Google isn't doing enough to improve Android

Whether you like Android or hate it one thing is clear, Google isn't doing enough to improve it. One of the greatest drawbacks to Android (for both consumers and developers) is that it's way too fragmented in both the screen size and the operating system. The screen can range from under 4 inches to over 5 inches, and most phones being shipped now are two OS versions behind.

The digital magazine Distro has a good graphic showing the percentages of OS versions on various Android phones.

Going beyond an HDTV

Everyone seems to be going gaga over the fact that the new 3rd generation iPad has more pixels than an HDTV, but these same people seem to forget that this is nothing new. My 2010 iMac has more pixels too.
2560x1440

The new iPad has a resolution of 2048x1536, it's height is greater than the iMac but when viewing movies what you really want is a better width. In the case of movie watching, this is where the iMac shines.

Yes, the new iPad display is impressive, but we've seen more impressive displays in the past. I for one love watching my DVDs on my iMac (as opposed to my HDTV) because the letterboxing is less. There are some that will argue that DVDs and Blu-rays are at a fixed size and they don't scale to larger displays (thus their argument for not wanting to buy a newer 21:9 HDTV; current HDTVs are 16:9), but you really do notice a difference when watching on an iMac with larger resolution than a standard HDTV.

Four reasons I dislike Dragonvale

Just now there was an "internal server error" which reset my game and I lost my most recent progress. This made me think about the upsides and downsides about having a game that lives on the Internet.

Rather than have the game data saved locally, Backflip Studios decided to save it on their servers. One good thing about this is that if you have an iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, you can pick up whichever device you want and continue your game where you left off (rather than have separate games on each device). However, the negative outweighs the positive with online game data storage.

These are four reasons I dislike the strategy Backflip Studios took with data management:

1, The game loads slow as it tries to contact the servers.
2, If you don't have an Internet connection, you can't play.
3, If there is a server error, you may lose some progress.
4, There is no guarantee that your data won't be lost in the future (like if Backflip goes out of business), thus voiding all your hard earned progress over the years.

Though there are good reasons to have online data storage, there are many more headaches with it than there are joys.

Overall, I enjoy playing Dragonvale, but I hate the fact that it requires an Internet connection and there is no guarantee that your game is safe. Play at your own risk. Dragonvale is free in the App Store.