Augmenting Reality
The newest version of the Yelp app for the iPhone (released yesterday) has a nifty Easter Egg that we weren’t supposed to get until the iPhone 3.1 OS upgrade. From the Yelp home screen, shake the phone three times to enable a feature called “Monocle,” which triggers an augmented reality feature, overlaying the iPhone’s camera view with a real-time HUD indicating businesses that are reviewed on Yelp.
image © Bryan Stratton
I tried it this morning while walking to the Little Red Bike Cafe in North Portland. At a distance, it worked pretty well, but as I got closer to my destination, the accuracy decreased. In the screenshot above, Darcy’s actually is pretty much right across the street from me, but Taco Bell is behind me, and the Little Red Bike Cafe is to my left.
I’m sure that’s just an issue with the calibration and the fact that the iPhone 3.0 OS isn’t fully equipped to handle augmented reality apps at this point. But for a secret feature that’s still in beta, it’s frickin’ cool, and it’s definitely got me looking forward to seeing what creative uses app developers come up with for the finished API.
Console Price Cut Roundup
The worst-kept secret in gaming has just been confirmed: The Xbox 360 is getting a long-anticipated price cut as of this Friday. The no-hard-drive Arcade version remains at $200, but the 120 GB Elite (with HDMI output) drops $100, from $400 to $300. The Pro, which sports a 60 GB HD and component A/V, goes from $300 to $250, but as soon as the existing stock is depleted, that model is being phased out.
image © Engadget
This, of course, is in response to the recently-released PS3 Slim, the skinny, $300 version of Sony’s Blu-Ray player. Rumor has it that it also plays games. I’m afraid Sony has an uphill climb ahead of them if they truly want to compete with the 360, but at least they’ve now got a decent ad campaign, instead of something designed to confuse and horrify you.
image © Engadget
The Nintendo Wii has remained at $249 since its launch, and as of April of this year, Nintendo was still denying that any price cuts were imminent. But with the X360 Pro dropping to the Wii’s price point and the full-featured PS3 Slim and X360 SKUs moving into the Wii’s neighborhood, it’s hard to believe that we won’t see a $50 price cut before the holiday season begins in earnest.
iPhone Face Collection
Just a quickie update today, as I delve deep into the guts of my latest book. Today’s Gizmodo has reposted all of the iPhone “face” wallpapers for your downloading pleasure. There’s also a nifty accompanying article recounting the origin of iPhone smiley face dude. Nineteen classic little bits of clever techie art, and free to anyone who wants ‘em. Can’t say fairer than that.
image © Gizmodo
A Bit of Perspective
And while I’m talking about the homebrew community (which is too often used as a fig leaf by software and media pirates), here’s a rather stunning article from today’s Gizmodo:
image © Gizmodo
I’m outraged that the Obama administration is supporting the RIAA on the case against Jammie Thomas, a single mother of four who has to pay them $1.92 million for downloading songs. That’s more expensive than murder and six other crimes[...]
Heck, you can do all these crimes, and the total amount will be only $2.2 million. Of course, you can’t really quantify years spent in prison using dollars, but I don’t care. The case of Jammie—and many like hers—is still absolutely outrageous.
Now look, I’m rather a fan of the Obama administration in general, and I don’t even want to think about how much of my work has been stolen over the years, from the software I’ve helped to create to the strategy guides that wind up retyped on FAQ sites a week after they come out. But this is silly.
Sony Courts iPhone Devs
Some notes about the approval process for PSP Mini games, from Pocket Gamer:
There is “no requirement for content approval” apparently.
Games will however go through a shortened quality assurance process to make sure they work properly on the various PSP hardware.
Significantly, this process is labelled as being “transparent, trackable and predictable”, with developers setting their own release dates.
This suggests Sony has learnt from Apple’s approval process for the App Store, which is regarded as being neither transparent, trackable or predictable.
image © casualgaming.biz
I find the “no requirement for content approval” extremely dubious. Is Sony really going to let Mini developers churn out porn apps for its handheld console and sell them through the PlayStation Store?
