Infurious at SXSW

Infurious is the only Northern Ireland company attending SXSWi and we’re doing it out of our pocket and without any support from our local economic development agencies. Phil has been partying with the other revelers and marvelling at some of the technologies he’s seeing – real cutting edge stuff …you should see the great stuff … Continue reading “Infurious at SXSW”

Infurious is the only Northern Ireland company attending SXSWi and we’re doing it out of our pocket and without any support from our local economic development agencies. Phil has been partying with the other revelers and marvelling at some of the technologies he’s seeing – real cutting edge stuff

…you should see the great stuff being done in HTML 5.0 and CSS. The amount of people doing web apps are unreal, even Photoshop style applications in HTML and only HTML.

All so nice and fluid, and best about it, there all using Macs.

On top of that, he was interviewed by the BBC and has a feature on their web site

Infurious developed a Comic Reader application that uses the iPhone’s familiar touch interface to navigate between different panes of a comic.
The Comics Engine can also layer audio on to comic pages, embed movies and links to YouTube.
The reader also features multi-layered content pages so readers can find bonus artwork, footnotes and explainers.

As we speak, a dozen or more bands and musicians are heading out to SXSW for the week of music supported by Belfast City Council, the Creative Industries Innovation Fund and Invest Northern Ireland.

Infurious at SXSWi 2009

Chinwag have announced the list of companies they are taking on the Digital Mission to SXSWi in March (I say “taking” but you have to realise that the Digital Mission costs £500 in addition to your flights and accommodation so it’s not a funded trip by any means.). As far as I can tell, only … Continue reading “Infurious at SXSWi 2009”

Chinwag have announced the list of companies they are taking on the Digital Mission to SXSWi in March (I say “taking” but you have to realise that the Digital Mission costs £500 in addition to your flights and accommodation so it’s not a funded trip by any means.). As far as I can tell, only one Northern Ireland company is represented here.

They write:

Congratulations to the companies selected by the advisory board to attend the Digital Mission to SXSWi and listed amongst the 35 hottest digital SMEs in the UK.

It’s a shame that other companies were not included in the trade mission as we have some extremely compelling companies starting out here in the province.

Murderdrome BANNED by Apple

From the InfuriousComics web site: By now, you might have heard that Murderdrome has been banned by Apple. This is due to the part of the sdk that suggests content must NOT offend anyone in ‘apple’s reasonable’ opinion. Here at infurious, we would love to work with Apple to ensure a content rating system can … Continue reading “Murderdrome BANNED by Apple”

From the InfuriousComics web site:

By now, you might have heard that Murderdrome has been banned by Apple. This is due to the part of the sdk that suggests content must NOT offend anyone in ‘apple’s reasonable’ opinion. Here at infurious, we would love to work with Apple to ensure a content rating system can be put in place to allow material that is no more offensive than many of the R rated films available to download on iTunes.

As a result, PJ has put all of the frames of MURDERDROME on the Infurious web site so people can get a chance to read it. Now, hark back to the post I made a few days ago of films without ratings on the iTunes Movie Store.

It’s also been covered on the “Lying in the Gutters” blog by Rich Johnston (the most popular and longest running comics column on the internet):

A remarkable plan.

Slightly scuppered by Apple telling the creators that “Murderdrome cannot be posted to the App Store because it contains content that does not comply with Community Standards” and “Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

Please give your opinion on the InfuriousComics web site.

I think it’s a shame that it has to come to this but it’s notable that there is no content guideline for applications on the App Store. For “Games” there is a guideline for suitability that is used by some and not all and, as we have seen, Apple is inconsistent in the use of the ratings system for their film content. How many books on there might be said to have explicit content – would you consider Candide (with it’s religious, political and intellectual views), or Dracula (with it’s Victorian examination of sexuality) or Tales of Terror and Mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle (It’s horror!) – don’t you think these are as effective as the visualisations possible through comic art?

Might be useful to note that AMERICAN PSYCHO is available WITH A PREVIEW, without a rating. Is it that writing (or the spoken word of writing) is less effective? Less able to rile the emotions?

Comics.

Wednesday afternoon I popped round to Paul’s house for a quick chat (and a couple of headache tablets) and I saw a demo of MurderDrome, the first iteration of a new comic application for the iPhone. There have been a few comic reader apps for the iPhone/iPod touch out there, most notably ClickWheel Comic Reader … Continue reading “Comics.”

Wednesday afternoon I popped round to Paul’s house for a quick chat (and a couple of headache tablets) and I saw a demo of MurderDrome, the first iteration of a new comic application for the iPhone.

There have been a few comic reader apps for the iPhone/iPod touch out there, most notably ClickWheel Comic Reader which gives access to a lot of content produced for 2000AD.

The Murderdrome iPhone comic demoed to me that day had a few very startling and fresh ideas.
The content was perfectly sized for the high res (160 dpi) screen of the iPod touch and iPhone. The side-side swipe of the finger moved from page to page but the UP-DOWN swipe of a finger took you through the content on that page. It removed colour, then inking, then brought the images down to the base wireframe. You could see the process on how it was made. You can, at a touch, remove or re-add speech bubbles and there are other settings (greyscale etc) which I didn’t have time to play with.

Paul (art, letters, colour) and Al (writer) have collaborated to make Murderdrome specially for the iPhone/iPod touch screen. The code was written by Philip Orr who you’ll also recognise as one of the names behind infurious. Watch Phil’s Blue Pilot for some very interesting developments soon.

See the Youtube video for more

Paul has some entertaining ideas on how this is going to work into a business model on the iPhone and iPod touch but you’ll definitely find some information on that on Paul’s blog, “Notes from the Drawing Board“.