Home Of Serendipity

Well I made the arduous journey to Austin, Texas for the South by South West Festival. I’ll be taking part in the interactive section, and my just take a peek at the music side of things as well.

I’ll be mostly found swanning around the conference floors, or at the Digital Mission stand, and as always, don’t be shy. Come up and say hi, and if your looking for a demonstration of some really cool iPhone/iPod development stuff, then just say so.

Of course if you really want to know what we’re up to and want to let loose some cash, then we’re open for business.

More updates from the front, as and when I get them.

I’m currently on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and my.SXSW

South by South West Interactive, or SXSWi, kicks off this Thursday 13th March for 10 days, at the Austin Convention Center in Texas. I’m heading out there for the first 6 days that cover the interactive and music festivals.

We were selected to be part of the Digital Mission from the U.K. to represent Briton in all things in the interactive arena.

My part is with our business Infurious, and promoting the mobile comic reader application to anyone who’ll listen.

I’ll post more details in the next few days.

I’d like to thank everyone who turned up at the Xcake meetup at Roast on the Lisburn Road, in Belfast. We had around 20 people from all areas. Bedroom coders to Queens Phd students and everyone else in between.

It’s great to see, and hear, what people of this wee island are doing with the sexiest, in my opinion, mobile handset. It’s amazing just how a small device can spark such imagination from people and what application they are developing, or would like to, see getting developed.

I had some interesting conversations with people and loved an idea pitched by Darin Smyth from Belfast Met. to do with iPhone training courses and possible others. More on that at a later date.

Can’t wait for the next meeting and hopfully this has got peoples jucies flowing and wanting more.

For more information on Xcake visit Home of Xcake

My brother bought me a book for Christmas showing street art by Banksy. A lot of it is quite humorous and we did have a few laughs. You can imagine my surprise when Melissa told me about some sign art that was very like what was in the book.

I’ve taken a photo to just let you all see. I somehow don’t think that it’s by the man himself.

This year I’m hoping to get stuck into creating a good number of new applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The AppStore is a great place with a whole slew of genres to choose from, though it really helps if you can make it onto the Top Paid apps list. We found that out when our first issue of EyeCandy, Masked Marshal, became staff favourite. We ended up getting a months sales in a single day. Not bad for something thats been out for a few months now.

What this shows is, as ever, you need marketing behind you. It’s no good simply posting an application onto the AppStore and hoping it will earn you a firm windfall of money. Though truth be told, it has happened. How do you go about marketing your application, especially if it’s a 99¢ app. How many would you need to sell in order to recoup your spend. Should we charge more, is it worth more to justify the increase in price. I think not.

I’m looking to create a little momentum by piggy backing on other peoples applications. Small logo insertions to help with the recognition of a brand, links to my website, and creating a built in catalogue of all application currently available directly from the application, that’s constantly updated.

I’m also looking to get past applications updated, ensure any bugs that are reported are fixed and the possibility of adding new features now and again, to help with the longevity of the applications use.

2009 is starting to look a little bright and I’m here to welcome the sun.

Phil Schiller says “So today what I’m going to talk to you about, is all about the Mac.”

I for one was pleased to hear those words. For so long, Apple seemed to be doing very little but talk about the iPhone, iPod Touch and how it’s taking over the world of gaming and telecommunications via mobile. It would be a nice change to hear what actually founded Apple in the first place.

Phil had three things to talk about. I actually though these would have been categories. Software, mobile, and hardware. What actually transpired was, software, iLife09 is out and has some nice bells and whistles. Software again, iWork, more bells and whistles, and one laptop. That was about the height of it.

What I really thought was a slew of new, or updated hardware actually turned out to be nothing more than one Apple product and only item within that line. The, much awaited, 17″ MacBook Pro. Don’t get me wrong, the MBP is really nice to look at, and has a longer battery life, according to Apple, up to 8 hours. Yeah, right, wait till the real world gets their hands on it.

I’ve been putting off getting a new 17″ MBP for quite some time and had actually hoped that Apple would offer the new Intel 4 core processor. That was my real hope. Nicer graphics, yeah that will do I suppose. Hard drives can be purchased and added to my existing machine so no biggie there, and the extended battery. I’ve never really needed a second battery and can usually find a power outlet somewhere so extra length is, again, nice but not my top requested upgrade. The MBP lacks any real crunch power and that’s where the 4 cores would have helped.

Will I go out and get one? Not totally sure. I can get another Gig of RAM into my current model, and up the hard drive. Graphics are fine for what I need. If I leave it too long to decide then I’ll end up waiting again, for the next model.

Will keep you posted.

There is a lot, as usual, speculation over what will be announced at this years MacWorld. I believe that it will have more to do with performance gains than actual products.

With Snow Leopard, no secret there, we should see gains on everyday computer usage, and as a developer and having access to Snow Leopard, this is certainly the case. Though I still wouldn’t use it as my main OS just yet. Using the graphics chips to do very fast calculations can certainly speed things up a bit.

Another, and IMO more useful, is the use of silver-zinc batteries in the laptop range. When you take your computer everywhere, getting the most out of its battery life is paramount and if news reports are anything to go by ZPower may be providing the juice for these laptops in the future. Have been reading up on ZPowers statements, and their news article in the New York Times.

The way I see it, this will be used across the range of laptops and filtering its way down to the iPods and iPhones.

The MacBook Air will get a 50-60% more battery life and still be non-replaceable, but stay the same size and weight. The MacBook will go the way of the Air and have a sealed battery compartment, eventually, though not yet. This will enable a light and longer lasting battery giving gains of 25-40% extra runtime. The McBookPro will still have a replaceable battery, but will be smaller and hence lighter. Maybe adding an extra 10-20% longer battery time. If the 17″ went to the likes of OLED displays then the increase would be more like 18-30%.

This isn’t going to be just a single product but a hugh announcement with regards to all products and with a 95% recycle rate.

As ZPower puts it: “The primary materials of ZPower batteries (i.e. silver and zinc) are fully recyclable. That means that the materials derived from recycling process are of the same quality as the materials that went into the initial creation of the battery.” Hugh+ for Apple with Greenpeace.

Still looking forward to the Apple event, even if Jobs reality distortion field isn’t on stage, I reckon his presence will still be felt.

Have managed to get this blog updated and centralised all the graphics into a single directory structure on the backbone of the internet. Now looking to get the Blue Pilot Software website brought up to date and a few redesign changes. Will need to keep this updated.

Blue Pilot Software is mainly for our comic, educational and light entertainment games. Currently only the comic stuff is up there but looking to change this soon.

The current 2 comic issues, Masked Marshal and Beatnik High, shown on the right column, are to get updated with extra colouring panels and a linking system to other comics that we will keep in a centralised location and updated each time the comic is used. This will provide helpful links to new issues and/or other applications by Blue Pilot Software.

So, first up is the Blue Pilot Software website. Once changed I’ll post and tweet the changes.

Talk again soon.

So we actually made it through another year. Time to let go of the past and welcome in the new, and what a year we will have for you all.

First off, Paul is heading to the New York Comic Convention, to pound the halls and show off our comic application, I’m heading out to the South by South West festival in Austin, Texas, this March and hopefully be on my way to this years WWDC again, can hardly wait.

We should, all being well, have a some big announcements to make at the start of this year. I’m looking to getting back to the EyeCandy work and getting on with my own applications again.

Keep watching here or my twitter feed on Philip Orr as well as our EyeCandy twitter feed at EyeCandy Comics.