Work received a few iPads this month, so we could use for site testing and general use around the office.  I’ve had the opportunity to take the device home a few times, and while I’ll agree that it’s a neat gadget, it surely is not worth $500 for all users.  To summarize:

If you only have a smartphone OR a laptop, an iPad is pretty cool and will complement your mobile life well.

If you have neither a smartphone or laptop, you are the iPad’s target audience, and the device could be a perfect fit.

If you have both a smartphone AND a laptop, the iPad will be redundant and nearly useless for you.

I fall squarely into that last group, and its been interesting to see all the uses other people come up with for the iPad that I just cant justify, because I already have a device for that.  My iPhone can do anything the iPad can (and my iPhone 4 will be more powerful), in a smaller package.  If I need more power, my laptop is a full-fledged computer, and about the same surface area as an iPad.  There’s almost no time where I could really use a device in between the two.

The iPad is a direct competitor to netbooks;  they’re aimed at the same audience.  This is a machine aimed at people who don’t have a laptop, but want a low cost mobile computing device – and to that end it performs most basic computing tasks as well, if not better, than your average $500 netbook. However, it’s not going to do the job of a laptop, and if you want true portability the iPhone may be the better choice.

I’ll be chronicling the whole process of building my touchscreen table, and this second post will explain just how one of these things works.

Essentially, there are 5 things required for one of these setups.  There are different methods of setting it all up, but these things are the same:

1. A display, usually from a projector (an LCD can also be used but is more complicated and limited in size)

2. A diffusion surface, for the image to shine onto and to capture the “bumps” of your fingers (more on this later)

3. An infrared light source

4. A camera, modified to capture only infrared light

5. A computer with software to capture and process the bumps registered on your touch surface.

Rear DI surface setup.

The picture above helps put everything together here.  We’ve got the projector beaming an image onto the diffusion surface, using a mirror to extend the throw of the image (I’ll discuss the projector specifics in a future post). The infrared light source can be done in several ways, but in my table I’ll be using infrared LED spotlights, located under the surface of the table. These lights flood the inside of the box with infrared light, invisible to the human eye. When my fingers come into contact with the surface of the screen, they bounce light down back towards the bottom of the table, as shown here:

Down at the bottom of the table, a webcam is pointed up at the underside of our screen surface. However, this camera is modified to only register infrared light, rather than the visible light filters normally equipped on webcams. When you look at this image on the computer, the infrared reflections your fingers make on the glass look like this:

Now, using free, open-source software on our computer, we can interpret the location of the bumps which the webcam is registering, and turn them into multitouch actions on our Windows 7 system.

In the next Ramvik Touch blog post, I’ll talk about projectors, and what kind of specs I’ll need to build this specific table.

If you think this is a really cool idea, you should really check out this thread on the NUI forums.  In fact, you should check out that whole forum, as it is pretty much the definitive resource on building and discussing these things.

Over the next few days, I’ll be posting more details about how such a system operates, as well as specifics on how I plan on building this machine. For now, I’ll post some pictures of other people’s IKEA Ramvik hacks, as well as some videos of other multitouch tables.

The Ramvik table I’ll be converting to a multitouch display.

The same Ramvik table with a Lite-Brite mod.

Ramvik table with florescent lighting and x-rays below the glass.

A smaller Ramvik table, as a MAME game console:

The official Microsoft Surface promo:

The Windows 7 Touch Pack:

The D&D multitouch application:

Some examples of other DIY multitouch tables:

Oregon Trail

This game is a pretty faithful reproduction of the Oregon Trail game most of my generation played back in the day, on their Apple IIe’s.  While the graphics have received a major overhaul, the gameplay itself has changed little, and several of the memorable features are right where you expect them to be.

The game has a very cartoonish feel to it, with the characters taking on a very hand-drawn look.  Just like the original, you pick what time of year, how many people, and what supplies youd like to take on your journey.  After that, you set off, and the majority of the game is riding the trail.

