KHAS-TV Report on Live Cams in the Community

Curt Kasper from News 5 KHAS-TV in Nebraska has just completed a report about Live Cams in the local community. Here's the clip that was aired January 26th, 2011:

And you can read the rest of the article here.

Make Money With iPhone Review.

There is a line of business is booming at the moment, even as the rest of the world is becoming more and more on the economic downturn. This is a booming business moving forward, and the Apple App Store. Great thing that you can only get someone with the pen and turn a serious profit. Do not you find it is much easier and slicker way to turn a good profit on the Internet, or anywhere else is paid to the economy. And if you have no idea how to start your work, then you are in luck, because some people have created a useful guide to help you get started.

One of these guides MyPhoneRiches. If we look at how to make money with the iPhone, then you may already be familiar with them, and if not, do not worry, I'll give it a worn out here. Basically, this MyPhoneRiches guidance on how to obtain not only their own programs easily developed and delivered to the store applications, and effective marketing. It also undertakes to teach him how to design and implement their marketing campaign as efficiently as possible with maximum benefit.

Serenity Volume 2: Better Days Review

When it comes to comics, Marvel and DC are not the only big dogs in town. Dark Horse also has a fantastic selection of reads that are both entertaining and highly stylistic. Serenity happens to fall under both the immensely entertaining, and highly eye pleasing. Even better, that wonderful paper comic now finds a new electronic form in iOS devices.

Those of you who may have never watched the TV series Firefly, enjoyed the movie Serenity, or feasted your eyes on the paper comics; this is a combination of science fiction blended nicely with an old west feel. The story focuses around a band of unlikely friends who keep taking jobs in order to keep their spaceship flying and food on the table. The plot thickens with an evil government who performs experiments on children of genius. One of their highly coveted experiments happens to be repossessed by their brother, and ultimately ends up becoming part of the Serenity crew. This digital comic focuses on a small portion of that story line.

The comic itself is very easy to navigate. Tapping on the left side of the screen will take you back a page. While tapping on the right will advance you along. You can also double tap in the middle and drag a slider to any of the 80 pages. Even better is that almost the entire book is set to portrait orientation. This fact means you will not be getting your exercise in by constantly having to rotate between landscape and portrait orientations like some other comics. This may seem like a small advantage, but it goes miles in keeping you in the story and not fighting a device.

The iOS devices make for a great reading experience. Not only is the text crisp and easy to read, but there is no need for a flashlight to read the comics while hidden under the covers. The artwork does a great job in blending space blasters, hovercrafts, and technology into a western setting. The colors throughout the comic are subdued and dark. I did bust out my Serenity comics and can even say the visuals are equal, if not a little better, than their printed counter parts.

Serenity Volume 2 is a wonderful addition to any iOS comic collection. It is easy to navigate, reading is a pleasure, and it is wonderful to have anywhere you go. Be sure you grab Volume 1 so you can convert those nonbelievers to the greatness that is Serenity. If you liked the movie, are a fan of Joss Whedon, or just like comics, this is well worth the purchase.

An Unofficial GameSalad Textbook Review

In the world of iOS development, there are those who have computer science degrees and those that don’t. Those who don’t know X-Code from an X-Wing use either GameSalad or CoronaSDK. I’m not going to get into programming languages/GUI’s here, but the basic idea of GameSalad is that it is a simplified interface for game design. Don’t be fooled by the stories of 3 year olds in the Middle East pumping out iPhone games, though; GameSalad won’t make the game for you and there is definitely a learning curve. More importantly though, GameSalad has definite limitations and certainly shouldn’t be used for every app.

With that said, there is definitely plenty of room out there for instruction books/tutorials. New on the digital shelves is An Unofficial GameSalad Textbook, a $25 app that will show you the ropes.

The real problem that I have with the Unofficial Textbook (I’m starting with problems today) is that when I pay $25 for an app (or anything considered in the upper echelon of app prices), I expect there to be little to no flaws in the text, high-quality examples (or possibly links to website examples), and a streamlined design. Instead, the app contains quite a few typos/grammatical errors, very few large picture examples, and an odd design that definitely needs some work. Scratch that. It needs a full redesign.

In its current form, each page of the book is a pile of text situated onto the left side of a very large width screen. Zooming into the text makes it look like a real e-book, but when you scroll down you’ll often find yourself straying to the right. Even worse is that once you get to the end of the page, you are forced to hit a little blue “next” button that will take you to the next page. In the modern world of e-books, it’s hard for me to do this when I spend a good deal of time swiping through realistic digital pages in my other book apps. An Unofficial Textbook just feels sloppy, and considering the price, it feels doubly sloppy.

As far as the content goes, An Unofficial GameSalad Textbook does a pretty good job teaching, but doesn’t offer much more than I can get for free on the web. If you’ve exhausted all free web resources and still want a nudge in the right direction, this may be your best bet, but put me on record for saying that it is not worth the high price and that it badly needs a redesign