Dave Metzener's Weblog

When did Apple change the way they send pictures taken by the iPhone? When I first got the iPhone, if I would take a picture which was stored in the phone as 1600×1200 it would send the images in email as 800×600 or quarter size.

I was testing a form I was creating for taking information in case of an automobile accident and was testing taking pictures and sending them as well. I copied the pictures out of my Camera Roll and pasted them into the email message I was testing and sent. When I looked at the email, I was very surprised to see the images at 1600×1200!

This works whether you use the Share button in the Camera Roll to send the email or simply copy them to the clipboard. I don’t remember over reading any of the blog posts about iPhone OS updates where they said that the pictures would be sent at full resolution now.

Searching Google, I am finding people asking questions about the 800×600 size as recently as 2 months ago. So I have to assume that this was an update in the 3.0 Firmware. Maybe its because of the MMS feature added but not usable in the US yet (thanks a bunch AT&T!). I’m pretty sure that the “Share” button in the Photo app is new to allow photo and movie MMS message to be sent. They must have decided to send those items full-size and in doing so, allowed pictures (and possibly movies, I don’t have the 3GS to verify that) in emails.

Either way, I’m very pleased that we can send full-sized photos in email now.

Here are some screen shots of the Photo Application showing what I am talking about in the 3.0 iPhone Firmware:

This is the Photo App with the Share button circled

Here I have highlighted 3 pictures to either be emailed (or MMS’s when AT&T gets around to it) or copied to the clipboard.

In the Camera Roll, you can delete pictures taken as well as Share/Copy them.

If you tap the “Share” button, you get this screen giving you the ability to Email the selection. I suspect when AT&T finally decided to let us poor Americans send MMS’s, that there will be another button labeled “MMS”.

There has been some confusing press about ngmoco and the developer removing Rolando when Rolando is released in the AppStore. Apparently, ngmoco has decided to not remove Rolando when the sequel is released and they are returning Topple to the AppStore as well.

This news has me a little baffled. In the video game industry, when a new game comes out, say GTA IV, and the distributor has an older version, GTA: San Andreas, still on the store shelves, its pretty easy to understand why that distributor would want to remove GTA: SA to have shelf space for the newer GTA IV.

In the case of the AppStore, a virtual storefront, there is infinite shelf space for all kinds of games and other applications. This is why there are over 50,000 titles in the store now.

So, removing an older title to put up a new title like Topple 2 or Rolando 2 doesn’t make any sense to me. Say a patron hits the AppStore, sees Rolando 2, buys it and finds out that he missed out on the first version of the game and wants to play it too. Well, if the older title is removed from the store, ngmoco has lost a sale that costs them noting to maintain in the store. Pure profit lost. Or, what about the patron that had Rolando, but for some reason, lost the copy from his computer and wants to recover it by downloading it again. He can for free with the AppStore, it costs ngmoco $0.00 for that ability. Yet, since Rolando was removed for the new version, that customer has lost his game that he potentially paid $9.99 for. If I were that customer, I would not be very happy and be looking to Apple to refund that money or allow me to download that game again.

Now, maybe I’m incorrect about the costs involved in keeping the older versions of their games in the AppStore. Maybe they are thinking of development costs of fixing bugs in a version that they consider obsolete.

At any rate, this is all moot since ngmoco is going to not remove Rolando when Rolando 2 is released and is returning Topple to the AppStore as well.

I would love to understand why ngmoco would think its a good thing to remove older versions of games for newer ones.

What an incredible waste of time. That’s pretty much all I can say about this Miniseries aired on ABC over the last two Sundays. This movie reminds me of one of the many really bad SyFy Saturday night movies. Let me explain…

Let me start with the science. Or the total lack there of. We start with the biggest meteor shower in over a thousand years. Ok, I can handle that. However, there is a chunk of super heavy Brown Dwarf star in the mix. Why the meteors don’t just clump together with the Brown Dwarf is not even hinted at much less explained.

This chuck of Brown Dwarf hits the Moon causing the Moon to alter it’s orbit into a very strange elliptical orbit. Instead of one of the Earth being at one of the focus points of the elipse, it’s in the dead center. Another completely impossible situation. The reason for the altered orbit was this super dense Brown Dwarf’s mass. The “scientists” finally calculated that the Moon’s orbit would decay in less just over 30 days in such a way that it would collide with the Earth.

