Looking for an Artist (again)

I'm having another crack at getting my webcomic Bounded by Infinity off of the ground. Again. I made a half-hearted stab at it last year, posting an "Artist Wanted" request on one forum and then loosing heart when no-one bit. This time I'm going to spam post the request in lots of forums, cross my fingers and hope I get lucky.

Shortly after I posted in the forums at Drunk Duck, this post appeared in which Drowemos makes the startling observation that if you want to attract an artist, something which they're known to be partial to is money. I'm not going to stoop to sarcasm. The purpose of Drowemos' post was to plug this contest aimed at webcomic writers and offering a prize of six professionally-drawn pages (cash value $150).

Drowemos' webcomic The World of Exiern is interesting in that it was started with -- erm -- basic art (possibly as an homage to Dinosaur Comics), which was later (partly) replaced by professionally drawn work once revenue permitted. So I guess that he should know page rates, but $25 per page seems a little on the low side to me.

I've considered going down the paid route but decided against it for a couple of reasons. For one it could get expensive quickly, especially if quality artwork still fails to drive page views. Sure, it's a chicken and egg thing. But what I think you'd really miss working in this kind of arrangement is real involvement from the artist. I'd like to work with someone who is committed to the project, who I can bounce ideas off and who will give honest feedback, rather than just whipping through commission after commission as quickly as possible.

Ah, well... here's hoping.

iPod Touch Update 1.1.3

So the iPod Touch firmware update (version 1.1.3) was announced at the Stevenote this evening (proper time). For some reason it took a little over two hours to download, and then it didn't appear to offer any new features apart from a new search button in Safari, which booted the bookmark button down onto the bottom bar. Not even any wiggling icons.

Now, I made a bit of a tit of myself over at the Macalope's place (mostly because it's late and the bit about the AppleTV didn't register), but the question still remains, why are AppleTV owners getting a fancy new system update for free? while iPod Touch users have to pay? And it's not like we're just paying for the five applications. If we were then it would surely have been easier for Apple to wait and make them available through the iPhone app store once it's up and running. But it's not the apps that we're buying, it an unlock for the features of 1.1.3. The download you purchase takes a second to download, and once it's run you've got new features outside the five apps, like being able to rearrange the home page.

The argument, of course, is that earnings from the AppleTV, like those for the iPhone, are booked over a number of years. Sorry, but this just doesn't wash. The AppleTV has been on sale for almost a year now, but until today (or until the date in the future when the software upgrade is made) you have not been able to purchase items from the iTunes Store through it, meaning that there was absolutely no basis for Apple's accountants to book those earnings as subscription-based. The iPod Touch, however, has been able to download from the iTunes store since day one, so if either of these devices should be eligible for free updates, it should be the iPod.

Putting the "ass" into Akass

Personal Computer World is the only print magazine I buy nowadays, mainly because I've never got round to cancelling my subscription. Still, it provides an interesting off-line read every month. The one thing I can't stand, however, is the attitude which their News Editor, Clive Akass, takes toward Apple. I don't know if he was bullied by the Cupertino company as a child or something: it certainly reads that way at times.

The magazine's Test Bed Blog has been quiet of late, but has sprung back to life with two posts in the last two days, both of which have included pointless swipes at Apple. "Apple maxes out during CES" seems to be complaining about Apple announcing products while CES is on, while "Why I bought a [sic] Eee PC" takes a dig at "Apple's iToys" for not having proper keyboards.

Oh well, I suppose it's better he gets it out of his system here, rather than clogging-up the paper PCW's scant news pages with this drivel.

Developing for the iPod Touch

Since the reason I got an iPod Touch was to develop applications for it, I though that it was about time I actually got round to giving it a go. This is a brief round-up of the tutorials I used, presented in the order I should have done them.

First step was to jailbreak the iPod to allow access to its file system. As I had OS v.1.1.2 this meant downgrading to 1.1.1. The instructions on this page worked perfectly for me. The longest part was downloading the two versions of the firmware from Apple.

When you run the Java .jar file in the last stage I recommend ticking the box to install SSH. Then, to connect to your iPod, first get its IP address from Settings -> Wifi and click on the arrow in the blue circle next to your active connection. Now from the Terminal, type:

ssh root@IPADDRESS

The default root password should be alpine, although you can easily change this using the SSH icon on the iPod. To begin with SSH is rather sparse since there are no command line tools installed. These can be found in the "BSD sub-system" package in the installer. Note, however, that I'm not sure whether installing them caused me the problems in the stage (and they can't be easily removed), but all things considered you're better off with them.

Next, in order to compile the toolchain used to build iPod apps, we need a copy of the iPod's file system. In theory we should be able to get this by using the scp command, thus:

sudo scp -r root@IPADDRESS:/ /usr/local/share/iphone-filesystem

Which should copy every file into the directory on your Mac where the toolchain Makefile expects it. However, for me this ran fine for 15 minutes and then stalled on "Resource Busy" / "not a regular file" errors for file in the /dev directory. Copying individual directories from route (/usr is the really important one) side-stepped this. Oh, and you may want to remove all your songs and movies from the iPod before you do this and save yourself a few hours.

