Author: Katherine Hannaford
Shiny Video Review: Hyde Park Robot Wars!
Last week Gary and I toured London’s Soho sex shops, this week we regressed to our ten-year-old selves and battled in the famous Hyde Park. I present you with…
ROBOT WARS!
Featuring Pleo the dinosaur, available from IWOOT for £249, the Meccano Spykee Micro also from IWOOT for £19.99, and the iRobot Roomba which is available for around £135.
So, who won in this bloody battle? I’ll tell you what, it certainly wasn’t our pride, which was wounded and is lying in a pool of blood somewhere in a central London park….
MySpace Music finally announced, with Universal, Sony BMG and Warner all signed up
I was going to write this afternoon about the rumours regarding MySpace Music coming through the wires getting hotter and faster, but before I had a chance, they only went and issued a formal press release about it!
As expected, they’ve entered a partnership with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group, which will offer music services on MySpace, a site that’s been known as a music community ever since all the sensible people fled to Facebook in 2007. Enhancing the MySpace Music platform already in place, they’ll offer DRM-free digital downloads, ad-supported audio and video streaming, a mobile store plus plenty of other knick knacks…
Rick Astley cashes in on 'rickrolling' success and launches ad-supported YouTube channel
He promised not to take advantage of his recent ‘fame’, but Rick Astley has certainly ‘let us down’, by capitalising on the Rickrolling phenomenon and gone and created his own YouTube channel. Ok, he joined in October 2007, but has recently jazzed it up, with revenue-making adverts.
Instead of using the couple hundred versions of his 1987 single ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ on the video-sharing site, users are now encouraged by Astley to help him out financially, and use his uploaded video instead. He’s gaining revenue by advertising his latest album (‘Ultimate Collection’, natch) on iTunes, which I’m sure at least 17 people…
Evil professors claim they can compress MP3s so much, you'll fit 20 million onto your iPod
How many clowns can you fit in a car? I’m still not sure, but supposedly we’ll soon all be able to compress the shit out of our MP3s and get 20 million onto an iPod. Good luck finding 20 million songs you actually like…
If the evil anti-audiophilic professors at the University of Rochester manage to release their new compression technology without Arcam and Denon product managers hacking into their PCs and deleting the relevant witchcraft files.
They’re working on technology which will shrink MP3 file size down to a 1,000th of its size, so an 80GB iPod could hold 20 million tracks…
Panasonic throws the miniscule SDR-S7 camcorder into the mix
I know there’s a Panasonic launch event in the coming weeks here in London, so I’m hoping they’ll be showing off this SDR-S7 camcorder, which was just announced in Japan.
Weighing an incredible 160g, or 182g with the battery and SD card in their relevant slots, it records in VGA resolution at 640 x 480 in the Mpeg-2 format. With…
YouTube Hits: The SEO Rapper's 'Design Coding'
This video has been floating around our office for a couple of days now, and I must say, give it a listen after the initial few horrible seconds, and you’ll understand why. The SEO Rapper, as he calls himself, has produced a helpful rap called ‘Design Coding’, giving you advice on how to design your website, with gems including ‘don’t use italics, use EM-PHEE-SIS!’…
Yahoo announces upgrade to OneSearch 2.0 voice-recognition mobile search software
More news from CTIA over in Las Vegas, this time from the Yahoo camp, who certainly isn’t letting bully-boy Microsoft get in the way of their new innovations.
Unveiled yesterday was their voice-enabled search function for mobile phones, OneSearch 2.0, created in partnership with voice-recognition firm Vlingo. It’s been in existence since early 2007, with 29 mobile network carriers offering the service.
Simply by speaking…
Forget running it on an iPhone, Samsung hopes to offer Second Life on mobiles
You might be able to get Second Life to run on your iPhone, but due to various problems involved in that process, I’d suggest you maybe flog your iBrick on eBay, go buy a Samsung. If you’re that obsessive about Second Life, which I bet you are if you’ve read this far.
They’re showing a demo over at CTIA this week, and hope to release the technology by the end of the year, along with an integrated blogging platform and easy communication between you and your Second Life elves/fairies/warlords through text and voicemail. An interesting idea, but chances are…
33% of iPhone owners have a second mobile as well, according to studies in the US
Whilst I know a lot of iPhone owners have second, or even third mobile, I didn’t think the percentage in the US would be as high as 33%. Isn’t the iPhone meant to be the saviour of the mobile communications world? Why use two?
A US agency, Rubicon Consulting, has published its findings about iPhone users, which include no-brainers like 75% of users do more mobile browsing because of the phone and that the most-used data function is reading emails.
Rather surprisingly, 40% of the users…
Nokia announces four handsets for emerging markets, the 7070 Prism, 2680 Slide, 5000, and 1680 Classic
Nokia has announced four new handsets which will be retailing for between €50-90, but before you go reaching for your MasterCard, I better let you know they’re aimed at emerging markets such as Africa.
The above phone, whilst looking suspiciously like the 7500 and 7900, has ‘external light effects’, themes, wallpapers, MP3 ringtones, voice recorder and hands-free speaker. Out in Q3 of 2008, it should be €50 plus tax….
