Archive for the 'Uncategorized' category

A Tecmo Bowl take on the Super Bowl

Feb 10 2010 Published by Kyle Buis under Uncategorized

As a Colts fan, this is a little painful for me to get into, but there’s a video of the clinching play of the Super Bowl done Tecmo Super Bowl style.

YouTube Preview Image

Speaking of Tecmo Bowl, I stumbled on this awards list from thepigskindoctors.com with names inspired by Tecmo Bowl stars


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Rule 34: There is porn of it, no exceptions.

Jan 29 2010 Published by Kyle Buis under Uncategorized

There are many amazing things on the Internet to learn to do and to play with. Then there’s the dark side which I will simply describe by saying “Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.”

Random searches online can find all sorts of unsettling images that’ll poison your mind for years to come. No amount of drinking or therapy can undo them.

The rules of the Internet are easy enough to find. I won’t link to them because it’s strictly NSFW (Not Safe For Work), but one of them is in the title of this post.

Why the long preamble? To brace you for the impact of realizing not only is there Simpsons porn, but a second man in Australia was arrested for possession of it.


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Enough with the iPad jokes, iBooks is even better

Jan 28 2010 Published by Kyle Buis under Uncategorized

Apple has since fixed this, but last night when I was searching in the iTunes store for the iBooks application, I stumbled onto an interesting related search


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The iPad: We've only just begun

Jan 28 2010 Published by Kyle Buis under Uncategorized

So the hype and bluster of another Apple event overshadowed it once again. Let’s all take a step back to reality and realize what we have.

It’s a larger iPod Touch
As has been fairly obvious from the get-go and even moreso with hindsight, this is a device that fills the gap between the iPhone and the entry level laptop. Does this make the iPad a bad device? No, it just means it fills another niche for Apple.

What hasn’t been mentioned yet?
Today was an event to spotlight hardware. Yes, EA and MLB showed off their wares as far as apps go, but there’s more waiting in the wings. This product is going to look better in March when iPhone OS 3.2 is released and developers have had two months to look it over. Apple had to announce the hardware before the software because it likes to surprise people and there’s no way releasing an SDK for developers months ahead of an event will keep it secret for long.

Content is king
Also waiting in the wings are deals with publishers of books, magazines and of course newspapers. There’s a lot that’s happened in the last few months that leads me to believe March could be very interesting.

First there’s last March’s announcement of the subscription model for apps in iTunes. This allowed developers charge for additional content to an app, but not for free apps. Of course when Rupert Murdoch decided he didn’t like giving out his content for free but wanted to keep his app free, that changed in September. This allows newspapers and magazines to put out their free apps and charge for content within them.

Most conspicuously absent from the festivities Wednesday was any sign of an app from the New York Times – whose editor back in October talked about Apple’s “impending slate,” referring to the iPad. Hell, even The Times is saying that “rumor” has it their top brass were in Cupertino looking at it.

Underpromise and overdeliver
Just this week Apple released its earnings report showing off a stellar holiday quarter and provided its guidance for the upcoming quarter. That guidance, as always, is widely considered less than what Apple is capable of and quarter after quarter they prove that right. Underpromise and overdeliver.

That’s what Apple is setting people up for as we speak. We saw the hardware, we saw a glimpse of the software, but just like the iPhone and the iPod Touch, the heart of this is in the software and the app ecosystem. Once developers get a chance to play with this extra space, it’s going to be interesting to see what comes out of it. If Apple got Pages and Keynote to work well on this device, then that opens up a whole new realm of possibilities, especially with the added screen real estate.


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iPad prediction results

Jan 27 2010 Published by Kyle Buis under Uncategorized

Alright, I let my predictions loose at 11 p.m. last night and haven’t changed them since, so let’s see how badly I failed:

1) There will be a tablet.
Yes, I got this one right, it was a no-brainer.

2) It will run on iPhone OS 3.2, which will be announced tomorrow and made available sometime in March.
Again, another sort-of no brainer the closer you got to the event, however it still remains to be seen when the actual OS would be made available. In hindsight March would be a little soon and since Apple said the 3G version won’t be available until April, well we’ll wait and see on the last part.

3) The tablet won’t be available at the time of the event, but it will be available around the same time as the iPhone update. Look for something akin to the 3.0 release where the software was out two days before the iPhone 3GS hit the market.
Another one I’m not sure about. Yes it wasn’t available today, but no announcements were made about the actual software release date. Another wait and see.

4) iLife 10 will be out with a significant update to Garageband
100 percent wrong. There we go, that’s more like my usual predictions

5) The mystical tablet will not be referred to as a tablet during the presentation. Apple will treat this like a new space and will not trod on the past ground.
This would require me sitting down with a pen and paper and going through the entire presentation searching for that word, but in the pieces I’ve seen, it was strictly referred to as a device between the iPhone and Mac and then as the iPad when it was introduced. I’m going to give myself this one.

Sounds pretty simple so far right? Well how about this one:

6) Remember back in 2008 in the year of our Lord when Apple filed a patent that seemed a little odd? The docking station for a computer? That was made for this tablet.
HA! EAT IT PEOPLE!
OK I got a little too excited about that one, but that’s one I hadn’t seen anywhere else, but damn it feels good to be right. Granted it’s an accessory, but this one I nailed.

7) It’ll run about $800 with the station.
No price on the docking station, but with the variety of flavors there will be a combination of the two that will add up to $800. The $499 starting price by itself was not something I expected though.

I’ll have another post with my thoughts on it later. Join the conversation on Twitter by dropping me a message @penlinks


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