Also, isn’t this the same company that routinely releases new PSP firmware to shut down the homebrew community and has devised some of the most destructive copy protection malware in history? Are we really supposed to believe that they’re suddenly a friend of the little developer?
Plus, the install bases for the PSP and the iPhone/iPod Touch are just about dead even, despite the fact that the iPhone has been on the market for a significantly smaller time frame. If Sony really wants to start poaching disgruntled iPhone app developers, they’d better hope that the imminent release of the PSP Go exceeds all expectations, and that recent accounts of Apple reforming its approval process are bunk.
For Love of Fail
From today’s Gizmodo:
According to a new reader survey by Game Informer, the Xbox 360 suffers from a whopping 54.2% failure rate. That’s an insanely high figure, but I can’t say it seems that inaccurate. And you know what? People don’t care.
Wow. I knew that a lot of gamers had suffered from the 360′s infamous Red Ring of Death (including me and some of my friends), but I wouldn’t have guessed that every other 360 has failed during its relatively short time on the market. Of course, there’s no explanation of the methodology used, so maybe it’s not as bad as all that, especially considering that extremely frustrated customers tend to participate more heavily in voluntary surveys. But still, even if the true figure is a quarter of that, the 360′s failure rate must rank among the highest ever in the consumer electronics world.
image © Gizmodo
The more interesting part of the story for me is not that Microsoft’s manufacturing process leaves so much to be desired, though. It’s that only 3.8% of gamers say that getting a RROD will keep them from buying another 360. Some of that has to be chalked up to Microsoft’s hassle-free repair and replacement program, which I’ve had to use myself and have nothing but good things to say about it (except that it was necessary in the first place, of course). But the extraordinary rate of consumers willing to come back for more of the same is a testament to the experience that the 360 provides.
My girlfriend is not a gamer, but we spend about 5-10 hours a week on the 360 streaming movies and TV from Netflix (which the 360 now has an exclusive deal with). If we have a Rock Band party, that’s another 5-10 hours spent using the magic white box. By contrast, my Wii has been blinking its creepy blue “you have a message” light at me for weeks now, and I haven’t even bothered to turn it on just for the sake of getting rid of the annoyance. And my PS3? Well, I’ve got a small library of Blu-Ray discs and one PS3 game (Grand Theft Auto IV, which, in retrospect, I wish I’d bought for the 360).
The Wii might be bringing in casual gamers, but the 360′s media center capabilities make it attractive even to non-gamers. And until Sony gets its act together, there’s no competition for the more hardcore, traditional gamer dollar. Almost every game that comes out on the PS3 is also available for the 360, and in my experience, the 360 version always runs as well (if not better) than the PS3 version.
It’s kind of funny: when Microsoft announced the original Xbox, my initial response was that I couldn’t see myself equating “Microsoft” with “fun.” But now that the 360 has established dominance in the console gaming world, I can’t imagine my living room without it.
Oh Snap!
Just read this post on Gizmodo, which links to an LA Times article that talks about how the iPhone has become the most popular camera for photo uploads on Flickr; it’s also the only cellphone camera to crack the top five spots.
But can anyone honestly say that they’re surprised to hear that? Not only does the iPhone install base number in the tens of millions by now, it’s a device that has made sharing media over the internet easier than ever. Not only that, it’s the kind of gadget that you want to find excuses to play with—as my girlfriend will attest with a sigh of frustration (though I’m hoping that, once she starts using my old hand-me-down 2G iPhone, she’ll become One Of Us as well).
And with all due respect to the DSLR crowd, I think most of us think of picture-taking as a point-and-shoot affair. In my younger days, I shot roll after roll of film on a bargain basement 35mm camera. And to this day, I still treasure the hundreds of photos I have from that era, and I don’t lament the fact that I wasn’t able to white-balance them properly. Ironically, despite Apple’s elitist reputation, the iPhone is the perfect device for snapping and sharing pics without any fuss.
