h. Play

There’s a lot of discussion about privacy these days: Facebook/Google takes on that subject, Foursquare geo-loc, Buzz, PleaseRobMe…

I believe it’s better to control your own digital life and share or not share what you want than trying not to be on the internet and end up on it anyway, thanks to a friend’s picture of you on FB or worse. I prefer to post a picture of my ass and let’s say that someone wants to put one to embarass me, well it’s going to be hard. I’m in control.

There is no such thing as too much transparency I guess. The world is going toward open, not close. If we open things, transparency has to be here. It’s embedded in the openness.

That’s where the two data giants of the internet are not fair and somehow scaring people: they know an awful lot about us (just think about it every time you use this search box, brr) but we don’t about them. Well if we want to know more about Google’s CEO private life, we can but I heard his house is not on Google Earth. Oh, and his lawyers put his mistress’ blog down last week-end.

When Microsoft is providing Hotmail to 270 million users, it’s not as big as a problem. MS business is selling software, operating systems and development tools. Google and Facebook business is to know you better to sell more ads to sell you more stuff. I know, we can’t really say to them to stop it. Actually they know that selling ads is a really poor income model in the digital age: Google is heading to become a network provider while starting selling electricity and Facebook is all about being a ubiquitous dev platform (for games of course).

We shouldn’t forget about what’s great about being connected: you meet people, crazy interesting people. You filter so much faster than in real life. Like was saying someone, for stuff posted on Facebook that got some people fired, how many of them have found work, friends, relationship with social networks? The balance is in favor of the positive I guess.

True.

Also it’s worth to point out that we benefit this amazing and exhaustive source of knowledge everyday. When we find on an obscure personal web page some really interesting information, or the exact answer we were searching for, we’re generally not really concerned about privacy in these moments.

Of course it’s a bit scary. But you don’t have to be active on the internet to have serious problems with people. Remember the cartoons making fun of Islam published in a local newspaper in Denmark in 2005? Well after years of death treats, assassination plots, one of the author faced someone wanting to kill him January 1st, 2010 with an axe and a knife in his own house. I’m pretty sure the cartoonist is not on Facebook doing RSVPs. He was under police protection since two years though. And he’s only a cartoonist using Freedom of Speech, you know. In a national newspaper, not on a blog.

The world is wild, online or offline doesn’t matter: privacy is pretty much dead since internet, GPS and mobile phones exist (you can know where the cartoonist lives just in a few seconds on Wikipedia). What you do, think does matter. And I’d rather know what you do, think than knowing nothing about your intentions. Online or offline.

That’s the cool part about staying closed: you don’t have to argue with anybody. It’s easier and as humanity, that’s what we did for now. It brought us WWI and WWII amongst other awful things like slavery. It’s harder to actively spread the positive mental attitude and keep an eye on everyone at the same time. The benefit of real freedom should overcome fear and laziness.

This is where the world collides. I know which way to go to avoid disasters in the future. Openness. Right now.

That being said, if someone wants to provide an email service as good as Google (keyword: spam filter) or a rss service providing privacy and sync with as many clients as I want, please go ahead. I would probably sign up immediately and even pay for it. (ala Flickr, no monthly fees kthxbye)

It’s not because I have nothing to hide that I want everybody to know it all almost by default.

Well I just deployed an e-learning solution, setting up the server, database, lms, creating and transferring content for the platform, creating accounts and being ready for clients.

I released a short video too:

I’m finishing another beat and audio fxs for a client and some classic music for composing training. I’m working on a funny flash game audio design and a prototype of my own for multitouch devices (which audio-wise is working perfectly, I can’t wait to put some input in it!).

I said I would update more my blog this year, I guess I was lying. Well it’s more like I’m under heavy stress and pressure right now but later you’ll have some palm trees pictures in your face and then you will hate me.

ffffffuuuuu 

I missed the Global Game Jam and still feel mad about it. I wrote a rant about the why, how France bla bla and all but who cares.

Things are moving.

 
Via The Daily What via Fark of course

On the keyboard

It’s the first thing I thought about: the angle for your wrist reading your iPad on your thighs is the worst ever to type something. The only way to type easily on a flat surface is to have it laying.. Flat on a desk. In this situation, having the screen on a flat position is awful for reading. I don’t see a lot of that comment on the web (actually beside Lâm I didn’t see this comment often).

