Vote for our SXSW Interactive sessions
Ribbit has been nominated for a handful of cool sessions for SXSW Interactive next year. This past year, we killed it with our session and went on to win the fabled Accelerator award. In 2010, we’re hoping to present one, several, or all of the following sessions. Help us by voting!
Instream Interaction: Dynamic Server Events Display and Response
RIAs across various platforms have the distinct ability to handle new data and events, and to respond to server-side commands with or without user interaction. Many applications don’t just issue server commands, they passively listen (and often react) to server and backend events. Harnessing this real time, dynamic ability can make an application more informative, valuable, and engaging—while supporting passive user involvement.
Parsing Conversation: Vocal Interaction as a Visual Medium
Can the inherently intangible, emotional power of voice be made tangible? Join us in exploring the visual patterns and components that comprise one of the oldest forms of human interaction—voice.
New School User Experience Patterns
We all use at least two or three different devices and/or online mediums (cell phones, personal computers, IM, etc.) to communicate daily. How do we create a unified experience across these different devices, so that the ways in which we communicate become more transparent, more natural, and less distracting?
iPhone game Rock The Rim video posted
I’ve posted a little teaser and instructional video for my first iPhone game, “Rock The Rim”. Based on user feedback and watching friends play, I realize the game may be a little more Wii-like than most iPhone/iPod owners are used to. Once folks catch on how to play, it becomes as fun and addictive as I intended.
The game can be downloaded/installed from iTunes here:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=325892192&mt=8
Be sure to leave positive feedback if you like the game!
Too many channels in The Static Age
Saw Green Day in concert recently. My first time seeing them. It was obvious that the average screaming, raving, mosh-pitting fan there was probably 10 years younger than me. And it’s obvious that Facebook and Myspace may not be as much of a ‘friend’ to the next generation as we all thought. In fact, I think they are starting to hate you.
Have you seen that Verizon commercial where the tween-age kids are annoyed with their parents excessive use of Facebook and Twitter? I actually thought this was more Verizon trying to advertise text-ing over social media. But I think this commercial is a bit more reflective of younger people’s sentiment towards sharing their life away online.
Green Day’s song “The Static Age”, off their recent album “21st Century Breakdown” speaks volumes about how convoluted and saturated our media experience has become. “Static” does not mean the opposite of dynamic, but rather static noise. Think snow on your TV. There are too many channels. Too many forms of controlled AND un-controlled media to tune into. Whether you think Green Day has the ability to profess such a message, or not, you’ve got to recognize how LOUD things have gotten with TV and the web competing for our limited attention.
Back to my point about the next generation getting weary of social media… At the beginning of their performance of “The Static Age” at the concert I was at, Green Day lead singer Billy Jo yelled a few things which result in massive applause.
“This is our moment. This is our time. We’re all here. Put your f**king cell phones away. This is the time to be together, person to person. No f**king Myspace. No f**king Facebook.”
And the crowd went wild. Mind you, this was in San Jose, in Silicon Valley, possibly the most web and tech savvy place on earth. It appears the sentiment of the next generation is clear. Good luck with that.
Oh, and you have ever liked Green Day, listen to their new stuff. It’s amazingly well produced.
Coding iPhone and Flash Mobile, back to back
After spending the bulk of my ‘personal coding time’ over the last 6 weeks on building my first iPhone game/application, I’ve moved on to another mobile coding platform. After 6 weeks of learning Objective C and Xcode (also my first time coding on a Mac), I’ve jumped back in time to a mobile platform called Flash Lite. Pretty insane. It’s a mobile coding mind bender. The developer’s equivalent to a gender transformation.
These are completely different platforms, and the approach, ‘vibe’ around them, and outcome couldn’t be anymore different.
With the iPhone, with each compile & build, seeing and feeling the app load on a my sleek iPod Touch, I felt like I was an Olympic swimmer, making a sleek dive off a precision diving board into a crystal clear pool surrounded by people sunning themselves and drinking vibrant cocktails.
On the other side, cracking open Flash Professional, coding archaic ActionScript 2 and compiling into the Flash Lite simulator they call Device Central, the experience was much different. It feels like you’re climbing up those wet and slimy stairs of a pool slide, making your way down the insufficiently watered and windy curves, somewhat burning your skin on the sides of the dry plastic, before getting dumped into a pool of a few senior citizens floating on foam noodles and sort of applauding at me.
Strangely… I still really love the latter experience. Why? Because it feels unique and un-crowded. The stuff I’m doing seems far more untouched, less shiny, yet way more revolutionary. And the stuff I build with the latter process can be published to a comparatively infinite number of brands and devices. The same Flash Lite (FP6 level) .swf I coded co-exists on both a Chumby, as well as my Sony PSP. (Pause for a second and imagine that. Two companies, produce two devices, meant for a much different purpose and market. Yet, they are bound by a common mobile platform that tells me, the developer, that I can WRITE ONCE!] I haven’t even tried my Flash Lite app on actual mobile phones yet. The thing is… I don’t need to. I know what I’ve done and accomplished. Feels good.
The app I built will be demo’d at http://developer.ribbit.com/blog in the near future.
While the process still needs a lot of help, I can see how Flash Lite (soon to be much grandeur Flash Mobile development) still has a huge place in this mobile application movement. And now that I’ve had my moment with Flash mobile coding, it’s back to iPhone to build another app that I hope thousands will enjoy — at Apple’s discretion, of course!
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