While you’re riding, you have a choice of speed settings – slower speeds will use less food and supplies, while going faster will cost you.  This could get monotonous if the whole game was a constant speed battle, but the designers stuck minigames in at just the right time intervals, and the games are perfect for short sessions with the iPhone.  The classic river fording and bear hunting games are there, along with new ones like wagon repair, fishing, and berry picking.  While these games are all pretty basic on their own, as a collection of minigames, Oregon Trail does a pretty good job of keeping one entertained.

Oregon Trail:  3/5

Kolonists/Settlers

One of my favorite board games is Settlers of Catan. The board the game is played on represents the island of Catan, and the different board tiles represent different resources.  The point of the game is to collect these resources to increase your cities and settlements, which in turn gives you victory points needed to win the game.

Kolonists was the first Catan-type game to hit the app store.  Recently, a new Settlers app was released by the designers of Catan.  Both apps are similar, although Kolonists has an important rule change that helps the game pass much more quickly.

In regular Catan, and in the Catan iPhone app, dice are rolled to determine who gets what resources.  Without going into a long explanation, whoever has settlements placed near resources on the board will reap those resources when the number tile on the resources is rolled.  This adds an element of randomness to the game, as one could get lucky and have all the rolls profit for them; on the other hand, one might have a game where nothing they’re interested in is rolled.

In Kolonists, on the other hand, no dice are used.  Instead, each settlement has a “worker” which the player can place on one of the surrounding land tiles.  If a city is on the board, that city gets two workers instead of one.  Every turn, each player is guaranteed to get the resources that they have workers played on.  In this way, it’s much quicker to get through a game, since you know exactly what resources you will be getting.  Besides this rule, Kolonists is essentially identical to Catan.

So which is superior?  Well, personally, i prefer Kolonists for iPhone play, so far.  The graphics are far easier on the eyes – Catan has so much artwork and movement in it’s app that it’s hard to see the board “at a glance” and make quick decisions. In addition, iPhone games aren’t usually something I’m going to be playing for more than a couple minutes.  Kolonists lets me have games in 15-20 minutes, whereas Catan and its dice roll system will take much longer to finish.

As a final note, both of these games have AI players, as well as a “hot seat” mode that allows groups to play by passing the phone around.  However, neither of these apps has internet play; i think that once one of these apps adds online multiplayer support, the choice between the two will be much clearer.

Kolonists: 4/5
Settlers of Catan: 3/5

Flight Control

Flight Control has to be, hands down, one of the best casual games for the iPhone.  The premise is simple:  you are the controller of an airport with 3 (or 4) runways, color-coded according to the type of plane the runway is made for.  As planes and helicopters come under your radar, you must guide them (by drawing a line with your finger) to the correct runway.  This is the simple part;  the difficulty of the game is making sure the planes do not collide.  Flight control offers 3 maps, as well as a speedup button to make each of the maps more difficult.  It’s stupidly addictive, and since a round only takes a few minutes, I can pick it up at anytime.  Probably one of my favorite iPhone apps.

Flight Control: 5/5

SimCity

Ahh, SimCity – another classic game, ported to iPhone. While I think many of the EA games are rough around the edges or dissapointingly limited compared to their PC counterparts, they did a really good job of porting this over to the iPhone.  The gameplay mechanics are similar to SimCity 2000 (the best SimCity of all, IMO), but the graphics definitely look like they’ve been ported from SimCity 3000.  Theyre not bad for an iPhone game, and the user interface has been ported pretty well to a touch schema. One wish is that they’d put a rotate function in for those hard-to-see spots, but i have a feeling that would require too much work to be worth the implementation.  Overall, SimCity is a solid port that I can pick up for a couple of minutes when I want to work on my sprawling metropolis.

SimCity: 4/5

The Sims 3

There was so much promise in this title, and because it was being worked on at the same time as the PC version of Sims 3, I had high hopes for the gameplay.  Unfortunately, I was disappointed.

The actions you can perform with your Sim are spot-on;  they work just like the PC version;  just tap somewhere to bring up a list of actions you can perform on that object.  Unfortunately, thats about where the similarities end.

The first, and most glaring omission from this title is the lack of a build mode.  For me, the build mode in the Sims is at least 50% of the game.  I get to create a house however i’d like and populate it with my favorite items.   There is no build mode.  Not a toned down build mode, not a slightly changed mode, none.

