Dil Toh Bachha Hai Ji

Indian developer wants to develop and not get restricted

Hi Microsoft Team

Great news that you are launching Windows Phone 7 in India (link), but why?  I’ll explain what I mean by this.  When I said why I mean why restrict us from developing on the device and testing on it.  By us I mean the Indian developer.  What will you do when people want to develop on it.  How will you chanelize the development.  First of all the environment does not exist here.  Read below to know what I want to say.

We had seen a lazy launch of the Kinect device in India, although technologically superior and way ahead of its time, the device had a low profile launch event.  I am possibly living in my own well.  This device is for gamers right, then where were they.  So unhappy a crowd was present there, gosh.  It was very much a closed event and a pure CORPORATE event rather than a gaming event.  Don’t worry am pro Microsoft, I purchased a Kinect as soon as it launched.  You know, you should have launched Kinect in Mumbai at IIT Powai, you would have been SOLD OUT on the event day itself.  Also, how about sending those who are registered on Xbox LIVE, an invite.

Check the Kinect launch pictures here (link)

To top it all the Microsoft team takes no heed to us developers here.  There is no premium Membership available for India to develop for XNA, this really sucks.  I’ve been a big fan of the MS products and all especially XNA and now Kinect.  But gee I think MS does not want me to develop anymore for it.

http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/65494/400769.aspx

http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/59063.aspx

http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/36780.aspx

MS please take heed of our requests and hope things change

I finally Got the Kinect

The Kinect Box

Finally after posting so much stuff on the Kinect I’ve bought it.  I was at a Reliance Store in Thane and saw the device in action.  I liked it, but wanted to try it before I buy it.  There were kids I fought with to play the Kinect, my wife was alongside me watching me turn into a kid too. 

The device is awesome, it works at a distance of 6 feet onwards, offering co-op play at 7.5 feet approximately.  I got the Kinect adventures free with the Kinect device.  At first I was skeptic whether the device works with my existing XBox360 (I’ve got the one with the HDD, HDD or some other storage media is compulsory for Kinect to work).  The store manager told me it works, I knew it would, if it didn’t then I would buy another XBox360 for this beauty.

Kinect Adventures bundled with Kinect

The sensors work pretty well, detecting all motion,  Kinect adventures is a good game to play.  One thing guarenteed is you will burn a lot of fat (So bye bye Slim Sauna Belt, get  a Kinect instead).

Cables with the Kinect

Personally I would say this is Microsoft’s comeback, and a good comeback it is.  Thumbs Up for Kinect.

Gaming Budget

I am excited looking at the new Kinect enabled Xbox 360.  Looks worthy of an investment, but what do I do of my old Xbox.  Now this increases my budget to buying a PS3, Xbox360 with Kinect, some frickin’ titles for both of them, upgrade the audio system, the TV

hmm… lot of money required

Project Natal arriving in late 2010. Wowie

Great news from the MS guys.  I shall obviously buy one.

Firefighter dead

Hi

Like every year, this year too was no different.  This Diwali too, there were calamities, but on a larger scale.  A building in Thane caught fire, the brave firefighters put if off on time.  But after few hours when they were back at home they received a call that it was on fire again, and they turned back to put it off.  Six of them entered the elevator, not because they were stupid, but they were very very brave.  They wanted to reach fast and put off the flames, that’s when the lights went out and they were charred for 3 hours.  The building caught fire by a rocket which landed in the empty house.  Newspapers were splashed with news that the building failed safety norms, that the elevator malfunctioned, had someone not lit that rocket, this incident would not have occured. 

One of those was someone I knew.  I heard a lot about his helpful behaviour and his bravery.  That day our whole village mourned.  There was utter silence that day.  Their bodies were charred beyond recognition.  Their bodies were wrapped in clothes and no one was allowed to see them.

