Hijinks Inc.

Category: News

  • Hijinks Reviews: Small World for iPad

    Publisher: Days of Wonder, Inc
    Platform: iPad
    Cost: $4.99 (slated for a jump to $6.99) [iTunes Link]
    Release date: March 31st, 2010
    Version Reviewed: 0.99

    Philippe Keyaerts’ Small World has made quite the splash with the release of its iPad version, and with good reason. Small World is a near perfect example of the way table top gaming should be done on the iPad; crisp graphics, smooth gameplay, easy to follow instructions, and excellent replay value. Did I mention replay value? My partner in crime Fred and I sat down and played 5 matches back to back and still could’ve played more if it weren’t for having lives and responsibility in the real world. I suppose this infatuation could be the result of us being easily entertained… but that aside, I really do think it’s a great game.

    Prior to downloading the iPad version of Small World, I’d never heard of it, let alone that it was a board game, but now I’m hooked. And I think you will be too. Unless your hate strategy games, in which case, why are you reading this review?
    (more…)

  • Hijinks Reviews: Tower Madness HD

    Publisher: Limbic Software
    Platform: iPad
    Cost: $7.99 [iTunes Link]
    Release date: May 21st, 2010
    Version Reviewed: 1.4

    Have you ever played a tower defense game? Yes? Great! I don’t need to write that boring explanatory paragraph, and you don’t need to buy this game because you can already download a hundred more just like it for free, right? Too harsh?

    Tower Madness HD is exactly what you’d expect a close-to-launch tower defense game for the iPad to look and play like. You place towers on a grid by touching the screen and choosing your tower from a popup menu. You may wish to use the pinch gesture to zoom down from the default isometic perspective into a 3D point of view. The single player campaign has a good variety of maps. The tower designs are diverse, and they throw enough different enemies at you to keep you on your toes. Honestly, there is nothing inherently wrong with the game. I actually liked it. (more…)

  • 30 Days Without Voice Service

    AT&TYesterday marked day number thirty since I posted my walk-through on how to use your iPad 3G ‘s Micro SIM in an iPhone for data only service, and more importantly its been thirty days since I last used AT&T’s voice service to make a call. While I’ve been using only VoIP to make calls and send texts, I did leave my service active until June 1st just incase things didn’t work very well. But as of the first, I am no longer paying for AT&T voice service.

    As you might have concluded from the canceling of my service I’m happy to report, that at least in my neck of the woods, using data only with Google Voice, GV Mobile, IPKall, Backgrounder, and Acrobits Softphone has been a smashing success. While I admit that it’s not as straight forward to place calls, it’s still easy to receive them. Which fits quite nicely with my phone usage.

    Overall call quality was surprisingly good, naturally it worked better over WiFI, but it was more than passible over 3G. Over the course of those 30 days I only used 291 minutes of talk time, but I sent over 1,000 texts and used over 16GBs of data streaming content. I also installed MyWi to use my iPhone as a hotspot so my iPad could still browse the net from anywhere I had 3G coverage.

    How my setup works is simple(ish). IPKall provides a SIP number for my Google Voice account to call, which rings to Acrobits Softphone, so if I use GV Mobile to dial a number it then rings my iPhone via that IPKall SIP number. Along those same lines, anytime someone calls my Google Voice number the call rings through to my iPhone using Acrobits Softphone.  You can find instructions on how to setup SIP calling in this post.

    Texting is handle through Mail.app as I have Google Voice forward my texts to my email. For a more real time texting experience I used Boxcar configured with my Gmail account to push notifications of text messages and new voicemails. I can also use GV Mobile or Google Voice’s own website to send texts from my phone.

    I did try all of this without jailbreaking my iPhone, and while it works, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s a bit more complicated to do things like make calls or even answer them (opening Softphone is rather slow). Plus, jailbreaking was necessary in my case since I wanted to run Softphone in the background and completely remove Apple’s Phone.app from the phone so it wouldn’t continue running and using memory (be advised, this removes your ability to call E911 in an emergency).

    I will admit this option isn’t quite as appealing since AT&T decided to change their iPad data plans, but for those lucky enough to still have unlimited data it might be worth a try. I’ll likely post another update in 30 days or so, as I refine the process.

  • Gee, thanks…

    You’ve probably seen this all over the net by now, but AT&T is sending an email to all those affected by that little security breach from last week, and guess what? I’m one of them… sweet. At first I just figured it was a mass email AT&T was sending out to everyone, but both TUAW and Engadget have reported otherwise.

