forenoon filings: May 2005

website feature: smart playlists

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

If you have any number of MP3s or AACs and like just a semblance of order, then I'm sure that you will have discovered the Smart Playlist feature by now. But creating your own smart playlists is not a difficult undertaking to do, and it is surprising how may iTunes users shy away from it.

If ever you find yourself stuck for new and different ways of selecting long forgotten tracks from the recesses of your iTunes library, then take a look at Smart Playlists.

how many games do you complete?

Recent research has shown that the majority of gamers do not complete most games. I would surmise that an equally sizeable number do not even get half way through (let alone to disc 2). As media storage is set to expand, will this trend change?

Many publishers have been on the receiving end of criticism when they release games that aren’t suitably long – and to avoid this, the trend of recent years has been to offer huge sprawling works spanning over 10, 20 even 30 hours worth of play.

But we have also seen how carefully crafted shorter works have been just as effective. Experience of games such as Pikmin and Gradius V are cases in point (two random choices). Each of these examples are quite "short" yet in their limited time have carefully crafted narratives that aren't overly complex; introduce gameplay innovations and wind up with succinct conclusions.

Another excellent example is Super Mario World, which although it is possible to finish within a few hours (using about 20 or 30 levels), takes many more weeks to reveal all of the secret and hidden levels.

gaming olympians

Who is the world's best video gamer? The answer may be a bit difficult to precisely define, but many examples of players mastering their craft are recorded and catalogued at Twin Galaxies. This is one of the oldest official score keepers of electronic gaming - although traditionally it has focused on arcade games.

The advent of memory cards, and save-points, has meant that the emphasis of many games these days have shifted away from pure scoring excellence to a wider set of measures like completion times.

The Speed Demo Archive has a collection of super-play videos - detailing a selection of well known games being completed - but all in a very short time. Very short.

Continuing on a speed and velocity theme, F-Zero GX released in 2003 by SEGA's Amusement Vision, was critically acclaimed and rightly so - for this was a futuristic racer that even up until now, is probably one of the fastest racers of recent years. However, if you think you mastered this 30 ship field racer and have good lap times, then I invite you to peruse this site here.

More practise is definitely needed...

website feature: the uncyclopedia

An entertaining and humourous alternative to the Wikipedia, waxes lyrical on the oldest trick in the book:

"The Oldest Trick in the Book is the infamous "Tapping on a person's left shoulder when you're standing on their right." This trick was first chronicled in cuneiform by the Ancient Sumerians. This chroniclization also created "The Book" itself. In this article, we will chronologically list, from oldest to newest, the tricks in the book."

Go and read more

the future of broadcasting

Monday, May 30, 2005

We have had podcasting for some time, but the Human Computer Interaction Institute has a new concept to offer - roadcasting.

What it boils down to, is broadcasting digital audio or music from an automobile over a short distance - the expected range would be up to 30 miles. Just as podcasting has created the armchair DJ, so roadcasting will give the opportunity to create, tailor and broadcast your own radio station.

As with any successful peer to peer networks, the critical mass is gained when you have many users sharing and creating their own content. The exciting possibilities of roadcasting (especially with the higher Wi-Fi use - expected introduction of Wi-Max) is the producer and listener control over smart filtering. If we combine this with the already increased use of internet and satellite radio, it seems that a significant shift in radio use could be looming.

nokia 7700 tablet

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

New announcements from Nokia are never anything to take too much notice of as they seem to be ten-a-minute; but this one is an exception - the Nokia 7700 Tablet has both a design and feature set that has taken strides away from conventional internet devices.

The most striking item to note is that it is not a phone. But voice communicationas have not been neglected, as this can be handled by its native support of Voice over IP (VOIP). It seems that all of its major features will be internet driven primarily being served by wireless connectivtiy (802.11b to be exact).

Mobile Burn has the scoop on the innards, but it is a bold move from Nokia in embracing open standards: the GUI is running a modified Gnome derivative called maemo, while the OS is Debian (and to cap it off, this was debuted at the Linux World show in New York).

As wireless networking becomes more widely spread, it will be telling to see how different computing devices will be able to interface and share information with each other. Having an open source tablet, continues the progress towards the wireless-but-connected home - or custom built automation.

apple officially recognises podcasting

I have to admit to being a Today programme listener. I am aware the average listener age of this show is supposed to be about 45 - and I receive no end of humourous comments for my askew listening preferences, but the news and discussions is always stimulating, the interviews and topics hard-hitting and the sports coverage very entertaining.

For a number of months, the BBC has been running a number of trial podcasts of certain radio shows for a few months now, and has recently added the Today program to its XML feed roster - a service I shall very soon avail myself of.

However, podcasting is still a slightly fringe activity among iPod owners, due to iTunes' very baffling non-support of it (at least on the Windows platform - iPodder on Macs integrates a bit better).

Well, early reports assure us that from v4.9 of iTunes, podcasting will receive its first official Apple support, and I am sure that this is boost that will really enable it to take off in a much more widespread way.

the gb micro lives up to its name

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

I didn't realise the GB Micro was this small...! If these calculations are correct, then this would be one of the smallest handheld screens of recent years.

featured website: automator world

One of the new features with OS X Tiger is the Automator. What this does is provide the user with an easy to use interface for building scripts for integrated OS tasks. Once you get to grips with it, it will amaze you to see how quickly and easily you can put together powerful scripts - which will save you lots of time as well.

