iNIN: You Were Poked with a Nine Inch Nail

More Trent Reznor opinions on the music industry and how it should promote itself, as well as a description of the new Nine Inch Nails iPhone app, another experiment in social networking.

The article also describes the dynamics of the App Store, and how, with its low initial entry cost, it is spurring on development of small-scale applications similar to the ones developed in the late eighties and early nineties. John Carmack has even gotten into the act, porting Wolfenstein 3D, the game that put Id Software on the map, to the iPhone.

In fact, he is using an open-source version of his own source code that was originally modified to use OpenGL, and has re-ported that back on to the iPhone. Apparently the project took him 5 days and will make him a bazillion dollars. Check out his blog item on the subject - Carmack is a good writer and his perspective on the gaming industry, not to mention the software industry in general, is fascinating. Wolfenstein, other than being a brilliant money-maker, is also an experiment in usability design - Carmack wants to figure out how to put the FPS on a multi-touch device, and this is his first crack at it. I wouldn't be surprised if he figures it out by the time he releases DOOM.