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URL Hunter offers a whole game in your browser's address bar
Perhaps you saw (and even played) URL Hunter when it was being passed around the Internets a little while back -- it's a tiny little HTML 5 game that takes place all inside a long Uniform Resource Locator in your web browser's address bar. The HTML script moves a few little "a" characters around, and you can line them up in your sights with arrow keys, pressing space to fire and shoot as many as possible within a time limit. Developer Corey Johnson, formerly of Maxis and now working at Github, says the game was developed over just a few hours of programming time. After reading about HTML 5's address bar API, he decided to try and make it interactive, and came up with URL Hunter. He had "lots of ideas at first, but cut most of them because of my self-imposed time constraints" of only a few hours of work. Johnson says that HTML 5's Canvas element offers much more "potential" for browser-based games than his URL hacking. But that hasn't stopped us from getting the initial funding together for Joystiq Publishing's first browser-based product, Call of Document Object: Model Web Design 2.
Iconfactory working on open-source iOS frameworks for Mac OS X
The Iconfactory is one of the premiere Mac development houses, and as Iconfactory developer Craig Hockenberry posts on his blog, they've just contributed to the developer community "in a big way." The team has introduced an open source framework called Chameleon, which provides apps designed for iOS an easier porting path to run on Mac OS X as well. Most of the work came from tools built to handle Iconfactory's own apps, but they've released the code to other developers interested in reusing iOS code for Mac OS apps. A lot of the ins and outs we'll leave for the developers to figure out (the project page admits that Apple may be working on exactly the same kind of solution, and Iconfactory says that if Apple tells them to shut it down, they will), but the bottom line for us users is that developers accustomed to creating iOS apps will have an easier time bringing those same projects over to Mac OS X. That means more quality iOS apps making the leap onto the Mac App Store, and better selection all around. The project is far from done -- Iconfactory admits that it was really just a toolkit built for their own apps, and the code has lots of holes that the documentation doesn't cover. But they are working on it and accepting donations, and interested developers will be able to contribute as well. It sounds like an interesting project, and it should pave the way for even better apps on both platforms going forward.
WebM components for IE9 bring further video compatibility to Windows, end to codec conflict?
We've been reporting on the drama over Google's WebM ever since Microsoft compared the video format to Esperanto earlier this year, but despite a war of words, Google and Microsoft seem to be playing nice as of late. What originally appeared to be a mere WebM plug-in for IE9, has turned out to be a full set of components for the Microsoft Media Foundation (MF) API, which means even more compatibility within Windows. Because the components are installed directly to the operating system, you'll be able to watch WebM videos in other programs that support MF, such as Windows Media Player 12 for Windows 7. We suppose this could be the signal for some sort of a truce over disputed video formats, but, really, what's the fun in that?
Internet Explorer 9 gets WebM support with 'preview' plug-in from Google, internet video gets more friendly
Google has released an early WebM plug-in for Microsoft's latest and greatest browser, IE9 -- stepping in to fill a gap that Microsoft itself refused to fill. You may remember the firm's decision to not build in support for the new standard natively, but that it was "all in" with HTML5, WebM's close cousin. Billed as a "technology preview" at this stage of the game, the add-on will enable users to play all WebM video content just like the good Internet overlords intended them to, despite the fact that an additional download is needed. Microsoft said that it would allow for support and it appears to be following up on its word, regardless of other harsher comments made separately. Isn't it good to see big companies getting along? Now if only these same niceties played out in the mobile landscape, then we'd really be getting somewhere. [Thanks, ChrisSsk]
Super Hero Squad Online fires up closed beta
Get ready, true believers! News has come down the wires today that Gazillion's Super Hero Squad Online has officially headed into closed beta. What this also means is that with this announcement, the open beta for this family-friendly MMO is one step closer. Hopefully, it also means that we'll be seeing some forward momentum on the other (read: more adult) Marvel MMO, which Gazillion has indicated is under development as well. For those not familiar, Super Hero Squad Online is based on the saturday morning cartoon, The Super Hero Squad Show, which has introduced the Marvel characters to a whole new generation. SHSO will be releasing as a free-to-play game with an optional subscription to unlock more content -- no word on the price point, currently. Another thing of note is that the game will be playable via browser, offering players a fast in to the action without exorbitant pre-downloads. A promotional comic for Super Hero Squad Online is also available at Taco Bell, which gives a bit of story and offers up a code for an "exclusive super-hero" according to Gazillion's release. So, if your kids -- or you -- would like to hero up with Super Hero Squad Online, head over to the official site and get signed up. Excelsior! %Gallery-93313%
Sony Ericsson details Xperia Play development: buttons easy, touchpad just a little trickier
In a post on Sony Ericsson's Developer Blog coinciding with the official launch of the Xperia Play at MWC earlier this month, the company clued in developers on how to take advantage of the game-specific controls they'll be dealing with on that glorious slide-out board. In short, it's insanely straightforward for the most part: the hard buttons just generate standard key codes, which explains why existing games worked so well with the unit we'd previewed. The only tricky part comes into play with the center-mounted touchpad, which can't be accessed through the standard Android SDK -- for that, you'll need to turn over to the NDK, the native-code escape hatch that Android devs use when they need higher performance and want to get closer to the hardware. SE's published a 16-page guide on getting to the touchpad through the NDK, and it seems straightforward enough -- and plenty of game developers are well acquainted with the NDK already, anyway -- so we're guessing it won't be much of a hurdle. Getting devs to support an input method that's only available initially on a single commercial device might be a bigger hurdle... but we digress.
