Posted by lorenb on Jun 10, 2009 in
business,
iphone,
linux
I noticed that the new iPhone 3GS now supports OpenGL ES 2.0. The iPhone 3G and iPod Touches only support OpenGL ES 1.1. The guys at Engadget think that will cause the app store to splinter.
Might happen eventually but until there is a critical mass of iPhones that support OpenGL ES 2.0 it would be a mistake to cut off the rest of the user base right now.
I wonder when Google will update Android? They only support OpenGL ES 1.0 right now. Not sure what Microsoft has offhand, they keep rewriting the OS every version. Should make doing cross platform games more interesting or a bigger pain in the ass.
Posted by lorenb on Jun 2, 2009 in
business,
linux
Rogers is now offering Android-based phones. They are HTC devices. With the so-called G2 out, hopefully Google will update their developer phone. I need to pick one up to for device testing at some point.
Sadly we still can’t publish any applications yet. No idea why companies in the USA, UK, France, Austria, Germany, Spain and Netherlands are so special. Maybe we’ll just have to create a US presence for the company and get around it that way.
Posted by lorenb on Apr 14, 2009 in
linux,
technology
Trying to lookup some information about Gentoo Linux and I came across Funtoo. It seems this is a fork of Gentoo that is maintained by Daniel Robbins.
Daniel Robbins was the original creator of Gentoo Linux. He did a good job too but some users were not happy and kept pushing him to manage the project more in the “community”. From there, you get the Gentoo council and lots of processes. Now things get masked longer, more software in overlays of varying quality, devs leave because of personality conflicts, and the distro seems a bit stagnant.
I was glad to see Daniel developing again. I emailed him to get more details about Funtoo. Depending on what their goals are, I might switch over.
Posted by lorenb on Apr 5, 2009 in
gnome,
linux
Looks like the Beagle project is no longer being developed. They are/were looking to a for a new maintainer but it doesn’t look like anyone is going to step up.
That’s too bad, but since that’s the case, I’ve now switched to Tracker
Posted by lorenb on Mar 16, 2009 in
linux,
technology
Saw some good news this morning as WebKit GTK+ released v1.1.3 and along with it comes the first Epiphany release based on that code.
I’ve been waiting for that for a while. I’ll have to try it out soon as I find that Epiphany/Gecko that I’m using now crashes a lot.
Posted by lorenb on Feb 26, 2009 in
business,
linux
Here are some really early screenshots of MMATracker for Google Android based devices. Given my posts from the last couple of days people have been asking me what our company plans are.
Not as functional as iPhone version yet, but we aren’t in a big rush given that we can’t sell it on the Android market.
Long term, we want to have all our apps on iPhone, Google and maybe Microsoft if they can figure out their app store.
Posted by lorenb on Feb 23, 2009 in
business,
linux
In order to sell on the Android Market you need to have a Google Checkout Merchant account. When I tried to do that for our company it wasn’t possible in their sign up form.
I emailed Google about this and they told me that:
At this time, merchants with a U.S. or U.K. business address and bank account can use Google Checkout. Google Checkout merchants can ship goods inside and outside the United States and United Kingdom. We look forward to making the service more widely available in the near future, although we’re unable to comment on the timing of Google Checkout’s availability in specific countries.
Even though our company is legally able to do business in the US and UK, Google isn’t going to let us. I think that’s silly. Google needs to get going on this. We want to develop/sell applications on your platform, why not let us?
Apple has clearly got the edge here. They all everything ready to go with iTunes.
I think I need a drink. Think I’ll try this sangria recipe out.