And it feels exactly like being 19. Aren’t birthdays meant to be more momentous?

I did go out to Wagamama’s with friends though, which was nice. If you guys are reading this, you’re pretty cool. Thanks

The numerous emails from various organisations was nice too. More people should put birthday messages in their software.

Developer networks already exist. There are hundreds probably, one for each company that wants developers to make things for its products, and is willing to support them through the process. The problem with these is that they enforce the idea that we’re competing against each other in a marketplace – which is true to a certain extent – but it doesn’t mean we can’t do more to work together. Sites like StackOverflow and XDA-Developers are brilliant in this aspect: the former, though primarily a means to solve problems, has created a mood of “elder sensei passes on ancient wisdom so that the young trainees may carry on the generation.” It has its limits though – discussion is banished from the Q&As, and relegated to the chat rooms which creates a barrier to entry. XDA, on the other hand, is huge. There are so many boards there, it must be difficult for the community to maintain a cohesive identity. Doubtless, lots of friendships are made, but they’re all fragmented.

Social fragmentation is a difficult challenge for administrators, and it manifests in any community. People tend to gather around what they know (I have first hand experience of this; on a forum I run, there is an Animé thread, and there are people registered who visit the site solely for that thread). This in itself is not the issue: I feel there’s a problem when 95% of the userbase doesn’t know that a given group of people exist. There have been lots of articles recently about the Internet’s “filter bubble” effect, and here it is in full force.

What ‘we,’ as a developer community desperately need is somewhere to socialise while still being able to talk about our passions (dev passions, of course). Anyone who attended #WordCampUK last year will probably be able to sympathise with this idea. As I described in my posts summarising the event, it was the first time I felt part of a community of developers. We were still, essentially, competing with our products, but that didn’t really matter. The event was a nice bubble where anyone could just talk about things which interested them: I remember, for example, having an extended conversation about back buttons. It sounds silly now, but it came about completely naturally.

I think it’d be fantastic if there were a site which encouraged that kind of level of engagement between its members. I’m vaguely aware of the WPUnity.com project (and I’m hoping it’s aiming to achieve what I outlined above when it launches), but as far as I know, nothing of the sort exists for mobile developers. And I wish there were, because I’ve got a lot of things I’d like to talk about.

It’s been almost a year since I started toying with the idea of selling this theme – I’ve put a lot of work into it after all. Unfortunately, there are lots of quirks from when I first coded it, making it difficult for me to a) clean it up for release and b) be sure that it’ll work properly in a lot of scenarios. And I just don’t have the time anymore!

So, I’ve decided to release my theme, “Dust,” as is: here’s the Git repo.

I’m happy for anyone to ask questions and send pull requests etc. In fact, please do! If Dust becomes anywhere near release quality, I’d love to have it on the WordPress theme repo. Until then, feel free to use it as a learning resource (or an example of how to not to do things, hah).

What’s next? I’d love to have one of those sites which impress people. Like acko.net or ma.tt something. Check back in a few weeks to see if I’ve been successful on that.

Or is it?

There’s a poll going on at the moment in the Spotlight section of the Games hub – “vote for the greatest game of all time!”. Opening this link takes you to this webpage, where you can submit your vote. Once you have, there’ll be a link saying “Play Bejeweled,” which links to:

 xbls://game?gameid=504707D7

And it doesn’t just work on that page. If you’ve got a Windows Phone with Bejeweled, click here to try it out. Pretty cool.

I’m not sure if the poll always gives you a link to Bejeweled, but either way this shows that “app urls” are already being used in the OS, and it should hopefully be available to third party devs soon.

Maybe in Tango?

I hope to have a basic version working and submitted to the marketplace by the end of the week. I’ll update as things progress.

Without such a system in place, I’m anxious about releasing a theme: if I’m asking people for money in return, they’re going to expect a great finished product. Which is perfectly reasonable, it just makes the whole thing a bit daunting for relatively inexperienced developers like me. I much prefer the “software as a service” model exemplified in the various mobile app marketplaces, where the user understands they’re paying for a potentially unfinished or buggy product, but also that the developer has committed to adding features and fixing problems for as long as they sell the app.

