Don't forget Parallel Kingdom - a free MMORPG with both Android and iPhone clients that's been around for a year or so.
http://www.parallelkingdom.com/
From the Enlightenment page:
You can even start your development now in anticipation. Use Elementary, Evas, Edje, Ecore, Eet, Eina, and so on and design for a small screen with a "finger" and minimal keyboard (by small screen i mean in the range of 240x320, 320x480 and so on up to 480x800 for portrait, and similar for landscape (320x240, 480x320, 800x480).
Could Samsung be eyeing Enlightment as the (or one of the) UI frameworks in their 'bada' mobile OS?
I am from Adelaide. What that particular article doesn't mention is that (a) this occurred at 7:30pm. Sunset was 18:00 that day and astronomical twilight (complete darkness) at 19:24. And (b) it occurred in Hackham. Think of your city, find the quarter that has the lowest socio-economic status and the highest crime rates, and imagine this occurring somewhere in that quarter.
Rather than whether they used facebook or rang 000, the crux of the local debate is what 10- and 12-year old girls were doing wandering drains at night in this area.
I distinctly remember the lack of corridors on firefly as one of the reasons i loved the show!
Actually, Firefly used corridors quite a bit. The team hung out in large rooms, but the more personal run-ins always occurred in the corridor or on the gangplank (a kind of corridor, really).
Imho the characters being able to duck straight into their personalised bunk trapdoors to escape a probing conversation, were a central theme to the show.
Working for a company that produces hardware with embedded software, I can attest that it takes a while to change horses especially if you've been producing a particular range for years. The HTC Touch HD is a case in point. They would have had the Winmo OS shackled to their 800x480 device a while ago. My guess is the better resolutions will be here within 6 months.
This smacks of a completely uninformed story from someone who has only ever played with an iPhone.
I've had my Android HTC Magic for 3 months and it has repeatedly stood up and traded punch for punch with my friend's iPhones.
In ONE area it was beaten - There is no X-Plane port. So Android lacks a cool flight-simulator, so far.
In SEVERAL areas, it came out the victor.
1. Many Augmented Reality platforms (Layar, Wikitude, Gammaray) are deploying on Android and really pushing the boundaries of this new technology. Quote from iPhoner upon seeing Layar in action: "Now, THAT's an application".
2. Google Sky Maps. Nuff said. Quote from iPhoner: *drool*
3. The openness of Android Market. The ease of getting apps into Android Market vs App store is well documented. In addition, third party websites can re-package the contents of Android Market, offering their own view of apps, searching, etc. I can share links about cool Android apps with others ( http://www.cyrket.com/package/com.sprx.layar ) . Conversely, if I want to see the entry for an interesting iPhone app, I cannot access the App Store without installing iTunes. FAIL.
4. The openness of Android in general - when Google and Facebook had their spat, yanking FB apps briefly, I went to a developers website to install their FB application with one click. You cannot install an application outside of App Store. FAIL.
5. Much more is possible on Android without rooting. It's fair to say that if you consider yourself a geek in any shape or form, you HAVE to jailbreak your iPhone in order to access the nuts and bolts of the platform. Quote from iPhoner: "huh, you can do all that and you haven't had to root it yet?"
6. I have already started developing apps for my phone with the really slick free Eclipse plugin and emulator that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac. It's a lot of fun. Quotes from iPhoners who are devs: "ehh, i have to pay to digitally sign it", and "eh, i don't have a Mac".
I could go on. But this is enough to make the point that the Android phones do not need to "match the capabilities of iPhone". They already do.
That said, I do agree that the Android platform has its problems.
And the biggest by far is Brand Name Fragmentation.
Google and the handset manufacturers need to present a much better brand identity. I know each corporation is honor-bound to try and force its own stamp on the product. But come on!!! Stop using different names in different countries!! HTC Magic, MyTouch 3G and G2 are all the same freaking phone, with cosmetic OEM differences. And there's only a few phones so far, how bad will it get when the forecast "18 Android phones" hit worldwide by the end of the year? Why not enforce a single name for each phone, and allow a carrier prefix? Vodafone Magic, Verizon Magic, T-Mobile Magic. What's so hard about that?
Don't get me wrong, the iPhone 3GS is a nice piece of kit. If there was no Android, it is the phone I would have.
Has nobody heard of them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code
An established standard for encoding text as an image.
Bonus is - any current smart phone with the right app can recognise qrcodes.
There's dozens of open source libraries to encode and decode them.
I like the original story too. See, I turned 33 on Tuesday. I was born on 10th March 1976, exactly 100 years to the day after the telephone was (according to legend) invented by A.G. Bell for his deaf wife.
Now for the delicious irony! I was born deaf, and have never been able to use a phone.
I suppose I'm a Linux Gamer. A mature one, no less. I have a 3yo 3Ghz w/hyperthreading, no dual core goodness for me yet. I just grabbed the last of the 7600GT AGP cards to eke a year or two more from my Mythbuntu system.
I'm finding there's plenty of material out there to keep my wallet safely closed. I play a little Freeciv, Savage, World of Padman, Pioneers... but what FPS do I keep coming back to?
Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Nearly five years old, but it's free as in beer, runs like a dream on my system, and the community is thriving with loads of servers and maps. And... most of the kiddies are away trashing the sequel, Quake Wars.
