All your time are belong to us

Paul Douglas Drinks to Beverages: Mixxed Up

2010-11-18T19:16:00.001Z

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Drinks to Beverages is back with the penultimate episode taped at the old Yaxley studio. Which is to say, the penultimate episode filmed before Paul Douglas moved into University Halls. Anyway, Paul's made a visit to Lidl (for...Some reason) and picked up another awful-seeming ripoff drink. After the "adventure" of Freeway Iron Brew, what fresh hell awaits Paul in his can of Mixxed Up Stimulation Drink? Watch to find out.

Tags: drinks, beverages, drinking, review, red bull, mixxed up, energy drinks, red rooster

Paul Douglas Drinks to Beverages: Powerade

2010-07-23T14:39:00.001+01:00

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It's a Mountain Berry Blast as Paul Douglas takes on Coca-Cola's Gatorade rival, Powerade. Join our intrepid sometimes-comedian and drinks fanatic as he attempts to discover if Powerade Mountain berry Blast is especially tasty, if it really helps your sporting prowess and whether or not he can use it to drown himself - no, sort of, like, really.

Tags: drinks, beverages, drinking, review, powerade, gatorade

Paul Douglas Drinks to Beverages: 7 Up Vs. Sprite

2010-07-19T00:45:00.001+01:00

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It's a showdown! Paul Douglas returns with his innovative beverage reviews show "Paul Douglas Drinks to Beverages", and this time, there's a fight...Our intrepid drinks critic seeks to find out which of the world's two favourite lymon-flavoured beverages is better: Is it 7 Up or is it Sprite? Watch and find out!

Tags: drinks, beverages, review, showdown, comparison, fight, 7 up, sprite, critic, midnight brown

Paul Douglas Drinks to Beverages: Red Bull Cola

2010-04-25T23:26:00.001+01:00

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It's time for more drink-related nonsense with another episode of Paul Douglas Drinks to Beverages! This week, the fluid deemed fit for human consumption is Red Bull Cola...You can probably see where this is going. Watch in delight as Paul Douglas succumbs to the torment and terror known only as "Drinking Red Bull Cola"!

Tags: red bull, drinks, red bull cola, taste, test, beverage, review, drinks, cola

Paul Douglas Drinks to Beverages: Lucozade Cherry

2010-04-18T19:07:00.001+01:00

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Paul Douglas is back with another Drink to Beverages! This time he takes on the newest member of the Lucozade family, Lucozade Cherry. What on earth will he make of this bizarre concept (Everyone knows the answer to "Which Lucozade flavour should I drink?" is "Orange", and oranges are nothing like cherries)? Watch and find out!

Tags: lucozade, drinks, lucozade cherry, taste, test, beverage, review, drinks, energy drinks

Paul Douglas Drinks to Beverages: Skinny Cola

2010-04-10T20:09:00.001+01:00

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Paul Douglas Drinks to Beverages once again, this time taking on New Age cola-drink, Skinny Cola. Join Paul as he attempts to discern just what creators Bio Synergy had to do to Cola in order to make it a dietary aid. Surprisingly, it's not magic. Unsurprisingly, the answer is disappointing.

Tags: cola, drinks, skinny cola, taste, test, beverage, review, drinks

Paul Douglas Drinks to Beverages: Skinny Cola

2010-04-10T00:21:00.001+01:00

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Tags: cola, drinks, skinny cola, taste, test, beverage, review, drinks

Hey! Watch this... Music Video Second Cut

2010-01-11T13:21:00.001Z

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This is the 2nd

VLog 3/01/10: It's A New Year

2010-01-06T18:19:00.001Z

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As 2009 turns to 2010, Jensonb gives us his thoughts on his favourite movies, games & music from 2009, complete with anecdotes and more. Then he takes a look at 2010 and what he's got in store for this year.

Endurance Run Endurance Run Part 2

2010-01-04T00:38:00.001Z

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The Endurance Run Endurance Run returns as Jensonb continues his quest to finally watch every single episode of Giant Bomb (dot) Com's Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 Endurance Run, here tackling episodes 20-26.

Hey! Watch this... Music Video Rough Cut

2009-12-30T23:38:00.001Z

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This is the rough cut of my A2 Media Studies Coursework, a music video for the song "Hey! Watch this..." by The Auteur, which I'm making available so we can gain some audience feedback ahead of making the finishing touches. Most transitions are missing, some of the edits are work in progress and some of the audio cuts need some modifications. Additionally, at least 1 instance of onscreen text is missing.

Review: Mrs. Santa Claus

2009-12-15T16:06:00.001Z

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Jensonb celebrates the Christmas season by sitting down to partake in a favourite hobby, watching trashy Christmas movies. Alas, his choice of trashy Christmas movies may have been a bad one in this instance. See what happens next as Jensonb takes on the 1996 Made for TV Musical, Mrs. Santa Claus, starring Angela Lansbury!

Endurance Run Endurance Run Part 1

2009-12-07T17:56:00.001Z

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Jensonb embarks on a deliciously meta quest to catch up with the Giant Bomb Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 Endurance Run. This, obviously, is of most interest to Giant Bomb Users.

Little Big Whoop

2008-07-24T16:12:00.001+01:00

The following is from my new primary blog at Giant Bomb:

So everyone loves LittleBigPlanet apparently. Seriously, the game's not out yet and everyone seems to love it. Everywhere I look, it's heralded as the second coming. And I can't see why. Okay, it lets you make your own levels. It's not that big a deal. I see people rave about every little thing. People call me weird for not being interested. I'm sorry folks, it's just not that interesting an idea. I'd never play it long enough to make anything I really liked with the editor, so I'm not interested.

It bugs me that in an era when everyone complains about the hype of games like Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4 (Games which were awesome, get over it folks), all those same people don't have a bad thing to say about LittleBigPlanet. I get it, you're interested. Doesn't mean the idea is particularly amazing or that the game's that original. Doesn't mean I have to like it too.

So add me to the minority not in the least bit interested in LittleBigPlanet.

Now Black Rock's Pure? There's a game I can get behind. Mindless off-road fun? Hell to the yes. 16-Player online races? Oh yeah.

Yes, I think Pure's going to be better than LittleBigPlanet. And for me, it will be. I might be alone in that. Does that mean you need to come here and tell me how wrong I am and list all the features of LittleBigPlanet which have still not made me think it's god (Yes, I ave heard about them)? No, it doesn't.

I'm immue to Little Big Planet's power. Even if I have to be the lone critic, I will be.

Jens Out

Kaboom!

2008-07-21T09:24:00.003+01:00

And just like that, The Bomb blew. Giant Bomb (dot) com has finally opened the doors to the final site, and it's absolutely fantastic. The site's got a few creaks owing to the huge load we're putting on it, but it's standing up better than I expected. Things are getting done.

The site looks attractive and it's laid out very well. The whole thing also has a very social atmosphere to it, it's friendly and communal - the content, largely collaborative. The forums are just getting started and already we're getting on very well.

The site's video player is also very good, attractive and simple, keeps out of the way. Very nice.

We may have just knocked the servers over there...Whoops.

Oh, there it goes. Back now.

Anyway, staying up for the site proved to be worth it. I guarantee if I'd gone to bed, I'd have slept past the launch and wouldn't have gotten to see the site until the afternoon. That would have been unacceptable.

I'm making a bunch of friends in the Live Stream chatroom. This is going to be fun.

Well, the site's now getting over the earlier crashes where it would completely fail to resolve as the load on the servers decreases - a lot of the users in America for example are heading to bed so the server's aren't taking such a huge hit.

There are lingering issues, with quite a few bugs and glitches yet to be sorted, but there don't seem to be any show stoppers. So far, it's a relatively smooth launch.

Can't wait for the next Bombcast.

Bomb Watch Starts Here

2008-07-21T03:36:00.003+01:00

Giant Bomb's Jeff Gerstmann today e-mailed anyone who had sent an e-mail to one of the Giant Bomb addresses (Notable the Beta Signup Address). It formalises the site's launch as being imminent, a fact already made abundently clear by the blog having been replaced with a teasing image and a "Landing shortly" message.

The most important part of the message reads:

This e-mail is being sent to let you know that we're getting very close to the beta launch of giantbomb.com -- if you want to be extra-certain that you secure your username of choice, you should start taking occasional looks at the site to see if it's up yet. You will not receive a second e-mail from us, as we're solely focused on the site itself.

So what will you be able to do on Giant Bomb?

Explore a database that already contains...
Entries for over 72,000 releases.
Pages for nearly 90,000 people involved in the creation of video games.
Almost 600 character pages!
Something like 580 pages for gaming franchises!
Dude, I don't know, how about I just write "and much, much more" here and we move on?
Don't forget, you'll be able to edit and add to all of these things!

And of course, we'll have message boards. Tens of thousands of message boards! Way too many message boards! Everything from the PlayStation 3 to hamburgers will have a message board associated with it. In fact, every single page in the database, including consoles, franchises, games, objects, characters, people, and concepts will all have a friendly message board right at the bottom. But don't worry about getting lost or missing out on a conversation. Messages from all boards are easily found in our forum index.

This extract of course excludes the instructions, but they're fairly obvious anyway.

So now, we begin the Bomb Watch. I have arranged for my browser (Firefox 3, Mac OS X 10.5.4, a rock slid and generally excellent browser and platform) set up to reload Giant Bomb (dot) com at set intervals, so excited am I to get into the site.

Unfortunately, I'm also way too excited. I'm afraid to sleep in case I miss it. I mean, even tonight, I really don't want to risk it, even though I'm almost 100% the site won't launch until something like 6PM BST on Monday the 21st of July (At the earliest).

And so, for as long as I'm awake, I'm going to be updating round the clock. I'll Tweet status updates at regular intervals and come the launch, I'll tweet my progress registering, then writeup impressions of the site her on All Your Time.

And yes, I fully intend to contribute as much as I can to anything Disney-Related (Exception: Chronicles of Narnia, we'll get to that little mistake someday).

Speaking of, how awesome does Pure look? For some reason, I'm all-the-way pumped for that game. Maybe cos it's a Disney-made insane off-road racer. We all know I love Disney and Excite Truck, Pure combines them. Naturally, I'll be nabbing the 360 version.

Anywho, where was I? Oh yes, The Bomb. I gotta tell ya, I really need this site. As it stands, the only gaming community I frequent is all but dead in the sections I read. I mean, I visit 1Up and GameSpot, but not their communities (Forums). 1Up's folks were very hostile (Generally, they were some kind souls) to those of us displaced from GameSpot (The site as a whole, not just the forums) after The 29th. GameSpot's forums I just found insular and not very fun.

Wow, I really want to make a movie about Gerstmann-gate...It's a great story for the screen. I saw a YouTube video which recast a JFK (One of my all-time favourie movies) trailer as a traler for JFG, a ficticious movie about Gerstmann-gate (Using JFK footage and dialogue for illustrative purposes), and it was very cool. I definitely think Jeff's story would be good for the screen.

Perhaps a book first, that's howit typically works...Oh well. If it's not been done by the time I can do it, I will. If anyone else is planning to do it and wants help (Writing, directing, any creative stuff really) drop me a line, I have some ideas how it could work.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Onward to The Bomb!

Jens Has Blown

Special Advanced Preview

2008-07-19T20:15:00.002+01:00

Here it is folks, the first publicly available Multiplayer Magazine material. This is Beta 0.2 of the Cover Layout, and I'm making it avilable for public viewing as of today for the sake of feedback, just drop me a line at jensonb (at) me (dot) com or jensonb (at) mac (dot) com.

Click Here

Meanwhile, I'm finalising internal notes on the Review Layout and you can possibly hope to see that soon too.

I'm also prepared to reveal that the Multiplayer Magazine website is going to be powered by Joomla and, to support our focus on community, we will be integrating a Kickapps Social Network, comprising message boards, blogs, photo sharing, video sharing and more. many of these features are also very helpful for our needs (Sharing content).

Lastly, I'm ready to reveal the format for the (As yet) untitled video show I'm going to be putting into production. The show will primarily involve me goign through the week's gaming news - lampooning both it and the coverage. Think of it as The Daily Show, but with gaming coverage. It will also play host to viewer submissions, ala Multiplayer Magazine.

Jens Out

Electronic Three

2008-07-19T19:34:00.003+01:00

Well I have to say this year was much better than last year, but the world is still poorer for not having the ability to watch 26 hours of Rich Gallup. Seriously, that guy could be the host of a show about paint drying and I'd watch.

Luckily, Giant Bomb, the world's best video games website supplied the required dosage of crazy fun E3 coverage. The podcasts and videos they posted essentially made Giant Bomb a lot like being with friends at E3, which is of course The Bomb's style - we're all friends here.

Despite some attempts from IGN to steal my "Live Coverage" viewership, in the end I opted to stick with GameSpot. Eckberg, KVO, Rabara, Thorson, RyMac and soem of the others put on a pretty good show, but someone please do something about Kristin Riley. That girl is insufferable.

1Up receives a commendation for their topnotch text-based coverage. I was using their news page as essentially a wire service whilst watching the show at the 'Spot. That said, I preferred their older news frontpage, from before they used a Blog to power it. Ah well, you can't have everything.

As to the actual content...Seems like the publishers want E3 to die. The Platform holders each had some fairly interesting stuff (New Dashboard, several interesting games from SCE and Nitnendo are finally putting out a microphone), but neither they nor the third parties really showed a "wow, holy shit, that looks awesome" title. It's all singles and doubles, where are the home runs?

Highlights for me are Pure, MAG, DC Universe Online, Portal: Still Alive, Animal Crossing: City Folk (w/ Wii Speak), Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, GTA: Chinatown Wars, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead and Geometry Wars: Retro Revolved 2. There are probably others, but whatever.

Konami, what the hell? Silent Hill and Castlevania? Singles and doubles, kids. Where's the home runs? For you, home run means: Metal GEAR!!!

So anyway, this looks like the last E3. All signs point to an untimely demise. For one thing, the banner saying "See you next year"? Missing. For another, I've already pointed out a lack of tentpole announcements. E3 as it stands is unimportant, small and is less and less unique all the time.

I for one loved the good old days of too little sleep, people runnign around a massive and spectacular show floor shwoing off awesome games. Yeah, maybe it was a bit hectic and hard to cover, but it's only for three days kids, you can do it.

You could also restore E3 to its former glory and still make it easier to cover, lemme tell you how:

Keep it invite-only, but make it big again. You could allow some more elaborate displays, make it more engaging, but still restrict attendees - you wouldn't need to limit them as much though. You could get senior retail people back for example, a sector conspicuous by absence this year.

Here's hoping that E3 does stay, even if it is a shadow of its former glory.

Jens Out

Player 2: Press Start

2008-07-18T04:29:00.002+01:00

I've just finalised Beta 0.1 of the Multiplayer Magazine reviews format, using Resistance 2 (Though I had to use the original Resistance's boxart) as an example. It took some time because with this one I was making some of the overarching internal content formating decisions, which I had to be sure on.

Synchro LET has increased significance and it looks awesome, it has officially been adopted as the Multiplayer font and it pervades throughout the magazine wherever appropriate, creating strong brand recognition and looking sweet.

Futura has been demoted to the cover font and Short Content font internally, body text is being displayed in Helvetica, with 15 being the standard size.

In GizzedUp I made use of compartmentalising and right angles to divide content. Multiplayer is making use of rounded corners, and shapes only have visible outlines if they are important. Typically, a shpe is just a block of colour. Notably, image captions extend slightly below the image (Seamlessly) and feature rounded corners on the bottom.

Soon, I'll be showing off the current Beta of the cover (Version 0.2 at the moment, I might be showing 0.3 if I make any chnages) and revealign the Review Guidelines, which will explain how we're gonna score games and also reveal what we're doing instead of "Area Scores" or "Medals and Demerits"/"Good Points and Bad Points".

Jens Out

Pinging you

2008-07-18T01:04:00.003+01:00

Hey guys, sorry I missed the blogging my impressions of the conferences. I was going to move it all to Tuesday, but I had to wait to watch the Sony and Nintendo ones and I didn't get to do so until I got up earlier.

I'll be posting instead about my impressions of all E3 on Friday. I'll get to it either between the two F1 Practice Sessions or after the second one. As a tiny preview: there's nothing I'm absolutely pumped to hell for...Like, at all. Certainly nothing new. Not that there's nothing new I want, just nothing has me as excited as some of last year's stuff.

My MobileMe code came and I'm now a full subscriber, so that's pretty cool. It's a nice service, I like being able to get at my stuff on my Mac, in a browser or on my iPod. Speaking of my Mac, I had a few software problems, but I managed to fix them just by trashing some files. Very happy, in Windows I'd probably have had to reinstall the OS.

Speaking of Windows, the box is gone. My only computer is the Mac mini, my favourite of all the computers I've owned, followed closely by the Eee of course. With it's 750GB external Hard Drive, iTunes and EyeTV (Which is fantastic by the way) it's also a fantastic Media Centre, an entertainment powerhouse.

But without my PC, my consoles are gonna be my focus in terms of gaming. Yes folks, that's right, another player has abandoned the PC Platform. And I'll tell you why: it doesn't work. Games are increasingly supposed to be a pervasive expereince, PC just fails to deliver that.

So, to ensue I have access to games not available on the Wii, I'm getting a 360, as you know. Torturously, I'm relatively certain I have to wait until I get my GCSE results and to make that worse...I got given a copy of Unreal Tournament 3. Which I really want to play.

