Author: Duncan Geere
Nintendo wants all Wii owners online
Nintendo has started a massive marketing push to get Wii owners online. Assuming, probably rightly, that most homes with a Wii have a wireless network of some sort, Ninty is engaging in an eight-week “Get it Online” ad campaign.
Currently there’s a huge banner on the Nintendo website which takes you through all the steps necessary to hook up your Wii to your wireless LAN. It’s not too tough, as you might imagine. There’s also some footage of the online features the Wii has, including the shop and the browser.
(via Tech Radar)
Apple will sell 1,000,000,000th App Store download on 24th April 2009
Lovers of large numbers and Apple shareholders will be getting together this Friday to celebrate the App Store’s 1,000,000,000th download. How does Apple know that it’ll hit a million on Friday? Maths and stuff, I assume.
If you change the date on your computer to the 24th April and visit the Apple homepage, then you’ll see a massive graphic saying: “Thanks a billion. Over 1 billion downloads in just nine months.” Or you could earlier, I can’t seem to reproduce it now, so maybe they’ve fixed the exploit that lets users display it.
It does beg the question: “WTF?”. A year ago, mobile apps were a murky world full of incompatibilities and random crashing. Apple has managed to do to the world of mobile applications what it did to MP3 players and arguably the smartphone market. It begs the question of where it’ll turn its attention to next. My guess? Tablet PCs.
(via Geek.com)
Viewsonic unveils exceptionally thin All-In-One PC
Wow. What a picture. Rave budgies in cyberspace. I hope whoever stuck that together in Photoshop is doing okay now and taking things a little easier in rehab.
Ahem. Viewsonic’s releasing an All-in-One PC. It’s called the VPC100, and it’s the first in a line of ‘nettops’ that the company will be releasing. It’s just 3.5cm thick, making it skinnier than a rake on a diet. It’s got a 19″ 16:9 LCD, and all the guts are crammed behind that.
So given how thin it is, the specs must be ‘budget’, right? Well, unfortunately yes. A 160GB hard disk, 1.6GHz Atom processor, and 1GB of RAM. There’s also a card reader, webcam, DVD writer and integrated speakers. It comes with Windows XP, though I’d suggest upgrading to Windows 7 or Ubuntu ASAP.
The VPC100 costs £500, which sounds a little on the steep side, but it really depends on the quality of the display. If it’s a decent screen, then this could be a nice little media streaming device for a location that doesn’t have a main display. It’ll be available Mid-May.
Spec Sheet (PDF)
World of Warcraft Pod is everything the WoW addict needs to live
We’ve heard many World of Warcraft addiction stories over the years. Mainly it’s people collapsing due to not eating or sleeping, so if you have a problem, or a partner with a problem, then why not get them this?
The WoW Pod has been developed by artists Cati Vaucelle, Steve Shada, and Marisa Jahn. They describe it as an “immersive architectural solution for the advanced World of Warcraft player that provides and anticipates all of life’s needs”.
Basically, it’s a little hut with a mildly Orc-y design, that contains a kitchen, toilet/chair combo and computer to play World of Warcraft on. It’s a little more sophisticated than that, though – the kitchen interacts with the game, for starters. Just pick a meal from an in-game menu, and when it’s cooked it’ll automatically mark you as AFK while you chow down on some Crunchy Spider Surprise.
(via WoW Insider)
Is MySpace dumping Tom?
Tech industry website TechCrunch reckons that the founders of MySpace might soon be scanning the jobs pages, as owner News Corp’s CEO of Digital Media, Jonathan Miller, is looking to replace the CEO, CTO and President of the service.
It’s claimed that a decision has already been made to terminate co-founder Chris DeWolfe, the current CEO of the service. Apparently the senior executive team will soon follow, which includes Tom Anderson (President and default friend for any new signups on the site) and Aber Whitcomb (CTO).
What this means for the site is still unclear, though it’s been struggling to compete with upstarts Facebook and Twitter and only really holds ground in the music sphere. Apparently a new CEO has already been recruited and is in the final stages of contract negotiations. Whether he or she will be able to reverse MySpace’s terminal decline remains to be seen.
(via TechCrunch)
Radio Times launches iPhone application
There are a few things that always feel like ‘home’ for me, and now I think about it, they’re all ridiculously middle-class. Croissants, Radio 4, Earl Gray tea, “Organic” apples and – most of all – a copy of the Radio Times sat on the sofa.