On the multitasking, relation with the processor

Yeah I don’t think it’s a big deal either. I prefer being able to multitask for sure but in a casual setting, when I’m not working I don’t use three or four applications, I usually use only one: media player, game, etc. I don’t close everything because I can on a laptop but in all fairness, I’m monotasking in these cases.

What I find crazy is reading an article on Engadget saying

“There’s no multitasking at all. It’s a real disappointment. All this power and very little you can do with it at once.”

If it’s blazing fast with just one application, be sure that it’s not the same experience on multitask. It’s linked that it’s fast and not flexible. Android does more vs the iphone therefore is not providing the exact same seemingless UI flowing because with widgets and 7 screens refreshing together while downloading an app and tweeting yeah, it’s not perfect on the old smartphones based on it (though the 2.1 update makes it much better).

I mean a tech blog this size not understanding how Apple thinks, how they always put the user experience joy bells and whistles first, doing the teenager geek who wants everything is not what I expect from a professional article on a new device hands-on.

If you want to multitask, buy another tablet computer. It exists since 2001.

Same

On the noiseless experience

People focus on the mobility of this “new” device but I like to point out that it’s also about the noise: smartphones, tablets are totally noiseless computer. If they were doing a little spinning annoying noise while on use, I’m pretty sure everybody would rather be on a desk with a big screen to read emails. With noise too but at least your sight thanks you.

It’s awesome to be in the silence of a bedroom and reading without being disturbed by the “computer noise”. It’s not just about the portability (because of course, you lose a lot going from 24/17/15” to 4,5 or 9,7” for reading). It’s also about ears freedom.

On games

The iPad seems to be a perfect game machine we were I think, a lot dreaming about. And yet Apple doesn’t care more than just bringing a fucking car race and a fps on stage. They have the same pattern all the time: do a device focused on experience delivery, contact publishers. Of course they go for EA and Gameloft, making so much money on iPhone.

But the iPhone is pretty popular in the game industry and in the geek/tech culture not because it’s cool to develop for (it’s not), but because the device is awesome and made super weird and unique games some major hits. The day these indie devs quit for another platform providing more support and more openness, the Apple touch device serie is going to be much less trendy.

I still can’t believe how Apple reacts about games. Steve must have a problem with them. Computer games made Microsoft in the 90s (DirectX). Computer games made Apple since 2007 (iPhone). Computer games made Commodore in the 80s (Amiga). Computers get popular in the mass market with games since always. They don’t with iWorks or Excel.

Pushing about how it’s cool to read books on a multitouch device in 2010 is more than meh. It’s kind of dumb.

On Apple politics

No camera, closed system.. I have no problem with people getting crazy and wanting to buy it like they want to pee so bad even if they know the 2G is going to have a camera. It’s business. But I’d rather have Apple be sure that I would not buy a 1G without camera because I know that every fucking netbook has one since day one. I’d rather have Apple be sure that I have some brain you know. The same with accessories sold at insane prices.

For Flash, I don’t care as a user. I hate Flash as a user. On the other as a developer I know how Adobe’s product is pretty neat, allowing fast prototyping and stuff like that. And I know that HTML5 is totally not ready yet, so the web without proprietary plug-ins is still a dream.

Some people think that it’s sad that the iPad is a closed platform (I guess they beefed up the protection against jailbreaking?) and that if they were starting their career today, they may not because they could not code and hack their computer like they want.

Well, I guess a teenager today who wants to code would buy two netbooks for the price of the iPad, install Linux/7/OS X and would play with them and learn to code. I’m not worried about how future generations are going to produce software because the world is full of computers.

It’s amazing how in a week like this you almost end up thinking that no, there’s only one computer company in the world.

And they are launching a product with which “you can browse the web with it”.

Saying that without laughing out loud in 2010, only Steve Jobs can.

I was wondering why there’s not a lot of people living in-between countries but now I have my painful answer.

It freezes your brain like a cold axe slaughtering your head.

It fucks my mind so hard. It was the worst week of the year they said. Well I concur.

It’s not really about the shitty weather or Christmas aftershock or more importantly because I miss her so hard. It’s about being stuck between two cultures that are really close and yet fundamentally different.

This in-between is the weirdest psychological thing I have ever experienced. It’s like living in two separate timeline where I have this one where I’m living in the US and this one I live for now here in France. This one I know so bad. This one that makes me think about last year when I started my company and really felt at war and hitting a dead end with France in general.

I was already moving away since a while. 7 years without TV, so less and less french discussion about what’s happening here. Ten years I’m reading most of the time in english, watching shows in english and now it’s been a year I’m writing in english. All my computers, OSes, apps are all in the language of Shakespeare.

