I an addition to being quite possibly the oldest Debian developer, he was also an occasional contributor to Wikipedia.  In addition, Dassen has frequently given talks regarding free and open source software and has been published in many texts and journals since 1999.

Ray had this to say about software patents, non-free software, propaganda, and himself.

I think software patents are evil and try to educate people about them, e.g. by pointing them to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, the League for Programming Freedom, and freepatents.

I’m a hacker, in particular of free software.

I educate people on the all too common misuse of the term hacker to mean cracker.

I advocate free speech.  Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!

I think cryptography is useful as a means of protecting privacy and providing authentication when needed.

Debian had this to say about Ray and his extraordinary contributions:

 Ray was a Debian Developer for an incredible 19 years. He joined the project in 1994, and continued to be an active contributor until recently. He was involved in Debian as a maintainer of several packages, particularly Gnumeric, and was a driving force behind the creation of the Debian Gnome team.

The Debian Project honours Ray’s great work and his strong dedication to Debian and Free Software. His technical knowledge and his ability to share that knowledge with others will be missed. His contributions will not be forgotten, and the high standards of his work will continue to serve as an inspiration to others.

As of this time, the cause of Ray Dassen’s death is unknown.  All of us at the Powerbase would like to lend our gravest condolences to Dassen’s friends and family, and the community that he has left behind.

Source | Debian.org

Ray Dassen’s Homepage

Developer of the mega-successful casual strategy gem World of Goo is back, and this time they’ve brought Linux along for the first ride!  Tomorrow Corporation‘s much anticipated, already award-winning indie game Little Inferno is now available in the Humble Store, and we can’t wait to play it!

So, what’s this Little Inferno game all about??

Here is the description from Tomorrow Corporation.

Congratulations on your new Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace!  Throw your toys into your fire, and play with them as they burn. Stay warm in there. It’s getting cold outside!

Burn flaming logs, screaming robots, credit cards, batteries, exploding fish, unstable nuclear devices, and tiny galaxies. An adventure that takes place almost entirely in front of a fireplace – about looking up up up out of the chimney, and the cold world just on the other side of the wall.

Finally, a toy burning simulator with Katamari Damacy like ridiculousness!

Interested in a copy for yourself?  Head on over to the Humble Store now!  $10 is probably a small price to pay for this one, and while it is also available in the Steam store, we’re having a hard time finding the Linux version there.

Source | Tomorrow Corporation

Via | Gaming on Linux

Buy Little Inferno | Humble Store | Steam

While GNU/Hurd is still not considered production-ready, and may not even get there, we are still amazed to see releases after 23 years of development!  In fact, our imaginations tell us that development is a lot like one person working a loom at 1/4 normal speed, trying to make a blanket to wrapped the earth with.  What’s even more amazing is that development continues even though Richard Stallman is not optimistic that it will ever be completed.

Stallman on Hurd:

I have done most of my work while anxious about whether I could do the job, and unsure that it would be enough to achieve the goal if I did. But I tried anyway, because there was no one but me between the enemy and my city. Surprising myself, I have sometimes succeeded.

From the announcement:

It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian “sid” at the time of the Debian “wheezy” release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.

Compatibility (in general)

Astonishingly, Debian GNU/Hurd is compatible with %75 of all the packages available for Debian Sid (about 10,000!!).  On the flip-side of the coin, GNU/Hurd is only available for i386 systems which are a bit of a rarity these days.  Debian is known for its wide support for different architectures going way back to the Motorola 68k.  Though it should be noted; this is not an official Debian release…

Source | GNU/Hurd News

Via | Reddit

Here is what he has to say about his work so far:

- we can manage chrome extensions (I just copied examples from here): we can recognize unpacked extensions, install, enable/disable. (oops.. uninstall/delete missing. Adding next days..)
- we can interpret (a bit) the version 2 manifest.json inside
- we can manage browse actions
- we can manage page actions
- we can open popups

So, the first easy step is done. Now what to really say we are supporting chrome extensions? Here is my todo list:
- support chrome object and (a subset of) its API (very long task)
- support the callback mechanism (really hard, this is the trick missing to say we’ll reach one day our goal)
- implement a way to retrieve extensions (support chrome extensions site? seems problematic. Add a ghns layer? Should do the trick. Probably…)
- ehm… port/implement extensions

Boon or bust?

It’s unclear to us how many KDE users prefer ReKonq over Firefox or Chrome but I would assume that it’s not an army.  That said, ReKonq does have a very compelling ‘web-app’ creation tool that supplements Firefox & Chrome quite nicely!  Tools like Google Keep work great in ReKonq as a stand-a-lone web app that iconifies to your taskbar.  At the same time, users of tools like Feedly –the ultra-popular Google Reader replacement– can’t take advantage of ReKonq powerful web app wrapper because it requires an extension to be installed in either Firefox or Chrome.  Feedly even leaves Internet Explorer users out in the cold with their model!

Source | Adjam

While we’re certainly happy with the look and feel of the site, what we think really makes our current setup special is that we’re now able to release our WordPress theme as a GPL project.

What did you expect?

The Dark Ages

During our early years, the layout for the site was unpopular, to say the least. When asked directly, most people we polled didn’t like the layout at all, and we believed it to be a major reason we weren’t getting much repeat traffic. In an effort to curb this, we purchased the commercial WordPress theme, Avenue.

Avenue did look pretty good, but we started to notice problems right away. There were some bugs and missing functions in the theme that bothered us, but worse, it appeared that development had stopped (or at least stagnated) on it. Even as of this writing, the last update to the theme was in October of 2012.

So naturally, we decided to start fixing some of the issues ourselves.

Adding author images was one of the first improvements.

After awhile, our theme had deviated significantly from the stock Avenue, and there was some concern about how we would gracefully handle an upstream update if one ever came (for the record, the theme was never updated in the entire time we ran it here on the site).

The social buttons in the header were a popular addition.

Knowing first hand how frustrating it was to purchase a theme only to realize it wasn’t complete and that support was essentially non-existent, we wanted to be able to take our modified version of the theme and release it publicly so others could benefit.

But unfortunately, we couldn’t. The licensing was unclear, and even though it appeared that Avenue was abandoned by its developers, that didn’t give us a pass to start distributing our own build of it for free. We couldn’t get anyone to answer through their support email address, but something told us the lines of communication would spring to life (and not in a good way) once we started giving their paid theme away for free .

Frustrated that we couldn’t distribute our refined version of Avenue, and still looking to improve the site’s look and feel, we started to look for yet another theme that would fit us a bit better.

DW Focus

After a bit of searching, we came across DW Focus by DesignWall. This theme looked even better than Avenue, supported a lot of interesting features (like built-in mobile and tablet UI’s), and best of all, was licensed under the GPLv2. Seeing this, we mashed the “Buy Now” button down as hard as possible and installed our new theme. But there was a bit of a problem.

Even though DW Focus was advertised as a 1.0 release, it was clearly not finished.

Now, small glitches and bugs are to be expected. We wouldn’t have minded that. But with DW Focus, whole swaths of functionality were missing, or worse, completely fake.

Don’t these look cool?

Take, for example, the “Sharing” panel displayed on the right. That looks nice and professional, doesn’t it? Counters to show how many shares you have, links to email the article to friends, etc, etc. One would assume, seeing such a thing in the live preview of the theme, that those little numbers would increment with how many shares you got on those social networks. Or that clicking “Email this article” might, in fact, email the article to somebody. Seems a natural enough assumption, no?

Well, as it turns out, those counters are all statically set at “0″. There was absolutely no code in the theme to make those numbers ever change, they were just for show. But a handful of zeros make for a rather embarrassing show, so everyone who installed DW Focus would have a site where it appeared nobody ever shared any of their content.

Asking support about this function only led to “It will be implemented later on” sorts of responses, with no clear timetable on when that would actually be happening.

We asked support about other issues as well, such as adding an icon for Google+ to the theme’s social bar. In this case, support gave us code we were instructed to place in the theme, but the code didn’t work. It’s syntax wasn’t even correct, it would immediately cause errors when inserted into the live theme.

These were some pretty serious issues, and frankly, we were left more than a little disappointed with the theme and its developers. Selling a clearly half-finished theme as a 1.0 and charging a premium price is questionable to begin with, but when you neglect to mention that the features prominently displayed in your preview don’t actually work, you’re bordering on a scam.

