http://t-machine.org Internet Gaming, Computer Games, Technology, MMO, and Web 2.0 Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:43:12 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Someone makes a highly controversial amateur YouTube video, showing an Auschwitz survivor and his children and grandchildren dancing at Auschwitz, to the song "I Will Survive". And, in the middle of the debate *that* stirs up, someone hits them with a copyright violation, forcing YouTube to remove the video. There's no ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/07/20/this-video-is-no-longer-available-due-to-a-copyright-claim-by-apra/ Is there a place to complain that UK government departments are breaking the internet standards and refuse to fix their websites? Occasionally, you find sites that do this. Usually, when you tell the organization, they're a little embarassed, and rush to fix them. From HMRC, I got a polite, pedantic, *but entirely ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/07/19/hmrc-disdains-internet-standards/ Android 2.2 has a nasty bug where it disables the SD Card on Google Nexus One phones. Fine, I found a workaround. But there's a down-side - what happens when you only AFTERWARDS remember that it's got the ONLY copy of several hundred photos, including plenty of uniques that can never ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/07/18/un-format-your-sd-card-android/ Google's Nexus One auto-upgraded a few weeks ago, to Android 2.2 It immediately broke itself. It was no longer able to use the SD card. As a side-effect, it was impossible to install any applications. Making this a very expensive, very heavy, very slow excuse for a mobile phone. The error was that ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/07/15/nexus-one-android-2-2-if-your-sd-card-stops-working/ There's a conference in Brighton this week, and one of the industry media - GamesIndustry.biz - has a base here, so they've been cropping up a lot in the reporting. In passing, I noticed some glaring howlers in their web-design. The 1990's called, they want their web-design templates back... Three glaring ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/07/14/3-things-a-news-website-should-not-do/ ...and Amazon's intelligent recommendation engine leaps into action: (if you don't know who Tim Langdell is, and you work in the games industry, just Google him. http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/07/08/tim-langdell-sells-a-game-on-amazon/ There are many examples, every day, of people saying stupid things on the internet. But rarely do you see smart people write long reasoned arguments that they appear to wholeheartedly believe, yet are fundamentally untrue. Jason Robert Brown has written a great post, and comes across as highly literate, reasonable, fair, ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/07/06/a-successful-smart-dumb-person-fails-to-defend-the-sale-of-sheet-music/ (where normaly people might "Be original, then Apologize if you fail") Just a minor piece of recent DRAMA! DRAMA!, something to cheer up the week... This excellent piece of Advertising / Fun / Augmented Reality / Creativity was - like most big-budget ideas - based on someone else's idea, someone who had ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/07/05/awesome-ad-agency-fail-steal-then-insult/ This post shows how to fix one of the biggest time-wasting aspects of Xcode: the default project. Every time you start writing a new app, you first typically waste 15-30 minutes "un-****ing" Apple's defaults. The defaults are terrible. e.g. they are effectively unusable with Apple's own SVN integration (Apple clearly doesn't ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/06/25/fixing-xcodes-default-project-templates-write-iphone-apps-more-easily/ If your startup sells stuff via the internet (you have an online product, service, web-app, etc), this may be the single most important thing to get right (assuming your core idea, team, etc has inherent merit). And yet so many companies spend so much money doing it so wrong. Why are ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/06/15/startups-how-not-to-write-your-website-sales-pages/ From one of those strange wending web-browsing sessions that started as innocent "work-related research" and ended up following the history of CDC... IBM, 1964: How is it that this tiny company of 34 people —including the janitor — can be beating us when we have thousands of people? ...to which Cray reportedly quipped: You ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/06/13/you-just-answered-your-own-question/ Some people are telling me I should just let it go, but honestly I just can’t do that. I’d rather quit. (As they say: It's funny, becaus it's true. If you develop for Apple platforms, that eloquently sums up