Let's not forget, that it was only a few months ago before this release, that achieving such results would have required an (at least) cursory knowledge of AppleScript - now the same familiar interface used for building smart playlists in iTunes has been applied to a simple coding environment.

If all of this is still too much work, then you can even download ready made workflows from Automator World.

see-through ibook

Thursday, May 19, 2005

iBook Lid
Uploaded by redrevolt.

I like homebrew projects and DIY mods - nice work!

e3: revolution, 360, ps3 and micro

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

E3 is almost beginning, but the trend that the big three have adopted over the last few years have been to hold pre-conference press conferences.

Well the big hardware announcements have been made. So far it seems to be business as usual with the design and feature set of the XBox360 and PS3. But the most radical hardware announcement has to be from the sleeping giant of Kyoto - the Nintendo Revolution (pictured above). Full specs are here.

Shame that no major revolution has been reflected in their handheld line up with regard to the Gameboy Micro: the material design seems to have been ramped up to compete with the PSP, but this a incremental update rather than a total redesign.

Early days yet - so we'll see what other software announcements are made as the weeks go by.

pavement art

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Walking through the West End a few days ago, I was struck by some of the chalk drawings that I saw being sketched.

This prompted a search of other pavement artists - maybe even further afield. Take a look at the examples of work from the artist who calls himself the Sidewalk Chalk Guy - the use of perspective in his pictures combined with the way the photos are taken are really quite effective!

montage-a-google

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

This site may be starting to sound a bit like a paid Googlephile, for which you have my apologies, but this new project really does deserves a few words.

The Montage-a-Google is an interface that allows you to turn the results of an image search into a graphic montage. It looks very good and may be useful for any design project that you may be doing.

Such projects are made possible by Google's willingness to encourage developrs to design open source and API based applications that dove tailed neatly into their search services.

mean machines remembered

During the late 1980’s to early 1990’s Mean Machines published by EMAP was one of the most highly regarded gaming magazines. It’s complete run lasted only 24 issues (before it was split into separate titles for Nintendo and SEGA), but readers will remember some of the memorable sections, the funny screenshot captions and of course the Mega Game of the month.

Back in the days before news blogging, once the new issue hit the stands it always was a guarantee that it contained exciting reviews and the news was always genuinely fresh.

The Mean Machines Archive has captured the essence of the magazine and has carried out extensive detective work in tracking down the former members of the editorial and design staff.

hay-on-wye literary festival

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

This year’s Hay Literary festival is due to begin on 26th May to 5th June inclusive, and a large number of writers and journalists are confirmed as attending.

For the un-initiated, this is a week when a large number of writers, jornalists and other interested parties head for a small town in Wales for a 2 week long discussion of all things to do with literature (primarily).

The full programme can be viewed here. The highlights that appeal to forenoon filings at this include:

Robert McCrum on the P.G Wodehouse
John Sutherland on Knowing Jane Austen

We'll see if an attendance can be organised - update to follow.

garageband compositions

Apple’s Garageband has now been out for sufficient time for budding musicians to get used to its features – and the version 2.0 upgrade was released earlier this year.

But have you ever wondered what other people have managed to compose using this software? iCompositions has established itself as a central portal for users to upload their compositions in MP3 or AAC format.

Although the music style is highly variable, browsing through the most popular and higher rated songs in some of the genre categories has unearthed some unexpected surprises.

getting used to tiger

The migration to OS X Tiger has been completed here at forenoon filings and all of my settings and files have been migrated with no problems. The only package that has doesn’t work is Desktop Manager, but checking the site today – the site author has already posted a Tiger compatible update.

After using this new OS for a few days, it has given me enough time to get to appreciate some if its lesser trumpeted features. There are 101 other places to read about Spotlight or Dashboard so I won’t waste space about those here. But for the two less talked about features of Tiger I liked are:

Stealth Mode: A new option in the firewall configuration menu can enable Stealth Mode. Sounds very FBI, but in essence this makes the Mac invisible to port scanners probes.

Integrated dictionary lookup: Hover your mouse over a word and press CTRL+Option+D to do a dictionary lookup on the word. A nice touch, but where’s the English English dictionary??

On the application front, most improved for me seems to be Safari. After performing a number of tests and comparing it with other browsers, I think its quite safe to say that this has benefited from a major speed boost. Pages are loaded with much less delay, and the RSS integration has been seamlessly added to the browser.

In Panther, my Mac screensaver of choice was always Flurry, but my pick of the Tiger bunch has to be the RSS visualizer. This takes an XML feed, renders and animates each entry into 3D text. Pressing a hot key directs you to the full page in Safari. The forenoon filings feed is currently set on the PowerBook here!

game playing clichés

When you have completed a number of platform or adventure games, you start to see a similar pattern in the type of pitfalls, obstacles and levels that crop up. Maybe lazy design has made this into a sort of cliché.