Archive for June, 2010

Doctor Who: Now Cracks A Noble Heart

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

Well now, that was an adventure. The final episode of Doctor Who’s fifth, or thirty-first if you’re fussy, series and the very first with Messieurs Smith and Gillan at the helm, if indeed a flying box can have a helm, has now finished broadcast and it would be an immense folly of me not to comment in earnest.

The Doctor: Matt Smith has inhabited the role and I have no way of criticising him for it. He’s a damn fine actor who has successfully given us The Doctor as we know him with enough new traits to make him distinguishable. Is he as good as Tennant? No, I’m afraid he’s not been quite as awesome as good old Ten, but the predecessor had three (point five) series’ to make his mark and Smith has only just ended his first (reportedly, out of five) so I still consider it early days. He’s a fantastic Doctor, but had a hard act to follow.

Amy Pond: Little bit disappointed with how this companion worked out. It seemed early on that Amy would be a new angle on a companion but, for most of the series, that was forgotten and instead other writers used her in the capacity of standard companion acting as the voice of the audience and her “issues” only came up when needed during Moffat episodes. For Amy’s part, they could’ve done more to seed her significance into other episodes rather than using it to beat you over the head every third episode.

Rory Williams: Again, a touch disappointing. Rory was, undoubtedly, intended as the comic relief throughout the series but he was, in that respect, far too similar to Mickey Smith. Both began as the clumsy source of annoyance who, as the series developed, grew into a hero. He had his moments, but he was too much of a cookie-cutter companion.

River Song: I’m simulataneously infuriated by and enjoying the ongoing tale of River Song. Given that she’s meeting The Doctor out of sync she is in a unique position to keep giving prophetic insight into the future of the show, and it’s pretty clear that she’s going to turn out to be wildly significant in Who-fandom in the coming years. I imagine Alex Kingston’s been paid a hefty sum to commit to the series long-term so that these hints can be explained and I’m glad, because she’s an immensely enjoyable character (sort of like a female Captain Jack) to watch.

Favourite Episode: Ooo, that’s tricky, but it’s probably either Victory of the Daleks or The Lodger. The former because of it’s historical references, continuity, geek factor and comedy, and the latter for it’s ball-scratching simplicty. The Dalek episode was part of the ongoing redevelopment of Doctor Who and so covered a lot of back-references, plus the relationship between The Doctor and Churchill (who had already met) was refreshing. The Lodger was a suprise considering it was the annual “cheap episode”, which have a history of sucking like a Henry Hoover on crack, and had a lot of appeal despite being a complete departure from the usual Who format with as much human drama, which would usually make me wince, as Sci-fi nerdgasm. I can’t continue without mentioning the fantastic Spitfire-Dalek Saucer dogfight in space, a completely ridiculous notion but fantastic all the same!

Worst Episode: I’m going to say The Beast Below which, on the surface, seemed like a chilling examination of nightmares but was actually a bit dull. It had a good story and morality tale, and I loved the introduction of Liz X and the twist at the end, but the threat of the baddie never really took given that they spent most of the story standing atop the whale and the smiler things never really seemed all that scary.

The Finale:

This entire series has felt like a massive build up, any stories with no references to the Cracks tended to be incredibly weak, and so you went into the last two episodes expecting a lot, and the penultimate episode “The Pandorica Opens”, at least, delivered. The appearance of so many aliens trapping The Doctor was a nice touch but, for both practical and time reasons, not one that would’ve been carried too far, given the intense amount of preparation that must’ve gone into the five minute sequence of trapping The Doctor in the Pandorica. Disappointingly, the entrapment in the Pandorica had to be resolved quickly, as an episode with The Doctor locked away would’ve been slow and tedious, but was done quite well using the viewer’s skewed perspective on time travel. Was there a better moment in that episode than the beaten up Doctor appearing with no warning from nowhere and, seemingly, dying. Although, giving The Doctor a Vortex Manipulator to jump around with helped the story along, but removed the impact of the TARDIS “exploding”.

