sangsara.net

  • ➟ Mark meets Kuato

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    Just discovered this hilarious video by my friend Mark, from four years ago. Basically it’s the scene from Total Recall where Arnold Schwarzenegger meets the stomach mutant, with Mark inserting himself into it.

    Link [YouTube.com]

  • A short aside on handheld game prices

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    When I bought my first Nintendo DS in the spring of 2005, touchscreen gaming was new to the mainstream and the idea of downloadable handheld content was still a few clouds short of a perfect storm. I believe you might have been able to download a game directly to a Windows Mobile PDA, but syncing them over from a desktop was the standard practice.

    At that time, I was happy to plonk down £20+ (nearly SGD$60) for a simple casual game like Zoo Keeper, which many will recognize as a clone of Popcap’s Bejeweled. Yeah, that game you can play for free online. I remember ordering it online from the American Amazon.com because it wasn’t yet due in England for some time, and the ensuing wait for something to play on my new DS was torture.

    Even though it launched alongside meatier fare like Super Mario 64 DS, this Match-3 game was an incredible new experience. The ability to directly manipulate blocks onscreen was hailed in the gaming press as something that could “only be done on Nintendo’s new machine”. You could even wirelessly engage other DS-owning friends in a competitive mode without them having to own a copy. I have fond memories of Zoo Keeper because its mechanics were finely tuned to allow ever-flowing speed combos, and till today still consider it a better Bejeweled than Bejeweled itself.

    Present day: one can download a similar game onto an iPhone in under a minute, for free or about a dollar. You compete against hundreds of friends online through Facebook. If Zoo Keeper were to be ported to iOS tomorrow (please please please), USD$4.99 (about SGD$7) would seem too high an asking price. Even Popcap’s own sequel to Bejeweled goes for $2.99 on the iPhone while desktop PC/Mac versions continue to retail at $19.95. How did we get to this point? I love a low price on games, and while $60 for Zoo Keeper was certainly too high a price – accepted at that point in time as a form of “early adopter tax” whereby new technology for which no benchmark price has been established often goes for as high as producers dare hope the market will bear – I worry that this might not be sustainable for our ecosystem of independent and major developers. Which is why I welcome Apple’s iAds program onto my device, and everyone whining about having ads in their games can go buy themselves a PSP Go or whatever.

  • ➟ Sizing up the iPhone 4 for shutterbugs

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    Fantastic review of what we know about the iPhone 4’s camera unit. In typical Ars Technica fashion, they get into the specifics of sensor suppliers and engineering technology while understanding what photographers and casual users want. News to me is that the larger sensor combined with the same lens as found on previous iPhones = a wider angle of view, close to 28mm (by 35mm film standards). Very exciting news.

    Link [arstechnica.com]

  • ➟ CNET Behind the Scenes feature on Windows Phone 7

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    The company decided more than a year ago to start over yet again, with a new approach and a firm target–holiday 2010–to have the all-new Windows Phone on the market. “I think when we look back on the release five years from now, this was a foundational release, not the release that broke through,” Myerson said. “We’ve got some tough competition.

    Confirmed: Copy/paste functionality won’t be included in 1.0, and the producer doesn’t consider it one of his top 10 things to add in the future. I applaud their start-from-scratch approach, but they are starting way, way behind. Although many will demand multitasking, VoIP/video-calling, and a ready to go marketplace of apps in 2010, the combination of Zune/Xbox Live/Office features may be enough to attract some customers.
    Link [CNET.com]

  • ➟ Rumor: Microsoft may have sold just 500 Kin phones

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    […] Microsoft has only sold about 500 Kin One and Two phones through Verizon since they went on sale in May.

    Unofficially, it’s speculated that the lack of a smartphone OS but the insistence on charging for smartphone-level plans may have muted interest and driven customers to the Motorola Droid and other phones with now-similar prices but more features.

    Poor KIN and Danger. It’s almost as if that stepchild division were given rope and ordered to hang themselves. Still, they must be feeling better than the JooJoo guys.

    Link [Electronista.com]

  • ➟ 56 Criterion Collection DVD covers

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    Some of the best designed cover art you will ever see. Why aren’t movie posters made this way? Well, apart from the fact that Joe Popcorn isn’t going to see something without a collage of all the stars standing next to each other.

    Link [unstage.com]

  • ➟ Too Many Lenses, Too Few Eyes

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    “Camera, Camera” captures one of the most disturbing examples I know of the way tourists can overwhelm their subjects. It is the scene of what once was a heart-stopping moment in the ancient town of Luang Prabang: the early morning procession of hundreds of barefoot monks in their bright orange robes, carrying begging bowls. As the film shows, this sacred ritual is now swarmed by scores of bustling tourists, some of whom lean in with cameras and flashes for closeups as the monks pad silently past. “Now we see the safari,” a local artist, Nithakhong Somsanith, told me bitterly. “They come in buses. They look at the monks the same as a monkey, a buffalo. It is theater.”

    The New York Times’ Lens blog on a new documentary about the increasingly intertwined acts of travel and photography, and the difficulties facing news photographers. One of the points I found interesting: how reframing experiences for the camera may be robbing us – travelers as a whole – of what joys come of immediacy and individual perspective. Certainly the opportunity to take new photos outside of my regular existence is one of the main reasons I get excited about travel; the surrounding unrecorded moments seem almost a scatter of sensual information in my memory, lacking narrative. It’s those that are probably worth more.

    Link

  • ➟ German student flashes Hells Angels, hurls puppy, escapes in stolen bulldozer

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    A German student created a major traffic jam in Bavaria when he made a rude gesture at a group of Hells Angels, hurled a puppy at them and then escaped on a stolen bulldozer.

    Forget our Orchard Road floods for a minute. This is news.