Incidently, I wrote about last year’s music event and made some semi-serious predictions for 2010.

Of course, the event began with Steve Jobs’ usual self-congratulatory ejaculation as he delights in just how well his products have sold, ignoring the criticism that the iPhone 4 had. Then he spends half an hour rolling around in piles of your money. YES! YOUR MONEY! YOU PATHETIC PRICK!

Ahem…

The sixth-generation iPod Nano is perhaps the biggest overhaul, mainly because it’s no longer a Nano — more a result of a horrific gene-splicing experiment between the Touch and the Shuffle. It’s inherited the Shuffle’s belt-clip and restores the square form factor that the third generation Nano had. Instead of the new Nano being a diminutive version of it’s Classic brother, it now sports a fetching touch-screen. This multi-touch (and no, I don’t know why you’d need multi-touch on an iPod Nano) and capacitive addition essentially does away entirely with the original iPod layout we’ve all come to know which, given that no new Classic announcements were given, marks the death of it’s former look. Instead of a click-wheel, the entire front of the device is a touch-screen, allowing navigation of the device. From the images I’ve seen, it does look like this screen is far too small and cramped to be comfortably used, although the newly redesigned interface for the Nano clearly has a touch-screen in mind. But the main reason I’ve not bought an iPod Touch already is the notorious fragility of touch-screens — I’m not convinced.

The iPod Touch has also had a minor touch-up, but nothing like the plastic surgery of the Nano. It’s slimmer, which by now is practically assumed of any newly released device, and has a screen supporting Apple’s randomly-named ‘Retina Display’. Another throwback to the iPhone 4 is the front facing camera (and the inclusion of a back-facing camera) to allow Apple’s new video-calling service FaceTime over Wi-Fi — given it has no 3G antenna band to get screwed up, this iPod might be less of a commercial balls-up than it’s cousin, iPhone.

In perhaps the biggest U-turn since Clinton, Apple have reunited the iPod Shuffle with it’s buttons. The last iteration of the cheap and chirpy noisemaker removed almost all the physical buttons on the device itself, meaning it had to be controlled instead by the buttons on the tinny travesty of headphones that come in the box, and navigation was aided by an almost as tinny voice. Though the voice remains (which is fine given most Apple fanboys hear voices anyway, mainly telling them to buy more Apple products), the buttons are back.

In a display of balls-out ripoffery, Apple have taken several chapters out of MySpace and Spotify’s books and will introduce a music-oriented social-network feature into the next incarnation of iTunes, known as ‘Ping’. Essentially, this will broadcast your appreciation of ‘The Fast Food Rockers’ to your friends, leave you without any friends and persuade you to find solace in the purchase of an iPad. I kid, of course. The real point is that you see what your friends are listening to and then you (because life is one big futile attempt at gaining social acceptance) purchase the same songs to demonstrate just how like-minded you are with your mates — kerching for Apple. Like a bit of Tinchy Stryder do you? No, you don’t. Nobody does. Everybody just thinks they should.

Something happened to do with the Apple TV, but that’s irrelevant seeing as nobody bothers with them — not while we’ve got Sky+ at least. It’s smaller, obviously, and is just a media streamer for your computer to your TV but with it’s own film and TV rental service. Boring.

All in all, the Nano is the biggest change, which is usually the case at Apple’s September music event. I’ve always loved the Nano precisely because it’s a middle-ground between the cheap but relatively feature-less Shuffle and the complex, expensive Touch — now, the Nano is less intermediate and more horrendously choreographed mix’n'match. Nothing unexpected or unusual, Steve Jobs didn’t come out in a floral dress and announce his impending sex change. Nor did he emerge holding Bill Gates’ hand, vindicating years of rumours. Once the Nano hype has died down, the tech world will breathe a collective ‘meh’ at yesterday’s announcement and we can all get on with our lives.

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 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). 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.

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’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 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 27^th 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.