Secondly, there is ONE SIM limit in the game. I can understand why EA might do this from a processing perspective, but i would rather play a choppy game with 3 sims than a smooth game with only one.  The Sims gets boring quick when you can’t multitask multiple family members, and the lack of items in the iPhone version only exacerbates this issue.

In conclusion, The Sims has great graphics for an iPhone game and shows a lot of promise, but these pluses are not enough to makeup for the things that EA left out of this port.

The Sims 3: 2/5

So blizzcon has come and gone, and boy was it a blast.  Friday the girls looked amazing in costume, many people agreed they were some of the most accurate character portrayals of all the costumes present.  Meg looked GREAT as Sylvanas Windrunner, see the gallery attached to this post for some pictures.

Met back up with our friend Morten from Denmark, who took some great professional photos of the girls.  In addition, during the costume contest, Meg went out for a smoke break and bumped into Travis Day, one of the lead item designers for World of Warcraft.  We made good friends, and Travis ended up taking us on a tour of the Blizzard development studios, which was amazing. Finally, on Sunday, we headed to Disneyland.  As I get older, the rides become less and less fun – but Space Mountain was still a blast, and I still like the look and feel of the Haunted Mansion.  It wasn’t the rides that made Disney fun, though – most of the Blizzcon attendees were at the park, also.  Travis and Morten joined us, and we all had a blast, meeting up with some of the other cosplayers later on.

As with last year, the most depressing part of Blizzcon is returning to Earth – we really got to feel like rockstars this year, and the girls are already excited to start on their costumes for next year.  Who knows, maybe I’ll have one next year too In addition, we’ve realized that once a year is far too little for our group of friends to meet up, and so we’re looking forward to another meetup in between now and next year’s Blizzcon – maybe in Vegas!

And so, here we are, 2009. The new Trek movie was a hit, and it seems like our beloved Star Trek might not be dead quite yet. But still, something is missing. And here’s what it is. THE FUTURE. Or, more specifically, the future’s future.

There is a reason why Star Trek was such a successful TV series, from TOS all the way to Voyager – it kept going forward. There was a logical timeline that everyone could see. Some of the things in TOS didn’t necessarily translate perfectly to TNG and beyond, but we could still, for example, look at Worf when he began on TNG, and then look at him when he left the Enterprise, and then again when he served on DS9 – and there would be character development throughout the series. The characters kept moving forwards in time, and so did the state of the galaxy. War with Romulans, then the Borg, then the Dominion.

But something happened after the end of Voyager. For some reason, the people who run Trek thought it would be a good idea to go back to the future, so to speak – to skip back before Kirk’s time and visit the first Enterprise. In my opinion, bad idea (and it seems like most Trek fans would tend to agree with me). Enterprise brought some answers to old questions, and may have had some bright points, but overall it was a flop – culminating in an ending that most fans do not accept as the true finale. What happened? Well, it may have had to do with the fact that they went backwards, not forwards.

DS9 ended on such a dramatic point in the human timeline; tensions were high with Klingons and Romulans, and the Borg, while incapacitated by Voyager, were still a threat. There was still much to come, and instead we went backwards to review that which we had already known. This is the fatal flaw, one that I am hoping Star Trek Online will help to fix. We need to go forwards, into the 24th and 25th centuries. Voyager established bits and pieces of what the 29th century would be like, and now we have to fill in the gaps and learn what’s really happened.

The new Star Trek movie, of course, was a hit – but I don’t think it’s what fans really want in a TV show. TV and movies are two different things, especially when it comes to Trek. In a movie, audiences come to see action and drama, to be kept on the edge of their seats – and to that extent, Trek XI was a big hit. However, in the process, the movie has dealt what could be a huge blow to the Trek universe. With J.J. Abrams and Co. set to produce at least 2 more trek movies, we can only presume that they will be in the same alternate timeline. So now we’re stuck back in the 22nd century? Say it ain’t so!

