Sony’s new dildo range – The Playstation Wank

March 16th, 2010

Good Evening, Good Evening, Good Evening and welcome back my fickle readership to matgreenfield.com. Having successfully bullshitted my way through algorithms, blundered my way through Programming, breezed through Commercial Software and bamboozled a board game – the time usually devoted to work and/or procrastination is, albeit temporarily, free for the production of more written content for this blog. Lovely. As such, to make up for the lack of posts, and because I’ve been inhibiting my own desire to write for the past few weeks, I am giving you lovely people an inveritable avalanche of topics under one post!

Playstation Move – and Sony’s new TV range, the Bravia Watch, and new eReader, the Sony Reader Read (I could go on for a while)

What the fuck has happened to gaming? The move from sedentry sit and button mash gaming to motion sensitive controllers has been apparent for many years and I had hoped we’d advanced enough along the natural progression of a new technology to the level of the upcoming Project Natal. But apparentely not, Sony has refused to even attempt to compete by bringing out a range of motion-sensitive controllers and dragged everything back a step. Nintendo, having only become a serious console contender a few years ago, has always been perceived as a casual gamers console, not the kit for serious fraggers who opt for either the PS3 or the XBox 360 – where the competition had always been – so Nintendo can afford to not try and dominate the market of motion sensitivity. Microsoft’s announcement of Natal, a system that aims to remove controllers from the equation altogether and have players control the game with their bodies in an intuitive (ie. not EyeToy) way was a groundbreaking step. What was the thought process of Sony execs when they were trying to find a way to compete with Natal and, after much brainstorming and deliberation, decided to do something that Nintendo did three years ago, badly, with a garish dildo complete with vividly coloured testicle.

It just feels like Sony have given up, not only did they produce something totally bland and unorignal AND give it a crappy design, they couldn’t even be bothered to make up a proper name for it – the Sony Move – which sounds like a cross between a barked command and a desperate plea to buy this heap of junk.

But if they really want to call such a phallic device after what they expect people to do with it, why not just call it the Playstation Wank and have done with it – in more ways than one.

Digital Britain – Well, we’re clearly not

Soooooo much to say on this topic that it will have to fill a post of it’s own, stay tuned…

Oranges, Nostalgia, Picturesque and Cynicism

As you’d expect, my coursework has severely depleted my reading, moreso than usual, but I have managed to dish up a few quips. Firstly, I have long-since finished Screen Burn by Charlie Brooker and found it to be a delightfully dejected book, despite it essentially being four years of Brooker’s weekly Guardian columns packaged into one book, starting at 2000 so the TV shows he reviews are a tad outdated and exist as a mere wisp in my memory – the first one mentions the departure of Ricky Butcher in Eastenders who, as I understand it, has since returned, left and returned once again. I have since purchased Brooker’s ‘The Hell of it All’ which is the same format but was released this year and opens in 2007, perhaps something I can be more atuned to.

I have finished reading the T.S. Eliot collection that any readers dedicated (and borderline obsessed) enough will remember me grappling with last year. My understanding of poetry was, as I anticipated, largely due to the assistive nature of my college teachers and I failed to grasp, I fear, a lot of the meaning. However, what I did understand made me have to pause for reflection – convenient then that I was sitting by the Student Village (my halls of residence) pond at sunset where the vista would’ve made Rolf Harris piss himself put me in a rather poetic mood for the rest of the day – I went out that night so it was shortly replaced with alcohol.

Oranges are not the only fruitI have since started reading, for perhaps the second or third time, Oranges are not the only fruit by Jeanette Winterson. This semi-autobiographical novels tells the story of a girl who has been a devout member of the Christian faith her entire life because of her adoptive mother, a frightfully narrow-minded person who clings . This girl grows up and becomes attractive to another female member of her church, and the novel deals with her own acceptance of her sexuality with her faith, as well as the complex reactions of those around her. The book has some seemingly over-exaggerated depictions of religious practises, but given that this is based on Winterson’s real experiences, this is likely not overstated – however, the book is not an plain and simple criticism of religion, as the protagonist maintains her faith throughout, but is simply a critique of people taking the teachings of religion, using Christianity as an example, too seriously and the impact that can have. The relationship is, unsuprisingly, tested by Jeanette’s revelation but a glimmer of hope at the end tempers the dramatic events of the book with an uplifting ending.

Alice in Wonderland: Burton does it again and it’s getting repetitive

I saw, just yesterday, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland – a continuation, of sorts, from the original Lewis Carroll original tale set 13 years later with a now young-adult Alice as the protagonist. Tim Burton brings his usual entourage to proceedings but I was unconvinced by their appearance – Johnny Depp plays The Mad Hatter but his performance is a far cry from the original eccentricity of the character and is instead that now all too recognisable ‘Depp Eccentricity’, not just for the costume similarities will you notice parallels between Depp here and his portrayal of Willy Wonka……or Jack Sparrow……or Sweeney Todd at one point. Bonham-Carter, at least, has some varieties in the characters she plays, unfortunately she doesn’t do anything with it and the part could just have easily been played as well by any actress. Stephen Fry has a vocal role as the Chesire Cat, besides being a huge Fry-fan, his normal British pomp is laced with something very dark that it’s unusual to hear in Fry’s voice – he does it beautifully but often British sounding dark can sound like a whine, Fry doesn’t manage to always avoid this but he does very well. Matt Lucas’ dual role as both the voice and face of the Tweedles was a masterpiece of casting that nobody could fault. The rest of the voice cast is padded out with the usual British treasures, including Alan Rickman, who somehow got starring credit despite being his character being on screen for all of three minutes.