Yesterday evening saw the return of Hustle, written by Eastenders-cliché-machine Tony Jordan who, despite my mockery, actually doesn’t do too badly from time to time. The show, now in it’s sixth series, wasted no time in settling back into it’s usual display of surreal situations, brilliant acting-in-acting, plot twists and a setting apparentely so small they seem to always be able to pop off to have a contemplative stare into the Thames (pseudo-deep pricks), but no bizarre use of “bullet-time” in this episode; which I’m slightly disappointed about.

I’ve been a fan of Hustle from, literally, the very beginning and was immediately enthralled as the show grabbed me by the vernacticules for the entire first and second series. I never managed to anticipate what seemingly irrelevant movement or action would be the thing that saved the team from (as Ash says in this episode, “it’s all about misdirection”)

It’s beautifully acted, Robert Vaughn as Albert is hollywood royalty playing hollywood royalty playing anything else. Like all the performers, Vaughn has to switch between several different personas, usually in the same episode. For example, last night he was playing the good-old wise, kind yet powerful Albert everyone loves, switching to Albert playing a man with his nose so far up his arse he could smell his own earwax, switching to Albert-mentor, to Albert playing a soft-spoken art professor, to Albert playing a bumbling gold expert (I’m borrowing from other episodes now but you get the idea). Adrian Lester, too, as Mickey, had to alternate between American-throated businessman and Londoner(ish)-voiced bruiser several times, which was superb on his part. Stellar performance, as we always expect, from Robert Glenister as Ash and Kelly Adams as Emma, topped off with a passable performance by Eastenders-baby Matt Di Angelo as Sean. No matter how many prepubescent stubble-beards you grow, Matt, you’ll still be Deano Wicks and look about twelve. That aside, it’d be perfect if they weren’t given such wooden and stale lines from writer Tony Jordan, a man who clearly doesn’t get enough misery at home so decides to chuck it in front of every television in the country on Eastenders. Besides Hustle and Eastenders, one of Jordan’s best known works is Life on Mars, starring Philip Glenister (whose brother plays Ash in Hustle, Jordan likes his Glenisters and, frankly, who can blame him), showing how Jordan has just enough imagination to write a intensely intruiging concept and generally follow through with action and ideas but fails piteously with dialogue and evidentely runs out of ideas pretty fast so reuses old formats, like so…

It’s getting a tad repetitive, at least once a series there seems to be someone trying to catch the team who has, apparentely, outwitted the best grifters in London. They have some sort of informal meet with Mickey, wherein they smile smugly and bask in their deluded confidence, there’s another Thames-adjacent discussion with Albert when the supposed Grifter-Yoda warns Mickey not to do anything, knowing that Mickey will be spurred on by his pride. Mickey will have a sudden burst of inspiration, grin inanely at the camera for a second, then wipe-cut to the team gathered in a hotel room, where Mickey says something unexpected. The con apparentely continues precisely as expected, on the teams part, often interspliced with some apparent scheming of this year’s newcomer-conman-catcher. Something will go wrong and you think the team have lost the money, or the mark, or (more often) their very liberty, before Mickey makes a big reveal of something that happened off-camera to demonstrate that they’ve got the money and tied up all the loose ends. Job Done.

In case you didn’t see it, that’s basically how last night’s episode played out.

The dialogue is so bland and ineffectual that I genuinely believe that in episodes of this format, you could watch the episode entirely on mute, turn the sound back on for the last five minutes and gain a palpable comprehension of what’s happened and how it was resolved.

When they aren’t doing this tired format, however, there are some generally original ideas for cons. Perhaps my favourite episode showed the team convincing a London newsrag that they have found the Queen Mother’s long-lost son, with a genuinely tense episode and one of the best plot twists of the show. Alas, that may’ve been one of the last times that the show has genuinely suprised me. Tony Jordan is clearly more of an ideas man, shame he decides to make them talk as well…

It’s also losing it’s signature characteristics that made it such a hit originally – there’s the bullet-time stuff that I’ve already mentioned, that recognisable theme tune from the first four series, breaking the fourth wall and bollocks-on-the-table surrealism. In the second episode of the first series, Mickey and Danny convinced the mark to part with his hard-swindled cash with a dance number, obviously it was meant to be symbolic of how they dazzled the mark and was undoubtedly more interesting than any dialogue that Jordan had prepared from his post-it note line bible, but the level of genius from early episodes is unmatched these days. If the second episode doesn’t involve naked hula-hoops and woodland creatures playing Scrabble in space, I’m switching off. I kid, of course, because shows have to change and develop, look at Doctor Who, but in the old days the weekly mindfuck of the episode would make up, indeed disguise, the terrible conversational writings of Tony Jordan – now it’s unashamedly obvious.

