Lately I have seen lots of articles and discussions about iOS stealing from Android and vice versa. Heck, I even ventured into that territory myself. People often use the argument that Android was “made” after iOS, so naturally Android “stole” everything from iOS. Likewise, Android had the pull-down notification center first, so iOS “stole” that feature for iOS5.

However, it’s hard to say who was actually first. Sure, iOS was originally released to the public before Android, but there is tons of evidence that supports the notion that both operating systems were being developed at the same time.

Time for a history lesson. The first public release of iOS, version 1.0, along with the original iPhone, was released in June of 2007. Android’s first public release, a beta version, was released in November of 2007. I think you can agree that both surfaced at about the same time. Now to clear up the confusion. Many people believe that because iOS was released first, it was made first. This really has no support when you do a quick search on the Internet.

Android Inc. was founded in 2003 by Andy Rubin and a few other guys known for their work in the mobile industry. It wasn’t until 2005 that Google acquired them. Based on this, you can say that development on Android as an operating system began as early as 2003. Now, given Apple’s closed nature, there isn’t much information on when development of iOS began. However, using Android as a benchmark, I think it’s safe to say that iOS development began around 2003 as well. So, while iOS was released first, I think it’s safe to say that both were “made” at the same time.

Now the question is asked: Who is stealing from whom?

I like to think of the mobile OS ecosystem as a group of operating systems that give it there all for their latest release to introduce a major feature before the competition, and in turn the competition seeing what works and implementing it in their own software. This is a great balance as it encourages innovation and competition. You could argue that Apple has been less than innovative with iOS5 (and vice versa with Android, in some respects), but that’s a different article. Besides, when it all comes down to it, most everything is just a reinvention of a past idea.

So, let’s put aside the notion of stealing. Instead, congratulate those who got to the market first, and encourage the others to try harder next time.

I have always found Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) a bit of a double-edged sword. They’re great for quickly churning out code, but awful for understanding the code you’ve written and the language it’s written in.

Don’t get me wrong, the code completion (and sometimes, code correction) features an IDE offers are a great tools that come in handy all the time. However, if you are new to the language, or especially new to programming in general, such features will hinder your ability to fully learn and understand what you’re writing.

Starting off with an IDE can also lead to bad habits in the future. For example, you might be use to your IDE automagically correcting anything from whitespace to brackets. While this is nice, what happens when the situation arises where you must write code without an IDE or even without a computer at all (e.g., at a job interview)?

My suggestion for new programmers is to crack open their favorite simple text editor (I prefer Gedit in Linux) and begin coding. I know I and others have greatly benefited from doing so.

When I first began learning computer algorithms, such as Bubble sort, big O notation was one of the hardest things to get my mind around.

To use Bubble sort as an example, the worst possible case is defined as O(n²). Worst case meaning, if the values you were trying to sort were in complete reverse order. What I originally believed O(n²) to mean is that for n number of values, it would take n² iterations in order to sort the values correctly. This is most definitely not the case.

Yesterday I noticed something odd. I wrote a quick implementation of Bubble sort and found that for n number of values, it took n² - n iterations in order to sort the values. Therefore, I believed the worst case to be O(n² - n), not O(n²). I was confused by this because just about every place I looked, Bubble sort’s worst case was defined as O(n²). I decided to visit Wikipedia and read up on big O notation.

I would like to point out, at this moment, that this year is my senior year of high school, and until now I had no real clue what a limit was. When I checked Wikipedia, surprise suprise, big O was not the worst possible number of iterations, but rather the limiting behavior of a function. Needless to say, I felt pretty silly.

If it’s still not clear, O(n²) means that as n increases towards infinity, f(n) appears to approach, but not necessarily reach, n². This explains why my Bubble sort function appeared to get close to n², but never hit n² exactly.

Moral of the story? Learn some basic Calculus concepts prior to venturing very far into the realm of Computer Science.

As social networks like Facebook and Google+ grow in popularity, so too do the fears that come with keeping all your information in one place.

Nowadays, more and more people keep all of their information and data in one centralized location. For example, someone might use Facebook to post status updates, pictures, notes, videos, and now music. While this is fine and dandy, two fears arise:

• All of your data is in one place, so if Facebook ever gets hacked or goes down for any reason, you’re cut off completely. You might even end up losing all of that data.
• All of your data is in one place, which means Facebook can do what it wants with your data, a la Big Brother.