It's agonising, seriously.

I saw Hancock the other day, and as I expected, that film kicked ass. I loved it, Hancock is officially my second favourite super hero behind Spider-Man now, it's that good. Only thing is, it's crying out for a game.

Someone needs to get on that.

Jens Out

Happy Days People

2008-07-12T16:45:00.004+01:00

That Prom? Kicked ass. But then, if you follow me on Twitter or MySpace, then you probably knew I thought that. It's re-energised me in the best way. Between the best night of my life and the love of my life, I'm happier than I've ever been. And I've changed a bit, for the better.

Mainly, I'm much more a social animal now. Which means my already growing preoccupation with social media has ballooned. I'm going to start blogging and Tweeting about life in general a bit more, but don't worry, I'm still a geek so technology won't be disappearing from the Blog.

On that note, I have updated my iPod touch to 2.0 and put a load of Apps on it. I'm bowled over, it's absolutely fantastic. I can't recommend Twittelator enough by the way, excellent mobile Twitter client - and on iPhone it saves you the cost of a text. Can't be bad, eh?

That I suppose is another example of the social media thing. I also happen to have MySpace Mobile and iFob on there. Of course you know what MySpace is. iFob is a vaguely similar location-based social network allowing peple to interact because they're near. This includes messaging and photo-viewing and shizz.

All very neat. I'm also quite fond of Apple's "Remote" which allows me to control iTunes (Or an Apple TV) from he iPod touch from anywhere in the house using the iPod touch iPod App style. This App is also able to switch between different iTunes copies, so with it you can live the total home thatre control dream today.

I ordered my copy of MobileMe...Well, my activation key I mean. Speaking of which, I've already started to use the Me.com web apps and they're excellent. Very pretty, very high-quality. You cna now hit me up at jensonb (at) mac (dot) com or jensonb (at) me (dot) com.

I also have it set up on my iPod and I must say it was a wonderfully simple process.

E3 is this coming week, I'll be blogging my impressions of the major press briefings (Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony) so look for that Monday and Tuesday.

I think that's all for now. If I think of anything else, I'll post again

Jens Out

Talking Smack

2008-07-09T15:29:00.002+01:00

Hey Sony, looks like we're gonna get another preview of PlayStation Home at E3. I eman, I don't care, do whatever you want, it's of little interest to me, but aren't you even slightly embarassed that you annonced this thing in early '07 for an October that year release and this is it's second E3, 2008 and current info suggests that you'll only get the Beta out this year, maybe?

Dude, whatever.

And how about you Microsoft? Doesn't it make you feel a little embarrassed that your console ships without Wi-Fi? Toasters have Wi-Fi these days. In order to get the 360 to have Wi-Fi, you want me to spend £55 on a dongle. These things cost like £20 for PCs. Are you freaking kidding me? There's a way to get my Mac to share its internet connection with the 360. It's convuluted, but you bet your ass I'm trying that before buying your POS peripheral for £55 - apparently it's not even a very good dongle.

This is especially weak because your USP is Xbox LIVE, industry standard online gaming service.

And Nintendo...For God's sake...Make your online system fun. All we want is oemthing akin to Xbox LIVE. Doesn't need to be as feature-rich. Just give us account names, not numbers. Let me accept adds, rather than adding back. Give us voice chat and make Animal Crossing an MMO.

You could add all this in a Wii Channel. Call it the Nintendo Player Connect Channel, something, anything. Just fix the gaming side of the Wii internet.

Talking smack is therapeutic.

Jens Out

It is done then

2008-07-08T22:54:00.003+01:00

Well, I've now finalised my plans regarding the iPhone 3G and my exam completion gift. I still intend to buy an iPhone 3G, but I only intend to do so when it becomes available on Pay/Go. And so I shall, funded by my wages from Tesco and my EMA. Contract was really not an option. I hate to wait, but O2 have forced my hand on this issue.

In the iPhone 3G's stead, my exam completion gift is to be the Halo 3 Edition Xbox 360. The effing awesome green one. This is the one I've wanted pretty much since Peter Moore raised it with one hand.

Additionally, in exchange for taking possession of my PC, my parents have bought me a 750GB USB Hard Drive and an Elgato eyeTV for DTT (TV Tuner). Two things I was going to buy myself which I now don't have to. Between those and the Xbox, my PC is redundant apart from Blu-Ray playing anyway. And I can always use the PS3 downstairs for that.

Which means my disposable income for this coming paycheck is £195...Less £59 for MobileMe and I've got £135 to spend.

And you know what? I've run out of major buys. All the big things I decided I wanted are gone (iPhone 3G excepted). So I'll buy iWork and probably try and nab MGS:TTS (Because I'm a Metal Gear freak and I simply must have a Metal Gear game I can play in my room - remember, our PS2s don't work. Long story).

But basically, from now on I'm on impulse and/or small buys until I start saving for the iPhone 3G. There's a chance that instead of iWork and MGS I'll buy a w580i this month, or do that next month if I buy the software this month, but other than that, it's uncharted territory.

I'll have to start buying my "back of the mind" wants. What I might do at some point is buy a DS Lite. That said, I'm half expecting The Reginator to reveal a new DS at E3 next week. I might buy that instead.

It's a Golden Age as far as I'm concrned.

Jens Out

PS: Oh god, I should ask the guy in the Shopping Centre about the signed Jenson Button stuff...I'll start small, with the cap or the (I don't think signed, but rare) Jenson Button F3 car...Then ask about the price of the signed 2000 Williams.

-Evil Grin-

Plans

2008-07-07T14:13:00.002+01:00

Okay, so O2 have totally effed me over here. But, I still want the iPhone and I still intend to go with Pay/Go. For that reason, I will buy one this winter by saving up for a couple of months (All it will take, my monthly income will be increasing to start at £275 come Autumn).

In the meantime, I'm going to have my parents buy me a cheaper new phone on the Tesco Mobile network. Probably the cheaper Sony Ericsson slider in white. Additionally, I'll have them buy the hard drive I have my eye on, the 750GB one. Anything left over I'll spend on a game or something, perhaps making use of my GameStation Gift Voucher (I'm praying for Twin Snakes).

That leaves me to buy my new TV Tuner and MobileMe. All told, that still leaves me with £95 after I take into account LOVEFiLM. If I don't end up with Twin Snakes, I might use some fo that for that, otherwise there's some miscellaneous stuff I've yet to buy like iWork and iTunes films.

Next month is probably my Xbox 360 in that scenario. It's gonna take over the PC's place in the VGA Switcher. But its physical location? I have no idea.

There's a chance I'll buy a DS Lite with that £95. I'm not sure, I'm just thinking about it. In that case, the 360 will be a month later and next month will be iWork and stuff.

Jens Out

So, you ever hear of these dicks called O2?

2008-07-07T11:46:00.005+01:00

By now you've likely heard the news. iPhone 3G is not out on Pay/Go until the indistinct "Later in the year". Naturally, I'm massively pissed off. For anyone wondering what happened to the 96 Hour coverage, that is. The news I was most interested in came real early and it was bad.

I'm forced to conclude O2 doesn't like customers, or money. Odd tactic, for a business.

The following is an e-mail I sent to O2 regarding this fiasco:

From the iPhone 3G page of your Help site, under Pay & Go:
"Pay & Go will be available later this year."

It's taken you since WWDC back in mid June to finally come out and say those of us who cannot have or do not want iPhones on contracts are being left out in the cold? I'm hugely let down. I've been looking forward to the iPhone 3G launch since the phone was announced, even more since it was confirmed Pay/Go would be an option.

But for weeks, I hear nothing. Then I start to hear from friends and people online that miscellaneous sources are saying no Pay/Go on launch day, some even saying not until the Christmas season. Shortly after, I receive an e-mail from O2...Telling me they're going to send an e-mail. Which I knew. Because I told them to.

And so then we come to today. As has become my custom, I head over to O2's site for news and check my mail. There in my inbox are details of how to buy an iPhone 3G on Contract. Which irks me because I registered my interest on the Pay/Go page and for a reason. Ad on O2's site? After weeks of stringing us along, O2 ordained to reveal Pay/Go customers are being left out in the cold until , well, I still don't know. You've managed to continue to disappoint without even removing the uncertainty.

How difficult would it have been to put some clear information informing us that the iPhone 3G would not be available on Pay/Go until later, or even that the Pay/Go option may have ended up being delayed? You clearly knew it might have been, which is why you have and continue to keep the details from us. It's extremely misleading, and there's a case to be made for it being fraudulent advertising, especially if you used it to gauge consumer interest (Which, to be honest, it was used for).

But then I do know why we're being treated so unfairly.

O2 wants to force me into a Contract. Well I don't appreciate that one bit. I can't have a Contract, it has to be Pay/Go. Even if I could, I wouldn't want it. One of the biggest barriers to iPhone adoption last time around was the lack of Pay/Go. It's clear to me now that either:

A) O2 are somehow unaware of this, leading me to wonder if they listen to their customers at all, and only found out by allowing people to register their interest. I should point out again that the manner in which this was done is in the grey regions of legality.
or
B) The Pay/Go option was pre-announced with the specific intention of announcing it's indistinct delay at a later date and therefore moving some potential Pay/Go-ers to Contracts, specifically early adopters

I feel extremely let down by O2 now. O2, you have some serious sucking up to do to avoid missing out on my sale. Ever heard of the iPod touch? It's waiting in an Apple Store near me, just waiting to eat your lunch.

This is totally unacceptable. I need a new phone. I have my heart set on that phone. I don't want to wait until freaking Christmas - this is supposed to be funded in part by my parents as a treat for the end of exams. Bit bloody late come Christmas.

No, the Christmas season is not an official timeframe, just one CS Reps kept throwing out which now seems likely.

Jens is Pissed

Announcing the 96 Hour iPhone 3G Net-Based Campout

2008-07-07T00:37:00.002+01:00

Starting at 8:02 this morning, I will be comprehensively combing the internet for every morsel of information about the iPhone 3G I can find. Everything will be aggregated here and on my Twitter feed.

So primarily, I'm donating my body to the world as a crawler for UK iPhone 3G news for the next 4 days. My main aim is to whittle through all the goddamned BS and try and find something out about the Pay/Go iPhone 3G.

I might even record some video roundups, using Screenflow to capture the internet and myself simultaneously.

So, what will be powering this crazy coverage you ask? The Mac mini will be my primary station and the one from which I follow most of the news and the one I'll be using to post about it, both here and on Twitter. Also lending a hand will be my Eee PC, serving up yet more news and allowing me to continue the quest away from the desk.

My camcorder will be recording me for the video roundups of course, my iPod touch will be handling (Some) of the entertainment I'll need to keep myself from slashing my wrists and, should the iPhone 3G actually be available on Pay/Go this Friday, my RAZR's last job will be Twittering the line at the Carphone Warehouse I'm buying from. Or, from the Cambridge Apple Retail Store (I'll explain in the morning).

That's 96 hours of iPhone coverage. Suck it Laporte :P

In all seriousness though, Leo rocks. I'm looking forward to and may well I may well join Leo's coverage of the worldwide launch if he wants me. For that, I'll take my Eee and use store Wi-Fi.

Wow, I'm gonna have to go sleep soon.

Jens Out

Welcome to Swift Kick in the Nuts

2008-07-07T00:16:00.003+01:00

O2 is one of those companies I really want to like. They're like Sega in the Dreamcast days. Wow, this is awesome, I'm gonna use the online aspect...Not working, I'll try again...Again...Again...Baby, why you gotta make me hit you?

With O2, it goes like this:

Ooh, iPhone 3G...It gleams like the eyes of God...Ooh, a classy white one...I hope O2 put this on Pay/Go so I can get it....Ooh, they did, yay O2! Love you! Now to await the details. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Wai...Ooh, e-mail from O2! Oh...All this tells me is that they'lls end me another e-mail and that's the important one. What the fuck is this? It's like a week until launch, where is the Pay/Go info!?

And it goes on. The "leaked" pricing I posted about earlier is probably right, and I'm just about happy with those numbers. Unfortunately, we now believe the Pay/Go iPhone 3G will not launch this coming Friday. Which blows, I want my damn iPhone.

What's worse is that we believe that to be the case. We have no damned idea. O2 refuses to keep their story straight.

And so, the hate is building. It'll probably pass once I'm rocking my 6 months of free data, but I rally am annoyed. I was lookign forward to lining up for the launch of a new product, I've been waiting for years to be able to do it.

And it looks like they're taking that oppurtunity away from me.

Fail O2, just a freaking fail.

Jens Out

PS: My DV-FireWire cable came, my camcorder is now functional as a webcam.

iPhone Europe: O2 accidentally shows its Pay/Go Hand

2008-06-26T23:26:00.003+01:00

Well, the cat would seem to be out of the bag. Multiple sites are reporting that O2 posted handset prices, rates and offer details for the iPhone 3G on the Pay/Go tariff to their site, apparently late last night.

The details have since been withdrawn from the site, but are still available to us through various rumour sites and blogs which caught them.

So, how much is the handset gonna set us back? 8GB will be priced at £299.99 and 16GB at £359.99 (MacWorld UK erroneously states £400, however even their cited source disagrees). These represent modest £30.99 price hikes on the elder models.

However, O2 has seen fit to sweeten the deal. Primarily through those "top up £X each month and receive" offers, but more importantly by bundling 6 months of unlimited (3G) data. Naturally, a fair use policy is in place and the offer only applies to phones activated before...December 31st. Some time away at least.
After the bundled data period is over, unlimited data can be added for £10 a month, a neatly non-committed solution, much better than the £30 tariff.

Incidentally, the 6 Months of data is therefore worth £60. I would have been buying it each month anyway, so I like to think of it as a £300 phone (16GB model) with unlimited data at £10 a month, £60 of which is paid upfront.

At these prices, with these deals, I'm definitely going to go ahead and get a 16GB iPhone 3G with a white back. I pretty much have to now. My touch is nearing the limits because I've bought three movies, and I plan to buy at least 2, maybe 3 more.

So, all in all, I'm pretty happy.

Jens Out

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Jens

2008-06-26T00:05:00.004+01:00

I got some great news about 10 hours ago. Giant Bomb is opening up signups for the Beta version of the site. All we have to do is send an e-mail to beta (at) giantbomb (dot) com with Sign Me Up in the subjet line.

They'll be sending us registration info, including the link to access the beta, within a couple of weeks. That means I'll probably be getting my first play with the site before my Prom.

All very exciting, cos Giant Bomb has already become my favourite games site even though it's just a blog at the moment. Imagine how much I'll like it once full functionality is enabled. Win, much?

So, what else have I got to tell you? Well, we've got Metal Gear Solid 4 and we're part-way through Act 2. I have to say, given all this hype about a warzone, I was apprehensive. I love Metal Gear and I was definitely interested in seeing the story conclude, but I was one person who adored the existing gameplay. Particularly in its MGS3 guise.

Luckily, there's plenty of good old-fashioned Metal Gear gameplay in there. Some of it's wrapped in new clothing, but it's there. That being said, some of the controls are distinctly weird to me as a Metal Gear vet. I know they're more like other action games, but that's sort of the problem. Metal Gear is very different from most action games.

Damn how I wish I could play Metal Gear Solid 3...It's a long story (Which I've told before) but I really can't play it as it stands. Sucks, cos it's one of my favourite ever games. I would love for them to re-release it on Wii, or make a Raiden game on Wii using its engine.

Yeah, I like Raiden. In fact, I liked Raiden all along, way before it was cool to (Dude's a fucking Cyborg Ninja now so everyone freaking loves him all of a sudden). In his MGS4 guise, he's now my wallpaper.

Oh, before we move on...Sunny, Olga's daughter...She's adorable! That is like the sweetest kid ever.

I've bought 3 movies from iTunes. I find it to be a painless and very efficient process. I got Zoolander (Love that film), Dodgeball (That one too, in fact it's a contender for best film ever) and I Am Legend (Which I ahd't seen before. It's fucking great).

Right now, I'm killing time. My brother's friends are here and he's hanging out with them in the living room. Where the PS3 is. So not only am I unable to watch him continue the story, I can't myself play any MGS4 for myself.

Oh well, Demi Lovato's on the radio, so that's cool.

Jens Out

Latter Day Lies and Other Cults

2008-06-25T22:43:00.002+01:00

As you may know, I am not religious. For me, something has to be demostrable and also feasible for me to believe it absolute fact. Religion is conjecture and assumption as far as I'm concerned, but for the most part it doesn't bother me. People can belive what they want to believe as long as they don't force it down my or anyone else's throat.

That said, I am damning towards those who try and treat religious concepts as sciences, not just because they are not, but also because it's offensive to anyone with a religion for which that concept is not true.

In theory, religion is fine. However, my disapproval of it is massive. One reason for this is the creation of intolerance. As if people don't find enough reasons to hate and murder eachother. Religion creates another despite members of many religions claiming to be against hatred and violence.

But mainly, it's as simple as religion being an expression of a very dangerous to operate your life and mind. Absolute, unquestioning faith. Absolute, unquestioning faith can and will put you in danger, it can and will put others in danger and frankly humans are better than it. We are capable of incredibly complex thought. Religion convinces us we are a lesser version of something else whilst simultaneously making us so by inhibiting our natural inquisition.

But for the most part, those who follow religion have found a balance. Many freely accept the flaws in their religions and even seek to replace the parts which are bad. These people are to be commended.

Problems really start with people who are followers through and through. This is never less true than with cults. Which leads me to my point.