Unsuprisingly, I recommend seeing it in 3D. As with Avatar, my feeling is that I would’ve been a bit disappointed has the 3D not looked so good, combine that with the finely detailed victorian setting at the start/end and the trippy Burton-esque Wonderland throughout and the result is quite spectacular – but an effect, I feel, wouldn’t have looked as wonderful in a mere two dimensions. The film itself is fairly predictable, but I think a lot of people will see this film with the misconception that it’s aimed at an older audience, it isn’t – it’s a kids film through and through so expect the predictable moral of the story, the puerile humour and all the other things associated with a kids film. Do I think adults will enjoy it? Absolutely, just bear in mind it’s still a kids film.

Sorry all, my pent up creative juices have run dry for today (which in a post entitled ‘Playstation Wank’ is never something you should close with) – much like the Artful Dodger, I’ll be back soon with more posts.

Now go wash your hands.

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Google Books – The Printed Word Lives On

March 15th, 2010

Hey all, I know perfectly well that none of you give a flying spaghetti monster if I post on here or not, given that I haven’t been writing on here in a while owing to a high work load and nobody appears to have thrown themselves off a bridge yet. However, my upcoming deadlines and the Easter holidays beginning at the end of this week mean that post frequency (and hopefully my site hits) should shoot up. In the meantime, here’s another Spark* article, although this is simply a rehashed version of a recent blog post (that, owing to lack of posts, is probably lower down on the main page) but nevertheless.

Google Books – The Printed Word Lives On
Mat Greenfield

In 2008, Apple deity Steve Jobs damned the Amazon Kindle to the technological abyss by asserting on eBook readers, “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.” Fast-foward to 2010 and chuckle with glee as you watch his holiness make a u-turn the circumference of John Prescott as the iPad comes out, brimming with eBook reader features and plans to release books on the Apple app store. Jobs has, albeit unintentionally, shown us that one of the oldest forms of communication simply won’t die.

Google Books

For around six years now, Google have been feverishly cataloguing books faster than a hyperactive librarian, meticulously scanning page after page and applying character recognition to create a vast database of books and their content. The aim of this process is to establish a new facet of their search engine, returning book titles and relevant passages for queries alongside the website results; although amount of content that you’ll get to see from results is yet undetermined, as Google are, as you’d expect, being put through the motions of copyright issues. The overarching concept is that, rather than searching to find websites with the information you need, or having to face the daring feat of going to your local library for books on the subject, you can get information the credibility of a book without having to decipher the cryptic systems of organisation in libraries. Since the inception of the internet and the unfiltered information therein, there’s always been a choice between getting potentially inaccurate information fast and getting verified information slowly that Google hopes to tackle.

This concept is not unlike Wikipedia, which gets a lot of bad press and is, for many educators, a taboo website – owing mostly to the claim that it’s unreliable due to its freely editable nature. However, Wikipedia is, arguably, the best possible source of information, as it is far more moderated than any other website out there – while it’s extremely easy for someone to make a website claiming that Bruce Forsyth is a robot spy whose speech synthesiser malfunctions whenever he says “it’s nice to see you”, but put that information on Wikipedia and it will be set upon by an army of editors who will pick apart this new addition, demand sources and, eventually, remove it. Getting a book published is another, pardon the pun, story, however, as a manuscript, research and information is subject to detailed editing, proof reading and review before a publisher sinks it’s cash into bringing it to paper and print. Non-fiction, therefore, and in particular publications of a scientific or otherwise factual nature is heavily moderated and its content is, again arguably, of greater veracity. Though Wikipedia has far more stringent editing procedure than the rest of the internet, it is no match for the experience and history of editing that publications carry.

Wikipedia is a favourite for students for the very reason that it’s a prolific, central source of information, but every student wants to impress their lecturer by citing publications by experts in the field, and now Google’s plan to create what is essentially a Wikipedia of books, carrying the heavy verification and moderation of the latter with the convenience and centralisation of the former, solving the age old dilemma of convenience versus accuracy.

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Cardinal Rules

March 4th, 2010

Just a quick post to fill the void that my articulated absence has inevitably left in your soul. I have a cardinal rule against blogging about anything personal – owing mostly to the fact that my Facebook does that perfectly and the fact that you readers simply don’t care.

However, I felt that this is vaguely relevant to the blog and I wanted to post something to avoid people thinking this blog is dead.

Firstly, it’s my 19th Birthday – that’s of little consequence but should be mentioned all the same.

