02 Feb
I have to admit, I’m a little ashamed at myself for not making this connection on my own. I’ve known about the work on HTML5 for a while now, and have been very excited about it, so I’m not sure why (besides being blinded by my overall disapproval of Apple Computer, Inc.) I didn’t see how their failure to include Flash compatibility in these hand-held iProducts wasn’t *as* debilitating as the knee-jerk reaction would lead one to believe.
Before I go into why I feel that way, let me first point out this doesn’t change the fact that these products fail to conform to *current* standards of expected functionality and web interoperability, and that this limitation was intentional on the part of the developers.
iPad Demonstration - Flash Snafoo
Does that prohibit the iPhone from being a great product? No, not at all. *I* have one, for goodness sake. It’s a great phone and app engine, sure. But to tout it as, “the most advanced web browser ever on a mobile phone” that lets you “the real web — not a stripped-down mobile version” (source) is just plain hogwash; removing all Flash content from the web is not what I would call “the real web.” Shoot, even in his unveiling presentation, Steve Jobs ran into the “there’s flash here, but I’m not going to show it to you” box. Flash has it’s downsides, sure, but right now it’s everywhere. It’s the standard for video, advertising, and casual web-based gaming. Not supporting it is a shot in the foot.
Okay,now, having said all that… We come back to HTML5. The next version of the web authoring standard is going to have built in support for all kinds of media encoding – including video. Not only that, but Apple happens to be part of the group that holds the patients on this new, built in, encoding (source). Seems they might be holding out for that to become a new standard .. which it inevitably will, since it will become part of HTML itself, rather than a plugged-in extension. YouTube and Vimeo have been testing out the new video tags for HTML5, hopefully in an effort to work out any bugs before the proposed standard receives final approval. Once that happens, Apple’s hand-held iProducts will be in a much better position than they are today. Seeing as Apple’s David Hyatt is one of the editors of the HTML5 docs, I’m sure this has been a calculated move on Apple’s part.
The two biggest issues that are left then, with regards to Flash support, are online advertising, and browser games. These two are heavily dependent on Flash support, and so far there has been little to suggest any of the new HTML5 tags will be of use to them. If casual gaming sites, and online marketing companies want to cater to the hand-held iProduct market, they will have to come up with something, and quickly… “lack of Flash support” is a major sticking point for a number of tech-minded people, but once HTML5 rolls out, that will be less and less of an issue.
01 Feb
For a while now I’ve been trying to find the magic-bullet in Social Networking: how to combine all my different feeds into a coherent whole, while maintaining individual usability. What do I mean by “individual usability?” Not all networks are created equal – they each have their target audience, as well as their target “feel” for how they present information – or even what information they focus on. There is much overlap, I know, but I feel it is also important to maintain these differences as well, as they are what help separate some services from one another.
For example: Facebook and Twitter are not the same thing; they focus on different aspects of their users lives; they had different target audiences to begin with (though I am willing to admit, evolution and popularity have merged what once was separate, to a great extent). Because of this, it is not only inappropriate to use them the same way, but down right insulting. Are there times when your Facebook status is going to be the same as your latest tweet? Sure, of course… but does that mean it should *always* be the same? No. Linking your Twitter account directly to your Facebook account, so that every tweet becomes your Facebook status, is not only a misuse of the two services, but also information overload for people who don’t care.
This is how I view some of the services available. I’m sure others will disagree with me, but … here ya go:
Services like Twitter, Identi.ca, Plurk, and YouAre: Life Streaming – that is, a round by round answer to the question, “what are you doing / What’s going on right now?”
Services like Facebook, Tumblr, and LiveJournal: Life Highlighting – that is, general overviews, points of interest, Micro-blogging, or virtual scrapbooking.
Services like BrightKite, Foursquare, Gowalla: Life Tracking – that is, answering the question of, “where are you, where have you been, and what do you think about those places?” There is some overlap here with Life Highlighting, and even Life Streaming of course, but generally one way: Life Tracking moves into the others, but rarely do the others move into Life Tracking.