Let this post stand as absolute declaration of the following:

I am at war with any and all religious cults. You are a cancer on society and I will not stand for it.

Of particular note are the two cults which I have the most against. First up, "The Church of" Scientology. I don't think I have to tell you how utterly - and insanely - dangerous this organisation is.

We know this because the scum who run it see fit to defend themselves against the slightest criticism with legal action. No religion should be doing that. Religion should stand on its own feet, total bullshit naturally fails and so it should be.

But it's worse than that. This is an organisation claiming to be a spiritual lead for people to follow. And yet, it requires its members to pay for its various texts and the insane practices it encourages them to partake in.

How many religions do you know of which restrict access to their texts? What kind of religion tells you you're not allowed to find out what it's about until you pay them? No kind. Cults do that.

It's another reason we know they're liars. What are they afraid of if it's not the revealtion of the absolute and utter bullshit they push on people?

Well, here is that bullshit:

And with that out of the way, we shall move onto my second major target, Mormons.

Yes, the Church of Latter Day Saints, or Latter Day Lies as I usually prefer to call it, is also a pile of complete and utter bullshit, Like Scientology, its presence on this earth is an abomination and it must be stopped. Fortunately, for somewhat different reasons.

My problem with The Church of Latter Day Saints stems from its inception. The story rings false in every possible way. Some guy just happens to discover texts of huge significance near his home which he never allows anyone else to see. When someone tries to force proof of the existence of the texts, he provides a flimsy excuse and gets away with it.

Blind faith. Dangerous.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the actual Latter Day Lies are completely insane. The third coming of Jesus...To America? What for? The native Americans were "cursed" to have red skin? What manner of sorcery is this? Native Americans share anscestry with the people of Asia and the Arctic. That is why they're not white like the people of Europe.

This all probably seems slightly random and out of place, but it really bothers me. These cults cause real harm to people and all the while they spread lies and encourage blind faith. I know I keep repeating it, but I can't emphasise it enough:

Blind faith is a danger to the individual, people the individual loves and who love them and anyone who ever has to rely on that individual.

Cults must be stopped.

Jens Out.

Guitar Hero: World Tour

2008-06-20T00:01:00.003+01:00

This time, I can't not get Guitar Hero. The fourth home console installment follows Rock Band into the whole band emulation category, alongside other newcomers Ultimate Band (From Disney Interactive, a potential buy for me) and a Konami game which souns so bad I've forgotten the name.

But World Tour sets itself apart with an awesome drum set featuring cymbals and some other neat as you like innovations. The guitar too has new and cool features like a touch sensitive strip for those unique riffs.

Vocals have been added too, but since there's not much room for innovation there, the scope of awesomeness is limited to it being there. I fully intend to make use of it though.

Also being added is music creation and this is way awesome. Now a band simulation game can actually let you make music. This is bigger than you may give i credit for. Whilst in this initial version I imagine even in-depth creation will be limited compared to making music the old-fashioned way, it opens the door to a future where making rock music is much simpler.

I'm all for that, I love disruptive media. I mean, heck, I'm harnessing the disruptive media that is the internet to create a crowd-sourced magazine.

I telly what, I can see someone, maybe even me, playing guitar and singing at the same time. Even drumming and singing. This is possible in the current Rock Band, but I don't see it happening much. All you need is a mic stand.

I can't wait to form a band with friends, but I also see some solo fun, both singing and playing both distinct instruments (Guitar and drums. There are bass an rhythm variants of the guitar, but they work largely the same) to be had.

All that remains for me to do is choose a platform, Wii or Xbox 360. I'm inclined to say likely the latter, but I'll base my decision on what my friends decide - gotta make sure we can play together online.

Jens Out

Record Breaking

2008-06-19T20:26:00.004+01:00

Before we get to the main stuff, I have to regretfully cancel the Mac mini video unboxing.

Unfortunately, my camera recorded the video in a weird format which I'm having trouble locating support for. Because the video is so short (And I've listened to the audio, fairly quiet because of the sub-par mic on the camera I think), I've been forced to conclude it's not worth hunting the entire internet to find support.

On the upside, I'm refining my vision for a web show and my research has led me to a couple of pieces of software which I believe will be very handy.

On a related note, I'm getting close to deciding on a camcorder to replace my DV one (Which will be installed as a webcam/permanent video camera for The 1K Studio (The tongue in cheek name for my bedroom which will be the studio for the web show). I'll use it primarily to record the web show.

Speaking of which, I need to buy a DV to FireWire 400 cable.

As to the records, I've broken my own this month. June 2008 is already, by some margin, the biggest month in All Your Time posting ever, buoyed by the lack of school and relatively high numbers of things to talk about. I'm very pleased.

Another record I contributed to was the Firefox 3 Download Day record. Yes, Mozilla's kickass browser did beat the previous record for downloads in 24 hours. And I helped by downloading it twice, once for Windows and once for OS X.

I'm getting ever closer to not needing the PC. I may have mentioned this before, but Maplin are selling a 750GB (Triple the PC's capacity) for £90 and since moving my iTunes library to the Mac, I haven't turned the PC on. I likely won't do so again until Sunday to record the F1 race.

I've already decided that with that HDD, I'll probably move my TV recording to the Mac mini using Elgato eyeTV Diversity (For Record and Watch, Record Two and Picture in Picture). After that, my PC's only purpose will be watching Blu-Rays, and I can do that on the PS3 if need be.

I'll have to talk to the parents. Might be that they take it off me straight or reimburse me for the upgrades I've given it (If they intend to use them)...The latter would afford me greater scope in my coming purchases.

I'm going to buy an iTunes Movie, maybe two, on Saturday. There are four I want, but two are still at New Release prices and I'll probably wait. Also this weekend, probably Sunday though, I'll be nabbing the URL and hosting for Multiplayer.

Hmm...I should probably write myself a shopping list for the next couple of months so I know what kind of funds I'll need...

Jens Out

Oh now that is cool

2008-06-19T10:47:00.005+01:00

I mentioned that I loved how I could use the Apple Remote to put the Mac mini to sleep. Well, I just woke it up with it too. It's great, the last remote I used with a computer could turn off, but not on.

And it's simple too, I just point it at the mini and press Play. Not even hold it, just press it. You hold it to put it to sleep, because obviously you want more of a safeguard from accidental presses for that.

And so I pressed play and within seconds, there's my desktop. Fastest time from pressing an activation button to seeing the desktop I've ever experienced.

This computer, this OS, this remote...All wicked awesome.

Jens Out

Edit: And another thing, I'll tell you why Spaces is awesome. Spaces means iTunes, Firefox, Pages and Adium can all be running, sitting in their own 1680 by 1050 work areas, making as much use of that space as needed and I can hop between them by location, a click of an icon in the dock shoots me off to that app's space.

To some extent it's kind of similar to minimising and restoring applications. But it's better, the apps are still there and still as you left them. You can hop between them seamlessly and/or focus entirely on one when you need to.

Leopard is the best OS I have ver used. And I've used a damn lot.

Multiplayer Status Report 1

2008-06-19T00:16:00.003+01:00

Well folks, this is the first in a series of Blog posts leading up to the launch of Multiplayer. The idea is to keep you up to date on how work is progressing, what's getting done, things I'm thinking about and so on.

Over the past half hour, I mocked up the Beta 0.1 cover of Multiplayer Magazine (Issue 1) in Pages '08. Worked like a charm I might add. Overall, I'm very pleased with how it looks, especially given how quickly I threw it together.

As part of this, I spent some time deliberating the Multiplayer fonts. GizzedUp used Arial, Verdana and variants thereof. I myself became infatuated with Bitstream Vera Sans at some point. But none of these wound up being used except Verdana - and that is for a tiny piece of text which isn't meant to be the same as the Multiplayer stuff.

As it stands, I've picked out a modern and fairly rare font for the majority of text (Including the word "Magazine"). As for the all-important "Multiplayer" part of the name, I settled on a placeholder font which looks very unique. And as it stands, I'm wondering if it should just be the final one as well, it looks great - especially contrasted with the "Magazine" font.

You know, Multiplayer Magazine Alpha 0.01 (Code Name: Let's Play) featured Halo on the cover, promising a (Fabricated) story about the future of the series. What adorns the cover of this updated effort?

Gears of War 2

Mac mini and Converse Pictures

2008-06-18T21:15:00.005+01:00

Here's the pictures, as promised.

Conquer Time and Spaces

2008-06-18T20:45:00.002+01:00

Awww yeah...

Aw. Yeah.

Here I am. On my Mac mini. The only sounds other than the ambient is the GiantBombCast...The mini itself, virtually silent. You know, it's very cute. Sweet little thing, happily glowing it's teeny light to indicate that it's on.

So, Leopard. I have to say, this OS is fantastic. Everything's so seamless, so slick. Spaces for instance is a great way to manage tasks. I have iTunes is alone in Space 1, utilising as much screen space as possible. After all, whenever I'm interacting with it, I'm focused entirely on it. Adium & Mail (I'll be putting Address Book and iCal there too) are in Space 2, since they're all fairly related. Space 3 is my browsing space, Safari and FF3 are there. Space 4 has the Finder and System Preferences at the moment, I'll be adding any games and apps related to getting things done.

Dashboard is cool, I can call it up and dismiss it from F4 and I have Web Clips set up for the latest PvP and Penny Arcades. I'll probably add Dilbert at some point.

Adium is a great IM client. Very minimalist, very pretty.

My iDisk is monted, my .Mac Mail all set up. It was so easy. It's just awesome. I love this OS to bits. Incidentally, a lot of people don't enable Magnification on the Dock...First thing I did. I love me some eye candy.

Front Row is also awesome with my dinky little Apple Remote. It's a great way to access video from across the room, very pretty. Plus, I was able to stream the trailer for The Dark Knight right in it (Looks cool by the way).

I'll be back with the photos later. The video will probably be tomorrow. It's not very long, I just wnat to edit it to perfection in iMovie before I upload it for your viewing pleasure.

Right, I'm off to download the iWork Trial.

Jens Out

Well, that's over

2008-06-17T20:06:00.003+01:00

Awesome. My last exam is over and done. Freedom folks. Seriously, I can't describe how liberating it is to have all that over and done with. I've now got a couple of months largely focused on chilling. I still have work, but apart from Saturday's I pick and choose when to do that and besides which it pays for my stuffs.

On that note, I'm getting a raise from the 29th and possibly a 10% discount. Admittedly, I'll probably only see benefit for like a month, but I intend to make full use of them.

Of course, not all my leisure time will be dedicated to that task which, many of you are aware, I attach huge importance to (Namely, doing nothing). Nope, I'll also be kicking Multiplayer into 1st gear. Starting tomorrow with the Mac.

Oh gods how I'm excited about my gosh darn Mac mini. Seriously, I've marked out its home with my (Now) signature green felt tip. I'm not sure how that became my signature non-extended prose pen...I took ownership of it to sign people's shirts on the "last day" and ever since then I've used it for, for example, writing labels, marking positions (As mentioned) and circling things.

But I digress. The DVI cable, the keyboard extension cord and the iPod Shuffle dock are all in position for easy plugging in. I believe I've mentioned but I'll repeat the keyboard extension cord is hanging down with the bundle of wires heading onto the bookcase so all I have to do to hook it up is unplug the keyboard cable from the USB hub and plug it into that. The mouse is plugged into the keyboard as well, so that lowers the ammount of cables going in.

I'm still debating with myself about plugging the Mac mini into the monitor's audio...Okay, decision time...Yes. I will. The PC can be a headphones thing from now on. The mini will be my media box anyway (Front Row FTW).

Speaking of Front Row, I'm totally excited about the Apple Remote. For some reason, the prospect of putting the little mini to sleep from across the room by holding the play button appeals.

I'll be taking pics of the mini in it's home and the monitor showing off the Leopard goodness as well as recording the promised unboxing video. Unlike most of these unboxings, mine will be done with fore-knowledge and preparation. I'll unbox it and plug it right into it's new home. The very model of efficiency.

Anyway, in other news, I've got soem new Converse Chuck Taylor All Star Hi-Tops. These new ones are a gorgeous navy blue. They also came with a nifty "POW" tote bag. No, not John McCain, a giant explosion...Hey, Giant Bomb! Damn I love that site. Sounds like it's blowing up July 7th or 8th.

I might show you these schmexy new shoes tomorrow with the pics of the mini.

Jens Out

For now.

Erm...Well, it's 16:10 at least

2008-06-13T14:22:00.003+01:00

Slight snag...I suspect because of the switcher. Anyway, my PC is now running at 1440 by 900. It's enough to show 720p video fullscreen, but everything's huge...And of course because it's analogue VGA it hardly looks pristine under the best of circumstances.

I really want to force it up to 1680 by 1050. I really can't see why the Switcher wouldn't be able to feed it, so I'm forced to conclude it's the computer being silly because it can't see the monitor directly.

If anyone has any ideas how to do hat, let me know. It's an ATi Card so yes, it is infected with Catalyst Control Centre...I did tell it that the monitor's native resolution (1680 by 1050) was it's maximum, but it seemed not to help. The option's still not there.

Maybe if I tell it the maximum is bigger than that...Nope, still doesn't give 1680 by 1050, though it did give one higher than that, 1600 by 1200.

Seriously...If you can help please do.

Jens Out.

Edit: On the bright side, Chicken Little is now playing the trailers and hot damn, the playback of the Blu-Ray at least looks gorgeous. And once I get my mini, that's all that will matter anyway.

HDCP is teh suck

2008-06-13T13:59:00.002+01:00

Jeez. All I want is to watch Chicken Little on Blu-Ray. I have all the necessary hardware and software, so it should be simple, shouldn't it? Well it's not, they all refuse to play nice with eachother and the HDCP keeps failing to initialise.

And so, the PC is having it's DVI privileges revoked. With any luck, moving it to VGA will finally allow me to watch. It should, because that's what the helper suggests, but since my graphics card only has DVI, I'll have to use an adapter, so who knows.

What this means in regards to my setup is that the shortest VGA cable is now running the shortest gap, the longest by far is running the longest gap and the beautifully long DVI cable is running from the monitor to where the mini will sit.

So the Mac mini gets the best hookup. Only fair I guess, it is going to be my primary system.

Jens Out

The new Setup in Pictures

2008-06-12T18:23:00.003+01:00

What's under the white on the screen? It's a secret.

WWDC: iPhones, MobileMe and a Big Cat in a Cold Country

2008-06-09T22:37:00.004+01:00

Wow, that OS X iPhone SDK stuff sure was one helluva Dog and Pony show. Nothing much new there except those cool little notifications apps can send you. That sounds cool my friends. Very cool.

Oh, and I want the AP app. It's free and will enable me to do skunk works reporting, which you can no doubt guess I would love to do.

From that, you have no doubt inferred I intend on using a device running Apple's OS X iPhone 2.0. And you'd be correct. Which neatly leads us to the big news from Steve's Keynote yesterday: iPhone 3G.

Well, it's damned pretty. The new plastic back looks nothing like those ugly mockups, it's a thing of beauty.

It's got 3G (As implied) for high-speed data access over-the-air, GPS for precise positional data, allowing breakthrough location-based apps like Loopt to give us a truly awesome experience. The battery offers 10 (Up from 8) hours of 2G talk and 5 hours of 3G talk, beating competing 3G devices by some 1.5-2 hours.

Aside from that, it's the same great phone it's always been. Same gorgeous front with the awesome 3.5" Multi-Touch display, same Home button and (upgraded) iPhone OS software.

And O2 have made my (And WizzKid's) day. The iPhone 3G will be available Pay/Go here in the UK. This means there is no reason I can't get one. As such, assuming O2 are nice and allow the Pay/Go-ers to buy on launch day (Oh yeah, July 11) along with the contract signers and the price for the 16GB is less than or equal to £329, I will be at my local Carphone Warehouse store (Just 10 minutes away) on launch day to pick mine up.

As for contract signers, O2 has dramatically improved the deal for you:

Very good deals there, I think you'll agree. The £30 tariff is weird. Yes, it's good the monthly cost now has a new bottom end, but the difference between the £30 and the £35 is so great the extra £5 is more than justified. Still, good if you're on a budget and mostly just want data.

Now, onto the next big thing from Steve's talk. MobileMe. Yes, the rumours were true. And MobileMe does indeed look like a huge improvement, Exchange for the rest of us. With MobileMe, I'll be able to keep my desktop (The Mac mini I mean. I can of course do it on a PC too, but I'm transitioning to an Apple oriented environment) and my phone (iPhone 3G 16GB in Special White Version) in constant sync, all over the air.

That's e-mail, contacts, calendar, photos, bookmarks, the whole deal. Nice.

Furthermore, it will enable me to share my photos from iPhoto and to some extent my videos from iMovie. And all of this...With my jensonb(at)mac(dot)com e-mail address.

I knew it was a good idea to get in on that early. Best part is, my .Mac trial will be automagically upgraded to a MobileMe trial in early July, so I'll run out the trial period in MobileMe. Then, I'll be buying the 1 year 20GB (Yes, they doubled the storage) for the new prie of £59 - down £10. Awesome.

And you know. It was kind of important I move to an all-new e-mail account anyway. My Hotmail was set up for me some time ago. Probably over a decade and I've used it ever since. And I've never used folders. It's a mess. Windows Live Mail (The desktop app) allows me to easily search all the e-mails, but seriously...Change was needed.

