seanmonstar

Great news:

[Disney] has just announced at CinemaCon that it will be releasing a new film in the universe every summer, starting in 2015.

I’m stoked. So this would mean:

• 2015: Episode VII
• 2016: Boba Fett?
• 2017: Episode VIII
• 2018: Han Solo?
• 2019: Episode IX
• etc

Oh yeah! So excited about all this hard work the team has put in. And it feels so good to know I helped on these features:

Use your Existing Accounts. We’ve bridged yahoo.com, but of course we built an open system: any domain can now become a Persona Identity Provider so users can reuse their existing accounts on any site that uses Persona.

Built Into Firefox OS. We built in support for Firefox OS and made Persona much faster on all mobile devices. This gives Firefox OS apps an even better experience when using Persona.

Android launchers have been all pretty similar, just with a few different bits of customization. I can honestly say that Shutters are an awesome new feature added to my Android device. Swipe up on an icon, and it shows the related widget.

I know, right?

That’s it. Like I said, I’ll lead the #OccupyDisneyland movement myself. Who’s with me?

Game Informer says there might still be hope:

We still believe in the video game industry, we still will provide Star Wars games, we’re just looking at different models rather than internal production[…] There’s always a possibility that it [Star Wars 1313] can still come out via licensing.

But really: Nooooooooooooooooooo!¹

You’ve noticed that terrible practice also, right? The one where you see a game trailer, and then at the end it tells you the list of stores you can pre-order it from, and which bonus-piece-of-crap you’ll get from each?

Kyle McArthur has an excellent in-depth critique of the practice:

If you buy the game, you’re voting that whatever the developers, publishers, or retailers did, worked. It doesn’t matter if you only liked some of it, and didn’t like other parts, the money speaks for you.

Worth a read. And a scotch.

If that’s true, the most fascinating thing to me about this invitation is that it mentions Android at all.

Indeed. The phrasing “New Home on Android” makes me think of a Facebook themed launcher, or otherwise some sort of new app that replaces the current Facebook app.

Clearly, we hope Firefox OS in itself helps a lot of people. But here’s the real mission:

In this sense, Firefox OS is as much a project to improve the Web as it is a project to build a new mobile operating system. Every Firefox OS API Mozilla can get adopted by other major browsers makes it easier for developers to convert vanilla Web apps into “native” Firefox OS apps, and vice versa. Even if Mozilla’s OS never gains significant market share, the effort to flesh out a complete set of Web standards for mobile computing will help to push the Web forward.

And:

Firefox OS could have a big impact on the Web even if it never gains significant market share. By pushing the Web forward, Mozilla is helping to ensure that mobile websites will continue to be relevant even as developers create hundreds of thousands of proprietary apps. Firefox could lose the battle for the smartphone OS market but still win the war for open standards.

This is Epic!¹ JavaScript has really been gaining ground recently. Soon we will play triple-AAA quality games by going to a website.

As we all venture further and further into the depths of the internet we find people that share our interests. Lots of them, actually. Letting these people — people you look up to or share interests with or share careers with — curate the content you see starts to make more sense than letting your great aunt Sally run the show.

This sums up why we always want something besides Facebook. We want to see content from people who are experts in the topics we like, not from people we get along with who happen to be physically located near us.

After playing with Keep for a few days, here’s my brief brain dump about it:

• The design is gorgeous!
• It’s oh-so-fast! Using the widget, it’s near instantaneous to hit the the Record button, and be recording a new note that gets transcribed with barely an error. Compared to Evernote, which takes a couple seconds to get up and running with a new note.
• It’s already integrated with Google Now. Just say “Google, note to self…”, and blam-o.
• I use the widget as a super simple reminder system. I’m terrible with todos, but occasionally need to remember to do a simple action when I get home, or when I wake up. The widget helps show me this reminders.
• It integrates with Drive, so you should be able to write and store decent notes or photos, and find them again.
• There’s FUD about Google potentially shuttering Keep in the future, and while that may happen, I’m not too worried. It’s part of Drive, which is a for-pay product, like Dropbox. Plus, if they still decide to close it down, you can access all your files from Drive just like a normal file system. Drive can sync to your computer, so all your files are still there.
• Android was in need of a default note/reminder app, and this fills it.

• I look forward to the things Google could add to Keep to integrate even more with the Google eco-system. Like some of these suggestions from David Pierce:

  We immediately had visions of being able to jot down notes with Keep and seamlessly email them out through Gmail, or convert the hastily-scribbled “get lunch with Jane on Wednesday” into a Calendar event. What if you could send photos from your Google Glass to your Keep stream, or jot down an address and then have Google Maps navigate you there later?