There were obvious moments of science-fiction shruggery, again diluting the impact of Amy’s “death” using some bullshit explanation of the Pandorica being able to prevent death so the prisoner couldn’t escape, the Pandorica was that secure (though the Sonic was able to open it with relative ease), or the idea that The Pandorica light held a “restoration field”. As well as the ultimate closer of the episode where, after spending an emotive ten minutes explaining how the resetting of the universe came at the cost of his non-existence, The Doctor was able to be “remembered” back sat with me as the biggest cop-out imaginable. Ultimately, the story became a massive set up resolved by a reset button so big it could be seen from another galaxy, if they existed in that universe, and a massive retcon always feels like a cop-out. Then again, Doctor Who has a history of leaving things ambiguous (by which I mean the writers got a bit lazy and gave up), for example they’ve still never explained Colin Baker; what the hell was he?

Overall, a fun story with ongoing significance. The arc over this series appears relatively wrapped up but an ultimate arc, perhaps over the course of The Eleventh Doctor’s life, has been hinted at. We still need to learn the cause of the TARDIS explosion and the owner of the chain-smoker voice that echoed through the TARDIS. I also found it interesting that, once again, The Doctor is called into action, presumebly hinting at the Christmas Special. On one hand, it gives The Doctor a direction, of sorts, where instead of simply knocking around the universe and running into this stuff, he’s actively called to it, but on the other it gives The Doctor a musty, ninteen-seventies detective agency vibe which I dislike.

Of course, it doesn’t end here. Blood of the Cybermen is now available to download on the BBC Website.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Nintendo 3DS – How it works

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Nintendo 3DS - How it works.

In the past 12 months, 3D has become the new black in cinema with every major studio releasing at least one three-dimensional film. But for all our CG technology and on-screen wizardry, we’re still forced to cling to our lenticular goggles to see it with, take them off and you’re left with a movie that looks like the cameraman had the tremors. For a while that was also true in the relatively new arena of 3D gaming, luckily for most gamers appearing geeky was nothing new, but now (as MediaKick’s superb and very prolific E3 coverage has revealed) with the announcement of Nintendo’s 3DS device, providing a 3D gaming experience without having to look like Austin Powers seems to be the start of a whole new triple-dimensional revolution.

Providing a 3D image, or (to be insufferably pedantic) autosteroscopy, traditionally used specially adapted glasses which, most commonly through the use of colour filtering on anaglyph (red and cyan) images but more recentely through polarised lenses, block out one image of a 3D film, shot with two very similar but ever so slightly different angles, for each eye. As each eye receives a slightly different image, the brain attempts to marry the two angles into a comprehensible image and the effect is the appearance of depth.

How 3D (basically) works

However, this system has always depended on the ability to isolate one particular angle for one particular eye, relying on the glasses to do so. This is a perfectly fine trade-off for cinemas, where you go for the specific purpose of watching a movie and are in a suitably adapted environment to do so, but serious questions have been raised to the quality of 3D films in the home and how much people, who may only casually watch films, will want or use the 3D technology. For example, the increasing number of people who use the internet and watch TV or movies simultaneously suggests that, as 3D technology relies on peoples eyes remaining focused on the images, and behind filtering lenses, it would not be as successful or appealing as it has been in the cinema.

The same can be said for gaming, though it’s much harder to be multi-tasking whilst playing a video game (especially if you’re a man), the growth of so-called “casual games”, as you commonly see for the Nintendo Wii, making video games, as the name suggests, a casual pastime, ridding the world of these headache inducing specs seems like a good idea; the Nintendo 3DS is the first serious attempt at making that happen, by utilising ‘parallax barrier technology’. Parallax Barriers come in the form of a thin and (apparentely) transparent layer that is fitted in front of an LCD screen that is fitted with thin “slits” that filter out an angle to each side so that one eye sees only one angle and the 3D image is perceived. A massive drawback of this is that the full effect is only visible from a very precise angle with an extremely low margin of error, requiring anyone attempting to see a film in 3D to sit as though they are experiencing some manner of rectal insertion. With the growth of games, also announced at E3, to use movement controls, such as Microsoft’s Kinect, this is a totally opposite paradigm to the one sharply taking effect.

How a Parallax Barrier (basically) works

The recentely announced Nintendo 3DS uses the same parallax barrier on it’s upper screen to produce a three-dimensional image to the player, and carries all the limitations of the technology, though it does away with the glasses. From observation, no clear effort has been made by Nintendo to combat the disadvantages of using parallax barriers, with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata insisting that the screen angle is perfectly suited for the way the average gamer would hold the device naturally, though this only mitigates the problem somewhat and the limitations are still very evidence. Although, a number of potential solutions, shown off by developers at E3 could be seen on later models of the 3DS; such as utilising the camera, face recognition algorithms and an automatically adjustable screen to constantly move the 3D screen to the correct angle as the player’s head (and thus angle of vision) moves.

