Tech Supersite

"The first phone to beat the iPhone"

2008-07-13T18:03:00.001+01:00

Finally, on the 11th of July 2008 - 4 weeks after it's announcement - the new iPhone 3G was released. It promised a quicker 3G Internet connection, GPS, 3rd Party applications and much, much more... but is it really worth going out and spending (an announced price of $199-$299, £100-£150, but actually) almost $600, £300 (including 18 month contract) on what is essentially, a smartphone? I shall give my verdict...

Good points:

The original iPhone was a superb piece of tech but there were a few issues with it like slow interwebs and no 3rd party apps (unless you Jailbroke it, but that would be going against the holiness of Mr.Jobs). However these problems have been solved. Good points of the phone are:

Hardware:

Design: The new iPhone looks virtually identical to the first iPhone, however the newer has (8Gb & 16Gb) a shiny black plastic back or (16Gb only) a shiny white plastic back. The newer is also a tiny bit lighter, but apart from this the phones are basically the same. The new phone still features excellent build quality and, with a bevelled back, actually feels a bit thinner.

Inside: As with the old iPhone, the new one is available in either 8Gb or 16Gb (with most probably opting for the 16Gb). A major change in the new phone is the introduction of 3G, which means faster data speeds when connected to the Internet (3G coverage can be found in most major cities in Britain, but not in the countryside). Another big change is the introduction of GPS, with a dedicated GPS chip, capable of identifying your position within a few feet.

Smaller changes: Improvements in call quality have been made with the introduction of a new speaker and microphone. Improvements in reception quality have also been made. Battery life, even though the new phone has GPS and 3G is about the same as the original one.

Software:

2.0 software: This is pre-installed on all iPhone 3Gs and can be downloaded for free for existing 1st gen iPhone users ($9.99, £5.99 purchase from the iTunes store for iPod Touch users). This adds the feature of being able to download 3rd party apps from the App Store, including games, IM apps and many other utilities. All you have to do is open iTunes, browse to the App Store and then download any app you want. (Some are free and some need paying for, depending on the developer's decision).

This also introduces support for MobileMe (the .Mac replacement). This allows to synchronise contacts, calendar and email over the air, and allows a Blackberry-esque push email experience. Over a 3G connection, syncing with MobileMe will be very quick and much easier that using an EDGE connection with the original iPhone.

Apps and MobileMe are the major software changes, but there are other minor ones including Contacts search and a scientific calculator (which I found quite exciting...)

Bad points:

Nothing's perfect... and the new iPhone 3G is basically what everyone expected - an iPhone which is 3 times as fast and has GPS, however there are still a few concerns with it.

3G network coverage is entirely dependant on where you live, so make sure (if you want to use it, which you probably will...) to check if your area is covered.

No MMS Support

No copy and paste (even though you can save pictures now... I would have thought this operation could have been adopted for copying and pasting)

No Bluetooth stereo audio

No support for Flash (!?)

2MP camera (not exactly under par, but not up to the standard of phones like the Nokia N95 with a 5MP camera)

No video recording (although this can probably be solved by software, by taking many pictures at once e.g. 24 pics/sec = 24fps)

Cost:

Up front, the new iPhone is extraordinarily cheap at $199, £100 (8Gb) but with an 18 month contract prices are actually slightly higher that the original phone

Contract	£35 $70	£45 $90	£75 $150
8Gb iPhone	£99 $199	Free	Free
16Gb iPhone	£159 $299	£59 $120	Free
Minutes	600	1200	3000
Texts	500	500	500

(Unlimited Data included)

Final thoughts:

Even though the iPhone 3G has a few problems it is still a wholly brilliant phone, and certainly worth buying. The original phone was a great phone and the new one certainly lives up to its expectations.

del.icio.us Tags: apple,iphone

Cewebrities... Yes that's right - Cewebrities

2008-06-28T15:33:00.001+01:00

This is sort of a continuation of the rant in my last post "Does the iPod age really know anything?". Again it was thought up at school and after some hardcore eavesdropping I've realised that people are not only "hardwarely"/"softwarely" inept, but that they also don't know anything about the new age of celebrities - cewebrities.