Under the current system, to update a WordPress theme not in the official repository, you need to distribute the files and ask the user to upload them to their site manually. There is a plugin to help with this, but it’s not an ideal situation. What I’d like to see is the theme developer being able to specify a location for each theme which WordPress checks for updates every so often – perhaps using another line in the style.css theme information section – giving seamless updates for both the developer and user, and a better experience all round. What’s the downside?

Controversial, maybe, but let me elaborate.

I’ve owned a Samsung Omnia 7 for just over a year now. It’s been a really good phone: strong and reliable; I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve dropped the thing on hard surfaces, and I’ve never had any problems with the software. If it weren’t for the fact that on first glance it looks like an iPhone knockoff, it’d probably be one of the best phones out there. I’ve been pretty happy with my purchase.

The Lumia 800 has been touted as the Comeback Kid of both Nokia and Windows Phone: neither Nokia nor Microsoft have had a major presence in smartphones in 2011, despite doing some really great things, and this phone is their first attempt at changing that. The result is mixed.

Firstly, I should say that, as a physical object, the Lumia 800 is lovely (at least it is when it’s not covered with the provided gelaskin). The screen just melts into the body as it curves at the edges. The subtle tapering at the top and bottom and its delicate weight make it really comfortable to hold, and, for some reason, it’s really satisfying to be able to stand it on end. It’s completely unlike the Omnia 7, which, for all intents, is just a screen with a rounded back. It’s unlike other Samsung phones, in that they appear to have put little effort into its design.

The Omnia does have its strengths, though. Its screen is fantastic. All the tech blogs have a thing about Pentile displays, but they’re just not an issue for me: if you’re looking that closely, you’re using the phone wrong. The colours are amazing on the Omnia, regardless, and on high brightness, it’s almost painful to look at how vivid they are. The whites are really white, and the blacks are really black. The Lumia is just as good, if not better in this department. Though when compared side by side, it’s obvious that the Omnia is brighter, the Lumia’s colours are warmer and easier to look at. The same, still vivid, colours are a lot less eye-searing on the Lumia, and obviously this is a good thing.

There are two main sources of disappointment with the Lumia.

For one, its camera isn’t that great. I had hoped that the whole Carl Zeiss thing that Nokia’s got going on would make for an amazing camera, but results up to now have been disappointing: the Omnia takes photos which are a lot clearer and less noisy, and performs a lot better in the dark; this could just be software though, so I hope it improves with updates. I do have to say that it’s amazing how fast the Lumia takes photos, though. Once in the camera app, you can pretty much take a photo every one or two seconds.

The second thing worth mentioning is the battery life. There have been issues: it’ll last a full day, seemingly independent of whether I use the phone or not. And, there are charging problems (when the battery’s drained, it’s not enough to connect it to mains – attaching it to the PC with Zune installed is the only remedy). Nokia have said updates are coming to fix the battery life problems, and again, I hope they improve the situation.

The Lumia does come with great Nokia apps, though. Nokia Maps is far superior to Bing Maps, Nokia Music is a nice radio service, and Nokia Drive means I won’t ever need to buy a satnav. They’re loads better than Samsung’s app offerings, at any rate.

All in all. The Lumia 800 is a great choice if you’re new to Windows Phone. In fact, it’s the only choice, given that the other option is made by HTC. It is however, though a really nice phone, probably not worth the upgrade if you were an early adopter: there’s just not that much differentiation. It’s as if Nokia looked at the Omnia 7 and thought “we’re making that, but prettier” – the only problem is, it’s a year behind.

For the past 19 years, I’ve led a pretty vanilla life. Everyday, y’know, just the usual.

And that, of course, means that I’m a pretty normal guy. I can’t say I’ve accomplished that much, though that is always the goal when I start yet another project. It’s unfortunate, really, I think some of my ideas are pretty good. At least, they would be if I put any effort into them. I’ve coasted for the last few years of my life. GCSE results were great, but that was to be expected given the school I went to. A-Levels should have been spectacular, but I didn’t put any effort in. Is it bad that I still got great results? Obviously, my A-Levels affected the university I got into. Interesting fact, if I had put in just 30 more UMS worth of effort into my A-Level subjects, I would be studying at UCL right now. In fact, with the results I got, I was lucky to get into Bath (I missed the requirements by a grade). What this has taught me is that I’m good enough to get by even without much effort. That probably sounds conceited, and it is. I haven’t yet had the experience of wanting something so much that I put all my effort into acheiving it, because I know I’ll be alright in the end. Knowing that has caused everything to taste like vanilla. Meh. Nothing special.