Secondly, I’ve mentioned a few times that I write newspaper articles for the Reading University Student Newspaper Spark* – you may’ve seen the articles I’ve written being re-posted on here. For the year thus far I’ve been just a writer for the Science and Technology section but a couple of weeks ago the incumbent section editor asked me, owing to the current position holder leaving at the end of the year, to fill the space of deputy section editor. This means that I will be responsible for helping the editor collect articles, putting together each edition and communicating with writers – it also means that my articles will only be printed if there isn’t enough articles to fill the pages. This was a point of worry initially, as my writing for Spark* was to get experience at article writing and deadlines. But I later realised that I have had the experience and it would be ongoing (albeit to a lesser extent) on this blog (which means more original content for you lovely dears) and getting experience at editing, which has more pressing deadlines, is the next logical step and would look even better on my CV – it’d be foolish to turn it down.

So that’s it, my cardinal rule broken for the sake of keeping my blog alive. I have several posts in my drafts box for future completion and your future edification – I only hope they remain relevant by the time I am free to continue writing them.

That’s it. Now go wash your hands.

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A Matter of Meme

February 28th, 2010

The Mobile World Conference has come and gone, passed without much input from me owing to a combination of indifference and an ever-increasing workload that this post seeks simply to exacerbate, but a new development in the Microsoft camps need my scorn…


Picture stolen from CNET UK – they won’t mind, they get more hits than me anyway and I can’t get review models.

I’m not going to go into a review of the device because it is basically a bog-standard phone OS, except app updates appear on the home screen. Instead, I’m going to detail why it will fail…

The reason it will fail is for one reason alone, it’s name. Windows Mobile 7 Series. The only words more depressing than Windows Mobile 7 Series is ‘inflammed clown herpes’, and neither are particularly appealing to go and ask for in bloody Phones4u. The thing that Microsoft consistently, absolutely always, misses is what the modern tech-generation remember anything by – viral. I know that sounds weird but hear me out, television shows for years have stayed in the collective memories of generations, long after they’ve ended, entirely on the catchphrases – “D’oh”,”Could I be anymore…”,”You Plonker”,”No soup for you!” – all made shows stand out and are instantly recognisable.

The same applies to shopping, if you walk into a phone shop and say you want an iPhone – let’s analyse that – it’s snappy, everyone knows what it is mainly because it indicates a single object and appeals to the gimmick Apple have had of grafting the letter i onto every device they’ve ever released.

Now, if you walk into a phone shop and say you want a Windows Mobile 7 Series Phone, not only will you most likely die inside before you finish it, you’ll also get blank looks with a name that sounds so indistinct and tedious. I’m all for branding and it makes sense that they’d continue their Windows OS in this way, but history shows that this just doesn’t work. With a snappier name as much time to ingrain that name into the minds of the public they might have a fighting chance, but they’re far too late – it doesn’t matter how much time they’ve spent perfecting the phone OS because they’ve lost, not only ground but sea and space to Apple.

Microsoft have taken stabs at viral campaigns but these have been pitiful, half-hearted attempts that fail to even become famous for being crap, like their Bill Gates and Seinfeld commercials that somehow managed to make Microsoft seem even more past it. You can just hear Bill sitting in his office thinking “whose funny” and showing how past it he is. The result of this is so squirmy, unfunny and borderline homoerotic it made me want to prise my eyes out with a shoehorn.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Microsoft has conceded that their market in a lot of things is comprised mostly of businessmen, people who don’t care about how the things look as long as it does the job. This has been a secure region of the market for some time but they’ve tried to show people that they are really young hipsters too, which resulted in the travesty that is Windows Vista, and clamouring to show that they’re down-with-the-peeps (word) with the XBox, before swiftly showing their silver-hair once again by chucking off chipped consoles from XBox Live. But the mobile is different, if they were giving it a dull name simply to grow old gracefully they wouldn’t have included heavy social networking features or anything un-business-like. They leave it, therefore, as a phone aimed at the planet’s population but appealing to the population of Malta. This will fail.

By this point, however, Microsoft’s so old and so long-lasting that the name itself is synonymous with stuffy businessmen and pure tedium – maybe the way Microsoft can make themselves appear younger and edgier is to get rid of Microsoft itself.

Oh, and because I sort of owe CNET because I borrowed that image from them, check out more information on the ejaculations of Microsoft’s Marketing Morons here: The worst Microsoft celebrity videos ever.

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Talking out of his iArse

February 24th, 2010

In 2008, Apple deity Steve Jobs damned the Amazon Kindle to the technological abyss by asserting on eBook readers, “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.” Fast-foward to 2010 and chuckle with glee from your comfy desk chair as you watch his holiness make a u-turn with all the elegance of an agitated baboon as the iPad comes out, brimming with eBook reader features and plans to release books on the app store. But maybe Jobs wasn’t talking out of his iArse back then, as Google takes up hammers to nail down the coffin of the printed word, people are still reading – but Google want their own say on how they do so.

