The First Step To Running Flash On The iPad: Ads

The folks over at smokescreen.us have done something truly extraordinary: they’re made it possible to convert something made in Flash to HTLM5/Java Script. What this means is that they can grab Flash animations and convert them so that you can view them on your iPad.

For example, many websites have flash advertisements, however those come up as the lego of doom on your iPad. In order to view those ads iPad users would have to install a Flash plugin, which apple does not allow, or the ad would have to be completely re-written into a language that the iPad browser is compatible with. But, instead of having to re-write all of the code for the add, smokescreen automatically does this for you, making much easier for flash developers to get their content onto iPads, iPhones, and other non Flash compatible devices.

This may seem completely useless at this point, however if and when smokescreen grows it may very well be able to make much more than just advertisements iPad compatible, which is why its development is so exciting.

Video Demo:

Smokescreen – iPad demo #1 from Chris @ RevShockAds on Vimeo.

Movie Pick: Good Will Hunting

Just felt like sharing one of my favorite films with you all. Watched again the other day, very inspiring. Anyhow if you’re in the mood for a feel good movie with a great cast, plot, and director don;t hesitate to rent this, it’s worth every penny.

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119217/

iTunes link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMovie?id=188765182&s=143441

Online Streaming Link: http://stagevu.com/search?x=0&y=0&for=Good+Will+Hunting&in=Videos

How To Use Your Existing BlackBerry Data Plan On An iPhone

from cellphones.ca

This is my video with the most views, funny how the least favorite of your own videos is the most viewed. It’s not a bad video, I just don’t think it’s one of my best. Anyhow if you’re interested on finding out how to do this just watch!

What AppStore Developers Are Doing Wrong

Just because I’m an early iPad adopter, doesn’t mean I’m oblivious to some of its flaws. However instead of ranting about flash, multitasking, or lack of a physical keyboard I want to talk instead about what seems to be defining success or defeat in the mobile computing market right now: Apps. For the most part, apps have paved the way for the huge success of the iPhone, iPod, and iPad. However there are some distinct recent trends that threaten the success of the AppStore.
The first harmful trend is the dependency on an internet connection. For many apps, like the facebook app, this is simply unavoidable. However, for apps like the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today internet dependency prevents the app from being usable. The WSj does a decent job by pre-loading of of the newspapers, decreasing load times while reading. However frequent crashes and long download times takes away all initial appeal to use the application. And as for USA today and NYTimes, the apps are literally unusable without an internet connection. Granted, you needed a collection to download the paper in the WSJ app initially but neither the USA Today nor the NYTimes allowed to read articles offline. The point is that if instead of relying on an internet connection to update the content in the application, applications like these should use the WIRED app’s subscription model. Sure, it takes a while to download each issue, but after the download is finished the magazine and all of its videos/pictures are available at any time. No buffering and no waiting; ass soon as the app is on your device the WIRED app is ready to go.
The second harmful trend in the app store is the pricing. This nonsense where apps are anywhere from a dollar to two is hurting the appeal of the app store to new and bigger developers. For, though related to another trend which if flat out copying of applications, if one is faced with two apps who claim to do the same thing say Things vs iNote (made up) and iNote only costs a dollar vs Things which costs five, the majority of people are going to just jump at iNote. And, after realizing they wasted their money they feel skeptical about purchasing Things, which would now cost them six dollars since the y wasted their money on the other app. This happens virtually with every app on the app store, Papi-Jump vs DoodleJump, TweetSimple vs Tweetie, Mocha VNC vs LogMeIn Ignition. For every single full featured, refined app in the app store there is a cheap clone somewhere out there. That clone forces the developers to charge less, make less, and therefore afford less.
You might think these two points are meaningless compared to other issues, but the fact of the matter is that the user experience on these devices is determined by the quality of the device’s applications. IFor if all the apps suck, all the iPad, iPhone, and iPod are is an overpriced paper weight. To put it differently, the reason why the music industry had failed to take off for so long before iTunes is not that the music sucked, but that the players sucked.

From here on out

I haven’t written on here for a while. Yea it’s my own blog but frankly I just didn’t have much motivation. Anyhow, I’ve decided that from here on out my posts shouldn’t;t be just tech related. From this point on im going to post on just about everything. So for now enjoy my old posts, but soon they most probably will be gone =(

Lq.