Fork This

There was no question that DW Focus had the look we were going for, and the stuff that was actually working was great. So we didn’t want to bail on the theme just because of the problems we were having. Instead, inspired by our previous bout of theme modifications, we decided to do what any lovers of FOSS would do when presented with a flawed piece of software covered under the GPL…we forked it.

Our modified version of the DW Focus theme is available on GitHub, and we invite others to look at the modifications we’ve made, submit any problems you might be having, and (if you’re really, really, nice) send us some patches for the things we haven’t sorted out yet.

A few of the notable changes we’ve made so far:

• Add author name and picture to each post
• Remove non-functional Social counters
• Add Google+ to hover-over social icons
• Fixed “Email this article” button

One thing we want to make very clear though, is that we are not trying to take over development of DW Focus, or undermine DesignWall’s paid theme business. Rather, we would much prefer the enhancements and changes we’ve made to DW Focus get integrated into the upstream, so that everyone can benefit.

As expected, the media has gone wild with the news that Defense Distributed finally made good on their plans of designing and releasing as open source the world’s first 3D printed firearm. But what does it really change? Does a 3D printed weapon pose any more of a threat than a traditionally obtained one? Does this development endanger the 3D printing field as a whole?

The DD Liberator

The Defense Distributed Liberator is a single shot .22 LR handgun that contains only a single component that can’t be printed on a 3D printer: the firing pin, for which you need to supply nothing more exotic than a small nail. Every other component, from the barrel to the springs that move the hammer, are 3D printed.

Essentially, the Liberator is nothing more than a “zip gun”, a form of improvised firearm that’s little more than a way to hold a .22 round steady while its primer is struck with a rudimentary firing pin. Like other improvised firearms, the Liberator is slow to reload, inaccurate, and has a rather nasty tendency to explode.

The Defense Distributed Liberator

But unlike zip guns, the Liberator can be produced on a large scale with automated processes. It’s this distinction which has caused the most debate, as it turns the normally haphazard process of building homemade firearms into something that could be considered close to a full production run.

Of course, the most obvious argument against the Liberator is that it’s made (almost) entirely out of plastic, rendering metal detectors useless as a deterrent. The official documentation for the Liberator says you need to install a piece of metal into the weapon’s frame to comply with the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, but of course the person who constructs the weapon could simply skip that helpful suggestion.

This is illegal, right?

Not necessarily, no.

In the United States, you are allowed to build (for your own use) any weapon that you could otherwise obtain legally. In other words, if you could walk into a gun store and purchase a gun, you could also build one at home. Similarly, anything which is not legally obtainable under normal circumstances (such as fully automatic machine guns) can NOT be built at home legally.

You could even sell a weapon you built at home, so long as it wasn’t made with the intent to sell. If you built Liberators in large quantities with the goal of making a profit, that’s another story.

There is some debate about the fact that the Liberator, due to limitations in 3D printing technology, lacks a rifled barrel. This may put the Liberator into a different class of weapon, but in that case it’s possible to rifle the barrel manually after it has been printed and therefore comply with all ATF regulations.

Liberator in the field

Practicality

So if the Liberator works as advertised (I.E. can shot a bullet without killing the person pulling the trigger at the same time) and is legal to print (at least in some parts of the world), does it pose a threat? Is this something we need to be worried about?

Not likely.

Take for example that printing the Liberator requires a significantly more capable printer than what most hobbyists have access to. The Liberator has been created for high end commercial 3D printers, not the cobbled together kits which individuals use (which still cost upwards of $1000 anyway). Not to say that it won’t be possible to adapt this design for less capable printers, but for safety reasons it’s probably ill advised.

Purchasing a handgun would certainly cost much less than the printer required to construct a Liberator, and would be several times more practical and powerful.

Even if you take price out of the equation, the Liberator is not a particularly good firearm. Single shot and smooth bore, the Liberator is more like firing a flintlock pistol than a modern weapon. It might be good for pretending you’re a pirate, but I wouldn’t want to try to defend my family with one.

