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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Freeware, Internet, Developer, iPhone, App Store, SDK, iPod touch

Aurora Feint devs share their social code in OpenFeint

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Feb 18th, 2009

The folks behind the popular Aurora Feint series of iPhone games have decided to share their work creating a "social MMO" system on the iPhone with other developers. They've just announced a system called "OpenFeint," which other devs will be able to license and use in their own games. OpenFeint will supposedly allow a developer to put together a multiplayer community in an iPhone app, complete with profiles, news boards and chat, in under an hour. They're also providing a server for developers to use, so devs won't have to host their own server software -- they'll just have to make their client work with the existing system.

Wild. It sounds like they're just making the systems they've already developed in their own games available to anyone who wants to use them. Right now, they're looking at a private beta (interested devs can sign up on their site), and eventually the service will be free for a limited number of users, with certain costs as the userbase grows.

The cynical side of us wonders if there's a catch in there somewhere -- presumably, all of the users in OpenFeint will keep their information on the Aurora Feint-owned server, so we'd guess there's a chance that at some point in the future, they could use that list for less-than-honorable actions (Steve Demeter's Onyx Online plan is another service that aims to be platform-wide, which seems to have similar risks). But that's just us being paranoid -- taken at face value, this just seems like one team of indie developers opening up what they've already done to help other devs. Very cool.

Tags: aurora-feint, client, development, iphone, ipod-touch, mmo, multiplayer, openfeint, plans, profiles, sdk, server, software, system

Filed under: Software, iWork

Apple profiles iWork@work for small businesses

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on May 29th, 2007

While iWork isn't exactly at the top of everyone's wishlist of Apple software, it still offers a fairly strong set of Apple-esque tools for creating gorgeous presentations and documents. Since the company already has a fairly thorough iWork product page aimed at the general audience, it seems only natural (if a bit long-time coming) that Apple focus on the business customer with a new set of iWork@work Profiles. Through case studies that delve into the daily duties of a photographer, a historian and an architect, Apple highlights how iWork (and iLife, of course) helps them all get the job done.

Naturally, these profiles are filled with quite a bit of Apple fluff, but I think it's interesting to read some of the finer details and features that iWork offers people who are actually running businesses with it. Yes there are plenty of complaints against iWork - it's missing a spreadsheet, it doesn't do this, it messes with that - but these profiles are a nice read if you're willing to set all that stuff aside for a moment and investigate what Apple's productivity suite has to offer.

Tags: apple, architecture, business, businesses, case studies, CaseStudies, historian, iwork, photography, profiles

Filed under: Software, Developer

rooSwitch: multiple application profiles

by Mat Lu (RSS feed) on May 7th, 2007



One nice feature that Apple is starting to add to some of their application is multi-library support. For instance, if you launch iTunes or iPhoto with the option key held down you'll get a dialog box asking you which library you want to use. Well rooSwitch takes this idea to the next level by making it possible to have different "profiles" for nearly any OS X application. The profiles include preferences, caches, and even application data like the aforementioned iTunes libraries, all storied in a single .rooSwitch bundle. To use it you just drop the icon of the application you want to create a profile for onto the rooSwitch window and you can then create multiple profiles that you can easily switch between using the radio buttons. rooSwitch can even be used to backup application profiles and transfer them between machines or accounts. rooSwitch was originally to help developers test different scenarios, making it a good way to test (especially beta) software without losing preferences and application data.

rooSwitch is $14.95 and a demo is available. In addition, there is a free lite version that is limited to six applications (Mail.app, Address Book, Safari, iTunes, iPhoto and Stickies).

[via MacApper]

Tags: profiles, rooSwitch

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