Atmosphir is a software-based game building tool for PC and Mac users that lets users put together their own gaming levels. Like many consumer-facing game creators you're only limited by the tools that have been given to you. In this case the tools provided are split up into packages of "blocks" that are both interchangeable and feature simple gameplay devices like moving platforms, and various themed texture elements that let you build worlds with grass, dirt, and sand.
The builder actually reminders me a lot of Cubescape, a product I looked at back in May. In Atmosphir's case, it's simply a matter of stacking pixels together on top of one another in a 3D grid. The big difference is that you can jump into your creation and play test it. Depending on what game play goals you set up, it changes what's needed to successfully get through what you've created.
The game builder is entirely in 3D. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CBS Interactive)The only thing I'm concerned about with this product is that the demo did not make playing the game look like as much fun as building the levels. I'm willing to withhold judgment until I get my hands on it, but it seemed to be lacking a decent physics engine and the graphics looked akin to Super Mario 64--a console title that came out 12 years ago. That said, look at something like Line Rider; if you give people simple tools and a platform they're going to go nuts.
To aid in that discovery process users can submit their creations to a central pool where others can jump in and play their creations, with some of the best items rising to the top. Also neat is the option to grab someone else's level and pull it back in the editor to make tweaks.
The service is a TechCrunch50 finalist, and is currently open for sign-ups, with plans to release a public client later this year. I've embedded a video of it in action below.
Update: I got some hands-on time with this after the presentation. Judging from the time I played with it, it's fun but frustrating. Like I said, if you've played Super Mario 64 before you'll feel right at home. It borrows the same camera controls and kill screen, something you'll probably see a lot if you're playing a badly designed level.
What's interesting here is that the creators, the guys from Minor Studios, could have launched this a few weeks ago at the gamer-centric Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) but chose to do it here. When I asked creative director Dave Werner why he'd pass up the chance to show this in front of more than 58,000 gamers and industry analysts, he told me he thought he'd get more leverage by launching it at this show.
Also worth noting is LittleBigPlanet, a PlayStation 3 title that lets you build your own 2D platforming games and share them with others. It's launching next month (thanks MoRic123)
See also: Mytopia: Yet another casual-gaming start-up goes live
Postbox is a new cross platform e-mail client for Windows and Mac computers. It's an alternative to Microsoft Outlook, and manages to bring some of the benefits of Web e-mail to a desktop application.
Things like a conversation view, tagging, and search that indexes both mail and attachments are all features Gmail users have been enjoying for years. The problem is, those features and several others have not gone over to the desktop side of things without additional software plug-ins from third-party providers.
Postbox answers that by taking many of these single features sought after by other third-party developers and blending them into a standalone client. For example, if it sees an address it will pull up a quick map link complete with business information. When you're offline you still get this information.
As some of the session judges at the TechCrunch50 conference noted, some of the things this product does would be much better suited as an extension to the software e-mail client you're already using. I'd certainly love the photo browsing client and conversation view in my Outlook, but I definitely can't ditch it until this product gets rock solid Microsoft Exchange support with a built-in calendar (a feature the product does not have).
Postbox currently works with IMAP, POP, and SMTP protocols, letting you tie in your Web mail accounts. Unless your business is running off Google apps this probably won't be a good companion for anything besides your personal accounts. That said, compared with something like Apple's Mail application, it looks like a nice step up.
Update: Postbox will be available for download in "a few weeks" time. Only the sign-ups were opened up today. I've also thrown in another screenshot after the jump.
(Credit:
Postbox, Inc. / CBS Interactive)
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At DemoFall, Mapflow demonstrated its iPhone application, designed to automate carpooling. The product was just one of many shown built around the iPhone at the event.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)SAN DIEGO--At Demo and DemoFall, there are always easily identifiable trends among the dozens of companies chosen to present their products.
In previous iterations of the events that I've attended, those trends have been photo-sharing services, online video hosting, Web 2.0, and the like.
This week, the trend--at least as I've seen it--has been the number of companies here with iPhone applications. Not every one of them is talking prominently about the applications they have, but Demo lead organizer Chris Shipley told me informally that she thinks that there must be at least a couple dozen companies with iPhone applications here out of the 72 total presenters.