So now I'm in my ultra-tidy new @mac.com e-mail account and I love it. Much better UI as well.

I recommend all my friends reading this now begin to use my @mac.com address for all personal communication with me.

And finally, Steve has revealed there is indeed a 10.6 being previewed, it's called Snow Leopard. I for one like that name, it's befitting of this release which is said to focus on giving OS X a smaller footprint and optimisig it, for example making it work better with multiple cores.

All very exciting stuff.

Jens Out

Fast times at Moscone Centre Junior High

2008-06-06T17:15:00.002+01:00

I've extensively updated my WWDC '08 Speculation post. You can review all my predictions for the keynote, the event and the period around it by visiting the link, or review the newest information below:

"Rumoured pricing (UK) has the iPhone selling subsidised on contracts from as little as free, up through £100. Macworld UK is suggesting the phone will sell unsubsidised on a Pay/Go tariff at the current £269/£329 price points (16GB/32GB or 8GB/16GB)."

"the 3G iPhone will match the existing model in general design and material choice, though it's size may have marginally decreased."

"From there, Steve will move on to the software powering iPhone 2nd Gen and iPhone black/white - as well as existing iPhones and iPod touches. That OS is now called OS X iPhone. Expect this section to give details on the AppStore as well as new software features. Highly unlikely Steve will go back over the SDK itself, more on that will follow in the sessions.

Expect Steve to announce launch apps including some of those we've already seen."

"Expect revamp of look and feel - the web interface I mean - in line with the recent .Mac Mail revamp, expect some more cross-platform uses, possibly a free version, possible capacity bumps and finally, expect integration with OS X iPhone. What form this final integration will take is debatable, likely it is syncing of and access to data - I'm sure you can imagine what forms this will take.

Unclear placement on this next stuff, but from what we see, it is worth mentioning. Mac OS X Leopard has been rechristened OS X Leopard, in line with the new name for iPhone OS, OS X iPhone. This probably means Apple will outline the differences and similarities going forward.

Rumours have suggested Apple may seed an OS X Snow Leopard (Technically, 10.6 under these rumours though I speculate even under that theory, Apple is dropping the 10.x.x numbering scheme in favour of OS X Name Version x.x, or even OS X Leopard Version x.x), an update in the same vein as OS X 10.1 back in the day - focusing on security, stability, general fixes and so on. Additionally, the release is said to drop PPC support and remove or de-emphasise Carbon.

I speculate these rumours are either correct and OS X Snow Leopard is the codename for the first update to OS X Leopard under a new naming system and release schedule/system or they are referring to a third OS X.

OS X touch would be a hybrid of OS X Leopard and OS X iPhone, combining the mobile platform's touch control roots with more of the raw power of the flagship OS for what I am calling iNewton, but you might call Mac touch. Yes, the Mac Tablet. I speculate Apple will reveal the iNewton and its OS X touch OS here, preparing developers for it by talking about it in sessions & the keynote and also seeding a developers' preview ready for a full unveiling and release details/release this comign January. This version would remove Carbon entirely as speculated.

That said, if Snow Leopard is, as others believe, an OS X Mac (As I am now calling the flagship OS as a line in light of the new naming scheme for the OS X iPhone line - to that end Apple would be advised to give individual OS X iPhone releases small mammal names) release, named OS X Snow Leopard, Is till believe it will include pervasive Multi-Touch based on the OS X iPhone line and be destined to power an iNewton because of this. This version would include the Carbon tools, but Apple's own apps would all move to Cocoa/Cocoa touch."

"As for the Mac mini's belated updated, the predictions I initially posted with regards to the update itself remain unchanged, but I now speculate it may occur at WWDC after all. Rumours suggest Apple wished to unveil new MacBooks at WWDC but has been forced to delay by Intel. I speculate Apple will move the MacBook updates to last year's consumer desktop update timeframe (August) in a straight swap with this year's due desktop updates (Mac mini and Mac Pro)

To put it simply, I think Apple was planning to update the MacBooks here and the Macs Pro and mini in August and may now be doing them the other way around.

It remains possible both lines will go without updates."

Yes, it's that time again

2008-06-05T20:56:00.004+01:00

Got some specific updates for you with regards to the 3G iPhone in the UK. First up, 9 to 5 Mac (The darling of the Apple Rumours Community) is reporting that Macworld UK believes new iPhone buyers, signing an 18 month contract, will pay as little as £100 for the handset. Even that those on that crazy top-tier tariff will get the phone for free.

Existing iPhone owners will be encouraged to update, signing extensions to their contracts (18 or 24 Months) in exchange for a free upgrade to the 3G model. Needless to say, all the UK iPhone users I've seen commenting are chuffed to bits.

More excitingly (For me at the very least), O2 is apparently preparing to sell the iPhone to Pay as You Go customers - like me. The price? Starting at £269. If that's a 16GB 3G iPhone, I'm buying one, no question.

If it's an 8GB 3G iPhone...Well, I dunno...I certainly will buy a 3G iPhone if I can get it on Pay/Go or unlocked, but if that's 8GB, I may or may not pay the extra for the 16GB. For one thing, I need it to be a better upgrade to the iPod touch. For another, I want some room for iTunes movies. Zoolander must be on that thing.

For those paying attention to my fledgling "Studio in a Bedroom for less than £1000" project, I've decided that rather than hunting out a high quality USB or FireWire (The latter preferred, I initially wanted iSight even though it's been discontinued but it proved hard to source at a reasonable price), I'm going to hook my miniDV camcorder up via FireWire and use that. It will probably work out better anyway, with advanced features like zoom and a screen I can use to monitor what it's looking at - I'll be doing the filming away from the desk.

I've even decided where I'll put it and where I'll position myself for filming. On that subject, if anyone's interested in creating a 30 Second looping abstract background, let me know.

The english exam today was a breeze by the way. And it gave me a chance to spend 45 minutes raving about Obama.

Finally, I'm announcing that Multiplayer Magazine's host has been chosen.

Jens Out

It's done

2008-06-04T15:38:00.002+01:00

Well folks, I've got it.

You can now reach me at jensonb (at) mac (dot) com.

I'm migrating my online identity over to the new address in the coming months. As of now, all my main memberships have moved to this address.

I'll be propagating it to friends and family next.

Jens Out

Now the Dust is Settling

2008-06-04T14:02:00.004+01:00

First up, it's over. Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic Nomination for President of the United States. I'm elated. Obama has been my man throughout this election and in fact I think that right now, he's my favourite ever politician. Surpassing even Lincoln and JFK.

He stands for hope, for change. He's the most inspirational leader I've ever seen. When he talks, I can't help but feel reverence and, yes, hope. Now we just need Hillary in the Veep spot, John Edwards* for AG and we can go win this thing.

I've been listening to some of the rubbish McCain has been spouting lately...It amazes me how much I loathe that guy. From what I'd been told, he was a Republican like Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Republican. But every time McCain opens his mouth, all I hear is hate.

A man who wants to continue the Conflict in Iraq despite the fact that it's a self-creating conflict. The insurgents are pissed because we're still there McCain. If we leave, they'll be less of a problem, even stop. That's not going to happen with us there.

Which calls to mind another thing I hate about American media and Republicans. It seems they think that Supporting the Troops is the same as Agreeing with the War. It's not. It's like how they think supporting the President is the same as Patriotism. In fact, supporting the President when he's doing a bad job is the opposite. The US Constitution encourages us to do something about a failing President.

On a related note, it offends me when ex-army politicians criticise those who did not serve. Not everyone can or should join the Armed Forces, that doesn't mean they're not qualified to comment, or even command.

Anyway, now that's out of the way, it's Giant Bomb time. Exciting news from the last Bombcast, Brad Shoemaker and Vinny Caravella are now members of the Giant Bomb Editorial staff. Caravella gives the site an acomplished AV professional for producing video content. Shoemaker represents a valuable addition to the writing staff with lots of experience, talent and many fans.

Including me, Brad rocks. Vinny too.

I can't tell you how much I love Giant Bomb. Way awesome.

Apple has added movies to iTunes UK. Aww yeah. I can get my Enchanted and Zoolander on, yo. Only thing is, I now kind of want an AppleTV again, for to get in on the HD rentals. I might be able to seel my dad on putting one in the living room for that purpose.

Speaking of Apple, rumours abound that Apple is set to seed OS X 10.6 at WWDC, ready for a January (MacWorld) launch. This version is said to be Intel-only and I expect it to incorporate Multi-Touch (More than the trackpad stuff we have, I'm talking pervasive) in preparation for a Multi-Touch tablet launching at the same time.

Beating Microsoft to market by easily a year, probaly 2, with a Multi-Touch "Desktop" OS release.

Meanwhile, an August event is rumoured to be in the works by Apple. Most of those parroting the rumour suggest it will intro the aforementioned Tablet and update the MacBooks (I can't imagine they mean the Pros as well, that would be one crowded event...I guess they expect that on Monday?). I stand by my prediction of a Tablet in January alongside OS X 10.6.

Thing is, that event would be the timeframe for the Mac mini update. But with the MacBooks being the subject of the event, would Apple bump the mini at the same time as they did last year alongside the iMac or, as some have speculated, intro a MacBook mini?

If Apple is going to give August over to portables this year, it's possible they've swapped the portables with the desktops thanks to the Intel delay on Montevina. You know when the portables were expected to get their day in the sun?

WWDC.

Prediction: Mac Pro and Mac mini updates may come week of WWDC. Possible no Keynote mention. Reason: Lack of other available periods any time soon.

I hope so. I really want them updated before I buy.

But wait there's more. And you thought I was done.

All this coverage of .Mac becoming MobileMe has gotten me to take a look at the service. I have to say, much of it looks pretty cool. And since it will already have been updated when I get my mini, I intend to trial and maybe even buy the service if I like it.

Only thing that bugs me is I'll probably get the lame @me.com e-mail address, rather than the vanity @mac.com I really want.

Mind you...I could combat that by starting the trial early, surely? It is 60 days, so I have time.

I might have to think about that actually.

I tell you what appeals most to me: mounting the iDisk. I've been looking for net-based storage for some time and for me, capacity is secondary. I want it to work like an HDD. And with my Mac mini and MobileMe, it will be integrated right into the Finder.

I call win. I keep saying I call things, it's cos I'm following the election...And playing Sudoku on Brain Training where I "call" a square for a number once I think it can only be that number. On a similar note, I've taken to holding a biro, pointiing with it and tapping a lot. I picked that up from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

I don't even use biros. I write with a Parker fountain pen.

Lastamly, I promise, here's one from the my plans files. I'm currently looking into the prospects of launching a video show using a virtual backdrop. This would be powered by the Mac and may or may not be a part of Multiplayer. if not, it would integrate with this blog (Or my personal site, should I ever launch one).

For that reason, I'm looking into high-quality webcams (Must be Mac compatible) and comign up with some rough ideas about the virtual set. Currently, I'm tnking abstract and animated as opposed to anything photographic or stupid like that.

In an oddly organic throwback...It seems Giant Bomb are doing something similar with their video stuff. though way more advanced. All green screen and shizz. They're reason: space. A green screen set uses way less space. My reason is similar in that I don't even have an pffce, just my room.

Jens (Finally - Ed) Out

*My second favourite living politician BTW and fourth of all time

Calling It

2008-06-04T00:19:00.004+01:00

Okay, I'm prepared to call the Mac mini 2008 Update for August. Prediction: new CPUs, new motherboards, new graphics (Newer GMA), larger hard drives possible new design. May be modular.

Next, we're calling Barack Obama the Democratic Nominee for President of the United States, sitting as he does just 10 Delegates shy with 30 Pledged Delegates up for grabs total tonight in two Primaries he is believed to have bought and paid for.

With that out of the way, we can move on to the forthcoming Giant Bombcast in which Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis are expected to reveal something major about Giant Bomb (dot) com I have a suspicion about what it is.

First, I'm half hoping, half expecting, the duo to announce registration and potentially the forums for the site are open, or opening this week. This would be great, the Giant Bomb fans are hugely devoted but currently the main communication medium for us in comments.

Forums would allow the community to blossom. And for once, I would be around at the incepton of a multiformat games website's forums meaning I wouldn't get lost amidst the kind of crap at GameSpot and IGN (I could never be bothered digging through that rubbish only to have the snobs snub me).

Secondly, with a probability of 65% or better, I expect the pair to announce a launch date for the Giant Bomb site - the day they're "blowing up".

Furthermore, I'd say this date will be at most 14 days ahead of E3 - which starts July 15. That is, I epect it to be launched no later than the start of July. I'm hoping for late June, but I'm realistic.

On an unrelated side note, Demi Lovato kicks ass.

Now then, I have an update on Multiplayer Magazine. My partner in crime WizzKid and I have made a decision about what will power the site and I have made a choice about hosting.

As time marches on, we'll be discussing it more and more. One of our current to dos is having our graphics team design a logo and setting a colour scheme for the site. Meanwhile, I'm going to be using some of my upcoming free time to begin getting the Multiplayer Content Specifications written up. I've written content philosophies before, but this one is entirely new - the previous one was based primarily on the first, itself fairly standard though with some unique twists.

The MCS will be pretty comprehensive, since it will be necessary to provide guidelines for all content types.

Anyway, I'm pretty tired. Night.

Jens Out

Apple Rumour Sites say the darndest things

2008-06-02T02:11:00.003+01:00

Mac Rumors are reporting that Kevin Rose has posted a video blog about a rumour he's heard. First, he mentions the 3G iPhone will likely cost the same as the current iPhone does now (We'll come back to that), then he goes on to a new rumour. Namely, he speculates there will be a $200 (I imagine listed as $199) low-end iPhone announced alongside it.

That would be my iPhone black/white rumour. Rose's price seems awfully damned low though. Like...Wow. That's half-freaking-price.

As to his specific comments about the 3G iPhone's price, I'm inclined to agree. Apple's not stupid, they know they need to bring in the new phone at the current price or risk putting people off. On some updated products, they drop the price (2nd Generation MacBook for example). I doubt that will happen here, but we can assume current prices.

I find it funny that Kevin Rose, the Digg guy, has apparently got more sources for leaked Apple news than a site called Mac Rumors. I mean, what the hell?

Meanwhile, what sources Mac Rumors do have are speculating that the 16GB 3G iPhone will be the base model...But it'll stay at its current price. That's $499! That means there will be no $399 iPhone any more - contradicting Rose's insinuations for one thing and also just seeming like bad damned idea.

Aple tried that iPhone starting at $499 thing before, you 'member? Didn't go well.

Meanwhile, they suggest a 32GB iPhone will be intro'd. At - wait for it - $699. No, that's not a typo. Six-hundred-and-ninety-nine dollars. As in, $100 more than they've ever charged. As in, $300 more than the current bse iPhone, $200 more than the top end.

And further, they're continuing to push this idea that it'll be in the leaked plastic shells I say are destined for the budget iPhone. Am I the only one here who thinks the present iPhone design is brilliant? Why is everyone in such a hurry to believe Apple are changing it for such a clearly inferior one in the form of these plastic shells which are so obviously more suited to a cheaper device?

All of this seems totally ludicrous and it is for that reason we can only pray they're just being stupid, or their sources are anyway. None of this sounds good at all.

Jens Out

Twitter

2008-05-31T22:23:00.003+01:00

I'm now fairly regularly Twittering, so here's the link to my Twitter page:

Me at Twitter

I might put the Tweets in the sidebar here. I'm not sure, there's an awful lot of stuff in there...

I'll think about it and get back to you. If you have any input, don't hesitate to comment. I always enjoy comments. They give me proof I'm not talking to myself and the one person I know reads the blog.

You know who you are.

Take me away,
Jens

Update: I went ahead and added it anyway. It's not very big.

I tell you what I love about Twitter: I can post to the internets from anywhere I have mobile phone signal This means I can tweet whilst on break at work and all sorts. Surprisingly fun.

WWDC '08: Steve Jobs Keynote Predictions

2008-05-31T21:26:00.009+01:00

It's that time again. I'll be putting all my ideas as to the content of the opening keynote address of Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference - to be delivered once again by Steve Jobs, Apple CEO - in this post.

First, Steve will unveil iPhone 2G, which will - humorously enough - be primarily about adding 3G cellular technology. It'll also add GPS and I expect Apple will double the offered capacities from 8/16GB to 16/32GB.

Update: Rumoured pricing (UK) has the iPhone selling subsidised on contracts from as little as free, up through £100. Macworld UK is suggesting the phone will sell unsubsidised on a Pay/Go tariff at the current £269/£329 price points (16GB/32GB or 8GB/16GB).

Rampant internet speculation based on "leaked" shots of the new iPhone's body (Tellingly, no shots exist with the electronics inside the shell) suggests the new iPhone will sport a plastic, glossy rear. I tend to follow more recent and more reliable suggestions that the 3G iPhone will match the existing model in general design and material choice, though it's size may have marginally update: decreased.

On a purely speculative basis, the approximate existing iPhone guts may continue to be offered in these new plastic shells as an iPhone with the nano suffix or something (I speculate iPhone white and iPhone black) - a more budget oriented iPhone.

From there, Steve will move on to the software powering iPhone 2nd Gen and iPhone black/white - as well as existing iPhones and iPod touches. Major update: that OS is now called OS X iPhone. Expect this section to give details on the AppStore as well as new software features. Highly unlikely Steve will go back over the SDK itself, more on that will follow in the sessions.

Expect Steve to announce launch apps including some of those we've already seen.

