Hung Truong: The Blog!

Guile Theme Ringtone for iPhone

Because Guile's theme goes with everything, I made a ringtone, which I'm currently using on my iPhone.

Get it.

Hung Withdrew TWENTY TEN. Hung Sent Out K2. It’s Super Effective!

I switched my blog theme again. Twenty Ten is the official default theme of WordPress 3.0, but that doesn't make it good. Too much wasted space on top. On a normal monitor, you practically have to go below the fold to get to any content!

I switched back to good ol' K2. It's good to have you back, buddy (even though by default you show post featured images in a really, really stupid way)!

Thoughts and Predictions on Apple’s iAd Platform

After reading this article on the upcoming iAd release, I have a few thoughts on the future of Apple's mobile advertising platform.

iAds on Apple devices will be rich media experiences, they'll stay in the app, and they'll make developers tons of money. That's what Apple assumes, at least. The major takeaways from this article are that only a limited number of advertisers are signing on at first, and at a really high premium. What's more, iAds are costly to “develop” which will limit the number of advertisers at first.

Advertising relies on a steady supply of supply (advertising inventory) and demand (ad impressions). The advertisers supply the… well, supply, and the developers handle the demand by providing users who will see the ads. Because there's not much supply yet, and because I have a feeling many developers will integrate iAds into their apps or already have, I predict a few things happening:

Users will go through a high degree of ad fatigue. With only a few different ads available, users will probably get bored of the same ads over and over. Sure, they're rich and interactive, but if I see that same Toy Story 3 ad a billion times, it won't be effective anymore. This will probably contribute to iAd blindness.

Initial advertisers will pay a premium for being first. Because of the limited inventory and abundant number of impressions, advertisers will probably end up using up a lot of their inventory. Apple might have a way of throttling ad impressions so they remain constant throughout a time period (or at least they should). If so, iAd display will be pretty erratic. Sometimes they'll show and sometimes they won't. Of course, if that happens, publishers will be upset that their placements aren't selling.

Publishers (developers) will make some money, but not as much as they thought (at first). Or at least, not until the ad inventory goes up. Because Apple will probably throttle the advertisements going to them, or users will be weary of the same ads showing up, publishers will suffer at first. In the long run, publishers will probably end up making more when the supply and demand issues fix themselves.

Advertisements will probably start off being innovative, then fall in quality. I have a feeling they will mirror the app store apps. There will be many high quality ads at first, but once Apple requires a steady amount of rich ads, others will develop iAds for advertisers. The ad inventory quality will suffer because of the cost and time associated with creating high quality ads.

On a high level, I see a few early issues in the iAd platform, mostly the demand for ads outweighing the amount of initial advertisements. Over time, this will correct itself, but at the cost of the quality of ads delivered. Think of how the App Store degenerated into crappy mirror apps, etc. Apple would like to keep the quality of their ads high, but I can't see this happening based on the number of ads they need to deliver.

This will happen because Apple is offering the iAd platform to all publishers (developers). If they had hand-picked a few to beta test, I have a feeling the supply and demand would match up. Apple knows they're behind in the game though, so that's probably why they're releasing it to all developers. In the long run, I think the iAd platform will be a hit for advertisers and developers. Hopefully the level of ad quality doesn't suffer so much that it affects the end user too much.

Steam Slow Download Solution

I just bought Civ IV on Steam, because there's some kind of sale. I started downloading it and it was giving me a measly ~200 KB/S download speed. This kind of sucked because I wanted to play pretty soon, and it would take a few hours at that rate.

I looked in the preferences for downloads, and noticed that I was connected to their Chicago datacenter. I tried switching it to Detroit and I still got some lame speeds. Then I switched to Phoenix, Arizona. And voila:

My hypothesis was that the datacenters were dying from the load of the Steam summer sale. So I tried picking a datacenter in a less sparsely populated area (Phoenix probably isn't serving that much load compared to Chicago or New York), even though it was further away. I think my hypothesis stands. So if you're experiencing slow downloads, try picking a datacenter that's further away. Just wait until my download is finished first. 🙂

Super Customer Service at the Apple Store

About two weeks ago, my GF got a refurbished iPod Touch from the Apple online store. The refurb was pretty cool, but it seemed to have a really low battery life. I made an appointment with the Apple Store App for the Genius Bar and the guy who helped us was really cool.

We explained that she just bought the refurb and it was pooping out after like 3-4 hours of use. The guy showed us some battery saving techniques (like lowering the screen brightness and turning off location services, etc). At this point I was like, “come on guy, I already know that!” Then he just gave us some paperwork to sign and a new iPod! YESSS.

The awesomeness here is that he didn't question us like we were total idiots and assumed we were right. He didn't make us do any stupid diagnostic tests to prove we were telling him the truth. This is what set the experience apart from others, like when I call the cable company and they make me turn my modem off and on, etc. Thanks, Apple! The only thing I would've changed is that I scheduled the appointment for like 7:30 and they didn't get to me until around 8.

The new iPod is working a lot better, so I'm glad we went in to do the switch. In other news, I am thinking of getting an iPad, because (gasp) I was wrong. In the future I should probably forego the knee-jerk assumptions for new products before I actually try them out. I can probably just say I did it for the lulz again and go on to become the next John C Dvorak. The iPad is actually quite neat. Understanding the iPad HIG goes a long way toward appreciating it. I also wrote an iPad version of my other app, so I'd like to actually try it on a real device at some point.