2 Robots

I’ll admit it. When I was younger I used to pirate music, movies, games, and software. I was a poor high school and later college student. I had no money. I couldn’t afford to buy those things. If I didn’t find a way to get it for free, I just couldn’t get it, period. It wasn’t a question of wanting to pay or what the market thought was fair. I just didn’t have any.

That was a while ago. Now I have a job. And I don’t pirate any more. Partially, this is because I’ve been a software developer, and I see things more “from the other side.” But mostly, its because I can. I have $50 to my name so that I can go out and buy that game I wanted, or the box set dvd’s, or whatever (not to say I don’t think they are overpriced).

That’s why I’ve always thought that the piracy numbers given out by the movie (MPAA), music (RIAA), and software (BSA) industry groups have been complete garbage. I mean, Billions of dollars? Common, that’s rediculous. Just because someone has pirated your software/song/movie doesn’t mean they are willing to pay for it. That’s always been my assertion, but of course I could never prove it.

Luckily, Russel Carrol, Director of Marketing at Reflexive (a PC game company) has done it for me. In an article posted at Gamasutra, he lays out a very data-driven and scientific analysis of the company’s piracy rates both before and after taking steps which reduced piracy. Read the article. Really.

His conclusion: Only 1 in 1,000 pirates are actually willing to purchase the product.

Does it still seem worth suing college kids, guys?

Apple seems to be getting a lot of negative press on its recent SDK announcement. Much of the criticism seems to focus around two issues: That not all functionality of the phone is accessable via the SDK, and that Apple controls the distribution method to the phone. I’ll adress the second point first. Some perspective on the history of apps on cell phones will do a lot to put this in perspective, and see why these decisions were made as tradeoffs, and actually strengthen the position of the iPhone as a leader in custom applications.

Yesterday was the first day of the Apple-Starbucks partnership to bring iTunes integration to your local Starbucks. If you haven’t heard by now, the idea is that when you walk into a Starbucks and you have a laptop, iPhone, or iPod Touch, you will get a special Starbucks store with specific Starbucks music and a “now playing” option so you can check out what you are hearing over the speakers in the cafe. So, how does this work in practice in New York, one of two cities slated to have initial support for this integration?

Read on.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve released a second iPhone game. This one is a cross between Tetris and Soduku, called “Tetroku!”

If you like either of those games, there are elements here for you to get addicted to. The full version is available from iGiki.com, but the demo version is available here for free, and is also playable in Firefox (sorry IE users).

You can also check out my previous iPhone game, Space Wormy, also known as Canyon Crawler.

As always, feedback is welcome!

Here you go … the first action game for the iPhone. While there are a handful of board and puzzle games available, this is the first action game ever released for the iPhone!

Check it out! Unfortunately, this game only works on Safari (Windows or Mac), and on the iPhone itself. No Firefox or IE

** Update — now works in Firefox! **
** Update2 — Added high scores to Space Wormy! **

http://www.2robots.com/iphone_wormy

I wrote a white pages application for the iPhone, and have it hosted on this site. If you’re viewing this from your iPhone, just click here, or point your browser to http://2robots.com/iphone.

For now, this app can find people’s names and addresses from their land line phone number. I’ll be enhancing it over the next few weeks (when I get back from vacation) with other ways of searching as well.

PS: The app doesn’t search your addressbook … it searches the White Pages on the Internet!