Finally, Steve will One More Thing .Mac. Update: Expect revamp of look and feel - the web interface I mean - in line with the recent .Mac Mail revamp, expect some more cross-platform uses, possibly a free version, possible capacity bumps and finally, expect integration with OS X iPhone. What form this final integration will take is debatable, likely it is syncing of and access to data - I'm sure you can imagine what forms this will take.

Unclear placement on this next stuff, but from what we see, it is worth mentioning. Mac OS X Leopard has been rechristened OS X Leopard, in line with the new name for iPhone OS, OS X iPhone. This probably means Apple will outline the differences and similarities going forward.

Rumours have suggested Apple may seed an OS X Snow Leopard (Technically, 10.6 under these rumours though I speculate even under that theory, Apple is dropping the 10.x.x numbering scheme in favour of OS X Name Version x.x, or even OS X Leopard Version x.x), an update in the same vein as OS X 10.1 back in the day - focusing on security, stability, general fixes and so on. Additionally, the release is said to drop PPC support and remove or de-emphasise Carbon.

I speculate these rumours are either correct and OS X Snow Leopard is the codename for the first update to OS X Leopard under a new naming system and release schedule/system or they are referring to a third OS X.

OS X touch would be a hybrid of OS X Leopard and OS X iPhone, combinging the mobile platform's stouch control roots with more of the raw power of the flagship OS for what I am calling iNewton, but you might call Mac touch. Yes, the Mac Tablet. I speculate Apple will reveal the iNewton and its OS X touch OS here, preparing developers for it by talking about it in sessions & the keynote and also seeding a developers' preview ready for a full unveiling and release details/release this comign January. This version would remove Carbon entirely as speculated.

That said, if Snow Leopard is, as others believe, an OS X Mac (As I am now calling the flagship OS as a line in light of the new naming scheme for the OS X iPhone line - to that end Apple would be advised to give individual OS X iPhone releases small mammal names) release, named OS X Snow Leopard, Is till believe it will include pervasive Multi-Touch based on the OS X iPhone line and be destined to power an iNewton ebcase of this. This versio would include the Carbon tools, but Apple's own aps would all move to Cocoa/Cocoa touch.

As for the Mac mini's belated updated, the predictions I initially posted with regards to the update itself remain unchanged, but I now speculate it may occur at WWDC after all. Rumours suggest Apple wished to unveil new MacBooks at WWDC but has been forced to delay by Intel. I speculate Apple will move the MacBook updates to last year's consumer desktop update timeframe (August) in a straight swap with this year's due desktop updates (Mac mini and Mac Pro).

To put it simply, I think Apple was planning to update the MacBooks here and the Macs Pro and mini in August and may now be doing them the other way around.

It remains possible both lines will go without updates.

Update: Courtesy of TUAW we now have reason to believe the Mac mini could well be EOL'd today, replaced by a similar product using (As speculated previous) an enclosure similar to AppleTV and Time Capsule/Airport Extreme Base Station. No word on pricing, but it would sport an optical drive and be pitched heavily as a new developer's tool.This make sense thanks to the influx of new Apple developers owing to the OS X iPhone SDK - since iPhone apps are made on Macs, Apple needs a new, affordable Mac to be available so they can get making them apps fast and cheap.

Treat this with a grain of salt. I imagine TUAW's images, whilst they may be based o a real product Apple is conceiving (Since it makes a whole lot of sense), are faked.

Live Blog: The Setup Renovation

2008-05-29T10:14:00.003+01:00

http://www.scribblelive.com/Thread.aspx?Id=1031

Update: All finished now. The hi-fi ended up moving up a shelf. The Wii has moved about 8 inches to the right to accommodate the VGA Switcher's new home. Between them is Wii Remote Number 2. On top of the Switcher is the Mouse Dock and Wii Remote 1 in its charging station. Behind the Switcher, angled through the gap at the side of the book case is my USB fan.

Beside the Wii on the right is currently the Eee, but that gap is eventually the Mac mini's home. To the right of that gap are the Wii games. Most of the Wii Accessories moved into the Wii Games' old home, the others have entirely new homes. For example, my 3 wheels (The Ferrari multi-format one and the two Wii Remote shells - including the official Wii Wheel) are in that redundant PS2's old home.

I swapped the power strips so the 6 is at the back powering everything, the 4 now upfront for charging things.

Final big change, I moved the monitor back and the speakers forward, so there's now way more space on the desk.

It's a pretty nice setup. I'll have some pictures soon...

...Maybe.

Updating The Setup

2008-05-29T00:16:00.002+01:00

Last post I mentioned my plan to redo the setup here just to unclutter the cables situation. Well I've decided to go a touch more drastic. I'm going to strip everything on the desk and the bookcase beside it out (Excluding some stuff on the bookshelf which will absolutely not be moving). That comprises the PC and all the related devices, the monitor, the printer, the VGA switcher, the Composite > VGA box, the Wii, the hi-fi & its speakers, all of my games & DVDs and the total removal of the redundant PS2.

It'll probably also require the reorganisation of a couple of crates and I'll be moving some of the Wii accessories (Though most will superficially remain where they are - hopefully neater though).

All of this is leading to the eventual installment of my new "desktop", the Mac mini. I put desktop in quote marks because it's actually going to sit on the bookshelf by the Wii, replacing the hi-fi which will move up a shelf or down two.

The other big news is that I might ditch the Dell after all. But only if my parents agree to pay me some money for the add-ons of this year in exchange for releasing it to them (Value £184, I'd hope for £150 from them). To recap, those add-ons are a Blu-Ray reader and a better graphics card.

I'd use the £150 to buy an Elgato eyeTV Diversity (Dual tuner Mac USB TV Tuner dongle) - that would replace the Dazzle*Stick as my TV, I'd let them have that...I hate it anyway. That would only cost £79.95, so I'd spend the rest on a big USB external hard drive - 400 or 500 GB. Half of that drive would be Time Machine for the Mac mini's drive and half would be additional media storage, mostly for TV recordings.

This would basically be me set. Yes, I'd lose Blu-Ray watching in my room, but I would still be able to do it elsewhere - either on the big living room TV or wherver they put the Dell. I'd also lose PC gaming, but the PC games I play most nowadays are things like Grid Wars 2 (Which has a Mac version) and older first person shooters (I keep going back to the First Person Shooters of 2003-2005 for some reason). Even Penny Arcade Adventures will run on the Mac mini!

Plus...I plan on getting a 360 anyway. So between Wii, that and the (Admittedly somewhat limited) games that work on the mini, I'll be set.

Speaking of Wii, MOHH2 is kickass.

I'm thinking of Liveblogging the rebuild from my Eee...Mainly as an experiment with livblogging, but also as a way to vent any frustrations with cables or whatever.

Anyway, that's all for now. Catch you later.

Goodbye papa, please pray for me,
Jens

Whew

2008-05-28T01:26:00.003+01:00

Well folks, it is done.

All published posts on this blog are now tagged. There are probably some errors and misses in there, but whatever. It'll do for now.

I'm really pumped about my Mac mini...I get it 3 weeks today, after doing 7 exams. I was watching loads of videos about it on YouTube earlier. I'm so excited.

Speaking of, I'm planning to strip out the desk area soon, re-wire everything and get the whole setup neatened up. Yes, I'm leaving before mid-August, but the mess back there is just bothering me.

I'm totally going to convince the parents I need a new desk for Scotland. Needs to be bigger for this monitor for one thing - there's just not enough free space on here.

I'll be doing a video unboxing and setup of the Mac mini. Should be fun.

I'm doing my WWDC Steve Jobs Keynote Predictions way early. But the post will get updates as I get more information closer to the event. My big hope? Mac mini update. Not because I'm unhappy with the current specs (Though the HDD could be bigger), more because I want it to be just before I buy so it can't be just after I buy. Which would be a bummer.

Baby bye bye bye,
Jens

Housecleaning

2008-05-23T01:15:00.002+01:00

Switched to a new design you may have noticed, it reflects the gradual change in tone up in here. I'm also currently in the process of tagging all the posts in the archive, and since I don't have any exams until June 3rd now, I should be getting that done in the next week or so.

I'm now on Twitter, dunno what I'm going to do with it, but I imagine I'll find some use for micro-blogging in the future. Follow me if you use it, but right now it's probably not worth joining just to follow me.

I'm hoping to get around to those exam reviews next week, I have some issues with all three I've done so far so stay tuned for that.

I finally enabled Advanced Desktop (Vanilla Xandros) on my Eee the other day, so I've been kind of geeking out. That's how I roll, yo.

Nintendo are bringing a turquoise DS Lite out. Hot damn. That might be the thing that makes me upgrade. That thing is lush.

Rumours abound Apple will unveil a 3G iPhone soon (Like, within 3 weeks) which will go on sale shortly thereafter worldwide. The most exciting rumour is that it may be sold contract-free at the fll price, with carriers offering rebates (Similar to the one offered by Carphone Warehouse and O2 recently) to drive contract sales. Well if I can get a 3G 16GB iPhone for £269, contract-free, then I might just have to go for that instead of the Sony.

I'd be more aprehensive about an 8GB, it wouldn't be a big enough upgrade on the touch.

Right, I'm off to spec up a computer to drool over at VooDooPC's website. I'll finish the upgrades to the blog soon.

Goodbye my Coney Island baby
Jens

Have a crazy dream

2008-05-06T21:45:00.002+01:00

If you're me, then you're writing this blog posting. And if that's the case, you have many ideas for the future, big plans. Cos your a visionary. Insane, yes. But as a result, a visionary. You've got innumerable plans, dozens of ideas.

The least of which is a crowd-sourced games magazine. But there are bigger ideas which springboard off of that one. There are ideas for years in the future. Entertainment. It's all about the entertainment.

See, for me, creativity and grand vision is just a way of life. It's how I roll.

Talk shows on the internet. Books. Businesses merging. Empires spanning so many media. Theme parks. Music. All that jazz.

At the end of the day, it's like being a kid way past when most people stop. But it's about carrying the conviction with me to make my dreams happen. Not just for me though. Almost all of them are for everyone.

But even I can't believe my latest one.

Freesat just launched.

And now...I kinda want a TV channel.

And I think I could make it work too. That, combined with the fact I sorely intend to launch one some day - and not decades from now either - is the scary part.

Have a crazy dream and watch as crazy things happen.

We now return to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Don't cry for me,
Jens

On Mobile Telephony and the Months Ahead

2008-04-27T23:16:00.004+01:00

Mbile Telephony

So I've finally picked out my new phone. Amazingly, it's a Sony Ericsson Slider. Why's that amazing you ask? Well, I hate most sliders and I hate most Sony Ericssons. Ironically, the only Sony Ericssons I do like are sliders. Some of the clamshells are okay.

So which one you ask? The W910i. Not really because of the Walkman, I have 3 iPods, but more because as a piece of kit, it suits my needs and it's a good upgrade on the RAZR.

It's a bit of a looker. If I ever end up somewhere with decent 3G coverage, I might even try sticking a 3 Sim Card in it to try and get in on some of that mobile TV love. I really want portable TV. If I need to, I'll buy one of those portable FreeView TVs...Speaking of, someone should put a hard drive in one of those.

Motor Racing

In other great news, Jenson Button came home an awesome 6th from 13th on the grid, setting the 5th fastest lap, reaffirming the point that Honda Racing F1 are back and their car is a quick racer, even if it's ultimate pace (IE, 1 lap pace) is not brilliant. They've shown they can mix it with Renault and Williams. Our faith has paid off. I'm very, very happy.

Multiplayer

On a brief Multiplayer note, we may have a graphics man lined up. Stay tuned. I would however like at this stage to announce that I am partnering with WizzKid, of WizzHack.co.uk, for the development of the Multiplayer Magazine website. WizzKid is a supremely talented web developer and I'm confident he can put together a brilliant package for Multiplayer.

The Months Ahead

GTA IV is released this coming Tuesday. Assuming someone's in to collect my brother's package, expect to hear from me about it - and the Xbox 360 being relocated to my room for the duration fo my brother's exams. He has more time consuming revision etc. than I will.

You'll probably hear from me again the following day when we finally get the final details of our exams and important dates, like when Study Leave starts. From then, expect content to be as normal only until Study Leave, at which stage it will be throttled (Though not, I imagine, shelved) until June 17th. But I intend to provide extensive coverage of my Mac mini's arrival and setup.

As to content in the exam period, I might post my impressions of how the exam went and review the exams themselves, something which I feel is sorely lacking. Exams are sorely in need of criticism. I'm planning to supply it.

After the exam period, I'm considering migrating this blog into a full-blown personal website, featuring pages dedicated to showing what hardware and software I use, an extended bio, dedicated links and contact page etc. I will, after all, have 2 months of free time and a brand new Mac with iWeb on it.

Also, below is the first in my series of music-themed signoffs. Anyone who can guess where each one's from (Song title, artist) gets the standard Jensonb reward.

That is to say, a cookie.

Going crazy and we're out,
Jens

On Macs

2008-04-25T20:40:00.003+01:00

So, recently I've been using the generic "Mac" rather than referencing a specific product when talking about my nex computer. In all honesty, it's because I've been spending a lot of time assessing the pros and cons of the current models and several now defunct ones.

It's no secret that I got pissed at Apple and decided not to spend the money on their MacBook Air. At any rate, my Asus Eee PC is serving me well as a lightweight portable computer, so it would be redundant.

Then I thought about going back to the MacBook for a while, but I scrapped that idea for financial reasons - that is, to free up money for a Halo 3 Xbox 360, which I'll need for once I'm no longer living with my brother.

So then I started thinking about going for a used Mac. I spent a while looking at prices on the old sunflower iMac (Scrapping it for logistical reasons in the end) before focusing on PowerBook G4s. I was very close to deciding for sure on one of them, then I realised I really wanted Leopard, and I wanted it to run well.

So, I thought to myself, how can I get a cheap Mac which will still run Leopard well?

Simple. For just £80-£100 more than I was lookign to spend on a PowerBook, I can get a Mac mini Base Unit. I know what you're thinking, but I've studied the specs and it's perfectly adequate for what I want to do with it. It'll sit happily atop my Windows PC and it's main jobs will be iTunes and making Multiplayer.

That said, it's easy to imagine me switching over to the near-silent Mac mini as my day-to-day computer, only powering up the noisy Windows box for games or watching TV or Blu-Rays. The Mac will certainly be my iPlayer/YouTube box though, thanks to an as-yet unacknowledged bug with Flash Player which prevents full screen FLV playback under Vista (Business) under certain conditions.

In order to finance the Mac, I'll be doing overtime to ensure my next 2 paycheques are in excess of £200. The one coming is already overtimed to about £180, and I've got a £44 overtime shift a week on Monday. Helping out is a £49 tax rebate I'm owed. That's £273 right there. That means I only need to work enough to earn £181 the following month in order to buy the Mac and iWork '08. But I'll probably once again try and push it over the £200 mark to ensure there's a bit of overflow and to prepare for the Xbox - itself necesitating £220. But since my exams will be over by then, I'll be abe to do more overtime.

Well that's the plan as it stands now. I'm eagerly anticipating the move now. I can't wait to pt together an all-new rig. The changes to this one since the Dell was installed are virtually 0, despite adding the Wii. Basically the only changes not related to the devices are the onitor and moving the Hi-Fi speakers.

I've got to get to work coming up with a complete new setup. Honestly, I expect to need to buy a TV as a second screen. On a bigger desk with more shelf and desktop space. Ths one's already cramped.

Thing is though...Like most men...For me, buying a TV is way awesome.

Jens Out

On Magazines

2008-04-25T19:51:00.005+01:00

Updates on The Crowd-Sourced Video Gaming Magazine. Resurrect the Print Media this Christmas.

New and likely final title is Multiplayer Magazine. Still shooting for release around December, but work is not scheduled to begin in earnest until after GCSEs are over, maybe even slightly later than that to allow time for a relocation to Scotland my end (Though partners could easily start work then). I do aim to have a more elegant setup in the North so production will be regular.

By that I mean, when the Mac (More details to follow) is installed here (Shortly after June 13. Likely June 18, 1 day after my final exam), there will be three video inputs going into this monitor, 2 audio and a third audio feed into the Hi-Fi. A month later I need to fit an Xbox in. The move will allow me to redesign the entire setup in line with the number of units. Bear in mind, this setup is jury-rigged from an original standard desktop setup.

Now, although full production on my end is not due to begin until after the move, I will be producing at least one Graphics-free/Layout Only issue before the end of July, labeled as a beta/betas. They will however likely feature screenshots. I'll be hoping to get some feedback on the layout from you guys and if a graphics guy hasn't joined the team by then, hopefully it'll encourage one to.

Now then, some information exclusive to the blog. It's about content. Multiplayer Magazine is Cross-Platform, or Multiformat if you prefer. But it's not multiformat like EDGE or EGM are. It's completely multiformat. Any platform you can play games on living or dead is fair game.

Columns will feature in Multiplayer Magazine. Users can submit Editorials to the Editor for him to Review for Inclusion just like any other content. But I will also be giving recurring slots to people of interest, including website owners, developers or journalists. Anyone who might have a story.

Obviously, some people are going to submit reviews of games which differ and both may be valid. A solution to this is going to be present in the Multiplayer Content Specifications (Little bit more on them in a mo). A system called, uncreatively, Second Opinions will give summaries of other writers' views in a side-panel alongside the main review. Readers who want to will be able to read Second Opinion reviews in full on a special section of the Multiplayer website.

