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Apple's revised plans for San Francisco store save historic fountain
Apple has provided the City of San Francisco with revised plans for its forthcoming flagship store, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Earlier this year Apple proposed to move its Stockton Street store to the Union Square shopping district. However, plans necessitated the demolition of a historic fountain, which created an uproar among area residents. The new proposal calls for the fountain to be moved about eight feet from its current location, rather than demolishing it. The new plans also feature a revised glass wall along Post Street and an eight-foot glass window in front of Stockton Street. Apple spokesperson Amy Bessette told the San Francisco Chronicle, "We've been working with the City of San Francisco as they review our ideas for an Apple Store on Union Square. Our latest design includes a store with more natural light and a plaza on Stockton Street that includes the fountain by Ruth Asawa, just a few feet away from its current location." Though the revised plans have met with acceptance among locals and government officials, they still need to be vetted fully before being approved by the city. [Flickr image by Ray Bouknight]
Bigpoint's Battlestar Galactica Online just the beginning of its master plan
In the Battlestar Galactica TV reimagining, the Cylons were infamous for having an overarching plan for their domination of the galaxy. Likewise, Bigpoint's plan for the newly-launched Battlestar Galactica Online is far more than it might first appear. For starters, the SyFy channel -- which is hosting the game on its website -- plans to aggressively run commercials promoting BSGO to the public. According to Gamasutra, Bigpoint itself is in a state of rapid growth with the recent acquisition of the former employees of Planet Moon for its relatively new San Francisco office. This newly combined workforce numbers over 80, and CEO Heiko Hubertz has them all mostly working on two major IPs: "We didn't acquire the company; we just took over the employees. So almost 40 of them are now working for us, and they're working mainly on Battlestar and The Mummy." Bigpoint's plan to tackle the North American market diverges from its European strategy by focusing on high-quality, multi-million dollar budget browser titles -- and so far, it's paid off, as the company is in the black. Hubertz thinks this was a smart move: "It was very quick -- the decision, 'Okay, if we want to be successful in the U.S., we have to change our thinking about this industry.' And that's the reason why we developed games here in the U.S., that's the reason why we picked a technology like Unity to develop games of high quality." You can read up on Bigpoint's plan over at Gamasutra, and don't forget to check out our first impressions of Battlestar Galactica Online.
TUAW predicts WWDC '08: How did we do?
The dust has settled from the stampede of announcements from yesterday's WWDC Keynote so it's time to take a look back at our predictions and see how we did! First, let's take a look at what was released at this year's WWDC: Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) seeds for developers MobileMe iPhone 3G iPhone 2.0 firmware ship date Let's see what we predicted: .Mac rebranding (with support for iPhone/PC) iPhone 3G Mac OS X 10.6 seeded iTablet Mac nano Flash on the iPhone Video on the iPhone Enterprise solutions for iPhone Over-the-Air syncing for "MobileMe" Redesigned MacBook Pro iPhone 2.0 delayed / ship date So, how did we do?Many of the things we predicted did actually come true (to our amazement!). We are extremely pleased with our predictions this year as we guessed everything that was released. All in all, we were 54.5% (6 right, 5 wrong) correct with our predictions. But we were spot on with the .Mac rebranding ("MobileMe"), 10.6 "Snow Leopard" preview, and the iPhone 3G / iPhone 2.0 announcement / delayed release. %Poll-15454%
