NxtGen Media - The Freeman View

iPad Thoughts

I have been following the iPad press with keen interest. I think that it was a phenomenal move to encapsulate the most common user apps into a single sexy no nonsense device. This is a device that I could get my Mom, and for the most part would cover everything that she would want to do with a computer. I would only have to do minimal tech support for it if at all. The price is right, and I could see this thing becoming commonplace in schools, hospitals, boardrooms, and all types of jobs. I don’t own a Mac, but I am seriously considering getting an iPad after it goes through an iteration or two. That is very telling in itself. I have an iPod, no iPhone, am a diehard PC guy and yet I am considering this device. Very telling indeed.

The make or break for this thing I feel will be the apps. With the right apps it can go anywhere. Well maybe not anywhere, but an industrial strength version would remedy that. What is really interesting to me is that this very chic multimedia device does not run Flash in the browser. I don’t know why Apple chose not to allow this, but I can say that it is obviously a move that makes a clear statement to Adobe. I could be very wrong on this, but I can’t see that this was an oversight. I interpret it as ‘Screw you and your software. We don’t want your stinking software on our device’. Or maybe, ‘we don’t want browser based Flash apps bypassing the App Store’.

If this device does become hugely popular as the iPhone did, and still does not run Flash apps well, that definitely will be a hit to Flash. With all the Flash content out there and the move towards more robust Flash RIAs, (which seems to me would be great on the iPad if performance could be addressed) it would seem that the more apps available browser or store, the more people would use it. I am not sure how this obviously political move will roll in the long run for either company. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, I continue to play with Unity3D and hope that it will work on the iPad as well.

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

I have to do my fair share of presentations. Never hurts to take tips from a master.

Learning Unity

I have been using Unity every spare chance that I get for a few months now. I find myself looking for every chance that I can find to get back to it and learn it. It ain’t Flash. It is not an easy transition to 3D development. Without an artist, I have to learn another 3D modeling program (Blender). I now have to consider a whole new dimension when coding. Thankfully scripting in SecondLife has helped ease some of that transition. I have gone through the Tornado Twins awesome tutorials as well as reading Will Goldstone’s great, Unity Game Development Essentials, which I will review at a later date and checking out his videos. All that being said, it is obviously a pain to learn a new technology, but that pain is far less than the excitement of finally having a tool that does web 3D so well.

I don’t have anything I care to show just yet other than programmer art and such, but I must say that I am excited about what is possible even at this stage of learning. I still work in Flash during the day, and I wonder if Adobe is going to eventually address this growing trend toward a 3D web. Flash is getting better, but I when I watch my kid playing Farmville and I look at the quality, I just shake my head. She still sits there and plays it though, and that in itself is very telling. I can’t help but see a tremendous opportunity here for the player that has a perceived 98% browser penetration, to make a move to crush the competition. Video is covered, web apps are covered, but games clearly need a more powerful player, and that is where Unity is really shining.

I don’t know how the Unity player penetration is going, not really caring a whole lot at the moment as our audience will be required to download the player. I am sure that it has grown since last October, and most likely will continue to do so as more people learn it and release their creations. For now I am in the learning phase, and quite pleased with the progress.

-DCF

Friends Doing Stuff

Love it when fellow creatives are on the move and doing things. I used to work at a company in Miami called LearningSoft back in the day (circa 2000). It was focused on creating learning based games and activities, so we had a mix of designers and developers on staff. The company fizzled, but many of us still keep in touch after all these years. Two of the Flash designers recently sent me some info on what they have been up to. These guys are pretty incredible in their own right.

Carlos Pita, aka ElPitaMan, has posted some one of his work on You Tube. It is an animated holiday ecard created for the clients of Televisia. He not only does the animation, but also does all the voices in his creations. Dude is incredible.

My other bud, Ansar Sattar entered the Animae Caribe Animation and New Media Festival, and won the Best Caribbean Animation award. He took on the difficult task of alerting Trinidad audiences to the threat of dengue fever borne by the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, and made the presentation a funny informative cartoon. Dang! He actually pulled off making that topic interesting and fun. Awesome work!

Ansar in the News: Ansar Sattar drawing attention with Trini-style fine tooning

DCF

The New Year

Happy New Year to all. As much as I don’t like to make resolutions for the new year I feel the need to put some stuff down as a marker to look back on next year. Last year marked the year of working in Second Life and Opensim extensively. This will continue in this year, but I am really pushing for more work in Unity and Flash. I witnessed corporate downsizing and a host of other effects of the economy of 2009. I am blessed to still be working and in a company that is now taking a new direction. I came through a knee surgery this year that was 50/50 in terms of what I would be able to do. As a martial artist, this is a scary prospect. I am blessed to say that I can still do martial arts.

This year I want to focus on:
- Really understanding Unity - Unity is like a new toy to me. I can do things in it that I have never been able to do. It simply is one of the most amazing tools I have seen for this type of development to date. The fact that the indie version is free is awesome. For games, both 2D and 3D it is truly incredible.
- Moving from Javascript to C# in Unity - I have been using javascript in Unity, but now want to move to C# because it just makes sense from a development perspective when dealing with both Unity and Opensim
- Working more in Flash Builder rather than Flash Pro - Flex has got the RIA thing down. For web apps, it is awesome
- Moving from Truespace to Blender - Loved TS in its day and will continue to use it for its swf exporter, but it is a dying application. Blender is coming into a new version and a new interface and does not look like it is going away anytime soon

- Documenting the ??? fighting system - Been working out MMA style and pretty much have mixed the hands style of Wing Chun with the feet of Tae Kwon Do. It just made sense. Things we noted:

• Six feet away from a powerful kicker, an inside fighter is toast if he gets caught by a well placed kick.
• The reverse is the same for the distance fighter. Once the gap is closed, if all they have is feet then they are toast when it comes to an inside fighter
• Ground is a whole other game - WC ground tech is brutal is great for the street and not for the ring. Jiu Jitsu has this pretty much ‘locked up’ and is indeed superior
• As a fighter ages he can’t do the high kicks of TKD (not with much power), but can do the lower kicks of WC and TKD with ease. These are now the base kicks.

Documenting what has worked and has streamlined everything is now the challenge. No forms now, just drills and techniques by the number.

I have never done this before on a blog. When I look back in 2011, I want to be able to say I knocked out all of these. None are difficult, but will take time and discipline.

DCF