I'll be the first to admit that I was slow to understand the value of iPhone apps, and I suppose that's because it took me awhile to buy one of the devices, and even longer after I did before I started trolling the Apple App Store looking for the best and brightest of what was out there.
My major introduction to the applications was a day I spent last month in Seattle, basically letting a series of them control my life for a day. And more recently, I have found myself blown away by some of the most simple applications imaginable. For example, Showtimes determines where you are and then comes up with a list of movie theaters--sorted by proximity to you--and shows the films showing at each and the times for each film.
As I said, it's totally simple, and pure genius.
Ultimately, while other mobile phones have many of the features of the iPhone, I don't think that there will be any others in the near future that combine GPS, a great interface, the power of an operating system like OS X, and a network of developers eager to reach out to an audience of users as devoted to their devices as iPhone owners.
Back here at DemoFall, there is definitely no shortage of companies that have developed applications for the device, and some of them seem very promising to me, even though most have yet to appear in the App Store.
I have my own ideas, as I stated above, why I think iPhone apps are the future of software, but I thought these developers would have opinions even more valuable than mine, since they're building businesses around the platform.
WebDiet built an iPhone application designed to help people find restaurants that serve the kind of healthy food they want to eat.
(Credit: WebDiet)Among the companies incorporating the iPhone into their Demo products are WebDiet, Telnic, SkyData, The Echo Nest, and Rudder.
"Right now, (the iPhone is) the platform with the most immediacy," said Richard Bryce, CEO of Mapflow, a company here with a product centered around an iPhone app. "Especially for the consumer market."
It's easy to see why Bryce would think so.
Mapflow is a very interesting product designed around the idea of helping drivers offset the high costs of gas by finding people who need rides to pay to fill empty seats in their cars.
"Most of our lives are ad hoc," Bryce said. "We're trying to apply the iPhone's smart technology to give that ad hoc, on-demand capability to carpooling."
The Mapflow system works by letting drivers define routes--either one-time, or repeat--they're following and the number of seats they have available to fill. The iPhone makes it simple to do this through lists that can be easily displayed and because the phone's GPS chip quickly determines where the driver is in proximity to anyone looking for a ride.
It might sound weird to pick up strangers in this manner, but Mapflow requires that all users register with their name, a photo, and a credit card, and that means that drivers can feel confident that whomever they pick up is probably going to be safe. And when they arrive to pick up the rider, the iPhone displays the rider's picture so the driver can be sure the person is who he or she is supposed to be.
In addition, drivers and riders alike can choose preferences for the type of person with whom they want to travel. This means, for example, that women can choose to ride only with other women.
Further, the service has a quick and easy rating system--again, enabled by the iPhone's elegant interface--that allows everyone to weigh in on the people with whom they've traveled.
Riders pay about 30 cents a mile to use the system, and Mapflow makes its money from a 15 percent commission on the transactions. Drivers pocket the rest.
Clearly, there are many questions the company must answer before the product becomes profitable--and of course, it must first release the application, which it plans to do in about four weeks. But this seems to me to be a very good use of the device, especially given the growing emphasis on getting people to stop driving one to a car.
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Tingz is a new widget engine whose big feature is cross platform data sharing. At the TechCrunch50 conference it was shown off on a Mac, iPhone and Windows Media Center PC, with various widgets pulling together the same data set.
The example given was a recipe widget on your computer that tells you how to make something, and if you don't have one of the ingredients you can bookmark it. This information gets ported over to a shopping list widget, which you can then access on-the-go via the iPhone application.
Presumably users would have it installed on both platforms to make the most use of it. When added on your desktop computer it adds contextual options on a system level so you can clip text, links, or other items and send them to your widget sandbox. Like Shifd, a cross-platform notes tool I use, this is handy way to port it around.
The Windows Media Center app might have been the most out of place, as it was advertised as being large and eye friendly but the text still looked incredibly small. It runs as an application within Media Center, which could make it useful for getting some Web video widgets to run right on your TV.
There are already a ton of services that have this cross platform data sharing, and panelist Digg.com's Kevin Rose pointed out these tools are invariably at odds with the built-in widget platforms found on OS X and Windows Vista. The one thing I think it has going for it is the built-in payment platform where you give Tingz your credit card credentials and and developers can let you pay for services via their widgets. This was shown off for something like buying movie tickets.