Nexus S OTA 2.3.2 update rolling out now, your SMS relations will thank you
Embarrassing SMS misdirect bug on your Android device? Nexus S owners should start checking their phones now for an over-the-air update that's supposed to fix the problem. It's being rolled out gradually, so just be patient if it's not there yet. How will we know the problem's gone for good? We'll just assume so until we find out otherwise, in some unfortunate manner. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Next-gen iPad may come with proximity sensor, iOS 4.3 beta reveals
Some careful digging in the iOS 4.3 beta has revealed an intriguing new string intended for the iPad's Settings menu. As you can see above, users will be able to toggle a new auto-unlocking feature on their iPad, which would respond to closing and opening of the slate's cover (or case, or sleeve, or whatever). Though the iPad already has an ambient light sensor, the one true way to make this functionality work is by employing a good old proximity sensor, so we can probably pencil that into our ever-expanding list of iPad 2 attributes. Who'd have thought there were so many ways to improve on a magical revolution, eh?[Thanks, Mike]
HTML5 gets a brave new logo for this brave new world
The lynchpin for all discussions of open web standards, HTML5, has been spruced up with a dedicated logo from its parent organization, the W3C. We'd wax poetic about it, but that job has already been done: "It stands strong and true, resilient and universal as the markup you write. It shines as bright and as bold as the forward-thinking, dedicated web developers you are. It's the standard's standard, a pennant for progress. And it certainly doesn't use tables for layout." [Thanks, Matt]
Android text messaging bugs acknowledged, fixes detailed
Hear that thunderous roar off in the distance, growing louder (and more frightening) as it persists? That is the sound of excited Android users emailing us to inform their fave gadget site that Google has just sent users an update to that little embarrassing SMS bug that we reported a while back. There seem to be two distinct issues: users have reported both opening one message to have a completely different message appear, and / or sending an text message to one contact yet having it delivered to another contact entirely. We need only say one word: sexting, to highlight just how dangerous this could be! Google promises us that a fix for these two issues are in the works. In the meanwhile, check out the e-mail below to read their response and work-around. [Thanks Jon, and thanks to everyone else who sent this in!]
Android still has horrible text messaging bugs that'll get you fired, busted, or otherwise embarrassed
Pardon us if the headline is a little sensational, but this is one that we've personally experienced -- and it's not pretty. For at least the last couple versions, Android has been plagued with a couple extremely serious bugs in its text messaging subsystem that can ultimately end up causing you to text the wrong contact -- even contacts that you've never texted before. There appear to be a few failure modes; the one we definitely experience on the Gingerbread-powered Nexus S involves being routed to the wrong thread when you tap it either in the Notifications list or the master thread list in the Messaging application, so if you don't notice, you'll end up firing a message to the wrong person. More seriously, though, there's also an open issue in Android's bug tracking system -- inexplicably marked "medium" priority -- where sent text messages can appear to be in the correct thread and still end up being sent to another contact altogether. In other words, unless you pull up the Message Details screen after the fact, you might not even know the grievous act you've committed until your boss, significant other, or best friend -- make that former best friend -- texts you back. There seem to have been some attempts on Google's part over the year to fix it; we can't confirm that it still happens in 2.3, but for what it's worth, the issue hasn't been marked resolved in Google Code... and it was opened some six months ago. This is akin to an alarm clock that occasionally won't go off (we've been there) or a car that randomly won't let you turn the steering wheel -- you simply cannot have a phone that you can't trust to communicate with the right people. It's a deal-breaker. We're pretty shocked that these issues weren't tied up and blasted to all affected phones as an over-the-air patch months ago, but whatever the reason, we'd like to see Google, manufacturers, and carriers drop every other Android update they're working on and make sure this is completely resolved immediately. Want to see this fixed as much as we do? Scroll to the bottom of the Google Code page and hit "Vote for this issue and get email change notifications." Update: So Google's changed the priority of the bug to "critical," which we'd say is a solid start. They're also asking people to simply star the bug rather than commenting on it -- unless you've got constructive information to add that might help them reproduce the problem, of course. Thanks, everyone!
