Cole Camplese

Dragon's Lair for the iPhone

The classic laserdisc video game Dragon's Lair has made its way to the App Store this evening. Originally released to the arcade in 1983, this full motion animated game was a massive departure from the other games of the era.

via toucharcade.com

This is a game I can get behind. I remember when this got installed in the arcade at Kerr Union at Bloomsburg University when I was about 9 or 10. That was during a time when half of the downstairs of the Union was a giant arcade with billiard tables and games everywhere. Not only is the game play ridiculous by today's standards, but just the thought of a University investing money into a gaming center is surprising ... oh wait, never mind.

Mobile WP Blogging

I just downloaded the WordPress 2.0 iPhone app and am writing this post on it while I sit and watch the Penn State game. A couple of quick thoughts:

• The first thing I notice is that it seems like it is less about blogging and more about managing things. Comment modertion seems to be the big feature. They've added gravatar support to help identify people. They may have done this because blogging in long form on this might be tough.
• The other thing I am noticing is that they don't seem to want you to add pictures after you start writing. I can't for the life of me find a button to add a photo once I start a new post. That is less than ideal. As a matter of fact, I can't see where to do a photo post at all.

For quick posts it seems strong but the lack of photo integration seems odd. I must be missing something.

Mobile Video

Being an iPhone user puts you into a strange place -- on one hand it is one of the more advanced devices available here in the States, but lacks some of the core features found on other devices that have been available here for quite some time. The feature I am referring to is the ability to record video. I just played with Brad Kozlek's 3GS and was so impressed with the camera and the video options that is causing me to get really itchy for one. The video quality sort of blows my mind in general, but the ability to instantly post it to YouTube or email it is a real game changer. Posting of video to YouTube has been on a tear lately, but the 3GS adoption will just blow that up. Here's a quote from a post at the YouTube Blog that lays it out ...

In the last six months, we've seen uploads from mobile phones to YouTube jump 1700%; just since last Friday, when the iPhone 3GS came out, uploads increased by 400% a day.

I'll add a little link to something else YouTube is going to kill at -- citizen journalism. If you take a look at this post, Helping You Report the News, you'll see they are clearly going after the "in the moment" style reporting that Twitter is dominating. The combination of mass adoption of devices, services, and the emergent ease of interoperability is a game changer. I find it really amazing to watch as hyper-connected social networks are fueling personalized text accounts of events and will now promote easy video as a basis for mass communication. To me it is stunning.

What I am struck by is how unprepared a site like Vimeo looks to me given all these recent moves ... clearly video recording and editing was not much of a surprise to developers and while Apple chose to directly integrate posting to YouTube there doesn't seem to be much of an excuse not to have a native video app ready to go. A quick search of the App Store reveals nothing. All I'm saying is that lots of people are buying these new devices and a properly designed application can provide huge opportunities to extend your brand and participation.

More and more this is what I am seeing with the whole iPhone ecosystem -- apps drive traffic and can really make or break an existing service. There are a dozen or so Twitter clients all vying for our love, Apple has helped YouTube extend its reach, WordPress is making it happen with a native app, as are so many others. Being prepared to pounce in the mobile space seems more and more critical even if it is to drive traffic to existing services. Now, can I wait until October when AT&T will let me update for a reduced price? Perhaps.

Roaming

I'll be on the road, so who knows what the one post a day for this month will look like during the next week ... I'll try to post something interesting as we travel to Orlando, FL for the week. I know, I know ... why the hell am I going to Orlando at the start of Summer? I'm asking myself that question as well. In all seriousness it should be fun, hot, and hopefully relaxing.

While I am not ponying up for a new iPhone 3Gs, I have upgraded to 3.0 and plan to take advantage of the newly announced free AT&T hotspots. I love the idea of easy login on my phone for wifi access along to way and while traveling. Even at home, where PSU has recently partnered with AT&T to provide customers access while on campus -- that'll mean I can use wifi in certain places without dealing with the iPhone VPN. BTW, does anyone know if it is possible to store a VPN password? I am so tired of checking something online while on campus and having it just spin ... if the VPN would auto engage and connect that wouldn't be an issue, but I can't for the life of me figure that out.

Either way I'll be connected as much as possible while traveling. I'll be doing my best to stay away from email, but I do plan to use some of the time away to take some pictures and continue playing with iPhoto and Photoshop. I'll be posting stuff here and over at my Flickr space.

Blogging from my iPhone

When the iPhone 2 software was revealed during one of Steve's keynote addresses the thing I wanted the most was SixApart's mobile blogging tool, but for WordPress. Well today I got it! The iPhone WordPress app is now available ... this post is being banged out on my iphone and I have to say it works very well. Lots of potential here. I was able to easily set up the connection to my personal blog, create a new post with the picture to the left, and then edit that (or any other) post. Very cool.

Perhaps next up is a client to publish to the blogs at Penn State environment?

