Author Archives: Josh Grauer

Review of the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet OS 2.0 Update

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Earlier today BlackBerry released version 2.0 of their tablet OS, so I installed it on my PlayBook this afternoon to have a look.  The first thing I noticed is that there are some new icons that are displayed in a home row and that the rest of the icons are now grouped together into a general area instead of being broken up into the old categories like Media and Games.  You can move icons in and out of the home row, which is nice.  You can also now drag an icon on top of another to create a folder that contains them, then you can drag more icons into that folder.  I ended up creating 6 folders: multimedia, games, reading, utilities, social, and setup.  I like being able to organize my stuff, so this is a great feature.

In general the interface has gotten a bit of a face lift.  Minimized apps look cleaner with a small app icon displayed next to the app name and the close button.  The transition animation that plays as you open an app folder is really nice.  All the new apps have a very clean and intuitive design.  This is probably the work of The Astonishing Tribe which joined RIM shortly after PlayBook was announced.

Messages

The best new app is the Messages app.  The first time I launched Messages I was taken to an account setup screen where I defined my Gmail, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts.  I also saw that I can connect to a Microsoft Exchange server.  Returning to the Messages app I saw that all my e-mail/messages had been imported from these different services.  The interface is really nice and I can see all activity across all of my accounts or look at just one account.  I did run into some problems where the settings button was initially greyed out and I also noticed that the Inbox for Gmail didn’t show all the e-mail that normally shows in my Gmail inbox.  I think the Messages app gets a little confused when you tag items in Gmail.  Once I did get into the settings, I was able to turn on the “group messages by conversation” option which helped organize all those Facebook messages.  I also turned off the stupid “Sent from my BlackBerry PlayBook” signature…Disco Stu doesn’t advertise.

Contacts

I was really impressed with the Contacts app.  I can see all my contacts from Gmail, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  I can even merge duplicates.  All of the information is there from each service.  The name start letter selection menu on the left is really slick and useful.  This app is awesome if you have a lot of contacts and use your PlayBook for business.

Browser

I saw that the browser now has some kind of Reader Mode.  I tested it on my blog and it does allow you to view the page in Reader Mode if you look at an individual post.  I’m not sure how useful this feature really is unless you’re visiting a site that doesn’t format well for  mobile devices and is able to load in Reader Mode.  Might be useful for e-book reading sites.

Calendar

The design of the calendar app is excellent.  You can view your calendar by week or month and instantly jump to today’s date.  It also automatically imported my Facebook friends’ birthdays!  When you create a new event you can select if you want to save the event to your local calendar, Google/Gmail calendar, or Facebook calendar…very cool.  I tried saving a new event to my Google Calendar and it popped right up when I refreshed the Google Calendar page on my PC’s browser.

App World

App World has a new design that reminds me a lot of the new Android Market, which reminds me a lot of the Windows Phone Metro UI design.  The layout is basically different sized tiles which you can scroll through.  It looks nice and seems to load a bit faster than the old App World did.  Still can’t view app preview screenshots full screen :( .  I also got a slew of errors when updating some of the apps I had, but updates have been buggy for some time.  I tried out the two apps I developed for PlayBook, flickr frame and flickr explore browser, and both ran fine under 2.0.
What I was really surprised to see are all the big name games that have made their way to PlayBook.  We’ve got all the Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Plants Vs. Zombies, and Bejeweled 2.  In the apps section I see a Groupon app, Evernote, Box (box.net), Poynt, and Splashtop Remote Desktop.  When it comes to games and apps it’s quality, not quantity.  There are really only a handful of really great games and useful apps, so it’s nice to see some of them on the PlayBook.  The 2 apps I’d really like to see are Netflix and a remote desktop client.  Thankfully we now have Splashtop (which requires it’s own installer on your server) and I did see a new Remote Desktop for BlackBerry Playbook app that works with regular old Windows Remote Desktop.  I’ll have to give that one a try.
What sucks though is that all of these games and apps are more expensive then their Android counterparts.  Angry Birds is free (ad supported) on Android while they are $5 on PlayBook.  Cut the Rope is cheaper on Android.  I don’t like it that PlayBook has fewer app choices, and yet charges more money.  On Android I also have the opportunity to return the app within 15 minutes if it doesn’t work or just outright sucks.  On PlayBook you’re stuck with it.  And what about the free app o’ the day that Amazon’s Android market offers?  Ok, so maybe this has nothing to do with the 2.0 update…but I’m really wondering why game/app developers are pricing their products so high on PlayBook when the market is smaller and struggling.
PressReader
PressReader looks like a new app that installed itself with the 2.0 update (unless I never noticed it before).  The interface isn’t as polished as the other pre-loaded apps, so I’m thinking this was not developed by RIM.  PressReader is basically an app/service that lets you download newspapers.  You start out with 7 free credits to use to download some newspapers.  I went ahead and downloaded today’s Arizona Republic and checked it out.  The table of contents view brings up nice little thumbnails that let you quickly jump to different sections of paper, pretty cool.  I personally hate the news and don’t read newspapers, but I imagine this would be a cool app for people that do like newspapers.