Android 2.3 Gingerbread's source code now available
Want to dig through 2.3 and see what all the fuss is about for yourself? Well, you're in luck, because Gingerbread has just hit the Android Open Source Project's repository, which means you can set up your machine to download the code. It's great news for hardware companies that don't care to get Google's certification to include Android Market access -- but it's also great news for casual and serious hackers alike who are looking to craft some seriously wild, wacky custom ROMs. So, what are you waiting for? Get to it, folks. [Thanks, Mike] Update: Eager coders are being asked to "wait a few hours or a few days" before downloading to balance out the server load -- and while you're likely not interested in doing that, it's probably in your best interest to heed the advice.
Google hides mathematical puzzle in Cr-48 video, rewards its solver with a laptop
Watching Google destroy Cr-48 laptops for fun can't have been easy for any of you, but it turns out that the wily geeks of Mountain View had a clandestine purpose to their malevolence after all. An equation, scribbled out in old school chalk in the background of one scene, attracted the attention of a Sylvain Zimmer, who, together with a group of like-minded geeks, set about trying to solve it and discover its meaning. A full day's worth of cryptographic work later, Sylvain was left with a set of numbers he was able to convert into letters, which in turned spelled out "speed and destroy." Appending goo.gl, Google's URL shortener, to the front of those words got him to a screen congratulating him for being "first to figure out our MENSA-certified puzzle" and promising to send him a Cr-48 laptop as his prize. Kudos to Sylvain... and to Google for being such irrepressible geeks.
PSA: Windows Phone 7's third-party apps easy to decompile, native code hooks exposed
We suspect most developers have gathered this since MIX earlier this year -- many of them have been dealing with variations of the problem since the genesis of Microsoft's .NET Framework -- but we thought we'd throw out a note that word's getting around on how easy it is to tear apart applications downloaded from the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, gain access to their resources, and get a look at their inner workings. Microsoft has been encouraging developers on the desktop to make this tough by using code obfuscation tools -- Dotfuscator, specifically -- for many years, but Dotfuscator's developer has only just released a free version (through March 31 of next year) for WP7, so it's made things tough to secure. In other words: business as usual, and "business as usual" isn't as airtight as your average white-hat dev would like. On a happier note, an enterprising coder by the name of Chris Walsh has fleshed out some hooks into unmanaged (read: native) Windows Phone 7 services. It's not what we'd call a "jailbreak" -- you're not altering the security settings of the device in any way -- you're just taking advantage of undocumented services Microsoft has in place, though it's still very cool. Walsh promises some tutorials on hooking into cool stuff like file system and registry access soon, but he notes that apps using these hooks are still running as managed tasks, meaning they can be slapped around by the kernel (killed, suspended, and so on) just as any other WP7 app can -- and we also doubt you'd be able to get Marketplace approval using this stuff.
Kinect running on OS X
Microsoft recently released its Kinect motion sensor system for the Xbox 360 -- it's a little camera-equipped device that plugs into the game console and lets you control game titles, Wii-style, with just your body in lieu of any actual controllers. Just a few days after release, the hardware was hacked, and now hacker Theo Watson has released an OS X port of libfreenect, a library that allows you to run Kinect's output directly into OS X. You can watch video of it all working right after the break -- he doesn't seem real excited about it (that, or he's tired after putting it together), but it is a cool little setup. It's still a work in progress (the device has only been out for a week or so), and of course this is all unofficial -- Microsoft will never be interested in wanting to hook the Kinect up to anything but one of their Xbox 360 gaming consoles. But we've certainly seen some fun things done with the Wii controllers an Apple devices, so maybe something cool will come out of this hack as well.
