I am completely speechless.
Wait a minute, not completely. Backabit, the indie game company Tim Sears and I formed to release Ramps for iPhone, has a blog. You can read about our Apple feature there. You should probably subscribe so you can keep tabs on Backabit news, process sketches, videos, and other fun content.
Way back in the dark ages of the web (2007, to be exact), I created a silly Flash game to help me learn physics animation in ActionScript 2. That game was Ramps, which roughly a ka-jillion people have played since then.
While I dig the “easy to learn, hard to master” play mechanics of the original game, it’s still very much a tech demo, lacking the variety, polish and expressiveness I crave from a game.
That’s why I’m so proud to unveil Ramps for iPhone and iPod touch, the first title from my new game company, Backabit. It was created in collaboration with Tim Sears, with a nifty chiptune soundtrack by Essa.
Here’s the skinny:
In the meantime, why are you still reading this post? Go play the game!
In the third and final of the guest presentations from this Summer’s Web Standards course at the Art Institute of Portland, Cloud Four Mobile and Web Strategist Jason Grigsby gives an incredible account of the current and future state of the Mobile Web.
Jason is a fantastic speaker regardless of the topic. You can follow him on Twitter, username @grigs.
This talk could very well change the focus of your career. Amazingly compelling stuff.
Flash or HTML5? Choose your side.
That’s the tone seemingly set by much of the web community following the aftermath of Steve Jobs’ controversial Thoughts on Flash, exacerbated today by a thoughtful (yet apparently blasphemous) thread of Twitter commentary from influential Facebook developer Joe Hewitt.
These conversations have re-ignited a debate already intensified by the ever-increasing prominence of HTML5. While it may seem natural to regard this as a quarrel between proprietary technology and open standards, this is a gross oversimplification. Our feelings are merely the growing pains of a maturing Web.
The source of much of this tension is the difference of approach between the World Wide Web Consortium and companies like Adobe. The W3C is an important group tasked with an inherently sluggish goal: To corral, distill and encapsulate the opinions of a zillion developers and vendors in order to produce hard-to-read documents detailing how the Web should be. While I’m sure more attentive observers may offer solutions for streamlining the W3C’s process, the result will never be analogous to that of a corporation. Great ideas (and profitable products) cannot wait for bureaucracy’s blessing.
Visionaries will always develop a means to forge ahead. That’s why Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer 9 all implement portions of an unfinished HTML5 specification. It’s also why platforms like Flash, Silverlight and the iPhone SDK have such a perceptible impact on the Web. Collectively, they are a crystal ball within which we may glimpse activities we’ll eventually take for granted. Remember how novel YouTube felt before embeddable Flash video became so pedestrian?
Not unlike the story of the tortoise and the hare, specifications eventually catch up. Like CSS and JavaScript before them, canonical experiences will “graduate” to full-fledged features of—or companions to—HTML. (Any Argo SSP or Netscape LiveScript loyalists out there?) Why? It’s all about accessibility.
The more accessible your experience, the larger your potential audience. HTML can be parsed fairly reliably by the majority of web-connected devices. But with each subsequent layer of complexity, your user’s device and/or browser must be sophisticated enough to interpret the additional technical requirements. It’s our job as designers and developers to weigh the benefits of each layer’s capabilities against the hurdle it may represent for the consumer. Many of us employ progressive enhancement to capitalize on the latest technology while leaving as little of their users behind as possible. Time/budget permitting, why wouldn’t you want to pursue a greater breadth of device compatibility?
Plugins must innovate in order to survive. If Flash stagnates, if it fails to shine a guiding light on the future of our industry, it will join its sibling Shockwave in an ever-growing graveyard of antiquated technologies, succeeded not only by HTML5 but by more innovative competitors (Silverlight) or a whole new paradigm (device-specific SDKs).
The Web needs these technologies. I believe (and wholeheartedly hope) that standards will continue to define the most prevalent form of the Web experience, but not without the guidance, foresight and bullheadedness of those who refuse to slow down.
