What iPhone apps developers should know (but don’t)!

As I browsed the Apple apps store today, looking for new iPhone toys, I stumbled across a great looking flight combat game by a studio who shall remain nameless.

The title was catchy, and although the description was too long, a skim of it seemed promising. But do you know what there wasn’t?

A picture of the game. (more…)

The future of websurfing

While Microsoft’s Internet Explorer bloats its way to oblivion (recent studies are showing the latest version can hit 300mb+ of RAM used after opening a dozen tabs, Mozilla is quitely revolutionising how people think about content. Check out this presentation on Ubiquity, a beautiful way to mash up your mail, web content, calendars and contacts. Neat!

Blogging from my iPhone

WordPress have released a handy mobile portal which can be reached at http://m.wordpress.com

The portal allows you easy access to your blog from anywhere, meaning you can now blog on the bus, on the loo or in bed, like I am now!

And people say geeks don’t get any action!

Bought an iPhone 3G

It’s 2am, so clearly time to blog. I bought an iPhone 3G! …the irony of doing this after my previous post is not lost on me. However, in my defense, I’ve managed to jiggle the plans around until I got one I was happy with. The change from my previous hatred and bile is that I’ve realised that the $50 standard Vodafone plan gets me almost the same deal as the $80 a month plan. Of course, the $80 plan has lots of minutes and texts, but I don’t make that many calls, and the $50 plan has 20 minutes of calls (yes, I know Rest of World, WTF), which will do for me.

The $50 plan has a data cap that’s almost the same as the $80 plan, and if I go over my limit it remains pretty cheap. I also threw on 2000 text messages for $10 bucks. So all up I got a good deal, got a discount on the phone for signing up with those plans, and I’ve got me an iPhone. I’m also quite happy that a combination of selling Second Life currency and other gaming stuff netted me the cash I needed to buy the phone itself.

Yay! iPhone! Yay New Zealand for being first in the world to get it! Boo Vodafone and Telecom NZ for their crappy plans!

Good night!

Vodafone New Zealand’s iPhone plans

Vodafone have announced their iPhone plans. We’re now in the elite club of being among the most expensive places in the world to own an iPhone. We’ve even made the US tech press

Check this lovely table made by a chap over on Geekzone. It shows the total cost of owning an iPhone in NZ over the 24 month contract period.

There’s already at least one petition out there. I signed, but willingly accept it was probably a complete waste of time. There’s also a great grilling of some Vodafone wank on Campbell live for you guys to watch.

I don’t understand the reasons behind their expensive plans. Vodafone have a unique opportunity to draw a very large number of people to contract, and an equally large number of people away from Telecom. What was surely a slam-dunk businesses opportunity, one that comes along maybe once in a decade, has been casually thrown away.

I used to be a fairly big fan of Vodafone. They’ve offered a good service and I’ve loved seeing them put the screws on Telecom. But after today’s price announcement I’m rapidly losing any appreciation I had for the company. For the first time ever I’m thinking I’ll keep an eye on Telecom offers in the future.

Well done Vodafone, you’ve annoyed the hell out of a long, long term customer and you’ve missed a great business opportunity.

iPhone Friday!

New Zealand will be the first country in the world to get the new iPhone! Around 9am Friday Vodafone stores will open and us eager tech geeks will rush in to buy. Only problem, we’ll have to line up in the freezing cold is my guess. No pre-orders, no idea how many are going to be in the shops, we won’t even know contract plan details until Friday morning. Sounds like a recipe for chaos and annoyance. But.. I’ll be there I bet!

Nike+ for fun!

I recently picked up a Nike+ kit for an Ipod Nano. The kit consitsts of a small device that plugs into the bottom of your nano, and a pedometer you put on (or in) your shoe. You then run, and the device talks to you while you listen to music and tells you your pace, distance and time. You can use the Nike+ website to check your stats when you synch your iPod, and you can set yourself goals, or your friends challenges. It’s pretty damn cool! If you’d like to challenge me, send something workable to TinyPirate on the Nike+ site.

You can check out my runs via the cool Nike+ sidebar on this site. Scroll down a bit and there you’ll see it!

Amazing photo tech – Must see!

Saw an amazing video for Photosynth, which is a clever piece of technology put together by a company bought out by Microsoft. Imagine a piece of software that reads every public photo (eg, off flickr), and links them all together to create seamless 3D models and environments. Spread that across the world. I don’t know whether to be excited, or scared! You can also try a simpler demo yourself.

Is Google trying to tell me something?

I was checking the blog stats and discovered something interesting. I’m convinced Google thinks I’m a very strange, twisted, if not sick individual. Next to ‘tiny EVE’, the top result to produce a click-through to my blog was ‘group masturbation’! You can see the full list of searches that resulted in click-throughs to my blog below: (more…)

DarkLife hacked, $400us stolen

Today I logged in to DarkLife to see a disturbing message from the coder, Bram (aka. Mark Busch in game). The post describes how we’ve had $400us stolen from our main ‘account’ holding our cash in Second Life for the DarkLife game. (more…)

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