I don’t think that should be enough. I know I can do more, but I don’t. Am I scared of failing something? I don’t think so, I’ve messed up quite a few things… actually, all my failures have come from me not doing something. There’s that time I let down a friend by not fulfilling my promises and avoiding contact with him, there’s my educational defecits, and there’s the last week or so where I spent all my time not doing work. The last one is pretty standard for a student, I expect, but I don’t think of myself as a student at the moment, given that I don’t study. I may have watched over sixty episodes of Castle, I may have enjoyed it at the time, but it didn’t get me anywhere. I probably don’t remember what happened in half of them, apart from Castle and Beckett fumbling their relationships a lot.

I intend to change this year. 2011 may not have been the best year I’ve had (2009 was pretty good, what with that trip to Thailand; but I guess every year has been pretty much the same). I want to make 2012 the year where I achieve things. I want to be a better Rikki  by the end of the year. I’ve already ticked one thing off the list; I finally went to the doctor and and got a problem fixed (the operation I had last monday was the reason I had time to watch four seasons of Castle – housebound for a week, doctor’s orders).

I want to start running. For real this time. there’s a pretty nice 3km route near my house, and I’m going to run it at least once a week. I want to get serious with some of the projects I’ve started. Making a Windows Phone app is part of my university coursework anyway, so I’d like to make another one of my own. I’ve got two half baked website ideas with the domains just sitting unused and the sites half-finished, so I should do something about them. There’s also my* forum’s game development project, so I’d like to see that be successful. I’d like to be more open, in life and also when I write online. I want to ace my exams.

So, I guess I’d better get started. I’ll try and make 2012 a more interesting flavour.

Artist Info

by Johnny Westlake | Free

Using Last.fm’s database, this app gives you access to extra information on the songs and artists you’re currently listening to. You can see upcoming events for an artist, their top tracks and albums, and comments people have left on their Last.fm wall. There’s also a pretty neat Zune-inspired screensaver mode.

RedLaser

by eBay | Free

This app lets you scan in a barcode or QR code of a product and search for it on eBay, Google, Shopping.com and other websites. It’s best used to quickly check whether something can be bought cheaper online: ideal for gift giving (keep it in mind for next Christmas, eh?). You can also create QR codes from your contacts list, which is a nice way to quickly share contact information. Pin one to your home screen and it’s like a virtual business card.

Prime TV

by Renfred | Free, 79p for notifications and live tiles

If you watch a lot of TV, like I do, then it’s easy to lose track of how many episodes of each series you’ve watched. Prime TV lets you keep track of shows and be notified when the next episode is airing, and even get plot summaries of past episodes if you need to catch up. It works well with both US and UK shows, and can synchronise with Trakt.tv (a sort of Last.fm for TV) if you ever need to back up.

Next Bus UK

by dans | Free trial with five launches, £1.49

This is actually a really useful app. Once you get past the slightly rustic  graphics, there’s a lot of information here. Find a bus stop using the map view, and get the times of the next ten buses. Choose a city, and get the bus maps for each company operating there. Pin a bus stop to your start screen for easy access to its timetable. Apparently the timetable even updates live if you’re in London, though I haven’t tested this. Either way, it’s a lot better than navigating Arriva’s website.

Tweet This Song!

by roguecode | Free, 79p as donation to developer

A simple, but really nicely made app; all it takes to tweet the song that’s playing is to tap on this app. Once you’re guided through the setup (really, all account setups should be like this), you can change the default tweet. From then on, launching the app will count down from three, send your tweet, and then close. It’s a neat way of doing things.

The Hype

by bytLabs | Free or 79p for background audio support and extras

If you’re acquainted with The Hype Machine, then this app needs no explanation. It’s a great way of browsing and playing tracks; there’s even background audio support in the full version. For those new to hypem, it’s a service which aggregates music blogs, extracting the tracks they share and letting you play them (some of these blogs let you download them too). It’s a great way of discovering tracks from new artists, remixes and mixtapes.

