Author: Shawn Blanc

The Guilt of the Video-Game Millionaires  →

Simon Parkin, writing for The New Yorker, about :

One night in March, 2013, Rami Ismail and his business partner Jan Willem released a game for mobile phones called Ridiculous Fishing. Ismail, who was twenty-four at the time and who lives in the Netherlands, woke the following morning to find that the game had made him tens of thousands of dollars overnight. His first reaction was not elation but guilt. His mother, who has a job in local government, had already left for work. “Ever since I was a kid I’ve watched my mom wake up at six in the morning, work all day, come home, make my brother and me dinner—maybe shout at me for too much ‘computering,’ ” he said. “My first thought that day was that while I was asleep I’d made more money than she had all year. And I’d done it with a mobile-phone game about shooting fish with a machine gun.”

The Guilt of the Video-Game Millionaires

Sponsorship Availability at The Sweet Setup  →

Speaking of The Sweet Setup, we’ve got some near-term sponsorship openings that I’d love to see filled, including this week’s spot.

The way sponsorships work on TSS is as a whole package bundle that includes a sponsored blog post with a big image, an exclusive ad in our weekly email newsletter, a few thank-you tweets from our Twitter account, and a one-month run of two banner ads served up in our sidebar.

If you’re interested in booking a spot, shoot me an email: [email protected]

Sponsorship Availability at The Sweet Setup

Platform Juxtaposition  →

On this week’s episode of The Weekly Briefly I discuss building a platform and an audience to share the things we have to say but how those platforms can turn on us and stifle our creativity and inspiration. Or: How do we keep out of the echo chamber in order to consistently create work we’re proud of and that has value and meaning?

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Platform Juxtaposition

Fantastical for iPad  →

Speaking of amazing apps that shipped yesterday, Fantastical 2 for the iPad is here. I’ve been using it for the last couple months and, of course, it’s great.

And in my time using and testing Fantastical for iPad, I realized a few things.

For one, I noticed how little I actually use a calendar on my iPad. I use to think I never used a calendar app on my iPad because there weren’t any options that I really liked (though, honestly, I do think the pre-iOS 7 iPad calendar app was pretty great). However, even with Fantastical available to me on the iPad, I just rarely ever opened it. But for people who’ve been running the iPhone version of Fantastical on their iPad at 2x, they’ll be extremely happy with the native iPad app.

Which leads me to my second realization. Using the iPad version put some context into just what an amazing app Fantastical for iPhone is. With all the extra space of the iPad’s screen, the app isn’t necessarily better than it’s iPhone sibling. And the fact that an app which has a primary function of displaying and making discoverable as much relevant information as possible, would do as good a job of that on the iPhone as it does on the iPad, is a testament to the former’s design quality.

Needless to say, if you’re in want of a great calendar app on the iPad, Fantastical is a great choice.

Fantastical for iPad

My Preferred Keyboard for Writing on the iPad (Mini)  →

Well, so long as we’re linking to cool articles over on The Sweet Setup, I also just posted an updated review of my Origami Workstation + Apple Bluetooth keyboard. I reviewed this little iPad writing accessory a year ago, and now that I use it with the iPad mini my affinity for it is even stronger. It is, in my opinion, one of the best Bluetooth keyboard options out there for any iPad at all, and certainly for the iPad mini.

My Preferred Keyboard for Writing on the iPad (Mini)

DPR’s Review of the Olympus OM-D E-M10  →

From the overall conclusion:

The E-M10 very much feels more like a third generation OM-D model than a step-down from its two brothers. It borrows many qualities we liked from both of them and presents them in a slightly smaller, lighter package.

I’ve read a few other reviews of the E-M10 and they are all glowing like this one. When the E-M10 was first announced a lot of people pooh-poohed it, saying it was just a poor man’s OM-D. But I think that’s missing the point entirely.

Last year when I wrote my one-year review of the E-PL5, I said there were no cameras enticing enough for me to consider upgrading. I spent some time with the E-P5 over Christmas and was actually underwhelmed by it — I wasn’t getting any shots out of it that I couldn’t also get with my E-PL5, and yet the E-P5 was bigger, heavier, more expensive.

But the E-M10 has turned out to be a fantastic upgrade from my E-PL5. For one, it’s almost exactly the same size (but with the EVF on top). It has a better back menu dial button (a 4-button d-pad instead of a spinning dial), it has the two dial control rings for adjusting Aperture, Shutter Speed, and/or exposure on the fly.

But something I’ve found myself using quite often is the Wi-Fi. I thought it was just a neat novelty, but turns out it’s actually quite useful.

As an example, a couple weeks ago I was at my nephew’s 2-year birthday party. I snapped a bunch of photos of him blowing out his cake. Then, as everyone was eating cake, I import a couple of the photos onto my iPhone, edited them in VSCO Cam, and then sent them to my folks who live in Colorado.

I have plans to write a more comprehensive review of the E-M10, but in the meantime I’ll say that I’m extremely happy with it. I’m not shooting more often than I already was with the E-PL5, nor has the E-M10 suddenly made me a brilliant photographer. However, I am taking advantage of all the extra features and functions that E-M10 has over the E-PL5. And that’s the point.

For further listening, check out a few weeks back, on one of my Weekly Briefly episodes where I talked about the E-M10 and why I decided to stick with Micro Four Thirds.

DPR’s Review of the Olympus OM-D E-M10