jon914

It's ironic that the USPTO's own site technically violates this patent, unless they've paid the royalties. ;) http://www.uspto.gov/siteindex.jsp

115,000 copies as of March 2010 according to http://www.next-gen.biz/features/gdc-semi-secret-talk-canaba...

Amen. I've learned the hard way that a few pixels difference in a hitbox makes the difference between them sticking till the end or quitting in frustration from dying unfairly and leaving you a 1/5.

Thanks! The application is actually written in Java and uses Swing.

Not the sexiest thing to use, but Swing is very customizable, and I wanted to ensure that it was cross-platform from the get go. In addition to that, we also have an ActionScript-based player/engine and invoke the Flex SDK to compile auto-generated AS3 source into a SWF.

The app also communicates with a server-side webapp to provide the resource sharing, so we've got a little bit of everything in our technology stack. ;)

There's still a place for desktop applications. It depends upon what you're building and whether that's a fit for the medium.

For example, I've built game creation tools. These are better suited for the desktop because of the complex interactions and user data involved.

There are plenty of startups that have built their software partially or wholly on the desktop such as Dropbox and Unity3D. For small developers, building desktop clients to popular web services like Twitter is another relevant path to take.

I got one of these pretty recently. Like all cold calls that feel out of the blue, I googled up an extract of it and tossed in the trash after realizing that it was a (fairly well-worded) scam.

My impression is that pointing out a typo doesn't further the conversation unless the typo completely alters the meaning of the comment.

As a Flash game developer, I find that Flash games run substantially faster in Chrome because of the way that Flash is integrated. By a factor of 2x in some cases.

Along similar lines, make sure you have clear and reasonable terms for parting ways with your co-founder in the unlikely event that that happens. It will save you from major headaches later on.

I recently went through that process, and even for an amicable split, it was a lot more work to resolve than I would have liked.

I think you're talking about Canabalt by AdamAtomic.

This is a link to the original Flash version, but he ported it to iPhone too. http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/

It really depends on the kind of business. If it's user-generated content, you're going to have a tough time with ads.

Instead, you should talk with your customers (or potential customers) to see what their needs and pains are and base your business model off of that research.

On the commute back home, I set the night's agenda by listing out the 3 things that I plan to accomplish. This way, I'm constantly moving forward each night and am not left wondering "what should I do now?" when I reach my desk.

My other tip is to listen to your body's signals. If you're sputtering out, grab a snack and walk around a bit. Speaking of which, it's about time for me to do that right now!