Finally, the Multiplayer Content Specifications. Significant portions will be available to the public for the purpose of ensuring content meets publication standards. Sections which only relate to layout and editing will be omitted from public release. The Specifications will include the review scoring system from the reviewer's point of view, which will also be explained from a reader's point of view in each issue.

Any questions, drop me a line at the usual addresses.

Xbox LIVE, AOL and the Changing Face of the Internet

2008-04-14T23:12:00.003+01:00

And so today brings us news that intrepid geeks have found a way to trick BBC's iPlayer into working on the PS3 - to many a shout of "about bloody time someone did, damned Auntie". And what does this say about the state of the internet. Many would say not much. I say a lot.

As Sony and Microsoft rush to tell us their PLAYSTATION 3 and Xbox 360 are the place for entertainment, the place for internet features...Wii beat them both to the punch by simple virtue of being more friendly. Wii scored a major coup in being the first "Living Room Platform" other than the failed Windows Media Center Standard to get iPlayer support.

But why the Wii you ask? Simple. Microsoft, to address them first, wanted the content, but not the brand. Yes, they want their customers to be able to access iPlayer, but they want it to be called Xbox Media Stream or some such nonsense name as they come up with arbitrarily. BBC said no, Microsoft wouldn't do the deal.

And that kills iPlayer's chances on Xbox LIVE for the time being. Because Xbox LIVE is a subscription based, gated community web service. Does that sound familiar? It ought to.

Exhibit A, the world's foremost dead-in-the water internet boom company. America Online, Inc. AOL's entire business model was a subscription based, gated community web service. Yes, Microsoft has more strings to its bow, as does Xbox alone, but the fact is: Xbox LIVE is AOL.

What then of Sony, with their "open" free web system? Open my ass. iPlayer isn't officially on PS3 because Sony don't want to do the deal. They won't let the BBC open the service to their customers as it stands for arbritary technical reasons.

What the real reason is? I don't know. But face it, it can't be very good.

But Nintendo? BBC said "hey, we have this iPlayer, it's pretty popular...". Nintendo said "What's that Flash? Use 7 and we're there".

Then they got even chummier "if you want, we can work on a Wii Channel for your service, I think our customers would love an iPlayer Channel, our competitors would hate it and it's a good use of our downloadable software platform."

Auntie was like "Hell to the yes."

Nitendo? Totally Firefox (Well, Mozilla).

So who does that make Sony in this second internet war?

Arbitrary technical blocks on service customers want for purely political reasons? Come on, you know this.

They're being Microsoft.

To summarise:

Microsoft's Xbox LIVE: America Online, Inc.'s AOL
Sony's PLAYSTATION Network: Microsoft Web Services (Comprising Internet Explorer, MSN Group etc.)
Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection/WiiConnect24: Mozilla (/Firefox)

Jens Out

Powering dreams, one lap at a time

2008-03-21T22:15:00.003Z

What's the point in two posts in rapid succession? Why not just one? Two questions I refuse to answer to, so keep them to yourself.

After the Australian Grand Prix, I reflected on how well Honda Racing F1 had done there, hauling themselves up from an unpromising off season following a dismal 2007 to be the faster of the mid-field cars, even get one of their cars (The one not hit by an errant Toro Rosso) into a podium (On racing merit) position. Disqualification aside, it was epic.

And so, we turned to Malaysia (Birthplace of one of my friend's mothers in an pointlessly unrelated piece of trivia). And our jaws dropped further. Jenson went P9 in Free Practice 1. We were into the top ten pace!

Then, he knocked us all flat in Free Practice 2. In a low fuel run, Jenson hauled the Honda into P4, besting the McLaren (Fastest car over a single lap in the field) of Heikki Kovalainen!

And with rain predicted as almost and completely a certainty for qualifying and the race respectively, Jenson Button - the rain master - could well be on for a podium. And dare I say, challenge for the win?

But honestly, even finishing 4th would make me as happy as a kid with a big ice cream. All I can say is:

Come on Jenson!

Jens Out (For true this time)

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

2008-03-21T22:06:00.003Z

So, today, I went to Toys R Us.

I played a little Tux Racer on the Eee they had on display, then took the ticket to the checkout, shoved my card in the slot, entetered my pin, claimed my Eee and left. Took about 10 minutes total including some time ogling the Doctor Who stuff. Painless.

I've got it setup and I love it, It works like a charm. Been hitting up forums, the chatroom from Forumula1.net, watching YouTube, iPlayer and MP4s. Even chatting with my frinds via Microsoft's Windows Live network.

The biggest job was redoing Firefox using the Minifox theme, Tinymenu extension and moving the navigation toolbar contents into the menu toolbar, before removing the empty navigation toolbar. All done to maximise viewing space.

I also did away with the status bar as irrelevant.

Right now I'm letting it charge for a while because it's been taking a pounding since it achieved full charge at around 1 or 2 (I forget). I ran it to dead at about 4ish I think and ran from outlet power for a while, before allowing it to charge a bit, then punding it again.

It's pretty, small, light and it was dirt cheap.

Love it.

Jens Out

Epic: Honda are back

2008-03-17T23:03:00.005Z

Earlier this year, I worriedly posed the question:

"Does/will the Honda RA108 suck?"

Off the back of group testing in the off season, the answer was seeming like an emphatic yes. Honda were making overtures of a new aero package to be tested privately in Jerez, but we received little information on the results and basically no pictures.

So, Australia arrived and Honda fans settled ourselves in to watch the RA108 at least make mincemeat of the Super Aguris in the achingly poor RA107B/SA08. But then something amazing happened.

Jenson went P11.

Several times.

The Honda was on the midfield pace. Not just on it, just about leading it. We had been expecting to be behind the slowest midfielders.

For Honda fans, after last year, this was like winning the WDC and the WCC at once. We were sniffing points consistently this season and a decent qualifying saw RB go P11 and JB P13 (Later 10 and 12 after Glock was penalised. JB was on a P10 lap at the end of Q2, but a small mistake meant he was marginally slower than Rubens). Between them was, of all things, Fernando Alonso's Renault.

Although Jenson was eliminated at the start by Vettel, Rubens did well and could have taken P3 if not for an unfortunate series of events to do with the safety car.

But the result (DNF, DQ) doesn't matter. It's the pace. Honda is not slow. It's not even mediocre. It has some speed.

Racing speed, not qualifying speed like the BMW.

We're eying a double points finish in Malaysia. And if it rains, JB could well do P3.

Looks like this year will be way better than (The not bad) '03, but not as good as '05/'06. But after '07, it'll seem better than '06 and '04 put together. And it's a solid base for the Jenson Button/Ross Brawn Honda Racing F1 Three-Year title assault staring in '09.

Hamilton, watch your mirrors.

Jens Out

Digital Print Media

2008-03-12T21:22:00.003Z

More details on the project for which I am currently recruiting talent.

I'm looking to launch a successor to GizzedUp. Wanna Play? Magazine (Working Title) will be a multiplatform, digitally distributed video games magazine, exceeding the pages per issue of GizzedUp by a wide margin.

The magazine is to be laid out and exported to the widely used PDF format on industry standard Mac hardware running OS X (Version 5) Leopard, the OS for creative professionals and publishing using the successful publishing software Pages '08, a component of iWork '08.

Most exciting of all, the content of the magazine will be crowd-sourced, opening the pages to anyone to have their review, news coverage, editorial, recurring feature - whatever they choose to write - published for all to see, with their name or handle proudly displayed alongside.

The magazine will be issued no fewer than six times per year and up to thirteen (Content permitting).

Readers and contributors will be able to hit up The Work Board on the magazine's website to see what writing needs to be done (In a general sense, the work board will simply list "Review for Issue X" or "News Writeups", with contributors choosing what specifically to write about. The board will be updated to include a list of which games or news items or so on have already had articles selected for publication) and with any luck discuss the magazine and gaming in general on the forum.

This winter, I'm getting back into the (digital) print media.

And yes, I know. About time too...

(PS: This Blog will live on though)

ASUS To supply my next desktop too?

2008-03-12T20:44:00.003Z

ASUS announced the stylish and powerful Essentio CS5110 - a silent-running multimedia PC with Intel Core2 Duo processing, 250-500GB of storage, up to 4GB of RAM, a 256MB nVidia 8600 GT (Not the finest card ever, but capable) and a blue-glowing (Wii-style) slim slot-loading Blu-Ray optical drive.

No word on pricing, but if the price is right, this beauty, or an updated variant of it:

Will undoubtedly be the replacement for my aging Dell Dimension 5150.

I had considered a Mac Pro, but I'll be paying for it with EMA and I do want to, you know, buy it before 2012.

Jens Out

Wanted Ad

2008-03-11T21:39:00.005Z

Wanted: Graphics Designer
Purpose: Designing logos, symbols and background images for upcoming video game focused project.
Details: This will include one-off work designing a brand symbol/logo, layout imagery (EG, content banners, tabs, section logos), but also recurring work designing colourful, but not distracting, high-resolution imagery to appear behind text. Photographic editing, or photoshopping if you prefer, possible, but not definite.

Web Developer Position Filled

Apply for either position by contacting me, for example via e-mail at:
paulwbdouglas@hotmail.com
paulwbdouglas@gmail.com
paulwbdouglas@yahoo.com

Jeff Gerstmann is back and he's got a new trick

2008-03-07T23:27:00.004Z

Jeff Gerstmann is ten times as slick as the last time, the last time you saw him, now you can see why the internet adores him. You might think his new trick is...

Anyway, abandoning the Magical Trevor riff before I have to do any major thinking, the one and only Jeff "You can't beat 100%" Gerstmann, who you might remember as the guy at GameSpot for the majority of his eleven year tenure there, is coming back to the internet after a brief spell on arch-nemesis television.

Of course, since Jeff was dispatched from Cnet's GameSpot, a lot has happened. First, Ryan Davis and Alex Navarro left, whittling GameSpot's key personalities down to Ryan MacDonald, Brian Eckberg, Kevin VanOrd and Brad Shoemaker. And two of them (VanOrd and Eckberg) could well be the next to go.

Navarro and Davis had teamed up with Jeff for a podcast associated with Ryan Davis's blog "Arrow Pointing Down". Now, Davis and Gerstmann (And probably Navarro, though that is unconfirmed) have commenced the soft-launch of their new home.

The Casfesisonal (Casual-Professional, menaing it adopts a casual friendly atmosphere with a professional staff doing professional reviews and news coverage in a friendly tone) Giant Bomb (dot com)

And I for one couldn't be happier. The new site, complete with a video series about setting up such a site called How to Build a Bomb, is an exciting development set to go full scale this summer.

I've already made it one of my most key hit ups in my daily bookmark run and I can't wait to see what it evolves into. I'm also excited to watch How to Build a Bomb. This kind of skunkworks really appeals to me, not least because I'm a huge fan of Gerstmann and Davis's work.

And also because I might have a little something up my sleeve for lauching late this year.

Let's Play,
Jens

Oh for Pete's sake

2008-03-07T20:40:00.002Z

You can't BTO the Combo Drive into a SupeDrive.

Sigh. Again.

Fine, then I'll up the RAM to 2GB to match the Air I was going to buy.

A lot of the time, things suck.

Jens Out

iPod touch: Apple Promises to punch you once, square in the bean bag every 3 months if you buy it

2008-03-06T20:51:00.004Z

Sigh.

Once again I find myself forced to want to kill Apple (The entity personified, not the staff). The January Software Update, AKA App Pack was bad enough. I could not buy that and simply do without a couple of features. I did want those features (Not the apps, didn't give two shits about them), but I could live without them.

Now Apple is going to charge me for the right to shop in the OS X Mobile AppStore? Now that's just out of line. But you know what? Fine. I'll pay the taxes. Mainly because ads which get in the way of syncing my iPod piss me off, partly because Apple's never going to listen to my money not flowing because other people's is and partly because I want those fucking 3rd party apps.

Games like Touch Fighter and Super Monkey Ball. Instant messaging. I did buy the iPod touch with the awareness that Apple were intending to sell 3rd party apps for it. It was part of my vision for my future use of it: a digital entertainment hand-held computer.

But I've come to some decisions:

1) I will not buy another iPod touch. My next iPod will be the 3G iPhone as soon as it's at the price point of the current 8GB model - and it better have more Flash than that or else I'll just keep waiting.

2) Apple is dreaming if they think I'm trusting them enough to spend the money for a MacBook Air now. The Eee will be able to function as an ultraportable so my Mac will be the considerably cheaper MacBook. I'll only pay extra for a better optical drive (A Combo drive in 2008 Apple? What the fuck are you on?) and the remote (WHY are those not free any more?).

Apple's gone to quite some effort to piss me off. I like the company generally, but not enough to put up with this rubbish.

Still not enough to turn me off their superior products.

Jens "Buy ASUS hardware, support Linux over Windows, give Apple money (But not too much)" with a J signing off.

Eeet'll have to wait

2008-02-22T23:52:00.005Z

Unfortunately, the way my pay has worked out (And because I hate filling out forms so I still haven't reeived my £50 tax rebate), the Eee is going to have to wait until next month. Think Good Friday sort of time.

In the meantime, I've ordered Medal of Honor Heroes 2 on Wii and F1 06 on PSP. Regular readers will know I think Heroes 2 is all the way awesome and most of you will have worked out that I love Formula 1.

Originally, I was going to play F1 06 on my brother's PSP. Under that arrangement, the only motivation to get the PSP version rather than the PS2 version was simple: we do not currently have a single PS2 operational in the house. Even though there's one 2 feet away from me right now.

It has no power cable. Seriously, we have no idea where it went.

Anyway, the plan now is to buy myself a white PSP Slim and Lite. Partially as something to play with until I get the Eee, partially because there's some PSP stuff I want to get into. Certain games and features, you know.

It's hardly going to be a major PMP for me though, my iPod touch does an awesome job of that as it stands.

I also just bought Sugar Tunes Numa Numa, a version of Numa Numa by Balan. And it's awesome. So awesome.

Oh by the way, remember my intention to exploit the US's shitty economy when I got there this year? My main purchase is probably going to be a MacBook Air. The way I'm expecting things to go down, I'll still have at least $190 left over for other stuff. Probably more once I ramp up the amount of overtime I do because I'm no longer at school full time or at all (Afetr the exams basically).

I think I can push it up to $1000 of spare cash.

One thing I'm excited to do on the America trip is put full coverage of it up here. I aim to video and photograph what we get up to, sharing those pics and videos with people here and at This is Interesting as well as recording a video diary for you on the Eee.

I'm going to try and find soemthing to test the whole using the Eee to do a multimedia report on something remote from my desk between getting it and heading Stateside. I think it'll be good at it.

Yes, I know I'll need a USB HDD. I'll get one.

Anywho, I think that's enough for now.

If anyone's still reading this, please leave more comments...I'm getting awfully lonely on here.

Jens Out

Preparing for Eee

2008-02-21T22:54:00.004Z

Hmm. I'm expecting to go grab my Eee tomorrow. For that reason, I've been thinking about the stuff I need t get done to prepare for it. First thing I've decided I need to do is take a cross-section of my daily bookmarks to put on it.

Actually, that's a half-truth. First I looked for a good game to run on it. OpenArena fits the bill nicely.

Anyway, my first factor for choosing sites is width. This blog will work fine on the Eee, but some sites are simply too wide. GameSpot.Com is an example of another workable site, which is cool because I want to watch their videos on the Eee.

Well that's done now...What's next?

Ah, move documents onto the Flash drive. Done.

I think that might cover it. I don't really need to scrounge around for many apps, it comes with apps for doing most of what I want to do anyway.

Of course, all this assumes I get my tax rebate.

In other news, I've joined the team at This is Interesting, so you can check out some of my stuff over there - I'm a bi-weekly contributor. Yeah, that's right, a posting schedule.

Bet you wish there was one here.

Dream on.

Jens Out

Only the inevitable

2008-02-19T19:41:00.008Z

The trend in computing recently spells the end for the humble desktop, the old king of the personal computing world. Usually running Windows, it is a familiar sight.

But users increasingly need more customisation, better asset management and are more and more taking their computer on the road. In the coming years, OS X/Darwin and Linux are going to lead notebook and handheld computers on a charge into dominance at the expense of Windows and its natural habitat, the desktop.

These are the beginnings of a sea change for computers, and the poster children are two radically different solutions to the same problem.

Apple answered changing user needs in the portability market with MacBook Air, the device which aims to be to the notebook what the iMac was to the desktop a decade ago.

Asus answered cries for more portability and customisation with the Linux-focused Eee PC. They further addressed the need for the cost of computing to plummet and the difficulty of it to decrease rapidly.

Apple and Asus are just two companies who are seeing a new way forward.

In the year 2015, the desktop will be relegated to the realms of the pros and a role as a base. In the home, users will freely roam around the house wielding notebooks tailor made to their needs, running Wi-Fi at speeds unthinkable at present to connect to internet up to 30 times as fast as it is now.

On the road, uses will take their computers with them and connect to fifth generation mobile networks, true mobile broadband, at speeds up to half of that available over fixed lines, blitzing current-spec third and conceptual fourth generation networks by an order of magnitude.

When a computer is unnecessary, phones like Apple's iPhone Air or any one of the millions of phones running Google's dominant Android will connect to those same networks and provide users with speedy, intuitive access to communication and information.

Social networks like MySpace and Facebook will have given way to more tailored content sharing communities, linking users with content and its creators based on interest.

Microsoft, its monopolies long forgotten as the once dominant computer company sells its operating system and becomes a solutions and consultancy firm.

The buyer? A bit player looking for the fast track to marketshare in the OS space.

They're still working the dead weight out of Windows 9.

These have been visions of the future,
With Jensonb

Eeek

2008-02-18T19:12:00.004Z

Well, what a difference a day makes. It turns out I'm not going to need to buy a PS3, my dad's getting us one. Which saves me basically £300 hard cash. Some of you might expect me to go back to buying the Xbox, but I decided not to.

Instead, I decided to get a hold of a computer. The geek in me was getting antsy. Of course you've guessed, the computer I'm getting is the Asus Eee PC. I'm getting the white one with 4GB of Flash and a webcam. It probably has a specific name, but I can't really be bothered to find out what it is.

Does this mean I'm not getting the Air? Not necessarily. What it does mean is whether I get the Air or a different Mac, I will still have a nice, light notebook for writing in bed and so on.

In other news, I got some really great news today, between moving operations from Petrograd (Peterborough), the heartland of English mediocrity to somewhere in Scotland, which by the way kicks ass, we're taking a slight detour for 2 or 3 weeks.

To the Everglades.

Yeah, Florida. It's awesome. I've been waiting to go to America for years. Finally I'm going to get to go to Disney World, see the awesome American food and purchase consumer goods at rock bottom prices (AKA exploiting the USA's shitty economy).

We intend to rent a villa over there and take in all the stuff we want at a leisurely pace. As a geek, I'll be taking at least one computer and my camera(s) and updating the blog on what we're up to as we go. As a part of that, I expect I'll be taking a fat USB HDD and several big SD cards.

Then we'll return, not to a house but to a boat. My dad really wants a boat. We were going to get a smaller boat and a camper van, then decided that was stupid and merged the two into a bigger boat.

Then we'll redo the house we buy to have it just the way we want it.

Well that's the future for me.

Live free or Die Hard,
Jens

This is an entertainment box

2008-02-16T23:44:00.003Z

Here's one that'll surprise you. I'm not buying an Xbox 360 anymore. Yes, it's a cool system. But since we already have one, I've decided it's probably more important to broaden our platform set.

So I'm going to buy a PS3.

Alright, you got me, that's not the only reason. Sony has been showing off a DVB tuner for the PS3 called PlayTV. With it, the console becomes a full-blown FreeView PVR. That's rad.

Currently, my PC serves as my TV and PVR. It's far from a perfect setup. For one thing, the software the Dazzle Stick which forms my tuner came with is kind of crap. For another, with it being a single tuner setup, I can only record one channel at a time and if I want to watch while recording, it has to be the channel I'm recording.

Worst part is, if I schedule a recording (Which is not easy with the software's sub-par EPG), it will strt up and basically high-jack all my system resources, making the PC unresponsive. This usually necesitates stopping what I'm doing and going off to do something else.

PlayTV has two tuners, eliminating the first problems. It would be a PVR seperate from my PC, so it couldn't highjack my resources. And Sony has plans to update the software down the line so that you can play a game whilst recording a show. That is cool.

What makes it supersweet is all of these features (Live and recorded TV) can be accessed remotely from any Wi-Fi connection by a PSP. So I could be in a Starbucks in London watching TV. Badass? I think so.

I, of course, also need the PS3 for some of the games it has as exclusives (Metal Gear, the last F1 game - though I expect new ones will be made by EA cross-platform, Warhawk, a timed exclusve in the form of UT3 and I'm sure there are others).

So there it is, I'm buying a PS3 in late March. Flame if you will.

Jens Out

She's a looker at least

2008-02-14T18:09:00.003Z

Following Honda Racing F1 can be awfully difficult and wonderful (Hmm, probably could have reused my totally badass Tale of Two Cities thing agan here. Instead, I shall link to it several times as it was totally badass). For you see, we as Honda F1 fans spend a lot of time crying silently as we see Jenson Button listed next to the number 15 (Or indeed, a higher number like 17) and Rubens as having had some kind of mechanical failure or been smashed into by one of the kids driving for the backmarkers.

We hear that the new car resembles "a sexy lady" or is a definite improvement, but are treated to, at best, one good year in every two. Jenson has the potential to be a superstar hotshot fighting it out at the front with his contemporaries Raikkonen, Massa, Alonso and so on.

And at least on the face of it, Honda should be building a car to allow him to do it. What keeps going wrong? I have no idea. But if this is not the last year of Honda failing to give Jenson the car to prove he can win the championship and Rubens one to show the kids what expereince can do, then Jenson should probably find a new home for 2010.

The signs do look good for 2009. Ross Brawn is the Team Principal and he's amogst the best personnel ever to grace Formula One. Honda have spent the money on a new Aero department, full of talents from other quick teams. It should be enough.

But this year looks to be another write-off. Once again, Honda's times are circling the drains, so consistent points are probably a pipe dream for us. Roll on 2009.

At least the car's another pretty one.

Jens Out

My Screw Up (Wikipedia Episode)

2008-02-10T14:25:00.001Z

Remember when everyone started to use Wikipedia? It was the promised land. The Fountain of All Knowledge. Everything was going to be on it. It was to be an encyclopedia with some modern real world significance. And we, the people, were to build and maintain it.

It sounded an awful lot like democratic or organised communism. Which is cool, because true communism works. Indeed, it's my firm belief that Total Democracy is the only workable form of governance. But that's a story for another time.

Something has gone wrong at Wikipedia. It's been simmering below the surface for a while. The often joked-about rivalry between the vast majority of users (The casual ones) and the die-hard Admins, the Wikipedians. You know the type.

Ever heard the phrase "This article is a candidate for speedy deletion"? How about "This article requires cleanup to meet Wikipedia's guidelines" (Or some variation thereof)? Or the now infamous "This article includes a trivia section. Trivia sections are disallowed under Wikipedia's Article Guidelines. Consider integrating the contents of this list into the rest of the article or deleting it entirely." (I forget the exact wording, it's an overly long message).

That's Wikipedian handiwork. It's annoying and distracting. And frankly, I'm sick of it. Wikipedia has ceased to be the democratic Fountain of All Knowledge, built and maintained by we the people. Now it's just another encyclopedia, except it's run by an elite club sitting around coughing up guidelines left and right, enforcing them as law and begrudgingly letting us discuss perhaps maybe editing an article in its Talk Page.

This feeling has been boiling beneath me for a year - in fact I did not once edit an article on Wikipedia in 2007, nor did I consider it - but it came to head earlier today.

Whilst watching an Episode of Scrubs, I got thinking about another episode which had a song I wanted to hear in it. Unfortunately, I did not know the song's title (Scrubs is a major way I discover new songs. Such as Light & Day / Reach for the Sun). No problem, I got the songs I wanted from Scrubs episodes previously ina very simple way. I set my Firefox Search Box to Wikipedia and typed the title of the episode in.

So that's what I did. And what do I discover? The Scrubs episode pages have been deleted. Long story short, this argument has been going back and forth for about 2 months with the articles being deleted and un-deleted.

And why? The higher-ups have deigned that articles which do not do certain things must go. TV Episode pages have to meet ludicrously stringent regulations which actually effectively limit the information they provide. Scrubs seems to be the testing bed for an all-new and highly draconian interpretation of Wikipedia's regulations.

Wikipedia has ceased to be a fountain of knowledge. Never mind all knowledge. Anything which limits what I can learn from Wikipedia in anyway is, in my book, not cool. It is against the spirit of the site.

And it gets worse. As a get out, the higher ups say we should look to http://scrubs.wikia.com as the new resource for Scrubs information. Firstly, that is impractical and ludicrous. Wikipedia is visited by millions more people than any Wikia Wiki. The Scrubs Wikia is essentially a fansite, limiting the number of people who will be aware of it and thus reducing the quality and use of its content.

Secondly, and I can't emphasise this enough: Wikia is a for-profit enterprise. I don't care if it is based on Wikipedia. It exists to make its owners money, which means it is far from being "The People's Encyclopedia" as Wikipedia is meant to be.

But here's the truly troubling part...Wikia is a for-profit entity containing many Wikis which are plastered in ads to make Wikia's boss, also Mr Wikipedia, money. And now Wikipedia is being managed in such a way as to promote visiting Mr Wikipedia's meal ticket, Wikia.

Do you see the problem yet?

Jens Out

I wouldn't pay $30 Billion, never mind $44 Billion

2008-02-02T21:15:00.001Z

What you'll have heard is that Microsoft, the lumbering dinosaur business of the 1980s, have finally stopped pussy-footing around and launched a hostile takeover bid for Yahoo!, AOL's contemporary from the infamous DotCom bubble.

AOL bought Time Warner in the heady days of the DotCom bubble using its inflated stock as currency. Ted Turner and his buddies fell for the false allure of the internet hook, line and sinker. Michael Eisner then Chairman and CEO of Disney, balked at the idea of AOL buying Disney or Warner even back then without the benefit of hindsight.

He might have been a flawed leader later in his tenure, and maybe he did lead Disney down another internet blind alley in the form of Go.com, but he can be commended for seeing that AOL was, in terms of core value, worthless.

The bottom fell out of the DotCom bubble shortly thereafter. AOL Time Warner's stocks plunged, AOL itself became increasingly a non-issue. Yahoo!, a major player in the key search market, also suffered.

And then, came the internet's pimp. Google went from strength to strength whilst Yahoo! floundered. A bewildered and confused Microsoft continued futile attempts to leverage its Windows dominance to sell users on their own internet services. Users turned over and yawned.

And so it has been ever since. Yahoo! continues to flounder, now valued at roughly $22 a share. Microsoft, increasingly aware that it is propped up by Office and Windows and even these products are facing problems, is using money to expand rather than innovation. The company is too big, too widely spread and ultimately too IBM to do anything else.

Microsoft lacks a true creative visionary, never mind leader. It's cash-rich and has many global brands it's failing to leverage. Somewhat like the beleaguered Apple of the mid-90s. And the newly empowered CEO is looking outside to plug the holes in the business.

When Apple bought NeXT from Steve Jobs and co., they did not just move NeXT's resources into Apple. What was Apple was removed. In a startling reverse take over, funded by Apple, the Old Apple gave way to what has been called The New Apple, the second Jobsian Apple.

But here's the thing, there already was a new Apple. It was called NeXT. All Apple had done was make the new Apple, Apple. What was in it for NeXT? After all, they already had the new Apple. Well it was the word "Apple". Steve Jobs made it clear, Apple's main asset is its brand.

So Ballmer is looking to acquire Yahoo!, Microsoft has lumbered down a blind alley and needs guidance out and Yahoo! needs a back door into more users to compete with Google.

So what's going to happen? I'll give you a hint: say good bye to Yahoo! and Microsoft. Oh sure, the names will stay. But Yahoo-Microsoft will see which management team has the best leadership vision and follow it. For both Microsoft's products and those of both Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Meanwhile, we hear that Amazon has bought Audible. Apple would have been well-advised to stop this. Audible would have been a good by for them too, allowing them to sell Audiobooks on iTunes in a more direct manner. It's not a huge loss for Apple, but Amazon is rapidly spreading outwards into new realms. Someone needs to worry.

Hey, maybe they can use their inflated stock to form Amazon-Apple Yahoo!-Microsoft Time Warner (AOL Time Warner is seeking to divest itself of the worthless AOL, hence their name would be dropped).

Jens Out

Does/Will the Honda RA108 Suck?

2008-01-23T20:17:00.001Z

Today, Rubens Barrichello took Honda Racing's new Formula One challenger out for a shakedown ahead of tomorrow's test with number one Jenson Button. Rubens completed 36 laps total compared to numbers in or near the hundreds from the likes of BMW and Ferrari. Reports indicate that at least for some of the day, the RA108 was inside the garage, the door closed, having its engine revved.

It certainly sounds like a simple setup day. Further reports, relayed via the forum of Real Honda F1, suggest that new parts are arriving as soon as tomorrow. The car is not set to officially launch until next week, when it will be bathed in it's revised Honda Earth livery (The concept is staying, but Honda is set to unveil a new design).

As such, it's entirely possible that times today, and even tomorrow's, are completely irrelevant. Honda could easily be using these days to evaluate things other than pace - the new ECU, cooling (Which is revised) and the engine/transmission combo.

The car, currently running in plain white - which makes detail spotting difficult though not impossible - sports a higher nose, resculpted sidepods with tighter air intake holes, a massive engine cover fin, somewhat simplified air fins in front of the rear wheels, a newer and slightly angular take on the thin nose and significantly fewer winglets.

The RA107's nose, to the right, is clearly different to the RA108's (Below). The new nose is visibly hooked and comes to more of a point. Meanwhile, the entire length of the snout is significantly thinner and it has more sever angles than the 107, which is fairly rounded.

Also noticeable are new, and big, barge boards. RA107 had no barge boards, relying instead on big - and I mean huge - winglets at the top outer edges of the sidepods. RA108's equivalent elements are significantly smaller.

Now, aside from the fact that this continues a trend many F1 fans have noticed - 2008 F1 cars sure are ugly - it's difficult to see where Honda is trying to make up speed.

The car's new, yes. But it seems like the same people designed with the same ideas. We can hope, I suppose, that the newly sorted out wind tunnel has simply allowed Honda to follow their design ideas though to their true conclusions.

Nevertheless, fans (Myself included) are worried by a distinct impression that the car looks like something of a step back, even from the still laughably poor end of year RA107. Oh, how it was bad...Better than godawful is still bad my friends.

The news that new parts are due tomorrow, and the fact that the real launch of the car is next week (This test serves mainly as the last component of the development testing. That said, only Honda seem to drive the car publicly before the launch.) provides the possibility that Honda is running without some final pieces.

Notably, fans are worried by the highly conventional front wing. It has been likened to a 2003-era car. This is one place Honda may be choosing to run an interim part ahead of some final revisions to a more radical design.

There is some good news. There is evidence that the Honda is on a similar design mentality to the McLaren (Though with noticeably fewer irregular and ugly kinks and corners), which is extremely quick.

If Honda is set to replace certain elements, we can hopefully breathe a sigh of relief. If not, we have some concerns. Rubens was the last of the 2008 runners, 2.5s off the slowest pace of the big 4 teams. We can hope this was more related to the development work than lack of pace, but it's not exactly morale-lifting.

After all, last season's dismal performance was preceded by equally disappointing times.

Jenson will be on track tomorrow and we'll see what times he does. If he's slow too, we can only hope that there's a better reason than "it's another piece of crap from Honda". The car doesn't look quick, nor is it as pretty as the Ferrari or last year's Honda.

I'm worried that the RA108's a dud, built on the platform of a dud as the platform for another dud (The RA109). And how much longer can we endure crap to get back to good stuff. 2007 was a terrible time to follow Honda Racing F1. We endured it for the promise of 2008.

Now if 2008 sucks, there's only so much will to follow through to 2009. And Honda needs to worry that Jenson Button might be thinking along similar lines. He wants to be fighting for the championship in 2009. Can Ross Brawn really do it? He's great, but if Honda continue to show no sign of technical ability, what can he do?

Incidentally, what made Honda move away from the solid platform of the classic 006-RA106 series (Right, in it's final incarnation)?

Here's hoping for a change.

Jens with a J, signing off.

iPod touch January Software Update Petition

2008-01-18T00:22:00.001Z

Hey guys,

Further to my previous coverage of the iPod touch January Software Update (AKA App Pack) debacle, I have signed the petition to get the iPod touch January Software Update to be made free.

Charging for add-ons is fine. I have no problem with that. But new users are getting this stuff free because they waited a month longer than me to give Apple their money. That's not right.

Those of us who got iPod touches as soon as we could deserve some love. And Apple has bitch-slapped us.

All this shenanigans has prevented me from updating iTunes. Let me explain how weird that is: I always have the latest iTunes release. Always. Every time it comes out I get the first second I can.

But I have been made aware that iPod touch owners who have not yet bought the January Software Update will be bugged to do so every time they try to sync their iPod touch. Every. Damn. Time.

And since, as we've discussed, I have no intention of giving Apple money for the JSU, that splash screen (Reportedly the entire iTunes content area - everything but the sidebar and the controls) is going to be bugging me for a long time.

So sign the petition. We have to let Apple know:

This will not stand.

And I thought they'd learn their lesson from iPhone's price cut. What's next? Are they going to offer the 64GB Flash Drive in the MacBook Air for just a £100 on MacBook Airs bought in March and onwards?

Sign The Petition

Thanks to TUAW

iPod touch Users: Boycott the App Pack

2008-01-15T22:06:00.001Z

Attention all iPod touch users:

DO NOT PAY APPLE MONEY FOR THE APP PACK.

That's right, the guy buying a MacBook Air is telling you not to give Apple money. But why you ask? Well, iPod touch's version of OS X Mobile 1.1.3 lacks 3 things included in iPhone's version (I must point out, by the way, they run the same binaries). To get these features which are free for iPhone users and new iPod touch buyers, we must buy the £12.99 App Pack when we may not even want any or all of the Apps.

Those 3 Features are:

1) Home Screen rearranging. iPod touch needs this far more than iPhone. We have that ghastly missing icon. We should be able to move the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store into that gap at the very least.

2) Web Clips. Again, we should be allowed to use these to fill up our barren Home Screen and also to make browsing to WebApps easier and faster.

3) Lyrics. My iPod nano 2 supports lyrics for pete's sake.

