sangsara.net

Category: Links

Link posts, mostly old and imported from my other sites over the years (e.g. Tumblr)

  • ➟ Apple isn’t going to get jerked around

    Good piece from Kontra (counternotions.com) summarizing the empire Apple has managed to build over the last decade, and what developers angry at the App Store model will lose by walking away. And to where?

    In order to become a better garden for developers, it’s not enough for other vendors to offer something that iPhone or iPad doesn’t. They have to match and better Apple’s current iPhone OS driven devices across all fronts. webOS had multitasking but no content. Nokia has market share but no direction or excitement. RIM caters to enterprise but not much else. Motorola still thinks it’s enough to manufacture handsets and leave everything else to ‘partners’ that turn around and stab you in the back.

  • ➟ Uniqlo’s 88 Colors

    Yet another beautiful Flash presentation from Uniqlo, this time in celebration of a new store in Shanghai. What is it? A grid of synchronized video thumbnails of girls wearing Uniqlo products, doing dance moves with their hands. Patterns emerge in waves and ripples. Music probably by Fantastic Plastic Machine once again. It works.

    Link

  • ➟ Carcassonne coming to iPhone in May

    This is great news for board game lovers. I enjoy Carcassonne far more than Settlers of Catan, which got a lackluster, multiplayer-less iPhone version last year. Both games are available for the Nintendo DS, where Carcassonne has a barebones, unattractive presentation, but Catan is quite alright. In fact, the iPhone port of Catan looked even better.
    The screenshots released so far suggest that Carcassonne on the iPhone is also going to be an improvement, and one sold at a much lower price at that. Which really makes Nintendo’s tough talk sound like famous last words.

    Link

  • ➟ Japanese researchers successfully complete artificial eel cultivation cycle

    April 8, 2010 will be remembered as the day that science set the Unagi free. In time, could this bring the price down to, say, $10 for a rice bowl?!

  • ➟ The sad state of typography on the iPad

    An article by Stephen Coles on fontfeed.com about Apple’s increasingly bizarre typographical choices, especially in the iPhone/iPad OS. Helvetica as a system font, Marker Felt for Notes, Verdana in iBooks (without Georgia), and that ebook reader’s plain awful justification scheme. I wasn’t aware of these flaws, and they’re seriously putting me in the wait-and-see category of someday iPad buyers.

    Link

  • ➟ The Unadvisor

    If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you’re really desperate, maybe you can ask… The Unadvisor.

    Link

  • ➟ Pocket Legends, a free MMO for iPhone/iPad

    This looks like WoW for the iPhone. Massively multiplayer, online all the time, on iPhone and iPad. Free to download, but I expect you’ll pay for benefits.

    Link

  • ➟ iPad magazines encounter resistance to newsstand pricing

    Pop Sci users called the app “amazing,” but one self-professed “techie” wished it was “a little less flashy and a little more intuitive.” Some commented on [the] Men’s Health app that they saw potential in the format, but complained about the iPad version’s low resolution and scarcity of interactive ads.

    Apart from that amazing nugget of information (people actually want ads that take up more space on their device?), this article shows PopSci and Time willing to take two different stands on pricing. PopSci would rather find ways to convince readers of their app’s $5 value, while Time stands by their price for now, and says lower subscription pricing may be coming.

    Link