It seems that 3D technology is continuing to develop just as any massively new innovation would, it has some limitations but looks very promising. Nintendo has jumped the gun a tad and released the 3DS almost, it seems, as an experiment and a “field test” would do wonders for accelerating the development and understanding of how 3D technology in gaming will be used. But for now, at least, the gamer is stuck with the glasses, unless they want to entirely boycott the upcoming motion-wars between Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

The Pandorica Opens

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

Ok, that had to be the most epic, awesome and utterly confusing episode of Doctor Who ever. As such, I locked myself away in quiet contemplation to consider what had happened and what might happen next week, though I have no spoilers to give so fear not.

Now, it has to be said that the RTD era became formulaic towards it’s conclusion, every penultimate episode would see a massive set up that would often fail to deliver in the finale; subsiding some of the story and action to the emotional drama with the revolving-doors companions. The poignant difference during the reign of Moffat is that the set up has been the series as a whole, and because of that the final story of this series would, to satisfy the legions of fanboys, have to deliver. Well.

Last night, what we saw was the mother of all cliffhangers wrapped in a sticky covering of fanwank. The appearance of the most popular, scary or otherwise memorable enemies, pitting Dalek next to Cyberman, Sontaran next to Weevil, Uvodni next to Sycorax, was the highlight of the episode, and creating a scene that looked like an Easter Egg sale at Lidl. The Pandorica was another great mystery, I (for once) had absolutely no idea what would be inside, though considering the sheer nerdgasm the past 40 minutes had been I was expecting the Eighth Doctor to stumble out to finally explain why he suddenly went bald and developed a leather fetish. As far as I understand it, the most intelligent life forms in the universe (who just happen to be The Doctor’s greatest foes, go figure) realised that the imminent explosion of the TARDIS that, they believe, could only be caused by it’s pilot (The good Doctor) can be prevented if they lock The Doctor away in the Pandorica so lured him to it. Nevertheless, the TARDIS (with River Song in it) still explodes and causes the Cracks that we’ve seen all series, which (I expect) means that the aliens will realise that it happens anyway and then let The Doctor out to fix it; if that happens it’ll be a bit of anticlimax. The autons, as part of the trap, appear to have recreated Roman soldiers and planted them in 102AD which, for some reason, includes a duplicate of Rory embued with the same memories and unaware of the plan or the fact that he was made out of plastic, who shoots Amy.

So, The Doctor is trapped in the Pandorica, Amy is dead, Rory’s an Auton, the TARDIS has exploded and River Song was inside. The latter, at least, is tricky because we’ve already seen River later on in her life telling The Doctor to look forward to this adventure. The questions we need answered is what caused the TARDIS explosion (and whose voice echoed through the TARDIS declaring that ‘Silence will fall’) and who River Song killed (”the best man [she's] ever known”), though the latter is quite clearly The Doctor and may not, necessarily, have to be explained next week.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

INQ Mini 3G – PseudoSmart, UberSocial

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Ever heard of INQ? No, until now neither had I. INQ is a phone manufacturer owned by the same group as the phone network Three who have provided me with a review model. As the tech world has shifted it’s focus to smartphones with all manner of touchscreen and QWERTY wizardry, it’s very easy to underestimate a good old-fashioned candybar phone; but looks can be deceiving.

INQ Mini

The first thing that hits you about this phone is the design. Though at first it appears to be an unremarkable candybar-style handset, on closer inspection you become captivated by it’s shiny red back (I’m sure there’s a correct name for this red but I’m a man and, as such, only see in 8-bit colour) and sleek metallic rim; the choice of red on black on the phone’s front gives it a feel of subtle sophistication, like a well-made tuxedo. In short, though I usually have a distaste for candybar phones on the same level as I do for people who wear big “neo” style leather jackets and dogs of all species, I absolutely adore the design of this phone. The keypad is a sturdy alpha-numeric one, which took some getting used to having just dismounted my QWERTY high-horse, that gives some organic tactile feedback with each keypress and was a genuine treat after testing the plethora of frustrating on-screen and flatbed keyboards.