Google have been, for lack of a better word, prolific in their endeavours – rising from an obscure, oddly named search engine to a main player in almost every digital pie they can stick their grubby little fingers into. Having perfected and, with increasing speed, enacted the art of data collection, and having catalogued nearly every scrap of data, they’re moving on to the most old school of old school information distribution and are attempting to digitise books…

For around six years now, Google have been feaverishly cataloging books faster than a hyperactive librarian, meticulously scanning page after page and applying character recognition to create a vast database of books and their content, with a view to have search terms passed through the data and return books that contain information on your search term. The amount of content that you’ll get to see from results is, as of yet, undetermined, as Google are, as you’d expect, being put through the motions of copyright issues. The overarching concept is that, rather than searching to find websites with the information you need, or having to face the daring feat of going to your local library for books on the subject, you can get information the credibility of a book without the hassle and trauma of standing upright.

We’re missing the bigger picture here – Google have tirelessly worked to build what is essentially a global centre for websites, videos, shopping and anything that the internet can do. But there’s always been a divide (a ‘digital divide’ if you will) between information readily available digitally and what’s hard to obtain, but often more useful, in hard copy – once again, also, it’s a trade off between convenience and precision.

It’s not unlike Wikipedia, show me a single regular internet user who hasn’t used the editable encyclopedia in some capacity, it is used because it is a prolific and centralised hub of information. The problem with Wikipedia, as with any website, is that there is a big difference in how this information is moderated – although, despite the bad press it gets, Wikipedia is arguably a more reliable source than other sites as a whole, because it is moderated to a degree whereas the web is not – which means there is no guarantee that the information you see is correct. Getting a book published is another aquatic vertebrate teapot, however, as a manuscript, reseach and information is subject to detailed editing, proof reading and review before a publisher sinks it’s cash into bringing it to paper and print. Non-fiction, therefore, and in particular publications of a scientific or otherwise factual matter is heavily moderated and it’s content is, again arguably, of greater veracity. Google is using their technology to make an online encyclopedia of entirely moderated information, with a plethora of fiction to boot.

I’m usually the first, or at least the second, to bemoan how a new project or gadget won’t be a success for this reason or that reason – but for once the sneeringly cynical side of my brain is taking a holiday, because I think this is fantastic. Many have accepted the sad but ultimately inevitable fact that libraries and books aren’t the primary method of getting information anymore, as with everything the convenience of our ability to retreive massive volumes of information with little more than a few finger movements has lead to it’s downturn. However, if we can get the same availability from sources as reputable and scrutinised as books, plus Google’s ubiquity as an information source, the oft-quoted dystopian vision of a world built on unmoderated and inaccurate information can be shut down by the luddite morons that preach it.

If Jobs is to be believed, the printed word might be dead, but it lives on in another form, albeit an abstract and entirely non-physical form, almost like a spirit…it’s oddly poetic. Gah, that was sickeningly sentimental.

Oh yeah, and if anyone smugly declares anything about the printed word technically living on as eInk screens on eBook Readers they will receive a swift and precise beating with my Sherlock Holmes collection – which is a heavy motherfucker.

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Eye on Earth

February 19th, 2010

Evening all, I’m still alive……..oi, I heard that. My attempts to write the recent tech news have been early successes that soon succumb to the worry about looming coursework deadlines and have stopped my creative  juices flowing – which shows you just how exciting my coursework is that I needn’t be creative. Luckily, my writing for Spark*, something I take as seriously as coursework (otherwise I’d never write), means that I am forced to spout some form of tech-news related writing every fortnight, which will keep me on my stylistic toes until I’m free enough to start regular posts again. Here’s my latest article that I’ve submitted to Spark*, Roya (mentioned and quoted in the article) is my flatmate and I should also mentioned that I’ve been asked to take the position of deputy editor of the science/tech section of Spark after the summer.

Eye on Earth

EyeonEarthReadingUni

They say that when something is out of sight, it’s often out of mind; that could certainly be said of climate change. Our narrow perception of our surroundings out of wider context makes it hard to see how much we contribute to global warming. Now, a joint venture between the European Environment Agency (EEA) and Microsoft seeks to show everyday web users exactly what’s happening to their planet, which they’ve dubbed Eye on Earth.
Eye on Earth may sound like the title of an Orwellian nightmare, but, in fact, it’s a website showing an interactive map of the 32 EEA member-countries, upon which users can enter information on the air and water quality using set descriptions such as ‘good’, ‘irritating’ and ‘clean’, alongside official data, all for the site’s visitors to see. The hope is that users will investigate and contribute to the map, allowing them to see precisely how their area compares with other towns, cities or even countries and appreciate how their own carbon footprint can have a visible impact when put into the wider context. The venture is in its infancy at the moment, but those behind it intend to expand the data displayed on the map to include other key indicators of environmental health, as well as provide tips on going green.
Eye on Earth is, itself, eco-friendly, the entire site utilises ‘cloud computing’, outsourcing the storage and processing power required to the servers of ‘cloud’ companies, which would be running at the same energy-output with or without the inclusion of this site. Taking in user-data in this manner is known on the web as crowd-sourcing, where an organisation uses their audience to gather and process information in a fraction of the time it would take to do it themselves. An example of crowd-sourcing includes the MP expenses scandal – when Westminster released 500,000 claim forms, instead of wading through the documents, The Guardian enlisted readers to review unchecked documents online for something news-worthy (i.e. poultry real-estate) and flag it for the journalists to review and print. Eye on Earth, then, is so green it recycles people.
With crowd-sourcing and the publicity that involving Microsoft will bring, those in support of the project feel that this is the ultimate twenty-first century way of raising awareness, including campaigners around the Reading University campus. Green Week representative, Roya Shahrokni, said, “I think it’s brilliant. Seeing something like this will help to raise awareness of the damage that’s being done to our environment and, hopefully, encourage people to start pulling their weight in the fight against climate change.”
The scheme has drawn its fair share of criticism, however, as some feel that this method of data collection is unreliable, relying on the perception different people without clear qualification to discern air or water quality. Though few are criticising how this scheme will raise the public consciousness, there is vocal opposition to this scheme as a source of information, fearing that the presence of official figures will be overlooked due to the higher volume of potentially inaccurate user data.
Eye on Earth is available online at: http://eyeonearth.cloudapp.net/

