trends

Is There An App For You?

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You want to stay in touch with someone?  You can use Facebook.  Or Twitter.  Or email.  Or Plaxo.  Or LinkedIn.  Or . . . well you get the idea.

Sure there's applications like Flipboard and RSS feeds to try and tie things together.  There's plenty of ways to try and arrange your time to keep up on social media.  But it seems keeping track of people is awful complicated in this age of technology to make things simpler.

Now for people who want to be known, or who have a lot to say in various media, or who have people who follow them intimately (from friends do just family), this is even more complicated.  Some people, for a million or just ten people want to keep in touch.

So I've wondered, in an age where there's many ways to turn simple feeds and data into Apps for Smartphones, iPads etc., are some people going to basically create "Me Apps"? 

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The Web? There’s an App For That

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I can't imagine what I'd do without the web.  Research, news, game tips, general amusement, and more are all there online.  Anyone can make a web page and create a new resource.  The web is vital to what I do, to my life, to my job – and I imagine you're the same way.

However we also know the web has problems.  We get bad pages and embed ads, corrupted sites and bad formatting.  How many of us have a few ad blockers, script busters, and other tools to make web-surfing easier?  How many of us sigh as we try and help our less computer-literate friends and relatives navigate the complexities of the modern web?  The web, for all its benefits, is complicated in many ways that frustrate our enjoyment of it.

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The Future of Hint Books

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I love hint books for video games.  Sure they're fun to get help on a game, but they're also chocked full of interesting details on the game, extra tips, and even instructions superior to the game manual.  They usually boast good production values as well – the really good ones are a pleasure to read and thumb through.  I think my love of hint books is easy to understand.

As I'm quite fond of hint books, I've noticed some trends that makes me wonder what the future of these large, beautiful guides is:

  • Downloadable content in gaming means more games coming out.  With the speed-to-market of games, with more choices to write hint books for, how will companies that make them choose?
  • eBooks.  It's rather obvious that more and more people are reading books in electronic format.  This is great to save trees, but are people going to keep their iPads on their laps to read their hint books while playing the X-box?
  • The internet.  Go to http://www.gamefaqs.com/ and you can get a lot of information for free on games.  It may not be as big or beautiful as some of the truly elegant books, but it's there for the reading.  Sites like GameFaqs also support communities so you can ask and answer highly specific questions.

So between more games, people getting used to electronic access of books, and the free online services used by people to get their game-hint fix, what is the future of Hint Books?  As you may guess, I'm going to attempt to answer this because it's a geekonomic area, and an area of career interest – besides for some of you hopeful writers out there, it might give you some career ideas.

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