Services like Plaxo and LinkedIn: Contact Manipulation – that is, work and/or personal contact listing. I’m not sure why either of these even offer the streaming of anything else (such as Twitter or Facebook feeds) as it seems, to me, to be highly inappropriate.
This is not a comprehensive list of course, just a random sampling of some of the services I use. When I use Ping.fm to send updates, everything in Life Streaming generally all gets the same information. Even though I put Facebook and Tumblr in the same category, I separate out micro-blogging from scrapbooking. Facebook will post news of what I post in Tumblr, as a scrapbook entry, but then you go to Tumblr to actually read the post.
I dunno… maybe I’m over-thinking everything, or just making a big deal out of nothing.
Maybe I should prune this all back to just two or three services and leave it at that.
Perhaps I should just mind my own business and let people use different services however they want to – in what ever way works for them. Those of you who know me, however, will know I just can’t do that … as a judgmental absolutist, for any given “thing” there is a “correct way” to do it (real or imagined .. and I’m quite willing to admit, sometimes it’s more of the latter than the former).
25 Jan
I’m not sure why, but I seems to be obsessed with the distribution of my gaming habits. I believe this might tie into my obsession with needing to be in-touch with the world as much as possible – an obsession which I admit is slightly counter to my, more general, anti-social nature. I dunno.. I’m just complex that way ;P
Anywho.. My obsession with the proliferation of my gaming-data started with the discovery the Steam distribution system for video games, developed by Valve Software. It was back when the Orange Box first came out, and I created my Steam profile in order to use their distribution method to get it (rather than buy a physical box). I decided to do that, in large part, thanks to comments made by my friend, Brian. He extolled the virtues of Steam, and I drank the Kool-Aid quite willingly.
Steam tracks your progress in games you download through it, and keeps statistics on time played, achievements earned, which games you play most often… all that good stuff. It also lets you see what Steam games your friends are playing, and lets you quickly and easily join games with your friends. It’s fantastic. I genearlly keep my steam friends list up all day while at work so I can schedule lunch-time games of L4D (1 or 2) or TF2. At this point, when I want to buy a new game, I always check Steam first to see if it’s available through them.
Next came my discovery of XFire. This is another game-tracking application, but it has the added benefit of in-game text chat, voice chat, video, and screen shots. Video and screen shots are automatically uploaded to your profile, so they are available for your friends to see without you having to do anything extra. The voice-chat is particularly helpful for games that don’t offer native voice chat, and it doesn’t require all the hoops you would have to jump through for Vent or Team Speak – most importantly, you can create a voice chat session on the fly. It’s really pretty awesome.
My next layer of obsession came in the form of Raptr – another monitoring application. It is very similar to XFire, but does have a few unique features which help it stand out: Not only does it track gameplay statistics like xfire, it also tracks your achievements, like Steam. Additionally, it hooks in very well with Facebook using the raptr application, something xfire and steam haven’t really done so far.
Bringing it all together, is my GamerDNA profile. Unlike the others, this isn’t an application that runs on my machine. GamerDNA hooks into all those other applications to gather gaming metrics. It uses this data to generate some interesting statistics on game play. It also keeps a record of your overall gameplay activities, including when you play a game for the very first time. I like this site, as it aggregates all this information and lets me generate interesting statistics from it 
03 Nov
A new, web-based, free voice chatting application – Blabbelon – launched today. Their target audience: Gamers. At first blush it looks okay … nothing to download, signup is fast and painless, and you can start chatting in under 5 minutes (depending on the speed of your email system – they email your initial password… to you).
It has a (slightly) configurable PTT key bind, allowing you to select your preferred bind, from a selection of rather limited (in my opinion) options. It took me a while to notice it though.. a small area in the upper right – not under “options” as one might expect.
Worth checking out? Yeah.. seems very easy to get started, which means new guildies can get in on the conversation without too much back-and-forth.
17 Oct
My buddy, Roy, is playing video games for charity today! 24 hours!! Heh.. oh the sacrifices we make 
Watch his live stream here:
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