ChasingLilly.net

Avast! Ye pillaging personas! Prepare for an onslaught of posts about video games. I try not to post too much about them, as I don’t picture myself as the type of person who sits around on his couch all day playing them, but I do have a lot of posts coming up about them. That’s because Portal 2 came out a bit ago, I just got a Nintendo 3DS (basically for free!), I can’t wait for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, there’s a new Call of Duty trailer, some thoughts on Nvidia’s Kal-El project for Android, I have some angry/nice/at-least-serious comments about Nintendo and Sony, and E3 is coming up June 7-9. So expect a lot of info on it coming up! Also I’ve been thinking about starting a second blog relating to some more personal matters, but I’ll have to write a lot for that before I release anything. So yeah, get ready… and it’s been a slow Help Desk day so far, thus the writing has commenced. Don’t believe me? Would this face lie to you:

Happy Trails,
Sam.

…is the most useful device I’ve ever owned. My little Android-running Droid-X. Say what you will about Android and it’s “shortcomings”. Write all you want about fragmentation. I love it. Somehow, it fully won me over from even my obsessive-use of my iPod Touch. Sure Android needs a more consistent experience across devices! It’s be awesome if every time Google released a new OS version every phone running Android would update. But that’s certainly not the fault of Google or it’s beautiful OS, we can blame 99% of that on carriers and manufacturers.

Stupid carriers loading bloatware. NO ONE WANTS ANYTHING TO DO WITH VCAST OR A DEMO OF MADDEN/NEED FOR SPEED. Stupid manufacturers feeling the need to make custom skins and custom “user experiences” for each and every device. NO I DON’T CARE IF I HAVE A DIFFERENT LOOKING LOCK AND HOME SCREEN FROM EVERYONE ELSE. In fact I like much more the basic, clean look Google makes default on their personal Nexus phones. I even downloaded an app a few weeks ago to route around the default Motorola lock screen and get the basic Android look for my version.

I’m super excited for the Gingerbread update being pumped out to Droid-X users soon, though. It looks like Motoblur will finally have an actual reason for existing. However, once again, I could do without all this if I could just get updates sooner without having to root my phone. Android’s an open system. THAT’S GREAT! Now let’s not ruin it like you already are, carriers and manufacturers. If it weren’t for you guys Netflix could have easily rolled out a fully fledged app months ago for Android without worrying about fragmentation and copyright. Heck, iOS and WP7 have both had Netflix apps for months! I’m so utterly left out. And that shouldn’t happen.

Kotaku posted an article yesterday containing an interview with the head of the Unreal Engine team, and he said due to fragmentation he wasn’t sure they would ever be able to get Unreal Engine fully on Android, whereas he said iOS is a given. He said Google needs to be more “evil” here and be more controlling. I disagree, I think the carriers and manufacturers need to be less controlling and work towards a middle ground with a still wide range of Android devices, but mainly with the most consistent experience possible. If that means shipping basic versions of Android and the only different being device specs, so be it. Perhaps Google could provide guidelines on which manufacturers could agree upon. Maybe even guidelines they must agree upon before licensing out Android to them.

Again, I am NOT saying Google should start imposing regulations on any custom UI’s or that they should necessarily make laws to standardize the whole Android platform on one rule of chipsets (though that would be an interesting idea, it certainly works well for Apple and makes using an iPhone much more predictable). But there does need to be more consistency. Let’s learn something from Microsoft’s past with Windows and not let the manufacturers (or publishers) go crazy here.

I could go on.

Anyways, the main point of my posting was to tell you all that I am going to be posting more about Android, reviewing some apps and giving general advice to the world. Cheerio!



Happy Trails,
Sam.

Okay so there’s this company called “Dzyplastic” which makes little Android collectible figures. AND I WANT ONE! The Series 1 collectibles are already out and sellin like hotcakes on crack, and they’re coming out with a Series 2. If you know what’s good for you, if you truly love me, you will get me one. Send it to me. (no seriously if anyone out there wants to get one for me, email me at chasinglilly@aol.com and I will message you my mailing address!) These things look sweet, and I can’t wait to have one!

Series 1 of the cute little things

This Android is racing somewhere for some reason. I guess...

Doh! Look! It's a cute little cupcake!

Happy Trails,
Sam.

[via Dzyplastic Blog]

Immediately after posting the last post about Angry Birds, I was made aware of an app which just showed up on the Android Market named: Angry Frogs. This game seems familiar somehow. Now don’t be fooled, this game may bear a similar name as the famous mobile game, but that’s where the similarities end! Oh wait… no… no, that’s not true at all.

As Android Central asks, “Let’s see how long this one stays in the Market”

Happy Trails,
Sam.

[via Android Central]

If you don’t know what Angry Birds is, then shaaaammee onnn youuuu! Even my uncle knows what it is! (whatever that’s supposed to mean) Oh, and if you really don’t know what it is, watch this:

It’s basically the most popular mobile game worldwide other than snake, and the most addicting thing since cream cheese! I’ve been playing Angry Birds for a number of months now, and I’m currently making my way through the Angry Birds Seasons Christmas levels.