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No time to procrastinate

February 10th, 2010

Hey all, if you’ve noticed that my blog posts have been a subtly mixed combination of sparse and slap-dash recentely then you’re an obsessive twat.

Nevertheless, this is so, and I feel I owe anybody (if they exist) who noticed the above statement an explanation.

Through a combination of sorting out finances and other such gubbins surrounding finding and renting my first house for my second year of Uni, coursework coming out the wazoo that, from, stretches to the very last day of the term, revision over the easter break and exams upon return, this is to be expected.

I’ve not been blog-idle, however, as I’ve been cobbling together posts in my spare moments and will be posting them as soon as they’re finished. Plus, come summer I’ll have more time to write posts, as I did during my blog-writing infancy.

Night all.

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Request from a Recovering Farmvillian

February 6th, 2010

Hey all, apparentely I’m taking requests now – but at least I know one person is actually reading this damn thing.

My friend Fraser, discontent with the projectile lobbying of digital livestock, tasked me on Facebook with this:

…any ideas for email applications that aren’t web based (need to be signed into msn messenger for email notifications, and i cant integrate it with my uni account), or mozilla thunderbird (theres like a 5 min delay between the email reaching my actual inbox and it appearing in thunderbird, which doesn’t seem m…uch, but it annoys me)? and apparently the newer windows mail / outlook dont let you use your hotmail account? fussssyyyyy.

This question threw a metaphorical spanner into my metaphorical brainstuffs as my usual answer to this is simply “Mozilla Thunderbird, fool!”. Alas, though I chastise Fraser for being put off by a five-minute delay when only the obsessed, and bored students, check their e-mail with any frequency upwards of five minutes, but seeing as Fraser is both – I must press on.

Personally, I have taken to forgoing web-based e-mail altogether and get anything related to Uni, Blogging or my other wheelings-and-dealings to my Palm Pre and have a browser-based e-mail for all the other crap (i.e. horoscopes, facebook/youtube/twitter notifications, etc.). Thus, my initial recommendation is that, if you have one, sync your important stuff with your phone and never check with your browser, thus you never notice any delay. Again, this solution may only work for some so press we on again…

As much as I hate to push Microsoft software over open-source Mozilla software, no other company really does e-mail clients better than Outlook, and I feel it would be unfair of me to write it off with Vista, Silverlight and that weird music-generation software they’ve been dabbling in without a proper look. Outlook is the oldest and most refined software, ideal for syncing with POP and IMAP e-mail services. Outlook has been regenerated recentely into “Windows Live Mail”, no doubt to keep up branding with Live Messenger (formerly MSN) and the rest of the Live suite that get’s pushed on you when you try to install Messenger.

I had no trouble syncing my live.co.uk e-mail account with Live Mail but, as Fraser rightly puts, Hotmail seems to be Microsoft’s unwanted, and poorly named, child that they are leaving out in the cold like so much mouldy cheese (I really should’ve put it in the fridge). In public, Microsoft won’t hold Hotmail’s hand as they cross the road, but on paper they’ll accept that they slept with that golddigging slut and will let Hotmail in with a blanket over it’s head. Tutorials online show you how to complete this setup and, were I in a position to test it, I would do so. However, sworn testimony from people on the internet, so you know it’s trustworthy, says that this simple method works; good luck Fraser, let me know how it goes….

http://www.freeemailtutorials.com/windowsLiveMail/setupEmailAccounts/setupHotmailAccount.htm

Apologies for the long break in posts, swamped with Uni work. However, a big sycophantic post about how great it is to live in the 21st century with technology is right around the corner, when I start planning it.

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Have a happy period, iPad

January 30th, 2010

Completely ignoring my Apple iToaster idea, bespectacled pencil Steve Jobs has finally laid waste to years of tablet speculation by bringing out the Apple iPad.

image

So big it takes up an entire wall.

