Today Fishlabs linked to an interview with its CEO Michael Schade on Polygon. One of the topics was the question whether a developer can deliver a premium gaming experience with a Free-To-Play business model. Michael Schade seems to think so.

I think it's going to be a difficult task. Delivering a high quality game while at the same time trying recuperate the cost of development and marketing through a FTP model results in the creation of a thin red line.

On one side of this line players are going to enjoy the game but won't have much incentive to spend money. On the other side of the line players have no possibility to significantly advance in the game and enjoy it without spending money over and over again on In-App-Purchases (see the Real Racing 3 travesty of a game).
Apply this logic to an online multiplayer game and that line becomes even thinner than in offline games, because it means a player (or a group of players) with sufficient funds can potentially gain so much power that other players will lose interest.

Walking that thin red line is what Fishlabs has chosen to do.

That being said, I believe that in previous Galaxy on Fire titles they've made good use of IAPs, limiting them to things that make the experience nicer, help the player progress a little bit faster, or give her/him a little edge, but nothing that'll completely alter the difficulty and thus the over-all experience of the game.
Because of this I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, but as we've seen with recent titles on the App Store, customers are increasingly sceptical of (high-profile) games that rely heavily on In-App-Purchases.

All that remains to be said is: "Viel Erfolg Fishlabs!"

Found on David Chartier's HD MINI LITE (PRO):

“Wonder if this movie’s good.” $10.
“Try the new Burginator Deluxe!” $6.
“Haven’t heard of that beer before.” $3-5.
“New restaurant in town!” $30-$200.
“Huh, an app. I really need a free trial.” $0.99”

Bill Kunz, developer of the most excellent Felix for App.net and Quite a Smart Guy. 

Harry Marks has done some analysis of the articles that were published on The Verge around the introduction of 'Facebook home'.

Read it, it nicely showcases what's wrong with what goes for journalism on the internet nowadays.

I've loved wearing Chucks ever since my dad bought me my first pair of low top Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars in beige when I was seven years old.

The healthiness of wearing these shoes might be debatable; I've owned at least one pair for the last 15 years and my feet/knees/hips are very healthy. The quality of these shoes is also debatable, but I've learned over the years that if I don't wear them daily—which I rarely do with any shoe—a pair of high tops will last 1.5 years before they need to be replaced (e. g. fall apart).

All in all they're dependable shoes that I know what I'll get out of.

What I hate though is the price, or at least the markup this particular brand/model of shoes carries in Europe. To illustrate:

• I bought two pairs of high top Chucks in a sports store on NYC's Time Square in 2009 for the regular price of ~ € 35,–
• I bought the pair pictured above for € 42,– on the internet in 2011
• A regular pair of high tops goes for breathtaking € 65,– to € 70,– in German retail stores, and—oh wonder—you won't find them cheaper in brick and mortar stores in almost any town in Germany. If you think collusion is in place here, you might be right.
• During a few trips to eastern France in the last couple of years I've seen that they usually go for € 65,– to € 75,– over there as well.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, I lived in Beijing, China for a while and there I bought genuine high top Chuck Taylor All Star shoes for—hold on to your hats—a mere € 12,–. How do I know they were genuine? Well, I was able to compare the pair I had just worn out to the new one, and they were identical down to the last stitch. I approached the store owner and she told me that even at this price she makes a decent profit off of them.

I'm of course not saying that German retailers should offer them at Chinese retail prices, but think about this: even considering shipping costs and intermediaries the online retailer I bought a pair from three days ago (they'll arrive tomorrow) still gets a profit margin of over 200% out of them.

Certain types of brick and mortar stores are dying in Germany—shoe stores that don't perform well in six months usually disappear—but when I see a markup of 450% and more compared to what I paid in China and 50% to what I pay online, I don't see how I'll ever buy a pair of sneakers in a regular store ever again.

Ich schreibe derzeit diverse wissenschaftliche Arbeiten und stoße dabei von Zeit zu Zeit zwangsläufig an die Grenzen meiner Formulierungsfähigkeiten. Da ich beim Frühstück kein Synonynmwörterbuch lese, sondern Artikel auf meinen Lieblingswebseiten, ist es praktisch einen guten Thesaurus zur Hand zu haben.