Star Trek Online, or STO, attempts to rectify this situation somewhat, by setting itself in the classic Trek universe, about a century ahead of where Voyager and DS9 left off. Romulus is destroyed, to keep the timeline consistent with the movies, and the Klingons may be preparing for an all-out war. Cardassia is under the control of a new ruling council, with Garak at the head. Many of our old friends from previous episodes – Picard, Worf, and hopefully more – will be forever immortalized as NPCs in this new online world. STO has a lot of expectations set for it, but the features look promising so far, and I’m hoping that Cryptic will come through for it’s fans.

I’ll conclude with some wishful thinking, something that could really bring Trek to a new audience and attract people in droves. Any Trek series which came out would have it’s own production budget – and Star Trek Online will have its own separate budget. If Cryptic and Paramount could get together (there’s the wishful thinking right there), we could have a TV series that ran parallel to events in an MMO. Just imagine – you sit down Wednesday night for your weekly Trek episode, which coincides with weekly server maintenance in STO. When the episode ends, you logon and events that played out now have corresponding repercussions online – NPCs may act differently towards people, sections of space may change. It would be a lot of work for Cryptic, for sure – but being able to have an hour-long cinematic every week would attract lots of new people to it.

Here’s hoping that the future of Trek is just that – a future, and not a past.

Well, better late than never, right?  This is my review of the iPhone EDGE, a phone which i have had for the better part of 2 years.  Friday afternoon, I head down to the Apple store to finally upgrade to the iPhone 3gs.

Why the new phone?  Well, there are two big reasons driving me to upgrade.  First of all, the broken screen – still totally usable, and totally ugly.  It’s about time to get that fixed.  Second, the internet speed.  My iPhone is fast enough for 90% of what I use it for;  however, if i’m tethered to a laptop or trying to watch videos, it just doesn’t cut it.

I’m going to split this review into 3 parts: the hardware, the software, and the missing pieces.  That said, let’s go over the iPhone hardware.

I’ve really enjoyed the phone in the past few months – and really had a chance to get used to the onscreen keyboard.  When I first got the phone, I definitely felt that phones like Blackberries had a definite advantage with their physical keyboards; now I’m not so sure it makes that big of a difference anymore.  Apple makes up for the lack of tactile response with the most accurate auto-correct software I’ve ever seen. Rather than just looking for words similarly to what you’ve written, as spellcheckers and most auto-correctors do, the iPhone is actually monitoring each letter you type, and what letters are around that one.  By doing this, they are accounting for the fact that when you mistype something, its usually because your fingers are slightly off, not because you didn’t spell it right.  Once you get used to making your mistakes and letting the auto-correct fix it for you, you can get pretty close to computer typing speeds – for me, definitely as fast as when i’ve tried using phones with thumbboards.

The rest of the hardware is solid as well;  I’ve had my fair share of drops with the phone, and for the most part, it’s held together.  As I mentioned earlier, I dropped my phone onto concrete from about 3 feet up – too much for the frame, especially the way it fell (hit the corner of the phone) – however, the phone still works perfectly today.  The touchscreen still acts as if it were one unified screen, even in the cracked sections of the glass. I simply put a screen protector over it and have been using the phone since. Other than that drop, my phone has tolerated other falls with no problems besides a scuff or 2.

Onto the software.  I’ve had my iPhone since before the 2.0 update came out, when the only apps one could get were through jailbreaking.  The difference between 1.0 and 2.0 has been like night and day – the iPhone was just that in my mind, a phone;  Post-2.0, it is truly a computing device, capable of doing the same tasks that a netbook can accomplish.  3.0 brings some big additions to it, the biggest of which is copy-and-paste, something we’ll talk about in the next section;  video recording is another big one.  Despite these leaps in functionality, i think the authorization of third party apps is the single most important change in the development of the iphone, and will continue to be for quite some time.

And now, the missing – things that Apple just hasn’t included in this wunderphøne yet.  As stated above, copy-and-paste is the one you hear people talk about most. It seems like something that would be so simple to implement – in fact, certain hacks allow copy and paste for some applications.  This is something that you don’t realize you need until you’re trying to copy a picture into an email, or copying a number from a website into your phonebook.  Copy-and-paste is probably the easiest of the fixes I would suggest for the future iPhones.