As you have probably noticed from the name, cewebrities is a hybrid word that comes from "celebrity" and "web", i.e. People who have or are doing something interesting, solely on the interwebs. I like to refer to cewebrities as: People who are famous but aren't. If I were (again) to go into the street and ask people who Sarah Austin, Leo Laporte, Smosh or Alex Albrecht were, I would guess they wouldn't know. (But maybe they're too busy idolising the newest "Big Bro" star or struggling to hold back the insatiable need to read Heat magazine).

It seems that once someone hears the words Internet or computer in a sentence, they switch off, or they just have an automatic reflex which causes them to talk about shopping as soon as these words appear. For example, I was talking to a friend about how I was IMing Wil Harris (from ChannelFlip, a web based Internet TV channel) however my friend didn't want to listen to a word of it:

Me: "Guess what?"

Him: "What?... This better not be about Mahalo Daily"

Me: "Noo - something even better!"

Him: "Go on..."

Me: "I was talking to Wil Harris - you knowm the guy who does that interne--"

Him: "-- Wow, look at that seagull out there!"

I think that people should be educated about these new stars, as you will be probably watching or using something that they have made, in the near future. To be honest - I would much prefer to learn about this than how tectonic plates move...

I think that sites like Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Plurk and edopter are helping to discover new cewebrities through the power of following updates - or if you prefer, stalking. Cewebrities aren't as arrogant as celebrities and, personally, I find them more interesting. (Why do I need to know that Wayne Rooney paid several million pounds, that he earned by kicking balls, for his wedding?)

Hopefully there will be an increase of the number of cewebrities helping to expedite people's understanding of the general interwebs and new technologies. (But I certainly hope celebrities don't try and be Internet stars. If Jade Goody joined the Internet revolution I would have to eat my iPod as well as my hat).

del.icio.us Tags: calacanis,cewebrity,channel flip,edopter,plurk,pownce,jaiku,twitter

Does the iPod age really know anything?

2008-06-21T21:20:00.000+01:00

This idea came to me after a Technology lesson, when many of my classmates were baffled and surprised at the fact the teacher had made a (truthfully adequate) tutorial video to show them how to use ProDesktop. They were all like "Wow - how did you do that!!", "That's amazing, that man must be a genius" and "...woo!". Frankly I wasn't so impressed.

It occurred to me that many of these people claiming they're all in the "cloud" and are Facebook/MySpace junkies don't actually know a thing about the general interwebs and technology. If I were to go out and ask a person on the street who Jason Calacanis or Kevin Rose was, I can bet that they wouldn't know who they were. (By the way - Jason Calacanis is the CEO of Mahalo.com: Human Powered Search and Kevin Rose is a head honcho behind Revision3.com and Digg.com). Similarly, if I asked someone what Twitter or Plurk is, I suspect they wouldn't know. (Twitter and Plurk are both sites where you can tell people what you're doing/what you think of stuff.)

The same goes for hardware. I can easily slip into a conversation about graphics cards or processors, and continue talking about them for some hours. However when someone comes up to me and asks for help - either with software or hardware, they are usually unable to explain, there and then what is wrong -

Classmate: "Err the thingy-magigy that makes words appear on the computer screen doesn't work",

Me: "You mean the when you type on the keyboard, the words don't appear on the VDU?",

Classmate: "Ahem... err... doesn't matter - I think I can sort it out..."

--or--

Classmate: "You know...hehe... I have Windows Vista - the best operating system ever!

Me: "Ever heard of Mac OSX Leopard??!"

Classmate: "Who?"

Also when I see people with iPods and phones I know they don't actually know how to operate them - they just read the manual and learn the basics. I see a couple of older students with iPod Touches and they don't know that a new 2.0 Firmware upgrade will be coming out in July meaning they can play 3D games on their Touch, they are the kind of people who complain and leave something just because they haven't upgraded and got the new features.

Overall I think that many people, especially teenagers, are seriously "backward" in terms of the new age of the Internet and the cloud (I know many older bloggers like Scoble and Dvorak who are more up to date than most of my classmates). I think many need to read up on new things and move away from their hubs and cliques on Facebook and Bebo and explore the world of the interwebs. After all, when many of them were born they had hardly any of the opportunities they have today - No Google = no easy search, no WikiPedia = no easy research, no iTunes = no easy music downloads and no MSN/GTalk/AIM = no IM or Email. In fact one of my classmates is so stup.... obtuse that they think WikiPedia is called "Wilk-a-pedia"... My point proven.

del.icio.us Tags: apple,calacanis,dvorak,iphone,ipod,microsoft,scoble,vista

Voodoo who? (Evolution of Graphics No.3)

