∞ Unity 5
So, what’s new? In Unity 5 we give you physically-based shaders, Real-time Global Illumination across high-end mobile, desktop and consoles, awesome audio, WebGL deployment, a 64-bit editor and much, much more.
This is yet another big deal for the game industry by Unity. I’m super super excited about the more advanced CG rendering features in Unity, as well as the WebGL deployment. It just makes Unity the Game Engine.
∞ Apple’s SSL/TLS Bug
Yet another reason why you should use Chrome, not Safari.
You are secure if you use Chrome, both iOS and OS X. Use this link to test;
∞ Social Aspects of Success and Failure in Cultural Markets
In short, Marco is right that Flappy Bird would likely not have succeeded as it did without having the qualities that he listed. Games like Flappy Bird will occasionally be catapulted to success in the App Store, and when they are it will be pretty clear, in one sense, what it is about them that made them so popular. But John is right that there are likely many, many games with these qualities in the App Store, and in a market for cultural goods where phenomenally rapid word-of-mouth success can happen, it is next to impossible to predict which of the many candidate games specifically will make it big. This is one reason, by the way, that players in markets for cultural goods often seek to control the distribution pipeline (in more and less legitimate ways) rather than invest too much time and money in content creation. It’s more predictable. This may also help explain why the immediate reaction of some people was to suggest that the developer had gamed the rankings to drive up popularity.
A must read. Especially if you were trying to find out why Flappy Bird had such a success from the aspect of the game itself, or thought the developer “cheated”.
∞ Facebook Is Buying WhatsApp for $16 Billion
Facebook has entered into an agreement to purchase WhatsApp, the massively popular messaging client, for $16 billion in cash and stock.
Let’s see whether this statement will change:
Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product.
At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That’s our product and that’s our passion. Your data isn’t even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it.
∞ Reddit IamA from the Person on a Hijacked Plane
I’m a male, 25 Years old, I was in transit at Addis Adaba for flight ET702.
The plane was hijacked one hour after take-off. This is how it went down.
Must read.
∞ Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling
These rules were originally tweeted by Emma Coats, Pixar’s Story Artist. Number 9 on the list - When you’re stuck, make a list of what wouldn’t happen next – is a great one and can apply to writers in all genres.
Great read even though I’m not a writer.
∞ You Can Get a Kitten at Any Size
A quick and simple service for getting pictures of kittens for use as placeholders in your designs or code. Just put your image size (width & height) after our URL and you’ll get a placeholder.
Example: https://placekitten.com/200/301.
Ira Glass on Creative Work
Ira Glass's great take on creative work, with his amazing voice.
∞ Indie Smash Hit 'Flappy Bird' Racks Up $50K Per Day in Ad Revenue
Flappy bird has reached a state where anything added to the game will ruin it.
AAA companies should really start to learn from indies on game design.
Which Paper?
Update on November 14, 2015: Dropbox also launched Paper.
There’s a simple fix here. We think Facebook can apply the same degree of thought they put into the app into building a brand name of their own. An app about stories shouldn’t start with someone else’s story. Facebook should stop using our brand name.
This Paper of course.