GeekGlue Site Update

Over the last couple of years my GeekGlue website has become increasingly out of step with my current interests. I've been thinking more and more about how I should use that space. In the last year I've become very interested in casual gaming and have (as noted on this blog) published a couple of games. Therefore I started to think that I would like to use the GeekGlue site to support my game publishing and perhaps focus my own research into casual gaming. I was also keen to use Drupal (which we've been using extensively) to make the site more flexible. Hence the new GeekGlue is born with new games added daily, a blog posting a daily review of the best new game of the day, walkthroughs of my games (and probably a few others) as well as casual gaming news. The site is very much in a formative state and I expect to regularly add new features in the coming months.

Kindle 2 vs iPhone Stanza

A few weeks ago I joined the growing throng of Apple fanboys and signed up for an iPhone. The main reason was that my last phone was one of the great GUI disasters of all time. It took about 8 button clicks to delete a single SMS message and similar hoops for many other common actions. So this time I was determined to get a phone that didn't make you want to throw it firmly into concrete after the first five minutes. I haven't been disappointed with my iPhone and in fact I have been surprised by it's versatility.

Since the first Kindle was released I've been watching that space with interest. I love to read and I love the idea of eReaders. But I've never seen an eReader I wanted to use. The Kindle seemed like an eReader I'd want to own. While I was researching new mobile phones I came across Stanza. Stanza is an eReader app for the iPhone and I was keen, though more than a little sceptical, to give it a go. What has surprised me is how much I've enjoyed reading books on my iPhone with Stanza. I've read a couple of novels using Stanza in the last couple of weeks and have my eye on a couple of others I'm keen to read. The only thing stopping me is the stack of paperbacks on my bedside table (I've issued instructions not to buy me any more paperbacks unless instructed otherwise). I could go on a bit here but probably best you take a look at Stanza's quick guide video if you want to know more.

Which brings me to Kindle. Last week Amazon previewed a new improved Kindle (see also CrunchGear's "Hands-on with the Kindle 2". Looks great but is it too late. The Kindle probably provides a slightly better reader than the iPhone (hard to tell from the preview) but it would need to be dramatically better to compete. One of the selling points for the iPhone is that I could consolidate my music and my phone into one device. So why would I want to carry another device to read a book when my phone does such a good job? Obviously not everyone has an iPhone, but I'm assuming that similar devices (by Apple or it's competitors) will become the norm in the future and that each will be able to provide a similar reading experience. So while Kindle seems like a great idea it now looks like a great idea that came too late.

Melbourne JoomlaDay 2009

Melbourne JoomlaDay 2009 will take place at Melbourne University on Saturday 7th February and Sunday 8th February. From the site :

"Joomla is an award-winning Content Management System (CMS) that will help you build websites and other powerful online applications. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everybody. Visit Joomla's official website.

Beginners will get a jump-start into Joomla, learn how to set up their first Joomla site. Designers will gain deep insight into Joomla 1.5 templating. Implementors and Developers will enjoy myriads of tips and tricks out of the core developers’ toolbox.

Joomla is an award-winning Content Management System (CMS) that will help you build websites and other powerful online applications. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everybody."

Registrations close on 21 January if they don't sell out before then (apparently it did sell out last year so you might want to get in early).

Zamak : Peugot Ad

Zamak is perhaps one of the worlds top designers of 3D characters. Mostly I've seen them as images on his blog. This morning Zamak has published a very cool Peugot ad using his robotic characters :

Adobe Stratus beta launched

Adobe have launched a new communication protocol(RTMFP) and the Adobe Stratus service (beta) to enable the development of applications using the protocol. Real-Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) uses UDP "whose low latency, end-to-end peering capability, security, and scalability make it especially well suited for developing real-time collaboration applications by not only providing superior user experience but also reducing operators' costs". Currently Flash uses Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) which is TCP based. "Stratus is a hosted rendezvous service" that allows Flash applications to sent media "directly between two Flash Player instances without routing through a central relay server".

Links

• Adobe Labs - Stratus
• Stratus service for developing end-to-end applications using RTMFP in Flash Player
• Adobe Stratus - Peer-2-Peer connection service for FP10 & AIR 1.5