UK Disconnected
At a time when internet innovation is sky rocketing, the UK government is trying to introduce something called the Digital Economy Bill. Sounds pretty harmless? It's actually a terrible nightmare in disguise and it will hamper innovation pretty sharpish.
One of those bills that tries to slip through government at the behest of media conglomerates, what does it mean for you? If anyone is even accused of file-sharing in your house, your internet can be terminated without notice and you'll be slapped with a £50,000 fine. They don't even need evidence.
ISP's would effectively be forced to spy on our internet traffic, ISP's that fail to co-operate will be smacked with a £250,000 fine. Ouch.
The tragedy is, this is just the beginning.
"Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he's planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson's successor in the next government would also have this power" — Cory, Boing Boing
And in somehow if that's not enough, under the same act the government will also introduce age ratings on all boxed video games aimed at children aged 12 or over.
There's no way that this is a forward thinking goverment, you might as well disconnect the UK from the internet altogether — as soon as what we say is spied upon, controlled and people are jailed without evidence I'll no longer feel like a citizen of the modern world.
You can help stop this bill going through by telling your MP just what you think of the Digital Economy Bill, a great website called WriteToThem is set-up to make the process as easy as possible, just enter your postcode, select your local MP, type out a succinct message and hit send.
Thanks for your help, if we stop this we've averted a digital disaster.
Grab and Share with TinyGrab
We all love to show each other things we find on the internet or on our computer but because most websites stop what's known as image leeching, often, broken images come back and it's all a bit of a nightmare.
Enter TinyGrab, a small piece of software for Windows and Mac that let's you screengrab any part of what you can see (like Jing), only it uploads to the internet and gives you a url you can just paste into a browser/forum/blog without having to press more than one key.
What's more, it's FREE to use it for 10 images a day — if you want lifetime premium use, with FTP functionality and file management it's only £10 to buy.
Flash Player 10.1 Pre-Release
All our games on this website run under the guise of Flash Player, so it's always good to have the latest and greatest to squeeze the best out of your hardware, but remember, this is pre-release software and it is likely not free of bugs (although, you can argue that flash player is never free of bugs).
If you want to submit yourself to the testing process at the possible benefit of a performance boost, go ahead and download the latest Flash Player, version 10.1 from Adobe Labs. We have.
Get Flash Player 10.1 from Adobe Labs
UPDATE: Just tested this new plugin under OSX and I'm seeing a massive performance increase, Anandtech has posted results from Windows at it looks to be over 100% performance boost in some cases.
New HSC2 Description
It took me a little while, but today I updated the appstore description for the iPhone version of High Speed Chase 2 with EMOJI characters. You'll only be able to see the benefit if you're running iPhone OS so I did some screenshots for those without.
As you can see, it not only looks a lot cleaner, the text is more to the point.
The Tale of Mr. Carter
The Tale of Mr. Carter is a short animation by SamuriFerret, a clearly talented young UK based animator
Thanks to AnarchyDom for pointing it out in the forum.
High Speed Chase 2.2 Now Available!
Apple finally got round to agreeing that High Speed Chase 2.2 was ready for publishing, so here it is! The 2.2 update, available right now.
Expect more FREE updates to come for all existing owners of the game or buy the game now to ensure future FREE updates.
Buy High Speed Chase 2.2 now from the App Store or just hit the shiny App Store logo to find the update.
If you want to see a video of the High Speed Chase 2.2 features, it's available to watch on Youtube right now.
What Would Mario Look Like Naked?
Apparently Mario without clothing would look like this. Hang on, this doesn't seem right...
PETMAN Robot
PETMAN is an evolution of the BIGDOG technology by Boston Dynamics. The thing that still gets me is in a few years we'll see auto-bots that will do things like drive us places, serve us coffee and milk our livestock.
Robot uprising?
Mini-Documentary
On Thursday the 28th of October, Johnny Two Shoes is being filmed for a short documentary for BBC 2 in the UK about game development, how we started and how we got into it at a young age.
I will try and post the video to the site once it has aired, I'm not sure of the air date right now.
Is there anything you think we should talk about or any questions you'd like us to answer in the film?
JTS Exclusive Games
Johnny Two Shoes is first and foremost a games developer, we actually built every game you can play on this website (and the website itself) and what's more, you won't find the majority of these games such as The Heist 2 and Attak almost anywhere else on the internet.
There are usually two types of casual gaming websites, portals and developer showcases. At Johnny Two Shoes we're more like a showcase, but, because we have a huge community that thrives on earning medals, socialising and interacting with the way we make games, we could be considered as a hybrid of those types of sites, taking the best of portals (medals, community) and showcase (personable, engaging).
Johnny Two Shoes is run entirely by two brothers Max (meridimus) and Josh (joshsslade) from London, UK. We hook-up our favourite freelance sound engineer, David Carney (thedavidcarney) for the awesome audio experience in our games.
I hoped you learned a little bit more about what Johnny Two Shoes is and if you'd like to take part in our bustling community you should head over to the forums and introduce yourself.