It’s 240×320 LCD screen is reasonable but can’t compare to modern AMOLED screens, but this is understandable as this phone is not intended for web-browsing or watching YouTube clips; it’s crystal clear and has a suprisingly good colour depth (though that may simply be the default wallpaper) but is otherwise rather bland. The phone comes with 3G and Bluetooth, the former serving suprisingly quick speeds for a phone that lacks a decent processor, and saves the user from the relentless tediousness of constant side-scrolling by crunching text into a narrower column that can be read in it’s entirety on the screen, suggesting an element of RSS functionality in the browser. The camera is a pretty standard 2 megapixel, delivering a reasonable picture quality but nothing particularly groundbreaking, as the photo below of my flatmates kicking back with some crackers (admitedly just thrown in to annoy them) will show:

FEET!

The OS is, again, something new for a smartphone, resembling something more akin to the bland Nokia OS circa 2004 than today. It contains a fully customisable scroll-menu along the lower region of the idle-screen to allow quick access to commonly used apps and, by default, includes a number of social apps (ie, facebook and twitter) with the ones you’d expect like address book and messages; a larger menu displays the full range of tools and applications in a tiled-thumbnail manner more Andy Warhol than tomato soup. The phone’s OS seems to lean towards promoting it’s social features, as the phone’s message facility combines SMS, e-mail and Facebook but alerts the user to new Facebook messages just as it would for texts which, given the amount of spam going around on Facebook, can be annoying. The INQ Mini houses all the standard phone features with the luxury of cherry-picking the most vital smartphone features, such as a full HTML browser and an app store, thus it has an MP3 player to complement the USB headphones. Navigating the OS was frustrating, it took me a while to find the larger menu which itself was sometimes confusing and easy to get lost in. Often the phone can show signs of lag which, after prolonged use, becomes tiresome.

As with my previous review of the HTC Hero, this phone came with Skype and Windows Live Messenger apps pre-installed. Overlooking my previous criticism of a Skype app for phones, and saying nothing of the new threat posed to it by the iPhone 4’s FaceTime feature, the app provides free calls to other Skype users and is just as, if not more, clear in call quality as a regular phone call. The UI acts much as a contacts list in your phone and fits well with the simple elegance of the phone, giving only what’s necessary on the front but housing a wealth of options on context menus. The WLM was a useful app to have on-the-go but needs more options for sound, I don’t need my phone to ping at me whenever somebody I haven’t spoken to in years signs in, but has a nice tabular format to display conversations and lists.

Twitter App

The interesting thing about this phone is that, though I’ve made a lot of smartphone comparisons, this phone is not a smartphone, and doesn’t try to be; it’s a refreshing new take on the modern smartphone. Instead of packing all the bells and whistles of the most expensive phones on the market, it strips out all the crap and leaves you with a sturdy and reliable device with just enough features to keep your social life up to date, but without not so many as to drains battery life faster than John Prescott being dipped in gravy. One might call it the poor-man’s smartphone but, though it comes with only the basic features of a smartphone and at a low price, that would do it a disservice and I’m more inclined to call it the efficient man’s smartphone, roping in the modern smartphone to something a little more related to the phone’s original purpose, communication.

Overall, I’d rate this phone at 6.5 out of 10, it’s phenominal design, sturdy keyboard and social features being the bulk of the points and the fact that I’m being careful not to directly compare this to a fully-fledged smartphone remvoing what would otherwise be a huge bias. But the phone is let down by it’s confusing navigation and persistent lag. This phone is not a normal phone, nor is it quite a smartphone, which both means it is feature-poor but also simplistic, if you are looking to dip your toe in the smartphone waters then this is a good place to start and, at an introductory price of £39.99, you really can’t go wrong.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

iPhone 4: Damn you, Gizmodo.

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Hey all, this is an article I wrote for MediaKick about the iPhone 4, announced by Steve Jobs at yesterday’s WWDC Keynote Speech. I’m not totally sure what MediaKick’s feelings about me reposting articles I’ve written for them but if this post undergoes a swift exit you’ll know…

Keeping up his tradition of announcing a new iPhone at WWDC each year, the bespectacled Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the newest addition to their smartphone range, the unimaginatively named iPhone 4.

iPhone 4

To build up anticipation ahead of his official announcement (which was no mean feat considering Gizmodo leaked a prototype of this phone several months ago, to which Jobs made a sly reference when showing off the new handset’s design), Jobs described this new version as “the biggest leap since the original iPhone”.