Let's try Let's Tap's Free Style mode
A year after Let's Tap game's release, Sega has revealed the code to unlock the game's "Free Style" Mode, allowing you to manipulate the Wiimote any way you like instead of setting it down on a flat surface and tapping. Let's ... Shake? Swing? Throw? Wait -- not that last one.
The story behind the Twitter worm
When we heard about this malicious JavaScript code that hit Twitter yesterday, we were kind of relieved: perhaps it was nature's way of ridding us of celebrity micro-bloggers. But as the day went on, it seemed that even if this were the case, a sordid tale was emerging: apparently the whole thing began with a Norwegian programmer named Magnus Holm, who had experimented with a flaw in Twitter's website that let users execute code on a mouseover. His version of the code simply replicated itself: "The purpose was simply to see if it was possible to create a worm," he told The New York Times, adding that he was surprised it had spread as quickly as it did. "Because it was very easy to delete the Tweet that contained the worm, I expected that everyone would just delete it the moment they realized that they've been 'infected.'" But soon enough, folks were updating the code for malicious purposes, including redirects to spam sites and, perhaps worst of all, Rickrolling. By 8:30 AM President Obama's Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had inadvertently sent the thing out to his followers, and by 10:00 AM (when Twitter had patched the hole) an estimated 200,000-plus users had been hit. Fortunately, it looks like things are back to normal, which reminds us: @justinbieber hasn't tweeted for over twenty-four hours. We hope he's OK!
'Rainbow tweets' start hammering Twitter after onMouseOver exploit discovered
Oh dear. Some wise guys have discovered a JavaScript exploit in Twitter's web interface, which uses an onMouseOver instruction to hijack your own tweeting voice and force you to say things you don't want to say. Simply put, hovering on some of these colorful new tweets can result in you tweeting out the spammiest spam you ever did tweet. So, as with Tetris, be wary of those blocks of color, they are the harbingers of doom. And until the Twitter crew wrap their brains around sealing this vulnerability off, we'd recommend just using any of the cornucopia of Twitter apps floating about in the webosphere. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Update: The Twitgineers are already dealing with the issue and are rolling out a patch that should span the entire Twitterverse before too long.
iPod nano code hints at possible video playback
It may not be anything more than a bit of excess or leftover code, but it looks like there's at least a hint of some possible video playback capabilities lying deep in the code for the new iPod nano (the internal settings property list, to be specific). As discovered by Erica Sadun over at TUAW, that includes options for things like TV subtitles, captions and alternate audio, and even a fit-to-screen option -- for the perfectly square aspect ratio of the nano's screen, perhaps? Of course, there doesn't seem to be an option to actually make video watchable on a 1.5-inch screen.
Facebook for iPhone's new 'pull to refresh' looked a little familiar
While the new "Places" GPS check-in feature got most of the attention in Facebook for iPhone's latest update, a more subtle feature made its way into the app's interface: pull to refresh. Users of the official Twitter for iPhone app, previously known as Tweetie, will recognize this UI feature right away, because Tweetie creator Loren Brichter pioneered it and even filed a patent application for it. If you haven't had the chance to "pull to refresh," it takes advantage of the iPhone's "spring-loaded" page dragging behavior by refreshing content when you navigate to the top of a list and drag down. It's a neat UI trick, and once you use it a few times, you'll wonder why Apple didn't think of it. Facebook thought pull to refresh was a neat trick, too ... so neat that Facebook allegedly "appropriated" some open source code in order to intro the feature on its iPhone app. Shaun Harrison of enormego writes that after digging through the Facebook app's source code, he found some very familiar entries: "I finally found the class: TTTableHeaderDragRefreshView. I started looking over to code to see how they accomplished it, and that's when I realized it: this was our class [...] Facebook prefixed some variables, slapped their Three20 branding on it, restructured some code, but it was the same code we wrote. The same code we wrote, with zero mention of us." The story has a happy ending, though: once the Facebook for iPhone team became aware of the misattributed code, they uploaded a new version with the correct authorship information. Awfully sporting of them; both the engineer who incorporated the code and Facebook's manager of open source efforts took the time to comment on the enormego devs' blog and apologize. Down the road, Facebook may face an even greater hurdle with the pull to refresh UI element; if Loren Brichter is awarded a patent for pull to refresh, Facebook (and other apps) may have to pay licensing fees to incorporate it.
