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Charity: The Humble Introversion Bundle!

In the giving mood? Why not head down and meet up with the other fine gamers hanging out at the Humble Bundle, who’re offering a bunch of cross-platform games (DRM free) to raise money for Child’s Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Donate for a couple of great causes and get a bundle of excellent games in return. If you donate more than the average, you can acquire some bonus titles not otherwise available with the initial line up of games and tech demos. The $70 bundle can be yours at any price, but we recommend at least slapping down a Jackson if you can. Contributers also have the option of bragging rights and posting their handle on the Humble Bundle wall of fame.

The Humble Introversion Bundle includes lots of great titles such as Aquaria, Multiwinia, and DEFCON, giving you plenty of adventure, multiplayer, and virtual gaming environments to romp through over the holidays. Given the choice of exploring underwater caverns and blowing up computer viruses, there’s something here for players of all ages. You can find links to all the great games below.

There’s fourteen days left to donate, so you have plenty of time to cash in your paycheck and donate to a worthy cause. Be sure to check out The Humble Introversion Bundle official launch video after the break and get amped up!

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A Reality Check On The Life Of An Independent Developer→

A Reality Check On The Life Of An Independent Developer

With the massive successes of Rovio (Angry Birds), Lima Sky (Doodle Jump), ZeptoLab (Cut the Rope) and other independent developers, a certain assumption has been established in which any developer who creates a reasonably successful app is thought to be profiting handsomely from the venture, maybe even becoming a millionaire. But as Shifty Jelly (developers of Pocket Weather and Pocket Casts amongst others) have pointed out in a blog post today, the reality of being an independent developer isn’t as idealistic as the success stories make it seem.

You put an enormous amount of effort (and yourself) into every product you make. Sometimes you find people deriding it, or dismissing it after spending 13.2 seconds using it. People tell you not to take that personally. Good luck with that. When you invest 6 months of your life, day and night, creating a product there’s no way in hell you can’t take other people’s comments personally. Reading App Store reviews can be as much fun as slapping yourself in the face with an ice cold trout on days where you manage to ship a bug with your product.

It is a little depressing in some respects, but it is also an important reality check on the difficulties of being an independent developer. The frustration of piracy and complaints about pricing really come through in the post - and whilst they aren’t the first to write about these problems, the post is a succinct and clear representation of their reality. Fortunately there is also a bit of light at the end of the tunnel, noting that it is the positives of the job that make it all worth it.

If you have the right personality, then sure, being an independent developer is a huge blast. Don’t come expecting millions of dollars to fall into your lap though, it’s damn hard work. Chances are you’ll make less than you would working for a giant, faceless corporation…but you’ll enjoy life so much more.

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Apple Posts New iPad 2 Advert: “Love”

Apple has tonight uploaded a new iPad advert to their YouTube channel. This latest advert, “Love”, follows the general style of their previous iPad 2 adverts — with a strong narrator intertwined with people using the iPad, highlighting an emotional connection. This advert highlights the emotional connection between people using the iPad for things that they love doing. There are shots of a basketball coach using an iPad to show his team a strategy, a group of friends in a band using the iPad to control levels, a person painting a landscape with an iPad, a person creating a home movie with iMovie on the iPad and a young child learning about dinosaurs on an iPad.

For some, it’s a life long passion. For others, its something discovered yesterday. We all have things that speak to us, they drive us to get up early, and stay up late. Getting lost in the things we love has never felt quite like this.

Jump the break to see the advert for yourself and jump over to Apple’s website or YouTube channel to see more of their iPad adverts.

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Apple Announces Holiday Sale For This Friday, Across The World

Update: Apple has now confirmed the “One-Day Shopping Event” is also occurring in the US this Friday - but it makes no mention of the sale also taking place in its retail stores, suggesting this is an online-only affair.

Apple has begun placing banners on its online Apple Stores across the world, indicating that it will be holding a sale this Friday - on the yearly “Black Friday” as it is known in the US. The banners, found on the store page, inform us that this “special one-day Apple shopping event” is this Friday, November 25.

Mark your calendar now, and come back to the Apple Online Store for the special one-day event. You’ll discover amazing iPad, iPod and Mac gifts for everyone on your list.

The banner has gone up on the Australian, Italian, UK and a number of other international stores. No mention has yet been made on the US store, but it is expected to also receive the banner in a number of hours. In the US the Black Friday sale is expected to also take place inside Apple’s retail stores - no mention of the sale in retail stores is made on the Australian or Italian notices.

Hacker Builds Custom Siri Proxy Server

A hacker known as plamoni created a Siri proxy server that could allow anyone to use it and make Siri work with a wide range of non-Apple devices. Applidium, a development firm, hacked the Siri security protocol and has explained the process so anyone can use it.

One implementation of Siri + the proxy server is sending commands to any standard thermostat with Wi-Fi capabilities. plamoni taught Siri (no jailbreak required) to send commands over the network and if you’re interested, the source code is available for free online. Anyone with an iPhone 4S unique identifier and knowledge of networking can get it working. In order to set up Siri to control your home’s temperature involves a DNS server that uses a proxy to send requests to Siri’s servers.

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Ron Johnson: “What I Learned Building the Apple Store”→

Ron Johnson: “What I Learned Building the Apple Store”

Apple’s former VP of Retail Ron Johnson, now CEO of J.C. Penney, wrote a guest blog post for Harvard Business Review analyzing the unique factors that contributed to the success of Apple’s retail stores. He says key to the experience was that employees didn’t want customers to buy more, but simply to get what they needed.

