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EpicWin is just that!
Aug 20th
One of my new favorite iPhone applications that just launched is EpicWin. It’s a to-do list, combined with some RPG and questing elements that enable you to “level up” your character by completing errands (think Chore Wars on the iPhone). Take a look at their awesome introduction video:
These guys have worked on some of my favorite games of all time, including LittleBigPlanet and Fable II, so they know a thing or two about creating some very addictive content. The “game” looks great, and has a quirky vibe that’ll definitely set it apart from other task managers.
Since you decide how many points you assign to each task, you can level up pretty quickly. Although I was hoping that there’d be some social aspects (competing against roommates for chore completion, etc) I can see how someone could easily cheat by creating easy tasks with high point values.
There’s one thing keeping me from using this app everyday: desktop integration. I currently use Things as my main to-do list manager, and it syncs with the Things iPhone app as well. I don’t really need two task managing applications on my phone at one time, and there’s very little incentive for a desktop client to use another company’s app for mobile use instead of developing their own.
The answer? EpicWin should create a full-featured RPG for the desktop that plays like a game! Yes, perhaps a little “pie in the sky,” but it would certainly hook more gamers.
EpicWin is $2.99 on the App Store.
Mr. Littlejeans’s 15 Minutes
Apr 20th
The cat known as Mr. Littlejeans is having his little furry moment in the sun. It all started with a photo I took of him, comfortably relaxing on Ryan’s lap. Ryan was having a difficult time finding a comfortable position on the couch for iPad typing, when inspiration suddenly hit…
Since then, LJ has been on TWiT, Lifehacker, MacLife, OS X Daily and several other blogs. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also include him on my own.
Update: Laughing Squid has us too! Thanks Scott!
Droid SMS alert on the iPhone
Nov 1st
Ryan has been quite taken by the Droid SMS alert sound (as evidenced by the most recent gdgt podcast) so I decided it would be fitting to make it his ringtone on my iPhone when he calls.
Unfortunately, I realized after the fact that it would have been much funnier to make it the default ringtone on his phone for all calls. You can get the sound here for your own personal enjoyment.
I used MakeiPhoneRingtone after converting the .wav to .aac, but you can also use Fission, GarageBand or the myriad other methods available.
Liberating myself from my iPhoto library
Oct 4th
Today I decided to dump my 16GB iPhoto library onto an external drive. After tweeting about it, several people asked me how I went about it, so here’s a quick guide (for Mac users).
1. Close iPhoto.
2. Locate your iPhoto Library under User/Pictures/iPhoto Library.
3. Copy the folder by right-clicking or Ctrl-clicking.
4. Paste the entire folder into your external drive.
5. Go back to your original iPhoto Library and rename it to something like “iPhoto Library Old.”
6. Open iPhoto, and when prompted select the “iPhoto Library” from your external drive as the library you want iPhoto to use.
7. Once it loads up all of your images just fine from the external, go back and delete “iPhoto Library Old.”
8. All done!
Now, if you’re a laptop user, you’re not going to be able to view your photos unless you’re connected to the external drive. This is OK for me, but might be annoying to people who use iPhoto a lot, so make sure you’re cool with that before you do this!
This is also a good way of making a backup of your iPhoto library to an external drive. Now, commence rolling around in all that spare hard drive space like I did!