So it’s really, really awkward to live in France interacting with my inside world –social medias, music, movies- all in english  and communicate with the outside world in french. Now that I lived in the US it’s even worse. I feel like totally spaced out, stranger in both countries.

And because I’m connected with my Verdell everyday with a 8 hours delay, having a clock widget set on Pacific Time to look at, I’m totally out of time too. In the evening I always have a rush of energy knowing that LA is waking up and getting ready. It makes me want to do things when it’s dinner time and that well, Paris is getting sleepy. And then I feel it too.

Depression. I call that a rollercoaster-you-can’t-get-out-from. It’s funnier this way.

I can’t wait for it to stop though.

Hee

Because it actually started on Twitter, for real. I remember, it was one of those Browse Evening, the kind I have everyday. I clicked on her picture. I guess the green attracted me. I like the green.

It could have not happen. Hell I could have not been tweeting (0,98% of  Twitter users are french in 2010, I started at SXSW 2007) at all and miss that!

And Better Off Dead. C’mon!!! That is crazy.

So if you want the rest which is pretty awesome, stay tuned on har0ld and missRFTC. Or follow the hastag #itstartedontwitter.

You heard about it here first. Or on Twitter.

This CES 2010 was very interesting. There’s something slowing down in the hardware world and that’s a big benefit for us as consumers and content makers.

The content (the oldest one, text is coming back hard) and user experience (free-dom) are driving the trend and that’s good news. HD wagon and 3D are trying to sell themselves like crazy but let’s face it: it doesn’t change things that much (you need a crazy large screen to see the difference, a lot of people don’t see the difference at all and more, 99% of the entire world cinematographic production is not in that format anyway). In that aspect that is no surprise if the SD-Wii launched three years ago is outselling by more than one million units its HD-competitors sales combined in the biggest month of the year in the game industry, last month. Seriously, it does say something.

It’s cool that 3D is coming out but let’s see when we’ll not need glasses which is a couple of years away, maybe much more before it’s affordable. HD’s still not.

HTC slate tablet prototype with Chrome OS

Instead the big trend appears to be about people connecting them, making their lives easier: TV integrating social services, devices streaming everything you want to every devices you want, e-readers allowing you to read stuff without killing your sight on a phone screen or making your knees hurt because of the heat of your laptop.

Instead of using technology to simply beef up the visual in-your-face experience, the trend is to do more overall and use the technology to make life better, more pleasant simply by being smarter on technology use, by being affordable.

Like the DVD upscaling technology. Like reaching your content from anywhere with Boxee Box or any computer set as a streaming machine. Like having a tablet on your couch, browsing the web and commenting your friends activity. Like the GPS and sync options of our smartphones. Like netbooks. Like charging your things wirelessly.

Like the SSD rejuvenating old PCs. Like Linux/Android getting huge because they make all these not-that-last-piece-of-tech you have work better, faster. Freely. For your own pleasure. That’s why Windows7 is good too: they didn’t rely on future technology like they did for Vista or older OS, they just heavily optimized what they had.

Dear slate tablets. Please hurry the fuck up. Game developers need you. 

I mean it’s a huge difference that we don’t go into the “MOAR” but into the “let’s be more efficient”. I know it’s not just to make people happy. Moore’s law is not as fast as in the 00s or 90s and now manufacturers can’t rely on that to scale investment and make a profit. They have to wait and expand their product life cycles.

Efficiency. It’s the first time in my mind that it’s the trend to rule them all, thanks to the mobile phones market driving the tech world today. Because we know it’s ridiculous to buy an entire new tv and entertainment set just to see 200 more lines in movies that don’t require that to be totally, absolutely enjoyable. It’s ridiculous to throw entire dvd collection to buy again some optical slow discs. It’s ridiculous to buy new expensive computers and graphic cards when we spend 90% of our time on the web and do so much on it. Hell my audio PC is just a bi-cpu and I can run more tracks than I can possibly handle. For life.

Despite everything manufacturers say people still have some brain or an empty wallet these days. Sometimes both, which make them search for efficiency even more.

The global economy is going toward better ressource management because we’re going to be short very soon. So does the entertainment and personal home digital business and we still have a lot to do (think about all this electronic trash we’re adding each day). 

Spending more, throwing things that work for a subjective gain is certainly not a good step into the future. Optimizing and saving ressources is a much better bet.