Ecosystems

I've spent the last few months submersing myself into various aspects of mobile apps.  Particularly the API's, be it Flash, or iOS, or XNA, and the key word I come away with is eco-system.

First, let's look at the Apple/iOS ecosystem. Apps like Pages, Keynote, and games like Rage give you pretty good interoperability between the iPad/iPhone world and the desktop Mac (I have several. Guilty as charged.)  What's lacking is Apple's version of the XBox. The Apple TV could become that, but so far, no luck.

Since I mention the XBox, let's look at that ecosystem. The XBox is one of the most exciting products ever to come out of Redmond. It's my go-to source for games and video. If the twitter app were a little more civilized, and if there were an interface to gmail, that would be my answer to all of life's little problems. The interoperability between XBox and Windows Phone 7 is very promising. I'm even tempted to ditch my iPhone for WP7.  We'll see how that turns out.

Did I mention I have a Zune HD?  Why I have a Zune HD is a complicated question, but let's just say that curiousity got the better of me.  Within about 20 seconds of playing around with it, my reaction was: this is a brilliant device. I still prefer it as a portable music player, and would say that the 3d games are better than their iOS equivalents. It didn't surprise me when it was announced that WP7 would be based on the Zune. Why Zune HD hasn't been updated to support the XBox Live marketplace is beyond me.

The Android ecosystem is still in the process of coming into being. More on that soon, but the recent generation of Android tablets, both 7 and 10 inch varieties using the Nvidia Tegra processor, look like the future of mobile. What I like most about the Androids is that they're tied to cloud apps in a more methodical way than the iPhone/iPad.  For those of us who've followed Nvidia's history of graphics processors, the Tegra looks good, if not as powerful as the iPad's A5 chip.

The principal point here is that there's not one complete ecosystem. Sometimes that's frustrating. And, it's curious that Apple, Microsoft, Google, and let's not forget players like Sony, could own it all, but have chosen not to.

Home Alone 3

I really don't want to harp on Sony's PS3 Home.  It sounds kind of interesting, but in the grand scheme of things not as important as the impending onslaught of XNA-related goodies.

That said, this Joystiq article caught my attention:

For starters, O'Luanaigh lauded the Home Development Kit Sony has created as an incredibly robust game-creation engine. Nobody knows about this potential, though, because most developers have spent their time in Home making simple promotional spaces for other games. "We see games as exciting asJoe Danger [coming to Home]," O'Luanaigh said. "It's essentially a great MMO engine."

Wait a minute, Sony has a development kit for Home? Makes sense, it just hadn't occurred to me. I'm going to have to see what I can dig up on this.

Grand Google Canyon

I defy anyone to try the Google mini flight simulator without a certain virtual thrill. I would recommend using the Grand Canyon instead of the default location, though.

Which brings up an interesting question: has anyone used the Google Earth API to create a virtual world?  Or maybe I'm looking at it wrong.  Maybe anything created with Google Earth actually is creating a virtual world, I'm just not used to looking at it that way.

No Place Like Home

Currently, Sony's Play Station Home is the only console-based virtual world.  I would think this is a space that Microsoft would be interested in:  (Virtual Worlds News)

Home features 100 games, an average user session time of 70 minutes, over 50 virtual spaces, 85% repeat users, and 14 million users overall.

That's pretty good.  That 70 minute session time alone would suggest that this is a space that the ad world should be interested in. For that matter, why isn't there interest in the PSP side of Sony to provide a mobile experience?

For that matter, at the point you're providing 100 games I would think someone would create a mobile device whose only function was accessing that virtual space.

More Fun with Tivo

Not to be too hard on the good folks at Engadget, but Tivo Desktop 2.8, which has been out for a while, already had the iPad support.  It also had some weirdness on some installs of Windows 7 with file transfers.  I've got 2 Windows 7 PCs at home, one of them worked with 2.8, one of them didn't.  The 2.8.1 release fixed things nicely.

I am noticing, however, that when I convert video for Zune the picture is too small.  I'm sure Tivo will fix this just as someone else besides me buys a Zune.

My Apartment Looks More Like a Lab

From Drop Box

Fun with Tivo

About 2 weeks ago I bought a Tivo Premiere.  While I'm not someone who's a big advocate of more television in your life, the way that I use the Tivo evolved to the point where it's worth while describing.  It's also worth mentioning that I was just curious how a Tivo worked, and why it's different from any old DVR (or using Media Center on Windows 7 for that matter).

I've had an XBox 360 for 3 years, and it has become sort of the center of my entertainment universe.  If I wanted to watch a TV show I'd download it through what's known as the Zune Marketplace and play it back on the XBox, a laptop, a desktop PC or my Zune HD.  In my home I have 6 devices I can play back Zune-purchased media, so it's an attractive option.  The problem is that I started to spend a lot of money on media. So, I thought I might as well just get the Tivo, and download whatever I wanted.  Which is more or less the case, though the "less" part of that merits some discussion.

Here's how it works in practice: I sit down in front of my main TV, copy over files from the Tivo, and watch it on the high def, or copy on to a laptop (either Mac or Windows 7) and watch it on the go.  If I wanted to, I could compress the recording for an iPhone or iPad, but that extra step seems too far to go.  One thing that's kind of nice is being able to start watching something on my Windows 7 netbook, then plugging it into the high def using HDMI to finish it.

So, here's the exception to all this space age science.  The programs recorded from HBO are copy protected.  That means I can only watch it on the TV where the Tivo is plugged in.  I have it set up right now in my bedroom where it gets the direct connection to the cable modem, but if need be I could re-wire things.