2008-06-01T18:01:00.001+01:00

So what went wrong? Unfortunately, riches begat the want for more riches. As is today, with nVidia and ATi, 3DFX only licensed the chips - they didn't manufacture them. When the Voodoo 3 arrived 3DFX had other plans - in 1998 they bought up STB Technologies, a large card builder of the time. The plan was to directly sell the highly anticipated (but, it turned out, disappointing) Voodoo 3 and rake in the cash. Unfortunately, this decision annoyed many third party manufacturers, who decided they would no longer buy future Voodoo chips. The combination of this, 3DFX's retail inexperience and the superior feature set of nVidia's RIVA TNT2 card caused major damage to the firm's value. nVidia added insult to injury with the GeForce 256, whose performance literally demolished the Voodoo 3. 3DFX's answers to the first GeForce, the Voodoo 4 and 5, came too late. The enhanced GeForce 2 and its new arch rival, the ATi Radeon, had already arrived and Microsoft's Direct3D API was proving to be more developer friendly than Glide. Faced with bankruptcy, in 2001, 3DFX agreed to be bought out by nVidia.

One secret of nVidia's and ATi's success was hardware transform and lighting. Before T and L, a 3D card would dramatically speed up the rendering of textured polygons - however this really didn't do anything to the resulting 3D scene. Light and controlling the polygons was still left to the processor, which to be honest already had enough on its plate, with AI and physics etc. The first GeForces and Radeons took this effort off the processor meaning there was one less restraint on a game's performance. The expensive GeForce 256 was seen as a performance revelation but it took quite a long time for hardware T and L enabled games to make it onto the market. When they did, the superior GeForce 2 series was in swing - most noticeably the very affordable MX "flavour". This itself was a turning point. It was the real beginning of today's dreadfully confusing 3D card line ups to hit every possible girth of wallet. All told, eight different models of GeForce 2 stuck out of nVidia's doors. Meanwhile, ATi was offering similar variants of its new Radeon range.

Both the early GeForces and Radeons made faltering footsteps into pixel and vertex shaders, which were probably the last real concept shift in 3D cards before they solidified into the current trend of refinements upon a theme. It was, however, the GeForce3 - and later the Radeon 8500 - programmable pixel and vertex shaders that definitely made the difference - partially, because the were the first cards to be fully compliant with Microsoft's DirectX 8, which by that point almost entirely ruled the API roost.

del.icio.us Tags: ati,directx,nvidia,opengl,technology,windows,ballmer

Glide and DirectX (Evolution of Graphics No.2)

2008-05-28T13:52:00.001+01:00

Usually game developers want a system where they only have to code for one standard rather than several ones - and in the late 90s this became true. In this period, however, the first DXes were very inefficient and suffered much criticism. Glide might have only communicated with Voodoos but it did it directly to them meaning it was faster. This, in conjunction with the cards raw performance meant the Voodoo was irresistible to gamers and due to this, the whole industry incorporated Glide. Glide was a major modification of OpenGL, another neutral API that predated and went on to rival Direct3D. It was created by the high end workstation manufacturer SGI and was expanded by a number of hardware and software developers - OpenGL was the closest you could get to an altruistic 3D API. Even though it continues to operate today, if it had been more successful in fending off the supreme power of Microsoft, we wouldn't be stuck with the issue of having to buy the error ridden OS that is Vista to play the best looking games (FSX, Crysis, Bioshock etc). Another 3DFX achievement of the late 90s was the custom MiniGL driver which meant OpenGL games could harness the power of the Voodoo - specifically the then new game release, Quake. The card's close relationship with the game that popularised online deathmatches and true 3D gaming - unlike Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, which adopted a 3D viewpoint when facing straight ahead - only reinforced the card's must have "cred".

As 3D gaming expanded, 3DFX's rule seemed less assailable. The Voodoo 2 was a refinement of the first chip, and made some image quality forfeits like no 32-bit colour support and no 800x600+ resolution support - however, it still offered unrivalled raw performance. The Voodoo Rush was able to cope with both 2D and 3D rendering, although there was a noticeable decrease in 3D performance, the Rush was an appealing upgrade. SLI - before nVidia had even got to it - had established the hardcore gaming enthusiast. 2x Voodoo 2s in one PC meant more FPS and ultra sharp 1024x768 resolution.