Well, the BBC’s in-house listings magazine has just launched an iPhone application, presumably so that you can feel at home wherever you are. It’s not free – it’ll cost you £1.79, but for extensive and accurate listings, recommendations and reviews for ever after, that’s not actually too bad.
The application wasn’t designed in-house by the BBC. It was put together by a US company called tvCompass. The BBC say that this is just another step in its quest to get as much content as possible available to iPod and iPhone users. What about the rest of us that aren’t converts to the cult of Mac, Auntie?
Scalextric enters the world of social media
Scalextric phoned me earlier. If you were a child of a certain part of the late 80s and early 90s, then you’ll immediately be envious. In actual fact, though, all that happened was that my inner eight-year-old immediately took the fore and started babbling excitedly. It was quite embarrassing. All they were trying to tell me is that Scalextric has entered the world of social media.
The company has launched a Facebook application, a YouTube channel and a blog. That wouldn’t normally be terribly exciting news, but the app and the channel seem pretty cool. The Facebook app lets you build a garage of cars that you can send to other people using the app. A few people will also win real-life Scalextric vouchers, so you can fill your real-life garage up with that instead.
The YouTube channel is also pretty awesome. There’s video of Jensen Button playing with the diminutive cars, but also guides on how to replace the contacts under the cars if they get worn, and footage of an attempt at the world record for biggest Scalextric track.
Lastly, the blog. It’s a little clunky, but there’s sections for news about the toys and space for news about motorsports. There’s also a ‘coming soon’ section for technical help on Scalextric builds, which I’m sure will come in handy.
The only thing missing in this list is a Twitter account. What’s that all about, Scalextric? I want to message @scalextric and not have some bloke from Warwickshire reply.
Blog, YouTube and Facebook App
Lego Rock Band confirmed
I know, I know. You’ve always wanted to combine your love of Lego Star Wars and Rock Band. Well, Warner hear you and they’ve got your back. The company has confirmed that it’ll be releasing Lego Rock Band later this year on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and DS.
Songs already confirmed for the game include Blur’s “Song 2”, Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting”, Europe’s “The Final Countdown”, Good Charlotte’s “Boys and Girls”, and Pink’s “So What”. It’ll combine the actually-quite-funny Lego games’ humour with the gameplay of the Rock Band franchise. And you can bet it’ll be one of those circular pieces over to the left speeding towards you.
There’ll be a career mode, just like the other versions of the game, except you play as a lego minifig. Players will be able to customise their avatars, as well as customising their entourage, including roadies, managers and crew. It’ll work with existing Rock Band instruments.
(via MCV)
UPDATED: BT blocks the Pirate Bay from mobile broadband customers
Anyone considering mobile broadband might want to rethink their decision today, after BT announced that it would henceforth be blocking access to the Pirate Bay for its mobile broadband customers. The company states that it’s in “compliance with a new UK voluntary code”.
BT’s mobile broadband is based on Vodafone’s network and it’s being claimed that the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) – who were responsible for a block on Wikipedia earlier this year – are behind the move. Apparently Orange, O2, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone and 3 have also all agreed to participate.
The move comes after the Pirate Bay’s administrators were convinced of assisting the making available of copyrighted content and sentenced to a year in prison. The four are appealing the decision, though I argue that I don’t think it’ll make the blindest bit of difference.
What we really don’t want, though, is an unelected, non-governmental organization like the IWF deciding what content we’re allowed to consume online. As OnlineFandom points out, many Swedish labels have found ways to gain considerable commercial benefit out of The Pirate Bay, sharing content on it with full permission. Why should Brits miss out on that?
(via Tech Radar)
Google launches "Similar Images" search and News Timeline
It’s been, ooo, at least a week since we’ve had something new from Google, and the company’s making up for lost time by announcing two new products at once. There’s Similar Images, and News Timeline.
Let’s start with the former. This is a new option for image search that lets you scan for images that look a bit like other images. For example, in the pic above you can see that a search for Jaguar brings up both animals and cars. If you click on ‘similar images’ below the picture, though, then just animals, or just cars, will appear.
News Timeline does pretty much what it says on the tin. It organizes news information chronologically, and allows you to define a date range to search for news within. It could be seen as a response to Twitter’s growing strength in the news market but in reality it’s probably just a rollout of existing search tech over to the news section.
Lastly, Google’s also putting more prominence to its labs features by moving them to their own domain. You can visit www.googlelabs.com to try out all of Google’s latest experiments.
(via Google Blog)
