seanmonstar

May 20 2013

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Star Wars Rebels →

I’ve always thought it would be awesome to explore the time period between Episode III and IV. My imagination went into overdrive seeing the Correllian Corvette towards the end of Episode III, and The Force Unleashed got to show the rebels make a formal declaration, but I want more.

And now, next year, we get a CG TV show exploring exactly that. Considering Star Wars’ previous TV shows, this should not disappoint.

May 17 2013

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'Hangouts... doesn't really unify anything' →

Hangouts is beautiful, and finally you can copy text from conversations, but it’s not as awesome as it should have been. Or could have been.

May 15 2013

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Android Studio: An IDE built for Android →

A new IDE to use when developing for Android. Hopefully it’s easier to work with than Eclipse. The way the code shows the resources dynamically and showing the icons in the side looks sweet, and the NullPointerException warnings look truly helpful.

I’m cautiously excited.

May 14 2013

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'DRM in HTML5 is a victory for the open Web' →

In other words, the alternative to using DRM in browser plugins on the Web is not “abandoning DRM;” it’s “abandoning the Web.”

May 13 2013

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'Teens aren’t abandoning “social.” They’re just using the word correctly.' →

You see, we’ve come to define “social” in unintentional Orwellian double-speak. “Social” has come to mean the exact opposite of what it’s meant for centuries. Instead of actual interaction and communication, we define “social” as once- or twice-removed ego validation through button-clicking.

Ding.

+

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EA gets multi-year Star Wars games deal →

Uh oh. Considering EA’s recent reputation, do we assume we’re doomed?

1313?

May 2 2013

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The proper way to handle game piracy →

The makers of Game Dev Tycoon, a game where players run a game development company, released a “cracked” version of their own game. It worked just fine, but as the pirates would play, they would start to see this beautiful message:

Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally. If players don’t buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt.

DRM done right.¹

It’s worth buying just for this alone. ↩

Apr 26 2013

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Android Babel API?

The communication situation on Android has gotten worse with the introduction of Google+. We used to have just Messaging (SMS), and Gtalk, and then they added Messenger. And they did this after Apple introduced iMessage, which simplified messaging. It seemed so counter-productive. So when I read things like this, I jump for joy:

Rumors have been swirling that Google is working on a cross-platform messaging service called Babel that will tie together all of its existing communication products, from Google Talk and Hangouts to Voice and Google+ Messenger.

It sounds like it could fall slightly short of everything that I would hope for, though. Android is in a perfect place to make their system even better, for everyone, not only when in Googleland. Android already has an API to allow any app to sync their contact details into your People app. What if they made a communication API, that any app could tie into, that would allow you to use just the native Android communication app, and be able to talk to everyone on all platforms. It could be SMS, Gtalk, WhatsApp, and Facebook, and I wouldn’t have to care how.

Someone on the Android team, please do it!

Additionally, this global app needs to behave similar to Facebook’s new Chatheads. Being able to keep browsing and doing other things while my chat is minimized, and then opening it partly to answer, and get right back to it: that is the way messaging must work on Android going forward. No butts.

I’ve always enjoyed Android messaging more than iOS, and a big reason is because the Android Messaging app shows the person’s picture next to their messages. For that reason, I’ve always assigned people I message frequently with a photo, if they haven’t chosen one themselves. This new API (call it Babel) would be really push it into the new age of text communication.

Apr 24 2013

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'Feed reading is an open web problem' →

Luis Villa raises an excellent question about RSS being an open web problem:

In other words – why is RSS an open web problem? why is it different from, say, email?

His answer:

If my browser doesn’t tightly integrate email, the open web doesn’t suffer. If my browser doesn’t tightly integrate feed discovery and subscription, well, we get exactly what is happening: a mass migration away from consuming (and publishing!) news through the open web, and instead it being channeled into closed, integrated publishing and subscribing stacks like FB and Twitter that give users a good subscribing and reading experience.

And then he explores what is needed (by browsers) to fix this open web problem.

Apr 19 2013

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Tech sites covering the Boston bombing

The Boston Marathon news is certainly a tragic thing, but to read about it on The Verge felt shockingly out of place. I wasn’t alone. MG Siegler on the coverage of the Boston bombings on tech sites:

Rather than directly send their readers to other places doing actual reporting, these sites all wrote at least one post (and in the case of Mashable, something like a dozen shameful posts) simply embedding, copying and pasting, or rejurgitating others’ information. And guess what they all got as a result? Pageview gold.

It seems the editor-in-chief disagrees, but then, of course he would. Still, his argument seems obtusely wrong:

We have never thought of ourselves as a “tech” site (and certainly not a “blog”).

Ohhhhh rrrealllyyyy? Not a tech site, you say? Strange, how when I hit the home page, the “sections” show me “web”, “gaming”, “apps”, “Apple”, “Android”, “mobile, and the like. What’s their About page say?

The Verge was founded in 2011 in partnership with Vox Media, and covers the intersection of technology, science, art, and culture.

Not tech? Alright, I get ya. Clearly, The Verge is about technology culture. Being a person who likes technology, and all that. But, you say the intersection. I used the think that meant “when a story touches on all of these subjects”, but now I’m less certain.

Instead, his argument continues:

We think of ourselves as a news site which covers the culture of now (for lack of a better term), the world at this moment, as it is — what matters to people who live and work in 2013.

So all the people who live in 2013 are interesting in the Asus Taichi tablet? Or that a Twitter exec didn’t say no to a ‘Twitter Home’? Or Facebook hiring a Maps manager?

My wife lives in the same century as I do (I have to assume), and she doesn’t care about any of these things. I care about them though. I also care about how Barcelona is doing in the Champions League, and how much I have to pay in taxes, but I wouldn’t expect to find anything about those on The Verge.

I do see that how I (and much of the world) would be interested in the Boston bombing. We’re also probably interested in what’s currently happening in Egypt, and how the North Korea situation is proceeding. But I don’t see anything about those on the Verge, except where they point out when insane world leaders take to Twitter. Interesting.

The Verge home page also had a huge box the same day of this timely article: “Staying safe: how can we find and defend against explosives?” Say what? I came to read about tech. Sorry, not tech, but things interesting to a technologist. This is just a second article taking advantage of our human fear of blowing up.

In the following days, they have indeed had several articles about the tech related to the Boston situation, and that seems fine. Still, when it’s not your field, simply link to the people who do report in that field. The same way we wish the LA Times would just point at a tech site instead of blabbering about something they don’t understand.