By Tim Kridel

Later this month, five of the world’s largest mobile operators plan to launch a virtual app store that will let their customers buy apps from one another. For developers, one potential benefit is access to each operator’s APIs to enable operator-specific additional features without rewriting big chunks of the app for each operator.

We spoke with Heavy Reading analyst-at-large Caroline Chappell, who recently met with the new app store’s architect, Michel Burger, head of architecture at Vodafone's Technology Strategy and Products Group. Although many of the store’s details are still under wraps -- Vodafone declined our interview request with Burger -- Chappell was able to get an overview of how the store will work and what it could mean for the app marketplace.

    

Not only are these amazing, and mind you, not rare at all, examples of Nature’s brainy creations truly stunningly impressive but they also bloom, in full color! Who can say this of our human brains? Maybe this is why we humans hide ours under our think sculls, while these awe-inspiring flowery creations so proudly expose theirs for all to admire?

Therefore, for the first time ever opening my mind to such a concept or possibility, and as a result of or reward for this broadmindedness, becoming so inspired by the amazing flowers initially discovered while in Japan, but their lasting impression reignited by that very garden I then entered while in Peru, I wish to pay homage to at least some of those flowers which I had the honor to make acquaintance with in my recent wanderings. For wherever I journey, whatever continent I land on, I find the Nature’s magnificence true to my expectations. Always glorious, forever astounding in its imaginary scope of artistry, and eternally adept at simply consistently and forever taking my breath away, it expands my mind, vision, perspective and gratefulness for its inspirational stimuli. In the same breath, it never seizes to take that certain air of human arrogance or “hot air” out of me, deflating my unjustified superiority while putting me in my place for who I am in contrast to its illustriousness, just another meek grain of sand in its infinite creative expanse and a never culminating, or running out of innovative ideas, breath of diverse possibilities.

 

With the success of Deathbowl ’98 a symbolic battle had been won.  But the war to get this stop-motion slugfest on the air as a regular series still remained.  Three major obstacles needed to be overcome for this to happen:  1) We needed a production staff.  2) We needed a production facility.  3) Most importantly, we needed an official greenlight from MTV and an order for episodes which we had yet to obtain.

“What the hell was that?!”

Krusty the Klown didn’t know what to make of Worker and Parasite, “Eastern Europe’s favorite cat and mouse team” when their indecipherable Cold War-era cartoon briefly subbed for Itchy and Scratchy.

It’s a safe bet Krusty would be far more favorably inclined towards Toys in the Attic, an animated stop motion feature directed by Jiři Barta and birthed in the Czech Republic, a land once trapped behind the “Iron Curtain” of Soviet rule.

When we left off last month, we were just getting ready to talk about where your revenues will come from.  If your project is a feature length film, your revenues will probably come from these sources in these amounts:

Cinema/Theatre	20% - 30%
Video Sales	35% - 45%
Television	23% - 30%
Ancillary	5%   - 10%

If your project is for television, the breakdown would look something like this:

Sometimes you walk in cocky and so sure of yourself that you may wonder why you even need to interview for the job in the first place?  Come on already you can’t be that good?  It’s great to possess self-confidence and to be self-assured when you are handling the interview process so well, but how do you really know you are acing the interview or living up to a higher standard?

Here are five ways to know you are hitting it out of the park whether you ultimately get a job offer or not:

 

By John Moore

Real-time strategy (RTS) games have had lasting appeal on PCs, and now the genre is moving to mobile devices. Needless to say, the shift from large displays to much smaller ones creates design challenges for RTS game makers. Kukouri Mobile Entertainment, however, has soldiered on with Tiny Troopers, available in the App Store and headed for other platforms. Kim Soares, chief executive officer of Finland-based Kukouri, recently discussed the company’s approach to miniaturized RTS.

 

Augmented reality and mobile apps have met before, but some developers contend that the next encounters will produce an even more sophisticated class of technology.

The field of augmented reality places a digital overlay on the real-world view through a mobile device’s camera. Over the past couple of years, developers have taken advantage of a mobile platform’s camera and GPS to provide apps that help users find particular stores, restaurants or other points of interest. Games such as ARDefender also employ augmented reality.

But app creators have begun to engage more of a mobile device’s sensors -- accelerometers and gyroscopes, for example. Augmented reality apps that use detailed animations are also in the works. The objective: inject augmented reality technology in a wider range of apps to boost the user experience.

Over dinner, Graham, Ivan, Tricia and I continued to discuss the project. We discovered the pub where we ate and slept, had people killed in two separate attacks.

Sony Picture Home Entertainment has just released on Blu-ray 3D, DVD and DVD, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, the latest film from those masters of zany stop-motion comedy and cheeky Brit humor, Aardman Animations. The transfer looks great and the animation is superb.  Though the film didn’t catch fire at the international box-office, don’t let that deter you.  The film is one of the few family movies that is enjoyable for youngsters with enough adult humor to keep the geezers happy as well.  The various DVD sets include numerous extras for hours and hours of “aarguably” the greatest set of stop-motion pirate movie festivities of all time.