My mom got an iPad for Christmas this year (yeah, I know, pretty cool!) and while showing her how to use it, I made sure to download Angry Birds to it. Basically she’s been obsessed with it since. In fact, in between watching The Princess and the Frog on the Netflix app, that’s about all I’ve seen her do! Almost as surprising, my iPad owning uncle called out of the blue yesterday to (whadda you know?) suggest she download Angry Birds!! So since Christmas my sister and her friend have also played the game, and been quickly addicted. I’m proud my family is an Angry Birds loving one

In honor of this fact, I decided I’d post a hilarious Angry Birds fan-made video! It’s a little crude, but it’s a pretty high-quality video, too. It’s from an Israeli comedy show named ‘Eretz Nehederet’ (translated: ‘A Wonderful Country’). Enjoy!

Happy Trails,
Sam.

Happy Halloween, everybody! Hope you all have an awesome/spooky/candy-filled day of wonders! In honor of Halloween, here’s a picture of the cutest costume ever made (along with the cutest kid on the face of the earth)!

Happy Trails,
Sam.

PS – Google, you’re amazing and awesome for putting Scooby Doo on the homepage for Halloween!

First off, this is just crazy some crazy-cool news. You may or may not have heard about Google making prototype driverless cars. Well apparently they’re not only real, but they’ve been on the road for a while, and they look pretty crazy. The laser up on top of the car maps out the surrounding area in real time, and acts accordingly. Just watching it work is pretty cool:

Second, (and this is actually rather old news, but I meant to post about it earlier this month) Android is now the most popular smartphone OS! Woot!! Some of you may remember that a little bit ago I finally upgraded phones to the DROID X, and have been loving it. Before, I had a Voyager but used my iPod Touch for basically everything except phone calls/texting. So for me, it was really a switch from Apple’s iOS to the Google Android OS. And while I truly loved iOS (and sometimes miss it’s stability), the control, freedom, and open-nature of Android have since completely won me over. Plus Steve Jobs is starting to snobbishly let the spotlight get to his head, but more on that in a minute…

Lastly…

Now come on, Apple. It’s time to stop this pointless masquerade against Adobe. Flash is a necessity for web-viewing these days. Banishing Flash is pointless for a media device of any kind, detrimental to content availability, impossible to defend logically, and ludicrous from a marketing standpoint. Listen, Steve Jobs, you’ve already laid down your “reasoning” for blocking consumers from accessing the vast majority of web-content, and now it’s time to wake up to reality. You’re not the only high-end smartphone OS out there anymore. Steve can rant all he wants about how the open-ness of Android is really a big problem (Hey, it’s a pretty good disguise! Fooled me!), but Verizon, Sprint, and Google have all monopolized on the public knowledge that the iPhone OS and the App Store are obnoxiously closed systems with their Android ads. I’m sorry iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users. I was right there with ya for a while.

Which is yet another reason I love Android: Flash 10.1 support? Check “yes”. I can view full web pages and have videos running in-page at the same time, or maybe I could head over to PopCap and play some flash Bejeweled.

On a side-note, there’s been talk of Microsoft possibly acquiring Adobe sometime in the future. I hope these talks and meetings don’t actually go anywhere. I love Adobe just as they are, and even if the combination would help level the field against Apple and Google again, I think keeping Adobe independent is important to keeping their products and creativity unmatched.

Happy Trails,
Sam.



edit — I figured it would be interesting to put up an article from TechCrunch attempting to rebut claims of Android’s openness as compared to iOS. I don’t agree with the article, and it leaves out many points. In fact, it says nothing about Android and more about the carriers and their crap restrictions (which, if you’re a smart techie, you can get around ). Butttt, it’s a good read if you’re into this sort of thing: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/09/android-open/

I just yesterday finally got my new phone. It’s the Droid X by Motorola, and it’s my first 3G smart phone. I figured I would give my quick thoughts on it, and what better way to do that than using the phone itself to write this post? First off, it’s an Android phone, though as far as I am aware, the new Froyo update is not available yet for the device. Not that I really care, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anyways since I just got it.

Previously I’ve only had experience with the iPhone/iTouch OS, so Android is something new for me. But back to the device…

It has a huge screen at 4.3 x 2.sumthin inches, which my abnormally large fingers love. At first my biggest concern was the fact it has no keyboard. Due to my previously mentioned fingers I usually need some sort of QWerty keyboard. However, as you can see it’s actually a bit of a non-issue because of the large screen.

The camera is 8 megapixels and takes HD video. The camera is pretty good for a phone, though I won’t be throwing out my standalone camera (if i had one).

All in all it’s pretty great, an i’m already being converted to the Android… which is saying something, cause for a long time I supported the iPhone OS. I have faith in Google and Android, and the openness of the Android OS is something I totally dig.

Happy Trails and Namaste,
Sam.