The iPhone may be my favorite device of the last ten years. No other gizmo since the PC has so fundamentally altered the way I interact with the web and my social circle.
But the iPhone’s ubiquity in the mobile space scares the living daylights out of me.
It frightens me the same way I’m frightened by the deceptive feeling of serenity that blankets me as I continue to surrender more and more of my data to Google (current buddy, future megalomaniac). The thought leaders at Apple have crafted an experience so warm and fuzzy it’s nearly impossible to escape its allure, even as it wallops all of its competitors.
I simultaneously sing the praises of the Semantic Web (often at the expense of rich media plugins such as Flash and Silverlight) while gleefully supporting dozens of apps delivered via the iPhone’s closed, draconian marketplace. The irony (hypocrisy?) therein is not lost on me.
It seems pretentious to avoid these products solely on insular, geeky principal, so I continue to champion competitors in hopes that a superior device will emerge or, at the very least, keep Apple under enough pressure and scrutiny to maintain their innovation and avoid sinking into mediocrity (remember?).
I had extremely high hopes for Palm’s WebOS, but a still-floundering app ecosystem coupled with some truly strange hardware choices appear to have sabotaged its chances. 
While I have much more confidence in the Android OS as a powerful and capable mobile device standard (especially in the long-term), the platform seems troubled by a lack-of-consistency between devices and the same snore-inducing, incremental release cycle that eventually tempered my excitement for ambitious open source projects like Ubuntu.
It could just be my ignorance of the platform, but as the iPhone becomes increasingly capable at performing business tasks I begin to look upon Blackberry users as I did AOL users ten years ago—with a feeling of solicitude generally reserved for endangered species.
What we need is a platform with a distinctive and decidedly un-iPhone-like user experience (an iPhone killer killer), produced by a company with experience facilitating ecosystems yet still capable of supporting a wide range of hardware and service providers.
Did you just say Windows?
That’s right, Microsoft showed off Windows Phone 7 Series this week, and it looks great. The minds responsible for the well-reviewed Zune HD have re-designed the mobile operating system from scratch. Designers like myself who admire the HD’s interface are thrilled, but considering the Zune’s marketshare could be very generously described as having a “lack of ubiquity,” it’s a brave (and admirable) move to hand them the keys to Microsoft’s mobile future.
Instead of forcing the user into disparate applications specific to function (iPhone) or allowing the user to multi-task until their poor little phone grinds to a halt (Android), Windows 7 Phones establish contextual hubs of interest. If you want to see what your cousin has been up to this week, you don’t have to check email, Facebook, Twitter and chat in separate apps; simply tap “People,” then select your cousin’s profile. This style of traversing your media and social circle is extremely thoughtful and appears to be well-executed. I know it won’t please everyone, but I’m certain a percentage of the population will instantly prefer it.
The interface itself looks completely unique, at least if you’ve never used a Zune. Subtleties like highlights, shadows, soft corners and texture are completely absent, allowing only color, typography and your content to show through. While occasionally abrasive (especially in the calendar application), it’s a striking choice that’s extremely memorable and looks beautiful in motion.
It isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. The browser is still Internet Explorer, albeit the improved (but sluggish) version found in the Zune HD. Until Mobile IE supports the same sort of HTML5 features that have enabled web app developers to deliver rich mobile experiences to the iPhone and Android devices, Windows Phones will still be an obstacle in the evolution of the mobile web. Perhaps most depressingly, hardware actually supporting this OS probably won’t debut until Christmas, and who knows what may have changed by then.
Aside from the platform itself, what excites me most about this announcement is that another Apple competitor has finally shown they’re awake. Watching Apple merrily stomp ahead with Android slowly gaining ground and Palm off in the distance is becoming tiresome.
But an Apple/Google/Microsoft/Palm slugfest? I’d pay to see that.