Oh my god! I'm totally blown away with Uncharted 2. This game has pulled me into the dark halls of gaming where you just waste all your life and spend 2.5 hours on it everyday for 3.5 years while eating 2.5 pounds of chocolate mouse per night. Well, not quite, but close.
I'm actually playing this baby for a week now, I've finally took the plunge and bought a PS3, guess what? Avatar Ultimate Edition looks absolutely stunning on it! Yes, I bought it just for the Blue Ray but now I'm actually playing... Shame on me.
The engine is sheer stunning grace, its digital bits blended with insight and precision. The set pieces are marvelous bits of cinematic history blended into the action crux of the main character. I've never experienced something as captivating as this game before on a smaller screen. This is the true blending or art and cinematography.
I'm amazed at the detailed script, and the blending of action-adventure queues with cinema bleeding-edge animation. This thing just Never Stops. It keeps going and going making you and your PS3 SixAxis wrapped into a single juxtaposed existence!
When you find relics you feel joy, when you kick the hell out of a soldier you find relief, when a monster of a beast throws you off a cliff you cringe, when your female companion gets upside of you over a bed, you get, well, pretty graphics. Its all in place. The emotions are there and are sustainable enough that you get a seamless experience from role-playing your avatar and going back and forth between story the (un) cut-scenes, such is the transition linear and smooth from one to the other.
Technologically is superior to anything out there, and this is out for some time now. They can put a train with more carriages that I could count moving between gorgeous mountains in full LOF view. WOW! Talk about engine power. Those SPU are in high gear!
There is such amazing artistry at work here. Its awe inspiring to mesmerize at the graphics and have gut intrusive emotions playing it from end to end. I'm humbled and grateful for getting to play this game. Its not everyday that someone yanks you out of your everyday life and pulls you in into an adventure. Nathan Drake is the New Indiana Jones. This is really play time for me once again.
I'm in child-like wonder mode.
Now I just need to make more chocolate mouse.
Finally! Eye Web is now officially in the App Store for approval by Apple. This means generally 2-3 weeks before its publicly available.
I am very happy to be making this post, it represents another beacon in my little shop called T-Minus 5. For this time, I wanted to make a splash, if not a total meteorite crashing wave, at least a nice whooshing effect that creates a smile in you once you see it.
I guess you know this already.
So, yeah, very nice icon, did you know it costed me
$100 to do it? Oh yeah, don't be fooled by the economics of today's freedom society. Artists (the good ones, that is) are an expensive class I must say, but the results are totally worth it. Isn't it nice to watch? It represents the world in all its multitude of people. The globe. The mass of beneath our feet. Revolving around it we have... a fire arrow, a blaze of yellow awareness, with this big eye looking into your soul. I love it.
Now, what is Eye Web after all? What was all the fuss about? What is it, and why did I do it?
By the icon, you can see its a Browser, by the name you can see its related to seeing. So, elaborating and in simple words:
Eye Web is a Mobile Browser
for Speed Reading the Internet!!
Speed Reading the Internet? Am I crazy? Well, I guess so.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but a
video is worth so much more.
Please, take a look at it.
If you like it, you can hype it up. ;) Thanks!
Finally! Google is putting their Bayesian algorithms to the test with this pretty damn amazing feature.
Priority Inbox might be the first of a new wave of applications, there is no way around it. They will be here. These new apps have something in common. Simplicity and minimization of the complex is the goal.
Check out the cute video of google on this:
So, yeah, pretty neat? Yeah, but its more than that; its useful. Twitter is neat. This is practicality at best.
The world is getting increasingly complicated and yet we are striving to get those web 2.0 interfaces up and going. Web 2.0 promises clean and uncluttered interfaces. It promises that the world will be a better, safer place, one where everything is organized under the Search umbrella. One where more than 3 clicks to do any given operation is 1 click too many.
That means clarity and above all, effectiveness. All the information related to what YOU are, what YOU want and what YOU do must be quickly accessible, indexed and searched on a whim of thought. The ultimate goal being a Brain Sync of sorts where you plug yourself into the Matrix and let yourself zone in with all the things you must do or experience.
Its almost like a freak-show
GTD for the masses. And it will probably be a reality.
There are many talks going on about the role of Augmented Reality and the total big-brother like scenarios it can bring. Besides good fiction it can also bring a new sense of wonder about the world yet unseen. We can be sure to be revealed little pieces of information right where we need them the most.
If most consuming media streams are going the Point To Point route instead of Broadcasting this is the way forward. TV is out, Social Networks are in. Why? Focused content. Profiled for you and your personality.
For example we go on a vacation to a foreign country, we engage the world with augment reality glasses and in all the HUD glory of Adobe Air, layers upon layers of knowledge bits are presented with clarification article snippets straight out of Wikipedia about such and such subject we are currently watching. Is that David's statue we are looking at? Why bother with the little text on the corner of the pedestal when you can have a virtual textual representation overhead in mid air about what your are looking at? There! We can see it now! The status history bullets points, snippets from art curators all over the world explaining the meaning of it, your friends comments about it....
Is this a good thing? We can argue that yes, it is because we now have a context from where to appreciate the piece of art we are looking but also then downside is that we are not looking at that piece of art any longer... we are looking at an abstraction of it superimposed by this new grid of information on your particular human experience in that time of awareness...
