Photics.com

I remember watching a history show about the gold rush. I learned a valuable lesson. A lot of people didn’t get rich during the gold rush. The ones that did, it was usually the people selling the shovels to the diggers. Today, Commove launched. I’m incredibly proud of this game. I think it’s awesome. But as I was trying to promote it, I was reminded of that historic lesson. While checking the HTML code on the Commove iTunes pages, “nofollow” hyperlinks were revealed.

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My next game has foreign language in it. I’m currently in the process of adding German and Polish to… my secret project. Yet, it’s a bit frustrating to type special characters. I usually launch Windows Character Map and I try to locate the letters with little hats, dots, accents and slashes. From there, I copy and paste the letters that I need. If this process seems archaic, I was even more bewildered when I wanted to send special characters via text messaging. I wondered if it was even possible. Generally, I have low expectations for mobile device performance. Yet, it was actually much easier to type special characters on Android than it was on my PC.

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Adobe Flash, I’m not seeing a bright future for you. It seems pretty clear that HTML 5 is going to be a new favorite. Look at the big three rivals – Microsoft, Apple and Google. Microsoft has Silverlight. Apple just announce the iPad – without Flash support. And as for Google, they do things with AJAX and basic browser features. If video is going to be a standard function of future browsers, why should I keep wasting money for upgrades of Adobe Flash? Why should I force photics.com visitors to use a third-party plug-in? If rival companies are coming to the same outcome, a world without Flash, then why should I support it?

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Considering the frustration that I experienced while developing iPhone / iPod Touch apps, I’m not a big fan of Apple. However, I do like new gadgets. I had seen the hype about a new Apple tablet and I decided to check it out. Surprisingly, I was impressed. The iPad looks like a fun device – great for Internet browsing, watching movies, reading books and playing games.  The price is pretty good too. The basic model is only $499. That’s not too bad for an Apple product. I like it. I’m not sure if I’ll actually buy one though, as I have a pretty good laptop, but the unveiling has re-energized me. I’ve been inspired to try Apple app development once again.

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I’ve been looking at the new Android phones and a lot of them do not have keyboards. I don’t know why the industry is still playing “me too” with iPhone-like interfaces. But as an app developer, I have to be aware of this issue. Considering that keyboard-less android phones have few buttons, the menu button becomes more important. That meant I had to get past a developer hurdle – learning how to add menus to my android apps.

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Back in the 90′s, I was a die-hard Mac fan. That’s only natural when your college is loaded with software and hardware from Apple. Even shortly after college, my graphic design work was mostly done on a Mac. But a decade later, I’m a Windows guy. The hardware is cheaper and the software is plentiful… including video games. Although, I recently bough a Mac Mini. I wanted to see if the grass was greener on the other side. It wasn’t, not for me. Having re-experienced the Mac OS side of things, I found more success with Android development than iPhone OS development. My Mac Mini went unused. The neglect was so bad that I didn’t even have it hooked up to the Internet. My shiny new Mac had turned into a dust collecting box. It needed new life… so I installed Windows on it!

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