People come to the Apple Store for the experience — and they’re willing to pay a premium for that. There are lots of components to that experience, but maybe the most important — and this is something that can translate to any retailer — is that the staff isn’t focused on selling stuff, it’s focused on building relationships and trying to make people’s lives better. That may sound hokey, but it’s true. The staff is exceptionally well trained, and they’re not on commission, so it makes no difference to them if they sell you an expensive new computer or help you make your old one run better so you’re happy with it. Their job is to figure out what you need and help you get it, even if it’s a product Apple doesn’t carry. Compare that with other retailers where the emphasis is on cross-selling and upselling and, basically, encouraging customers to buy more, even if they don’t want or need it. That doesn’t enrich their lives, and it doesn’t deepen the retailer’s relationship with them. It just makes their wallets lighter.

Johnson, who joined Apple in 2000 and was head of retail operations until 2011, left Apple’s retail stores with average revenue per store at $10.7 million and overall revenue in Q4 up 1% at $3.6 billion.

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LogMeIn Ignition Adds Direct Integration with Dropbox, Google Docs, WebDAV Servers

In the past months LogMeIn, makers of the Ignition app for iOS, have released a series of updates to enhance Lion compatibility on the desktop and improve the file sharing capabilities of the iOS client, which, as we detailed in our various reviews, is a great way to remotely access computers (Macs and PCs) over the air. LogMeIn Ignition isn’t the cheapest app on the App Store, but its rich set of features and support from LogMeIn (a company that, among other things, also produces a free VPN tool for OS X) make it a worthwhile purchase for those looking for a complete solution to control a computer’s screen and access to its files.

The latest version of Ignition, released today, adds a single, yet important feature called Cloud Bank that brings direct integration with Dropbox, Google Docs and any WebDAV server to the iOS app. LogMeIn Ignition was already capable of moving files between computers and iOS’ local document manager with an intuitive drag & drop menu and copy/move functionalities; nowadays, however, users are more likely to keep their documents in the cloud, rather than physically stored on a computer’s drive, and LogMeIn’s move towards integration with cloud-connected services is certainly welcome as a way to get files from the cloud and onto a computer remotely.

My Cloud Bank allows LogMeIn Ignition users the ability to take full advantage of being remote by connecting them to their files no matter where they are. We’ve extended the functionality of our File Manager feature and given users the benefit of using cloud storage services in conjunction with remote access and local file storage on their devices.

Think of Ignition as a bridge between the cloud and a remote computer. With Cloud Bank, Dropbox and Google Docs are easily accessible through Ignition’s usual interface, with the same copy menu from computer-based remote connections. You’ll be able to move files between Dropbox and a computer you’re remotely connected to, or get a spreadsheet from your Google Docs account into a computer without, say, giving the person that’s using the remote machine access to your Google credentials. With WebDAV support, users will be able to configure services like DropDAV, which turns Dropbox into a WebDAV server and works out of the box with apps like Pages and Keynote.

I look forward to seeing whether LogMeIn will ever consider adding support for iCloud files, as that seems the most logical step to seamlessly fetch an iOS user’s cloud documents. In my tests, Cloud Bank has been extremely reliable in dealing with large Dropbox transfers from the cloud to a computer I was remotely connected to via 3G.

LogMeIn Ignition is available at $29.99 on the App Store.

Google Search for iPad Gets New Features and Redesigned UI

A few minutes ago Google released a new version of its official Google Search app for iOS that, alongside bug fixes and full-screen mode for search results and images on the iPhone, brings a completely overhauled interface, as well as new functionalities, on the iPad. Google Search, available as a universal app, has in fact introduced a redesigned UI that falls in line with Google’s recent updates to its online services like Gmail, Google Reader, Google Calendar and Google+. Google Search on the iPad now sports a series of gray icons in the main page to quickly jump to History, other Google apps, voice search and Goggles, a feature that Google introduced on iOS months ago to search for products just by taking a picture of them. The History page got a visual overhaul, displaying search results as stacks of pages you can swipe through to get your previous search.

Often you may be looking to find something you have seen before again or are continuing research on a topic. But on a tablet, typing can be a challenge. That is why we have created a visual way to explore your search history. Swipe right to view snapshots of pages you’ve visited, stacked and organized by search term. You can also manage your search history from this new view.

Search results are now loaded with Google Instant and Instant Previews, meaning the engine will be able to predict your queries and, at the same time, offer a visual aid to display pages as thumbnails, rather than just text results. The typical search interface is still there, visualized with Google’s recently launched tablet view. The native app has allowed the developers to embed a toolbar at the top, which contains buttons to open voice search, apps, settings, and sign in with your Google account.

Another big change on the iPad is how results are displayed side-by-side with webpages. As you tap on a link from the search results, Google Search will “slide in” a webpage with a quick animation that enables you to go back at any time with a single swipe gesture. You can adjust the size of the panel and visualize a webpage alongside other search results. Furthermore, the webpage view features another toolbar with buttons to +1 on Google+ and search for a specific word inside the page. With the iPad in landscape mode Google has effectively built a sort of split-browser with search results automatically loading in the resizable panel on the right.

Once you pick a web page to visit, you’ll see the page load on a new, slide-in pane that will layer over the search results. You can slide the pane to the right to get back to your search results, and even keep scrolling through the results as your web page is loading. This allows you to go back and forth from results to web pages quickly to get the information you are looking for.

Especially on the iPad and in landscape mode, the latest Google Search update seems like a step in the right direction to enable users to search faster, switch between results quicker, and have access to search history in a more user-friendly interface. You can get Google Search for free from the App Store.

More screenshots and promo video below.

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