Like Myspace before it, Facebook is trying its hardest to keep you on their site for as long as possible. Just recently announced was watching internet video sites (e.g., Hulu) from within Facebook. Facebook wants you to do EVERYTHING using Facebook.

Here is where Distributed Social Networking (DSN) comes in to play. Instead of using Facebook to do everything, you delegate specific tasks to specific social networks. For example:

• Twitter for status updates
• Foursquare for location check-ins
• YouTube for video
• Flickr for photos
• Imgur for images

Why would you want to do this when you could use a network like Facebook and have things all in one place? Well, aside from quelling the two fears mentioned above, distributing your social activity to many different networks will allow you to get the best experience for different types of activity. For example, YouTube is designed for video sharing, therefore YouTube will probably have a much nicer video experience than Facebook would.

So, the idea of distributed social networking is simple: Spread yourself out among specialized social networks in order to get the best experience as well as the best peace of mind.

The biggest plot hole here is that you probably do not want to have tabs open for every single network you are using. You still want a centralized place to aggregate and manage all of your social identities. Does one exist? I don’t know as I haven’t done my research, but you should really watch this space.

A few months ago, I was approached online by a graphics artist with an idea for a mobile game, Gerk the Gherkin. He had most of the art and sound done, only needing someone to build the game itself. I had very little experience with game development previously, especially when it came to Android game development. Nonetheless, the game was finished quite recently and you can check it out in its free and paid forms.

Having very little experience with Android game development (I had played around building an OpenGL-based engine awhile back, but it never took off), I opted to go with AndEngine. I picked it mainly because it was being actively maintained as well as for its thriving community. It took me quite some time to learn the ways around the codebase, but eventually I got a menu working with sound. I felt pretty accomplished at this point, but the rush faded when I realized the huge task I had ahead of me: writing the game itself.

In the beginning, Gerk the Gherkin consisted of only one type of game, titled “Foam Valley.” I initially decided to give randomly generated leveling a try, but that didn’t end well. Random level generation is hard to perfect; the slightest hiccup will throw off the game flow completely. After failing at multiple implementations, I instead hard-coded “sections” of the level that could then be stitched together randomly. This turned out to work pretty well, and is how the level works to this day. The lesson: when it comes to random level generation, start large and whittle your way down to what works and plays the best.

The first level took weeks to get working properly (in my defense, I was still learning AndEngine). However, I soon learned that even once you successfully complete the game to the original specifications, you are not finished coding. It was about that time when my partner on the project (the artist who originally approached me) decided the game was lacking, and quickly came to me with an idea for an entirely new level, complete with entirely new mechanics. Quite honestly, I was a bit disappointed. I was under the impression that my work was complete and, being the lazy teenager I am, did not jump at the idea of more coding. However, a job is a job, so I stuck with it.

The second level, named “Gerkanian Skies,” consists of the player controlling the hero’s spaceship in order to navigate through a never-ending stream of obstacles. For this level I returned to random generation, and in this case it panned out perfectly. I also made use of Box2D physics, which was an adventure in its own right. Another couple of weeks passed, and soon that level was also completed. We were close to releasing.

Left to be done was basically polishing and tuning, but don’t underestimate those tasks. We played the game for hours, tweaking things to be just right, making sure OpenFeint worked as it was supposed to, etc. Lots of bugs were slain and performance was improved significantly. Here we see one of the most important aspects of game development: never slack on optimization. If your game jerks and lags too much, it isn’t going to be fun to play.

So, the game was completed, and we released the paid version to the Android Market for ~$0.99. We let it run for a couple days before deciding a paid version on its own just wasn’t going to cut it, we needed a free version if we were going to get any visibility whatsoever. So, I slapped in some advertisements and we released the free version, which is doing significantly better in terms of downloads. Who knows? Maybe that move will get us to a comfortable position in the Market.

All in all, creating Gerk the Gherkin was a blast. I strongly recommend giving AndEngine a try if you’re new to Android game development, as it makes getting things up and running a snap. In the end, I have something else to put on my resume, and I might make a few bucks as well.

This is kind of a new thing for me: I’ve started a “Let’s Play” series on YouTube.

If anything, I had thought it would be a series on Minecraft, but in fact it is a series on Terraria. Nevertheless, it’s a whole new adventure for me.