Final article to be continued...

del.icio.us Tags: ballmer,directx,gameplay,games,gates,microsoft,opengl,tech,technology,vista

The Evolution of Graphics (No. 1)

2008-05-24T17:48:00.001+01:00

Graphics cards have changed - a lot. It doesn't seem long since graphics cards that had 128 Kbs of memory were the market leaders. Nowadays GPUs have up to 1Gb of memory and some - including the new nVidia 9800 GX2 - have 2 GPUs in one casing.

The first graphics cards started to appear in 1981, when monitors replaced actual physical prints. IBM released their GPU with a colossal 4Kb of memory - it was able to produce electronic text...! Move forward to 1987 and VGA cards were capable of 640x480 resolution and a massive 256 colours. A few years after this the first 3D graphics cards were introduced - and here began the history of computer graphics as we know it.

There were many 3D accelerator "add-in" cards around before the release of the well-known Voodoo board. These included nVidia's and ATi's first attempts. However it was 3DFX's efforts that changed everything. Before these 3D masterpieces we did have sort of 3D graphics - blocky, uninteresting and slow is how I would describe it. But, this was mainly due to the CPU restricting the GPU from doing its work.

The Voodoo was the board that every gamer wanted, it was affordable - compared to the ridiculously high GPU prices of today (£400/$800 for a 8800GTX!!) - and with the drop in memory costs meant the Voodoo had a huge 4Mb of it. It was quite an unusual thing, it didn't have 2D rendering properties of its own so you had to connect it to the PC's standard VGA output - It only powered in when you played 3D games. The connection between the VGA output and the Voodoo meant a slight degradation of image quality but no one really cared - they were too busy admiring their 3D works of art.

What 3DFX achieved with the Voodoo was not necessarily a good GPU but the fact that it made other companies compete and how it started a 3D revolution. If today, you think that nVidia vs AMD (ATi) is confusing - with all the 8800s and 3850s and GX-this-and-that - there were up to a dozen GPU manufacturers in the late 90s, like: S3, Trident, Matrox... the big names that once earned big money became forgotten, though, in the vicious GeForce-Radeon war of the early 21st century. Some are still going, however some have been obliterated entirely - including 3DFX itself.

3DFX also did the unimaginable - they defeated the Satanist software giant that is Microsoft. Nowadays we use DirectX (DX10 and soon DX10.1) and this is the only way the GPU communicates with the Windows game. However back when Voodoo ruled, DX was crushed by 3DFX's own Glide API. While DX attempts to bind PC gaming to Windows, Glide was satisfied with DOS as it was in Windows 95. However, it only played "well" with 3DFX's own cards while DX was made to operate with many different cards - only if they corresponded with the few Microsoft rules.

Article to be continued...

del.icio.us Tags: amd,ati,nvidia,apple,ballmer,gameplay,games,gates,graphics,windows,microsoft

Review: Microsoft WWT

2008-05-16T20:20:00.000+01:00

Ever wanted to look up to the skies and see galaxies billions of miles away, but don't have a high powered telescope? Well, Microsoft Worldwide Telescope (WWT) is the answer.

Microsoft have stitched together images of space from hundreds of high powered telescopes around the world, including Hubble and Chandra.

When installing the application the usual installation dialogue comes up and asks you whether you want to install the "online" version or the "offline" version. The online application requires 1Gb of HDD space while the offline version requires 10Gb.

I recommend the online version as WWT actually caches many of the images and eliminates most of the need of being connected to the Internet.

When first starting up WWT you have to wait a few minutes for it to start up, which can be rather annoying - however, on opening the application after this, load time is usually only a few seconds.

When the application opens you are faced by a similar interface to Windows Media Player with tabs across the top with labels "Explore", "Guided Tours", "Search", "Community", "Telescope", "View" and "Settings.

Clicking on Explore shows you a series of folders like "Constellations" and "Solar System" etc. Clicking Guided Tours shows a couple (as the name suggests) tours of certain phenomena and galaxies. Clicking Search, of course, lets you search names of stars and galaxies, and will then "jump" to them. Clicking Community will allow you to join different groups around the WWT society - this is an online feature. Clicking Telescope lets you control the telescope by entering Altitude levels etc. or using the onscreen controls. Clicking View lets you change some of the features, like the time and what colour you want the cross hair to be. Finally, clicking Settings lets you change more advanced settings like how sharp the image quality is.

