Posts for 'Tech'

Well now. Given recent events, I think it’s fair to say that I feel like I understand the intricacies of international copyright law a little more than I did a couple of months ago. ^_^; After my communications with the TPCI lawyer, coupled with some readings from some other sites concerning similar copyright cases, I thought I’d write up a bit of a clarification of how this stuff appears to work.

MANDATORY DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, and the following text is my own supposition. It shouldn’t be taken as absolute truth, and if you see something you know is incorrect, please let me know.

So, the crux of the matter is that ‘fair use’ is a rather convoluted and complicated ‘convienience’ clause added to copyright law, with the original goal of (subjectively) ‘limited’ re-use of copyrighted material without needing to get the original holder’s permission primarily for purposes of  things like critical commentary or research. With the existence of the fair use clause, this basically means that most forms of unauthorized copyright usage go from ‘blatently’ illegal to ‘potentially’ illegal. ^_^;

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Yaaaay! ^_^

So yeah, Apple approved iPokédex midday Sunday, and I got it all set up Sunday evening.

I kinda failed epically with the icon there. I thought Apple would add the gloss effect like they did in the app, but apparently not. And you can’t change it until another release update.

Anyway. If you have an iPod touch or an iPhone, go grab it now! 😀

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ipokedex/id385672600

Tell me what you think!

So. The iPad 2. Looks shiny. I can’t believe it’s been a year already since the last iPad was announced. XD

I really love my iPad. I’ve had such a great time with it over the past year. ^_^
I was initially skeptical if getting another iOS device that simply had a bigger screen than my iPhone was actually worth it or not, but it turns out it was. The extra screen realestate can be used very effectively and it’s simply a lot easier and quicker to be able to look at more content at once than the iPhone.

One thing that stood out on the iPad over a laptop that I noticed was the sheer portability of the thing. With a laptop, you can’t really carry it when it’s on. You have to either set it down, or really awkwardly hold it, usually balanced on one arm. XD With the iPad, I could quickly load stuff up, rotate the screen as needed, and if there are friends present, you’re not tied down to the ‘crowd around the screen’ mentality.

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I just realized. I put up a post introducing iPokédex, but I only stuck up a temp pic of its logo. ^_^;
In this post, I’ll start to put up some of the features in it that are completed. In a later post, I might do a bit a bit of a rant on why I did that, but for now, just sit back and look at the purdy pictures. XD

So the picture on the right is the first thing the user will see when they boot up the app. The main set of navigation for this app is provided in the tab bar that runs along the bottom of the screen. Each tab bar button relates to a different set of information (eg, items, moves, types, egg groups etc) which can subsequently be drilled down to get even more information. The order of the tab items can be customized (ala the iPod app), so you can pick and choose what goes down there to your own liking. ^_^

Since none of the standard code in the Apple iOS SDK can handle this normally, I ended up writing all of the tab control code myself (Approx 800 LOC ^_^; ). Once iPokédex is done and out, I’ll see about posting it online somewhere. 🙂

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Well… I was going to write a blog post on this before it came out, but ‘lo and behold, it came out a few minutes ago.

The Mac App Store

I’m downloading it now, but in the meantime, I’d like to just put out my own thoughts on what I think about it:

In my opinion, if it’s executed well, it might be a good idea, but knowing Apple’s philosophy, I think it might already be doomed for failure.

The concept of the Mac App Store seems pretty cool; it’s just like Steam but for everything! XD
It can provide a central hub accessible to all where any number of apps can be very easily located and downloaded. These apps can then be automatically updated as new versions come out.

Given my own experience when writing and marketing my Twitter utility, DesktopTweet, this is a totally awesome concept.
I was running around the internet trying to find Twitter related blogs and wikis that would let me post an article about DesktopTweet (On that note, nearly ALL of my traffic is coming from the official Twitter Apps wiki) in an attempt to market, and even still, I doubt I made much of an impression. Secondly, I had to write my own series of metrics and update tracking code for it so I could see what kind of people were downloading it, and so I could automatically inform them when an update came out. If my experience with the iOS Store is anything to go on, all of this stuff is provided straight from the start.

So, with that being said, I’d say the concept of the Mac App Store is totally awesome, and I may even go so far as to say it’s a potential game-changer for software on the micro-computer platform.

But, with all that being said and done, I do have a few reservations about it:

If the Mac App Store is anything like the iOS App Store, it may be doomed to failure.

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Just downloaded a new iPhone app… named BlogPress.

I haven’t really tried blogging from my phone before, mainly because I was so disappointed by the featureset of the WordPress app.

Either way, BlogPress is looking really cool so far. I’ll see how this thing goes. 🙂

In any case, off to load it onto my iPad now. 😀

Posted from mah iPhone 4. XD