Categories
Technology

My Mobile Industry

With CES taking place right now and Apple soon to release their numbers for the holiday quarter, there is a lot of talk about the current mobile industry. There are many people better able to talk about the current state of the industry and many more willing to talk about where they see the industry going.

I’m going to briefly talk about what I would like from the mobile industry.

I’ll start with the low-hanging fruit:

  • lower data prices
  • LTE in rural markets
  • better reliability
  • no data caps (or at least much higher ones)
  • better customer support

Like I said, low-hanging fruit. I think most people would agree that those would be great changes to the overall industry. If this happened, I could see many rural customers ditch their current providers for mobile LTE connections only just because of the speed.

However, how about the devices?

For me, I don’t want a single mobile player to have control of the industry. I don’t want a “Microsoft” for the mobile space, that will be very bad for everyone. Not Apple, not Google, not Microsoft … no one should be able to control greater than 50% of the market at one time.

What I want is three strong players constantly competing with each other to make better devices that serve their customers. Right now I hope that Apple, Google, and Microsoft will go ahead and do that, each holding between 20% – 40% of the smartphone market at any given time.

That’s what I want from My Mobile Industry.

Skyward Sword Day 12: Songs

Another two hours of playing time in the bag and now I’m well over 30 hours for the total game. I was worried that this was going to get slow, but it was surprisingly fun.

SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW

Finding the last of the notes was not a huge deal, with the only issue for me being the very last note and needing to find my way to the top of the Great Deku Tree to overturn a stubborn pad. Part one of the song learned and the dragon even cleared out the forest for me so that it was dry again. I’m sure the residents of the forest will thank me later.

Then it was on to Eldin Volcano to find … Eldin. Sadly, you get knocked out of the sky, captured, and all of your gear is stolen.

Cue spy music!

So you head off and get your gear back and finally get to the top of the mountain to find that Eldin is more than willing to jut hand over the song to you. That was nice!

Eldin

I love the art direction for the dragons in this game. They look kind of funny, which is great.

Finally, off to Lanayru Province to find the last dragon (his name is the same as the province). This time, though, you are greeted to a pile of bones.

Well that’s not going to work.

Luckily, we already know that the timeshift stones can shift time … and those bones had to be alive at some point … so let’s find one of those. Luckily, there is one nearby and you’ll get to follow that powered card all the way around the gorge until finally you meet up with …

A SICK DRAGON!?

Lanayru

You get some hints, take a seedling back to the Sealed Temple, go back in time, plant the seedling, go back to your time, harvest the fruit and then head back to Lanayru and give him the fruit. He then gets better and teaches you the next part of the song.

If you are keeping track … that’s three of three when it comes to pieces of the song you need to learn in order to go back to Levias and learned the last part and finish this thing off!

I was wondering what the song was going to be, but I finally figured it out before I got there. Of course, the Song of the Hero is the main theme from The Legend of Zelda past. Nice touch.

Back to Skyloft and now I have to endure another trial. That’s for later.

The puzzles were great, once again, and I found myself needing to scramble to make sure I didn’t get caught a couple of times. It was overall a good search and ended up being shorter than I thought it was (which was good) and now I’m closer, ever so much closer, to finding the Triforce.

Categories
Life

Local Beer Wins

I’m a huge fan of the local, family-owned August Schell Brewing Company. Thus, it was good to find in my Twitter stream today that in 2011, one of their beers took #1 in the Best Cream Ales category at the 2011 U.S. Open Beer Championship.

Deer Brand

Boom. Nothing like the original.

The brewery also placed #10 overall. They had a number of #2 placements and one of my favorites, Stout, took #3 in its category. Excellent showing overall.

Categories
Technology

Google+ + Google Search is …

From TechCrunch we get “Google Fuses Google+ Into Search — And There Are Bigger Changes Afoot”.

I might be paranoid (still looking at maybe getting clinically checked for that one), but this just seems like a very slippery slope. Essentially Google+ “stuff” (pictures, links, etc.) are going to be getting high(er)-billing in Google search results.

It’s disconcerting because it means that Google+ stuff is going to be giving special treatment, if your stuff is not on Google+ then it will get bumped down below whatever that persons’s Google+ activity has been sharing.

So, SEO is now going to shift to trying to get as much stuff on Google+ in order to try and get into that very seductive personalized area on a person’s search page. Another land rush is on the way (just like Facebook Pages were in the not-so-distant past).

I’m probably blowing this out of proportion, but it just sounds a little suspect. Sometimes, personalization is not the key and I think that general web search is one of those things.

Bah, I’m just an old man.

Skyward Sword Day 11: Meet Flying Fish

After some time away, I’m back to Zelda. Right now I’m sitting at almost 30 hours of playtime and I have no idea how close I am to being done. Extremely satisfying.

SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW

When I last left, I had just found out that Zelda was not who we through she was and now I needed to head back and find the Triforce! So it’s off to Skyloft!

Guess what, no one knows what’s going on. Great. So now I need to head off and find the Sky Guardian (or whatever) and talk to him. Sadly, it seems that he has been pretty cranky recently so you’ll need to first learn how to use your bird to attack things (and that can be tricky) and then they’ll send you to the Lumpy Pumpkin to pick up some soup.

Excellent, we have the big guy’s favorite soup and now we should head to the large thunderhead to meet up with Levias.

He is kind of angry, but it’s because he has a parasite attached to him. So you battle the parasite (which is a pretty cool boss battle overall) and finally you get to speak with the guy.

Levias

Basically, he doesn’t know where to go either … but if you learn a song you’ll be able to find a clue on Skyloft. So now you’re off to find the other three parts of the song and then return to him to learn the last part. So we are heading back to the three areas we have been visiting to find the dragons there and learn the other parts of the song.

First stop, Faron Woods and you can only go back to the Sealed Temple. When you get there, you find that The Imprisoned is breaking out again … and you have to seal that guy back into the ground before you can continue.

Do so.

Finally you find out that Faron Woods has been flooded. Well, that’s going to complicate things immensely!

Flooded Faron Woods

Finally, you dive down and get into the Great Deku Tree, find that our friend the Water Dragon has flooded the forest to rid it of monsters. However, in order to get the song, you need to find little “note-tadpoles” and then report back. So that’s where I am.

This has maybe been the slowest part of the game for me so far, but it has included two boss battles (which were fun). Of course, my playtime was limited yesterday, so I’m hoping to get through the note-hunting next time and move onto the volcano soon.

I’ve been awed again by what Nintendo has been able to do with the Wii hardware with the Flooded Faron Woods. It is a seriously cool area. I think you’ll enjoy it.