First, make sure you are sitting down because I’m going to reveal some shocking things about myself here:

In 1983 I was in high school.  (Yes, I am that old)  Pretty much I was late for school every day.  (again…  I know.. very surprising!)  As “punishment” I got detention and had to stay after school.  Detention could be spent in a variety of rooms, my preference was the computer lab.  The trick here was that I wanted to spend time in the computer lab.  So it was impossible to “punish” me.  At some point I think they caught on and made me spend my detention in a different room, but that actually punished them more than me, so eventually they gave in.  But I digress…

The point of this post is that in the 1980′s when I programmed, I just tried stuff to see what would happen.  I had no fear of typing “Run”.  The result was that I made some cool apps.  But these days, in iPhone OS, where I’m not that swift on objective-c, or these days Open GL ES – I tend to be taking more of a ‘research-research-research’ approach and am not clicking “Build and Run” as often as I would of when I was 16.  At least that how I feel at the moment.  I can’t say that it’s fear – because I know that nothing will explode.  But there’s something going on.

What do you think?  Are you less creative or less adventurous with technical things than you were when you were younger?

High Tech Monorails is a documentary I edited for my friend Rob Kelly.  It’s airing on Travel Channel and Travel HD several times this month starting Sunday at 7pm PST.  Set your TiVo and be sure watch it!

The show covers several of the world’s best monorails including the Schwebebahn in Wuppertal Germany, which was built over 100 years ago.  It also takes you to China aboard the 1.2 billion dollar mag lev that reaches 270 mph, and to Las Vegas where a monorail was built to connect the back side of the strip’s casinos.  And the film talks about how Los Angeles was offered a free monorail in the 60′s but turned it down due to pressure from the oil companies.  And it asks the question “why aren’t we using these technologies more today.”  All egos aside, it’s a delightful way to spend an hour.  I hope everyone gets a chance to check it out.

Hit the link to see a clip from the show…

Ok!  So I’m including this next section to tease Rob a little, plus having edited the show, this is one of the oddest things I’ve seen all week…

I figured there was probably a clip of the show on youtube because there’s a clip of everything on youtube.  I searched youtube for High Tech Monorails and I found this golden little gem of a clip:

I can’t wrap my head around this but it’s a show about japanese people watching High Tech Monorails. Hmmm.

ANYWAYS!  For a REAL clip you can go to hightechmonorails.com

I watched, hoping for a BSG-style re-imagined remake of the 80′s original and I got the feeling that’s what they were going after. For some reason I can’t quite tell yet if they succeeded. I didn’t watch much of the original miniseries (or any iterations thereafter) but remember enough know a few spoilers. So I was glad that the pilot covered a lot of ground and I think it got us far enough along the story to hopefully be able to kick into full swing next week.  In comparison I felt both BSG and Sarah Conner Chronicles had excellent pilots and got things rolling right away. I think it might take a few more episodes to see how well I’m going to like this. But at least they got me willing to give it a try for a few more weeks. For now we’ve got a season pass. What did you think?

To my point, a similar thing has certainly happened to the makers of the iPhone app Bang!Bang! and Boom!BOOM! Shotgun Free (iTunes links).  They had what they thought was an original idea. They set out to make it professional, using realistic graphics and hollywood sound effects, and they worked it through the iPhone app approval process.  Only to find out that Apple was approving several ‘gun’ apps all around the same time.  No proof of this of course, but I suspect that Apple might have held theirs back to time the releases closer together. I believe theirs did hit the store first, but others soon followed, including what can only be described as an extremely cheap knock off called Shotgun Pro.  But plagiarism is the best form of compliment, right?  And competition is what makes this country great.

But still, the idea that Shotgun Pro had made it to #2 on the Entertainment charts got under their skin a bit.  And to be honest it also makes me scratch my head as it is a somewhat un-inspired soundboard app.  So to combat it they too set out on a mission, to ‘pop a cap in the arse’ of the competition.  Take the jump to read on and see the video…

Here’s what seems to happen in the app store: When someone comes up with a decent idea and makes an app, others follow and make a bunch of copy-apps.  In the interest of good competition, you would expect the copies to raise the bar, thus forcing the original apps to also add features and get better.  But instead it seems that the copies are often cheap imitations with a little less going for them.

There’s also the whole bogusness (that’s a word) of the review process.  A fairly cheap campaign is to hire a few hundred of your friends to buy your app and praise it, and/or buy the competition and slam it.  As a side note, it’s the same problem that DIGG has. I could DIGG an article with exclusive photos of a meteor hitting a school bus, but unless I have 100′s of friends to dig it for me it will get buried in about 45 seconds.  Similar problem exists with the app store.  Unless you’re willing to play this game and also exploit the system your app will be rated fairly low (from the competition).  Normal average honest app purchasers rarely rate apps, so until your app has 10′s of 1000′s of buyers the bogus ratings will weigh down your overall score.