Then there is the distance the Moon is away from the earth. In the second part of the miniseries, the government attempts to “destroy” the Brown Dwarf by firing 88 nuclear missles at it. Those missles only take about 10 minutes to get to the Moon. Now mind you, the Moon was getting so close that it’s tidal pull was strong enough to cause a negative gravity in certain areas of the Earth. This caused trains to fly into the sky, cars to also take flight, people to lift off the ground, etc… It also caused all kinds of electrical problems. The final attempt to save the Earth was to send astronauts which also seemed to take just a few hours to fly there.

More problems with this miniseries comes when they land on the Moon to attempt to push the Brown Dwarf away from the Moon (it’s currently embedded deep in a crack that was created due to the impact. I guess they don’t believe in craters and have never heard or read about how the Moon was created in the first place) by using a device that creates anti-gravity (the first piece of SF they discussed in the miniseries). They claim that the Moons gravity is now twice that of the Earth due to this Brown Drarf fragment in the Moon. So they land a new Lunar lander on the moon with no problems at all. No mention that they would have to totally reconstruct a lander that could handle the gravity change or that the amount of fuel that would need to be used to land and take back off would be way more than a normal Moon landing.

I’m sure there were more foibles in the science of the miniseries, but those were the worst. Then there was the continuity that was totally killed. Having Germany, England, Japan, and New York all be dark (night time) at the same time. The Moon always being full in the sky even though over 30 days pass in time. Showing the Moon and Earth as if the Moon was orbiting in a Geostationary orbital distance. Then other times, the Moon was at an apparent distance that was pretty much normal. Oh sure, the images were pretty, but very hard to swallow. They pretty much just picked what made the scene look good instead of what made sense.

Of course, they also had to have sound in space too. Rockets that made rocket sounds while on the Moon and in space. I realize that pretty much every movie ever made has sound in space, but still…

As far as the acting went, it was OK. I’ve seen way better, but I have seen way worse too.

Over all, I would have to recommend staying as far away from this one as possible. It’s not worth the 4 hours it takes to watch. I was really hoping for something way better than actually aired. It’s no wonder that Science Fiction has such a bad wrap when such bad SciFi like this is created.

It was back on December 18th that Rolando [AppStore link] hit the AppStore for the iPhone/iPod touch. It was released with a price tag of $9.99. Pretty steep these days with all the really good games to choose from. A little over a month later, developer ngmoco lowered the price to $5.99. That’s when I nabbed the game. They later lowered the price to $4.99 for a few months before bringing it back to it’s current $5.99 and its been there ever since. This is probably the reason the game is not in the Top 100 Paid titles. It probably was up in that list when it first came out.

It’s not entirely a unique game since LocoRoco is pretty similar to it on the PlayStation Platforms. However, thanks to the accelerometer in the iPhone/iPod touch, it has a very unique take on the style. Plus this type of game hasn’t really been duplicated as much as the Match-3 games have.

I haven’t played all the way through Rolando [game's home page] yet, but its got some amazing levels and the overall look and feel of the game is truly inspiring. There is a great added touch with the fact that there are game elements that the user gets to control to help the Rolando along in their quests.

Overall a great title that deserves a top 10 on someone’s list.

Well, our friends over at ngmoco have released info telling us that the much anticipated sequel of Rolando, Rolando 2 [game's home page] is going to arrive July 1st. Now, I don’t know if that means that the title has been approved and is waiting to be released to the public in the AppStore, or that July 1st is when the title will be submitted to Apple for review. Hopefully the former.

The sequel looks amazing. ngmoco have given Rolando 2 a new look with 3D elements:

It still has the signature user interactive elements to keep the title pretty unique in it’s genre:

With a bunch of new Rolando characters that have unique abilities to give the platformer a cooperative feel.

There has been a lot of buildup to the release of this title on the game’s home page with a bunch of videos and screenshots, info about the new Rolando characters, the ability to make your very own Rolando. They have also added a feature that allows other players to challenge you via the new 3.0 Push technology.