Across the bottom are 3 boxes - Look At, Imagery and Context Search Filter. Clicking on Look At lets you change what you want to see - and you can click on Earth, Sky, Planet or Panorama. Earth mode uses the Live Maps model and enables you to look at the Earth as you do in Live Maps/Earth - or Google Earth in fact. Sky mode is basically the mode where you can look up into the sky using images from famous telescopes. Planet mode lets you look at planets and moons - including Mars and Jupiter's moons. Panorama mode allows you to look around from a Rover on different moons (only 4 are available at the moment).

Clicking on Imagery lets you change which planet your looking at or who's photography your looking at - which is useful when checking out the sky. Finally Context Search Filter lets you change what you're searching for - I.e. Stellar, Nebulae etc.

The controls are very simple: arrow keys to move around, RMB to check out what star your looking at (It shows a pop-up displaying information about where the star or planet or galaxy is and how big it is etc.) and the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

To conclude Microsoft Worldwide Telescope is a very useful program for a budding astronomer to a master "spaceman". With a great interface and great features I think WWT really competes with Google's Earth, Maps and Mars series. Overall I would give this application 8/10.

del.icio.us Tags: Ballmer,Google,Microsoft,Windows

Vista and the Elderly

2008-05-11T18:31:00.000+01:00

Technorati Tags: ballmer,gates,vista,xp,windows

It's probably a bit late to be talking about how Vista works but something that happened on Friday brought my attention to how finicky and a little awkward Windows Vista would be for an old or inexperienced person.

It was the last day of the week and the last day of exams, so our Latin teacher promised that we could watch a DVD. Every teacher in my school gets a laptop with XP installed, and most don't have a problem with it. However there are some who find it very, very hard to use - like our Latin teacher...

Seen as it was Latin he had decided that the DVD had to be something vaguely educational - so he chose the Doctor Who episode where they go to Pompeii. He got his laptop out, connected it up to the speakers and the projector with little help and then was baffled at what he faced.

He had put the DVD into the disc drive in the laptop. As anyone would, he clicked on the disc drive and unfortunately it didn't work and was not responding. So, seen as I was the geek of the class he called me up to help him out. I tried to reach for the mouse - but he insisted that he would do the clicking and I would tell him what to click. So without actually checking if the disc drive was a DVD drive or a CD drive I told him to click on Windows Media Player. Then I told him to click on "Now Playing" - he refused to do so as there was the "egg timer next to the cursor and you can't do anything if that happens". I was so annoyed...

So after wasting half of an hour and a quarter lesson, he sent us off to the computer technician (who, to be honest probably doesn't know as much about computers as me ). We walked back and after some debating with my Latin teacher the technician told him that the DVD would not play in a CD drive.

So instead of watching Doctor Who for the rest of the lesson we watched some story-telling series starring Michael Gambon.

The teacher had that much of a problem with XP and it isn't exactly a "hard-to-learn" OS. I dread to think how long we would have been there if he had been using Vista. I suspect we would have waited about 20 minutes for it start up, about 10 minutes for it to "recognise" that there was actually a CD in a DVD drive, then about another 30 minutes for Windows Media Player to start up and probably 40 minutes to start up Task Manager to end Media player when it doesn't respond.

Anyway, we still wouldn't have been able to watch Doctor Who.

Facebook to launch "Facebook Connect"

2008-05-10T07:48:00.002+01:00

Social network Facebook announced Friday the debut of Facebook Connect, a new technology for members to connect their profile data and authentication credentials to external Web sites. It makes the company the latest major Web site to embrace the concept of data portability.

The formal announcement was made through a post on Facebook's developer blog by senior platform manager Dave Morin, who has been one of the company's most visible evangelists in the developer community over the past year. Facebook Connect will launch within the next few weeks.

Through Facebook Connect, members will be able to use their Facebook identities across the Web--profile photos, names, photos, friends, groups, events, and other information. Facebook profile content, for example, could appear on other social sites, and Facebook event listings could theoretically connect with external event and invitation services.

Facebook will handle the authentication process, and while privacy controls have not been made clear, the company has stressed that user security will be a priority. And there's reason to believe Facebook will be particularly careful: The company already partners with outside services to share data in its Beacon advertising program, and the PR missteps surrounding Beacon's launch are something that Facebook likely does not want to repeat.