The Liberator also has the rather inconvenient habit of consuming barrels at the same rate it does rounds of ammunition:

Before firing a barrel, we recommend heating acetone to boiling and treating the barrel for ~30 seconds to decrease the inner diameter friction, which increases barrel life from 1 round to ~10 rounds.  Note that we recommend printing multiple barrels and using each only once.  Swapping the barrels is simple and fast: rotate the barrel to release the locking cam.  Pull up on the barrel.  If the barrel cam broke, turn the Liberator upside down to remove the debris.  Then drop your new barrel in and rotate it until it locks.

Liberator README

So unless you break out the boiling acetone (boy, doesn’t that sound like a lot of fun), you’re advised to throw out the barrel each time you fire the Liberator. Considering how slow 3D printers are, you’re talking about consuming a component which took hours to print in a split second.

Challenging Ideas

If not a weapon in the traditional sense, then the Liberator is surely an ideological weapon, and in that capacity it’s extremely effective. It shows how absolutely pointless current concepts in gun control really are. What good are arbitrary limitations on magazine size in an era of self-manufactured weapons?

On the other hand, Defense Distributed have opened up themselves, and perhaps the entire 3D printing community, to critical attention on a global scale. The mass media and government is reactionary at best, and the Liberator is an easy target for those who want to put limits on what the individual has access to.

By releasing the Liberator as open source (under the zlib license), Defense Distributed has ensured that the Liberator will be here to stay. Even if Defense Distributed gets shut down, the source files for the Liberator are now so widely spread that the genie can never be put back in the bottle.

In the end, the fact of the matter is that the Liberator is more of a proof of concept than a realistic firearm. Defense Distributed created the Liberator to prove that they could, to show how worthless gun control laws are in the modern world, and perhaps most importantly, to exercise their rights as American citizens.

The situation is a matter of fact, but the causes are still a matter of debate. Are females really less interested in technology? Or is it more likely that there are many females who would have gotten into the field had it not been for the negative connotations of a “girl on the Internet”?

In an effort to help increase female participation in open source development, the Ada Initiative recently announced they had entered into an agreement with social programming site GitHub, wherein any female who requested a private repository on the service could receive one free of charge (a feature which usually costs $7+ per month).

While this sounds good on paper, and is no doubt an excellent PR move for both parties, who does this actually help?

Fear of Open Source

The open source world is sadly not immune to this particular plaque of the larger technology field: females are in very short supply. One would hope that the more enlightened open source community would be somewhat more inviting for female participants, but the reality of the situation doesn’t seem to agree.

The Ada Initiative reports they’ve found a general reluctance among the comparatively few female programmers to open up the source code of their software for a number of reasons:

In working with women in open source, the Ada Initiative found that many women are reluctant to post their code publicly when they are first getting started in open source software. This reluctance has good reasons behind it: fear of being told they are bad programmers, fear of being publicly mocked or harassed, and even fear of losing job opportunities. All of these are greater risks for women on average than men.

Ada Initiative Blog

These fears are well known to anyone looking to start in the open source world. Every person who has submitted a patch or published an open source project has, at least once, had a pang of self-consciousness. In the wide world of open source there are players of every conceivable skill level, all the way up to industry leaders; putting your code out for that vast repository of knowledge and experience to examine causes a feeling that is every bit like stage fright.

The claim that female programmers feel this fear any more than males seems a bit dubious. It’s pretty hard to put a number on emotion, and I say you’d be hard pressed to find any open source developer who could say with a straight face that they entered into the community without any fear of inferiority; male or otherwise.

While this is absolutely an issue that the community should be addressing, what good to separate it into male and female categories? Work should be done to make the open source community a more accepting place for new contributors of both sexes, rather than focusing on females and letting the males fend for themselves.

Helping or Hurting?

Despite the dichotomy the Ada Initiative is bringing to the situation, their core observations are indeed correct: open source can be intimidating  So how do we fix this? How do we make it so new developers are more comfortable with releasing their source code?

Apparently GitHub feels that the best way to do that…is to help developers hide their code.

GitHub’s offer to give free private repositories to female open source developers seems to be a complete step backwards. By making this public policy, it simply strengthens the notion that female programmers aren’t good enough to play with the “big boys”. Setting the precedent that any female who requests it can have the source code of their supposedly open source software hidden from public view does nothing but validate the fears that keep females from releasing their source in the first place.

I am a male who has written open source code, and know all to well the feeling of uncertainly you get when developers who are clearly more skilled than yourself review your code. Can I have a free private repository? If not, why not? Why is it that women should receive special treatment if they are nervous about contributing to the open source community? Isn’t that the opposite of equality?

But besides the issue of gender, how does using GitHub’s private repository feature help further the cause of open source software? Even the blog post that announced this partnership mentioned how the key to becoming accepted and comfortable in the open source community is just that: opening up your source for peer review:

But the best way to get better at programming is to collaborate with and get review from other programmers, which is far easier to do with a shared repository like those provided by GitHub.

Advising that female programmers use GitHub private repositories as a way to control who looks at their source code is against the principles of open source, and furthers the stereotype that female programmers are unable to operate on the same playing field as the rest of the open source community.

Make no mistake, the goals of the Ada Initiative are honorable enough. There is no question that the gender ratio is strongly skewed towards males, which is something that clearly needs to be addressed. But advising policies which segregate development into male and female categories is certainly not the right approach.

The Antares rocket safely delivered all three of NASA’s PhoneSats into their intended orbit, and according to amateur radio operators all over the world, the three micro-satellites are performing as expected.

NASA’s PhoneSat

Global Effort

As the PhoneSat satellites have rather limited transmission capability, NASA is relying on a global network of amateur (AKA ham) radio operators to keep an ear out for these tiny little craft.

By openly documenting the spacecraft’s packet protocols, listing the frequencies they will be transmitting on, and even displaying an animated map to show where each PhoneSat is in the sky, NASA has given the public everything they need to receive regular downlinks.

Once a radio operator has received one of these broadcasts, he or she can upload it to the PhoneSat.org site, where it will be cataloged. When enough data has been collected, NASA will (hopefully) be able to piece together information spanning the entire mission, including the sensor data and images the PhoneSats are constantly sending out.

Listen Up

Interested in trying your hand at receiving signals from these Android-powered spacecraft?

It’s not nearly as complex as you probably think, as there are now multiple low-cost USB radios which can be used to receive satellite transmissions. All you need is a decent antenna, and some patience.

Take a look at our guide on RTL-SDR for some ideas on how you can get started in the fascinating world of amateur radio for around $30 USD.

Here is the description from the developer Andrew Henderson

BeagleSNES is an embedded Linux appliance that turns your BeagleBoard-xM hardware into a Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It combines the SNES9X emulator, a custom GUI front-end for selecting games, and patched bootloader with Linux kernel to create a stand-alone console capable of playing SNES software. BeagleSNES boots a Linux kernel and OS from the BeagleBoard’s MMC SD card, allowing you to update your BeagleSNES system by mounting the SD card under Linux and then directly modifying its contents. SNES ROM images, as well as saved games (for the SNES titles that originally saved games to their internal SRAM), are also stored onto the SD card.

For authenticity sake, Beagle SNES is configured for S-Video output.  That’s a bit better than the RF-switch you had daisy chained to your Sega Genesis and basic cable connection when you were a kid, but will still effectively hook up to your dusty old CRT TV and feel like the real deal.  Perhaps the coolest thing about BeagleSNES is the fact that it does not require a keyboard and a mouse.  Just a controller.  Andrew mentions on the project’s homepage that the only ‘supported’ controller right now is the Tomee USB SNES gamepad, but mentioned that anything with a sufficient number of buttons should work fine as well.   So it could be assumed that the real-deal would work with just an adapter.

At the same time, I’d like to go out on a limb and say that this is probably good, legit software judging by Ryan’s email address (@icculus).  It seems that Andrew has some level of association with Linux gaming legend Ryan Icculus by only a slim degree of separation.

Source | BeagleSNES

]]> http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/beaglesnes-now-you-can-build-your-own-embedded-snes/feed/ 3 http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/reimagining-play-interview-with-playmgs-taylor-cavanah/ http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/reimagining-play-interview-with-playmgs-taylor-cavanah/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 14:01:37 +0000 Tom Nardi http://www.thepowerbase.com/?p=6776 Last month, we brought you a review of the MG, an Android powered handheld gaming system designed for casual games. The combination of vanilla Android and the MG’s custom parental controls made the device a compelling option for gamers young and old alike, and its comparatively low price combined with the vast Android software library offered an unbeatable value.