Instructions for getting and compiling the toolchain can be found here, and with the preparation above should work without problems. To test that everything is working I used this Hello World source code, found via here. Download it (it should unzip automatically), then in the terminal navigate to the directory and run make. If everything is set up correctly you'll now have a file called "Hello" (identified as a UNIX executable by the Finder). Copy this to your iPod with:

scp ./Hello root@IPADDRESS:/Applications/

To run it, SSH into the iPod, navigate to the Applications folder, and run "Hello":

cd /Applications
./Hello

"Hello World" should be displayed on the iPod (wake it up and unlock it). You'll notice that the home button doesn't do anything. To kill the program, go back to SSH in the terminal and hit ctrl+C. The # prompt will reappear in the console and the iPod will drop back to the launch screen.

Well, that's it for compiling and running a first iPod app, now it's off to find some documentation for the iPod version of Cocoa.

Advice

In response to this question posted on 43 Folders, I'd probably suggest finding a different hospital to get sick in. Seriously, this doesn't inspire confidence.

(Or alternatively, look for the little bottles labelled "Valium"...)

About the Radioheads

The ever belligerent Gruber recently took Fortune to task for ranking the way Radiohead marketed In Rainbows as the the 59th Dumbest Moment in Business (this year, I guess). And I completely agree that the $3 million (approx. -- and let's face it, with that kind of money you can afford not to count every penny) is a substantial vindication of the strategy. But I think that it's a very big mistake for pundits to project their big-business-is-screwing-the-artist-so-let's-all-go-indie ideals onto this band, or to mistake their actions for anything other than cynical self-serving greed.

This story (saying that Radiohead flounced* out on EMI when they didn't get the $10 million advance they wanted) appeared in The Times last week. Now, I'll say right now that it's probably mostly a smear piece planted by disgruntled EMI executives, but I'm sure that there's at least a big enough grain of truth somewhere in there to stop it being libellous. Let's compare this to Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (I've heard of them, but I've never heard any of their music) telling their Australian fans to steal their music because the record companies were ripping them off by setting the price of their CDs unfairly high. Back to Radiohead, who let their fans pay whatever they thought In Rainbows was worth, right? Sure. Unless they were real fans, in which case they wouldn't have settled for less than the super-snazzy boxed set, a snip at only £40...

So I guess the take home point is that, yes, as all right-thinking people have known for a while now, the music industry is really screwed up, with talent largely being ignored and those few "lucky" individuals who make it through getting themselves exploited and ripped-off, but don't go looking to Oxford's finest to sort it out.

[* Go on, sit back, close your eyes and try to imagine Thom Yorke flouncing. If that doesn't make you smile than nothing will.]

iTouch OS 1.1.3

Gear Live, whom I must admit I had never heard of before, have posted a video of the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware (and boy do their servers seem to be playing the price right now). I recently acquired an iPod Touch, so here are a few thoughts on the impending update from the perspective of someone who probably isn't going to get to see most of them. The coolest non-iPhone specific feature looks like the curled-up-page effect, so I hope it's made available to other apps and not just Google Maps.

The ability to add Safari bookmarks to the launch screen should be really useful, but at the same time it makes me a little suspicious: it makes the web apps metaphor make more sense, allowing you to treat on-line applications as equals to those built-in, but with the advent of "proper" (native) apps supposedly only a little over a month away, should this be necessary? And shouldn't this feature have been there six months ago? Maybe it's a convenience thing, allowing you fast access to your favourite site, but in that case why should Safari get the special treatment? How about putting your favourite contacts or top songs on the launch pad, too?

I guess what I'm really stressing over is, are we going to get another fudge so we come out of Macworld with web apps still as the main method for developing for iPhone/iPod touch.

Okay, I can think of three not-so-paranoid reasons for adding the feature. Firstly, because it has been on someone's to-do list since 1.0 and so it was bound to turn up eventually. Secondly, because having got developers to spend the last six months on Mobile Safari optimised web apps and even though you've just moved the goal posts again Apple still want to throw them a bone, no matter how small. And thirdly, because if the hip and groovy kids are to be believed where it's currently at is social networking and that's happening on-line. Facebook as a pre-installed icon on the iPhone some time soon?

Blog Work & Play

I just bought a copy of the excellent Mars Edit, making use of the MacSanta deal on about its last day. I now hereby resolve to get my money's worth from it by blogging far more frequently (it's a new year resolution, don't you know).

Now all I need is a reader or two.

If You Can't Beat Them...

Okay, while I'm in an end-of-year predictive mood, let's talk about the Beatles and on-line music. I'm not actually waiting for them to release their songs on-line, but lots of other people seem to be. The big question seems to be who will they choose to favour with their back-catalogue? Is there an on-line music store big enough for the band which was bigger than God? I'll go out on a limb and guess "no".

I think that when the Beatles make their songs available next year, it will be through their own on-line store. After all, when you're dealing with digital downloads there isn't a physical supply chain to manage, so why give some other company a cut for managing hosting and payment processing. Radiohead -- joke that the In Rainbows "pay-what-you-want" scheme was -- have shown that given enough free publicity it can work. And since it's the frickin' Beatles we're talking about, I can't see a lack of publicity to be a problem. I imagine that it's only Sir Paul's divorce which is currently holding things up, but I'm sure that once he's shot of peg-leg someone need only flip a switch and they're good to go.

So there you are: more stunning predictions to follow.

Monstrous

This great article in Wired led me to this discussion of J.J. Abrams' latest project. I'm a big fan of the idea of ARGs, despite never having taken part in one. Thinking about the movie, I really hope he does come up with something original, because at the moment the discussion suggests John Wydham's The Kraken Wakes.

I shall have to start the "Hands Off Our Science Fiction" movement...