When I was about 11 years old, I used to read a Dutch gaming magazine called ‘PC Gameplay’. It introduced me to gaming in general, and it also brought me into the world of trying games out instead of dismissing them at first glance. I made a resolution not to assume anymore that something was not my type of game; after the astonishing experience that was Baldur’s Gate, you tend to start looking for other immersive and amazing gems in gameplay.

That same magazine ran a review of System Shock 2 in October 1999, and I was amazed. Not because I thought it’d be such a great game, but because just the pictures and the review scared the living daylights out of me. It took me almost 4 years to gather all the guts I could muster and try the demo. I never realized I was in for an experience that’d return to me repeatedly in the 5 years to come.

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Before you associate the following UI design with me or Cocoia, let me assure you that I have had no involvement in Picasa whatsoever. With that out of the way, the recently released Picasa Mac version is quite… unique when it comes to UI.

This image illustrates nicely how Picasa seems to use mixed sans and serif typography, wholly custom controls and strange, nonstandard color palettes throughout the app. I must admit I’d expected more from Google; I’ll stick with iPhoto for now.

Update: Michael J. Tsai reports that Google is using a cross-platform toolkit, which also prohibits Picasa from running on PowerPC Macs. Weak.

Wipeout HD is an exclusively downloadable title for the PS3. I think that it’s actually the first title of such a large franchise to hit the Playstation Network (PSN in short) Store while not being available in regular brick-and-mortar retail outlets. You’d start to wonder why exactly, as there’s people like me who’d certainly pay for Wipeout HD on shiny Blu-Ray, the PS3’s defacto disc format.

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I don’t like year-in-review posts. That’s why I’m taking a different approach.

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Well, it’s that time of the year again, I’ve packed my bags and me and my girlfriend are off to celebrate 3 days of guaranteed fun at Lowlands 2008. Lowlands is a musical festival, with a huge line-up of artists, cultural events, and great food and people. It’s the third year I’m attending.

This year’ll be quite different than the last, as I’ll be taking my iPhone 3G, and I’ve also taken some time apart to make a beautiful and well-optimized web application for all attendees with iPhones and iPod Touches; LL4iPhone. With permission of the festival organisers, I could use some of their decals and branding in the app to give it a consistent feel. It was quite an interesting personal assignment to flex my poorly trained Javascript and PHP muscles, but it worked out quite nicely in the end. You can check it out at LL08.com (you’ll be automatically taken to the web app if you’re on an iPhone); it’s entirely free to use.

I will also try to update with pictures and text from twitter and perhaps even this blog post by using iPhone applications, if my battery levels allow it. If you’re at Lowlands, give me a call or email so we can meet up!

Just under 20 hours before the official release of the new iPhone 3G, Apple’s opened the doors to the App Store. A lot of great apps are already available, and I wanted to share my selection of fantastically designed and useful apps that you can grab when you update your current iPhone (or even better, get a new 3G iPhone).

All of these applications are linked to the iTunes Store, so click the link to proceed to their iTunes page with screenshots and other information.

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