PeKay's Little Author

This presentation was actually the first time I had heard of this application. So in order to get familiarized, i decided to go ahead and try it myself. This app apparently originated from Japan, which i thought was really cool. It has some really cool features and the UI is really cute. Users can basically create little story books and share them across the board with other users of the application. Last I saw, the app has about 127 monthly users, which is not a lot but still significant. I was also amazed at the depth of implementation of the app. 

Initially I thought it would be a flash plugin, but actually it really is all HTML and javascript. That's pretty amazing to me, as the implementation is definitely not something trivial.

The presenting team did a wonderful job with the presentation. I found it really engaging and the layout of the slides were very attractive and really relates to the application. They also brought up a number of points which i agree with, one of which was the interactive UI of the application, particularly the drag and drop feature. This makes it really appealing for kids (thats what they usually like to do right?). In applications like this, I feel the UI can be considered more important than any functionality. There would hardly be a point in implementing many features if the targeted audience didn't know how to use em. And honestly, I have never really given much thoughts about UI until now so I guess I have a lot of catching up to do.

Another point that really got my attention during the presentation was that the app seems to behave like two different entities on Facebook and the iPad. I wasn't really sure what that meant as I don't have it on my iPad to try it out. My guess is that it is still under implementation and it's likely that users will then be able to view books created on their Facebook accounts on their iPads. This kind of situation, to me, is really confusing? lol. I feel that developers should have focussed on setting up the integration before launching or the effects might actually be detrimental. Just my 2c =/.

The group also pointed out the possibility of implementing more sophistication targeted at a wider age group. The purpose of the app seems to be for social networking and encouraging wider social interactions for children. Children can design personal story books to share with other children. For older users, perhaps the idea of sharing books could also be attractive. Currently, its possible to share photos, albums or events, so perhaps sharing a book should not be so surprising. In fact, it might even take social interaction to a whole new level. Imagine sharing your albums in the form of a book, dragging and dropping your pictures and putting text by the side. Books shared can also be about experience and expertise, anything. That would be cool to me. Though, I think youths in the age group of 13-18 would probably find DotA more engaging. 

So, my thoughts for this application - well it is targeted for kids, so it's really kinda hard for me to relate to it. I did manage to create one book though, and I found the process rather, hmm .. 'okay'. It wasn't that boring (which was what i expected, sorry). But I can see how an app like this would be appealing to children. Its pretty much human nature to want to share stuff, like to recommend a good experience, or to advice against bad ones. For children, this would be more apparent as they would have less tendency to wanna keep things secret? haha. Anyway, I'm guessing this is the direction that this particular app is heading. A medium thats dedicated for children to share.

But really, is this feasible? As pointed out in the presentation, the age limitation for users of Facebook seems to go against this very purpose. On top of that, very few kids around the intended age group would actually understand how to use the app properly. The UI is good, but is still not so trivial that a kid could use.

After really looking into this application, I have also come to realize that the market targeted at kids is actually quite remarkable. There are so many apps aimed at children (i mean in the case of the iPad) and some of them have really good responses. Parents nowadays might want to let their children become more tech savvy by exposing them to such applications on the iPad as early as possible. I've never seriously considered this area of the market, but now i know its definitely worth investing time in.

Just my 2c, and i sincerely apologize for any offense made.. ^^;

HTML5

So the buzz this week is about HTML5. The features that caught my interests in particular are:
1) <video>
2) <audio>
3) <canvas> maybe?

Video. Awesome (because i don't know flash and am too lazy to learn about it). Its intuitive. just point it to a certain video file in your server and that should be all thats needed.

Audio. Same as above.

Canvas. This one was interesting. The potential of such a tool is too great to imagine.  For one that i can think of is fancy shaped divs. How i think it could be done :
1) Draw a large canvas area
2) Draw the shapes and use javascript to reference them as objects or DOM objects.
3) Allocate the div certain event listeners.

Imagine having a non-flash world map element divided into continents and being able to program those continents for various effects! (thoughts for a project that i am working on)

Other things that came with HTML5 are supposedly newer JS functions and CSS3. I don't know yet but I usually search for a functionality that i need on the internet or on jQuery. So far I've been able to get most of em easily, i don't know if they were JS from HTML5 or not. Or perhaps it referred to the new functions made to handle the canvas elements, which is a pretty huge framework from what i saw while exploring the tutorial. As for CSS3, I've actually been using them since some time back. and i didn't even realize that it was CSS3, lol.

Now for some doubts. From what i have understood so far, there are various ways to program stuff on iOS. Some are Xcode (which i have but am noob at), objective-C (no experience), or HTML5. So, that means within the core, an iOS is able to render HTML5? Will JS/CSS will be in as well?
Does it mean that Safari App actually uses the innate HTML parsing, but simply with the ability to point to other URLs? Really looking forward to some trial runs soon.

Finally, as a close heres some food for thought: Who initiated the development for HTML5?

APPLE (:

Back to SChool

Finally back. Already the third day in fact, but been too caught up in catching up. I mean, like wow.

Missing the first 2 weeks of curriculum didn't seem much to me. I thought it'd be mostly intro lectures like it had always been for the past 4 sems of experience. But no. It didn't occur to me that this time, the first 2 weeks can be considered the most important?  Because its this time that u try to form groups, which will be with you throughout the entire course line -- AND ultimately determine your fate. Twas kinda late that i realized that.

Having said that, I am really thankful of my group mates who were kind enough to take me in. I mean, even I know how bad it would look when you don't even show up for 2 lectures or can't attend group meetings. I'm not proud of it, but please believe me that it was not the outcome that i had wished for. Im really really thankful for the understanding shown to me by these good people. I know it hadn't been easy on them, and I will make it up to them.

Its finally the weekend, and the pace is slowed down a little. Finally less admin issues and requirements (except for 2 minus this one blogs which I'm behind for). Project group assignments, tutorials and tutorings are done too. So whats next? hopefully rest? haha. FBAssignment =/

Well this assignment experience has been, pardon my poor ability in expression, like a roller coaster ride. When things work out or when your animations turn out like the way u want them to, morale goes sky high. You keep coding for the next 3 hours. But when things don't turn out the way you want em to, div box aint showing the correct format, queries returning rubbish, morale goes ground zero. You spend the next 5 hours figuring out whats wrong. And so on. The result? A tired, but satisfied coder. lol

Then theres disagreements. Put in a nice way that is. Sometimes things aren't so nice though. We argue, i think every group does. and that sucks. I want things done my way, you want them yours, well.....so how?
It can be hard to appease everyone. I just hope that at the end of the day, they realize its nothing personal. I still like them as friends.

Coded from 12pm yesterday till 10am today. The original intention was to code through the night and attend the seminar, but guess the mind is just too weak. Actually, the body was weaker lol.

Enough rambling for now, gonna get some z's. Continuing the discussion online later at night.

To be continued (: