Amazing Aaron

Went to the Awesome Inc. Mobile Mini Conference today and had a blast. I learned a lot and everyone there seemed to be having fun. West came with me, and he had a great time as well. He stuck to the iPhone beginner tutorials all day, and I wondered around to different sessions trying to absorb as much as possible

I also got some great video of everything today. I'm uploading the video as I write this and I hope to have the video up tomorrow!

I will be going to the Awesome Inc. Mobile Mini Conference this Saturday the 18’th in Lexington KY. I’m really looking forward to it! The conference is on mobile platforms like Google’s Android, Yahoo’s Blueprint, and of course Apple’s iPhone.
Most of the show will be on the iPhone and that’s the real reason I’m going. If you read my blog you know I’ve been wanting to get into iPhone development for a while now, so I hope this event gets me excited enough that I actual do something! I also am hoping to learn a lot of the inside stuff from other developers that will help me avoid some of the pitfalls they have had.
If you live near Lexington KY then you should come I would love to see you there!

If you follow me on Twitter you know I updated my iPhone to OS v3.0 and I'm really loving it. It makes your iPhone so much more usable! I'm not just talking about features like copy and paste, which works like a charm by the way. I'm talking about just how much more snappy my phone is! Were I see the speed increase the most, is in the camera app. I can now take a picture and in about 2 seconds it's ready to take another, Where before I had to wait what seemed like forever! I also have not taken a blurry picture since I updated! Before if I moved the camera to much or the subject moved to much it would blur, But now I don’t have any problems with blurring!

Of course there are also a lot of other cool features in OS v3.0 such as the ability to login to your YouTube account from the YouTube app, Automatic Wi-Fi Login, Notes syncing, voice memos, MMS & tethering (when AT&T gets around to it!), and a lot of other improvements!

I really think I could live with this phone for a few more years without upgrading, but I'm really loving the video recording feature of the new iPhone 3GS! I would also like to have GPS which the EDGE version I'm using does not have. Like I've said before I'm not really concerned about the 3G part, because there is not a 3G network anywhere around me, but a good thing about the new OS 3.0 is that even on the slower EDGE network I have noticed a speed increase in web browsing!

I don’t know when I’ll be upgrading to the new iPhone, but I’m sure you will know as soon as I do!

I finally got a chance to watch the iPhone 3.0 SDK presentation over at Apple. I really like the new features, and WOW the iPhone is looking better, and better as a game developing platform. It looks like apple is really trying to make the iPhone a great mobile gaming console. They have added things like, peer-to-peer communication between games (and apps), and voice in game, so you can communicate like on Xbox Live with your friends, while you play a game with them. It seemed like most, if not the majority of updates, and upgrades to the SDK were for gaming (at least it seemed that way to me :P). I would love to make a game for the iPhone/iPod Touch, but I have no experience with Apples core this, and Xcode that programing. They say its easy, but I don't know? I would just like to give it a try, but its $99 to join the developer program, plus the software only runs on a mac! Maybe I could get a Mac Mini, there the cheapest, and pay the $99 to give it a shot. Its still a lot of money, so I will really have to think about this one! Another idea is, you could try and use a Hackintosh to run the SDK software, but I don't know how great that would work, If it would work at all. I don't know if anyone has tried it before. I'll check into it, and let you all know! Apple says theres over 100 new features in the 3.0 update. Here is a least of some of the biggest: Cut, copy and paste- Wow finally, what took them so long! Spotlight searching- This is really timely. I'm starting to have a hard time finding my apps! Plus it searches music, and emails too! Push notifications- Lets apps send notifications to your home screen. Like small text messages, and number badges on there icons. In-App purchasing- This sounds really cool for games! They showed off a Sims 3 demo, that let your purchase extra items from within the game, when they came available from the publisher! MMS- this is something I would never use, but a lot of people ask for in iPhones. For some reason it does not work with the iPhone 2G. They say its because of hardware constraints on the older hardware. I just think there trying to get people to upgrade! Peer-to-Peer connectivity- Again really cool for games. It lets you play ad-hoc like you can on a DS or PSP! Third-party Accessories- This lets accessories makers tie directly into the hardware, and make apps that interact with there products. They showed off a glucose meter that could send the blood test results back to an iPhone app. Turn-by-Turn- This finally lets TomTom (and others) make a turn by turn GPS app for you car. Landscape keyboard- All native apps are now compatible with landscape mode. Which means you can use a full virtual keyboard when typing emails or txt messages. Voice memos- This is a new native app that lets you record messages with he iPhones mic, and then you can send them by MMS. I also think you can send them by email. Stereo Bluetooth- iPhone and iPod touch will now support stereo Bluetooth headsets. All these and more features will be available this summer (sometime). Its a free upgrade for iPhone 2G, and 3G users, and $9.95 for iPod Touch users everywhere. The beta is already available to people in the developer program :(

I have decided to buy an Xbox 360 Pro. I know I already had an Xbox 360 Elite, but that was like a year ago, and now I want a 360 again. Plus, I have a good reason, I’m going to be making an XNA game. For those of you that may not know what XNA is, its basically just the software, or framework, that you build games for Windows, and games for the Xbox 360 with. I have not decided what kind of game I’m going to make yet, but I have a lot of that’s for sure! On my last post, I talked about how I was making a game for a contest on YoYoGames.com. Well I did begin to make a game for the competition, but like a lot of things with me, it never got completed, for one reason, or another -I don’t even know why I didn’t complete it now :). The game was called ‘Lost Civilization’, and I got it to where it was playable, and was pretty near completion of it, but it still needs a lot of bug smashing to do, among other things. I’ve been wanting to finish it lately, but don’t know when I will get around to it -if i ever will. I might just throw it up the way it is on YoYoGames as a beta -more like Alpha really :). I will however put a screenshot of the game in this post for you all to see! I have made a few new videos, and put them up on YouTube, but nothing great, just me rambling about things. Mostly just about my new iPhone, and no, not the new iPhone 3G, but the first iPhone. I got it when it was the only iPhone, that shows how updated I keep my blog. I will tell you what, I will promise to post more, if you all tell me you want to see more posts, more often. Just leave a comment on this post, and I’ll see it. It will encourage me to write more, if I know someone is really reading it, LOL! Well, I’m going to sign off for now, I hope this was a good enough update for you! Till next post, I’ll C-U!