Widget: iClock

More than 3 years ago I decided to move from developing small applications and left the 'widgetsphere' to focus more in the casual games industry. I created Games-Garden, a facebook app and a bunch of games.
These days my mode has changed a bit and I don't feel like spending all of my spare time creating games which might be played only a few thousand times. The competition is too big and there are lots of 'pirates' stealing games (specially from China) which is not fun at all.
So, I've decided to go back to create these small apps known as widgets. The first one I'm releasing is this iClock. Similar to the Digital Time and Date widget that I created more than 5 years ago, which by the way it has been cloned many times already, the iClock shows the time in a 12 hours format and as well it shows the date when moving your mouse over the small calendar icon which shows the day. The graphics obviously have a big influence from the iDevices and so far it looks like people like it. What do you think?

iClock

Personally I think is nice :)
I had the idea of creating a similar widget many years ago when at my previous job I worked on a countdown and these days the idea came back after my current task at work includes a copy of that old countdown. So yeah, it looks like everything is a remix... :D

Sound spectrum visualizer

I know I'm a bit late for playing with the AS3 sound API but I never had the chance to check it out before until some time this year and specially in recent days as I got the flu and haven't had much to do when at home (my girlfriend doesn't want to catch it so she's sleeping in another room and I'm not allowed out of this room...).
Anyway, after playing a bit with the SoundMixer class, and adding basics Flint particles in the background (yeah, some default example), I ended up with a small flash visualizer and uploaded to YouTube.
 

I think it looks cool, plus I love the song, Deckers Theme by Dom & Roland.
The base of the code can be found at this old post from Mike Chambers. I advise you to play a bit with the code, you can get some really nice results. And by the way, it's never too late to learn new stuff ;)

New Game: Emotiblocks

Just had a quick look at my forgotten blog (yes, the one you're on now) and noticed it's been a while since I mentioned any of my works.

Well, I've been busy doing games and other experiments mixing many technologies as usual.
Anyway, I want to introduce you to my latest released game: Emotiblocks.

It's a match 3 type of game with power-ups and 1 minute levels.
If you don't feel like playing it now, maybe this video from early development stages will tease you enough to try it for yourself:



And if in case you feel like adding it to your site, just download the .zip file from Games Garden 'Games for your site'.

Flash Games Event: Mochi London 2011

Mochi London 2011 is a FREE 2-day Flash games event taking place on August 27th-28th, 2011 in central London.

It has been brought to you by members of the Mochi Media community, Mochi London will bring local and international people together to share insights and experiences about the Flash games market. We're calling at:

• Flash game developers
  
• Flash game artists and designers
  
• Flash game publishers

Whether you live or work in England or anywhere else in the United Kingdom, or even elsewhere in Europe, this event will be well worth the trip. Mochi community members Chris Jeffrey (ChrisJeff) and myself are organizing the event, with support provided by Mochi Media.

Come and join us! it will rock!
The speakers include:

• Iain Lobb (freelance Flash / ActionScript developer)
• Stuart Allen (developer of Gravitee Wars)
• Martine Spaans (Ubisoft, formerly of SPIL Games)
• Michael Hudson (ActionScript developer, CodeHeads)
• Merlin Gore (Flash developer, FlashGameLicense.com)
• Mike Jones (Platform Evangelist, Adobe Systems)

Don't forget to register and find out more at the Registration Page.

Google+ first impressions

I've been testing this new Google+ thing just to see what is about. Not that I'm excited about social-networks at all but I love technology.
By the way, this is not a full review nor anything like that, just a quick 'first impressions' on my experience so far using it.
First of all, as they are in close beta testing getting the invite was a pain!
After a friend found a 'hack' or a workaround to send invites, I managed to get into 'the circles'.
Inviting people is even a bigger pain!
Seems like even with this workaround, they allow only a limited number of people to join every day so, so far I got 1 friend! woohoo!! :D
I like the clean look of it and how it divides streams into 'circles' so you can choose the people who will read your message, only family, only friends, etcetera... nice! but there are loads of steps just to publish a simple 'hello mum'.

The circles idea reminds me of Wallop, a social-network made 100% in flash by Microsoft back in 2006 which I think it fail for 2 reasons: their greediness and the flash-o-phobia people had back in that time. It was way too advanced for those days :)

By the way, I don't think many companies will restrict the access to google.com so accessing to Google+ in a sub-domain is a good idea, http://plus.google.com, or bad idea from a business perspective... I'm sure companies will find a workaround to block access to it as soon as it becomes popular (if ever).