The Dark Furie

These two classic gothic horror books can be downloaded for free (support depends on your country) to your phones and read at your leisure. If you've never read them before then they're definitely worth a read, although my tip is to start with Frankenstein. Shelley's work stands up so much better these days than Stoker's Dracula does. But wait, that's not all...

Today's Game

New York, 2011 A.D.

The city is besieged by a wave of terrorist attacks. With conventional police overwhelmed, several private forces have been created to counter the threat.

The best funded and most effective are the Freedom Fighters.

Other forces, integrated with live TV crews have become extremely popular.

So begins Zombie Infection, the first true survival horror built exclusively for mobiles.

When I first came up with the idea for my mailing list (before I started giving these things away here) I mentioned that most mobile games just plain don't work because action games don't translate well into mobile games. Zombie Infection is the exception to that rule - fast and frantic action, creepy creatures that take strategy and item conservation to beat, puzzles to solve, boss creatures to fight, side-quests to complete. This is a complete survival horror experience that you'll play over and over, if only to unlock the hidden bonus games, find that last file or play a favourite mission again.

There's not much I can say about Zombie Infection that isn't covered in Pocket Gamer's review where they gave the game 10/10 and compared it to George Romero's films. Read that and download the game or, well... or I'll eat your brains.

And one final treat for all those who've already tried out Zombie Infection and read those book - Resident Evil: Genesis. This little horror game contains puzzles and zombies galore. It's a bit more hardcore than Zombie Infection but can provide some entertainment on a cold and lonely night, as the wind howls across the moors.

Read more...

Wouldn't it be great if my ideas could somehow be brought to the attention of the CEO of a company that creates a leading mobile phone operating system? Can you imagine the fast forward the technology would have if my ideas were taken on board and integrated into a new operating system? That's the reason I recently signed up for an account on Symbian Ideas, where I can submit my ideas and get them rated by others, and eventually have them brought to the attention of the Symbian CEO. Well, that and the fact that my last source in the Symbian team recently left the business meaning that if I'm going to post about the future here I'm going to have to create that future myself. Unfortunately the site is full of people who're going the "copying ideas from other companies" route that I mentioned earlier, with hardly any innovation in their ideas at all so I don't know how long the initiative will last.

My first idea that I posted there is as follows, and includes links to more detailed posts that I've made here.

I suggest scrapping third and first party downloadable applications having new icons and instead integrating them into the existing applications already on the phone.

Okay the basic idea is that the phones have a more powerful core application package (PIM functionality, gallery, image editing, web browser, etc), achieved by combining some features, that deals with most situations and that can have the core applications functionalitys improved via plugins to add new features and browser window shaping widgets rather than having an entirely new application added to the menu. These plugins would use the core user interface as standard, only adding new functions to the existing applications. For example, rather than downloading a new application to add funny stickers to my images I'd add a plugin to my image editor that does that. Rather than downloading a new Twitter client I'd add a widget to my Twitter bookmark that shapes how the site is presented when I open the bookmark.

This would result in both a cleaner user interface with less icons needed, making it easier for newcomers to find their way around the phone and for themers to create themes, and a more personal device containing only the extra functions you actually need. As user interface wouldn't be a concern for most developers, they could release smaller function packages quickly for smaller development costs, luring bedroom coders towards Symbian as they design things for their own use.

I've written about this in a bit more detail before now and there are more examples and a more advanced way of looking at this at that link. I'll try to copy it over at some point, but the main points are all present.