The problem is that, over the years, the plot twists have become more and more predictable; at least they have to me. Over the years I’ve watched episodes with a beady eye and thought to myself “that’s the hint at the ending” and, more often that not in the last two series, I’ve been correct, I even half-guessed last night’s twist. BUT when I spoke to someone else about this, someone who had only just started watching it, he disagreed with me. So, I’m more attentive or I’m obsessive enough to have watched the show long enough to spot an unusual camera shot, either I’m getting smarter or the show’s getting more predictable (I’m torn here between my own arrogance and my poignant skill at self-deprecation so I’ll leave you to make up your own joke there). The shows technical “re-boot” last year started on a high, admitedly, and did take me by suprise, but (lately) seldom does Tony Jordan manage a consistent run of genuine twists; Agatha Christie he ain’t.

Ok, it seems odd to criticise a show that I love so much, both now and before, and long may it remain on our screens. Pains me to say it, but I actually think that Tony Jordan makes the show, metaphorically as well as literally, to the extent that no plot twist would be quite so delicious in the hands of someone else, nor the ideas quite so ludicrously brilliant, it’s a fantastic show and I hope it keeps getting made. Shame the all-dialogue scenes are just like Twitter – you know they’re there and that they’re talking, but you can anticipate the point of it and you really just….don’t…..care.

LONG LIVE HUSTLE!

I’ve always loved 3D technology, it’s been around for more than 100 years so it’s near enough the steampunk of video, and every few years it’s revitalised and filmmakers have another crack at trying to ignite excitement in the old ways. 2009 is a landmark year for it’s advancement, with all major animation studios bringing out a new 3D movie, including Pixar’s ‘Up’ and Dreamwork’s ‘Monsters vs. Aliens’ but will this attempt to bring 3D into the modern age be successful?

There are a variety of ways that 3D works, the common feature in all is studios film two different views of the same thing (much how human eyes see objects), then the process that follow depend on the type of glasses that will be used. Some flick the view from each lense on and off continuously so that the eyes keep seeing two different aspects which the eyes will translate into one image and thus 3D. Other ways, including the one I used for my test, include colourising each view if the glasses have certain colours (such as my test glasses, pictured) which used a red/cyan setup. In the latter example, the colour of one aspect is washed out by the lens so that the viewer sees two slightly different views in either eye, again translated into one image by the brain.

The technology aside, it’s application in our everyday lives as much as TV and film is now is a point of consideration. This technology has been around for so long yet never been taken mainstream on a regular series of movies. In the past decade, any 3D movie has been either kids films with a lot of (or even consisting entirely of) CGI backgrounds or animations, other than ‘My Bloody Valentine 3D’ which was released last year with a barrage of grizzly horror in 3D. Perhaps then, the advancement of such digital technology will allow filmmakers to perfect the art of 3D film, the problem then is focusing too much on showing off the technology rather than story, worsened by the cost of making such a film.

Sky recently announced that they would try and take 3D technology to mainstream television with their subscription service and their own (and other) channels as they did with HDTV over the past few years. The problem is that a lot of television programmes, particularly ones on channels that will be the quickest to join this like the BBC, have no call for their shows to be in 3D. Who would want to watch Eastenders in 3D? Also, what does this mean for HD, a newly introduced and somewhat luxury television product becomes almost at odds with this new “format”. Sure they can give you 3D in High Definition, but what sort of technology and costs is that going to incur, and will anyone actually care enough to pay for it? When I was testing 3D content (I rented a godawful kids movie that was made in 3D) I found that quality, and certainly colour, was badly affected when watching in 3D, and the view was far from perfect. Most commonly, objects in the far background became blurry and objects in the close foreground were too difficult for my eyes (with their immaculate 20:20 vision) to focus on and so the two different images became just two different images. Only images that were, for lack of a better word, in the middle of the action were clearly visible AND 3D, which gave a horribly pointless view that simply looks like an image on a card that’s been pushed out in places to give it a 3D effect and doesn’t look in anyway realistic. The effect of having only visible things in the middle makes the whole point of 3D redundant, as filmmakers love to show it off and have objects seem to come out at you, but when you consider that by the time it gets close enough to take it realistically and be fooled, it’s split out into two blurred images and loses it’s threat quite quickly.