It's a big move for the site. Until this point, Facebook has had a reputation for keeping its cards close to its chest--even banning the account of popular blogger Robert Scoble when he used a script to export his Facebook contact list to Plaxo. But Facebook has a representative in the Data Portability Workgroup, and executives have said that Facebook has wanted to bring its information outside the site eventually.

"These are just a few steps Facebook is taking to make the vision of data portability a reality for users worldwide," Morin wrote in his blog post. "We believe the next evolution of data portability is about much more than data. It's about giving users the ability to take their identity and friends with them around the Web, while being able to trust that their information is always up to date and always protected by their privacy settings."

Last month, Facebook started partnering with other social sites to pull external data into Facebook's "mini-feeds," displaying user activity from the likes of Flickr and Yelp on Facebook profile pages.

No partner Web sites for Facebook Connect have been announced yet, but director of platform Ben Ling explained to CNET News.com that "there's been a lot of partner interest." One partner, however, was displayed in mockups on Facebook's developer blog: social news site Digg.

The technical details also remain unannounced. "We're not announcing the details of the partner integration today," Ling said. "What we're announcing at a high level is that we will have a program that's built into partners large and small, and they will be able to access Facebook Connect."

Facebook kick-started the social-networking developer platform craze when it launched the Facebook Platform a year ago. But on Thursday, bigger rival MySpace made a big move when it opened its own profile content to outside sites--in a sense the reverse of Facebook's famous decision to welcome external developers onto its own site. Facebook representatives said Friday that there are now more than 350,000 developers from 225 countries developing for the platform, although one prominent programmer said earlier this week that he believes activity may be slowing.

Facebook has also held over 50 "developer garage" events in 10 countries, and Ling said that Facebook Connect will be discussed at future "garages."

One Facebook insider, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said to CNET News.com that the project had been in the works for quite some time, and said the announcement wasn't issued as a response to MySpace's "Data Availability" project. "We actually think what they are up to is pretty cool."

Representatives from MySpace were not immediately available for comment.

MySpace has partnered with the likes of eBay and Yahoo for Data Availability, which means that many of the Web's biggest names are now warming up to the idea of social-network identity portability. It's likely to be popular with users eager to quell the onset of "social fatigue" from too many logins and profiles, but privacy and security advocates may raise a red flag--as might advertisers, to whom Facebook's walled-in user base was ideal for targeted marketing. Spreading that data across the Web could complicate matters on that front.

Microhoo?

2008-05-04T07:42:00.004+01:00

After what seemed an age Microsoft has abandoned their pursuit to buy Yahoo thus preventing them from competing against Google.

"We continue to believe that our proposed acquisition made sense for Microsoft, Yahoo and the market as a whole. Our goal in pursuing a combination with Yahoo was to provide greater choice and innovation in the marketplace and create real value for our respective stockholders and employees," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Even though Microsoft had raised it's first bid by US$5bn (£2.5Bn) Yahoo still didn't accept the offer.

Ballmer went on "After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal."

Yahoo claimed that the offer proposed by Microsoft was to low and said that many of their shareholders agreed at this.

"Yahoo is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market," said Roy Bostock, chairman of Yahoo's board.

"...with the distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us-" Yahoo can continue with "-the most important transition in our history," Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang continued.

All parties with a stake in the deal had been waiting for Microsoft to announce its next move, after Yahoo failed to agree to a deal by the deadline Microsoft had set three weeks earlier - this Saturday.

But Microsoft stayed silent for days, as observers speculated whether it would walk away or prepare a hostile takeover. However, on Friday anonymously sourced reports in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times said that Microsoft and Yahoo had turned a corner and were for the first time negotiating merger terms in earnest.

GTA IV Gameplay leaked

2008-04-26T21:05:00.004+01:00

With the release of GTA IV imminent everyone wants a glimpse of how the game will really "play" - and they probably don't want to watch the made up "preview" videos.
Jason Calacanis twittered this - GTA IV leaked - unsurprisingly the game looks superb and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.
(Caution - the preview does contain some swearing and violence)

World in Condlict: Soviet Assault

2008-04-25T19:43:00.003+01:00

Last year at about this time I saw a game called World in Conflict. When I first saw it I thought it would be a cheap copy of Company of Heroes (except, set in the 1980/90s).
When I started playing I was stunned at how good the graphics were and I remember the first nuclear missle that I launched - It was simply AMAZING.
However Massive Entertainment have brought out a sequel to WiC - WiC: Soviet Assault. The new game will feature a new UI and will be available on not only PC but Xbox 360 and PS3 aswell. The game also promises even better gameplay and even better graphics. I'm really looking forward to this game and it will be released in September this year.

