Technology

Alongside a bunch of iPod, iTunes and AppleTV updates, Apple also showed off its new Game Center app, bundled with the new iOS 4.1 at their music event yesterday. To demo the ease-of-use of finding friends online, they allowed Epic Games to give a tech demo of an upcoming multi-player game. However, I think it's safe to say that like me, most people forgot about Game Center completely and simply marveled at the console-quality graphics of Epic's Citadel tech demo. It uses the Unreal engine, and the graphics were so stunning that even my wife asked in shock "Is that on an iPhone?" What you see on the left there, is an actual in-game screenshot.

"Well", you think to yourself, "they're probably cheating somehow." But then, shortly after the keynote, Epic actually releases the tech demo into the App Store. I downloaded it and, wow, am I impressed. I would say the graphics are on par with my favorite MMORPG "Myst: Uru online" - and that really maxes out my iMac's graphics capabilities. The tech demo includes live shadows and complex shaders, such as parallax mapping (which for those who don't know, is like bump mapping, but actually changes the geometry of the surface, rather than just the way light falls onto it). And the frame rate is excellent, even when looking over endless landscapes, or at the whole castle and village from the outside. Though I was not able to test this particular feature (owning only an iPhone 3GS and an iPod 3rd gen), I hear it looks even more gorgeous on the Retina display.

More screenshots after the break.

Yes, you read it correctly: After years of forcing their followers to resort to textual blogs to follow an event live, Apple is finally broadcasting a live stream of its music event tonight (at 6 p.m. London time / 7 p.m. Berlin time on Apple's website). The catch: You will need a Mac with Snow Leopard or an iPod/iPhone as the stream will be an HTTP Live stream only. Though Apple has made this a standard, so far it seems only Quicktime X adopts it. You may try your luck with VLC as described here, in case you are stuck on a PC or an older version of Mac OS X. See y'all tonight!

Ever since the Wii hit the market, the conventional rules of video gaming have been shattered. The image of the lazy nerd sitting in the basement with pizza and a controller has been transformed into fitness-hungry beautiful people advertising for that new Wii fitness package. The demographics of the video gaming world have shifted, and after the huge success of the Wii, the other video game console companies are shipping their motion-controlled accessories this holiday season.

After the break we will take a look at all three systems, and compare their features. While each system brings its own share of exciting new features, they will most surely also introduce problems. We will take a look at the strengths of each system and possible issues.

So when Apple presented the iPhone 4's "Retina" display at the WWDC it certainly did raise a few eyebrows and spawned quite a few discussions on whether or not Apple's claim of the human eye's incapability of distinguishing pixels on the display are in fact true. However, nothing quite describes the resolution of the display like a pixel-by-pixel screenshot. View it on your low res display here (make sure to zoom to actual size) and then imagine all that visual glory on an 8 cm x 5 cm pane. Hell, it doesn't even fit on my MacBook screen!

On a side-note here, it is interesting to note that Apple has been attempting to introduce a resolution independent version of Mac OS X ever since 10.4 (Tiger). Rumor was that Apple had some super high-def displays up their sleeves. However, it proved too difficult to get the application developers to support the varying scale levels. I assume that Apple found their golden opportunity with the iPhone, where the UI follows a more streamlined approach, making the step towards resolution independent apps much less painful. Let's see if they find a way to port this back to the Mac. As some have said, who have witnessed the Retina Display first hand: You won't want to go back.

As I have already mentioned in an earlier post, I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my computer... and I am quite happy with it.

However, some things have changed since previous versions. For instance, you now cannot move a window to the other desktop by just dragging it. I guess they removed the feature to not confuse inexperienced users.

Since I used that functionality a lot (and also the desktop switch with the mouse wheel) I looked for a way to get it back. Here are the shell commands I ended up with.

gconftool -t string -s /apps/compiz/plugins/vpswitch/allscreens/options/next_button "Button5"
gconftool -t string -s /apps/compiz/plugins/vpswitch/allscreens/options/prev_button "Button4"
gconftool -t bool -s /apps/compiz/plugins/wall/screen0/options/edgeflip_move "1"

If you have been following Google's IO conference and keynotes, you surely have not missed their latest incarnation of their Android operating system, named Froyo (short for "frozen yoghurt", following Google's tradition of naming their OS versions after desserts. Beats large cats in my book anyway, but don't tell Simba). You might have also caught their claim, undermined by numerous eyebrow-raising graphs, that Froyo boasts the fastest browsing experience ever.

As Froyo made a surprise appearance on Android phones around the world in the past few days, the benchmarkers have begun inspecting that claim. It turns out that while the claim is valid, another feature works against it: As usual the culprit's name is Adobe Flash. Hit the break to watch two videos on how fast Froyo really is, and just what an impact Flash makes to the whole experience. It gives credit to the recently uber-chatty Steve Jobs when he stated in his open later, that so far Flash just hasn't been convincing on mobile platforms. It looks like he wasn't exaggerating...

Some of you may remember the 2D-Boy World of Goo pay-what-you-want offer a back in 2009. Essentially this allowed you to purchase the game for any amount you felt adequate. I remember being appalled at reading that many people were paying just a cent or two, and that 2D-Boy was actually losing money as the transaction fees were higher than that. They released a very interesting follow-up on which people were the most generous. Unfortunately, I missed out on the offer because (as usual) I simply had forgotten about it.

But now, an even more amazing offer is back called the Humble Indie Bundle. It includes "World of Goo" and 4 other games that all run on Linux, Mac and Windows and are all DRM free. You can pay what you want, and I can highly recommend it. I dished $20 for it, which may be above the current average, but I still consider a complete steal. Furthermore you can decide if the money should go to the developers, should be donated, or split between both. Check out the video after the break. As for me, I've got some Goo towers to build!

No, I am not talking about the animal in the picture, but rather about the latest and greatest Ubuntu release. When it comes to cats and operating systems I usually think of several Mac OS 10 versions such as Panther, Tiger and Leopard, etc... I am just guessing, but I think the Ubuntu team had exactly that in mind on their search for an animal starting with the letter "L". And I personally think it fits, because the new look, the integrated Ubuntu One Music Store and the window controls being at the top left actually remind me of those great Apple operating systems.

What do I think of Ubuntu sort of copying Apple technology? So far I am happy with it. Maybe this would change, if Ubuntu started to copy the unpleasant things as well such as trying to narrow down user options to push its own products. I think a software company has to find the right balance between client and company interests. Of course, different clients have different interests, so that balance highly depends on the client himself... but I am getting a little bit off topic here :)

It's an odd situation, that many of us may find us in: You have your great home cinema system setup, with a giant TV screen and a 7.1 surround sound system, most likely in our living room. Yet most of your music and movies are sitting in on the PC in the work room. What to do? Well you may not know it, but your TV may be able to do more than you think. The keyword here is DLNA. After the break I will show you how I got my Sony TV to play all my media on my iMac, including purchased iTunes music over the home network. This will also work for a PS3, and may work for other DLNA enabled devices. Furthermore the software involved is open-source and platform independent so this should work for Linux and Windows users as well.

I have often wondered just how precise the iPad's touch-screen is. As I have some ideas of my own that I would like to implement (most likely, in a far too distant future), this aspect has always interested me. Well, a video I just stumbled upon shows just how incredibly sensitive the screen really is. While watching, keep in mind that the dude making the video is using only one hand, and does this in one take (with the camera in his other hand).

The video furthermore undermines that yes, the iPad is not merely to consume, but also to produce and create. Hit the break to see the video, and as always, leave your reactions in the comments!