Tag: First Impressions

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Geek

Just finished Act I of Broken Age. I want to hug you, Tim Schafer!

Finished Act 1 of Broken Age last night. It needs to be said that this is Tim Schafer’s first point and click adventure game in 15 years which means to say that my last encounter with him in this familiar space was during my teenage years when Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle were kings of the adventure genre.

Continue reading “Just finished Act I of Broken Age. I want to hug you, Tim Schafer!”
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Mostly Everything

Do you still want to know what I think of Apple’s iPad?

Imagine if the iPad made its debut right after the MacBook Air. Imagine if Steve Jobs unveiled the next generation iPads to be the smaller and more handy iPod touch and iPhones respectively. That would have made bigger news.

Net of it all, it’s a great device to have around the house for surfing, reading comics and viewing photos and movies. You can’t take it apart, but that’s OK. It heats up real quick though, and that sucks. But, yes, Virginia, summing it all up, I like it. I guess, in a way it is like what the Apple TV did to multimedia. It kinda pushed reading and viewing stuff on a tablet to become more elegant and less geeky. That’s what Apple really does to the industry.

On the device is UNO Magazine.

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Mostly Everything

Hands on with the Nokia N900 running on Maemo Interface

nikia_n900_PH

The Nokia N900, seen wild in this blurry camera phone pic, is in Manila. Yesterday was Nokia’s Christmas Party and apart from winning a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone (!!!) at the raffle I got the chance to take a peek at the new N900. I only got the better of 4 minutes with the device so here are my first impressions in bullet form. These are general impressions on the N900 as well as the new Maemo user interface.

The N900 is beautiful. It is a sturdy messaging phone, light to the touch with fast UI response.

  • The multiple desktop functions of the Maemo UI is similar to the iPod / iPhone’s. You are allowed to have four desktops which you can scroll through using your thumb. Imagine combining the widget home screen interface of Samsung and Apple’s iPhone and this is what you get. It works.
  • The “apps menu” icon has been changed to resemble a series of squares on the upper left. Pressing that opens the application menu. One noticeable difference is that “Messaging” has been changed to “Conversations” which is really the move to threaded messaging. When you have multiple messages open, Maemo shows this ala Expose for Mac OS X with each window (let’s say, two message threads and the main Inbox) all neatly aligned. You can delete a window using the big “X” on the upper right hand side. The N900 is highlighted by its really good integration of messaging applications.
  • The new UI is fast. Essentially, the changes are really aesthetic. I can compare it to how HTC made their own interface (before the SenseUI of the HTC Hero) over and above Windows Mobile to compensate for the slow and rather outdated UI. Maemo is Linux based so it does feel lighter.
  • I noticed that Maemo doesn’t have a back button. I could be wrong but going back to previous functions entails using a hidden button on the N900 which I discovered by accident. Again, I’m not sure if this is a feature of the N900 per se or as a part of Maemo.
  • No pricing yet. This phone isn’t even OFFICIALLY out yet locally.
Categories
Mostly Everything

First Impressions with Google Wave

photos_google_wave_philippines

Before I received an invite, my notions of Wave were formed mostly from what I’d see on the Internet – if email was invented today, this is what it would look like. At the same time, I was finding it difficult to describe Wave as the sum of its parts. There’s no way to describe it than to break it down: it’s like email, chat, and micro blogging that’s built as a collaborative effort that supposedly complements Google Docs.

The truth is, what we’re seeing is a preview. I still can’t find an efficient use for it, maybe because I’ve grown accustomed to conventional ways of email and chat — having your mail inbox open somewhere and your Yahoo! Messenger on the side as you talk to clients and build projects. So what Wave is asking for is a behavioral change.

Well, what it is as of this very moment is a reminiscing of mIRC, which will ultimately become another time waster as seen from our serious discussion above. Heh. 🙂