Flashgamer

Twitter has become an important part of my day, but today it lost a lot of it's value to me. By changing this 'tiny' setting, I no longer see the conversations that my friends have. I only see people twittering for themselves or directly mentioning me. I now get only 1/6th of the messages I used to get.

This is not how I use Twitter. I use Twitter to follow what my colleagues in the community and friends do and chat about. By removing this feature, the value of Twitter is now VERY reduced and I feel like quoting Eivind Ingebrigtsen that tweeted last week: "Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups. If you assume, you'll make an ASS of U & ME". By ASSuMing things like this - Twitter could easily kill itself... You'll find some good commentary on this topic at the Ajax Blog as well.

Posted by Jensa at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Incredible. The coating on my MacBook pro is pretty worn (where I hold my hands) but today the Command key broke in two? I sure use it a lot, but since MacBook Pro is a favorite with programmers, shouldn't the keyboard handle our everyday usage?

Update 1: 15 minutes to wait for Applecare support. Hmm...
Update 2: AppleCare says this is not covered. Suggests calling an authorized service partner
Update 3: Last 40 minutes I have tried both Eplehuset and Humac (the two suggested partners) and none of them answers the phone.
Update 4: Finally got through to Humac. They said I'd have to hand them my machine or they could send a service technician to my house. If that isn't overkill I really don't know what is...
Update 5: Eplehuset finally answered the phone and said "sure, no problem. we'll fix that for you." They're officially my Apple Heroes!

Posted by Jensa at 02:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

"Something is technically wrong" at Twitter, today and most every other day. I once read an article where the author claimed that "it does not matter WHAT technology you use. Worry about that WHEN your product is a success". I guess Twitter is the continuing proof that this does not hold up?

Maybe he wasn't all wrong though. IF you have a success AND you're able to monetize it - you can use those money to fix any remaining technical issues, right? It's all just a matter of scaling the hardware and you're good to go? Looks like that if you build your software using Ruby on Rails, you're bound to be screwed for a long time if you're successful and refuse to change platform. After all - Twitter isn't Rocket Science, it's a server based app with rather limited capabilities that is written in a high level language.

I'm currently reading "Hackers and Painters" where Paul Graham (amongst other things) explore the ideal programming language. Given the condition that you have infinite computing power, high level languages are great according to Graham. The problem is that every level of ease for the programmer has a price. From machine-code, moving upwards through the various programming languages from machine code to C and eventually Lisp - every level of abstraction comes at the cost of slower execution. Twitter is running on Rails and it seems they just don't have the required hardware.

Or is it just hardware? To scale as much as Twitter needs to, is incredibly hard when it all comes to hardware. Wouldn't it be great if Ruby had some features that could help this? The developers of Ruby are really certain about themselves. It's like they have found the Holy grail of computing and have developed the ultimate language that never needs extending. That's kind of like Paul Grahams basic idea and I wonder if the Ruby devs have read Paul Grahams book? It's a fun read that'll provoke and entertain when it comes to nerds, computers and designing programming languages.

PS: I sure hope they fix Twitter soon. I'm really missing it and three months ago I didn't even use it. Now THAT's strange!

Posted by Jensa at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

About two years ago, I quit my own company to go freelance. I was working on a huge project with more than 50 small Flash apps, but I left the project some months ago more or less out of frustration. It's now more than three years since it was started and there's still nothing I can show publicly.

Well, I've not been sitting idle. I've made a kids game (with Netron) that has gotten rave reviews. The game was done in both Norwegian and English and it will soon get worldwide distribution in even more languages. With a fun storyline, more than 40 minutes of animation, 30 mini-games and a drawing program it's a solid package of kids entertainment. The game targets kids 3-10 but should work well for childish grownups as well.

I've also done an awesome looking 3D map for an amusement park (also with Netron) as well as changing the backend of Flashmagazine to ExpressionEngine. I've also been working on an AS3 version of an Open Source project that I'll get out the door soon. It's lagged behind because of fun commercial work, but I'll get it out within the end of next week.