Twitter

2008-04-17T20:27:00.002+01:00

I'm "sorry" to say I am addicted to Twitter. I use it regularly now and have a whole 25 followers! (yay...) I think that Twitter gets better when you get more followers this is achieved by following other people. Although I have 25 followers I am following 128...
By the way - if you want to follow me on Twitter feel free to @ www.twitter.com/ebygum

Fairtrade Challenge

2008-04-13T08:05:00.002+01:00

Head off to - co-op-challenge.blogspot.com - it's a blog that we made for a competition that we are doing in school. We won the quarter-final round and soon we will be entering the semi-final.
Also see our advert for our fairtrade product, at - www.youtube.com/coopchallenge

The song is New Soul by Yael Naim.
Thanks to Harry for the poster and summary text, to James for his poster, to Mark for the blog and to me for the presentation, blog and video. Good luck everyone in the next stage of the competition.

1 million viruses

2008-04-11T20:32:00.002+01:00

The number of viruses, worms and trojans in circulation has topped the one million mark.

The new high for malicious programs was revealed by security firm Symantec in the latest edition of its bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report.

The vast majority of these programs have been created in the last twelve months, said Symantec.

Cyber criminals pump out malware to fool anti-virus programs which look for characteristics they have already seen.

Most of the viruses are aimed at Windows machines - serves them right...

Blender

2008-04-08T20:44:00.003+01:00

After deciding that I will probably work in CAD when I am older I went in search of a CAD program to learn. I actually found Blender while watching a YouTube video which was made using the application
(see iMac MultiTouch)
It's quite hard to grasp, but I think I've got a basic idea of how to use it. It has advanced animation making facilities and other great utilities. I will be making some models and animations when I get a full understanding of the program and will be posting here. So watch this space!

9in EEE PC

2008-04-03T12:26:00.004+01:00

The 9in EEE PC has been released (it's actually 8.9in). Although Asus has put a new screen on the EEE, it is still very similar to it's 7in brother. Asus say it can manage 2.5 - 3 hours battery life. They also say it will be on sale in mid 2008 and with a price tag of 300 euros for the 12 Gb version. Also rumoured on sale is an 8 Gb version.

AOL takes Bebo

2008-03-23T20:10:00.000Z

23 03 2008

AOL buys Bebo for $850,000,000… which is a lot. Eyebrows have been raised in response to news of the deal because Bebo’s traffic levels are only a fraction of those seen at MySpace and Facebook. Bebo had 22.4 million unique visitors worldwide in January, according to comScore Media Metrix. Facebook and MySpace both had more than 100 million worldwide visitors that month. Despite this users spend more time on Bebo than both Facebook and MySpace. Information from AOL is sketchy on the details of how Bebo will be integrated into its other properties, other than thoughts that it will be paired up with the messaging services AOL IM and ICQ.

A funny Apple vs Microsoft video

2008-03-15T19:20:00.000Z

Here's just a little animation that I made when I had some spare time (yes that is how sad my life is - ROFL) Anyway, here you go...
Please comment on it and give me some more ideas for another episode!

The Orange Box

2008-03-09T07:32:00.001Z

After some debating I finally got The Orange Box. It was expensive - £40 - but there are 5 games in one box. First I decided to play Portal and I managed to complete it in a measly 2 or 3 hours. Half Life 2 (Ep1 & Ep2) are a bit harder so I'm still half way through those. Last night I decided to play Team Fortress, I thought it was going to be a bit bland but when I started playing it, it was amazing. The graphics are what you call "retro" - i.e. they are cartoons but they look like they are real. Plus the gameplay is superb. I must say it is one of the best cartoon MMOFPSs.
So that is The Orange Box, great value and hours of fun...

Bill Gates no longer richest

2008-03-08T07:30:00.000Z

I suppose you could thank Yahoo for making Bill Gates fall off the top spot and go down to a measly 3rd. Now in front of him is, in 1st Warren Buffet worth $62 Billion and in 2nd Carlos Silm. It may seem a disaster but Gates is still worth a frankly massive $58 Billion, so there is no real need to feel sorry for him...
After February and Microsoft's Yahoo bid Microsoft's shares plummeted. As you can see on this confusing chart below:-

On the first graph the thing that is falling are Microsoft's shares after they bid for Yahoo. So we'll just have to wait and see how far Gates falls after he actually clinches the deal with Yahoo.

