New Year's Resolution

Among the other resolutions I've made again and again, such as losing weight or exercising more, I added a new one this year:

By the end of the year, I would like to create a piece of software outside of TrainMaster.

This resolution is not for profit. I'm not looking to turn a buck on the side. My goal is not to pad my resume, although creating something on the side won't hurt the resume either. The one thing I'm after is stretching myself, putting myself to a challenge I hadn't encountered before.

When I started fostering this idea last year, I looked at a couple of different technologies. Microsoft has recently released XNA, it's development platform for the Xbox360. The technology looks sound. Many homebrew developers are already publishing on the platform and making notable amounts of money. While the publishing mechanism seems straight forward, I lack a few key elements in the development process. Namely, an HDTV and an Xbox360. Maybe next year.

Another technology I looked at was the Facebook platform. I like the social interaction that Facebook brings to the Internet. This option was more appealing because it offered more new languages to develop in and new challenges in deployment. Items I still need to publishing on this platform includes setting up a directory for web serving and perhaps an extra charge for a stable IP address and a domain name.

Of course my dream platform is the impressive WiiWare. I've always loved Nintendo products and attempted to get a development kit from them for my high school programming independent study. I was shot down then and told that development kits only go out to recognized developers. While the concept of WiiWare would seem to denote a shift to the small guy like 2D Boy and Semnat Studios, one must still go through Nintendo to get the development kit. Looks like I'll have to put this one on the future list.

While console development stays a dream and goal of mine, I think I will spend this year focused on the Facebook platform. So I will end this post with some questions for the Facebook users out there to answer.

1. What do you like most in an application?
2. What are some things you don't like about some applications you've tried?
3. When you play a game on Facebook, how long do you perfer each session to last: several clicks, several minutes, or more?
4. Do you prefer direct or delayed interaction?
5. Should your interaction be limited by your friend list, or do you like to interact with new people?

I thank you for your input, your opinion is valuable to me.