how Apple (currently) appears to everyone they partner with: a childish, passive-aggressive ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/06/11/some-people-are-telling-me-i-should-just-let-it-go/ Apple added some of the earliest, best *hardware* support for mouse and trackpad gestures (2-finger swipes, pinch/zoom, etc), but has been very slow to add support for gestures to their *software*. Out of the box, OS X can do almost nothing with them. Previously, I'd used the quick-n-dirty-but-it-works "MultiClutch" app ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/06/07/os-x-a-burst-of-mouse-y-awesomeness/ (Google just made a major change to Gmail accounts in the UK, now that they've settled a trademark case brought against them. This is great - it will simplify mailing list management for a lot of people, and everyone in the world can (legally) be "@gmail.com") However ... I've now had ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/05/26/but-gmail-said-i-dont-have-to-do-anything/ Here we have Zynga recruiting for a CTO in SF: http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?k=Job&c=qoX9Vfw9&j=oRigVfw4 (see also the last post, on UK online games jobs) http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/05/25/more-interesting-mmoonline-games-jobs/ UPDATE: I'll add other roles in as/when I get the OK from the relevant people; not all of these are public yet. --- Despite the heavy rash of studio closures (well documented by Nicholas Lovell), it seems there's a lot of exciting online/social games hiring going on right now - I'm getting ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/05/16/uk-games-companies-are-hiring-2010/ Dear Eric ... here's my problem: Somehow that didn't feel right for Google. We wanted something much more transparent and open" (Eric Schmidt, Chairman/CEO Google, writing in the Harvard Business Review this month) How, exactly, would you reconcile that with the fact that I had to serve Google with a legal document ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/05/11/google-your-attitude-sucks/ Beautiful, and disturbingly accurate. http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/05/11/not-satisfied-with-the-number-of-deaths-and-permanent-maimings-from-that-invention-he-invents-c-and-unix/ I've been writing about Entity Systems sporadically for the last few years. Recently, I finally had the time and the excuse to build one of my own (i.e. not owned by an employer). If you haven't read the main series of ES posts, you should do that first. There are ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/05/09/entity-system-1-javaandroid/ Two more firms have proven their mettle this week (i.e.: think twice before engaging them). As always, it's nothing personal. If a recruitment agent is doing a job that I and others think weak, but managed to persuade an employer to pay them to do it - and to accept that ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/05/06/exposing-the-weak-recruitment-agencies-2-more/ I'm getting messages every day from John Say (of Say Design) pushing me to join his network on Ushi. Ignoring them had no effect; I'm now routinely forwarding these to google's spam box. I'm amazed that in 2010 people would send out an "invitiation" to their business contacts without bothering to provide ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/05/05/john-say-please-your-network-on-ushi/ Interesting search result for "O2 Facebook": ...IIRC that started off as a service for MySpace, then MySpace/Facebook. Apparently now it's all about Facebook (only). The only mention of MySpace is a navbar link to something about broadband - seemingly unrelated. PS: Entity System post coming soon, for those that look for such ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/05/05/when-google-seo-goes-unmaintained-too-long/ One great achievement of the web is the huge reduction in barriers to publishing. But the flipside is that we now see extremely low incentives for publishers to keep content "live". Back when it cost money to publish info, you had good reasons to *keep* your content live once it ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/04/26/low-cost-publishing-easy-to-kill-content/ So neatly done, I find it hard to believe it's not real... "3D gaming? What if the game characters saw the GAMER in 3D instead of the other way around? Is it really only myself that thinks like this?" (along with other greats such as: "A good game can be played on ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/04/23/3d-gaming-what-if/ Why couldn't I stop thunderbird from downloading 2GB of files that it is absolutely not supposed to download in the first place? Ah, well, it turns out ... there's a bug in the basic "include folder for offline" GUI, whereby it is COMPLETELY IGNORED for certain