Sure, it don't have no lens flare. You think I care? I have a half hour gaming window and I enjoy every minute of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget Parallel Kingdom - a free MMORPG with both Android and iPhone clients that's been around for a year or so. http://www.parallelkingdom.com/
At this stage (nconsidering it's a one-man show) you still need to roll your own: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/12/04/how-to-convert-hexxehs-chrome-os-build-image-to-a-virtualbox-v/
Could Samsung be eyeing Enlightment as the (or one of the) UI frameworks in their 'bada' mobile OS?
I am from Adelaide. What that particular article doesn't mention is that (a) this occurred at 7:30pm. Sunset was 18:00 that day and astronomical twilight (complete darkness) at 19:24. And (b) it occurred in Hackham. Think of your city, find the quarter that has the lowest socio-economic status and the highest crime rates, and imagine this occurring somewhere in that quarter.
Rather than whether they used facebook or rang 000, the crux of the local debate is what 10- and 12-year old girls were doing wandering drains at night in this area.
I distinctly remember the lack of corridors on firefly as one of the reasons i loved the show!
Actually, Firefly used corridors quite a bit. The team hung out in large rooms, but the more personal run-ins always occurred in the corridor or on the gangplank (a kind of corridor, really).
Imho the characters being able to duck straight into their personalised bunk trapdoors to escape a probing conversation, were a central theme to the show.
Working for a company that produces hardware with embedded software, I can attest that it takes a while to change horses especially if you've been producing a particular range for years. The HTC Touch HD is a case in point. They would have had the Winmo OS shackled to their 800x480 device a while ago. My guess is the better resolutions will be here within 6 months.
This smacks of a completely uninformed story from someone who has only ever played with an iPhone.
I've had my Android HTC Magic for 3 months and it has repeatedly stood up and traded punch for punch with my friend's iPhones.
In ONE area it was beaten - There is no X-Plane port. So Android lacks a cool flight-simulator, so far.
In SEVERAL areas, it came out the victor.
1. Many Augmented Reality platforms (Layar, Wikitude, Gammaray) are deploying on Android and really pushing the boundaries of this new technology. Quote from iPhoner upon seeing Layar in action: "Now, THAT's an application".
2. Google Sky Maps. Nuff said. Quote from iPhoner: *drool*
3. The openness of Android Market. The ease of getting apps into Android Market vs App store is well documented. In addition, third party websites can re-package the contents of Android Market, offering their own view of apps, searching, etc. I can share links about cool Android apps with others ( http://www.cyrket.com/package/com.sprx.layar ) . Conversely, if I want to see the entry for an interesting iPhone app, I cannot access the App Store without installing iTunes. FAIL.
4. The openness of Android in general - when Google and Facebook had their spat, yanking FB apps briefly, I went to a developers website to install their FB application with one click. You cannot install an application outside of App Store. FAIL.
5. Much more is possible on Android without rooting. It's fair to say that if you consider yourself a geek in any shape or form, you HAVE to jailbreak your iPhone in order to access the nuts and bolts of the platform. Quote from iPhoner: "huh, you can do all that and you haven't had to root it yet?"
6. I have already started developing apps for my phone with the really slick free Eclipse plugin and emulator that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac. It's a lot of fun. Quotes from iPhoners who are devs: "ehh, i have to pay to digitally sign it", and "eh, i don't have a Mac".
I could go on. But this is enough to make the point that the Android phones do not need to "match the capabilities of iPhone". They already do.
That said, I do agree that the Android platform has its problems.
And the biggest by far is Brand Name Fragmentation.
Google and the handset manufacturers need to present a much better brand identity. I know each corporation is honor-bound to try and force its own stamp on the product. But come on!!! Stop using different names in different countries!! HTC Magic, MyTouch 3G and G2 are all the same freaking phone, with cosmetic OEM differences. And there's only a few phones so far, how bad will it get when the forecast "18 Android phones" hit worldwide by the end of the year? Why not enforce a single name for each phone, and allow a carrier prefix? Vodafone Magic, Verizon Magic, T-Mobile Magic. What's so hard about that?
Don't get me wrong, the iPhone 3GS is a nice piece of kit. If there was no Android, it is the phone I would have.
But there IS Android, and there is a better way.
OH MY GOD THE CORNER OF A BLACK BOX!
Incredible. Somebody should patent that.
Yeah, I saw this barfage too on Chrome. Works ok on Firefox 3.5 though.
Has nobody heard of them? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code An established standard for encoding text as an image. Bonus is - any current smart phone with the right app can recognise qrcodes. There's dozens of open source libraries to encode and decode them.
I like the original story too. See, I turned 33 on Tuesday. I was born on 10th March 1976, exactly 100 years to the day after the telephone was (according to legend) invented by A.G. Bell for his deaf wife. Now for the delicious irony! I was born deaf, and have never been able to use a phone.
I suppose I'm a Linux Gamer. A mature one, no less. I have a 3yo 3Ghz w/hyperthreading, no dual core goodness for me yet. I just grabbed the last of the 7600GT AGP cards to eke a year or two more from my Mythbuntu system.
I'm finding there's plenty of material out there to keep my wallet safely closed. I play a little Freeciv, Savage, World of Padman, Pioneers... but what FPS do I keep coming back to?
Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Nearly five years old, but it's free as in beer, runs like a dream on my system, and the community is thriving with loads of servers and maps. And... most of the kiddies are away trashing the sequel, Quake Wars.
Sure, it don't have no lens flare. You think I care? I have a half hour gaming window and I enjoy every minute of it.