shaunfs

Screw it, I'm psyched! It's a great time to be a mobile developer! I was going to write a whole response regarding iOS vs Android until I realized the debate is like religion or politics. Currently both platforms are great and only getting better with each iteration. I'm developing for both platforms and loving it. Just in the latest iterations look at what we can do.

iOS * AirPlay - My phone will be my gaming console and media center, genius! * iCloud - Good, no more transferring files back and forth. * CoreImage & AVFoundation - 30 lines of code to add video editing and filters to my application, sounds good! * GLKit - High-level 3D libraries for a game developer noob like me. I'm in! * TwitterAuth - I'm still going to integrate FB authentication but this is cool too.

Android * Ice Cream Sandwich - No more fragmentation. Unifies hundreds of devices (not just phones). Brand new UI library. I can't wait! * ADK - My home, car, and toaster will soon be at my mobile command while giving me status updates. This is so awesome! I foresee Android powered cleaning robots in the future. * Face-tracking - So my phone can recognize me and focus in on my face and voice automatically. This sounds like fun. * USB Host - I can plug anything USB into my Android phone. Hot damn!

I understand the argument that traffic from your current network is cheaper and therefor enables cap-less ISP services but I think it's nieve to believe these ISPs don't intend to control as much of your purchase and viewing activity as possible. Cable companies do this now with traditional cable and telephony services and it makes them a fortune. Any ISP owner worth their salt would always prefer to have an unfair advantage instead of an even playing field. Capping your competition is an unfair advantage and too good to pass up if legal.

First it's the direct media (movies, music, etc), then it could be gaming networks, VOIP services, cloud file storage and so on. It's entirely conceivable that we would be financially forced to use the lower quality services of an individual ISP instead of a higher quality alternative. Then the real competition would be ISPs fighting over physical turf while online services look to parter with those ISPs instead of focusing on innovative products.

I have the same issues with Intuit mobile and desktop apps.

Inductive charger landing pads, a must have. Let them build forever. Just make sure the pads are plugged into a neighbors outlet ... or their Chevy Volt.

http://translogic.aolautos.com/2011/01/06/ces-2011-gm-brings...

This is awesome! It's sort of like a less precise large-scale 3D printer or MineCraft. I'm sure I'm not the only person who thinks this is certainly the beginning of automated construction. It works for assembly lines. We may finally be getting to the point where the same process will work in more mobile volatile environments.

What is a for-loop? Seems to copy my beautiful jQuery each()!

$.each(new Array(3), function(i){ alert(i); });

Funny ads although I think it's difficult to market Windows Phone 7 as being easier/faster than others. Visually the iPhone and Android appear more beautiful and equal if not more obvious to use at first glance, in my opinion. Instead, this new Windows Phone 7 marketing feels like they are saying "buy our phones because the other ones are too difficult to pull away from". If someone wasn't paying much attention to the wording in the ad it may have the opposite intended message which is "buy our phone and you'll forget about everything else".

Unfortunately the SEO industry will make this a pain for all of us just like they did with stuffing image alt text in the early 2000's.

Being poor is buying only Oatmeal and Mac & Cheese because they don't require electric refrigeration, can be purchased in bulk inexpensively, and you just add water to eat.

That brings back bad memories. Granted, compared to many parts of the world it's a walk in the park.

Fair enough

Look at this: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&...

What's the point. I bet there are a million bigots, immature kids, and ignorant people asking questions on Yahoo Answers. Unfortunately every country has people like this, it's not exclusive to one area.

Let's just all read this and decide collectively that Yahoo Answers should never again be used as debate source material: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100317231952AA...

I have to admit, I always wondered why Naruto was a blue-eyed blonde white kid. This article helped me consider some of my own reasoning. I had just assumed Naruto had characters that reflected a mix of races instead of one race. The last sentence of this article is offensive though. It's a derogatory generalization. Personally it doesn't matter to me what the characters look like and I don't see why someone relating to a character is a negative.

In the spirit of Duke here is the best web comic ever: http://www.pidjin.net/2010/01/25/iwish/

Every FPS before it was super serious. Then comes Duke, a trash talking, stripper payin, badass mofo who is all out of bubble gum. Also it has holo-duke which I contest is the best FPS feature ever created. Many a friend parished from my holo-duke + room lined with pipe bomb combo.

Anyone get the feeling this game is going to sell like crazy. It's like an urban legend you can purchase. They should embrace the jokes and try to leverage it to build suspense and PR before the release. I was awaiting this game as an 8th grader for crying out loud, and now I'm 28!

It is definitely a very niche product, possibly to my detriment. I'm in the process now of requesting reviews from the larger related sites. I definitely agree with the lite version, I have one waiting in the app approval process now. It has some of the functionality and an ability to upgrade within the application.

Thanks for the feedback!

That is genius! I never even considered implementing a suggestion into the app, seems like an easy way to obtain ratings as long as it's not too intrusive. I'm definitely including it in future updates.

Good point, worse case scenario is they ignore me and I lose nothing.

It's sad but true, with MMOs and epic single player RPGs for the desktop and consoles available tabletop gaming is on the decline. I'm hoping to build some tools to help make tabletop gaming less about the math and physical book/paperwork management and more about the social and imaginative experience that is difficult to replicate in the video game space. All I have at the moment is a dice roller though :)

Thanks for the feedback.

1. I will try to persuade some of my customers to submit app ratings. Unfortunately the ratio of purchases to review seems to be about 70 to 1, at least for this app.

2. Dice roller was taken although die roller I think is open. I'll try to tailor the name,description, and keywords to more heavily trafficked related search terms. I did include some game names in the description which seems to help with search some.

3. I have a free version with iAds waiting for Apple review now. I'm hoping that will help supplement the revenue and also drive sales to the paid version. $10-20 CPM sounds great. I'm from a web background and traditional website CPM is nowhere near that.

Thanks for the helpful suggestions, I'm looking into them now. The 0.99 sale sound like a good idea to test the waters. I tried to price it on the low end compared to most of the competition.

That's true, there are quite a few dice rolling apps out there. This was my first time coding in objective-c so I wanted to keep the app concept simple yet still related to D&D.

I've started looking into the magazine ads and related websites recently although the minimum spend might require me to wait for a month or two since I want to try and keep this business completely self-funded.

Unfortunately if I counted my time I would be in the hole about 4-6k right now.

lol, sadly it's an actual screenshot from my phone. I'm lucky to get a bar or two.

http://bit.ly/axJcJp