The team behind the MG had obviously done their homework and targeted the product to a very specific market which was otherwise being ignored. Rather than throwing out a half-realized device that didn’t resonate with any particular use case, the team engineered the hardware and software experience to their target audience to great effect.

Taylor Cavanah

To learn more about the focus and vision which made the device a reality, we got in touch with MG’s physicist turned meta-gamer Taylor Cavanah.

Creating the MG

The Powerbase: Taylor, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Can you start by telling our readers a bit about yourself and your background?

Taylor: I’m a physicist and started my career in Nanotechnology at Zyvex.  After finding some success in developing the nanoprobing market for the semiconductor industry I decided to strike out on my own.  My buddies and I started our own software company – Locai – and a year ago we combined forces with the hardware and business guys from ACTScom to launch PlayMG.

The Powerbase: What exactly is your role at PlayMG? What are your day to day responsibilities like?

Taylor: My specific role involves game/app design, platformsoftware design, business development, innovation, and as is the case with all start ups – many more roles.  Day to day I was either talking with game houses, working with the hardware guys to design the user experience, writing the story behind our game within the gaming device app Origins, looking for interesting apps to work with, working with marketing to craft the messaging behind these features we were building, and testing devices in every possible way.

The Powerbase: PlayMG has no qualms about the fact it has targeted the MG to younger gamers. Why do you think the younger gamer is so important? What makes the MG a better option than, say, mom’s old smartphone?

Taylor: Every one has a slightly different opinion on this but for me the younger gamers make the most sense because they can’t have phones.  Whether their parents don’t want them or can’t afford the data plans, there are a lor of younger gamers who love apps but can’t get access to them.  The “hand me down” argument is definitely valid.  I can hand down my phone and just remove the plan and then they have a smart device.  That’s where our added benefits factor in to the equation.  You can’t get Family Collaboration, SpendSmart, or the Origins game in a hand me down.  And sometimes more importantly, you can’t get that “awe” moment when your son or daughter opens up your repackaged device from 2 years ago.

Android and the MG

The Powerbase: Its differences aside, the majority of the MG’s software is straight Android. Would it be safe to say that, if it wasn’t for the open nature of Android, the MG wouldn’t exist in its current form? Would have putting this same hardware out with a proprietary operating system have gotten you as far as Android has?

Taylor: There is no way we would exist without Android.  The barrier of entry previously was just too high.  We got a solid and awe inspiring product to market in 9 months.  Core to that was not having to build an entire OS.  Not just in terms of getting something to market but that greatly helped us focus our time and money where it mattered – on the added benefits like Family Collaboration and Origins.  This is what I love about open source – you get to make products with extremely well designed experiences where it matters.

The Powerbase: One of the biggest selling points early on was that the MG would be a vanilla Android device, meaning it would be as close to AOSP as possible. In the end the MG delivered on that promise, and is one of the few non-Nexus devices available running stock Android. Why was running stock Android so important for the MG?

Taylor: Part of that answer has to do with my previous answer – it’s just easier to not build stuff you don’t need.  I think everyone can point to some larger companies that have large engineering staffs that have to build stuff because those salaries are being spent no matter what.  Then you get a lot of customization away from stock.  But most of that is useless and provides no value to the customer experience.  A lot of engineers also like the job security that building all of this custom stuff gives them.  They will always be needed because only they know how this version of flavored Android operates.  For us it was exactly that overhead that we didn’t want.  If we build our own flavor of Android then every new app or platform we create down the road has to take that into account.  We had to keep our focus on what mattered for the end user.

The Powerbase: From a development perspective, stock Android is generally preferable to manufacturer modified builds, but what about the end user? It’s no secret that the most popular Android devices (such as Samsung’s Galaxy line) make use of manufacturer modifications to their interface and applications, so the public doesn’t seem to mind. Do you ever worry that shipping with stock Android rather than a build with more visual flair and streamlined functionality pleases the developers at the expense of the end users?