The next missing feature is one I doubt Apple will be fixing anytime soon, especially because they don’t see anything wrong with how it works now:  the battery.  Specifically, the battery being non-removeable.  I know that the iPhone gets decent battery life for all the features it has, and I know that Apple is trying to extend that battery life.  However, the fact of the matter is that the iPhone battery lasts 2.5 days, TOPS – with minimal web browsing and phone useage.  There are going to be times when people need just a bit more juice, and for most people that would just mean carrying a second battery around with them.  For the iPhone, that means bringing a specially made battery pack that attaches to the phone, making it bulky. Unfortunately, Apple is slowly replacing all of their products with internal batteries, so I don’t see their stance on this reversing anytime soon.

The last feature is more of a pipe dream for most, and that is videoconferencing. Something that was predicted to us decades ago, there is still nothing that approaches smooth mobile video calling in the US. Europe and Asia have videoconferencing phones, but it just hasn’t caught on in the states yet.  A big part of this may be that Apple is waiting for LTE (4G) networks to catch on more – their increased bandwidth means more room in the signal to send smooth video and audio.  Maybe the 4G iPhone will have this, maybe not…it’s debated whether or not video conferencing would really be a killer feature, or just a bandwidth hog.

• New druid art for cat and bear forms has been added.
• A new zeppelin docking ramp has been added to Thunder Bluff allowing Horde players easier transport to and from Orgrimmar.
• Northrend Children’s Week has arrived in Dalaran!
• 25 player raids will no longer be referred to as heroic versions of a raid, as there is a new distinction between normal and heroic modes for both 10 and 25 player versions of the Crusaders’ Coliseum.

• The newest season of Arena gear can only be purchased if you meet the requirements with your 3 or 5 player team rating. Rating requirements from 2 player teams can still be used to purchase the previous season of gear. (aka 2v2 is dead)
• Players will now be awarded experience for completing objectives and actions that yield honor in Battlegrounds
• Players who do not wish to gain experience through PvP can visit Behsten in Stormwind or Slahtz in Orgrimmar – both located near the Battlemasters in either city – and turn off all experience accumulation for the cost of 10 gold. (twinking)
• When standing at a capture point that you control, you will gain a buff called Honorable Defender. This buff grants +50% honor gained from kills. This currently affects Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm and Isle of Conquest.
• Arathi Basin – The time it requires to capture a base has been reduced to 8 seconds, down from 10 seconds.
• Arathi Basin – The game now ends when one team reaches 1600 victory points, down from 2000.
• Warsong Gulch – There is a now a 20 minute timer on this battleground. After that time, the team with the most flag captures wins. If this would result in a tie, the team that captured the first flag wins. If neither side has captured a flag, then the game ends in a tie.

• The cast time for summoning any ground mount is now 1.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds.
• Mount Training + Druid Warlock Mount levels reduced: lvl 20/40/60 for normal/epic/flying.
• The ravasaur trainer Mor’vek has returned to Un’Goro and will offer to help Horde players raise and train a Venomhide Ravasaur as a mount… if they can survive the creature’s deadly poison.

Ask J will be an ongoing section of my blog, that will deal with computer questions that I get asked fairly often.  The idea is that if I write a little post about each of these problems, I will have a central location to point people to for their common computer problems.

The first issue is one that we have to deal with quite often at work.  To be honest, clearing the cache does not solve the origin of the problem, which can be corrupted data in Exchange.  However, oftentimes the corrupted data will be client-side, and clearing the cache will let the mail flow in smoothly again.

Note: It will take quite some time to refresh all your messages.  The amount of time depends on how much mail you have stored in your exchange account.  I’ve had accounts with a few hundred emails take an hour or two, and I’ve also had accounts with over 10k emails take 2 days.  Make sure your computer is on and connected to the internet after you’ve cleared your cache, to let mail messages re-download.

• Right Click on the name of your mailbox in Entourage – the mailbox name should be in a grey box on the left, right above “Inbox”. If you don’t have a right mouse button, control-click.
• Click on Folder Properties.
• In the window that appears, there should be a section named Empty Cache.  Click on the Empty button in this section.  Entourage may hang (appear to freeze) for up to 5 minutes during this part.

When that section finishes, your mail messages should be locally erased (they are still stored on the server).  Entourage should automatically begin to re-download your files.