The service is currently in private beta and requires a software installation on all three platforms.
Tings has widgets that share data across multiple platforms, starting with three popular ones.
(Credit: Tingz.net)
Social Web surfing tool Me.dium is one of the first apps ready for Internet Explorer 8 beta, which Microsoft unveiled at Mix '08 in Las Vegas Wednesday.
The browser add-on enables users to chat with each other and see which Web pages they're visiting. This release takes advantage of new WebSlices and Activities features within IE 8.
With WebSlices, users can subscribe to dynamic updates of specific parts of Web pages they visit, with new content displaying within the Me.dium sidebar.
Activities capabilities enable users to bring up maps or Web searches of highlighted text on a page. The Discovery activity offers real-time content recommendations related to the pages users are browsing. The feature maps and ranks the popularity of users' ongoing activities.
Upon Microsoft's request, the Me.dium (more here) team reportedly built the tool for IE 8 within a week.
For the sake of security, Me.dium allows stealth settings so users can hide from each other, and it shuts off at bank sites.
Users testing IE 8 can download Me.dium here. Some rival social browsing tools, however, don't require installation.
The extension, also available for Firefox, added support for IE 7 in September.
Me.dium is ready for Internet Explorer 8.
(Credit: Me.dium)
LAS VEGAS--Microsoft offered its first public demonstration of Internet Explorer 8 on Wednesday, a prospect that had general manager Dean Hachamovitch struggling to figure out what to cover.
"I'm so excited that I had to figure out how to focus," he told the crowd. The marketing folks naturally suggested he point to three major advances, but Hatchamovitch disagreed.
"These are developers," he said he told the marketers. "They can count higher than three."
So, instead he said he would talk about eight features: CSS 2.1 support, CSS Certification, performance, start of HTML 5 support, new developer tools, activities, Web slices and one he hasn't named yet.
Microsoft also said that the first beta of the browser, intended for developers, will be available after today's keynote.
One of the new features, WebSlices, allow users to break a Web site into parts and only get updates from the part they want.
In IE 8 users can subscribe to parts of Web page," Hachamovitch said. He showed an example in IE 8 where users can use Web slices to subscribe to a single eBay auction.
Apple has its own Web-clipping subscription method that is part of Mac OS X.
Separately, Microsoft said it was making available a beta version of Silverlight 2, which will move the technology further beyond delivering video and into creating rich Internet applications.
Among the features of Silverlight 2 is what Microsoft calls adaptive streaming: the ability of the client PC to decide how large a streaming file it can handle at any given moment based on its CPU and network resources.
"If the network gets congested it can drop down to a lower bit rate," said Scott Guthrie a vice president in Microsoft's developer division.
With IE8, Hachamovitch discussed Microsoft's commitment to compatibility. He relayed a story of what his kids used to say whenever they had Internet problems.
"They'd ask 'Daddy, did you break the web?'" Hachamovitch said. "Most of the time I could honestly say 'No.'"
In a broader sense though, Hachamovitch said, that others might disagree that Microsoft, had in fact broken the Web. "Web developers might answer the question differently," he said.
Hachamovitch then went on to talk about Microsoft's commitment to interoperability and steps that it has taken. Microsoft announced earlier this week that IE 8 would use its most standards compliant mode by default. The company said it believed that move would assuage developer concerns as well as regulatory and competitive issues.
However, a top Opera executive told CNET News.com yesterday that Microsoft's move addresses only one of several concerns that the browser maker had raised with the European Commission.
You can organize just about anything using the templates in iWork's Numbers app.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Among the announcements at Apple's press event on Tuesday, Steve Jobs talked about the many improvements to Apple's iWork office software. iWork, not unlike Microsoft Office for Windows users, provides a suite of programs designed around productivity. Though the names are different than their Office counterparts, it's pretty easy to tell what each program is for by their names, which include Pages for word processing, KeyNote for presentations, and Numbers for spreadsheets. Mac users who use iWork already love Pages and Keynote, and the newly released Numbers is a welcome addition to iWork '08.
I'm not just here to tell you about each of the updates, however. I'm here to let you know you can download and try it out for yourself! Wednesday, Apple released a 30-day trial for iWork '08, which lets you download and check out each of the programs and their updated features.... Read more
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