Turn your iPhone into a World War II fighter!
Genius application coded by those very clever people at Do Tank Studios; turn your iPhone into a fighter.
Flash 10.1 on Google’s Nexus One
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlWOocHwcLo
Adobe have announced Flash 10.1 for the Nexus One. While it looks okay, I can’t say there’s anything from this early demo which significantly impresses me (either as a developer or web user). It seems the National Geographic demo is primarily geared towards business, as it highlights the ability for Flash ads and banners to finally appear alongside regular web content (yes!). Flash ads and banners are exactly the type of content normal web users would prefer NOT to appear, and this is especially the case if accessing the web across a dodgy 3G connection. As a developer I also couldn’t see much on that site preview which SHOULD’VE been Flash and could’ve just as easily been done in JavaScript (aside from the nested video). Bad example Adobe.
The main thing that bugs me about the video is that Adobe are marketing it as “Flash 10.1″. Unless it provides comparable performance, usability and a feature set to the Flash people know on desktop computers then I don’t think it’s a great idea marketing it with the same product name. You can market it to developers as the same product if coding for either player is largely similar, but to end users it can only lead to disappointment and frustration when their mobile version of Flash doesn’t perform in a similar way, or it doesn’t perform at all due to features of normal desktop 10.1 being disabled in the mobile player. This has occurred with Flash in the past; where versions are marketed as being certain numbered versions but have lots of essential sub functions disabled (sometimes for understandable reasons, such as printing on the Sony PSP Flash Player 6).
It’s for this reason that I don’t have a problem with “Flash Lite” (from an end user’s point of view). It’s identified as a different product, and has typically been distributed across mobile devices… devices which largely share certain feature restrictions in comparison to the desktop versions of Flash. If a user compares Flash Lite between two mobile devices he/she will notice more similarities than differences than if he/she made a comparison with the full version on a desktop computer.
Don’t get me wrong; even though the above dwells on negatives I think it’s great that Flash is coming to Google’s new phone but I think it’s mainly from a development point of view (that I may get to play around with it). With Adobe’s increased focus on the monetisation of Flash I hope they don’t lose focus on the experience of end users (installing, using and maintaining Flash versions) and want they might want from the product.
A new PS3 slim user’s review
“Last Christmas I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away”. This Christmas, I didn’t give anyone my heart, but I did give Sony some of my cashola in exchange for a PS3 slim and collection of games (nice Alan Partridge-style link huh?). I’d been holding off buying one for ages (years in fact), but I knew I’d have to get one at some point if only to play God Of War 3.
So…as a longtime happy Xbox 360 owner, what did I think (I hear you not ask)? Well, the machine is good but things are as I thought they were before buying the console; the 360 is a better gaming machine.
Impressions of the machine itself are favourable. It’s a solidly-built machine and features everything and more I’d reasonably want from an entertainment machine (Blu Ray, wireless, etc). However, since I got the console it’s crashed twice in the middle of games. I thought Microsoft had the reputation for “screens of death”, but my 360 has never crashed in the middle of a game. It did RROD however so I’m not elevating the technical build of the 360 above the PS3. However, it’s important to note that Nintendo consistently builds its consoles it a bulletproof fashion, so both Sony and Microsoft have something to learn from the Big N there.
iPlayer on the PS3 deserves a special mention. The dedicated menu option in the XMB might be little more than a browser bookmark but the performance of iPlayer on the console is excellent (well done BBC and the Glow team).
The games on the PS3 are good, although there’s nothing I would be crying myself to sleep every night for not being able to play on Sony’s machine (yet). Wipeout HD/Fury is very good, Uncharted is very very good (really enjoying the adventure, story and characters), but the other shooters I got with the console aren’t doing anything for me right now. Christmas Day was largely spent testing out the Blu Ray performance of the machine, and I was pleased with the sharpness boost the format provides over DVD.
So, all-in-all, I’m happy with my PS3 but if faced with choosing a games machine it’d still be a no-contest decision in favour of the 360. Most my friends own one (even cisnky folded like a pack of cards and bought one 
), the online’s better and the multiplatform ports are consistently better. I don’t feel sorry for Sony at this stage as they’ve made a series of really bad/insulting decisions in the gaming industry of late (initial PS3 pricing, PSP Go pricing, PSP Go download game pricing, late release of PSN games to European customers, etc), but I do hope 2010 is a good year for them as I know they can produce gaming excellence when they have to.