07.09.08
Posted in Computers, Social Networking, The Future at 1:28 by Tom Reynolds
Like I suspect many others in the UK who were looking to upgrade their iPhone, I’ve been left disappointed by the O2 website.
But it matters not - for the thing that I am most looking forward to is the Apps Store, the thought that I’ll be able to download additional software for use on my iPhone is the real thing that fills me with excitement.
And I can do that on my ‘old’ iPhone.*
Now, were I a clever person I’d be coding my own applications for the iPhone, unfortunately I am a bit thick at the moment so I’ll have to resolve myself into being the ‘ideas’ man.
So here are my ideas for the ideal iPhone application that I’d be willing to lay down cold hard cash for. There are more obvious ones but I would imagine that everyone and their dog has a chat or IRC client in production. (I would rather obviously love to get involved with number 2 if anyone has a job for me).
1) A MMORPG, something fairly lightweight, perhaps with the majority of the heavy lifting done not by a server, but by the combined mesh computing power of all the iPhones running the software. Otherwise similar to Runescape. Imagine being able to grind levels while sitting on a bus.
2) An Augmented Reality Game, perhaps crossed with social software overtones - consider if you will a game that is location based to where you *really* are. Using the location services in the phone (either original iPhone, or the AGPS of the 3G iPhone), you would be able to interact with the players that are around in you in physical space. I see it being based on a similar story to the old ‘Highlander’ TV series, or based around a secret society of wizards hiding in the modern day - or spies, or superheroes, or aliens looking to infiltrate Earth. I believe it is obvious how the social networking system would fit in on this.
3) An application that links up with Trustedplaces.com So I could use that location detection to find decent food places near where I am, read the reviews and decide where to eat. Again you could integrate the social aspects of that site into the application easily and have people filing their reviews immediately after eating.
4) Meetup - Yet another location based application. Let’s say that you are going to meet a friend, by sending out a ‘ping’ you could see the location of every friend near to your current location. Integrate the camera into it so you could send them a photo of where you are from within the application itself. Have it integrated with websites like meetup.com or Upcoming. This may be what Fire Eagle does, I’m not too sure as I don’t have an invite.
5) Lightsaber sound effects based on accelerometer input. Because I am a geek.
6) Two player board/strategy games like chess or backgammon. I’d be extremely surprised if these aren’t offered at launch or pretty soon afterwards. You meet up with a friend and pull out the board of a thousand games…
7) Voicedialing - possibly tricky with the access people have with the APIs, but it’d be a great upgrade. Now the Americans are having handsfree legislation introduced I suspect that Apple might include it with a firmware upgrade.
8) The iPhone camera able to take a picture of an object’s bar code and look it up on Amazon or similar comparison sites. Delicious library does this for the tabletop, but it’d be great to have that functionality on the go. Oh, and QR codes as well please.
9) VNC into my home Mac, because I am that sort of geek.
10) A copy of the BNF for offline reading, and not for £100+ please.
And generally I would give up a significant organ of mine if I could get a foldaway keyboard working with it, or use it as a modem for my Macbook Pro.
*Actually it’s my mum that is most annoyed, as she is the one who is getting my ‘old’ iPhone - and she is very much looking forward to it…
Technorati Tags: iPhone, Applications, appstore, apple, mmorpg, location, fireeagle, trustedplaces.com, lightsaber, voicedialling, augmentedrealitygame, meetup, vnc, wishlist
Permalink
07.08.08
Posted in Musing, Whoring myself at 23:57 by Tom Reynolds
I don’t know where I’m going with this, or even what site I should post this on - perhaps I’ll just cross-post it to everything.
Once upon a time I was a clever bastard. I used to devour computer languages, I used to write 6502 machine code, in Hex for burning straight onto EPROMs. I used to learn things every day, I devoured books. I used to build computers and fix them. I used to solder little electronic gizmos together - 555 chips and LEDs, all in bare feet so I could hold the board still with my toes.
But last night I was trying to understand ‘regular expressions‘, something that I should have found really easy. But I sat there and scrolled backwards and forwards and it just didn’t sink into my brain.
It’s not the first time I’ve noticed this, I sit and read and reread a bit of text a couple of times before it sinks in. I try to remember something and it just doesn’t work. I try and write a blogpost and the words stop flowing.
I’ve a sneaking feeling it’s to do with my lifestyle at the moment. I’ve heard it said that learning computer programming will alter the way that you think but I think that my earlier life has slipped away from me.
It might be a result of rotating shiftwork slowly eating away at my brain, it might just be my age - but I’m hating it.
The other thing that it might be is that in my day to day work I don’t need to use my brain anymore. I turn up to a patient and can tell what is wrong with them within a minute, the lack of any ’serious’ cases has meant that I go from job to job picking up people with very little wrong with them (or the usual suspect illnesses like angina, or COPD), doing some vital signs and then writing the same paperwork. I drop them off at the hospital and repeat it all over again - the only thinking that I have to do is in trying to work out how to get some food inside me.
