Douglas on Tumblr

The demo seemed targeted specifically to existing FarmVille players, because I (having never played the game) couldn’t make heads or tails out of how one is supposed to play or what sort of entertainment it was supposed to provide.

Would it be overly cynical of me to say that Farmville exists more to make Zynga money than to provide entertainment?

I am very interested in seeing how Google TV turns out. I commend Google for having a go at improving how we use technology in the living room. What’s below is about something I find puzzling about their strategy. I am not trying to say ‘Google sucks’.

Remember the day before Google TV was announced? WebM was the big announcement in the keynote of the first day of Google IO. Now there’s this:

Google TV is capable of playing 720p and 1080p Flash videos. For best performance:

Use h.264 encoding for all video content. Avoid encoding your videos in h.263 or vp6.

No mention of WebM or the HTML video tag.

I know this section is about Flash, not video in general, but a mention of WebM would seem relevant here. I thought ‘open’ video was the future.

…the notion that blogging is a meaningful verb. It is not. The verb is writing. The format and medium are new, but the craft is ancient.

John Gruber

Old post found via Marco Arment

The ability to see two sources very close together is called resolution. It’s measured as an angle

This is an important definition from a great article. I love technical articles like this.

Objects and actions are pleasingly orthogonal to the mathematically inclined

Certianly are. I think this distinction is what makes Quicksilver so appealing to me.

Marco Arment proposes another iOS multitasking service for registering to check for updates with a server periodically. I said I was looking for this in my original iPhone background processes list. Arment says:

This would allow Instapaper to download updates in the background, and would also greatly benefit RSS readers, Twitter clients, chat programs, weather and news widgets, and a huge number of other applications

Such as Notes, Calendars and Mail applications. (I don’t know if third party Mail and Calendar apps are allowed. I’ll have to check if there are any.)

Simplenote would really benefit from this.

There do seem to be some third party email and calendar apps.

There is an app for accessing a Hotmail account. I’m saddened by the app store review saying how the writer felt trapped by the iPhone email app. It is Apple’s app that supports the flexible IMAP standard and Hotmail which does not.

Gruber linked to this discussion about him. That’s irrelevant. I just wanted to grab this bit:

jacobolus:

putting an image behind the search engine homepage is a stupid gimmick which adds nothing to the value to my search results.

papachito:

Not really, in ChromeOS, the google homepage will be kind of like your desktop. So putting a picture there is like putting a picture on your desktop wallpaper.

I wouldn’t say a desktop background adds anything to your files or windows. So you could say desktop backgrounds are stupid gimmicks. They’re not practical, but fill a common human desire to decorate. A plain background is allowed if you find that preferable.

Sorry for linking back to an old article, but I wanted to comment on this piece from three weeks ago.

It just works. I want to check email, look at my schedule for the day, look at Facebook, view something on YouTube, check out some news headlines, or just watch a movie, the iPad (and future devices of its class) are just much more convenient.

I love my ThinkPad T400. But when I go to it, I have to pray whether it’ll come out of sleep. If it does come out of sleep, it’ll be slow.

I don’t find I have this problem with my MacBook Pro. I agree on the convenience aspect though.

Similar to #1, I can check my email, look at my various RSS feeds and scan my schedule in less than 30 seconds.

That is pretty fast. However, I doubt you can actually read anything in that time. This is a mixed bag: NetNewsWire for iPhone launches much fast than NetNewsWire for Mac but Simplenote feels more like Notational Slug than Velocity. Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ also makes things move fast. Desktop apps could be much faster than iPhone and iPad apps but I think it is true that they often are not.

A lot of cool little programs are being made because developers can actually get paid for making cool stuff.

I agree.

• NetNewsWire
• Notational Velocity
• Simplenote

under the new plan, you can pay just $55/month: $40 for voice and $15 for the DataPlus plan.

That still sounds pretty bad to me.

My iPhone is on O2’s pay as you go service.

I can pay £10 each month for unlimited Internet. This does not allow tethering. At any point, I can not pay this and use my iPhone like an iPod touch with phone capabilities (but not mobile Internet).

Calls and text messages are on pay as you go, which means I pay for what I use. I don’t use much so I pay very little.

Over the last eight months, I have only given O2 £80. This setup would not work well for people who make many more calls and send more text messages that I do. I think it’s great though. I would much rather not have to deal with a mobile network provider, but that’s not reality.

Main page with videos here.

Steve Jobs’ opinion comes across very clearly. He’s honest and direct. This is commendable.

It is also interesting how little new we learn from this interview. I think Jobs’ opinion and vision come across in the products themselves.

My favourite bit is the comment that PCs are like trucks. This makes a lot of sense to me.

Jim Ray’s article ends:

— Contributed from my iPad

I like this a lot. It occurs to me: the iPhone and iPad are great for contributing because they’re the best devices for consuming on. The convenience of doing everything on one device often outweighs inconveniences like slower typing and the difficulty of referencing lots of sources.

Sent from my iPhone.

[iPad] is a premium computing experience, albeit a (deliberately) limited one. It doesn’t do many things badly, it does some things very well.

He ‘gets it’ to some extent. Fortunately the things the iPad does well are the most important things to me. Mostly this is consumption.

There seems to be an attitude of contempt when saying how the iPad is ‘only for consumption’ particularly in Paul Thurott’s article. I think most of what most people do with their computers is consumption. This does not seem particularly bad to me. That is just the way things are.

What about me? I try hard to make sure I am engaged with what I read: sending thoughts into Simplenote and sometimes to Tumblr. I do all this on my iPhone and it works alright. I am not producing a lot of content but that’s fine.