Wolfgang Reszels OpenThesaurus-Plugin für das OS X Lexikon sind hier ungeheuer nützlich, denn obwohl die Datenbasis schon etwas älter ist, ist es sehr praktisch die Inhalte von OpenThesaurus.de offline verfügbar zu haben. Wenn man aber belastbare Definitionen benötigt—und hier ist der Duden immer noch die Autorität—dann landet man früher oder später auf Duden Online. Die Firma Duden bietet zwar die meisten ihrer Nachschlagewerke als Software zum Download an, jedoch funktionieren diese ebenso gut wie quadratische Reifen am Auto.

Um mir die mühselige Aufgabe zu ersparen jedes mal auf duden.de das gesuchte Wort einzutippen, habe ich mit ein wenig Hilfe durch diesen Artikel einen Dienst für OS X gebastelt.

Die unten verlinkte Datei wird einfach im Ordner "*Benutzername*LibraryServices" abgelegt. Damit ist der Dienst systemweit verfügbar.
Genutzt wird der Dienst, indem man ein Wort markiert und dann im Kontextmenü (rechte Maustaste oder CTRL-Taste + linke Maustaste) unter Dienste selbigen auswählt.
Alternativ kann man auch den Menüpunkt "Dienste" im Menü mit dem Programmnamen nutzen oder ein Tastaturkürzel nutzen.

Anmerkungen:

1. Den Ordner "Library" kann man unter OS X Mountain Lion aufrufen indem man im Finder auf das Menü "Gehe zu" klickt und mit gedrückter ALT-Taste den entsprechenden Eintrag im Menü sichtbar macht.
2. Ein Tastaturkürzel kann man in den Systemeinstellungen unter "Tastatur » Tastaturkurzbefehle » Dienste” definieren. Mein Vorschlag ist "CTRL+ALT+CMD+D", da diese Kombination meines Wissens nach von keinem anderen Standardprogramm verwendet wird.

Bonus:
Wer häufiger englische Wörter nachschlagen darf und hier eine gute Quelle sucht, ist mit dem Longman English Dictionary Online gut bedient. Ein OS X Dienst, der genauso funktioniert wie der oben beschriebene kann hier heruntergeladen werden.

I love music and I'm a podcast addict. That's why I carry earphones with me everywhere.
The problem is that the cables tend to tangle up when you just throw them into a pocket or bag.

While my beloved in ear monitors reside in a semi-hard case when not in use—where for whatever reason the cables still manage to tangle up—my regular Apple buds are usually just thrown into my pocket.

Jens Arne Männig had the great idea to use simple claw clips to store cables neat and tangle-free.
Over here a pack of six plastic claw clips costs about € 1,–.

This is the result:

If you'd like to hear me talk about the current Apple news and what Apple's competitors have been up to lately, you should listen to the current episode #239 of the International Mac Podcast.

The makers of the universally lauded Dark Sky app for iOS, have unveiled their latest project; a weather website:

[…] we decided to do something grander: create our own full-featured weather service from scratch, complete with 7-day forecasts that cover the whole world, beautiful weather visualizations, and a time machine for exploring the weather in the past and far future. You can access it from all of your devices, whether it be your laptop, iPhone, Android phone, or tablet.

Read the announcement blog post for an overview of all the features.

But there's more: Forecast.io is not only free, it even has a public API:

On top of all that, we’re providing this data to other developers, in the hopes that a truly independent weather community can thrive in the era of increasing corporate consolidation.

The developers are also working hard to expand their precipitation forecast service found in the Dark Sky application to countries around the world as fast as they can — which I honestly am really excited about.

I always keep a weather app on the first page of my homescreen of my iPhone and iPad, it's going to be interesting to see whether this website can replace the native app I use on both devices (Marco Arment seems to think so).

My favourite Twitter client for iOS received an update today.

Among a slew of smaller and larger improvements (the full list of changes can be found here), Twitterrific for iOS 5.2 now supports push notifications — a feature many users have been waiting for eagerly, myself included.

The picture above captures my reaction very well.

(For those of you who don't know the ERMAHGERD meme, consider yourselves informed.)

Yesterday Apple bumped its podcast fetching application to version 1.2. Compared to the competition (Instacast, Pocketcasts, etc.) it still lacks many a feature power consumers of podcasts will miss, but it's a welcome update nevertheless.

The most significant change is an updated, simplified, and optimised UI, that might not look as pretty as the virtual tape deck in the previous versions, but works a lot better. The most significant addition are playlists—Apple calls them “My Stations”—which are highly customisable yet easy to set up.

Chris Breen at Macworld and Cody Fink at macstories wrote good overview articles outlining and reviewing the new features and changes.