In essence...
You are GONE, WIPED OUT.
What will happen to YOU, the human being? Are you ready to give your soul to the cloud machine?
What will happen when we all are on this freak Truman Show like wonder of world. Is this the 21st century?
Is Sky Net a fictional artifact?
Augmented Reality is actually the OPPOSITE of what Google is doing. Google is all about making lives easier, and yet augmented reality is all about adding informational layers on top of our old and boring non-pixelated world in 3D.
Or is it?
By the way do you want to see in 3D? Buy a Sony 3DS? No, no. Just look out the window! Its 3D already folks. Thats why Augmented is the way to go.
Or is it?
Nah, lets buy a 3DS anyway...!
Go to the first page of pomodorotechnique.com and the exit the browser. Don't read it further. Just notice it and then step back.
Its all Fluff.
Ah, Time Management. Nothing beat my system now, I just love it. I love my breakfast in the morning, I just love it, with eggs, cheese, and tomatoes! Oh darn, its time to make another task! Here we go! Set and Go! Yeahiii!
Tick... Tick... Tick... there goes the tomato!
This is getting really troubling. All these new so called "Concepts" for Time Management are really pushing the edge of acceptability. This stuff is nothing more than Fluff around a well known paradigm of pressure by time restrictions.
So, you don't have your priorities straight and then you go to this Tomato site to get them? People are actually buying Tomato Clocks, and then, bring them home to achieve goals? Are they? Or are they just meandering around a more deeply seated problem? Do they think Tomatos ARE the solution?
All the so called "experts" on Time Management with these fast over-the-knee solutions are just selling us Fluff around our core needs and they are marketing it all up so they can have another Passive Income Stream (another product sold by others of course).
Plastic Tomatos, News, Events, Fans, Videos, Workshops (oh yes, Tomato workshops!) great! And soon... "Pomodoro For Teens!" (this one is always 2 years after).
Really... Are you inspired by revolving Tomatos? Or are you inspired by your work?
And so, for the ones who were contemplating buying Tomatos I propose an alternative.
You see, I use eggs. FREE range ones.
http://e.ggtimer.com/
Ciao.
I am hard at work on a new app here at T-Minus 5.
It is almost near the cycle of development now. It is still under wraps but I'm beginning to spread the word on it as it nears completion.
Transport Me Up was not an app for everybody in any respect, it was and is made for a very focused core audience (the ones who take transports on a regular basis), for those it is effective and it is cool, and serves its mission with grace and style. I'm proud of that app, it solved a particular day-to-day issue and created value for its users.
So, yeah, I'm pretty proud of
Transport Me Up. However for this second one I will shake some things up!...
I want to go out and make a true impact on people everywhere, I want to surprise, to make a standout and to create shock and awe! It will be outstanding!
All I can say its that it something really special, something surprising and best of all.
Something...
FREE!
Yes,
FREE, I was thinking about all this new iAd business and trying to see if it fits the new app or not. Yes, it is a great source of revenue, as perhaps it might have its uses but I really can't get my head around it... it just seems a little too in-your-face still due to the shortage of screen space in the iPhone and all I don't want is to have users having another lousy app in their hands. I mean, I am actually spending a lot of my personal investment in effort and time doing this and I don't want to make a sub-standard product.
The other side of the coin is that as a developer I do want to get noticed by my efforts and the quality and value I provide and I do wish I could get a return on that investment, even more to pay the setup fees on all this adventures in iPhone Development. It costs a developer $100 per year and even more dollars and a lot of man hours to research, design, polish, build assets, graphics and market it all up. Its money and time and effort.
So, how do I get a return on investment but still cater to a large audience? How do I put an outstanding product out there, in the hands of as many users as I can while at the same time giving as much as I can as an artist would do but still allow room for people to thank me in return for my work of art?
My answer is this one:
No iAds, Go Free Version and allow the users to Pay/Tip/Donate you using in-app Purchases.
So, this is my take on it: "Premium Versions with the Gift"
As for the app, I will not disclose any further! ;)
Stay tuned!
Me and my new friend Raj on extreme adventure at night time on the Coliseum.
We had such a great time together that we decided to take some photos for posterity. Raj was about to return to his home town in India without going to the city center, so I called his bluff and there we went to catch a glimpse of the old city.
It was the first thing that showed up in visual range when I exited the subway. To reach the city center we had to go though some hell of a transit system. To call Rome disorganized its to call them a favor. Its true that they are not the best running city in the world, but the charm is all there.
Regarding the Coliseum. Yeah, its big, not that large, but big, and cool looking depending on the time of day. At day time its a mess, the marble is made of some dirt sucking rock. At night time its a Alice in Wonderland feeling.
There are a lot of people around the area. Snack, food stands, and the occasional permanent seller. One funny bit was when this Indian guy tried to sell Raj (another Indian guy!) a crystal laser engraved Coliseum. That was pretty funny!
There were also some fruit selling stands at 5 Euros per kilo, not quite the basic consumption product you're used too but the apples were great anyway.
All in all, this bit of the adventure went well and Raj got home with some nice mementos for the trip.
I will post more tidbits later after some more in depth photo processsing.
Ciao.