I've also gotten myself an office downtown Oslo, in Storgata 51, straight in between the town centre and Grunerløkka. I share offices with two product designers that has a really cool device, one designer as well as three architects.

The architects website was designed by Junebug and I converted the design to ExpressionEngine and set it up. I'm yet again amazed at how flexible EE is. Every item written on the site can be associated with an architect and/or a project. If you look at an architects page, you can also see all the latest news for the projects they work on. Every project page also shows the news associated with it, so it's effectively a full project history. Every project has a unique RSS feed so anyone can easily track the progress in a project with next to no extra effort for the one filling in the content in the CMS. Really pleased with how the site tuned out.

Posted by Jensa at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

My new office has a cool mix of people, 3 architects, 2 product designers, 1 web designer and me. The product design guys just got a 3D printer (!) and I just had to try it out using the Flashmagazine logo!

More pictures of the process on Flickr. It's just insane. With a printer like this, you can make anything!

Posted by Jensa at 03:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Gizmondo quotes a new survey that claims that OSX now accounts for 7.31% of all OS's. For now it looks as MS is still asleep dreaming of Vista. Odd, isn't it? They really don't see Apple as competition, do they?

PS: Two years ago, Gartner estimated that by now, Apple should have gained a 2.9% market share...

Posted by Jensa at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We're spending this years holiday at the farm where my wife grew up and today, her brother (the farmer) had to go to a Christmas party in Oslo, several hours away. I thought I'd be nice and give him a hand so he could stay in town a little longer, so I volunteered to take care of his pigs...

Taking care of 420 pigs sure is a different experience than coding all day. Today I've been "whacking away" at loads of shit instead of a keyboard - one and a half hours of shoveling shit and spreading sawdust for the pigs to walk / sleep on. When I was only half done, my cap was soaking wet from sweat. I wasn't exhausted, I just got really warm from shoveling (I guess I should exercise more). So, holidays are a time for doing something different. Farming sure is a lot more physical than what I usually do :D

PS: I've now showered for half an hour to get rid of the smell, but I suspect I'll need another shower to loose it completely...

Posted by Jensa at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I just saw Scott post about a project that I've followed with great interest, the OLPC. Originally dubbed the $100 laptop, the cost is currently about $200 per machine. I assume that the price will lower as the number of machines produced go up. To boost this process the people behind started a campaign where by giving one, you can also get one yourself. The basic idea is to offer low priced computers to developing countries. What I see as the single biggest thing coming out of this is Knowledge. The information available on the web is massive. These machines can really help giving under-developed places opportunities they'd never have and improve a lot of lives.

The OLPC website has very limited info, but for those interested, I recommend checking out the Google TechTalks video where the project was presented. It's a little long, but this machine is totally cutting edge in all the ways it saves power and connects. Well worth checking out! Unfortunately, anyone outside the US/Canada cannot donate for now.

I also noticed something really cool, T-Mobile are giving away a full years hotspot access to anyone contributing! Really nice of them, even though it can be considered marketing. I spend maybe $50-$100 on random T-Mobile access per year, so it could actually reduce the price of giving in my case.

Posted by Jensa at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Do you know what you're paying for? Check this article by my buddy Jarle Bergersen. Initially, the adsense /adwords system provided by Google was simply amazing. Since the text ads were displayed based on the contents of every page, they were always relevant and they usually showed up on the right sites.

Click-rates were astounding when I first implemented Google ads on Flashmagazine 4 years ago, somewhere between 3-4%. Numbers like these were pretty rare in the industry back then and they've been falling steadily ever since. Now the clickrate is about 1,5% and it looks like the folks running adsense /adwords have gotten despearate to improve the situation. Using Google, you can't really decide where your ads show up. Google will try to locate the best place for your ad and up until now they've done a decent job. With the introduction of Adsense for Domains, they are now allowing domain pirates and others that don't provide value to get a bit of your advertising budget and there is no way you can prevent it (Norwegian version).

