Tapmates’ Robin Raszka redesigns Instagram for fun.
Forstall is quite literally claiming perfection while a hand model holds up this terrible example of everything that’s wrong with Apple’s commitment to typography.
— Khoi Vinh dissects the rhetoric around typesetting in the new iPhone 4 promotional videos.
Smokescreen
The Strongbad demo will make you a believer. This thing reads the actual SWF binary and creates native, browser based executions.
Explanation from Simon Willison:
Chris Smoak’s Smokescreen, “a Flash player written in JavaScript”, is an incredible piece of work. It runs entirely in the browser, reads in SWF binaries, unzips them (in native JS), extracts images and embedded audio and turns them in to base64-encoded data:uris, then stitches the vector graphics back together as animated SVG.
Incredible.
![Production artwork from Spaces of Play’s forthcoming iPhone game Spirits. Team member Andreas Zecher:
The game [borrows] some basic gameplay mechanics from Lemmings-style games, but has a very different graphical style and atmosphere. Players can manipulate the wind in the game world and guide the spirits towards the exit of each level using four different actions: Blow wind, suck in wind, dig tunnels and build bridges.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l0soj5VJ2V1qz6jndo1_400.jpg)
Production artwork from Spaces of Play’s forthcoming iPhone game Spirits. Team member Andreas Zecher:
The game [borrows] some basic gameplay mechanics from Lemmings-style games, but has a very different graphical style and atmosphere. Players can manipulate the wind in the game world and guide the spirits towards the exit of each level using four different actions: Blow wind, suck in wind, dig tunnels and build bridges.
Old, but good. David Lynch on the iPhone film experience. (And from the related videos, why he turned down Return of the Jedi.)
Eric Peltier’s DADADA-2010. Made me laugh.
The Font Game from Johno Boardley, Justin Stahl and Kari Pätilä is in the App Store approval queue, due out any day. It’s a single-player, quick-fire font identification game in which you race the clock to name 30 typefaces in a multi-choice format. The beautifully designed interface makes liberal use of H&FJ’s Whitney family, which is a welcome change from the usual Helvetica. I’ve played with an early beta and even then the subtle animation effects and slightly non-standard UI made for a very handsome product. I’m sure it’ll be a big hit.
Pocketball for iPhone
My good friend Matt has a new iPhone app out. It’s called Pocketball and it’s a physics puzzle in the style of The Incredible Machine and Enigmo. Like every good puzzle, it starts off easy and keeps getting more challenging. The rules are always clear, but you gotta get cleverer with each level to keep going. At a criminal $1.99, with no nickel-and-diming, and in this economy, you can’t afford not to buy it.
I’ve made it midway through the game in my first couple of days, and it’s quite fiendishly simple and challenging at the same time. The game’s graphics, also by its creator Matt Comi, are minimal and beautiful and add to its overall appeal.
The scary story of Hallokitty
Last October @avon and I built an app and submitted it to the App Store in plenty of time for Hallowe’en. It was approved in January of this year (thanks Apple). The point of the app is to scare your friends and mums by concealing unspeakable horrors behind some cute swipe-activated purring kittens. It makes grown men weep*, and works even better if you can trick your prey into listening through headphones.
And now our devilish, best Hallowe’en app ever can be yours. Follow @hallowkittyftw for free promo codes this weekend, “because you shouldn’t have to pay $0.99 for this pap”.**
*Possibly with laughter. **US store only though, Apple’s rules.
I’m pleased to announce version 1.6 of Ego is now available (iTunes link). This update includes a new widget type: Vimeo!
A very nice addition (that would be even better if it also displayed stats for channels and groups!).