Print To Go

I also saw a new “Print To Go” utility that lets you configure your PlayBook to print to a printer connected to a PC.  Sounds a lot like Google Cloud Print that has come to Android.  The idea is great, but in my case my printer is connected over wi-fi and I don’t have a PC running all the time acting as a print server, so I’m not so sure how this app would work for me.  No biggie, I don’t really plan to print from my PlayBook.

Summary

What this update brought to the table is a bunch of really great productivity apps.  While most people are still using their tablets as portable gaming systems, RIM is offering up a bunch of really useful tools for people who actually want to put their tablet to work.  That is BlackBerry’s bread and butter, the business types.  If they could just get the PlayBook into more businesses we might actually see PlayBook thrive.

I’ve always loved the gestures on the PlayBook.  I think it was very innovative of them to take advantage of the bezel space and the gestures make working with PlayBook really smooth and effortless.  I really think that PlayBook has a superior interface to iPad and Android tablets, but BlackBerry was so slow in getting PlayBook to market that it really hurt their chances for success.  The same story with Microsoft’s Window Phone, really nice UI and nice devices, too late to the show.  Now that PlayBook sort of supports Android apps, we may see them make a comeback.  It’s not helping that Adobe is abandoning the Flex framework, which was/is the primary development platform for PlayBook.  Maybe RIM knew it was coming and that motivated them to adopt Android.

The 2.0 update was a step in the right direction.  I’d love to see more productivity apps from RIM along with more Android apps making their way to PlayBook.  We’ll have to wait and see if that is enough to keep the PlayBook around as the tablet market becomes more and more competitive.

Album Review: Alice in Chains – MTV Unplugged (1996)

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I spend a lot of time with a pair of headphones wrapped around my head.  When you listen to headphones for a long period of time, your ears start to fatigue and your brain starts to melt down.  Sometimes I want to listen to something crazy that will get me energized (Skrillex anyone?) but lately I’ve been wanting something more mellow without going as far as straight up classical.  When I get into that mode my go-to album is Alice In Chains – MTV Unplugged.

The quality of the recording and mastering of this album are top notch.  Each instrument and vocal comes through in perfect detail and blend so nice.  You feel like you’re sitting in the middle of their performance.  Acoustic guitar on my left, another on the right, bass somewhere in between, drums in the back, and lead vocals center stage.

Of course the performances were excellent as well.  All 13 songs are great.  If you’re a fan at all, you owe it to yourself to check this album out.  I’m hoping to some day get the DVD as well and try it out on the surround sound :)

The Double Fine Adventure Game Has Hit $2 Million + in Donations

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As previously mentioned, Psychonauts is my all time favorite game.  The studio that created that wonderful game is called Double Fine.  Double Fine makes incredibly creative games that are super fun to play (ok, they’re not all gems, but most of them are really great).  While most new games focus on hyper realistic graphics and better cinematics, Double Fine games are focused on telling a great story.  Their games have heart and when you finish one of them you’re imprinted with that experience for life.  These are the kind of games you get lost in.  If you were on a deserted island (equipped with a game console) and had only one game you’d get to play for eternity, you’d pick one of their games.

