Articles about programming in Cocoa are many and in many places. The majority of them are of very high quality. To help out, I made this collected index, searchable by title or by article content. This page is very easy to maintain, so please email me any other articles out there that I've missed. Of course, make sure you also know about Apple's Cocoa docs! Also note that there are many Cocoa languages beyond Objective-C.

It’s a bad game player, a bad app platform, a bad web browser, a bad video player, and, most disappointingly, a bad Kindle.

It's an ultramodern CSS-Framework which comes with common magazine design elements such as pagination, gutters and of course a basic grid.

iosframeworks.com provides a carefully selected list of frameworks and classes that can be used as building blocks when creating apps for iOS devices.

La prossima settimana il Daily, il quotidiano per iPad della News Corp., diventerà a pagamento. Sarà il momento della verità, secondo Jon Miller, il chief digital officer della News Corp. Il Daily dovrebbe essere disponibile anche in Europa tra non troppo tempo. 

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Quelli del Telegraph hanno scoperto che i lettori non usano l'iPad per sostituire il giornale di carta, ma piuttosto per leggere le notizie quando non riescono a comprarlo.

Telegraph mobile product development director Tim Rowell says: “People are realising that the iPad is not a direct substitute for the newspaper, they’re arguably complimentary.” [...] Some like News Corp (NSDQ: NWS) are betting on a straight-line conversion over time, from consumption of printed newspapers to consumption of newspaper-like app editions. If this is not the case, the decline of print and emergence of digital may remain less joined up and, inevitably, more complex than publishers had come to hope.

Insomma non è detto che il giornale di carta scompaia. Almeno in tempi brevi.

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WordPress is incredibly popular, so it’s no surprise that there are a few iOS apps out there written either specifically for WordPress or to at least integrate with WordPress.

WordPress for iOS – Of course, you have to start off the list with this app, the official WordPress app from Automattic. “With WordPress for iOS, you can moderate comments, create or edit posts and pages, and add images or videos with ease.” Requires a self-hosted WordPress or WordPress.com blog. (iTunes)
Express for WordPress – “Express is an iPhone app built to quickly and effortlessly publish images/links/notes and short posts, on the go, to your WooThemes powered WordPress website.” Requires either a tumblog theme from WooThemes or the WooTumblog plugin. (iTunes)
PhotoSmash – “PhotoSmash makes sharing images on your WordPress blog a snap! Don’t wait until you get back home to post your images.” Requires the PhotoSmash Galleries plugin. (iTunes)
Polldaddy – “Take the pulse of your customers directly for the first time ever with Polldaddy for iOS. Now all the power and flexibility of Polldaddy surveys are literally at your fingertips.” Requires a Polldaddy account and the Polldaddy Polls and Ratings plugin for WordPress interoperability. (iTunes)
ShoZu – “ShoZu connects you with all your favorite social networks from one app. Update all of your social networks at once – upload photos and videos to over 50 of your favorite sites including Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Photobucket, WordPress, MySpace, Photoshop, and email addresses at the same time.” Requires a ShoZu account. (iTunes)
WordPress Mobile Statistics – “WP Mobile statistics gives you the opportunity to check the information available from the WordPress.com Stats plugin from your iPhone/iPad or iPod Touch.” Requires the WordPress.com Stats plugin or a WordPress.com blog. (iTunes)
WP Dump – “WP-Dump is a simple and fast photo app for WordPress blog users to upload photos directly into their blog.” Requires the i-Dump iPhone Photo Uploader plugin. (iTunes)

Do you use an iOS app with WordPress that we’ve neglected to list? If so, we’d love to hear about it!

Apple has revealed the most popular and highest-earning iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad Apps for 2010 thus far, including top-sellers in the highly competitive Games category.

Apple’s lists divide apps into three categories — the most downloaded free apps; the top-selling paid apps and top-grossing apps (which includes both sale price and in-app purchases) — and also further divides those categories into categories such including games.

Chillingo’s Angry Birds was a top performer across devices, cracking the top ten in terms of both gross and paid downloads on both the iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch, with a free Lite version reaching the top ten list for iPhone/iPod Touch downloads. The lite version of the company’s Cut the Rope puzzle game was also a top free iPhone/iPod Touch download.

Popcap also had cross-iOS-platform success, with paid versions of Plants vs. Zombies appearing on the top selling and grossing lists for both platforms. Bejeweled 2+ Blitz also appeared on the top ten sellers and grossers lists for the iPhone/iPod Touch

In word games, Newtoy’s Words with Friends showed up on all three iPhone/iPod Touch lists, while EA’s licensed Scrabble achieved top sales and gross on the iPad.

Game apps dominated overall app downloads on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Nine of the top ten paid iPhone/iPod Touch apps across all categories were games, as were seven of the ten top-grossing apps on the devices and five of the top ten free apps.

On the iPad, however, games represented only two of the ten top-selling apps, one of the top-downloaded free apps and four of the ten top-grossing apps overall.

Unlike Apple’s regularly updated daily lists of to-selling and downloaded apps, which FingerGaming tracks regularly the 2010 lists are not ranked numerically. However, a look at the titles that reached the Top 10 gives some insight into the state of the iOS game market.

For instance, despite the iPad’s reputation for maintaining a higher average price point than the iPhone and iPod Touch, seven of the top ten selling games for the year are currently priced at $0.99. Five of the top-ten-grossing games on the device sell for $9.99, however, with only one $0.99 game cracking that list.

On the iPhone/iPod Touch, Playforge’s Zombie Farm managed to make the top-ten-grossing games list despite being offered as a free download.

The full lists of 2010 sales and downloads so far for 2010 (in alphabetical order) are as follows:

Most Downloaded Free iPhone/iPod Touch Games For 2010
Angry Birds Lite
FallDown!
Glow Hockey 2 FREE
Pac-Man Lite
Paper Toss
ROCK BAND FREE
Tap Tap Revenge 3
Unblock Me FREE
Words With Friends Free
Zombie Farm

Top-Selling Paid iPhone/iPod Touch Games For 2010
Angry Birds $0.99
Bejeweled 2+ Blitz $0.99
Cut the Rope $0.99
Doodle Jump $0.99
Fruit Ninja $0.99
Gamebox 1 $0.99
Plants vs. Zombies $2.99
Skee-Ball $0.99
Tetris $2.99
Words With Friends $2.99

Top-Grossing iPhone/iPod Touch Games For 2010
Angry Birds $0.99
Bejeweled 2+ Blitz $0.99
Call of Duty: Zombies $4.99
Doodle Jump $0.99
Monopoly $2.99
Plants vs. Zombies $2.99
Tetris $2.99
The Sims 3 $2.99
Words With Friends $2.99
Zombie Farm FREE

Most Downloaded Free iPad Games For 2010
Bubble Popper FREE
City Story
Farm Story Summer
Hit Tennis 2
Pimple Popper Lite
Pocket Frogs
Restaurant Story
Solitaire
Stair Dismount Universal
Texas Poker

Top-Selling Paid iPad Games For 2010
Angry Birds HD $4.99
Cake Doodle $0.99
Monkey Preschool Lunchbox $0.99
Pinball HD $0.99
Plants vs. Zombies HD $0.99
Predators $0.99
Real Racing HD $9.99
Scrabble for iPad $9.99
Shanghai Mahjong $0.99
Slice It! $0.99

Top-Grossing iPad Games For 2010
Angry Birds HD $4.99
Flight Control HD $4.99
Labyrinth 2 HD $7.99
MADDEN NFL 11 $2.99
Need for Speed Shift iPad $9.99
Pinball HD $0.99
Plants vas. Zombies HD $9.99
Real Racing HD $9.99
Scrabble for iPad $9.99
X-Plane for iPad $9.99

We were the first big media source to cover Flipboard, and ever since that moment the iPad application has taken over the technology scene leaving many scratching their heads: what about this application is so special? Let’s take a moment to break down just what Flipboard is, why it is a big deal, and what it means for future media applications.

To begin, Flipboard is not finished or perfect. It has annoying  feature holes, but like an unfinished painting you can see the bigger picture in the gaps. Flipboard needs, among other things, offline access, stronger posting capabilities for Facebook and Twitter, more pages per section, a ban button, and better controls to prevent repeat content. All that will be solved over the next several releases, it’s just a matter of time, so let’s put that aside.

Flipboard has a core quality that makes it special: it turns noise into signal. Across several content sources, Flipboard is more than an aggregator, it is an improver of content. It sharpens the influx. The two social networks that are built into the device are prime examples of this. Flipboard is a near-perfect (see above gripes) casual Facebook and Twitter application. Flipboard takes the tweets, and turns that feed into a readable, coherent, content spread. From tweets to product, from Facebook statuses to well organized nuggets of information, Flipboard brings in text and gives you a book.

In a way, Flipboard is the opposite of TweetDeck. TweetDeck takes Twitter, and makes it more like Twitter; it’s the same idea on steroids. Flipboard takes a Twitter stream, and spits out someting wholly different. From a nearly unreadable stream of blather, Flipboard returns to you a curated short magazine, for free.

Twitter lists are perhaps the single strongest use of Flipboard, if you are a power Twitter user. If you are like me, you have and use lists to track topics and news. Flipboard takes this more focused feed and works its magic, but as the input is cleaner, the output is stronger. I can only imagine what all Scoble’s lists are like, you can only access some inside the application.

I hope that I have made my point clear, that Flipboard is the tool that we have all been waiting for to turn our millions of notes, blogs, tweets, posts, and updates and make them into something consumable. It’s like we have been eating our content raw, and Flipboard is the fire that cooked it for us for the first time. Just how big a change are we talking about? I truly believe that anyone who finds Facebook or Twitter to be dull, or unusable, will find them to be 100% more engaging on Flipboard. This is the next step.

The Future
The first quality set of aggregators never had a chance, FriendFeed did little to help people deal with information overload, in fact it in some ways exacerbated it. Google Buzz was a similar idea lost inside of a popular email application, but it did not help people dig themselves out of the influx of stuff. Digg and Reddit are not personalized enough to keep an individual smiling all of the time. Curation needs to be user-specific.

The self-selection process that we all go through on Facebook and Twitter by following people is the ultimate act of personalization, but the information that we receive is too raw. I do not want to scan a list of sort blurbs. Quick, fire up TweetDeck (or Seesmic, etc) and look at how cluttered your screen is. Ugly, right? It’s just too much for the normal person.

There is just too much noise in social media, and the greater internet areas of content and interaction. To prune the noise in our online lives we need help. We need a personal TechMeme team of editors to pick and choose and serve us what we want to read. Flipboard is the first application to do an acceptable job of this, but it won’t be the last.

We have finally perfected publishing and sharing. Using the tools in the world today you can create and publish literally anything, anytime, usually for no cost. After several revolutions that brought us the first blogging networks, then micro blogging and tweets, and finally the comic oversharing of Blippy and its ilk, the idea of sharing is nearly played out. You can share anything, so now the challenge becomes how to accept the information and beat the chaff out of it.

Noise in, signal out, we need more curation, and we can’t do it full time by hand forever. The next great media companies online are going to take the massive, grass roots content creation that we now have (which is wonderful and empowering), and serve me a hot plate of personalized content with a great shell wrapped around it that makes the information consumable and compelling. Flipboard is doing that better than anyone else, and the fact that they are doing it on iPad makes it all the more exciting.

The internet and other new technologies have exploded the old media paradigms, and we are now, at long last, watching our new technologies mature. Flipboard is leading this charge, but we all need to keep two eyes open for just who is next.
Original title and link for this post: Why Flipboard Matters

Companies do all kinds of studies all the time for all sorts of reasons. Seeing as the iPad is currently one of the hottest devices on the market, it should be no surprise that companies want to know about how users are using it. Even if that company is Microsoft.

Yes, Apple’s rival has created a Facebook event calling for iPad owners to come to Microsoft’s Redmond campus between July 16 and July 21 for a study. Specifically, it’s Microsoft’s User Research group and they want people for chunks of two hours to apparently survey how they use the device. A follow-up note indicates that it’s student iPad users that Microsoft is specifically interested in here.

So what do they want to study about the iPad? Who knows. ZunePad? But as one commenter on the Facebook posting notes, “This gonna be a hard study, since most of the people who bought ipad are apple fanboys and apple regular customers their point of view is, um, damaged.”

Or maybe this is the secret to Microsoft’s second inception.

A “Microsoft gratuity item” is being offered in exchange for participating. Oh goody. Here’s to hoping it’s a Courier.

Here’s the description:

Microsoft User Research is looking for iPad owners for an upcoming study to get feedback. This study will be two hours long and will take place on the Microsoft Redmond campus with a number of dates and times between Friday, July 16th and Wednesday, July 21st.

In appreciation for your time, each participant will be offered a Microsoft gratuity item.

If you are interested, please respond to the questions below to uccoord@microsoft.com with the subject line “iPad”:

• Name/Age
• Phone Number
• Job Title/Company
• Are you employed full time?
-OR-
• Are you a student?
• Do you own an iPad?

CrunchBase InformationMicrosoftiPadInformation provided by CrunchBase

As everyone on the Web knows by now, Steve Jobs does not think too highly of Flash and therefore you cannot watch Flash videos on the the iPad (or the iPhone). Apple’s position has stirred a lot of debate about how much video on the Web is iPad-friendly. It turns out that about two thirds of new videos are currently being encoded in the H.264 format, which is playable on the iPad, but media sites still need to either package that video in an app or in an HTML5 video player viewable in the iPad’s browser.

Streaming Media decided to shed more light on the issue by surveying 1,147 online media professionals about their iPad and HTML5 video plans in a report available here. According to the survey, 49 percent plan to support HTML5 video on their media sites by the end of next year, and 36 percent plan to support video on the iPad either through dedicated apps or an iPad compatible Website.

At first blush, these two numbers don’t seem to make much sense. If 49 percent of media sites are going to support HTML5 video, then by default they will also support the iPad. But if you drill down into the survey responses on whether they plan to support the iPad specifically, a full 19 percent wouldn’t disclose one way or the other. Add that to the 36 percent who say they will support the iPad, and you get close to half, which is the same as how many say they will support HTML5 video. What this tells me is that either there is still some confusion on the part of the Web video industry or that there is more support for broader standards like HTML5 video which will work across different devices like Android phones and tablets.

Other than the iPad, support for mobile devices goes beyond Apple devices. While 65 percent plan to support video on the iPhone via apps or an HTML5 Web video, about 40 percent plan on supporting Android and Blackberry devices. Again, the way to kill many birds with one stone is with HTML5 video through the mobile browser rather than developing separte video apps for each device.

Already, YouTube, Brightcove, and many others are getting on the HTML5 bandwagon. There are still standards battles brewing between the underlying H.264 and new Google-backed WebM codecs. (Just today, Google enabled WebM support in Chrome, for instance).

Confusion is not good for adoption. A full 32 percent of the survey “respondents said that the lack of a single HTML5-compatible video codec is holding them back from moving to HTML5.” But small companies are moving faster than big ones (no surprises there). Only 13 percent of media companies with more than $1 billion in revenues plan to support the iPad in the short term, according to the survey, compared to 30 percent of organizations with less than $1 million in revenues. I predict the bigger media companies will come around soon enough.

CrunchBase InformationiPadInformation provided by CrunchBase

Ubisoft has released Prince of Persia Retro ($0.99), a port of Jordan Mechner’s landmark PC action-platformer. The game is available as a universal app, optimized for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad platforms.

Prince of Persia Retro adapts the 1992 Macintosh version of Prince of Persia to Apple’s touch screen devices. Players use a set of on-screen directional buttons to control the prince; tapping anywhere else on the screen serves as an “action” button for slow steps, hanging off of ledges, and sword attacks.

Prince of Persia Retro includes all levels and content from the original game. Given that Prince of Persia is notorious for its high difficulty level, though, I have to wonder how well it plays on a touch screen. Perhaps its low initial price point serves to offset the inevitable player frustration. This is just pure speculation on my part, though!

Wired has just proved paid content via standalone applications on the iPad in one fell swoop, selling a shocking 24,000 copies of its new application in 24 hours. That works out to nearly 17 per minute the entire first day of its release.

While a free application might be able to match those numbers sans perspiration, the Wired app weighs in at $4.99. That is a heftier than usual price tag for a content application in the mobile space. Many newspapers and periodicals are placing their content into applications which they then release free of charge.

Initial estimates of sales for the Wired iPad version were completely off the mark, with one rather public estimate guessing first day sales of a paltry 3,000 units. Whatever the reason for the initially low estimates, they have been proven wrong.

Why has the Wired app performed so well thus far? The company put significant effort into its development, melding the enjoyment of a physical magazine with the iPad’s simple touch mechanics. I can honestly say, playing with the app on my iPad, that it is indeed the first reading experience from paper to screen where the digital version exceeds the traditional one.

But with that high $5 price tag, the staying power of app is in question. The first people to purchase iPads have been the tech oriented, and thus it is to be expected perhaps that the Wired app would perform well in that demographic. As the iPad becomes increasingly mass market, whether the application has legs under its sales momentum remains to be seen.

Then again, at 17 copies a minute, the app brought in over $5,000 an hour to Wired. That alone must make the bean counters smile.

Image credit.

This seems the ideal solution for my iPad sketching needs.
A few days ago, when I thought of hacking my Pogo Sketch, I started researching all of the options for creating my own drawing tool for the iPad's capacitive touch screen, and was researching the styli that were available. I came across the odd design of the iClooly and thought I'd try it out of curiosity.

I had low expectations, but was surprised by how well it works for iPad sketching. I did the quick character sketch above in about 5 minutes with the odd little iClooly and Sketchbook Pro. As usual, there are things I think could be designed better, but this seems the ideal solution for my iPad sketching needs. The pros and cons follow.

The iClooly is manufactured in Korea and is not the prettiest looking or most ergonomic stylus. The drawing tip is actually a brush. A cap covers the tip, and a button at the end of the metal cylinder must be depressed to push out the soft metal bristles. It actually resembles a makeup brush.

First I'll touch on the things I dislike. Like most touch styli out there, it's barely long enough to fit in your hand--I find myself keeping my fingers higher above the screen on an iPad than I would a normal pen or Wacom stylus to avoid making marks. The cylinder is quite thin, so those with big fingers that detest thin pens be warned. The cap comes with a little key ring, and must be removed to use the brush tip. Unfortunately, it can't be attached to the back of the pen. One thing I also worry about is how the bristles will hold up. I'm imagining that they'll be splayed out with repeated use, like a well-worn toothbrush. Time will tell.

Now I'll cover the pros, starting with the form factor. I'm used to using thin pens that I get occasionally from Japanese stationery stores, so the form factor doesn't bother me, and I like the fact that it has a clip to attach it to the outside of my Apple iPad cover. The metal cylinder feels durable.

Where this stylus really shines is in how it performs as a drawing tool. At first I thought it would be weird drawing with a brush, but it is not at all. Once I let go of the idea of needing a fine point to sketch, I've been able to evaluate these things a little more practically. The broad brush is not much thicker than a pencil eraser, and if you move fluidly on the screen it's possible to let the physical size of the tip disappear and focus on getting your idea down.

The main reason this stylus beats the others, in my opinion, is because the brush tip glides across the screen effortlessly. The quick test at drawing UI shapes in Sketchbook Pro below shows how lines can be smoothly drawn, without any of the ugly jagged shapes I occasionally would get using a foam or rubber stylus tip, which tends to catch the glass and cause too much friction. That's why I had to hack my Pogo in the first place. This is why I loved Ideate at first--it makes up for the jagged line problem by smoothing your lines.

I should add that drawing finer details like the icons is really impossible for me without using a sketch app that lets you zoom like Sketchbook Pro does.

The last observation I have is that if you view sketching as something you do loosely, and give up on any of the things that make it feel more mechanical, i.e. straight and clean lines, grid backgrounds, it's easy to start feeling capable sketching on the iPad. I think in my quick test this kind of shows. The rougher and looser I draw, the easier it is for me to get out of my own way and not fuss on aesthetics. The Kirby character drawing I started above was fun and effortless and using the brush tip to airbrush color just felt awesome, better even than doing it with my Wacom.

I highly recommend this thing to iPad-toting interface designers that want to try their hand at getting creative with some of the better drawing apps out there. Tell me what you think and please post your sketches to the flickr iPad Sketch Group.

Pen and paper are still superior, but iPad sketching is good enough to leave those behind.

The topic of UI sketching on the iPad is coming up pretty regularly for UI designers. People want to know how it feels and if it's going to replace pen/pencil and paper. After a few months using as many drawing apps as I can get my hands on, I find that it's more than adequate for UI sketching needs. Pen and paper are still superior, but iPad sketching is good enough to leave those behind when you're away from your desk. Here's my run down of pros/cons.

My initial reaction was that finger/nail drawing wasn't going to cut it. For one thing, while you can get around the fat finger obstacles by using your fingernail as your tip, fingers don't work because they hide the screen. A stylus helps, but because of the fat tips of capacitive styli and the friction caused by capacitive foam, it doesn't feel as smooth and the foam stylus doesn't glide on the glass. But, I don't think that's a hindrance for basic sketching. I've also read that the sensors on the touch screen aren't really designed to work with fine tips in the same way that resistive (pressure sensitive) screens are. What I think would be perfect is something that glides like your fingernail on the end of a stick--a plastic nib in the center of a capacitive foam tip.

With all my nits and dream stylus fantasies, at the end of the day I think that the fatness of a pen like the Pogo Sketch is arguably better in terms of forcing you to do rough sketching as opposed to fine detailed drawings. Roughness and low-fidelity is one of the important attributes of ideation--generating ideas in quick succession and in volume to explore ideas without fussing over aesthetics. This is how I'm justifying the constraints in my head anyway. :)

That in mind, some designers, regardless of my rationalization, will care about the feel of pen options and responsiveness of drawing programs. There's an interesting blog entry on the doodl.es blog that talks about capacitive styli and the applications Brushes and Sketchbook Pro from an artist's perspective. While some of the discussion about the features of the apps may not be relevant to everyone, the description of what is possible to those who care about the style of their drawings will like the comparison of the Pogo Sketch with the HTC HD2 stylus.

I finally settled on using Sketchbook Pro with a Pogo Sketch the most for its closeness in feel to sketching on paper. It's about as good as it gets for my needs right now. I won't argue with anyone that says it's not as natural-feeling as paper, but it's good enough for me. For detailed work, I think the capabilities of the vector drawing tools in OmniGraffle for iPad are also very interesting, because your lines have all the line properties that OG offers, and can be closed to make shapes, with fill properties. Some of the features in OG iPad are so good actually, that I can see them being useful in OG Pro Desktop.

I'm going to try to occasionally post sketches in this iPad Sketch Flickr group, so watch that space.

Da un po’ di tempo a questa parte sto cercando di farmi un’idea sulla lettura e soprattutto sulla narrazione. Dopo la presentazione di iPad, in molti hanno definito il nuovo gadget-totem di Apple come l’ammazzakindle. E in effetti l’hype che Cupertino ha saputo generare ha messo un po’ in ombra l’ebook reader di Amazon. Era piuttosto ovvio che Jobs usasse anche i libri elettronici per far leva sull’immaginario delle persone che magari faticano a comprendere le implicazioni e le possibilità aperte da un oggetto come iPad.

Nulla però mi toglie dalla testa che il formato stesso del libro, ormai antichissimo, sia pronto a un salto evolutivo. Che non vuol dire, beninteso, che il libro sparirà del tutto. Ovvio. Piuttosto sarà necessario pensare e ripensare alla narrazione in nuovi contesti, che non hanno al centro tanto i gadget tecnologici dove questi contenuti bene o male finiscono, quanto soprattutto l’interattività.

Ok, sento già le persone urlare cose come “CD-Rom interattivi” o “Enciclopedie multimediali”. Avete ragione. Ci siamo già passati. Ci abbiamo provato e abbiamo fallito. Io in quegli anni uscivo dal liceo e cominciavo a muovere i primi passi nella grafica 3D, quindi conosco poco quel contesto. Quello che posso dire ora è: no. Non si ritornerà a quello (o meglio, non ritorneranno a quello le persone che davvero vogliono esplorare un mondo più o meno nuovo). Non succederà perché è cambiato il panorama, e magari perché siamo cambiati noi.

Ma torniamo alla narrazione. E alle possibilità. Un po’ di tempo fa sono rimasto affascinato da questo gioco di Daniel Benmergui. Si chiama Today I die e ve lo lascio scoprire, insieme alle altre cose che ha messo sul suo sito. Ecco, se oggi mi chiedessero: dove può andare la poesia in un mondo veloce, digitale e interattivo? Risponderei con il link a Today I die.

La gente legge poco. Lo sappiamo. Forse se lasciassimo che la narrazione emerga attraverso un mondo, uno spazio di possibilità da esplorare, ritornerebbe ad appassionarsi. Abbiamo bisogno di muoverci, di esplorare. Certo, non è facile, e siamo solo agli inizi. Mi viene da pensare che un Bolaño che ha scritto 2666 come una serie di romanzi che il lettore può affrontare nell’ordine che preferisce abbia già fatto un piccolo passo in questa direzione.