Normally, I hold off on new titles for the price to drop a little, but I have a feeling I’m going to be grabbing this one as soon as it hits the AppStore. I really can’t wait.

So, I was looking at the Top 10 lists in iTunes just now because I had read that one of the best $0.99 Apps had dropped off the Top 10 paid apps list. Pocket God had been in the Top 10 Paid list for around 4 months until it was knocked to 12 this week.

In fact, as you can see, it had 13,285 ★ ratings. I’m a bit surprised that an App that has such a low rating is sitting in the 7th place in a Top 10 list.

I get the feeling that the Top 10 lists are not based on ratings, but downloads. So, since free apps are easy to download and not cost the downloader anything other than time, these free apps get many downloads and skew the Top 10 list to make them pretty much useless.

I suppose the Top 10 Paid list has a similar problem. Apps that only cost $0.99 are much easier to download than Apps that cost $9.99. So in general, lower cost apps will have a higher spot on the Top 10 Paid list than more expensive apps. This probably isn’t always the case.

This week however, the Top 10 Paid list has 7 apps that are $0.99, 2 apps that are $1.99 and only 1 app that is $3.99. Going an extra 10 apps in the Top Paid list, shows that 7 more apps are $0.99 for a total of 14, 2 more apps are $1.99 for a total of 4 and 1 is $2.99. The first $4.99 app is TETRIS® in 22nd place and the first $9.99 app is The Sims 3 in 25th place.

So over all, I have to say that the AppStore Top 10 lists are not very useful. AppVee.com has a user based Top 10 list, but that’s all they show, just 10 apps. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any other websites that lists out applications based on review ratings, not downloads. If someone knows of such a site, please pass it on, I think we all would like to know of a good, objective place to find really good apps for our favorite hand-held device.

So many years ago, I had an Amiga 500 and had found this awesome game called Archon: The Light and the Dark. It was created by Fire Fall Associates and distributed by EA. I played that game way to much even back then. This was back in 1985. Quite a few of my buddies back then also had it. It was a very popular game. Pretty far ahead of it’s time.

Well, it’s made it to the iPhone/iPod touch now. Archon Classic is the same exact game, updated graphics and controls that are just a tad difficult to get used to when one was used to playing with an Atari digital joystick.

I always find it interesting that older games are still popular enough to make an appearance on newer hardware. According to Wikipedia, there are other versions of the game on several platforms including the Playstation, Xbox, and Windows. Someone made a Quake 3 modification based on Archon too.

As soon as the iPhone version popped into the AppStore, I nabbed a copy. One thing that buying games on the iPhone/iPod touch has that is a problem is the lack of instruction manuals. Archon is not a simple casual game like Bejeweled. There are some pretty subtle rules with the squares of the chess board and you really have to know how each of your pieces fight in the combat arena.

The Help in the game goes over some of this, but not all of it. There is nothing over at the developers website on how to play. In fact, there seems to be more info in the Wikipedia webpage than any location that the iPhone/iPod touch version has available to it. I don’t have any of my Amiga games or disks anymore. I’m pretty sure I sold it all to someone. I wonder if there is a copy of the Archon game manual in PDF on the web somewhere… Apparently so. You have to love the internet!

Archon Game Manual

I look forward to playing this one. If it’s anything like the old ‘85 version, it will be a blast to play again.

Here are a few more screen shots from both the old ‘85 version and the iPhone/iPod touch version. You should be able to tell which is which.

If you are a fan of Archon [AppStore link] from way back when… I suggest getting this one. It’s not even really all that expensive. Just $3.99.

Welcome to Dave Metzener’s Weblog!

The purpose of this site is stricly for myself to post thing that I find interesting or surprising and feel that others should know about them or just marvel at.

The older site I used to run, Weblog of a Switcher, has unfortunately been lost to the bitstreams. The only piece of it I have left is a backup of SQL commands that “in theory” should recreate all the databases and data. Unfortunately, none of the plugins or tools I have access to allow me to restore the data to the old site. So I have put it to rest and have the old web address forwarding to here.

Don’t expect hundreds of posts a day. I would expect to see one post a week and if I am feeling really creative, maybe 3 a week.

I hope I can enlighten here at least as much as I did at the old site if not more.