S R Jamadar is survived by his wife and two kids. He was very brave in nature and very helpful

We shall miss brave souls like you and believe me I shall never ever miss stupid people from the face of the earth, who play with firecrackers which are almost equivalent to bombs.  I believe that should be a serious crackdown on noise and smoke pollution by the government and all citizens should definitely take care and act responsibly.

- Elvis

My Caricature

Hi guys

This guy I work called Dhiman with had created my caricature.  I really love the way he’s written ELVIS, reminds me of the great Elvis.  He’s awesome with his work.  Check out his site (http://www.brushapart.com)

My Caricature by Dhiman (http://www.brushapart.com)

-Elvis

New version of Flash supports iPhone development

Continuing my discussion on yesterdays post, Flash developers would be now seriously glad, elated, happy, or more than happy feeling triumphant.  The reason to celebrate?   First it was the release of the Flash Player 10.1 by Adobe and now?  Well Adobe has announced on Monday that the next version of Flash (Flash Professional CS5) shall enable the developers to create content for the iPhone and iPod Touch devices too.

I seriously wish to be at Max. (guys please someone sponsor me, message me if you want to do research on Flash).  This happened at Adobe Max conference on Monday where Adobe revealed a series of applications built for the iPhone using the new Flash version.

View them here http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/.  There is also a FAQ below in that page, do read that.

More links related to the news

Adobe Developed IPhone Tool Without Apple’s Help

& the official press release

http://eon.businesswire.com/portal/site/eon/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20091005006358&newsLang=en

Do check this video

Watch my blog for more info, heck, you can carry on reading the Adobe site for more info too

Flash Player 10.1 announced, smartphone enabled, no iPhone yet

On Oct 5, 2009, at Adobe Max, Adobe Systems Inc. announced the release of Flash Player 10.1 for smartphones, smartbooks, netbooks, PCs and other Internet-connected devices…

Read full press release here at http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200910/100509AFPforMobileDevicesandPCs.html

Check the videos here at

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/videos/

This is the first runtime release of the Open Screen Project.  We already know that Flash Player exists on 99% of Internet enabled PCs (http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/).  Now this is the new age Flash version, a great boon for developers, write once and run on multiple platforms.  According to Adobe, this version of the FP (Flash Player), is gonna run on Android, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm WebOS and Symbian S60.  Also an addition is Blackberry.

I see the the biggest advantages for a developer that ActionScript 3.0 usage now will work across all platforms, so now its truly multi-platform by all means.  That means now all the she-bang that you get to play or see on the desktop will now work on the mobile device also, kudos Away3D and Papervision 3D.

The Feature list according to Adobe (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/features.html)

• There will exist a global error handler.  Now I just need to write one error handler to process all try/catches.
• Globalization support
• Mobile Text Input.  They say that there will be a virtual keyboard popping out and in off text fields
• Multi-touch and gestures.  This one is gonna be a developer favorite alongwith being a nightmare (I’m just scaring you, lolz).  On Windows 7 supported multi-touch machines this is gonna rock.
• Accelerometer input, we can now receive native accelerometer inputs mapped to X, Y and Z values of objects via ActionScript
• Screen Orientation, this is gonna be rocking
• Graphics hardware acceleration, this is a mobile only feature, now you just wait.  This is not for rich quality 3D, but all the transformations,  native 3D effects, vector graphics etc.  will be renedered on the mobile device via a new GPU-based vector renderer unlike the desktop version.
• and many more…

To put it in a nutshell, this is gonna be a very power packed version of the Flash Player and sure is gonna rock.

I wonder why Apple isn’t taking any notice…

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Flash Platform Services

Adobe introduce the Flash Platform Services, with which you can develop and share your applications across social sites like Facebook, MySpace and iGoogle.  You can build in a Share menu for the same using Adobe softwares.  I guess it shall be a delight to develop seeing your applications across sites now

Learn more about distribution

Advanced parameters for the share menu

Game Developer’s FAQ

Publisher’s FAQ

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