the singularity of being and nothingness
Archive for July, 2010
HTML5 Geolocation
Jul 9th
Continuing on from my last post regarding new client-side storage options, I decided to keep the trend of HTML5-related posts coming 🙂
So unless you haven’t visited the web in the last 3 years, you know that location-based services are super-hot right now. If social networking was the final result of Web 2.0, wiring-in people’s browsers (both position-locked and mobile) to geolocation is easily Web 3.0 and beyond. For example, with few exceptions, the vast majority of my iPhone apps have some geo-location component. Whether it’s my RedBox app finding me the closest kiosk, or FourSquare letting me “check in” to new (and not so new) locations, nearly everything I do on the web is able to be tagged with a location. Every tweet, every Facebook wall post, heck, even this blog post have geolocation data attached to them. In every possible way, the web is no longer just about “what” you are doing–it’s where you’re doing it as well.
To help make this more of an integrated reality, HTML5 will come fully-loaded with baked-in geolocation support. As with client-side storage, dealing with the geolocation options is quite easy.
Let’s take a look at a simple example. In what follows, I simply want to More >
HTML5 Storage: Goodbye, Cookies
Jul 8th
If you’ve done any web development, at all, ever, you’ve undoubtedly used–and cursed–the clunky cookie.
In all fairness, cookies are nice for what they are. You can store basic information about users and their behaviors on the user’s machine for use on your site, and they are fairly reliable. The problem with them, though, is that they are clunky. Clunky to set, clunky to expire, and quite limited in terms of storage capability–4000-some characters…lame.
Fortunately, in HTML5, we have a much better option for light-weight client-side storage (like cookies) without the clunky-ness, retarded size limits, and potential “leak” issues. Actually, we have two 🙂
First, let’s talk about the Storage object to which the two options belong. According to the proposed spec, the Storage object provides access to set, read, and remove “items” which are basically the key/value pairs that everyone is familiar with. Unlike cookies, however, the key/value pairs do not have an expiration date associated with them, and are removed either by user action or by the cessation of a session.
Enough talk. Let’s look at the options.
sessionStoragesessionStorage is an attribute of the Storage object which represents a storage area for each “origin” [read domain]. In other words, sessionStorage is a place you More >
Final Fantasy XIII Review
Jul 7th
Final Fantasy XIII was one of my most anticipated games in a long time. Heck, I more or less bought an Xbox 360 so I could play it (well, and Left 4 Dead 2, of course!).
For those who know me, it is well understood that I am a big fan of the Final Fantasy franchise. With the exception of a few spin-offs for the various hand-held devices (and XI, which doesn’t count), I’ve played every Final Fantasy to date. I’ve reveled in the unparalleled awesomeness of VII and VIII, vigorously defended IX as a GOOD game, and even suffered through others like X-2 (remember that one?). I’ve watched both movies, and have trudged through spin-offs of the franchise like Dirge of Cerberus. My love of Final Fantasy, of course, guided me infallibly to Kingdom Hearts which, although probably consistently better than FF games, rings in at a close second.
Given my history, then, I feel I am an adequate judge of the games. So without further introduction, here’s my breakdown of Final Fantasy XIII.
StoryFFXIII is the story of six otherwise unlikely comrades bound together by a common curse which has transformed them into L’cie, the hated and feared subordinates of the Fal’cie More >
Mason, OH Zoo :)
Jul 2nd
iOS4 Reflections
Jul 1st
I’ve had iOS4 upgrade on my iPhone 3GS for about 2 weeks now, and since I’m not unfortunate enough to have procured an iPhone 4, I thought I’d share a few reflections about my experiences.
First, the BadThe biggest downside of the upgrade is that the new OS puts a severe beat down on the battery life. Before the upgrade, I used to be able to listen to Pandora all day at work, make a few calls, and surf around on my phone while watching TV…on one battery charge. Now, however, my battery life is at least halved, if not more. If I start Pandora first thing at work, I’ll be getting down into the 30% range by late afternoon, necessitating an early evening charge. *Sigh*
A few other disappointments:
- Random buggy-ness: I’ve noticed that apps will randomly crash without warning
- Multi-tasking management is kinda clunky–way too many double-clicks and holds to end a program (should give you the option when normally closing, me thinks…)
- Camera “zoom” upgrade is a joke. It’s exactly what you’d expect, and exactly what every app out there already did: make crappy, low megapixel pictures look even worse.
While these are fairly serious issues, there are some definitely cool More >