The new iPhone departs from the casing style of its predecessor in the biggest way seen so far. As it does away with the slippery bevelled edges that caused many a drop-induced screen crack, replaced with a steel edge that nicely frames the handset. What’s more is that the stainless steel edges make up the band for the antenna system within the phone, fitting all standard connectivity medium antennas (GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, et al) in a feat of engineering that Jobs claims was worth sacrificing Apple’s traditional aversion to distinct lines in their products. The new edges also allow the phone itself to be notably thinner, reduced to an anorexic 9.6mm, with Jobs claiming it to be 24% slimmer than it’s past incarnations, making it the thinnest smartphone on the market today; which, to me, sounded like a challenge. The buttons on the edges remain more or less the same, volume rocker (but now with an added mute toggle) on the side, headphone jack atop and microphone beneath. Jobs referenced the Gizmodo leak by insisting that nobody had seen this before, to howls of laughter, none of which (I assume) were coming from Jason Chen.

The new iPhone 4 also packs a new screen, a 3.5 inch display with an 800:1 contrast ratio and a 960×640 pixel display, figures until now unheard of on a mobile phone. A new feature allows this called ‘Retina Display’, which, despite it’s cool-sounding name, is simply a quadrupedal increase in pixel density on the screen; meaning that text and displays will be far crisper even at close range as the ppi (pixels per inch) is increased to 326. Indeed, Jobs went into scientific detail explaining the working of the human eye and explaining that the limits of the retina is 300ppi and, with a display comfortably over that limit, text viewed at a longer distance should resemble a printed book. Arguably, this (pretty poor) comparison was in response to the critics of the iPad’s capabilities as an eBook reader as it uses a backlit screen, rather than the traditional eInk screens, and is less comfortable to read at length – surely if the problem doesn’t exist on the iPhone, people will be more confident about iPad purchases for it’s eBook functionality. After some technical difficulties in which the iPhone 4 seemed to lose Internet connection which caused Jobs to, paradoxically, request that the journalists in the room, promoting his product online, stop using the Wifi, the ‘retina display’ was further demonstrated through a wealth of comparisons between the iPhone 4 and the 3GS. Jobs reassured the assembled app developers that their existing apps, when used on an iPhone 4, would render in the sharp retina display, before rounding off his demonstration of the display by describing it as the “best window on the planet”, I can only assume he was excluding the human eye.

Eager not to leave out the major techies in the room, Jobs went under the hood of the iPhone 4 and for the first time in WWDC history we were shown the innards of the new iPhone, he started talking about the A4 processor, designed and built in-house by Apple; currently only available in the iPad, the A4 chip packs 1GHz of punch. The most noticeable thing within the new iPhone is the larger Li-ion battery, taking up a good 30% of the immediately visible back, accompanied by the usual unrealistic stabs in the dark estimations about battery life, claiming 6 hours of 3G browsing, 7 hours of 3G talk and an amazing 300 hours standby. Not to be outdone on the ecological front, Jobs’ next job was to fly the green Apple logo for a moment and explain how the iPhone 4 meets all the environmental standards that the users have come to expect from his products – good to know that the Apple is compostable. The phone also comes with 32GB of storage (though it’s pretty likely models with varying capacities will be available), dual mic noise suppression (using the back mic to identify noise and attempt to filter it out of the front mic input), support for 802.11n Wi-fi which has recently come out of draft and a fairly standard HSDPA connection speed.

Rather than bringing out their own gaming device, Apple has opted to infiltrate the gaming sector in the guise of an MP3 player as they touted, above anything, the gaming features of the iPod Touch. Now the gate is open for the iPhone to throw it’s antenna-edges in as, to go with the classic accelerometer and the oh-so-pointless compass, the iPhone 4 packs a gyroscope. This 3-axis addition gives a far more accurate representation of the device’s position and movement to make motion-controlled games even more immersive. The gyroscope, combined with the accelerometer, now give the iPhone a 6-axis sense of motion putting it at about the same as early PS3 controllers, this is the first time anything Apple has produced has been directly comparable to a gaming-specific product so it’ll be interesting to see if this will lead to any degree of competition between the large gaming companies and Apple. The iPhone 4 also comes with the proximity sensor that deactivates the touchscreen when, for example, the user lifts it to their face to talk, to avoid face-dialling (a word I just made up) and a light sensor.

