Daryl Baxter.

My Link to the Past: Tomb Raider 2

Firstly, i’ve been able to write an article every few weeks for the student magazine about certain games that defined part of my childhood in the 90’s.

Tomb Raider 2 was one of these, and the maagazine was finally published yesterday:

Pretty excited to finally see it published after a few weeks waiting :)

Due to the limited word count in the magazine, it’s missing a few sections, especially the conclusion. So I thought i’d post the unedited version here, with some videos as well.

Click ‘Read More’, and enjoy!

Read More

Surface.

This video sums up everything i felt about Monday’s event.

Also to quote one man from the above video:

If you see a stylus, they blew it.

Tim Cook at the D10 Conference.

As i’m having trouble sleeping in this mad heatwave, I stayed up for the 2AM Interview between Tim Cook at D10.

This is a conference that is now in its 10th year, it’s a great 3 days of interviews from all walks of technological life. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had a joint interview a few years ago which was a brilliant highlight which should be seen on YouTube as soon as.

The above are only highlights of an hour show, but it gives you a great idea of it.

A website analysed what the interview gave, especially the bits of Facebook and ‘other’ Apple TV.

All in all it was enthralling and really shows that he knows that after nearly 14 years of being at Apple there won’t be any ‘massive’ changes undertaken unlike how the Forbes article from last week gave that impression.

And i’m getting the feeling this year’s WWDC is going to have a fair few surprises that will be much more than iOS 6 and Lion.

Source.

Prototype iPad with 2 dock connectors on eBay.

As a manufacturer needs to, they prototype all possibilities, a lot could change someone’s mind if they actually use a prototyped product rather than staring at a drawing.

So today someone has, somehow, obtained a prototype of the first gen iPad with two dock connectors.

I faintly remember reading about this around the time it was released 2 years ago, and hoping it would appear on subsequent revisions. Since then, i’ve grown to appreciate the on screen keyboard, and not really see the point.

As all prototypes seen on eBay, this won’t last long, so make sure to click the link below quickly!

Source.

Facebook Camera, The End Of Instagram?

I first signed onto Instagram way back in August, and I thought it was a good idea, but i could do the same thing on Twitter without a filter.

When Facebook announced they had bought Instagram, a lot of friends suddenly signed up and jumped on the Instagram bandwagon. By the way, this just shows how much of an influence Facebook can incredibly be.

I’ve been using it a lot more since i actually know people this time that i’m following, and i’ve started to use it much more than Twitter now, which i’m only using as a kind of RSS Feed.

But yesterday as i’m walking through London town, i read that Facebook have brought an app of their own, much similar to Instagram.

At first it was confusing, why have two similar products, of which one is in the processes of being officially acquired?

But then i realised of two things, they’ve been trying to redo photos on Facebook the same way Timeline has been to profiles, and it’s the start of the transition.

Now, viewing photos on a PC has changed significantly in the past year. Instead of clicking on a photo and being able to easily go to the album, a black background surrounds the selected photo, and dependant on the privacy setting, it’s either going to be the only photo you see, or you’ll see an album.

Also uploading photos. The feature that has stood out for me has been facial recognition as soon as the photos are uploaded. To be fair, 80% of the time, it’s tagging a robot as a lad i know from years ago, but the idea is still promising.

This would be the work of Sofa and Push Pop Press, acquired a little over a year ago, and presumably started work on the Facebook Camera app.

Anyone you know uploading photos on a mobile device from Facebook knows that to even think of uploading an album you may have stored on your device is just asking for trouble.

Then the ‘transition’ i spoke of.

I believe that as soon as the Instagram deal closes, which is, all the investors and board members agree and go through all the paperwork, it’s not a simple ‘yes we’ll buy you’, these two apps will merge, bringing Facebook’s users over to Instagram, and when a user is clicking the ‘Photos’ tab to their left, they’ll also be given a link below to an ‘Instagram’ app, which will be able to import all your photos from your account, to your Facebook profile.

Maybe we’ll see this by the end of 2012, but i don’t believe we’ll be seeing 2 apps this time next year.

How Tim Cook is changing Apple.

An article came out today on Tim Cook’s 10 months as the CEO:

For their part, most Apple employees seem more than satisfied with Cook. He often sits down randomly with employees in the cafeteria at lunchtime, whereas Jobs typically dined with design chief Jonathan Ive. It is a small difference that speaks volumes about how employees can expect to interact with their CEO. At Apple, Jobs was simultaneously revered, loved, and feared. Cook clearly is a demanding boss, but he’s not scary. He’s well-respected, but not worshiped. As Apple enters a complex new phase of its corporate history, perhaps it doesn’t need a god as CEO but a mere mortal who understands how to get the job done.

What a lot of people don’t seem to understand, is that at the end of the day, Apple is a manufacturing company. They will have had roadmaps for the next 3 or more so generations of the iPhone, iPad etc way before Steve Jobs passed away, the major features planned obsessively and finding ways to achieve it with sublime efficiency. Right now, Apple is in great hands, and we’ll be looking at the fifth generation of the iPad with the same magic that has been there since the beginning.

This article, even though some sections give quotes that would give a reader or Apple fanboy worrying thoughts, such as

“I’ve been told that any meeting of significance is now always populated by project management and global-supply management,” he says. “When I was there, engineering decided what we wanted, and it was the job of product management and supply management to go get it. It shows a shift in priority.”

It’s pointless. Again, Apple is in good hands. 

But then later in the article, this quote appears when talking about the Apple Top 100 meeting from this year in mid April:

One veteran executive was “blown away” by what he had seen, says someone this executive spoke to afterward. Reports another person with access to top-level Apple executives: “People came away totally comfortable with where the company is headed.”

When the new major product does eventually appear from Apple, that’s when i’m curious as to how it will be presented for its first time. Will Tim Cook describe and show all the details? Will he give a demo?

As yet, we haven’t seen this, only 2 appearances of upgrades from existing products, then handing it over to Phil Schiller or Eddie Cue etc.

But with under 3 weeks to go until WWDC, and ‘a whole lot to look forward to in 2012’, i’m looking forward to this with great anticipation.

Spotify for iPad.

A review from The Verge:

While Spotify’s iPad app is truly excellent at what it does, I can’t give it a pass for exhibiting many of the same faults I have with Spotify’s iPhone app, Android app, Mac app, Windows app, etc, etc. The useless What’s New section, inability to see your Play Queue, and lack of sorting options make the app harder to use, as competent and complete as it is by Spotify’s standards. If you know exactly what you want to listen to, the app will make you happy — but it’s quite poor for discovering new music.

Perhaps most importantly, it seems like Spotify has deliberately decided to keep playlists as the sole means of organizing content instead of a unified “Collection” that lets you view songs you’ve saved by artist, album, and inside playlists you’ve created. Only being able to save content via creating playlists is a long out-moded method — just ask iTunes, Grooveshark, Rdio, MOG, Amazon, and just about any other company that offers music jukebox software. I hoped that this feature, among other things I’ve mentioned, would pop up in the company’s iPad version — especially since competitors have had some of these features for years. So while Spotify’s iPad app and catalog are both exceptionally solid, the company’s product-related priorities are confusing. It spent months building a beautiful and speedy iPad app that will elate Spotify users but doesn’t actually do anything new for discovering music. In short, it’s exactly what we expected and nothing more.

Source.

Puzzling as to why the Apps aren’t available, but that could be to do with Apple’s guidelines.

But, it’s finally here in an update released this morning. If you’ve got a subscription, go get it.