Adobe blurs the line between on and offline

2008-03-01T15:49:00.000Z

I and many other people often have the problem of opening applications which need an internet connection offline. However a new program released by Abobe called AIR will promise to solve this. Someone who wants to put an item up for bid on eBay, for example, could fill out the form through the AIR software while the PC isn’t connected to the Web. The software would automatically post the information to eBay the next time the computer is connected to the Internet.
However Abobe is not the only one who has tried to do this, Google, Microsoft and others have also attempted this as well. That’s because while online software has a number of advantages – there’s nothing for customers to install, it’s accessible from any computer and it’s usually faster to develop – it also has one big disadvantage: You need to be connected to the Internet to use it.

EU fines Microsoft

2008-02-28T17:13:00.000Z

The EU fined Microsoft a record $1.45 m Dollars for charging rivals too much for software info. EU regulators fined the company again Wednesday, saying it charged "unreasonable prices" until last October to software developers who wanted to make products compatible with the Windows desktop operating system.

The penalty far outweighs the next biggest fine, also imposed on Microsoft in March 2004 when the EU ordered it to pay 497 million euro ($A800 million) for using its role as the world's leading supplier of desktop software to elbow into new markets for workgroup servers and media players.

YouTube blames Pakistan

2008-02-25T20:46:00.000Z

After YouTube went down, the company owned by Google blamed the Pakistani ISP PCCW. The blackout lasted for almost 2 hours.

Reports say that the ISP blocked YouTube because of the offensive Danish cartoons showing Muhammad, which featured on the site.

The decision to block the site has caused mass outrage in the country. Wahaj-us-Siraj agrees:

" Users are quite upset. They're screaming at ISPs which can't do anything.

" The government has a valid reason for that, but they have to find a better way of doing it. If we continue blocking popular websites, people will stop using the internet."

Other countries including Turkey and Thailand may have blocked the site aswell.

MacBook Air battery life

2008-02-24T07:39:00.000Z

Many people who have bought and tested the MacBook Air are complaining that the battery life is quite a lot shorter than Steve Jobs himself stated in his Keynote at MacWorld 08. He said that it would have 5 hours battery life however people report that the battery lasts for a measly 2 hours...

However sales of the Air are still increasing - it must be because of its stunning looks and its amazing thinness.

Windows How To

2008-02-23T15:13:00.000Z

Watch the video here and subscribe to my YouTube channel. It is all about Windows and how to do things with it. The first episode is how to turn Windows User Account Control (UAC). For the transcript just send me an email.

Vista SP1

2008-02-23T08:04:00.000Z

The new service pack for Vista is literally a stone's throw away. It is due to come out it March (end of) but it is already available for MSDN subcribers.

SP1 is basically a wrap-up of all the old updates and adds some new features to the disk defragmenter and many other programs.

However Microsoft did make a silly mistake a few days ago, they accidentally released SP1 to some users on Windows Update. Apparently it was an "accident" (yehh right). SP1 also promises to allow programs that didnt work on Vista to work on Vista SP1...

Ahh so confusing, why doesn't everyone switch to Mac.

iPhone/Touch SDK

2008-02-21T18:46:00.000Z

The software development kit for the iPhone and iPod Touch is almost here (End of Feb/Start of March 08)! So I and many other nerds can make there own third-party software for the iPhone and touch. Apple hope that this will boost their sales (which I suspect it will - the stock iPhone's app range wasn't that large and I don't really like the web apps)

It may seem all "goody good", however there is a fear of viruses infiltrating the iPhone software but this threat is a small one and I think that the SDK is a certain step forward.

HD DVD is dead

2008-02-20T18:38:00.000Z

So after a whole 2 years of battle HD DVD has finally collapsed under pressure and passed away. After Toshiba declared that they shall no longer produce HD DVD drives and that all the major film companies will be only releasing their movies on Blu-Ray, this only left Microsoft in the Red corner, fighting for HD DVD --and no one likes Microsoft--(!)

So right here, right now, I'd like to declare HD DVD dead. It had a short life - born in 2006 AD and passed away, at the tender age of 2, in the year 2008 AD. It will always be remembered for its cheapness and its huge storage but now HD DVD has gone to a better place... Amen.