In response to one of the biggest criticisms of the iPhone, a feature oft-rumoured but never vindicated, Apple has finally introduced a front facing camera to the iPhone’s otherwise unblemished front. Though the cameras are now 5 megapixel instead of it’s normal 3, Jobs insists that for image quality and professional photography the focus shouldn’t be on simply increasing the megapixels in a camera and one’s effort should, instead, focus on “capturing photons and low light photography”, to which Apple’s solution is a backside illuminated sensor. Other features of the camera includes a fairly standard LED flash and 5x digital zoom, but also continues the development of Apple’s ‘tap to focus’ feature which directs the camera to focus more on areas indicated by the viewfinder and less on other areas. A very interesting, but perhaps ultimately superfluous, addition is the camera’s ability to record video in high definition – a video quality of 30 frames per second at 720p quality, integrated with the iPhone’s antecedent video editing application (or a new development which I’ll come to later) and one-click sharing with major social media websites.

After gleefully announcing the introduction of iMovie for the iPhone, Jobs left the stage and ushered in Randy Ubillos, one of the people behind Adobe Premier, Final Cut Pro and now the new iMovie for iPhone. This new app incorporates the functionality of the original Mac application into a portable format, into which you can import recorded video and chop’n’change to your heart’s content; it even includes visual effects, transitions, sounds and geotagging to give you the full experience of a basic video editing package. The iMovie app can even allow you to export your edited creation into a variety of sizes and resolutions: 360p, 540p and 720p. Attempting to stuff so much functionality into one cramped, if well pixel-occupied, screen inevitably meant that the screenshots appeared to be quite cramped, but hopefully this will be resolved with later versions. The app will be available soon in the App Store for $4.99.

Steve took the stage once again to again request that the journalists, for whom this whole keynote is for, refrain from using the Wi-Fi and even requested that Wi-Fi cards be switched off as it was interfering with the smooth demonstration of the iPhone 4 features. His return was to talk about the iPhone OS 4.0 which will now, and forever more, be known as: iOS 4; this segment was little more than a rehash the new features of the iPhone OS 4.0 as he did in April: multi-tasking, unified inbox, etc. Jobs mentioned that the Safari search engine feature, which already houses Google and Yahoo! search engines will now also support Bing, and Jobs was surprisingly kind to his companies rival about how Microsoft have done with the introduction of Bing.

As with the iPad, the iPhone 4 will have a focus on eBooks as the app for this, ‘iBooks’, is added to iOS 4 – combining an eReader with a PDF reader to act as a pseudo-document management application as well as a bookshelf with the charming visuals for iBooks that we saw on the iPad demonstrations. Jobs also touted the ability to sync your eBook collection with all your Apple devices, saving the need for repeat purchase and syncing your place in a book and your notes, along with a heavy focus on interactivity within the text, such as finding word definitions with the in-built dictionary and searching the web for words, phrases or references within the book you’re reading.

A new feature within iOS 4 is the inception of iAds, the inclusion of advertisements within apps to, as Jobs explained here, to help app developers (and, no doubt, Apple themselves) earn money and, thus, encourage the development of free and low-cost apps. He demonstrated how these apps would seamlessly integrate with the app and, in fact, the overall effect was quite pleasing; the ad wasn’t distracting. Given the controversy that this move has been met with, Jobs assured the developers present that clicking an ad wouldn’t, thanks in part to the new addition of multi-tasking, cause the app being used to exit, nor would the developer be required to do any sort of hosting or management of the ads, all of which will be served by Apple servers. Apple already has a very wide range of surprisingly well-known companies signed up to advertise on iAds, collectively committed to pay $60 million; money which would come back (minus Apple’s fees of course) to the developers. Jobs delighted in explaining how this close communication between advertiser and platform owner meant that new ways of advertising where possible, and continued to demonstrate using an in-app advertisement for the Nissan Leaf.