To me, it looks like Google is loosing it's touch? Up until now, they've always done what is best for the end user/advertiser, but this time it's apparently only about money?

Posted by Jensa at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just gotta blog this for future reference. I keep getting requests from friends that are looking for a simple way to set up a small webshop and I found this - Bigcartel - a really simple solution that you can have up and running in next to no time. They offer a free solution that you can test just for fun, and a subscription version with some useful features. They only offer PayPal, but that's more than enough for simple use. Anyone can set this up. Found it via this neat site where you can get "Apollo bootleg t-shirts".

Posted by Jensa at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sort of out of topic and mostly of interest to those that can read norwegian or know Jarle from when he did Flash. My buddy Jarle Bergersen got tired of all those dorks that have started their own web directory and think they have a business idea that they can force onto other people. These companies sell listings though phone and they won't take no for an answer - if you answer the phone, they will send you a bill no matter if you agree or not.

The company in question - Bedriftsguiden - is especially bad. What I find most amazing about this comany is that it clearly consists of people that cannot do even simple math. They claim to have 162.622 unique users a month but an amazing 2.498.610 page views for that same period. This means that the average visitor reads more than 15 unique pages when visiting a directory site like that. They have more ads than relevant content (approx 2:1 ratio on a random page I tested) and your ads will drown if you put them there. The average reader will not read 15 pages on such a site. Everything I know about usability tells me that the average user will leave such a poorly organized site quite quickly, maybe after 2-3 pages. I strongly suspect that they don't know the difference beween visitors, hits and spiders gathering content in those numbers. They refuse to use professional aditing of their visitors, probably since they fear they'll get lower numbers than the unprofessional software they use at the moment.

I love that somebody kicks those idiots in the nuts. Jarle got coverage in a national newspaper and now it keeps popping up negative stories all over the web about Bedriftsguiden. If you Google for their name, all you'll find is negative stories about the company. Funny since this is a company that also claims to know how to do Search Engine Optimization... They're so unprofessional and clueless that they also comment anonomusly on blogs that mention the story and try to say negative things about my buddy Jarle. Funny - most bloggers know that to have any kind of credibility you should post with Full name or nick + a working URL. Those that comment negatively without disclosing who they are usually have something they need to hide... lol

Anyway - Best of luck fighting them. If they ever sue you, I'll chip in on the trial ;-)

Posted by Jensa at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Since my first Wintel PC, I've used Norton's various Utilities for maintenance and antivirus. Not any more. Last week I read a post by Stephanie at CMXtraneous saying "Is Apple getting too big". Appears that Symantec has the same problem. They've become so big and have automated so many tasks that they're not able to support their users.

Continue reading "Symantec getting too big? - No more Norton for me" »

Posted by Jensa at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

My brother just sold his house since he is moving to Australia. Feeling temporarily rich, he and his girl got me the greatest Xmas gift ever! Been playing all day. Great toy and not too expensive to crash either. I've picked up spare parts once already ;)

Posted by Jensa at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Might as well blog? I've been so busy with my pet project http://www.flashmagazine.com that I never took the time to start my own blog. Flashmag is now in it's fifth year, has several great contributors and this month there will be more than 100.000 unique readers (400.000 pageviews++). Not too bad for a hobby, but since I try my best to keep Flashmagazine a professional publication, it's loads of things I'd like to blog about that just doesn't fit it's format.

Flashgamer won't be a blog about me, but rather about some of my hobbies. I'll post cool Flash Games that I find, personal opinions and small reviews on various games I play and maybe some Flash code snippets / rants. We'll see. Maybe I'll even update this standard template? :)

This site (Flashgamer.com) used to be a showcase site for Flash Games I made. I put it up in August 1999, but by early 2003 the amount of visitors was massive. Funny how popular Free games are... Since I had little or no time to update it, the content was rather dated. To avoid bandwidth bills and fuzz, I put the site to rest.

Posted by Jensa at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)