AppFlow

by Gergely Orosz | Free

This is probably the one of the best ways to find new apps at the moment. Made by the same guy who did Cocktail Flow (see my previous post), it looks great and is easy to use. He’s put together some special lists (Best Mango apps, Christmas themed apps, top rated apps, etc.), making it easy to find new and interesting apps whenever you’ve got a bit of time free. The ‘Discovery’ feature is an interesting addition, as it attempts to recommend apps similar to something you like.

Fuse

by Rudy Huyn | Free but settings reset every three launches, 99p for no limitations

Fuse is a very pretty RSS reader, giving you three innovative ways to view your feeds. There’s a tile view, a ribbon-inspired view, and a rather slick view based on words alone. It can synchronise with Google reader, but probably the best part is that you can pin individual feeds to your home screen, with the tile updating and flipping over when there’s a new article.

MyEncyclopedia

by Rudy Huyn | Free

Another app from the developer of Fuse, MyEncyclopedia is a viewer for Wikipedia. Again, it’s a very nicely designed app, all the more impressive given that it was made in the three days leading up to Christmas. And it’s free! You can mark frequently visited pages as favourites, and there’s an automated offline caching too (just tap on ‘display cache’ while it’s loading a page).

easyHeartRate

by wsoftvn | Free trial, 79p

This is an impressive app, using your phone’s camera to measure your pulse. All you need to do is cover the camera lens for thirty seconds, and let the app do its magic. I’m not sure exactly how accurate this is, but it seems to get results in the right area. Good for users of RunKeeper or similar fitness tracking services!

BONUS APP

WP Shortcut Tiles

by Nas2lor | Free

This kind of app is really useful if you’re forever switching your WiFi and 3G on and off in an effort to save battery life. There are a few on the marketplace, but this is probably the best I’ve found so far. In this, you can create tiles which take you straight to the relevant page in the settings for WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth, Location and Flight Mode (unfortunately nothing for Battery Saver yet), and there are even tiles like ‘New SMS,’ ‘New email,’ and ‘New Status.’ Handy!

Next time, a look into the homebrew scene for Windows Phone.

Without further ado, here are a few games I’ve enjoyed playing over my year of owning a Windows Phone.

IN THE BLUE CORNER, THE INDEPENDENT DEVELOPERS! NO XBOX LIVE. AND USUALLY NO INCOME EITHER.

Indie

Wordament

Free with ads

Wordament is a word search style game in which you, well, search for words in a 3×3 grid. This isn’t as simple as it sounds, given the time limit and the obscene amount of words possible (seriously, look at the word list after a game: you’ll be baffled by half of them, and then you switch to the “obscure” list and find that you don’t know English as well as you thought). The way some players get those scores is impossible. At least, it is to my anagrammatically challenged mind.

AlphaJax

Free with ads, or £2.29

AlphaJax is a scrabble-style game, which I’m told is similar to Words With Friends. AlphaJax has turn-based multiplayer with opponents chosen from your contacts lists, skill-based matching or randomly. Naturally it can take a while to finish a game – the toast notifications and live tile updates help a lot with keeping your turns timely – but this just makes victory all the sweeter when you win a close victory with a word like ‘cat.’ Qi is a particular favourite of mine.

Interestingly, the developer has decided to give out the free version two ways – in its own listing and as a trial for the paid version – but that’s a point for another post.

Nom Nom Worm

Free with ads

Initially I downloaded this because of the intriguing title (and the, frankly, ridiculous tile picture), but it was a keeper for two reasons: firstly, it’s a very fun take on the Snake genre, and secondly, it has DELIGHTFUL music. Seriously, I will never tire of those beats. The developer, Elbert Perez, has loads of other nice games on the Marketplace, played by enough people for his device statistics to be a good indicator of which devices are out there. Also, he made $30k over five months from his games alone. That’s pretty sweet.

Occupied

Free with ads

Occupied is a simple left/right sorting game. What’s hard about that? The time element introduces a challenge of course, as does the online leaderboard. However, the most challenging thing is when the airport ‘renovations’ move the bathrooms around. Seriously? Argh.

As far as I remember, this was first release of a new developer around the release of NoDo. It’s gone on to have over 100,000 players, presumably bringing in a good slice of ad money for the dev. Hopefully stories like this will inspire more devs to publish their wares and bring quality games to the platform.