    Dear Valued AT&T Customer,

    Recently there was an issue that affected some of our customers with AT&T 3G service for iPad resulting in the release of their customer email addresses. I am writing to let you know that no other information was exposed and the matter has been resolved.  We apologize for the incident and any inconvenience it may have caused. Rest assured, you can continue to use your AT&T 3G service on your iPad with confidence.

    Here’s some additional detail:

    On June 7 we learned that unauthorized computer “hackers” maliciously exploited a function designed to make your iPad log-in process faster by pre-populating an AT&T authentication page with the email address you used to register your iPad for 3G service.  The self-described hackers wrote software code to randomly generate numbers that mimicked serial numbers of the AT&T SIM card for iPad – called the integrated circuit card identification (ICC-ID) – and repeatedly queried an AT&T web address.   When a number generated by the hackers matched an actual ICC-ID, the authentication page log-in screen was returned to the hackers with the email address associated with the ICC-ID already populated on the log-in screen.

    The hackers deliberately went to great efforts with a random program to extract possible ICC-IDs and capture customer email addresses.  They then put together a list of these emails and distributed it for their own publicity.

    As soon as we became aware of this situation, we took swift action to prevent any further unauthorized exposure of customer email addresses.  Within hours, AT&T disabled the mechanism that automatically populated the email address. Now, the authentication page log-in screen requires the user to enter both their email address and their password.

    I want to assure you that the email address and ICC-ID were the only information that was accessible. Your password, account information, the contents of your email, and any other personal information were never at risk.  The hackers never had access to AT&T communications or data networks, or your iPad.  AT&T 3G service for other mobile devices was not affected.

    While the attack was limited to email address and ICC-ID data, we encourage you to be alert to scams that could attempt to use this information to obtain other data or send you unwanted email. You can learn more about phishing by visiting the AT&T website.

    AT&T takes your privacy seriously and does not tolerate unauthorized access to its customers’ information or company websites.   We will cooperate with law enforcement in any investigation of unauthorized system access and to prosecute violators to the fullest extent of the law.

    AT&T acted quickly to protect your information – and we promise to keep working around the clock to keep your information safe.  Thank you very much for your understanding, and for being an AT&T customer.

    Sincerely,
    Dorothy Attwood
    Senior Vice President, Public Policy and Chief Privacy Officer for AT&T

    What, no free month of service?

  • AT&T’s New Data Plans

    Death StarThis is more of a rant than an informative post…

    By now, I’m sure all of you have read about AT&T’s “fantastic” new data plans, offering such wonderful options as a DataPro plan with 2 friggin’ GBs of data a month! Holy crap!!

    Did anyone see my data usage for last month? I’d be screwed if they weren’t letting existing customers keep their unlimited plans, but now I can never cancel and re-up with the same plan at a later date, basically locking me into the very contract I was promised I’d avoid.

    The iPad is a fantastic platform to consume media with, I do so quite a bit while traveling and often in places that don’t have WiFi access or worse, charge for it. During the original announcement of the iPad 3G one of the primary selling points for me was the unlimited data plan, and before AT&T’s announcement of the their awesome new plans I was going to purchase a second iPad 3G for my wife to use, but frankly, 2GBs a month is in no way a ‘Pro’ data plan. I burn through that on my iPhone in a week, on my iPad in a few days. Really AT&T? You couldn’t at least top Verizon’s MiFi cap of 5GB? Now even though I admit I’m not a typical user, nor do I represent a typical users bandwidth consumption, I think we all can agree that these new plans are terrible. How can this be considered a competitive move in todays market, especially for drawing in new customers?

    I love how MacRumors pointed out that it was previously thought that Apple launched the iPad on AT&T based primarily on the $29.99 unlimited data plan.

    Apple had been expected by many observers to launch the iPad in a partnership with Verizon, but the Apple CEO Steve Jobs surprised many at the device’s January introduction by announcing that it would appear as an AT&T exclusive for 3G service in the U.S. Speculation centers around AT&T having outbid its competitors with its data plans for the iPad, offering unlimited data for $29.99 per month.

    There goes that theory…

    All in all, I’m concerned both as a shareholder and a consumer. This seems to be a major tactical misstep for both Apple and AT&T, am I just missing some massive piece of the puzzle?