My Simple iPhone App Wish

I've been very happy with my iPhone since I got it last year ... I like it so much I haven't yet felt compelled to pony up for the new one. With the 2.0 software update I am thrilled with how easily I can extend the functionality of the device -- and the "fake" GPS works fine for me at the moment. I am betting there will be a killer app for the real GPS integration that will get me thinking, but for now the location based hooks in software are good enough for me.

There is one thing I want though ... I would really like an app that made it easy to acquire content from the iTunes Store that is in the iTunes U area. I know how it all works behind the scenes (for the most part) so I know it isn't a simple task, but having the ability to integrate SMS notifications to students that new content is available in their iTunes U course spaces would really kick ass. I fully get the challenges with authentication, storing credentials, and the like but having an app that would at least let me point students directly to (even a public) course in iTunes U would be outstanding. I could easily write a half dozen case studies where this could be put to amazing use -- and I am betting it would drive adoption of both the new 3G powered network device and the wifi enabled iPod Touch on campuses.

Real content on the go would be great. Total integration across the iTunes/iPod/iPhone eco-system would be an ideal situation for us all. Thoughts?

Moving Day

Tonight I decided to move one of my blogs from the Blogs at PSU that I have stopped using over here to my main space. The blog I wanted to move is my iPhone blog that I set up during our investigation of the iPhone. There are a couple reasons I wanted to move it -- getting the content in one location and to see how easy it is to leave the Blogs at Penn State.

I have been writing quite a bit about ePortfolio at the University and much of my thinking has centered on the Blogs at PSU as the primary tool for them. One of the questions I get asked a lot is how can students take their content with them when they leave. One of the things we talk about is that since the Blogs at PSU publish static pages into a directory the whole directory could be downloaded and burned to a CD. I haven't tested that and while I think it would work, I am guessing it would take some tweaks to get the paths right for media and for the CSS. That method would also keep someone from updating their portfolio.

There are a number of commercial blog hosting spaces out there -- Wordpress.com and Live Journal are two of them. I wanted to see what would happen if I took my MovableType powered blog and simply chose to export it and import into a WordPress blog. The long story short is that it just worked. In the Blogs at PSU dashboard I was able to select export and it kicked out a downloaded .txt file that had my posts and all the comments in it.

Then in WP I was able to jsut go to the Options > Import screen and browse for the file.

From there all I did was select a user name for the files to be imported under. At that point I could easily edit the posts, add categories to them, or anything. Everything was preserved. I also just tested it out over at the free wordpress.com and it worked perfectly! So we do have an easy to use solution to let people take it with them when it is time to go.

iPhone (and iPod) SDK

I am not going to rehash the news that Apple will finally release an iPhone SDK, but will make special note of the fact that this means there will (finally) be an iPod SDK. What is so great to me is that I actually sat in an Apple conference room five years ago (?) when the first iPod came out and told them straight faced that unless they released an SDK they would have a loser on their hands. I hate looking so stupid ... but vengeance is mine, Apple will indeed allow third party developers extend the most popular device on the planet. The thing that really interests me is the notion Fraser Speirs writes about -- how long until there are as many OSX powered devices as there are Macs in the marketplace. With that as the starting point for this, the rules of the mobile device game just got changed in a whole new way for those willing to play in the Apple landscape.

Managing Video

I just wrote a short piece about how to get the video files you want on the iPhone over at my other blog. If it is of interest, take a look.

Managing Media on the iPhone

Not sure that title says what is should, but I have been ultra frustrated with one piece to my iPhone world -- the small amount of storage. I am used to having a solid 80 GB of space to take my media with me wherever I go, but since the iPhone landed in my hand I am having to learn how to manage a mere 8 GB. I know that still sounds like a lot -- if you are like me, you recall computing in the days of 128K of RAM, 400K floppies, and when you did have a hard drive it was 5 MB. So 8 GB should be enough ... and it is when I am just running around town. I keep a handful of playlists, three podcasts (with the three most recent), and really only a movie I have been trying to watch. But when I hit the road, I like to have enough media to keep me occupied during flights ... that becomes very challenging especially if what I am after are several episodes of a TV show -- in my case the Sopranos.

What is so frustrating is how hard it is to regulate what shows up on the iPhone -- I have had the same problem with my Apple TV. I finally figured out how to get the 5 most recent episodes on my iPhone in the right order -- what was happening is that I would get the 5 episodes at the end of the season ... in other words, instead of episodes 1-5 I would get 6-11. It was driving me crazy. The following solution is the only way I have been able to reliably get what I want.

I start by heading to the Info tab of the iPhone when it is connected to iTunes. I check the "only sync checked music and video" checkbox.

Next I head over to my video area of iTunes and locate my show ... I uncheck the episodes I do not want to see synced to my iPhone.

I then have to go back into the iPhone area of iTunes and set the pull down to only grab the 5 most recently unwatched episodes.

May not seem like all that much, but it sure took me ages to figure it out. Sorry if this seems obvious ... one thing that I should mention is that Apple has the best UI people in the World, they should refine this feature in iTunes.