“Let’s Play” videos (or LPs) are basically videos of a player (or multiple players) playing through a game, usually adding commentary as well. While it sounds a tad boring at first (who wants to watch people play a game when you can play the game yourself?), I’ve found that I actually enjoy watching LP videos more than playing the game itself in some cases.

Anyways, this is just a blog post saying that I’ve begun my own series, as horrible as it might be. Want to give it a watch? Start with episode 1.

Before I say anything, I want to go on record saying that Google+ looks amazing, and I seriously hope that it takes off and doesn’t go the way of Google Wave. However, Google’s VIP only approach for the initial release of Google+ might doom it just like it doomed Wave.

While I understand the need for beta periods, keeping them private is not something you can do with a social network. The loss of hype is what killed Wave, and Wave lost hype because it was in a invite-only stage for so very long (probably because Google announced it at Google I/O and then stopped caring, but that’s beside the point). When you announce a product, people will want to try it out immediately. If they don’t get a chance to get their hands on it, odds are they will walk away, never to return.

Once again, I really hope Google+ does well, and I can’t wait for a chance to try it out. I simply believe that private betas just don’t work for social networks.

When Google announced their plans to unleash Chrome OS to the world via Chromebooks, I was excited. When I heard that they would be giving students the opportunity to rent Chromebooks for only $20 per month, I was blown away. Today, however, I found out those plans have been changed up a bit, and now I’m not so sure I want a Chromebook.

Today I read that Google is only leasing Chromebooks to businesses and “education institutions,” which means students have to hope that their school knows what a Chromebook is let alone have the desire to rent one.

I suppose I can see where Google is coming from. If they allowed individuals to rent Chromebooks, they might think that they’d have to deal with tons of warranty claims and whatnot. They might also not want to deal with having to track individual leases (it’s easier to track institutions that order in bulk). I’m sure it all comes down to money, really. Google might just not have seen it worthwhile to provide individuals the opportunity to rent Chromebooks.

The idea of renting a computer for two years and then trading up for the latest and greatest model when I renew the contract was a stellar one, in my opinion. That is exactly the idea that I believed–or hoped–that Google was aiming for. I’m a student myself, and I don’t have $500 to blow all at once on a computer right now. What I can afford is $20 a month.

I suppose the only hope left is for another business to pick up where Google fell short. I’d like to see a company begin to provide Chromebooks for other individuals to rent, despite any possible risks. Many people I’ve talked to about this idea love it just as I do, and I don’t doubt that the business that implements it will be rewarded in the end.

For a few months now, I have been working on a new Android game using AndEngine. We recently decided to add another style of gameplay into the mix, and I was eager to try it out. However, it required the use of Box2D physics, which I was unfamiliar with.

After implementing Box2D, the game started to appear to work correctly. However, at the point where objects that fly off the screen and are re-positioned to the back of the group, I started noticing some wonkiness. Collisions seemed to appear almost at random. I spent hours debugging the issue, and took a long break from the game the last few weeks (mainly for school reasons, but there was also the dread of having to deal with this issue). Just yesterday, however, I started back up on developing the game. This morning, after many hours of solitude in the fetal position trying to figure out why life absolutely hates me, it hit me.

When I wanted to re-position a sprite in vanilla AndEngine, I would simply call setPosition() on the sprite, giving the new coordinates. The coordinates given were for the top left corner of the sprite. Box2D works differently, however. In order to position bodies (along with their sprites), you must set up a new vector and pass it to the body via setTransform(). This is how I was doing things, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. That is, until I realized that Box2D wants the coordinates for the center of the body, not the top left corner.

TL;DR: I’m an idiot for not reading the documentation more carefully (even if there is very little of it), and you can expect my game to hit the Market soon.

Empire Avenue is a great place place to see someone’s connections across the social web. From one page I am able to visit a person’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. However, there’s one site that I’d really enjoy having as well.

GitHub is a site for people who want to host and collaborate on open source projects. I keep quite a few projects there myself, including my GitHub app for Android, Hubroid, as well as my Empire Avenue extension for Google Chrome, P³.

I believe GitHub would make a great addition to the array of social websites supported by Empire Avenue. Empire Avenue could track how often you participate in other open source projects as well as your own.

Just like Empire Avenue has encouraged me to become more involved with Twitter, YouTube, my blog, and other sites across the Web, it could also encourage others to become more involved in the open source realm.