Marc Palmer

I haven’t had time to use them much yet but the iWork 08 applications look great. Some typically Apple simple but very elegant refinements and new features.

However I still don’t get why Apple don’t ship keynote with default themes that support the native 1280×800 resolution of MacBooks. It’s braindead – they supply 1280×720. You have to set a custom slide size to have something that natively uses the full screen.

The web agency I work for needs good people. We are expanding quickly as clients beat their paths to our door.

We do websites such as Tropicana, Tropicana Go, PJ Smoothies, Copella Fruit Juices and many more.

There are a number of positions opening and we’re always interested in hearing from great people for when we need even more!

Currently we’re looking for an Account Director, a Project Manager, HTML/CSS/PHP developers, graphic designers with "X-Factor", and Java/Grails developers. For more details see the recruitment page.

We use freelancers for some roles, and others are permanent. Get in touch with us at workwithus@enotions.co.uk

Apple made a bold move not shipping J2ME and instead pushing developers to Web 2.0 on the iPhone. It is in my view a shrewd move.

It is unquestionable that this causes major problems for existing J2ME games developers, who are probably the biggest benefactors of J2ME on phones. JS + HTML is just never going to make for as good a game experience as J2ME for action games. However there are plenty of games you can do with Web 2.0 and it brings many advantages – easier networking/multiplayer, no deployment hassles, no operator QA needed, and grossly simplified porting (IF other phone manufacturers ship standards compliant browsers).

I suspected when Apple announced this that it could effectively be the end of J2ME on mobile phones. Now I have more reason to think this, from a Motorola developers mailout:

MOTOMAGX, Motorola’s recently announced Mobile Linux platform, is the next significant step in demonstrating Motorola’s commitment and leadership in Mobile Linux. Building on the global success of Motorola’s earlier Linux-based platforms, MOTOMAGX delivers new levels of openness, flexibility and support for third-party applications on Motorola devices. MOTOMAGX supports three different application environments, including Java ME with WebUI and native Linux in upcoming releases. The WebUI application environment combines underlying Web 2.0 software technologies with access to local device resources, enabling developers to easily create personal and contextually aware Web 2.0 experiences for handsets.

So they are going to start shipping linux based standards compliant browsers, possibly even WebKit based seeing it is linux friendly and open source.

If another big manufacturer like Sony or Nokia does the same and actively pushes developers to Web 2.0 like this, I think you will soon find that J2ME is a sorely niche market in a few years.

The good money is in subscription services and games, or ad-driven free services and games, which are hard to achieve in J2ME. So action games will suck on the Web – maybe for now, maybe not later. However most phones completely suck for playing action games anyway.

Usually the most popular games on mobile phones don’t require fluid graphics / scrolling etc. They are games like Sudoku, Tetris-alikes, Monopoly etc. All those should be easily done with Web 2.0, and you get full internet playable versions for desktop users at the same time. It’s a win-win for those happy to ditch the hell that is J2ME development.

It is a harbinger of all that is wrong in this world, that the US is now using an armed robotic killing machine in Iraq. You can bet that at least a dozen decision makers have looked at that thing and said "Huh… that’s so cool!".

You can also see how it goes at Neocon central: "Damn those pesky bereaved families. Now we have to spend millions on robot drones instead, but hey each one that gets blown up is another ton of cash for the arms firm I have shares in. It’s like one of those computer game things my kids play, except when we lose a ‘life’ I gain a pension!"

Some of the most worrying quotes:

The machines had a tendency to spin out of control from time to time.  That was an annoyance during ordnance-handling missions; no one wanted to contemplate the consequences during a firefight.

Most importantly, the machines now come with kill switches, in case there’s any odd behavior.  "So now we can kill the unit if it goes crazy," Zecca says.

And this is where in my professional capacity I get really alarmed and angry. How can a representative of the company even talk in those terms. How many companies have you worked at where everyone, or even a majority of the people were truly excellent at their job? Not many eh. There’s often a lot of people who just shouldn’t be there, or are frankly dangerous (to the business). This is not a game people. I imagine the development team weren’t sent out to live unarmed in Baghdad for any length of time to see how it would feel.

So why are we to think the military of any country are special here? Employment perks like building devices to kill people and a pension make sure only the people with the very best skills turn up? I don’t believe it for a second and that is the really, really scary part. If there’s only 1 person in a 10 man team who is a bad programmer, you better hope to hell they have the best code reviewing project in the world.

I find it hard to believe, given the quotes above.