The barrage of problems continue when you consider that for the casual TV watcher won’t want to have to stick on a pair of glasses just to watch TV, meaning that Sky will probably introduce this as a premium package as I have mentioned, which itself will be it’s downfall as no-one will pay for this or want to stick on headache inducing glasses (the distribution and maintenance of these will be tricky, though not impossible for Sky) and have to be constantly focusing their eyes on different objects, particularly when fast-action stuff keeps cutting shots very quickly and disorientates the viewer. The glasses are, indeed, 3D’s most debilitating factor and there is no way of getting 3D to work without them, unless you get a viewer to keep blinking each eye in rapid succession, something which kinda detracts from watching the film. Granted, over the years they’ve become a lot less nineteen-eighties, though the resurgence of the Buddy Holly shades look may help, and (in the case of gaming, see below) even become cool, but they still greatly effect the casual viewers ability to watch a show comfortably. Interestingly, the test pair of glasses I was using (pictured) meant that whenever I took them off, closing one eye gave everything a red tinge and closing the other gave a blue tinge for a brief time (that wore off thank god) and I couldn’t watch more than 20 minutes of the film before the eye strain and a minor headache forced me to take a break.

Having said that, 3D gaming has become quite successful, mainly through NVidia’s technology making pre-existing games into 3D instead of releasing a limited number of games themselves which will be expanded too late to interest the public. But then again, gamers traditionally want the most immersive experience from their games and would welcome this, where the average TV viewer has little need or want for a more in-depth view of Anne Robinson, but does that mean that they might want 3D when it’s used in the right places, such as feature films? I would love to see The Dark Knight in 3D simply because how epic the action is (if you ignore, for the moment, the criticisms of cutting shots) but I don’t give a shit if I see the Queen Vic in 3D because the whole point of it is the story. The Dark Knight is about the story, unfortunately it was a kack story so the visuals are begging for 3D.

Web content is an entirely different matter. Minoru have just bought out a 3D webcam that has two different camera’s mounted on a set that records two different views and stiches them together into one on the fly. But at the moment this product is completely useless unless one distributes 3D glasses to their friends, which is a bit excessive just to turn it on, wave your hands around and point your finger at the screen for a moment and then get bored. It costs £40 but you’d get bored of it in 40 seconds. YouTube have been testing out 3D content on their videos and some users have even set up their own 3D recording system and made videos of their own (my favourite one is embedded below)……

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RKI0mtedZw&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00]

…but in the most part, it’s not really necessary other than to have hands waving around at you in a slightly more realistic way than HD, the novelty of which will wear off fast.

Perhaps then, if applied in the right places and using the correct technology, it can be a very good feature, but the fact remains that it’s mostly a gimmick used by filmmakers of films that might not be successful without a gimmick like this, hence why only kids and horror films have used it in the past ten years. Gamers and horror fans like the idea of a more immersive experience and kids like the idea of it, and certainly in the kids films does the story require such a hook as this. Consider that history has shown 3D going mainstream to have failed at least 3 times in the past, but as technology advances it can improve the way that 3D is conducted and hopefully we will stumble upon a way to I remember saying a few years ago that HD was pointless, nobody would pay for it and I saw no difference, and I was wrong. So perhaps, and I really hope, that I will be wrong again, but it has a LONG way to go before anyone will take 3D in mainstream media seriously. Staying in the realms it currently inhabits may be the best way for it to slowly become more and more featured, but it will certainly never become the standard way of broadcasting on ANY television channel or media.