Ignoring the name that sounds like the most technologically advanced sanitary towel, this new product from, soon to be religious cult, Apple no longer seem content with branding everything they create with a half-eaten fruit and feel the need to make everything look like an iPhone. The iPad is the latest in an explosion of new Tablet PCs – devices which blur the line between netbook and smartphone as they boast the convenience of the latter with the performance of the former. Apple, as expected, declined to unveil this at CES in front of their undoubtedly jealous rivals and staged yet another overhyped product launch in which Steve Jobs walked the huddled masses through the device.

The iPad is, of course, a touchscreen tablet computer that runs Apple’s 1GHz “A4” processor, the first device to do so and, indeed, the first time in recent years Apple have developed a processor rather than sliding between AMD and Intel like an overexcited horse on ice-skates. 1024×786 resolution screen means good video playback but not full HD (or 3D, they’ve missed a trick). It also comes with a choice of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB flash memory capacity and a battery claiming up to 10 hours of use time and more than a month in standby time. Now, I don’t know a lot about batteries, but that’s quite a discrepancy.

Under the hard stuff, we have the OS which appears to be simply a variation on the iPhone OS – similar icons and support for iPhone apps, upscaled to fit the larger screen, and a choice of buying it with or without 3G and needing a data plan. I suppose not including the same OS you would get on a computer presents this more as a leisure device, which is at odds with the unwritten apparent application of tablets which is to replace netbooks as a portable, work device (illustrated helpfully by Steve Jobs and some handy graphics involving a middleground and falling words at the keynote speech, the netbook was crushed by the mere name iPad).

One of the biggest problems I see with the iPad, is the lack of Flash support in-browser, which absolutely fucks the idea of this being used as either a leisure device OR a work device. Using it as a leisure device, in this age of the internet, means web browsing, and that’s made a whole lot harder when the platform that a big chunk of the web is built on isn’t supported. This will also affect is as a business device given that any company worth it’s bisto does publicity and presentations in big shiny flash videos. Sure, Apple were kind enough to offer us a scraping of flash in the stuff we do most (namely BBC iPlayer and YouTube) but this device absolutely needs Flash support or it’s going to have problems; other tablets support flash, within months (if not weeks) Adobe will release their mobile flash plugin and I’ll be able to view Flash content on my Palm Pre, but the iPhone won’t support this. Apple, stop being petty, get your shit together, let Adobe pass it’s mobile flash for the iPhone and please your obsessive, salavating hounds of fanboydom or……well nothing. Admitedly, nothing will happen to damage the sales of the iPhone, or even the iPad, without Flash because most don’t understand it. While people see and know the term “Flash Player” bandied around on the web, usually in those few seconds before it kicks in on a YouTube video, but few understand what it is or understand when you mention it doesn’t support it. Someone I know, on mentioning that there’s no Flash support, replied knowingly ‘Oh that’s ok, I always take photos in the day’. Typical.

Typing, of course, is handled by an onscreen keyboard and this, I feel, is where the iPad, and indeed the whole tablet concept, falls down. At the keynote speech Jobs demonstrated it by resting the device flat on his lap and typed facing straight down. This is one of the major flaws I see with tablets, in that, to do anything worthwhile involving typing you need to suffer excruciating neckstrain and it just isn’t worth it when you can have a netbook. Laptops were designed with hinges below the screen for a reason. It’s not all bad, however, because in a very Apple-like move, Jobs announced a keyboard that can dock with the tablet making it, that’s right children, a sodding computer. If I were to own one, I wager it’d spend a lot of time sitting docked (and plugged in) on my desk and be used as a second computer.

I actually feel that this device is pretty under-spec, it’s supposedly a work-on-the-go device with all the things you’d need, yet it runs a measly 1GHz processor. Apple fanboys will tear the tape away from their mouths (I got pissed off with the 3GS and started kidnapping them, is anyone complaining?) to tell me that a slower processor doesn’t matter in an Apple environment because it the OS runs faster and more efficiently. Excuse me while I wipe yet another cliché that Jobs tries to sell from my ears and call bullshit on that. Sure, Windows is bloated but I cannot allow you to say that, even if that were true of Apple, a 1GHz processor would run at a bearable speed, it just doesn’t gel.

Obviously the rumours of this device have been around since Duke Nukem Forever was in pre-production but, for the most part, these have been dashed. The toenails of rumour-man were getting so long that it’s good Apple have decided to clip them (I’m not sure what made me think of that metaphor, I must cut my toenails), but it’s a shame because some of the aforementioned rumours, which is now relegated to rank of “made up bullshit”, were quite intriguing and would’ve made the device really stand out, like if it had run Mac OSX (which of course they couldn’t do otherwise it would be a Mac and have the price to show that). Instead of introducing an entirely new looking device, the “big iPhone” look makes sense I guess but putting it on a larger and definitely not pocket-sized device confuses the idea of a phone handset. It’s hardly surprising that Apple wanted to spread this form factor as a brand having managed to do so with every other possible aspect (even with music, going so far as to create their own DRM a few years back), but I think they needed a new look to set out this device as the laptop-smartphone ‘middle ground’ they’re so fond of and not merely an extension on the latter. The screen is laced with a black edge bigger than Steve Jobs’ piggy bank, so the whole things feels like they’ve compromised a lot of screen real-estate for the purposes of the iPhone-look. I would’ve gone with a screen touching the very edges of the device, but that’s merely to feed my uber sci-fi technolust.