AND IN THE RED CORNER, THE BIG GUNS: THEY’VE GOT ACHIEVEMENTS, AND IT’LL COST YA

Paid XBL

Orbital

£2.29

Orbital is a nice game to show off Windows Phone out and about, with its flashy graphics and easy gameplay. The game concept isn’t nearly original, as I’m sure I’ve played it dozens of times (though I can’t seem to remember any specific examples), but the premise is this: shoot orbs at existing orbs to destroy them, keeping in mind that orbs stay on the screen after you shoot them. I’m impressed at how slick this game is – it loads almost instantly, and the fast-resume support makes it ideal for quick gaming sessions. The multiplayer is very nice too, with two players playing on the same board. It’s something I wish more games had.

Tentacles

£3.99

This is probably my favourite game on the marketplace at the moment. You are a parasite, an experiment from a dolphin-headed (and probably insane) scientist, navigating guts, brain and arteries, in order to put an end to all the madness – at least, I think so. It’s not really clear. But, it’s fun, and with the challenging… challenges, achievements and levels, it’ll last a long time. In fact, it was too challenging for some people so the developers made the end levels easier (along with adding in fast-resume support) – though I managed somehow.

ilomilo

£3.99

Initially an exclusive for AT&T customers, ilomilo was released to everyone in January, along with a rather good XBLA release. It’s a 3D game – very nice looking for one of the earlier releases – which asks you to reunite ilo and milo by moving them around the cube-based world and solving puzzles. The developer has updated it to support fast-resume, as well as adding extra chapters to play. It gets fairly challenging part way into the second chapter, so it’s definitely worth the money.

PopCap

Of course, no games platform would be complete without a PopCap game or two – and this one has two. Plants vs. Zombies (£3.99) and Bejeweled Live (£3.99) make an appearance*, both ridiculously addictive and well made. Unfortunately, last time I checked, neither has fast-app switching support (which is only really a problem when playing PvZ), but that will surely change as the platform grows in popularity and developer support.

IN THE YELLOW CORNER, WE’VE GOT THE CHERRIES ON TOP. THE ICING ON THE CAKE. THOSE SPECIAL DOG-TREATS. DON’T LAUGH, THEY’RE FREE

Free XBL

Breeze

Free with ads

Released pretty recently, Breeze is part of a small band of free XBL-enabled games on the platform. This means achievements, but only 50G worth each.

It’s essentially a maze game, where you guide a little flower around a course using either the tilt controls or a virtual joystick, collecting sun – and once you’ve collected enough sun, you can make your way to the exit. It’s by no means enthralling, but it’s one of the better uses of tilt control.

Shuffle Party

Free with ads

This is another one of them free XBL games. The simplest way for me to describe Shuffle Party, having never heard of the “traditional game of shuffle board” talked about in the game’s description, is that it’s like Wii Sports Bowling. It has the obstacle challenges and everything. You can’t pretend you’re actually bowling a ball like you can with a Wiimote**, but the touch control is nice enough.

Another bonus: this game has multiplayer! Local, two person multiplayer that is. We’re still waiting for the asynchronous online multiplayer games on Windows Phone (at least, XBL ones; see AlphaJax).

The other free XBL games are Flowerz, Minesweeper and Sudoku, if you’re interested.

AND FINALLY, IN THE GREEN*** CORNER, WE’VE THIS GUY…

Xbox Companion

Free

I’ve included this because although not a game, it’s essential if you have a 360. Well, not essential, but it’s pretty nice to be able to search the Xbox, launch & download apps and control media all using your phone; for those rare situations the controller is too far across the room to fetch. Still, browsing the marketplace whilst remaining in-game is pretty handy. It’s also a great sign for further integration between console and platform. Imagine it: a free extra controller! It’ll never happen of course, but one can hope.

Good night, and good luck.

* Maybe I should do a post on how easy it is to use phrases like ‘in the market’ and ‘make an appearance’ and sound like a precocious tech journalist.

** Unrelated point: I maintain to this day that I coined the term ‘Wiimote,’ on the Official Nintendo Magazine forums shortly after Nintendo’s unveiling of the controller.

*** Did you see what I did there? Red, blue, yellow, green… remind you of anything? No? Oh, never mind.