Journal

My Xbox has been MIA lately, and my ambitions in WoW have feigned a bit over the last few weeks, so I turned to another platform for my gaming fix: my iPhone. Alas, I don’t have any noteworthy games, other than Frenzic (mostly because of my addiction to the desktop edition). So, I turned to my favorite game sites for help.

If these sites had content related to iPhone games, it was minimal and limited at best. “There has to be a specialty portal for iPhone games,” I thought. Googling ‘iPhone game review’ does yield several dozen sites that attempt to collect analysis of portable games. Unfortunately, most were terribly organized Wordpress blogs, link bait, or spam-blogs. Some were almost notable, but all of them lacked real critical/thoughtful/complete reviews, not to mention their information organization was unbearable.

I will concede that IGN is a viable publisher in this space and does have a wireless section, but their network is too large to really focus on this sort of niche. Also of note is the fact that many of the major reviewers I’d like to see creating content about the iPhone are struggling in the current state of the economy and simply don’t have the resources to create or staff new sections for their site.

So my challenge to the major publishers and journalists in the game industry is to pick up the ball and see that the iPhone (and iPod Touch) will be an important player in gaming. This portion of the industry needs to be moderated by real journalists and real critics (not to discourage the opinions of independent publishers, but your ideas are just that, opinions). Game developers take the iPhone seriously, you should, too.

*Please leave a comment if I have overlooked a site or outlet that meets my “challenge”. I’m really aching for some quality content.

A recent post to the Google Groups for my favorite editor Coda detailed how to set up the new SVN feature with a git repository. Naturally, I had to try it.

So far, so good. I haven’t made a commit to my public repo yet, but I’ll update more on that later. Now, to subversion or to git? I’m not sure.

Wasn’t it just in 2.5 that we got a “wp-admin” redo?

Meh, I’m over it, the new one, due in November, looks great.

Captured by Michael Mistretta for WP Candy and Word Camp Toronto.

wtfbbq

Is this necessary? They claim it’s a “random security measure” to protect Facebook from spam. Hrm. Weak sauce, Facebook, weak sauce.

Ever try to use CSS to specify a background image for table rows?

IE 6 and 7 breaks it. The image is iterated across each <td> in the row. Here’s a simple fix in your CSS:

tr {background: url('image') no-repeat left top; position: relative;}
td {background: none}

Easy.

He said

I said

1. Proprietary: If you think the Microsoft monopoly sucks don’t you think that a Google monopoly does suck as well? It might be partly open source, but Google Chrome won’t be another Firefox, you can bet. Google is the Microsoft of the Web. It won’t be friendly forever. Just ask the Chinese. Microsoft of the web is a bit extreme. It will be open source. Webkit is open. Not to mention portions of the code base are being handled by other entities (like V8). Its a Google branded browser, or course the shell will be proprietary.
2. Privacy: Google knows what you search (Google search), what you read (iGoogle, Google Reader), what people visit a site (Google Analytics), what sites you visit (Google toolbar, lifetime Google cookies, DoubleClick tracking cookies) etc. but there still are some unknowns, from time to time. With a Google browser you can’t hide anything anymore. Conspiracy theory. Your privacy is your own concern; choosing to use the Internet (that is remote data that belongs to someone else) is choosing to forfeit some of your privacy. Besides, it’s this same feared browser that will implement some of the best anti-phishing and security measures out there.
3. Ads: Both Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 come with either built in or easily added Google ad blockers. A Google browser is basically a Google Ads feeding machine. Download the plugin. It will be available in a few days.
4. Web Development: Web Developers have a difficult enough job to fix websites for the 4 most used existing browsers now IE7, IE6, Firefox, Opera. Do you think a Google browser and IE8 will make it easier? Currently building websites often takes up less time already than tweaking them for different browsers. First, Opera is NOT in the top 4 browsers used, Safari is. Second, most developers are building to appease IE6 (though, they should stop), IE7, Gecko (Firefox), and Webkit (Safari and Google). The discrepancies between versions of Firefox and Safari are minimal and can be fixed in the later stages of development.
5. Web Standards: Do you really expect Google and Microsoft to implement the same Web Standards? No way, they will attempt to push their own ways of interpreting them, both will differ. We’ll end up with web apps or even websites working just on one of them. Standards are an after thought. Browsers often regulate new standards. Yes, what IE has done to the web is criminal, but there will always be varying degrees of adherence to standards. As web developers, we suck it up, and build stuff that works for everyone.
6. Firefox: The guy who built Firefox now works with Google or for both FF and Google. Do you really think this will go forever and Google will support it’s own free and non-profit open source competition? Someone will. Even if (when) Firefox dies, there will be another.
7. Search: No other search engine will be able to succeed in future. Google will just like Microsoft bundle the browser with the search engine so that any new search engine that comes up in future will face an unsurmountable disadvantage: It won’t be able to gain market share without owning a browser. Yeah, maybe…

If you are worried about a browser, be concerned for IE8.

The suffixes -ish and -ness are both great descriptors of my status as a freelance web developer and consultant. I still work part time at the University of Denver for the stability of a paycheck while I get on my feet. I truly prefer (for now) the hectic schedule and risk involved in freelance, and can’t wait to expand my workload in the coming weeks. Eventually, I’d like to free myself from the 9 to 5 ball and chain, and work full time as a freelance “web technologist” (that’s what I am calling it). For now, at least.

Need work? Let me know: tbeseda at gmail.

Testing the Wordpress app for my phone. Even including a creepy self portrait.

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