What advantages does this tablet have over every other tablet that were announced at CES last year. Apple’s unsubtle timing with the Creation event clearly generated enough hype to overshadow the devices announced in Vegas so that anyone contemplating a tablet will automatically think of Apple. To be honest, there’s nothing that would feasibly set this apart, I was privy a little while ago to some of the visuals of the OS that made it onto the final unveiling and they did make me salivate, but unless it’s in practise I can’t say anything. The eBook reader interface was what I liked the most, but it’s worth mentioning us Bulldogs won’t get native eBook support, and bear in mind that it lacks the e-Ink screen. Maybe it’s because I’m a tech writer, but if I was going to buy a tablet I’d feasibly look at my options and include the iPad as a contender, but not automatically assume it was best and blindly buy it.

Scarily though, fanboys wouldn’t be quite so discerning, and it doesn’t really matter what this device does because there’s already a market who would’ve bought it a month ago. Creator of Digg and co-host of Revision3 show Diggnation, Kevin Rose did a survey a few weeks ago essentially saying that if Jobs said we have a tablet and told you nothing else about spec, features or price but just said that you can order it now, would you buy now? Shockingly, around 30% of the people who took the poll essentially said “Yes, I trust Steve Jobs and would buy right away”. Apple’s hold on these obsessive Apple fanboys is so absolute that regardless of how tablet computers fare in the future, Apple will always have customers.

I like this device, I have to confess, but I think the target of tablet computers in general need changing, and will probably do so organically as these devices become commercially available. These devices are being touted as a replacement for netbooks, as a portable yet functional device, but they won’t work like that; a functional device needs a keyboard that you can use without breaking your neck. I think that these devices will become perfect gadgets, not for “on the go”, but for “around the house”. I can picture myself sitting down on a sofa in the morning with a coffee to read some news, read a book, check my email – but not work.

Though I lose any future Apple-bruising points for saying this, and risk being called an Apple-polisher, but I may actually buy this, or I may buy some other tablet if it’s got a better spec, but this is pretty good. It’s being sold in the US for $500, which equates to around £300ish in the UK, so it’s a relatively cheap device for Apple. However, for the reasons I mentioned above I’d only go for the WiFi one rather than shelling out for another data plan.

But I’m not using that fucking onscreen keyboard…

P.S. I apologise for the lateness of this post, I’ve been quite ill this week and had to wait for my thumping headache and nausea to subside momentarily so I could read the keynote coverage. Night.

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CES 2010 – The Geek Synapse

January 21st, 2010

Hey all, this is my roundup of the tech being shown off at CES in Las Vegas this year, this is the article I’m writing for Spark* and won’t need to submit until Tuesday so any feedback or corrections would be appreciated. I wanted to talk about more stuff but I was fairly limited on the word-count so I’ll probably talk about each of the topics covered in more detail later on for a post.

CES 2010
Mat Greenfield

Amongst the glitz, glamour and gambling geriatrics of Las Vegas, January saw the arrival of the biggest technology trade shows of the year, the Consumer Electronics Show, parading the latest innovative, shiniest and weirdest tech that bespectacled geeks and corporate suits have to offer. Unfortunately, the Spark* budget didn’t quite stretch to shipping me off to Sin City to attend the show in person, but I’ve still managed to put together a round-up of all the gadgetry-goodness that you’ll be craving in 2010.

New mobile phones were an inescapable point of intrigue this year, as Google showed off their first handset – the Nexus One. While Google have had their Android OS on the market for some time now, this is the first phone that they have designed themselves, with the aim to sell it directly to consumers SIM-free rather than going through network providers. motorola-backflip_1 Motorola demonstrated their quirky new phone, the Backflip, a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard on the back that you can flip out rather than the traditional slider. Both these phones are gimmicky and otherwise unremarkable 3G touchscreen handsets, the former dripping with hype, having been promoted far and wide as the “Google Phone”, but lacking any particularly groundbreaking features that set it apart from its HTC cousins. Relatively unknown phone manufacturer ‘Sonim’ garnered more publicity than they’d hoped when they challenged BBC Click reporter Dan Simmons to break the “unbreakable phone”, who subsequently rendered it inoperable by smashing it on the corner of a fish tank.

Netbooks, having well and truly embedded themselves into the realm of the everyday use device, were less innovation and more preservation this year. Asus announcing nothing new to their eeePC range but more carbon-copy models that have barely changed since the last CES besides slightly new cases and more names totally unrelated to their use or purpose (i.e. the Seashell or the Surf with no discernible beach link).Alienware M17X Notebook The only major innovation on the show-floor here was the theatrics of Alienware in demonstrating their M11x gaming netbook, the first small laptop with sufficient graphics and processing power to run all the usual niche features of a gaming laptop, like customisable case lighting, without breaking your spine when carrying it, a definite plus.