When I started the job every call was a problem to be solved, but now I think I’ve reached the stage where I don’t need to think about how to get the trapped woman with a broken leg out from under her bed, I don’t need to consider how I break bad news to someone, it all just comes subconsciously to me.
I guess I’m just not stretched by my work anymore, even though I don’t know what patient I’m going to go to next it’s all just become a bit ’samey’.
Because I’m not thinking in work, my brain isn’t getting any exercise. Because I work rotating shifts I can’t go to night school to start learning again, because I work twelve hour shifts it is incredibly hard to motivate myself to learn on my own.
I need a kick up the arse. I need something that will stretch me, motivate me and force me to do some learning.
I need to get out of shiftwork - but I can’t do a fixed rota in the ambulance service because I just couldn’t live on the cut in wages that I’d have to take.
I’m not sure what else to do, and this is part of the reason for this post - I love to hear what other people think. This is a request for advice, a request for things that I can do to get my brain working again because I hate this slow slide from how my brain used to work into a dullness.
I need to get motivated again.
I have some books on programming in modern languages - maybe I should hit the Python one, try and force myself into thinking again.
C9
Permalink
07.07.08
Posted in Computers at 22:58 by Tom Reynolds
I’ve been considering the idea to have all my writing, twitters, del.icio.us links and so on and so forth in one place. While Mental Kipple was supposed to be a cross between a tumble-blog and a place for me to write about other things, the inclusion of my daily tweets has put up a psychological block to me posting more frequently here.
So I’m turning off the tweets here.
Instead, everything that I write will be collected in one place. I’ll still be doing individual posts on here or on Random Acts Of Reality, but they will also be cross-posted to my new place.
You make make use of www.tomreynolds.net in whatever way you wish.
Permalink
Posted in Computers at 22:29 by Tom Reynolds
This is a test post - please ignore.
Permalink
07.06.08
Posted in Twitters at 23:59 by
- Wondering if two new blogs is a good idea or not. Then thinking of potential third groupblog. #
- @stefidi all will be revealed in time… #
- I wonder why there is nothing on the news about the woman thrown 8 floors to her death yesterday. #
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Permalink
07.05.08
Posted in Twitters at 23:59 by
- Where is @qwghlm? #
- Org talk at #opentech was great. Real revivalist atmosphere. #
- And where is @ #
- And where is @minifig? #
- Sitting on the floor at the back like a naughty child. #
- About to record the session in the seminar room. #
- Bollocks. I need to stitch together 800 .au audio files. I think I need to learn mac scripting. #
- Having to leave #opentech for previous online appointment. #
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Permalink
07.04.08
Posted in Twitters at 23:59 by
- I should stop reading comics before I go to sleep. Then I might not dream of a half naked @warrenellis giving me LSD and Foxy. #
- Heading out to see if I can provoke the police into arresting me for doing something utterly legal #
- Escaped arrest (blame the lack of front line police officers), but did get spoken to politely by a security guard. #
- Registering new URI… #
- Suggestion to all Americans on their Independence day - Do a YouTube search for ‘Why are Viacom such wankers?’ #
- ‘wankers’ was originally was going to be something much stronger… #
- Damn it! Why do DNS propagations and domain transfers take so much time. #
- Dear Aperture, why don’t you accept NAS vaults? Is it really that tricky to work out? #
- Hmmm…. Either off to pub, or off to buy milk for a cup of tea. Undecided which at the moment. #
- Do two bottles of wine contain less calories than a medium pizza? If so then I’m winning on my diet. #
- @stefidi I’ve heard it’s good for you. Besides I’ve run out. Anyway - Isn’t vodka and ORANGE a healthy fruit based drink? #
- At Opentech tomorrow - stop me and say hello if you like. #
- @minifig Will I get to see you then? RESULT! Gotta love #opentech #
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Permalink
Posted in Computers, Social Networking, Technology, The Future at 19:41 by Tom Reynolds
I’m at this tomorrow - if you see me stop me and say hello.
Permalink
Posted in Social Networking at 11:29 by Tom Reynolds
A judge ordered this week that Google must turn over personal records of YouTube users to Viacom
The ruling means that Google will have to produce all personal content of users, including names and IP addresses, to Viacom.
A suggestion - why not, especially on this American day of Independence, do some interesting search terms on YouTube while knowing that it is likely that Viacom will see it.
My suggestion is that you do a search for ‘Why are Viacom such wankers?’
You may replace ‘wankers’ with your own descriptive word. Being English my own choice is related to the female genitalia…
Technorati Tags: Viacom, Google, YouTube, Judge, ruling, wankers
Permalink
07.01.08
Posted in Twitters at 23:59 by
- I have learned to never contradict 90 year olds who tell me they are going to die. #
- Have been put on a break. Therefore sunbathing on station. This is a rare occurance #
- Sadly my crewmate won’t match me in sunbathing topless. Why wouldn’t she do that? #
- Dear hospital. Your writing of account name and password on your publically accessable computer monitors does not fill me with confidence. #
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Permalink
« Previous entries