folders. One of those folders ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/04/19/thunderbird-3-critical-bugs-imap-folders/ ...I'm really.Sorry, just very very busy right.now! Welcoming some new people to Red.Glasses (my iPhone development / agency company), and lots of projects all happening at once. Given how many people I see out of work, I'm delighted to.be bucking the trend, but until.our new people get.up.to.speed, its a bit too much, ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/04/15/if-youre-waiting-for-me-right-now/ I'm doing some pretty cool stuff at the moment - I'm not looking for a job - but a few months ago I got emailed by three different Google recruiters, inviting me to apply for three (different) specific jobs, in different parts of the company, almost all at the same ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/04/09/rejected-by-and-rejecting-google/ (if you haven't read the main post explaining this, read this first) Submission Author: (tony.almazan at gmail.com) Title: Galaxy Trader Type: Casual mutliplayer Facebook game Word count: 373 words Proposal Ever wanted to be filthy rich and travel the galaxy? Now here is your chance, you have been fortunate enough to have a rich uncle loan you ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/04/04/judging-game-ideas-galaxy-trader/ From the IGN walkthrough: "If you have trouble grabbing the beam, just keep trying—we promise it works, but lots of readers have told us it's not always easy." I'm a pretty good AC player, but after 10 minutes of trying to do that one standing jump, I gave up and stopped playing ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/04/04/assasins-creed-2-understatement-of-the-century/ The font-settings in ThunderBird are terrible: the default settings are ugly, and the GUI is too broken to let you change them. Fortunately, if you hand-edit the config files, you *can* change the fonts, as much as you like. Sadly, the options etc are undocumented, and easy to get wrong. Incidentally, ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/04/04/thunderbird-3-fixing-the-fonts/ Oh dear. Did someone ignore their "please renew your domain" warnings? http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/04/02/gamedev-net-gone-from-internet/ (Third and final Thunderbird post (promise!)) I had an idea; maybe if I deleted TB, then restarted it, and forced it to go offline first, THEN configured folders, THEN allowed it to connect, it might. just. work. Of course, doing so discovered some obvious bugs in TB. Sigh. I got it mostly ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/03/25/thunderbried-3-0-x-make-it-download-only-the-selected-folders/ When you run Thunderbird, and connect to gmail, it downloads your inbox. Then it does nothing, for an hour or so. When you run Thunderbird a second or third time, OR when you first synch a single IMAP folder (I don't know which of these two events triggered it) it waits a ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/03/25/thunderbird-firefox-email-really-doesn%e2%80%99t-work-catastrophically/ Thunderbird just released an update a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd try it out. Day 1: Thunderbird refuses to check email. See this screenshot, note the timestamps, while I'm sitting here waiting for an email that should ahve arrived a few minutes ago, desperately pressing the "get mail" ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/03/25/thunderbird-firefox-email-still-doesnt-work/ Nicholas Lovell suggests it here: Think about it. It’s your baby, your dream, your idea. My own way of describing this is: Who owns the IP? (dev, initially) Who invented the IP? (dev) Who - therefore - understands *why* the IP exists, *how* it works, *why* it's "good"? (dev) Who cares most about the IP? ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/03/24/%e2%80%9cdevelopers-outsource-publishing-to-publishers%e2%80%9d/ This past few days, as people have asked me "how's the conference going for you?", my recurring response has been: I'm ambivalent. This is my first SXSWi; I go to 3-5 tech and media conferences a year, speak at 1-3 of them. The "party" atmosphere was fun on the first day ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/03/16/my-first-sxswi-the-low-brow-conference/ ...it's not a good idea to mug someone who practices Kung Fu. Fortunately, in this case, I'd only slept 3 hours in the previous 40, and it took me long enough to realise what was happening - and I was sufficiently in-attentive - that I didn't hit back in any serious ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/03/08/generally-speaking-when-you-mug-someone/ I'll be in SF from Monday afternoon to Thursday evening (leaving SFO at midnight on thursday night). My iPhone is unlocked, so I'm hoping to find a cheap SIM