October 12th, 2011 § § permalink
If you like playing trivia games, then Trivium for iOS is definitely for you. Trivium for iOS is a game that lets you answer over 10,000 (yes, that’s ten-thousand) questions in more than 7 categories of question types from general trivia to science to historical events.
With many trivia games, it isn’t fun for adults to play because the questions don’t seem relevant, but with Trivium, the questions are geared towards high school and college users, making you really think about some of the questions. As you play, Trivium will begin learning your skill level, and will give you more questions that suit your skill level.
This game really shines in the game play. Besides having a great user interface that lets you quickly navigate to a game of your choice, the game offers many play scenarios. You can play locally by yourself, but there are also several multiplayer options. You can play using “Heads Up!”, which splits the screen on your iOS device, allowing you to play with a friend using the same device. You can also play over Bluetooth with another iOS device, online using Game Center, and if that weren’t enough, you can also play against the computer using one of 4 different skill levels.
The application also interfaces well with Game Center in iOS so that you can prove to the world that you are, in fact, the trivia master.
When you are ready to switch things up, you can purchase trivia packs in the application using your iTunes account. For $1.99 each, you can enable the following trivia packs:
- General Trivia
- Popular Culture
- Science Trivia
- Historical Trivia
- Technology Trivia
- Movie Trivia
- Sports Trivia
Right now, Trivium is free for a limited time. Head on over to the iTunes App Store to grab your copy today! Trivium is available on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and is a Universal Application.
July 13th, 2011 § § permalink
Today is my first foray into the Mac App Store and is also the day that I release my first publicly available Mac OS X application. Over the past few months, I’ve been working on an application called Shrinkr for Mac. This application allows you to quickly and easily shorten long URLs right from the menu bar in Mac OS X.
Shrinkr for Mac is the ultimate URL shortening tool for Mac OS X. This tool is easy to use and ready to convert any long links you throw at it by using popular URL shortening services like Goo.gl, Bit.ly, Is.gd, X.co, and more. Shrinkr is compact and lives in the menu bar on your Mac and looks like a small anchor. To use it, simply copy the URL you would like to shorten, then select the URL shortening service you wish to use. A few seconds later, Shrinkr will automatically copy the shortened URL to your clipboard, ready for you to paste it into an email message, tweet, or chat. It doesn’t stop there, however, as the application can also integrate with your Bit.ly account to provide shortening history in your account.
Check out Shrinkr today by visiting the Shrinkr for Mac website, or by checking out the screencast below.
June 21st, 2011 § § permalink
In programming, regular expressions are very powerful way to check inputted text against a certain expected format; however, programmers can’t always remember every regular expression syntax available. An online tool, though, can help you easily generate regular expressions for use in your programming project.
Txt2re.com lets you build regular expressions by either entering a string that you would like to match, or by selecting various elements to match using the expression generator.
As you can see, Txt2re is pretty amazing and powerful for developers who constantly rely on regular expressions.
What do you think? Do you use Txt2re or another regular expression generator? Let me know in the comments below or follow the conversation on Twitter.
March 29th, 2011 § § permalink
Recently, I launched a new website, thanks to some grant funding I received from the University of South Carolina as a part of their Magellan Scholarship program. This website is devoted to the user interface and web accessibility research that I have been doing since my freshman year at the university.
The website hosts a blog, forum, and plugins, tools, and resources for developers and website administrators who want to make their sites more accessible by using our tools and resources. Below is the introductory post from the AccessibleFutures.org blog:
Welcome to AccessibleFutures.org. This project is a direct result of the accessibility developments and research conducted by the BrailleSC.org project at the University of South Carolina Upstate by Cory Bohon, Dr. George H. Williams, and Dr. Tina Herzberg. You can find out more information about BrailleSC.org by visiting the website.
AccessibleFutures.org provides tools, plugins, documentation, and other resources to developers and website administrators looking to make their websites more accessible. Our plugins for popular content management systems like WordPress, Omeka, and Drupal allow anyone with limited knowledge of website accessibility to create rich, fully accessible websites after the fact.
If you are interested in user interface design and/or web accessibility, then check out AccessibleFutures.org today.
March 27th, 2011 § § permalink
If you are a Back to the Future fan, like myself, then you will love a new game that is now available for the iPad. Telltale games recently released this new application that I was able to take a look at, and I must say, if you love the movies, then you’ll like the video game just as much.
Like many of the Telltale games, there will be many different “episodes” of the game that will be released over the next 5 months. Right now, the first episode has already been released, and the second episode will be coming out soon.
In the game, you play Marty McFly in an all-new, rewritten story line. In the first episode, you get to revisit the 1980s when the DeLorean gets instantly swept away. Marty soon finds out that he must travel back in time in order to save the Doc.
With a good, full story background story behind the game, great gameplay, and amazing graphics, It’s no wonder that I’m currently playing Back to the Future for iPad. Be sure to check it out today for yourself. I guarantee that you won’t regret it.
You can learn more about Telltale Games’ Back to the Future for iPad by visiting their website or checking out the game on the iTunes App Store.