One of Double Fine’s latest projects is a new adventure game that they are funding via Kickstarter.  Why Kickstarter?  Because classic adventure games are old school and game publishers aren’t interested in funding them.  There just isn’t any money to be made in making adventure games…right?  Take a look at the Kickstarter project.  They’re at over $2 million as of this writing.  They hit their target of $400,000 within 8 hours and I believe they hit $1 million within 24 hours.  They’ve still got 22 days left for people to donate and the money is still trickling in.

When they hit $1 million, the gaming news sites picked up the story which is how I heard about the project.  I went ahead and pledged $15 just so that I’d have access to the game when it came out.  Honestly, when I read “adventure game”, I thought it was going to be something like Psychonauts which I consider to be an adventure game.  I was wrong, this is going to be a game more like The Secret of Monkey Island or Full Throttle, a game where you click through an interactive story and solve puzzles.  I never actually played any of those old adventure games, but they look like fun to me.  Plus my laptop sucks and I probably couldn’t play anything 3D on it.  Monkey Island was updated with new graphics and is now on XBox Live Arcade, so I’ll be grabbing that soon just so that I can get into the adventure game mood.

It’s totally worth the $15 just to check it out and get access to the behind the scenes documentary they’re making.  If you’re into creative games that tell a good story, I’d encourage you to pitch in your $15 and check it out!

Guild Wars 2 Coming to Console?

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IGN is reporting that Guild Wars 2 may come to console!  Ever since I gave up the EverCrack some 10 years ago I’ve been dreaming of the day when I can get back into an MMO.  I had actually planned on building a modest gaming PC just so that I could get into Guild Wars 2, but I’m still having a hard time laying down $800+ just to play a game (of course I could spend less, but if I’m building a gaming rig I’m not going to scrimp).  Turns out I may not have to!  Of course the graphics on an XBox 360 won’t compare to a nice gaming PC, but on the flip side I’ll get to enjoy the game on the big screen, with the surround sound, and my giant bean bag :)

The Last Nail in the Coffin for Flex

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Now that the Flex SDK is officially an Apache project, Adobe has released a new document providing more detail around their plans for the Flash platform.  Reading through the document the part that concerns me the most is this:

“In the past, features were added to Flash Player and AIR specifically to support the needs of Flex applications. Going forward, features will be added to the runtimes to support Adobe’s vision for the Flash Platform. The Apache Flex Project may choose to take advantage of those features; however, new features will not be added to the runtimes specifically to support the Apache project’s efforts.”

That bit there is really what will kill Flex.  The SDK can continue to evolve, but only as far the runtime will allow it.  We’ll no longer see the real significant innovations come to Flex because the runtime will never change to support them.

Also mentioned in the document is that Flash Catalyst is going away along with the design view within Flash Builder.  This is a clear indication that Adobe doesn’t really plan to continue building tooling around Flex, they just want to support basic coding features until they can quietly put Flash Builder to rest.

Adobe has abandoned Flex and is now focused on HTML, which makes a lot of sense for them.  Mobile changed everything.  Apple was never going to play nice with Adobe and there were too many technical hurdles to getting Flash to be performant and fully featured across so many mobile platforms and devices.  With HTML, Adobe no longer has to worry about getting the platform in place…HTML is supported out of the box.  All they have to worry about is doing what they do best, creating design tools.  Adobe Edge is looking good and my experience with PhoneGap has been positive.

I think that I am still far more productive developing with Flex than I am with HTML, but as the technology and tooling evolves, that could change very quickly.  When it comes to enterprise development I’m still not convinced that HTML is a good solution.  I’ve been working with Microsoft’s WPF framework along with their Visual Studio and Expression Blend tools and I’m very impressed.  Right now I think Microsoft’s offering is very good for enterprise development if you are targeting the Windows desktop.  For mobile, I still think native development is best, but I would love to see HTML based apps really come together with some nice design tools and a way to package your app for multiple platforms (a la PhoneGap).  As for Flex, I wish you a long life and I will miss you.