Month: September 2009

You may have seen images of a house flying under balloon power somewhere recently, and I have no idea how influenced by that Higher is, but I can tell you this a hypnotically relaxing game. This is a free, Flash based browser game. Starting on the ground, rolling your cursor over passing balloons will slowly raise you into the sky, which is full of mines! You can click and hold the mines to move them out of the way, or preferably into each other, thus clearing your path to the stratosphere and beyond. If you need to move left and right, you can do so using the WASD keys. Space pauses, and you can click on ‘upgrade’ to exchange the points you’ve one for house upgrades that will take you even higher than before.

After a couple of minutes you should get the hang of Higher, and it then becomes a really engrossing game, with you constantly managing your balloons and shifting mines out of the way. The pause is a big relief, and your progress is automatically saved as long as you don’t delete your browser history.

Way back when, at the very beginning of home computing, you had two options for obtaining software. You could buy it, or you could buy it.

Luckily, things have changed. Companies like Google and Mozilla started to do something that was completely unheard of – something that would really irritate giants like Microsoft. They began to produce open-source services and software for large-scale distribution. Suddenly, you didn’t have to be a slave to the big boys – unless you wanted to. Open source went hand in hand with other free things. Crowdsourcing. GPL. Suddenly the Internet looked like a very different place. Thousands of people were working together to bring computing to everyone. Cooperation and free access were the mainstays of the movement.

The history of open-source software is heart-warming. It is also just that – history. Things have changed, and companies like the ones mentioned above are now huge corporations with multi-million dollar turnovers. They have money. They have fame. They have power. Is it still fair for them to ask other people to do their work for free?

Don’t get me wrong. I love free software, a pretty major requisite for working at Softonic. The other day I was browsing through the latest software news when I noticed an ad for a design challenge from a big-name company. The competition invited users to overcome a design problem with tabs and, although I found it hard to pin down the precise details, the winning solution would have a Creative Commons Attribution license. This means that the company in question, or anyone else, would be free to ‘remix’ the solution for their own use. And the reward for providing this solution, this raw material? Money? A job? A holiday in the Seychelles? Nope. As far as I could see, their name would be mentioned in connection with the solution. Continue reading “The essence of the web or the height of exploitation?”

An interesting query from one of our (anonymous) readers on a topic which has even cropped up in our editorial meetings:

Hi! I’ve been thinking about buying a smartphone, and one of the features I’ve heard people talking about on mobile blogs is “Augmented Reality”. What is that, and why is it useful? Should it affect my choice of phone?

Though it seems like something of a current buzzword, Augmented Reality as a term was actually coined in the 1980’s. In simple terms, Augmented Reality – also called AR – means the enhancement of what you have around you by adding a layer of data to it. In other words, you can use AR to make your surroundings ‘smarter’ – pointing out places of interest, for example.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkPHDMVxKn0[/youtube]

On my HTC Magic Android phone (AKA the myTouch 3G), I’ve tried out a few of the more popular AR apps and I can honestly say that while I don’t use them 24/7, knowing that I have them to hand is a great feeling. Wikitude AR is the first Augmented Reality app I tried and its results were impressive. Simply point your phone’s camera at anything you like and Wikitude combines GPS location, your phone’s internal compass and a variety of data streams (most notably Wikipedia) to provide you with a wealth of information about what you’re looking at. A newer competitor, Layar, performs similarly but with the advantage of being free and open – meaning that anyone can add their own data layer to it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EA8xlicmT8[/youtube]

Another application, Google’s Sky Map, may not be considered to be a classic use of AR but in my opinion it’s a great example of what Augmented Reality can do. Using it to locate and name celestial objects is actually really fun and enhances a fun hobby. Continue reading “Ask OnSoftware: What are Augmented Reality apps?”

Mac: One of the only bad things about switching to Mac from Windows is the loss of games. Despite everything, PCs are still more popular than Mac for gaming. CrossOver Games comes from the same makers of CrossOver which allows you to run many Windows applications on your Mac in a virtual environment. Like CrossOver, CrossOver Games is designed for those with little technical knowledge and holds your hand throughout the setup.

Windows: Believe it or not, there are people who need to be reminded of when it’s time to leave work… and TimeStamp is the perfect app for them! This cute little program lets you mark the time you start work and the time you finish as if it was a real punch clock – it even features a “punching” sound effect. A great way to control your working hours.

Mobile: Take control of nitro charged monster trucks, and charge of danger filled courses in Stunt Car Racing 99 Tracks. This is a 2D game, where the aim is to compete courses in the best time possible, with the highest score. Mix care with speed for the best results, there is a surprising amount of subtelty needed here to succeed!

What got me started thinking about this most recently was testing Spotify mobile, for Android and iPhone. The high quality streaming service means users needn’t carry their music collections around on their devices, just open Spotify and listen to whatever they want. I find it hard to believe that streaming all that data is an efficient way to listen to music.

Old heavy industry has a poor environmental image, but do new high tech industries do much better? We don’t imagine smoke stacks and poisoned lakes etc when we think of web 2.0 (or 2.1, 3.0…), but is there any evidence this industry thinks about the future of the planet any more than the old industries?

With the Spotify mobile apps one thing becomes quickly obvious – streaming to your phone hits your battery, much more than listening to your personal library would.

I have a contact who works with design sustainability in the UK, and after a short discussion about Spotify, his answer was unequivocal: “Digital streaming has the look of another clever technology that is not good for us“.

In essence it’s because when consuming media ‘locally’, you only have to download it once, and can then access it as many times as you want, only using the energy of that one device. But with streaming services, every time you access media you are consuming more energy in the sending and receiving  of information, the server running at the other end and your device too. That uses more energy.

We are supposed to be cutting our energy consumption dramatically over the next decade, and yet are developing new technologies that are obviously less energy efficient. I’m picking on Spotify because it’s new – video services like Voddler would undoubtedly be worse, and any streaming service is essentially wasteful. These services are convenient, and people love what they can do, but shouldn’t convenience be secondary to sustainability? The idea of downloading content that is then “thrown away” immediately after use is dreadful, after all.

I read many tech blogs daily, and the environment is basically off the radar, as if it’s not their concern. It is everyone’s concern: if sustainability and energy efficiency aren’t part of your development and design decisions in the 21st Century, you are designing irresponsibly.

Canabalt is a pretty simple proposition – you have to make a daring escape. From where or what you’re never told, although the scenery might give you some clues. It’s a one button game – your tuxedo-ed protagonist runs automatically, and you need to jump to avoid falls and obstacles. It gets progressively faster, and if you die, you start again. It’s not clear if there’s an end, or you are just trying to get a high score (in meters). It doesn’t matter – with its great music, sound effects, and enigmatic black and white widescreen presentation – it’s just cool.