charming
Latest
Free for All: Charmed, Zentia, I'm sure
Charm is one of those words that, as a kid, I never really understood. I always pictured some southern gentleman, lemonade in hand, wooing powdered belles from his porch on a hot summer's day: that's how I defined it. But now I think I understand it so much more, and I often wonder why this industry seems to often ignore the word, or has no idea what it means. It's easiest to explain it this way: You cannot be charming by acting cool. If you act cool, it comes out cheesy. The movie The Matrix, for example: trying to act so incredibly cool, but comes off only cheesy. You must simply be cool to be charming. You can also be truly wide-eyed, which is charming. Or innocent, which is much rarer, but still charming. Be warned: Top Gun was considered very cool, and Tom Cruise very charming, in their time. Shirley Temple, mainly because of the time period her movies were made in, is still charming. A Christmas Story is very, very charming. Reese Witherspoon's work in Election? Oozes charm. Roy Orbison? Cool and charming, despite looking like a grandmother. The same applies to MMORPGs. Seriously. Some games are trying to be way too cool, and should just relax a bit. Be fun. I recently discovered one of the most charming games yet in Zentia.
TUAW's Daily App: RunMonster
There are quite a few "run tracker" apps in the App Store (I know our own Erica Sadun is a big fan of RunKeeper). However, RunMonster is also worth a look, if only because it's just plain gorgeous. It lets you do all of the usual things: track your runs and bike rides, keep stats on your workouts, or see maps of where you've been according to the iPhone's GPS. It goes further than that, though, with a very elegant and charming interface, and surprising ease-of-use. It will automatically name your runs according to streets, and it'll even group your runs and figure out whether you walked, biked, or ran, according to your speed. Even if you've already picked a running helper, give RunMonster a consideration. There's a free version to try out, and a US $9.99 version fills out the feature list nicely (with sugar like music controls and gestures) if you like the app. Like most of the great running apps out there, it won't necessarily make you a better runner, but it probably will make you enjoy the journey more.
