Mobile Console Gaming

Paul Malone sent me this link to an article on euroGamer. The article points out the rise of the smartphone in gaming and the inevitable changes this will make to the gaming industry. No-one would have guess that Apple’s iPhone would be the third place mobile console (behind the Nintendo DS and the Sony Playstation … Continue reading “Mobile Console Gaming”

Paul Malone sent me this link to an article on euroGamer.

The article points out the rise of the smartphone in gaming and the inevitable changes this will make to the gaming industry. No-one would have guess that Apple’s iPhone would be the third place mobile console (behind the Nintendo DS and the Sony Playstation Portable) – both of which have been out for much longer. Microsoft has yet to enter this market though they, with Sony and Nintendo, are still warring over the static console market.

“The latest shot to be fired in this unusual war came this week, when digital research group comScore revealed its latest figure for mobile phone game consumption. Yes, mobile gaming; the videogames industry’s unloved stepchild, launched to so much fanfare and so much subsequent disappointment. The sector has been quietly marshalling its resources and building its revenues for some years now, but it’s still never quite had the breakthrough which would make up for all the overstated ambition of its early years.”

“comScore’s figures show that the overall number of people downloading mobile games last year grew 17 per cent, to 8.5 million. In itself, that’s respectable growth – but the real news here is that this growth was in spite of a 14 per cent decline in those downloading games on traditional mobile phones.”

“Those pundits who looked at the early sales figures for games on the iPhone’s App Store, tapped their noses and predicted that this device would have a huge impact on the whole world of gaming on the go have, thus far, been proven correct. It’s hardly stunting the growth of the DS yet, but even at this early point, the iPhone is making waves.”

The iPhone is making waves. I love that turn of phrase.

Our Sammy

Sammy Wilson (born 4 April 1953) is a Northern Irish politician and both a Member of Parliament and a Member of the Legislative Assembly for East Antrim. In June 2008, Mr Wilson became Minister of the Environment, much to the irritation of green and environmental groups. This was because of Mr Wilson’s opposition to the … Continue reading “Our Sammy”

Sammy Wilson (born 4 April 1953) is a Northern Irish politician and both a Member of Parliament and a Member of the Legislative Assembly for East Antrim.

In June 2008, Mr Wilson became Minister of the Environment, much to the irritation of green and environmental groups. This was because of Mr Wilson’s opposition to the creation of an indepedent environmental protection agency and his support of nuclear power. Mr Wilson was the winner of the Green Party’s Green Wash award – the MLA most likely to damage the environment.

Most recently Our Sammy called a government advertisement campaign on climate change “an insidious propaganda campaign which would not be imposed on people in NI.”

Mr Wilson has also advised Whitehall that such messages can only be promoted in Northern Ireland with his permission and he wants to see what he terms ‘postcode lockouts’ used to prevent them ‘leaking’ into that part of the UK.

You have to remember that Sammy represents the Everyman – a sure indicator that not only can any man get into politics but it doesn’t matter whether they have the intelligence, education or experience to deal with these issues.

Sammy gets his show around the 3 minute mark…

Mememememememe

I like MobileMe. I dislike the fact that I cannot apply rules to move messages to folders in MobileMe, it has to be done on the mail client and only works on the client. That sucks. It means that I can’t really use my MobileMe account for mailing lists because it doesn’t filter and neither … Continue reading “Mememememememe”

I like MobileMe.

I dislike the fact that I cannot apply rules to move messages to folders in MobileMe, it has to be done on the mail client and only works on the client. That sucks. It means that I can’t really use my MobileMe account for mailing lists because it doesn’t filter and neither does the iPhone so your inbox gets filled with crap.

Apple’s Mobile Me Mail effort: 4/10 for lack of attentions to detail.

#portfolio

Today I did a guest lecture spot at the University of Ulster in Coleraine. The students were from two course: Interactive Media Arts and Media Studies and Production. I droned on for around an hour on the Digital Circle, entrepreneurship, funding, how they, as final year students, should seriously be considering their portfolio, the addition … Continue reading “#portfolio”

Today I did a guest lecture spot at the University of Ulster in Coleraine. The students were from two course: Interactive Media Arts and Media Studies and Production. I droned on for around an hour on the Digital Circle, entrepreneurship, funding, how they, as final year students, should seriously be considering their portfolio, the addition of extra-curricular work and even the presentation of tangents followed when pursuing curricular assignments.

I then asked this question on Twitter…

QOTD: how important is extra-curricular portfolio when hiring a recent graduate in design / media / software? #portfolio

Twitter replied…

johngirvin @cimota: significant; shows genuine interest and passion for the subject if they spend free time at it. #portfolio

and

johngirvin @cimota: ex-curricular activities = more experienced, better rounded candidate. #portfolio

and

TaraSimpson @cimota, @johngivin: John nailed it, but I’d go a tad further. I’d say *hugely* significant. Software especially is much more than a day job

I agree. When asked to take on placement students earlier in the academic year, I said that I’d be interested in placing any student who could show me a portfolio outside of their coursework assignments. It stands to reason – if you turn up to a job interview and other candidates can demonstrate a significant portfolio, then you may as well go home. In addition, the creation of portfolio might mean you retain the gem of an idea which could be developed commercially in the future.

While I may have charmed some of the students into somnambulism, some seemed interested in the material and were keen to learn about the moves in the industry, keen to note down sources of funding for their pet ideas and left considering how to get a step ahead – by starting now and not waiting until after graduation.

Neil Young of ng:moco

With a bit of luck this won’t time out… Neil Young > iPhone is greater than… from Dom Sagolla on Vimeo. Related posts: Take a couple of minutes to appreciate genius. OpenMoko FreeRunner: *sigh* So what will this tablet be for? Use of OpenData: Icelandic Earthquakes

With a bit of luck this won’t time out…


Neil Young > iPhone is greater than… from Dom Sagolla on Vimeo.

Snow day…

My brother at Mac-Sys sent me this picture of his journey to work… Related posts: Mac-Sys is 9 years old Mac-Sys starts blogging! Ten Apps I Want… Snow Leopard: the next version of Mac OS X – due 2009

My brother at Mac-Sys sent me this picture of his journey to work…

dsc00424

iPhone as a ‘prophet’

From @semaphoria insight into the new gig: building a small/nimble agency that will help clients bring useful, delightful and smart iphone apps to market. This was ReTweeted by Raven Zachary who has defined his company as iPhone intelligence. Raven is the founder of iPhoneDevCamp and was the project director for Obama ’08 For iPhone and … Continue reading “iPhone as a ‘prophet’”

From @semaphoria

insight into the new gig: building a small/nimble agency that will help clients bring useful, delightful and smart iphone apps to market.

This was ReTweeted by Raven Zachary who has defined his company as iPhone intelligence. Raven is the founder of iPhoneDevCamp and was the project director for Obama ’08 For iPhone and he provides a diverse set of services for clients relating to iPhone Strategy and Product Development.

There’s a groundswell of support for iPhone as a platform but critics of the platform have been many. It’s too restrictive for some, too cumbersome for others – but I feel they miss the point. This isn’t about taking Apple’s platform and promoting it to prominence, it’s about the promotion of mobile as a computing platform as well as a communications platform. It’s been said repeatedly that the iPhone itself is a great device but a rubbish phone – and yet it’s selling nearly 20 million (not including iPod touch devices) – this alone tells me that the market is demanding more than just communications from their mobile devices. They want internet services, location services, friend services and all sorts of other value adds.

To my mind this makes the iPhone a prophet rather than a messiah. It’s showing us that there’s an immense amount of interest in the iPhone as a mobile computing platform and this will extend to a halo effect where other smartphones will be brought to the same level – whether it’s Android Market, Blackberry Market, Microsoft Skymarket or other similar clones. The same services will likely need to run on these other platforms once they gain enough momentum and they need to be INTEROPERABLE.

Analyst nonsense..