Jobs then takes his audience back to 2007 when he demonstrated the first public iPhone call to Jony Ive, one of the lead Industrial Designers at Apple, and he says that he has the honour of doing so again. The large iPhone on the screen showing what Jobs’ handset shows flashes up with the normal outgoing call display to Jony Ive when suddenly a face fills the screen, a face belonging to Jony Ive himself. Now, Jobs and Ive begin a sort of double-act to introduce ‘FaceTime’: Apple’s new iPhone VoIP application, allowing video calling using the front or back facing cameras between any two iPhone 4s. Jobs was coy enough to mention that the app currently only works for “calling” over Wi-Fi, as they are still working on deals with carriers to allow this data-heavy service. The call to Ive came through very clearly with no palpable lag, even in spite of Steve’s Wi-Fi worries so it remains to be seen if this service can compete with Skype, which has recently moved into mobiles. My prediction is that, considering the high number of iPhone users and FaceTime’s video calling prominence (where Skype has, on mobiles, failed to bring that out yet), Skype should retreat – fast.

Wrapping it up, Jobs mentioned that they’d resurrected the white iPhone for it’s fourth iteration to co-exist, once more, with it’s black twin. Details of US pricing were much the same as in the past and there was, understandably, no mention of UK pricing [O2 will be announcing pricing in the coming days - Ed]; though it was mentioned that the UK was one of the first five countries the iPhone 4 will ship to upon it’s release on June 24th. Before signing off, Jobs pleased music-lovers and early iPhone adopters everywhere by announcing that iOS 4 would be available for past models of iPhone and iPod Touch, unfortunately it would be feature-limited on the 3G and not on the first generation Touch due to hardware capabilities.

With the keynote speech over, loyal Apple fans will go away happy that practically all their past demands have been met, if 2009 was any indicator then 2011 will probably be simply a minor variation on what we’ve witnessed now; but you can’t help wonder where Apple can possibly go next…

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Facebook is an open platform: Accept it or GTFO!

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

Facebook has come under intense pressure recentely over it’s privacy settings, with people somehow being able to bemoan the confusing complexity on one hand but also being able to claim that there aren’t enough settings to let them personalise their settings on the other. Not just because I find most people to be blithering idiots, I find these people particularly insufferable because they totally miss the point of a social network service to begin with, it’s essentially the equivalent of shagging around and then being angry when your balls start to itch.

Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook Founder

Mark Zuckerberg, the man behind Facebook, began it as a college project with, I gather, no intention (and thus no foresight) to turn it into a company or the massive Web 2.0 service it is today. The development of Web 2.0 is synonymous with integration, the sharing of data and information between services on the same universal platform: the web, all leading to a cohesive user experience. How many different forms do you have to fill out in order to get accounts at all your favourite websites, I did a count and found that over my e-mail, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Digg and all other websites I have an account with I have wasted so much time entering the same information over and over again; what Facebook aims to do is share all the information automatically. You may’ve seen Facebook modules on some websites that already show your profile and wall, inviting you to post, for example, what you’re watching on a video-sharing website to your profile.

Like!

You would almost certainly have seen the Facebook ‘Like’ button (above, although I know it says ‘Arr!’ because my Facebook language is set to pirate, but you know what I’m getting at). These take your Facebook login details, which are often stored in cookies on your machine, which is why (if you so choose) you can go to Facebook and be automatically logged in, and allow you to source data and information from other sources without the long, tedious process of getting addresses and re-posting. This is, basically, what Digg has been doing for years, but in a far more social way as Facebook is more of a social network with this data-mining functionality where Digg focused mostly on the latter.

Where this is going, I feel, is the use of Facebook as an ‘Internet Identity’ and I, quite frankly, welcome it. A good way to look at it is the idea of credit cards, rather than going to each shop and having to fill out your bank details again and again every time you want to buy something is marginally more secure but a terribly long process. Credit cards store that information and allow you to reproduce it automatically so that a shop can charge you for your purchase, consider how much trust you put in your bank to keep your money, financial and personal information secure – how is entrusting Facebook any different? It also means that sharing web content is simplified, meaning you can show practically anything on the web to your friends on Facebook with one click. These are the first of many innovations that the open sharing of information can bring, but people who are worried about their privacy on Facebook undermine this new functionality. There is, of course, the risk of data being stolen, which can lead to identity theft, but if you were stupid enough to put so much sensitive information on a website you quite frankly deserve it. People will also bemoan that their data can be sold on and lead to spam and, again, that’s true, but we have spam filters and all manner of opt-out settings that can reduce spam to, at most, a minor inconvenience – but I feel that should be considered a side-effect necessary for the innovation allowing this development can have (which I’ll go into later) just as targeted ads from Google’s data mining of, say, your e-mail keeps Google services free.