to shove in, but otherwise it'll be email-only. The 2010 list of GDC parties is looking pretty full (and there's a bunch after ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/03/05/gdc-2010-about-to-start-im-there-for-3-days/ If you are an iPhone developer - or if you know any iPhone developers - don't upgrade your device to 3.1.3, and more importantly: don't upgrade to the latest Xcode. (this came out last week) Among the regression bugs (i.e. stuff that they fixed in the previous version, but because theire process ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/02/08/iphone-bugs-to-make-you-weep-os-3-1-3/ Google is giving away free Nexus One handsets to mobile developers attending the GDC this year Google is not a games company; Google has never shown any interest in the $75 billion (roughly) games industry. Suprising? Not really ... $75 billion *for the entire industry* is smaller than some individual companies ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/01/26/google-and-the-games-industry/ (...or else forgo it) (EDIT: To be clear: Piracy isn't theft, but it certainly is illegal. Please do not misconstrue: I do not condone piracy; this post is a lament at the extent to which the retail industries encourage or coerce consumers to pirate content. I am still looking for a ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/01/26/once-again-im-forced-to-pirate-digital-content/ Last night, I went to the Houses of Parliament for the first time, for a panel session on Video Games, organized by one of our MP's, Tom Watson. Walking through the enormous medieval Westminster Hall (stone floor, stone walls, massive oak timbered ceiling) en route was a bit surreal, and ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/01/26/panel-taking-video-games-seriously/ What's a browser MMO? Today, not 5 years ago? In the previous post I poked Earth Eternal for claiming to be the "*REAL* MMO for your browser", and disappointing on that front (although it could be awesome on all other fronts). I finished with: So ... EE may be a great game ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/01/18/2010-and-the-browser-mmo/ It's a REALLY short review (but bear with me on this): they wouldn't allow me to play. That came as a major shock. I didn't set out to write about EE, I just wanted to have a look for myself, but this changed my mind. I'm probably not the target audience ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/01/18/earth-eternal-short-review/ (if you haven't read the main post explaining this, read this first) Submission Author: Chris Locher (calocher at gmail.com) Title: "Net Quest: The Search for the win" Word count: 500 words Proposal The game is a casual Diablo/Torchlight like dungeon crawler based on all things Internet. The player is a web browser personified in a virtual ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/01/14/judging-game-ideas-net-quest/ In general, it seems that most entrants to game-design-competitions could get huge benefit from just a small amount of fairly simple advice and feedback. I've been a judge on several game-design competitions. I've seen a lot of recurring mistakes and successes, and I'd like to see less of the former, more ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/01/11/got-an-idea-for-a-new-game-want-some-feedback-and-publicity/ In a few months time, I'll be in Austin, TX, sitting on a panel at SXSW ... judging people's ideas for new computer games. I'm going to make an offer here, now, to help people entering future competitions (FYI: it's too late for SXSW 2010). This is the fourth time I've ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2010/01/11/panel-at-sxsw-aaa-game-design-competition/ I got this in my inbox a few days ago, and it's been forwarded to me by a few people since: (NB: the fact that you still have to login MERELY TO READ THE DAMN FAQ linked from the PR statement is IMHO symptomatic of some of MP's problems :( ) metaplace.com ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2009/12/24/farewell-metaplace/ I was too busy to post at the time, but Apple recently approved an update to my first ever iPhone app [iTunes Store link]. I'm using this app as a personal experiment in designing educational and learning games. Unfortunately, this update took something like 4 months to get through submission (rejected ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2009/12/10/updated-simple-maths-game/ A year or so ago I did a roundup of the major free Web Analytics services. I was interested to see how Google Analytics had affected the market: was there a market left any more? One of the trials I signed up for I found so useful I carried on using ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2009/12/09/getclicky-sucks-an-analytics-service-going-out-of-business/