“Bernstein Analyst Announces iPhone Nano, iPhone Touch” is a classic example of an industry analyst disappearing up his own ass and using Google Keywords to decide what to write about. ” The other 83% of mobile handsets are largely sold without data service, except possibly text messaging. To more effectively address this part o fthe … Continue reading “Analyst nonsense..”

“Bernstein Analyst Announces iPhone Nano, iPhone Touch” is a classic example of an industry analyst disappearing up his own ass and using Google Keywords to decide what to write about.

” The other 83% of mobile handsets are largely sold without data service, except possibly text messaging. To more effectively address this part o fthe market, we believe Apple should offer an iPhone that does not require the user to sign up for a data plan.” Sacconaghi estimates that adding such a device to the iPhone line-up could potentially add $7 billion in revenues and $4 billion in gross profits annually (assuming a 3 percent market share).”

Of course, all of this is made up. It’s not even projections. It’s nonsense.

It misses the fact that the iPhone platform is all about the software. The iPhone is pretty much a dinner plate of a hardware device – it’s long, it’s wide and it’s not that pretty. But the software is golden.

And it’s the same sort of argument that Apple should license Mac OS X for white box PCs. Changes the experience, aims at the low end of the market. It’s a stupid argument and it didn’t work last time round.

Tuesday Night Cocoa

  Tonight was the Tuesday Night Cocoa group meet. Half a dozen hairy blokes sitting in the Mac-Sys Ltd offices with instructional PDFs up on a projector and open books in front of them. I’m very keen on this – this is a small cadre of fellahs, some of whom work in Mac-Sys and some … Continue reading “Tuesday Night Cocoa”

photo   Tonight was the Tuesday Night Cocoa group meet. Half a dozen hairy blokes sitting in the Mac-Sys Ltd offices with instructional PDFs up on a projector and open books in front of them. I’m very keen on this – this is a small cadre of fellahs, some of whom work in Mac-Sys and some of whom don’t, taking the time of an evening to fix issues with their coding projects and leaving with homework which they’ll work on during the week. To a degree I’m envious but I’mr eally glad I was able to help them get this started.

None of the guys there had any coding experience and yet they’re tackling the iPhone SDK in their spare time. They’ve buzzed me a couple of times in the last week or so with compile errors which they couldn’t debug (simply due to their lack of experience) but tonight they didn’t need to ask once – the previous nights and afternoons they have put into this have started to pay off.

It’s a great example of grassroots doing it for themselves – this is what I love about the current industry – people doing it without asking permission – whether they’re running a code class for the iPhone, running a coffee meetup for tech-heads just because they’re in the right place and the right time or knocking brains together to create a mashup of two useful services – it’s great.

Kudos to them and I can’t wait to see what they’re working on next.

you want to start something?

Today I was challenged about this web site. “It’s not very welcoming”, they said. It’s true. You go to the main domain site and it states curtly “Your IP has been recorded”. This is true of course, your IP address has been timestamped somewhere on my server which means I know when you were there … Continue reading “you want to start something?”

Today I was challenged about this web site.

“It’s not very welcoming”, they said.

It’s true. You go to the main domain site and it states curtly “Your IP has been recorded”. This is true of course, your IP address has been timestamped somewhere on my server which means I know when you were there and I can likely track you down to your IP pool at the very least.

But that’t not all.

You want to start something? sounds like you’re picking a fight”

Well, that’s because I am.

I’m what they generically call an “angry blogger”. You only need to look at my tag cloud to see that. I call people names. I swear. I shout. And my tone is challenging at best, aggressive most of the time and down right insulting at it’s worst.

But that’s not really what it means.

Do you want to start something?

Start something. Start a blog. Start twittering. Start using RSS. Start filling in your FaceBook or LinkedIn profile? Start connecting. Start a new business. Start talking to people. Start paying attention. Start looking outside. Start listening. Start losing that weight. Start learning a new skill. Start reading more. Start thinking more. Start playing games. Start a community group? Start a web site. Start an open forum. Start getting involved. Start something.