The key to Web 2.0 is identity

But what of anonymity? Anonymity is one of the original cornerstones of the internet, the recent ‘Draw Muhammad Day’, coincidentely also on Facebook, was a response to the creators of South Park censoring their depiction of the Muslim prophet Muhammad for fear of death threats as well as the threats and even murder of cartoonists who have criticised Islam. The idea was that while it is easy for one religious group to threaten the individual, they couldn’t quash free speech on the scale of thousands of anonymous internet users; despite my opinions on religion, which I sometimes write about, I’m not here to discuss that. What stands out from that is that anonymity was available even for a group on Facebook, even with the wealth of information there, people are still able to remain anonymous, and that’s true for the Internet as a whole, if you wish to remain anonymous you can but, for the most part, why would you want to? It is not very often that one actually needs to be anonymous on the Internet, which is why I fail to see why people make such a big fuss over Facebook privacy; you can have your cake and eat it too.

But we’re missing one of the biggest reasons behind the criticism of Facebook privacy: people don’t like their information to be available to just anyone. But then if they don’t why are they using a service that explicitly promotes the sharing of information and, above all, social networking. I understand that it’s a good way to communicate with friends and contacts and not intended as open ground for strangers to stalk you, so then don’t put any information on your Facebook that you don’t want people to see! My Facebook account is open to absolutely anyone who wants a peek (except my mother) because I have nothing on there that I wouldn’t want people to know, I don’t have my home address or phone number, I have absolutely no information that I wouldn’t tell a stranger if they asked nicely. At the top of this page you’ll see a little Facebook icon, click on it and see my full profile, there is nothing on there I don’t want people to see because I wouldn’t put that on the internet. That’s the golden rule: If you don’t want something to be publically known, don’t put it on the Internet. I’m half-tempted to develop an app for Facebook called ‘The Ultimate Facebook Privacy App’ which simply deletes your facebook account and puts up a message saying “If you don’t like it, then fuck off” on the screen. Not to mention the fact that people seem to be so bafflingly egotistical as to actually think anyone gives a crap, your profile is boring, your pictures are boring – what does it matter if people can see your profile? You’re boring!

Oh no!

Facebook will continue to be criticised by jumpy idiots who don’t understand the point of social networks. The growth of Web 2.0 will see increasingly more services under fire for privacy concerns lead by morons, such as the ‘Quit Facebook Day’ guys, who don’t understand how this stuff works nor can apply the basic common sense needed to protect your privacy – the golden rule I mentioned earlier. Frankly, these pseudo-Luddites (I should mention that ‘Quit Facebook Day’ was an absolute failure) can struggle against it but the sheer number of applications this new paradigm of information sharing has is staggering and brilliant; it has an unlimited potential for innovation, but only on an open platform. If they’re so opposed to the open sharing of information they should, by all means, quit Facebook and let those of us with enough brain cells to use it securely enjoy the functionality this provides, rather than stubbornly staying on Facebook and brow-beating Zuckerberg for being a visionary.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Uhp-Dayte!

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Hi all, I’m back – sort of. My exams are over and now I return to my keyboard to deliver my usual feast of technical, literary and other-ical delights. Given that my exams ended about six hours ago, I don’t have something yet but I felt like I should write something.

MediaKick is a gaming and technology news website that I’ve started writing for, though my contributions have been (at best) meagre due to exams, now that I’m free of that I will be writing more. I’m yet to check this properly, but as far as I understand it everything I write for them is automatically theirs and reposting it on here would be something akin to copyright infringement. This will, inevitably, mean that my output will be delivered mostly there.

But, I’ve been in contact with 3 who, once again, are sending me TWO (count em) phones to review, and given that they’re sent out specifically for review on this site AND considering that MediaKick only publish reviews of new products (these phones are fairly mature) it’ll be a matgreenfield.com exclusive. Plus I do, of course, have book reviews to write about and my other treats. Technology will still, by all means, remain the primary topic on here, but prepare to see a broader range of topics – beginning with a post I’ve been wanting to write for a while, it’s about my views on religion (for those who don’t know, I’m an atheist) which is something I tend to avoid writing about, but this feels like something that could be useful. Plus, I’m resuming reading Dracula for the sake of showing my flatmates what a REAL vampire reads like, see my Twilight rant for more detail.

So, this summer will be pretty pivotal for the continuation (or not) of matgreenfield.com; we’ll see how it goes.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »