Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

So tonight is the night. After weeks of coding, bug fixing, testing, more bug fixing, polishing and then a little bug fixing just for the hell of it, Glyph Designer is being submitted to the Mac App store. Tom and I are really pleased with v1.0 and hope you guys enjoy it as well. We’re […]

Movie Triangles is a fun Java game where you connect movie stars and their films in a Sierpinski triangle-style grid. Developer Jim Blackler originally had the idea to create a trivia game made up of information straight from Wikipedia, and Movie Triangles is what that idea eventually became. It’s also available for iOS now as a free universal app, so if you’re a movie buff (or just know one), you can test your knowledge of movie casts right now on the iPhone and the iPad.

Unfortunately, since the app started off outside of the iOS platform, it’s not super flashy. You’re basically just dragging triangles with text on them around, and a little bit of extra color or flash (a timer? another mode?) might have gone a long way. But the game is surprisingly addictive, as you can tell by playing it online, especially if you happen to know quite a bit about recent movies and movie stars. For film buffs, rearranging the triangles to try and remember who’s in which movie is a lot of fun.

The app is free, so there’s really no reason to complain. Give it a look if you’re into playing a little movie trivia on your iOS device.

TUAW’s Daily App: Movie Triangles originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Without much fanfare, Verizon Wireless has discontinued “New Every Two,” a long-running promotion where anyone completing a two-year contract was eligible for a new or discounted phone if they signed on for another two-year contract. As of January 16, a few weeks before pre-orders would be accepted for Verizon iPhones, Verizon has changed its policy.

Previously, anyone completing a contract would be eligible for either a new low-end phone or a credit ranging between US$30 and $100 toward the purchase of a new phone. Verizon has also changed its early termination policy, which once allowed customers with a two-year contract to bail after around 13 months. This has now been raised to 20 months. It’s true that Apple mobile products rarely, if ever, enjoyed this perk on AT&T, but the timing of this policy change is a bit of a slap in the face for the 26 percent of current iPhone users expected to switch to Verizon once the iPhone becomes available. According to a ChangeWave survey, 41 percent of those potential switchers plan to switch to Verizon within the first three months of the iPhone 4’s release on that network, and another 31 percent plan on switching within the first year.

If you are an existing Verizon Wireless customer at present, you will be grandfathered in to the “New Every Two” program, but it seems that the timing is calculated to make sure that any switchers from AT&T will not have the opportunity for any sort of discounted phone. This and the fact that the Verizon iPhone will not be able to use the internet while talking on the phone may dismay people who are intent on switching — me included — but I’m sure that Verizon Wireless considers this a minor inconvenience for customers looking forward to using an iPhone on a network that (theoretically) will offer better performance than AT&T.

We’ll keep an eye out for other “gotchas” that Verizon may announce.

Verizon discontinues ‘New Every Two’ policy in the wake of the iPhone originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sunday can only mean one thing: Talkcast!

Tonight we will have the episode we have been waiting to have since about an hour after the iPhone was announced exclusively on AT&T: Verizon iPhone! We’ll talk about what to call it, what this means for the white iPhone and more. Since I am hosting this evening, there will be plenty to chat about in the Aftershow as well.

Your calls and questions help us make the show the best it can be, otherwise I’m just talking to myself! To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the “TalkShoe Web” button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 PM EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (yay for free cell phone weekend minutes!): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 — during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

If you’ve got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk with you then!

Talkcast tonight, 7 PT/10 ET: Verizon iPhone Edition! originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 16 Jan 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last Wednesday on TUAW TV Live, I discussed my success over the past year at moving towards the ultimate goal of a paperless office. I thought it would be a good idea for me to pass along some of the methods I’ve been using to accomplish this elusive goal, and also offer a deal to our readers for an e-book all about the subject.

My earliest steps towards a paperless office actually came a few years ago, when I went to electronic statements for my banks and credit cards. However, up until the beginning of 2010, the filing system for my business consisted of big binders or folders into which I would slip the printed copies of those statements along with a ton of other paperwork. Now, as the statements come in my email as PDFs or are downloaded from the bank or credit card company website, I save them directly into special folders in my Dropbox.

Continue reading The paperless office: How to get there (and a discount e-book offer)

The paperless office: How to get there (and a discount e-book offer) originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 15 Jan 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just in case anyone is not familiar with it, the Sparrow Framework is an open source iPad and iPhone game engine that I have mentioned in the past, and used to create the beginner’s action game programming tutorial.  I feel that Sparrow is the easiest open source game engine out there to get a handle on for beginners which has already been used in several games in the app store.

The recent update adds some extremely useful features, most significantly the following:

1. Proper API documentation which you can browse online, and also import directly into Xcode and browse through directly in Xcode’s help window.

2. A new class acting as a canvas which you can draw other display objects on, but still renders at the same speed.  This class seems ideal for drawing apps/games.

You can read the Sparrow Framework official post for full details and information on the many other changes here:
Sparrow 1.1 hatched!

You can find Sparrow’s download page here.

It’s great to see the way the creators of Sparrow have been able to improve the framework without adding any bloat keeping the framework lightweight and fast.

Read More: iPhone Dev News

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