Genius
I’m in love with iTunes 8′s new Genius feature. For those who don’t obsessively follow gadgety news, it basically does two things: it suggests songs for purchase from the iTunes Store that are similar to any song that you select in your music library, and it can also instantly create a playlist of up to 100 songs that all go together from any song in your library.
The first thing, I’m not so excited about. I don’t buy much music off of iTunes, because I’m one of those crazy old-school guys who actually needs to hold a CD in my hands before I feel like I own the album. I also have hair growing out of my ears and frequently shout at kids to get off of my lawn.
Also, there’s still a maddening number of songs in the iTunes store that have copy protection attached to them, or are only available at a lower sound quality, which sounds tinny and flat to my ears. And ultimately, there are plenty of other places on the internet that I can *ahem* “borrow” music from, if I’m just checking something out before deciding whether or not to buy the CD, or if I’m looking for something that’s out of print and unavailable for purchase from the copyright holder.
So the Genius iTunes Store recommendations are great for discovering other rarities by the same artist that I don’t already own, or for finding similar artists that I might be interested. But the real genius of Genius, as far as I’m concerned, is the Genius playlist maker.
When you first install iTunes 8, you have the option to have Genius scan your entire music library, which can take a little while, but it’s a one-time-only thing. Genius takes all of that information and sends it to Apple. (The iTunes 8 EULA swears up and down that no personally identifiable information is sent, but I’m sure that Apple now knows pretty much everything about me. But the joke’s on them: I’m not actually very interesting, and I rarely buy anything from their store.)
Apple does something with all of that info that they won’t talk about, and then it sends a bunch of information back to your iTunes library. Click on a song, click the Genius button, and BAM! You instantly have a playlist of songs. And when I say “instantly,” I mean it. It takes less than a second. You can choose how many songs to have in the playlist, you can instantly refresh it with all-new songs, and you can save the playlist for later.
And it’s just about as smart as the name implies. Selecting “How Soon Is Now” by the Smiths makes a playlist that includes Echo & The Bunnymen, New Order, The Cure, Morrissey, and newer stuff like Muse and The Arcade Fire. Bruce Springsteen’s “Downbound Train” leads to a playlist full of downtempo stuff by R.E.M., Neil Young, The Police, Warren Zevon, and The Kinks.
The one that impressed me the most was a playlist I created from Metallica’s “Orion,” off of their 1986 Master of Puppetsalbum. Genius was smart enough to put on songs by Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Pantera, and Anthrax, as well as more Metallica songs. But after ten refreshes, it only gave me one song off of their Black Album, and it never included any songs off of their post-Black Album stuff. It was smart enough to include live versions of old songs recorded and released after the Black Album, but not a single tune from Load, Reload, or The Album Whose Name Shall Never Be Mentioned Again appeared in any of the lists.
How does it work? I have no idea. I think it has something to do with how many other Genius users have the same songs in playlists of their own, and which other songs are included in those playlists. There’s probably some iTunes Store marketing data at work as well (“customers who purchased song X also purchased songs Y and Z”), and I’m sure there’s some basic analysis of things like genre, tempo, date of release, and other info that Genius can mine directly from the song and its data tags. They probably also have a room full of music nerds like me, scripting rules like, “A playlist built off of Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears In Heaven’ should never include R.E.M.’s ‘Fall On Me’ or Tom Petty’s ‘Free Fallin”.”
