What Your Profile Picture Says About You (Hint: "You're a Douchebag")
Warning: this post contains graphic imagery of pricks, cunts and assholes.
I have a new favorite douchebag profile pic: Enthralling My Fucking Audience. This one is phenomenal; you’ve probably seen it somewhere amongst your fucking friends. It’s where a Very Important Dbag (VIDb) is captivating above-mentioned audience solely through the power of his personal presence.
Jesus Christ, the fucking hubris. The fucking insane, idiotic hubris.
Hilarious!
In Memoriam: Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - the last great tactical shooter of our generation?
Traditionally a producer of hardcore tactical shooters on the PC, Ubisoft had to make several changes to their game design philosophy in order to cater to the audience on current gen consoles. The original Ghost Recon and the Rainbow Six games tasked players with firstly thinking through their plan of attack and selecting their personnel according to mission objectives, before then playing through the next step of actually implementing that plan by switching control of their units as each level progressed. Playing as the sniper would mean finding a vantage spot to identify enemies and provide cover as you moved your assault team in for a close range attack. Cycling through each member of the team made you both the central commander and the footsoldier, opening up all aspects of the battlefield via the eyes of everyone, and giving players a true sense of control.
I miss Rainbow Six, the way it used to play…
The new Apple TV - let me guess
From the Steve Jobs biography:
“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant,” Isaacson wrote.
Isaacson continued: “‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”
Me guessing on the new Apple TV
Compilation of rumors plus own guessing.
- Integrated TV with functionality of current Apple TV box + a great screen.
- Will use some new display technology that the competitors won’t have initially.
- Just 2-3 different products with different screen sizes.
- Price: +15-25% over similar Samsung product. $599 for 40”.
- iOS-style dashboard with icons that the user can organize.
- Multitouch input: either with user’s existing iOS device, a custom pad like the Magic Trackpad, or an iPod Touch bundled with the TV.
- Possibly: Siri voice input for simpler operations. Will not be available for 3rd-party apps initially.
- Can use existing iPhones/iPads/iPods as control devices.
- Multiple devices can control and serve content to the TV at the same time via AirPlay. AirPlay performance and frame rate will be improved over existing Apple TV.
- Apps will be cross-compatible on iPhone/iPad/TV to some extent.
- Open SDK for app development.
- iPhone/iPad/TV cross-platform apps will be promoted in App Store.
- The Apple TV will be the US market leader for “smart TVs” in 2 years after its launch.
Further reading
- Techcrunch: “The New Apple TV Will Finish What The Mac Started: Killing Off Discs” (March 2012)
- Techcrunch: “Thoughts On Apple’s Latest TV Efforts” (August 2012)
- CNN/Wired: “An Apple TV reboot could be a game-changer” (June 2012)
- Forbes: “Siri: Apple’s Key for Future Growth in Your iHome” (October 2011)
Email Lookup for Mac OS X
Here is an example of a company name lookup (with just name and email in the results, formatted for easy pasting into Gmail etc):
Download the application for Mac OS X here: http://bit.ly/EmailLookup_v1-3
Let me know what you think!
Mega Trends in Technology
Here are some larger trends in technology that I think are happening. They could be useful when thinking of new products or companies to invent.
Many you have probably seen before, others could be new. I will revisit this page many times over.
- Communication converges towards telepathy. I wrote a separate post about this earlier. Phones are becoming smaller, invisible. Location services keep track of your friends automatically.
- Storage, bandwidth, processing power becomes free. Chris Anderson has already discussed this and written a book about it.
- Everything becomes digital. Things that we haven’t considered part of the digital revolution will be drawn in. Media (music, games, movies) has already gone through this change, next up are physical items with 3D printers and maker machines.
- Everything becomes wireless. We’re already using WiFi, many people use wireless headphones (audio) and wireless connections for their TV sets (video). Wireless power will be the next breakthrough.
- Storage → references. We’re moving away from files (resources) and instead using links (references).
- Batch → real-time. With more processing power, things that used to take minutes now take milliseconds or less.
- Online identity becomes more important than real. This applies both to the online real self (i.e. Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn profiles) and alter egos (i.e. avatars in online games).
- Search → task fulfillment. This idea came from my friend Andrey Zhukov. Don’t just show me a long list of results, do something for me! (Yes, Google.com, I’m talking to you).
You should learn a new programming language!
Learning a new programming language is great for two reasons:
1. It expands your mind. Your brain gets exercise when it’s forced to think in new ways.
2. If you’re building something big, take the time to learn the best tool for the problem at hand.
I learned this the hard way when building Zyked.com. At the time, ASP (the old one, not .NET) was all I knew. I spent almost a year slowly building a large site, before hitting a wall when I came to AJAX stuff and Facebook integration. I then learned Ruby on Rails and rebuilt the site in 1/10th of the original time.
Learning to be productive in a new language, framework, or tool rarely takes more than two weeks. It’s worth it.
Object-Oriented Languages
Programming for total beginners: http://www.codecademy.com (JavaScript)
Python: http://people.csail.mit.edu/pgbovine/python/
Ruby: http://tryruby.org
Functional Languages
Functional languages are hyped right now because they scale better across multiple processors.
Clojure (like LISP):
- Learning: http://java.ociweb.com/mark/clojure/article.html
- Learning quiz game: http://www.4clojure.com
See also: Haskell, Erlang
Alternative Presentation Styles
Funny video game animations by Ola Persson
In case you missed this (and based on the YouTube view count, too many people did), here are some excellently satirical video game videos from Swedish Video Game Awards (“Dataspelsgalan”) 2009, created by Ola Persson/Kongotec.
Game of the Year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p2mJxsUyjE
Sports Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NqFot9dnzo
Platform Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XOe_ldnzIU
Online Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmPXW9HKUDI
Action Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8daCMC1r-Nw
Role-Playing Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULrx6U6hF1s
Strategy Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOSWIvVmX4I
Children’s Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPI2uFhRZe8
Social Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WUer80oPe0
Racing Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyfbarCV4YQ
Handheld Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiYmXudXZH8
Puzzle Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InMPze5c30o
Best Swedish Indie Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sXhT5sM0kU
Best Swedish Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDS54tSIgGU
