Pay no attention to this post– okay, a little attention if you want, but it doesn’t merit much. I’m on board a Virgin America flight to New York (where I’ll cover RIM’s BlackBerry event tomorrow). And since I have Internet access via Gogo but no laptop–it ran out of juice–I’m trying blogging on my iPad.
Verdict: Doable, but slow and not terribly pleasant. Biggest problem: I’m in a middle seat…
This may be one of the fundamental differences between New York and San Francisco: In the Bay Area, I’ve never seen an eating and drinking establishment try to ban laptops, let alone e-readers.
If 3D gaming is going to take off, it’ll have to find a way to reduce eye strain during lengthy play sessions. For one Nintendo 3DS game designer, that means being mindful of the way 3D effects are applied.
Masahiro Sakurai is a veteran game designer who is now working on Kid Icarus — the first proper sequel to the NES classic — for Nintendo 3DS. When asked by CVG whether he’s felt any eye strain with the handheld, Sakurai said the issue is most pronounced when there are a lot of objects flying towards the user.
Sakurai’s solution? Focus more on movement away from the user. That’s it. Sakurai didn’t elaborate further or give any examples of how this would affect the game.
I’m not completely satisfied by the explanation. When I tried the Nintendo 3DS at E3, my most profound 3D moment happened when a dinosaur nearly popped out of the screen during a scream of rage. To hear that such moments must be used sparingly is disheartening.
But at least the explanation shows that Nintendo developers are trying to address eye strain at all. Nintendo was already burned once by the issue; the infamous Virtual Boy would actually pause and remind players to take breaks. Those who didn’t heed the advice got headaches.
Nintendo’s other eye strain solution is built into the 3DS hardware: Players can reduce or switch off the 3D effect entirely with a slider on the side of the device. Again, it’s no cure-all, but at least it will allow people to keep playing without interruption.
The simplest and most expansive iDevice jailbreak was released last night. In the past, and prior to Spirit, most jailbreak solutions required a computer intermediary running software locally to get the job done. It wasn’t difficult, but it did require research and could be somewhat intimidating to the uninitiated. Whereas the new jailbreakme.com website offers jailbreaking to anyone who can simply navigate to a URL. But I wonder how big the need or interest in jailbreaking is these days.
I’m not personally traumatized by the news that the version of Android 2.2 that Verizon’s original Droid gets won’t let the phone tether to a laptop or serve as a hotspot–I have a Verizon MiFi–but it’s another sign of Android’s inherently fractured nature. (Back at Google’s I|O conference, it played up the hotsot feature as a key advance.)
Microsoft said Monday that it was expecting to release Office for Mac 2011 in October, while at the same time cutting the price as much as 50 percent to bring pricing in line with its Windows counterparts. Two versions of the software will be made available, one directed at academics and the other for business.
Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 will include World, Excel, Powerpoint, and Microsoft’s instant messaging application for Mac OS X. The business version will include all of the above applications plus Outlook, which will replace Entourage as Office’s e-mail client on the Mac.
Pricing for the student version ill be $119 for a single license, and $149 for a family license which allows for installation on up to three machines. This compares to a single license price of $149 for Office 2008. For Office for Mac Home and Business 2011, a single license is now $199, down from $399, and a family license $279.
At any time, a user will be able to upgrade from the Student to Business version using online upgrade functionality, Microsoft said.
A $99 version of the business suite would also be made available, but only to those in higher-education. Proof of employment or enrollment in an academic institution would likely be required to take advantage of the discount.
Those who purchase Office for Mac 2008 after Monday will be eligible to upgrade to the new version at no cost, Microsoft said. To receive the free upgrade, the purchaser must register at Microsoft’s website.
Checking e-mail has long been considered the primary pastime of the online user. However, if data from Nielsen is to be believed, that’s no longer the case. The firm found that on average, about 23 percent of our online time is spent on social networking sites, versus 8.3 percent on email.
This was a much wider spread than last year, when it was 15.8 and 11.5 percent respectively. The changes could be explained by the fact that social networking sites are the primary method of communication between friends these days, which makes sending an e-mail much less necessary.
Facebook is dominating this space, with an 85 percent share of social networking use. MySpace comes in a very distant second with a five percent share, and Twitter only a single percentage point.
Our third most popular activity online is playing games, which on average takes up about 10 percent of our time. Again, highlighting the power of social networking, Zynga is one of the biggest companies in the space.
Zynga is creator of the popular game Farmville, which has seen a majority of its success as a result of the success of Facebook itself.
Social networking service Twitter hit its 20 billionth tweet on Saturday, reaching the milestone only two months after it had received its 15 billionth tweet, and five months after hitting ten billion. The accelerating growth shows that the fad surrounding Twitter is still going strong, and especially in Japan, where the milestone tweet occurred.
Some 12 percent of all tweets originate from the country, the single biggest contributor to Twitter traffic. Some say the language itself is the reason: saying something in 140 Kanji characters would be a much more complete thought than in 140 Roman ones.
While Harry was writing a short post about PlayOn’s iPhone web app, I immediately started trying to run the streaming video service on the iPad as well. I’m happy to say that with a bit of trickery, I’m now able to watch videos from Hulu, CBS.com and more from the iPad, without paying for Hulu Plus.
To do this, you’ll need a Windows PC, the latest version of PlayOn (you can try it free for 14 days, and the paid version is much cheaper than Hulu Plus), and Atomic Web Browser, an alternative iPad browser that costs $1. You’ll also want a bit of patience, because PlayOn doesn’t officially support the iPad right now and the workaround isn’t flawless.
The trick is simple: In Atomic Web, go to “Settings,” then hit “Identify Browser As,” then select “Mobile Safari – iPhone.” This fools PlayOn’s mobile website into thinking you’re visiting from an iPhone, so it won’t redirect you back to the PlayOn homepage.
Now, run PlayOn on your computer, then visit m.playon.tv on the iPad. Press the button to connect with your PC, and you’re in. Just look at all that content!
Fair warning on some glitches: Each menu page may take a couple seconds to load, and you might stare at a black screen momentarily before videos start playing. Don’t start tapping buttons wildly, just wait it out. Also, my computer slowed down considerably and my router dropped its connection after using PlayOn’s mobile site, but I haven’t experimented enough to say whether those are one-time bugs, critical flaws or total coincidence.
I’m now seriously considering a lifetime PlayOn license (as an aside, I’m thrilled that PlayOn now offers a flat-rate alternative to its yearly subscription plan). PlayOn only works over a home network with a PC in tow, so iPhone support doesn’t really interest me, because I won’t watch video at home on such a small screen. But with iPad support, I can watch Hulu in bed, or subscribe to MLB.tv without also having to buy the $15 iPad app. Until PlayOn adds iPad support officially, or Apple approves PlayOn’s native apps, this workaround is going to be great.
JK on the Run’s Kevin C. Tofel is reporting that a new Nielsen study says that Android phones have 27 percent of the US market for smartphones, beating out Apple’s iPhone for the first time. At the same time, another report says that Android has an even heftier 34 percent of the market, making it the country’s most popular mobile OS.
Both factoids sounded familiar. Sure enough, back in May yet another firm (NPD) said that Android had 28 percent of the market to iPhone’s 21 percent. Lesson: Don’t take research reports as gospel.
Everybody agrees that Android phones are outselling iPhones in terms of units. Given how many models are on the market, and how well-marketed some of them are, it’s not surprising that it’s taken the lead–the shocker is that it took this long for such a pervasive OS to beat one that’s on only two phones from one carrier.
For consumers, the unit-sales horse race isn’t all that interesting. It’s the overall health of the competing ecosystems–as reflected in quality and quantity of third-party apps, services, and accessories–that matters. And while Android is making rapid progress here, nobody who’s trying to be even sort of objective will make the case that the Android Market is now the equal of the iPhone Store.
Android now has users in vast quantities; it’s up to Google to polish up the still-mediocre Market and do everything in its power to help developers create lots of exceptional apps.