Taylor: I have never believed that popularity of a device has anything to do with how well it is designed or received by customers.  The large software guys have proven time and again that being big in a space and having a ton of money can make up for a lot of deficiencies.  I say this because I don’t believe customers buy the Galaxy line because of the manufacturer improvements – most customers have never seen stock Android so they don’t know any better.  My guess is the commercial bashing the iPhone (hilariously with the parents in line) did a lot more than the user experience.  From what I’ve seen all of the added modifications make little difference to the real end users (not us tech types who are too deep in the space).  We found you could do an amazing amount of things just using the widget system in Android to change the user experience – without huge teams to build and then manage modifications.

The Powerbase:  Some would say that shipping the device with vanilla Android only makes sense if it’s kept up to date with AOSP (such as the Nexus line), but the MG is still on 4.0.4. Why hold the MG back? Are there plans on updating to Jelly Bean (and beyond)?

Taylor: We will update to Jelly Bean.  But with such a low saturation of Jelly Bean and many apps still not upgraded for the experience it doesn’t make sense to expend the effort.  Again we’ve got to focus on that end user experience and the only people ever asking for Jelly Bean are analysts or the random parent who just saw some article that mentioned the new Jelly Bean thingy for Android.

Expanding Android Gaming

The Powerbase: One of the best features of the MG, at least for parents, is unquestionably the Family Collaboration System. While it currently sets the MG apart from the competition, would PlayMG consider bringing it to generic Android devices? Perhaps charging a monthly subscription fee when used on non-MG hardware?

Taylor: We are always weighing the pros and cons of releasing some of the proprietary apps to the Play Store.  Right now we only have to manage one device, we get to ignore fragmentation, and we have a competitive advantage.  I don’t see us releasing the apps until we are much more established.

The Powerbase: An advantage of putting out an Android based gaming system is, of course, that you aren’t responsible for developing or publishing games for it (unlike traditional game consoles). That said, are there plans to talk to developers about MG optimized games? Is that already happening?

Taylor: Nothing that I can talk about but we definitely have plans and some preliminary talks about using our PlayMG IP to create games.  Any game developers interested (especially if they want to do something outside of the normal bounds of gaming) should get in touch with us.

The Powerbase: You can’t talk about Android gaming anymore without mentioning the OUYA; while it’s aiming for a completely different market than the MG, are there any parallels you draw between them? Do you see families owning both devices in the future?

Taylor: Mine arrives in 3 weeks (if I had more time and money I would have gotten a developer version).  I would love to work with OUYA in the future and I do believe that console gaming and portable gaming will always be with us.  Where the hardware, software, and interfaces end up who knows but for now there are many opportunities that could be explored between the two companies.  For the next year though I’m guessing both of us will be too busy to pursue them.

Looking Ahead

The Powerbase: A common criticism of the MG is that it lacks physical controls. This was a design decision based on the intended userbase for the MG, but it’s also undeniable that there are hardcore gamers out there that would appreciate an MG-like device with physical input. Is this a challenge PlayMG might take up in the future? Perhaps a device like the Sony Xperia Play, but in a non-contract form like the MG?

Taylor: I don’t see that happening.  Our target user is not hardcore and in fact probably did not grow up with a game system that had controllers.  But at an even deeper philosophical level (get ready for the fan boy to come out) I think the portable gaming systems with controls aren’t just missing the mark but don’t really have a mark to hit.  Portable gaming is about the casual experience on the go or that little block of entertainment that you carry around in your pocket.  I have so many different serious game devices where I can have mind blowingly immersive experiences – but that’s not what you want in a portable gaming device.  At the end of the day we talked to a bunch of “gamers” in our demographic and they wanted a device they could put in their pocket versus a device that let them play games designed for pre-touch devices.

The Powerbase: If it’s not giving too much away, what can you say about the future of PlayMG and the MG itself? Anything current or future owners should be looking out for?

Taylor: We have some great plans for the Family Collaboration System – making it much more collaborative.  A lot of parents and even kids have asked for expanded features here.  I’m most excited about expanding the portable fun in the device.  The entire industry as a whole is barely scratching the surface of what you can do with portable gaming.  We have some very interesting things planned for making shared portable gaming experiences like no one has seen before.  Unfortunately I can’t say much more than that.

Thanks to Taylor and the entire PlayMG team for their assistance and professionalism while we worked on the original hardware review and this interview. We’re very interested in seeing where the future takes PlayMG, keep an eye out here on The Powerbase for future coverage of this unique company and its products.