While the turn of the decade didn’t see the invention and full-scale integration of flying cars that we’ve been promised since the mid-eighties, Ford have done their bit in making modern cars seem a little more Futurama by introducing Sync. A user interface fully integrated into the car, allowing you full scale control and customisation, allowing you to almost totally change your displays on the dashboard, console or any display around the car. Along with advanced phone synchronisation via Bluetooth, voice commands, navigation and, most importantly, cup holders.

PolarBearTV Other tech treats from CES included the Powermat wireless charging technology, an adorable TV screen embedded in a toy polar bear from Hanspree, media streamer the Boxee Box, more information on Microsoft’s Project Natal, seeking to rid the gaming world of controllers and a NIMble microwave with a touchscreen Android phone built into it – for some reason.

Surprising no-one this year was the appearance of new eBook reader models, devices that can store and display digital books with e-ink screens to avoid eyestrain and glare. To take on the Amazon Kindle, Samsung wasted no time in announcing a range of eReaders, the E101 and E6 models come in 10-inch and 6-inch displays, have built-in Wifi and touchscreen and support ePub formats which allow flexibility with ebook stores instead of tying you to a device’s store. entourage_edge_ebook_netbook_2 Entourage’s eDGe eReader is a clever dual-screen device has an e-ink screen attached to a tablet computer, allowing integration between the two devices, such as opening links, searching for references and viewing images in colour from the eBook page on the tablet screen. The Que ProReader set itself apart by being “a professional tool, not a leisure device”, which explains it’s cumbersome A4-page screen size, 3G internet and news subscription feature on the home screen. This costly device would look more at home on the desk of a pristine office, not hastily crammed into a bag and would certainly awkward to carry around or read on. The Copia Ocean 9 eReader seeks to turn digital-literature into the next Facebook with social network features built into the device, allowing discussions and reviews between other people reading the same books as you. But if all these different models and features are too much to handle, the simple jetBook Lite solves that issue with a simple, cheap and no-thrills eReader, with 100 free pre-loaded books to get you going, or Bookeen’s small Cybook Opus. It seems that, with the 2009 showing just how profitable the eBook market can be, companies are eager to write their own chapter, unfortunately their desperation to stand out has lead to many bringing out overly expensive and impractical devices that will not, in the most part, stand up to everyday use.

Keeping up with 2010’s futuristic theme, the appearance of several new Tablet PCs at CES this year exploded the ‘don’t need but really want’ synapse in every gadget-geek’s brain. These new devices blur the line between netbook and smartphone, boasting the processing power of the former with the convenience of the latter; even though they can seldom fit in pockets. Dell showed off their Mini 5 Tablet Concept, a prototype device that so closely resembles a smartphone and even runs Android, though Dell were adamant that this qualifies as a genuine computing device and not a phone, despite needing a data plan SIM card to surf the web and its ability to take calls. Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer made an unusually reserved appearance at a keynote speech to talk about new slate computers running Windows 7, with particular focus on the HP Slate, a touchscreen device tailored for the OS. Lenovo-IdeaPad-U1-Hybrid-1-540x407 Lenovo came out with their Ideapad UI, a sleek touchscreen tablet that runs a Linux OS for 3G web browsing and on-the-go usage, but also comes with a keyboard attached to a laptop-esque casing. Sliding the tablet into this case instantly turns it into a Windows 7 machine for more intensive work and solving the onscreen keyboard problem that, for many tablet-adopters, will be a bitter pill. Though Apple has been rumoured to be developing a tablet computer since Steve Jobs had hair, the company was, as per usual, absent from the proceedings in Las Vegas. But did, last week, send out invitations for an event on January 27th to the US press emblazoned “Come See Our New Creation!” so, with ever more persistent rumours and the explosion in tablets so huge it can be seen from space, odds are that Apple will announce their tablet as this goes to print; I apologise if it turns out they announced a new line of toasters.

With the release of Avatar at the end of 2009, 3D films are officially here to stay, and CES was packed with displays showing how home-cinema will handle the new format. Sharp paraded their 3D “quad-pixel” technology adding yellow to the RGB configuration that’s happily been in place for years, whereas Samsung triumphantly brandished (and rotated simply for emphasis) their pencil-thin 0.3 inch display. Panasonic are perhaps the company embracing 3D the most, announcing the best quality 3D-HD television at CES and showing off their 3D camcorders. Panasonic even announced a partnership with US satellite service DirecTV, which will allow broadcast of 3D HD content to homes in the States, as will Sky in Britain later on. Unfortunately, enjoying the new format almost definitely means you’ll need a new TV, new cabling and a new receiver, meaning that (like HD) it will take a few years to become widely used; if it takes off successfully at all.

Yeah I know this isn’t rounded off particularly well but the article had to be in four sections and I don’t know how my editor wants them arranged, but didn’t mention any sort of closer so yeah.

Feedback please! Much love.

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