For most people, the Genius playlist will just be a fun novelty, or a quick way to come up with six hours of music for a party or a road trip. But I’m a straight-up High Fidelity music geek who spends WAY too much time making mixes and playlists from a music collection of nearly 25,000 songs (99% of which were purchased legally, which is why I didn’t own a car until I was 27). At a certain point, something like Genius isn’t just a helpful utility, it’s absolutely necessary if you want to continue enjoying the full depth of your collection.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to listen to a playlist based on Mojo Nixon’s “Tie My Pecker to My Leg.” I’d have never thought of mixing Ministry’s “Jesus Built My Hotrod” and the Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia” into it, but now that you mention it…
Why I Don’t Regret Buying My iPhone When I Did
I’ve received no fewer than three taunting messages from “friends” in the 48 hours since Apple announced that the new 3G iPhone would be released on July 11th. “Don’t you wish you’d waited?” they asked. “The new one’s going to have so many more features, and it’s $200 cheaper!”
My short answer: No, I don’t regret buying my iPhone in February at all.
My long answer: No, I don’t regret buying my iPhone in February at all, you covetous jackals. You don’t even have iPhones, which means you barely qualify as human in my book. Which, by the way, is an audiobook that I can listen to on my iPhone while I’m browsing lolcats, checking Red Sox scores, and downloading music. The future called, but your caveman phone just sent it straight to its primitive, non-visual voicemail. Press “1″ with your unopposable thumb to listen to it!
And if having a five-month head start on being unendurably smug isn’t enough of a reason for not regretting my purchase, here are five more:
1) Size Matters: My music collection clocks in at about 130 GB. When I bought my iPhone, the largest storage capacity was 16 GB. After formatting, that left me with only enough room for about 10% of my music. The 3G iPhones, spiffy as they are, don’t have any increased storage, which will be my primary reason for upgrading when I finally get around to it.
2) I’ll Be 2.0 Too: Most of the really nifty 3G iPhone stuff that was demoed at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference were third-party apps that will be available to all iPhone owners when the iPhone 2.0 OS is made available as a free download in a few weeks. That’s the truly great thing about the iPhone – the software is upgraded regularly, which adds additional functionality over the life of the device. You don’t have to buy a new one every year to get all the good stuff.
3) You Get What You Pay For: I paid $500 for my 16 GB iPhone when I bought it. The new 16 GB 3G iPhone is going to retail for $300. It’s also not going to come with the $50 dock that was included with mine, nor will it have the fancy-pants multi-head power adapter that mine did. That’s not $200 worth of goodies, but it softens that $200 early-adopter penalty somewhat.
4) 24 Easy Payments of $15 More: Unless you’re willing to unlock your iPhone from the AT&T network with some shady software (which might not even be possible with the 3G iPhones), you have to sign up for a two-year commitment to AT&T, and they’ve goosed up the rates for the 3G iPhones. The data plan is now $30 a month instead of the $20 for the original iPhone, and instead of getting 200 free text messages, they charge you $5 for them. Over 24 months, 3G iPhone’s service plan will cost $360 more than the original plan, which eats up that $200 price drop and then some.
5) I Love My Effing iPhone: Did you see the piece of crap “smartphone” I was stuck with for two years? Thick as a brick and nearly as functional. I could never get the wifi to work reliably, and the novelty of having Word and Excel on your phone wears off as soon as you try to use them on a 3.5-inch screen. To add insult to injury, it cost as much as the iPhone when I bought it, and that was back when the dollar was actually worth something. The iPhone does lots of things well, and it’s learning new tricks every day. It gets more delicate caresses from me than my girlfriend does, and don’t think that that hasn’t led to a few arguments. I listen to it as I fall asleep and check email on it as soon as I wake up (because my office is at least 10 feet from my bed, and that’s way too far to go to see if I actually need to get up yet or not).
A buddy of mine who works for Microsoft and hates all things Apple didn’t hesitate to praise the iPhone as one of the most amazing gadgets ever developed. And he’s absolutely right. It’s impossible to overstate how truly remarkable this thing is, and now that it’s reached a very competitive price point, there’s no reason for any of you to not experience the magic for yourself.
Go ahead. Do it. Join us.
Join us.
Join us.
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