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Paying homage to the colorful world of comic books, superheroes and villains… we wanted to take a closer look at the colors in comics and see if they too can tell a story…
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An incredibly fascinating look at colors used in comic books. I love that the infographic covers the changes in time, the difference between DC and Marvel and the colors most often associated with heroes and villains.
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The Yahoo comparison makes sense the way Elgan constructs it, but I think it’s more apt to say that Facebook’s goal has been to be the new AOL. “Walled garden” is a phrase that gets batted about a lot with regard to the Big Fruit, but Apple rarely builds services that you’re forced to use in lieu of interoperable standards. Facebook has little interest in building anything but.
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Coyote Tracks: Why Facebook is the New Yahoo
I don’t agree with Elgan, it seems like a very stretched and somewhat fallacious comparison right now but I love this gem from Watts Martin. It feels like Facebook is trying so hard to look ‘open’ with all their apps, API’s and login systems but I almost always end up at Facebook rather than departing it.
(Source: chipotle)
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But at a technical level, is this really something Adobe should be crowing about? The game requires an iPad 2 for performance reasons, even though the animation is 2D, not 3D. The game was originally written in Air for play on the PC, so I have little doubt it was less work to port it to the iPad within Air rather than rewriting it natively in Cocoa Touch. But it doesn’t seem right to me that this game doesn’t run on first-gen iPads. Commenters on Brimelow’s post seem to agree.
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Daring Fireball Linked List: Machinarium, iPad Game Built With Adobe Air
This is exactly right. There’s no reason that a game like Machinarium couldn’t run on hardware that powers extraordinarily detailed games like Infinity Blade or Dead Space.
It may make economical sense to use a cross-compiler in the short term. You make money on many platforms with minimal work customizing the app to each platform. But it’s a shitty shortcut that sacrifices speed and stability because it’s easier.
The bigger problem is that it is just the beginning of the issues. When you carefully craft an application from design up you create a much more compelling experience for users. It isn’t just about performance or even taking advantage of features for each individual device, it’s about making design decisions to create an application consistent with the platform. This isn’t as dramatic in games since UI’s are so non-standard but it’s imperative for other apps to fit in the native ecosystem.
Is user experience important to you? If it isn’t — like all non-native apps for any platform — you’re playing a short-term game.
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8bit Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Ok, ok! Now this, is freakin GOLD!!! 8bit #DXHR. It’s the Sarif Manufacturing plant level. Every detail is in there. Well done buddy! :D
Whoa, this is awesome!
However, there doesn’t seem to be any attribution on the original post so I’m just linking to this instead of reblogging the image.
(Source: jayjaybe)
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(via MySaver: protection for your iPad, iPhone, and iPod cables by thomas lehman — Kickstarter)
I need half a dozen of these. Seriously, I have probably five or six iOS device cords and the only one that isn’t frayed to death is a non-Apple one I got with a car charger.
And they’re so damn attractive.
Want one? There’s 27 days to go on their Kickstarter campaign and they already have double their goal pledged.
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bmx & rain Canon 7D “2000fps” w/ a little help from Trapcode. #vfx
The most gorgeous thing you’ll see ever (this weekend).
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The Matt Gemmell Daily
… is not here. It doesn’t exist. You were probably expecting something from paper.li, which lets you create an online “newspaper” from Twitter, Facebook and RSS feeds.
The reason that I haven’t created such a thing is because I really, really hate them. Allow me to explain why.
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I haven’t used Paper.li (yet) but there are so so many apps and services trying to solve the problem of aggregating news from your networks and presenting it to you in a tasteful way. Unfortunately, many of them share the problems that Matt Gemmell describes.
And they are very real problems that should be carefully considered by developers, content creators and — perhaps most importantly — readers. You.
(via Marco Arment)
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In a normal world, writing favorably about Apple would just be common sense, as the company is doing pretty well. In this world it makes you a “fanboy.”
…The reason people like Siegler and Gruber and this furry beast so often write favorably about Apple is because the company is, by every measure, astoundingly and almost unprecedentedly successful. That should be obvious. In fact, it should be weird to be obsessively writing about the company’s flaws.
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The Macalope Weekly: Gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em | Macworld
Certainly one of best Macalope Weeklies in recent memory (they’re all delightful).
I’ve always felt that the term ‘fanboy’ doesn’t belong in any conversation, if it wasn’t so demeaning it would be rather superfluous. Yet it’s become ubiquitous just about everywhere you’ll find people commenting.
I understand, it’s fun to invalidate people you disagree with by dismissing them as fanboys. However, the truth is that it demeans not only the target but also readers and insulter alike.
Unfortunately, not everything fits into a narrowly defined view of black and white (and that’s no more true just because it’s the internet). To unfairly dismiss a writer’s integrity by projecting a 1-bit worldview upon them usually reflects far more strongly on your own.
I know and respect a lot of professional writers, many of them write for Apple centric publications. Not one of them doesn’t take the responsibility to be fair — if not impartial — very seriously. If you pay attention, each will criticize Apple and praise Microsoft or Google when it’s appropriate.
Yes, they are biased, we all are, but that responsibility is what separates ‘fanboys’ from professionals. We’re all adults here.
(The Zune is still the best media player I’ve ever owned and Google Reader? It’s the only act in the game…)
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We’ve all heard about endangered species. But what about endangered languages? Tim Brookes researches languages on the brink of being completely forgotten, and he’s here to break ‘em down and store ‘em up with his Endangered Alphabets project, our Project of the Day. Brookes carves and paints near-extinct writing systems from Indonesia, Nigeria, and beyond into wood, and he’s planning a traveling exhibition to preserve these scripts and the fascinating cultures they embody.
Bonus tip:
If you feel so moved as to share this project with people on the internet, be sure not to accidentally type, “alphabets on the verge of DIStinction,” instead of extinction. Something on the verge of distinction sounds kinda’ nice, but your Facebook Page community will painstakingly point out your error, again and again, with growing emphasis, as the day wears on.
This sounds like an unmeasurably important Kickstarter project
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It’s only “easier to defend a patent lawsuit” if you have infinite money to give lawyers, infinite time to deal with it, and an infinite tolerance for stress and uncertainty in the process.
Most companies either don’t have the resources or conclude that it’s not cost-effective to reach the point of being able to reasonably argue about a patent suit’s validity, so in practice, targets threatened by patent litigation rarely have the chance to defend themselves.
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http://www.marco.org/2011/08/12/nilay-patel-the-patent-system-isnt-broken
This is precisely the problem with the patent minefield the United States Patent and Trademark Office has created for us. It’s next to impossible to not violate someone’s patent and there’s no way a lot of smaller developers can stand up to a ridiculous patent troll who’s existence is entirely dependent on sewing infringements.
Software patent systems like ours hurt everyone but the trolls. They deprive users a lot of awesome features developers would like to include but can’t without violating obvious patents that the USPTO as negligently approved. Perhaps it’s because instead of developing they’re spending all their time fighting battles in our legal system or maybe it’s due to the lack of resources because they settled. It’s a lose-lose problem situation and a gross waste of time and work that could be better used doing almost anything else.
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Flirt is a nice looking new Facebook client for OS X. I’m a pretty light Facebook user and I don’t need this kind of power so I haven’t taken it for a spin yet. However, I really admire Falkor for having the guts to go for what we might now call a premiumly priced social app.
Bravo guys, I hope there are enough interested users will acknowledge all the handwork that goes into a lovely crafted application.
They have a trial available and you can buy it on the Mac App Store