Certo, creare un mondo è più complicato. Ma per fortuna oggi non abbiamo solo più la parola (che per sua natura si presta a una narrazione lineare e finita). Possiamo cominciare a pensare, come ha fatto Benmergui, a piccoli mondi da esplorare, piccoli mondi che cambiano con il nostro intervento e che ci offrono storie diverse. Ecco, credo che sia necessario cominciare da qui e pensare in piccolo. Il romanzo breve è forse la prima forma da esplorare per vedere se può evolvere in qualcosa di diverso. Da lì si potranno forse costruire esperienze più complesse; ovviamente il linguaggio dei giochi diventa parecchio importante in tutto questo. I giochi sono da sempre spazi di possibilità. Forse è il momento che lo diventino anche le narrazioni.

Pur non avendo ancora avuto tra le mani iPad, trovo che una prima idea interessante sia quella della versione di Alice. A quanto si vede dai filmati in rete siamo però ancora lontani da una vera interattività. La versione iPad di Alice mi ricorda di più i vecchi libri animati (che personalmente adoravo): piccoli mondi costruiti con finezza e ingegno, che però lasciavano spazio a pochi interventi da parte del lettore. Erano come acquari da guardare con meraviglia per scoprirne ogni piccolo dettaglio, ma poco più. Ora, se mettessimo insieme le possibilità interattive di una cosa del genere (che sfrutta con intelligenza l’accelerometro e il multitouch) con le idee di testo che muta e di esplorazione di Benmergui, probabilmente saremmo abbastanza vicini a quello che immagino e che mi riesce difficile spiegare.

Una cosa del genere si presterebbe anche a fruizioni successive, perché sarebbe molto difficile vedere ogni lato del mondo e ogni evoluzione della storia durante la prima esplorazione. Qualcosa di simile a quel che succede in Heavy Rain, ma insieme più raffinato (nelle modalità del racconto, nel raccordo tra le varie “scene”) e meno ambizioso (ovvero meno film a tutti i costi).

Mi piacerebbe vedere qualcosa del genere presto. E sono piuttosto sicuro che accadrà. Là fuori ci sono moltissimi autori e studiosi che stanno ragionando in modo nuovo.

Juan Sanchez, UX Mag Senior Editor, shares his experience with building an iPad app.



Communicating thoughts and ideas can be one of the biggest challenges in an industry that relies so heavily on visual interpretation. If you’re working on an idea by yourself, with a colleague or a client, it’s one thing to see an idea in your mind and another to get it out for others to evaluate. As a UX designer, sketching is a daily necessity. It’s one of the most valuable tools you can wield.
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WordPress for iPhone OS 2.4.: WordPress for the iPad is now available, according to the WordPress for iPhone blog. The Automattic team has worked with Small Society to work on this new version. Find more details about the application at iphone.wordpress.org and also at the Next web writeup, which has some nice screenshots as well. Writing and editing posts along with streaming through comments and moderating them should be easier on this iPad version. I would love to hear some real world opinions on this product because it might make or break my desire to get myself another toy.

As a general-purpose tablet, the iPad can be many things to many people: an ebook reader, a wireless TV, a touchscreen videogame console. But to store owners and business people it can also be a cash register, with the right app, of course. Jack Dorsey’s Square, which was initially developed for the iPhone, now has an iPad app as well (iTunes link).

Square comes with a peripheral credit card swiper that lets any store or business person take credit card (or cash) payments on iPhones, and now, iPads. It takes finger signatures on the touchscreen, generates email or SMS receipts, calculates sales tax, and comes with an online accounting dashboard to keep track of sales. (You can watch our video of how the iPhone app works).

The iPad version is going to be appealing to many merchants because of the bigger screen and because it just looks more professional—more like some of the custom point-of-sale tablets you already see at some retailers today. But an iPad is probably much cheaper than some of those custom hardware systems, and Square’s payments software on the backend will keep getting better. Square can add new features without swapping the hardware.

So while the iPad will mostly be a consumer device, it opens up some interesting new opportunities for businesses as well.

Read our full list of the best iPad apps at launch here.

CrunchBase InformationSquareInformation provided by CrunchBase
CrunchBase InformationiPadInformation provided by CrunchBase