Check out the ratings for Shotgun Pro (as of March 27th 2009)…

How is it possible in the real world to have 129 people who just LOVE the app, and 112 people who hate it?  Those ratings are clearly ‘fixed’ by people buying the app just to rate it.  Probably on both extremes of the scale, the high side by them and low side by their competition.  By the way, I don’t blame Apple too much for this nor do I have a suggested solution.  Any system that can be exploited will be exploited.  It seems to me that if you really want to know if an app is good or not talk to a friend who has it, or look at an app review site like toucharcade.com.  I also suspect that iPhone OS 3.0 might help – as it should allow free versions that are upgradable to pay versions.

Dambia’s first move was to release Boom!BOOM! Shotgun FREE, which works similar to the Bang!BANG app that I premiered a few weeks ago.  But this week they’ve gone a step further and released BoomBOOM Shotgun PRO, which contains 5 different guns, better help pages, and a few surprises.

A company representative had this to say, “We were trying to elevate things above “soundboard” apps by adding motion, decent graphics and incredible sound… you know, because it’s an iPhone.”  But the competition just slapped the word PRO on their versions which didn’t have any pro features, had static images, and sound effects that clipped.  In response they said that they “decided to make it right for the consumer and reset the bar.  Anyone that wants to buy this sort of app shouldn’t be paying for distorted audio, amateur UI’s and clip art.”

For more info you can go to kaisakura.com/firearms/

I’m glad to see Jimmy embracing the tech side so much that he’d interview Joshua. The Apple fanboy in me is also comforted by the mac on his desk.

You can watch the entire episode below (for as long as the link works) or at hulu.com.  Full screen it’s almost as good as cable…

UPDATE: After watching I realized that the TiVo description was wrong. Turns out the Lonely Island Boys were not on that episode.  For shame.  Here’s another clip of them with Jimmy from Feb 11th.

Rumor has it that it took several tweaks and a change to the App’s rating before being allowed into the iPhone App store. However the first app (of several models) has finally passed through and should be available early next week is available in the app store now.

They have several other guns coming out as well, including an O.G. version that you hold sideways, a Shot Gun, and something along the lines of an AK. Here’s a promo video showing several of the upcoming gun models.

Kai Cherry of RnSK Softronics, part of the team that created the apps in partnership with Damabia, Inc., explained to me that each gun model is carefully crafted – down having a specific look, realistic options, and unique animations. Even the firing mechanisms are individually tuned to that particular firearm. Here’s a preview image of their gangsta O.G. version, due out soon:

There are options for each gun app to be use lefty or righty. And you can disable the intro video to get to the action faster. Even though the app doesn’t officially launch until Monday, it is actually available in the app store now (iTunes Link) for $1.99. For more info you can go to kaisakura.com/firearms/

For more check out http://www.coraline.com/

Computers:

I believe that even with all of the denial from Jobs, Apple will release a tablet netbook-type computer this year AND that it will have a touch screen and no keyboard. 9 to 5 Mac is expecting an iPad to be announced at Mac World in a few weeks but was describing it as just a large version of the iPod touch. But if that one turns out to be just a PMP, I still think there will be another device this year that is a tablet mac real computer.

I think it’s also very plausible that there will be a touchscreen iMac in 2009.

I’ve already made claims about 2009 being the year of cheap flash ram. I’ll go out on a limb and say sub-$100 512GB thumb drives by the end of the year.

TV / Home Video:

This one is a rebuttal to a prediction I read earlier. Some dude predicted that Bluray would peak and start to die this year. I disagree on that one – it will continue to strengthen. David asked “what price will Hollywood BD’s get down to this year?” I say $15 if you buy them the first week they come out at Best Buy. David says “$7, that’s the only way they’ll compete”.  I’m not feeling the $7 thing but most titles having a regular retail price of $20.

David is predicting new TV that are also NAS boxes.  So that’s a TV that has a hard drive in it – with services like ftp, torrent, itunes server, media player, etc.

I predict that TiVo will come out with a new box that acts as a central DVR for your whole house – it will be the one with the hard drive.  They’ll also have satellite boxes that don’t contain hard drives and will ONLY stream media from that main box.  OH AND they’ll have the gull to charge a monthly fee for those extra boxes even though they are providing no real service on them – as they will only stream the data from one box I own to another box I own.

Food:

David is claiming that we will see new hybrid breeds of fruit. Something along the lines of a banana mixed with a strawberry. The idea is his but the example is mine.

Life predictions and other randomness:

I will, in 2009, eventually get an iPhone app finished and for sale on the app store.

Fox and Warner Brothers will come to an agreement and Watchmen WILL be released but not on March 6th – more likely the 4th of July weekend.

That’s all I got in me tonight.  Get your predictions going here in the comments…

UPDATE:

Something weird happened with our comment system, possibly relating to a leap year date problem – not sure.  Anyway we lost a couple of comments on this post. So here are Shannon’s predictions for 2009:

• I will change my hair color.
• 4 of our friends will get engaged.
• 3 of our friends will get pregnant.
• My mother will paint some room in her house.
• Your father will buy a powerbook.
• Satellite radio technology will include the ability to rewind a song on the radio and purchase music via your car stereo.
• Big 80′s hair will make a come back.