Until at least these 3 things are free, buying the App Pack is telling Apple they can screw ipod touch's existing users for whatever money they want.

If you own an iPod touch, join the boycott. Spread the word. The more users refuse to pay the more likely it is Apple will stop pulling this kinda stunt.

I will repeat as I can't stress it enough:

Spread the word. Boycott the App Pack.

Update: And if you're so inclined, sign the petition to get Apple to Make the App Pack Free

There's Something in the Air: A Tale of Two Apples

2008-01-15T19:24:00.001Z

It was the best of times it was the worst of times.

January 15th. The Moscone Centre in San Francisco. Steve Jobs delivers the MacWorld keynote address 200 days after iPhone went on sale.

And commits one of the most horrendously offensive two-fingered salutes to early adopters in history. Second only to the infamous iPhone price cut. But this act was not against iPhone users.

No, it was against uses of iPhone's little brother. iPod Touch. Apple unveiled OS X Mobile 1.1.3, announcing it as a free upgrade for iPhone users. For them it adds Web Clips, customisable home screens, Lyrics and more. For iPod Touch it adds these things as well as Notes, Weather, Stocks, Mail and Maps. Apps included on iPhone, but dropped for iPod Touch.

What's the problem? They want existing users to pay $20 or £12.99 for the privilege. New buyers get the new software free.

That's not cool Apple. Not fucking cool. I'd just about let you away with charging for the apps, but charging for the 1.1.3? That's low. Very fucking low.

Don't expect a penny out of me for it.

And at that same conference, Steve Jobs look the wraps off the (Unfortunately named) MacBook Air.

Despite it's craptastic name, MacBook Air is quite simply amazing. It's thin and light. It has a MultiTouch trackpad. It looks gorgeous.

It's a little pricey. It must be said. But it's awesome. More details are here, but don't think the MacBook Ar excuses the iPod Touch 1.1.3 bullshit Apple. It doesn't.

I'll get a MacBook Air, and I'm sure I'll love it. I will not pay money for an update to add features others get free because they waited and which should have been there from day one.

It was a shit announcement, it was a great announcement.

It was Apple before releasing a product, it was Apple after releasing a product.

It was consumer electronics Apple, it was Apple Computer Inc.

Jens Out

"Something in the air. A storm is coming."

2008-01-14T01:28:00.001Z

Apple has unveiled their traditional Keynote tagline, along the lines of "The Beat goes on" or "The first thirty years were just the beginning". This time, "There's something in the air". I can only assume they're not referring to Apple's sky-high sales and share price (Those those will, no doubt, get a mention), but what do they refer to then?

It's a matter of some debate. Join me for a second look at what may be just around the corner at Apple.

So, there's something in the air. You know, words like those foretold the splitting of Ten and Rose...Anyway, Doctor Who geekdom aside, what - if anything - is Apple getting at?

A surprisingly popular theory is a featherweight slim Apple notebook with no wires - with induction charging dock even. Hmm, would the dock have to plug in though? Wouldn't that be plug-less guys? Not wireless?

Well anyway, it's a nice idea. I would suggest that induction charging is possible as a magnetically attached pad of some sort. MagSafe 2 basically...Hey! I called that! If that's on the MacBook they unveil, I called it. I claim full credit as the one who broke that.

That said, ditching USB for Wireless USB? Not cool. What about all those iPods? It's nonsense to be honest. Ditching the power plug in favour of MagSafe 2 may be cool, but USB and FireWire ports are kind of needed. Apple could hide them on the back behind a cover if it really wanted clean lines though.

The only problem I have with any of this, is the name. People keep calling it MacBook Air.Aside from the obvious complaint that one could levy at that (That it lacks Apple's trademark subtlety to use the suffix as the basis for a tagline), it's also a really awful name. I can't stress enough how utterly and completely shitty it is.

I mean, it's just terrible. What could possess Apple, who brought us the names iPod, Mac, AirPort, iMac, iBook, MacBook and Mighty Mouse (Yes, I do like that name. Call me crazy, but associations with ridiculous cartoons are cool) to call something "MacBook Air".

Come on guys. It's gotta be MacBook Nano. If Apple release a slim notebook called MacBook Air, I swear I will bang my head against the wall.

Awful, awful, name.

As for the more traditional MacBook Nano rumour, I've come across what is either a very unlikely leaked image or an extremely good fake.

If that is what Apple unveil on Tuesday, I will punch the air. I'll even let them away with the MacBook Air naming sin if it looks like that - making the excuse that it made me punch the air (See, there was a reason I used that turn of phrase).

I will pay up to and including £900 for that. Even £1000 if it's features are cool enough. Considering my current plans call for a £699 notebook at a discount of 10%, you can see I really like that design.

But the "something in the air" tagline hasn't just opened speculation on the new MacBook. Some people have offered other more literal interpretations, most of which seem more likely.

For example, there are suggestions that since Apple uses Airport to refer to Wi-Fi devices, Air in Apple-speak might be translated to as radio communication and/or specifically Wi-Fi.

That doesn't tell us what it has to do with Wi-Fi, but it's a start. Some suggest the likely (Wireless synchronisation of data like music ala AppleTV), others the huge and improbable (Apple are co-financing Google's 700MHz spectrum bid or are set to help roll out WiMAX coverage ahead of a WiMAX iPhone).

Nice ideas...Another slightly more worrying idea is that Apple is going to spend half the keynote talking about .Mac - life "up on the cloud", floating in the air. Microsoft Corporate Vision Babble 2006 Consumer Electronics Edition.

Please...Just, no. Make it free if you want Apple, but don't treat net services like some kind of unholy god only you understand - the way Microsoft does basically (Except, in their case, they don't understand them at all).

It's also possible that it refers to all those movies that are going to be sold/rented from iTunes flying through the air to AppleTV.

Or, it could just be a really cool tagline.

Ever think about that?

Remember the trouble attaching meaning to "The beat goes on" got us into?

Yeurch.

Here's another idea out of left field. Many Apple fans are also Nintendo fans and vice versa (Especially since Nintendo graduated from The iPod School of design with DS Lite). This idea is a modification of the pre-existing iPod House/Mario Factory theories.

Nintendo will make games for iPod with Video, OS X For iPod and OS X Mobile (Incidentally, that middle one is what I will from this point forward refer to the Split Pane iPod Classic/Nano 3 OS as), and possibly Mac and AppleTV.

In exchange, Apple will ship a piece of software for Nintendo's Wii via the WiiWare (Wii Software in Europe) system. This will be FrontRow 2. Possibly branded as iTunes or AppleTWii or something cute like that.

I'll call it AppleTV for Wii here.

AppleTV for Wii will mirror AppleTV in features. However, instead of downloading your content, it will rely solely on streaming. So all the content on your Mac or PC can be watched, listened to our whatevered on your TV via Wii.

This is a big win for Apple as well as The Big N. Nintendo gets to monetise Mario and co on Apple's various platforms and, in exchange, gets software which essentially leapfrogs its Wii ahead of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PS3 as a media entertainment hub. Which sucks for Microsoft and Sony since that's really their main defense against Nintendo's unstoppable onslaught with Wii.

Apple, meanwhile, gets to sell a slightly cut down version of Apple TV to less HD-oriented customers without having to build any hardware. All they do is charge a one-off software fee, say, 1200 Wii Points (If they even decide to charge) and the iTunes/AppleTV ecosystem becomes backwards compatible with non-HD TVs and draws in new customers to iTunes from those who have Wiis and want to watch movies on their TVs.

In fact, I think Apple should do that anyway. It's such an obvious idea. AppleTV adds a hard drive and support for the HD movies I expect Apple to put on iTunes, whilst AppleTV for Wii provides a cheaper way into the system (And something of a backdoor for Apple to get customers in, ala Sony and the Blu-Ray toting PS3).

Jens Out

In the Future

2008-01-10T23:19:00.001Z

Well guys, since no-one seems to be reading this any more I figure it's not wasting anyone's time if I do a post about stuff I'm gonna buy and indeed stuff I have bought.

Since my PC and desk now function as my entertainment system, and I have a widescreen 1050p monitor, I decided to make use of those pixels and seriously upgrade my media centre.

Firstly, I bought a LiteOn DH 4O1S Blu-Ray Disc Reader to allow playback of the dominant consumer HD video format. It's in the system now, though I can't yet watch any Blu-Rays (More on that later).

Next, I decided to upgrade the control system. Now, I do have a wireless presenter mouse built into my desktop mouse. That method of control does work of course, but it can be tedious to mouse ball over controls from my bed.

So I got CyberLink's IR USB remote control. It works great - controls DVD(/Blu-Ray) playback, TV Centre Pro (Helpful, since the mouse and keyboards for that are jacked) and iTunes. Basically, I'm set.

Incidentally, Need for Speed Carbon (Yes, I did buy it) is great on Wii and works really well with my steering wheel shell.

For those of you wondering, my first Blu-Ray movie is The Simpsons Movie - easily one of my favourite films of all time. 2007 was a great year for movies. Bear in mind, Spider-Man 3 (Another of my all-time favourites) and other truly great films came out this year as well. Even made for TV Movies were better than expected (Yes, I do love HSM 2. So sue me.). It was also a great year for games between Mario Galaxy, Halo 3, CoD 4 and of course Portal. This year shall go down in entertainment history.

So what am I buying in the coming future? Well, first I'm going to get a Sapphire HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB of GDDR4 memory. Besides bumping games performance (Like making Halo 2 at least seem playable) and providing access to recent games like Unreal Tournament 3, it has HDCP. With that, I will be able to watch my Blu-Rays (My monitor is also HDCP-compliant).

Games-wise, Medal of Honor Hereos 2 is next on my list (I'm moving to renting games unless I really want them from now on, thanks to my £10.99 per month LoveFilm account which is also supplying me with additional HD content in the form of Blu-Rays). February 8th can't come soon enough.

I'm also buying an Xbox Live Vision Camera £50 set, the one which comes with a headset, 12 months of Gold and 2 Arcade games. It's outstanding value. I more interested in the Gold subscription, games and the headset to be honest, but the camera will be nice to have.

Then, a month later, I'll be grabbing Game's £209.99 Xbox 360 Arcade Bundle and putting the hard drive from my brother's Premium in it. He's buying an Elite. The Premium will go in the living room, mine will go in the upstairs TV room (My dad won a 20" HDTV at work).

So once I have that and I can play 360 just about whenever I want, you can expect my GamerScore to go up a fair bit. Possibly I could take it to above 5,000 before we leave Cambridgeshire.

I'll also grab a GameWare Play and Charge kit as I continue my ongoing fight against Double-As.

Then, in mid-June, I will make the biggest purchase I ever have. At long last, I will be buying my MacBook. So hooray for that.

Anyway, that gives you an idea of where I'm headed in the coming months. You can probably expect me to gush at length about most of those products and, indeed, I advise you to be prepared for more Blu-Ray love than anywhere else on the internet which doesn't swear allegiance to PS3.

Jens Out

Bill Gates at CES

2008-01-07T04:00:00.001Z

Bill put in a surprisingly good performance, lifted by an amusing video about him leaving which led to a meme for the entire keynote about new things to do with his time, to announce absolutely nothing.

Microsoft demoed new and upcoming technologies, but did not announce any new products. The only announcement made was that BT are to launch an IPTV-enabled Xbox 360 soon.

The rumours were wrong. Bill didn't care about going out with a bang.

iPod Touch Kicks Ass: Scientific Proof

2008-01-04T03:21:00.001Z

Apple advertises iPod Touch as having a battery which is good for 5 hours of video or 22 hours of audio only from a full charge. When I was reading reviews in the run up to Christmas, I noted that most of them ran without full battery life tests.

So I've tested Apple's 22 hour battery life claim, one which caused at least one observer to complain the iPod Touch was inadequate compared to other iPods (Nano for example) and iPhone.

I conducted the test using my 8GB iPod Touch. I disconnected it from my computer after a complete charge and starting it playing. The WiFi had been turned off in advance. It played a 73 track, 4 and 1/4 hour long playlist of mixed genres on shuffle.

The iPod was feeding the supplied earbuds at my normal listening volume. The screen was switched on and then off again a total of 13 times to check the battery indicator and to perform 3 skips.

Music stopped playing at 27 hours and 40 minutes, then the iPod shut down.

Soon, I will conduct a similar test with the WiFi antenna turned on. Either way, I have demonstrated that iPod Touch is fully capable of playing audio for almost a 1/4 of a day longer than Apple guarantees.

Good job iPod Touch!

Jens Out

CES Las Vegas 2008 Bill Gates Keynote Predictions

2008-01-04T01:55:00.001Z

Next week, Bill Gates is set to give his final CES keynote. Although Bill's keynotes are generally considered to be nowhere near as entertaining as Steve's (Jobs) - notably due to how awkward a person Bill is - he usually has some pretty significant things to discuss at these things.

Furthermore, rumours have been flying around the Internets relating to games that the keynote will carry at least one major announcement relating to Xbox. Bill wants to go out with a bang and apparently that bang is going to come courtesy of the good half of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division.

If it's still called that. I haven't checked recently.

Anyway, the smart money seems to be on the Xbox 360 Ultimate. The Ultimate will offer a built-in HD-DVD drive, WiFi, a 320GB Hard Drive and Microsoft's much touted Mediaroom software for IPTV functionality. It'll offer users a dominating home media solution for a huge cost, but one which will probably compete well with Sony's comparably tepid 80GB PS3 (Which does have one slight advantage: Blu-Ray pwns HD-DVD, but more on that once my 2 still-due packages arrive).

Now that's quite impressive. Bill could retire on that. But I said he wanted to go out with a bang.

So hold on tight, here's my purely speculative idea for the real big news.

Xbox Live Silver is dead. Long live Gold.

And by that I mean that I expect Bill to announce some way of playing online free. It might be that Gold gets cheaper and moves to dedicated servers with Silver using the old user-hosted system.

Or Gold will stay the same price and offer a subsidy against IPTV services, or even bundle IPTV into the cost.

At the very least, I think Bill will say Xbox 360 Ultimate owners get free Gold. That would allow them to charge a slightly higher premium over the PS3/80GB and drive even existing 360 customers to the top model. Which would itself drive sales of Microsoft's inferior - and lousy - HD-DVD standard, rather than Sony's Blu-Ray.

And now for some less exciting predictions. Bill likes Windows, but we already decided this will be a fairly gaming-oriented keynote. So I suspect Games for Windows Live is about to go to Version 2. Obviously, it would fall under the same pricing changes listed above. But I also think Windows itself will now access live.

Windows Live will probably get an update with a Games for Windows Live Manager/Guide. This would function as a combined version of the Xbox 360 Dashboard and Xbox Guide and would likely function by putting your GamerCard in the Sidebar (As well as an obligatory Notification Area icon), the clicking of which would bring up the Guide window.

Also, I expect the Xbox 360, Windows Gallery and Zune Marketplaces are to be merged. I doubt that means you'll be able to do much more than cue downloads, but you might get to buy music on your 360.

But hey, maybe you'll finally be able to buy that Games for Windows Live version of Uno they promised.

By you, I mean me.

I want my Uno.

Jens Out

Macworld 2008 Steve Jobs Keynote Predictions

2008-01-02T19:38:00.001Z

On January 15th, Steve Jobs will be delivering the Macworld San Francisco keynote address. Last year, this address was used to unveil iPhone and to finish off the unleashing of Apple TV. Previously it has been used to announce iMac Core and MacBook Pro.

This year, I expect a return to Mac. Specifically, I expect Steve to make 2 major hardware announcements, 1 hardware replacement and at least one major software update. Further, I imagine there will be some less important accessories announced or upgraded.

Firstly, I expect Steve to reveal an ultra-thin notebook with a 13.3" screen using Solid State rive (SSD) technology in 32GB and 64GB versions. Expect Steve to show us how amazingly fast it boots. "I just press the power button and boom, it loads up. Press the power button again, it turns off. Press it again, boom. Back on. Isn't this incredible?". Possibly aluminum, colors unclear. Possibly iPod Nano colours, possibly iPod Classic colours.

And the other vital details:

MacBook Nano. Available that day or soon after. Expensive as hell. Cool as ice.

So next, Steve will want to eliminate the Mac Mini - needs to be the Mac Nano. So it'll probably borrow the MacBook Nano hardware and integrate it into a revised take on the Mac Mini form factor. Almost certainly thinner and using iPod design cues (Excluding chrome).

Mac Nano. Shipping February*. Same prices as Mac Mini for bumped RAM but reduced storage. Better than Mini at the very least.

Some accessory expectations: new Mighty Mouse to match latest Mac designs. Apple Cinema displays bumped to 1080p minimum with integrated iSights. And a curve ball purely off the top of my head...Updated Magsafe for all MacBook models, probably announced during the MacBook Nano bit.

Next, the Pros will get the new Intel processors and the Mac Pro will receive a facelift to bring it in line with the other Macs and a Blu-Ray drive.

And my last prediction, iTunes 8. Yes, I know I predicted it last time and was wrong. But come on, it has to come out now. It's overdue!

Well, to be totally accurate, I expect it will be called iTunes '08. But whatever. Movie rentals, movie store in international iTunes Stores (E.g., UK) and TV Store in more countries. OS X Mobile apps for sale (iPhone/iPod Touch SDK stuff) Integrates Front Row 2 across Mac and Windows. Available for download that day.

Anyway, there's a few things I expect to see at Macworld this year.

*Or that's what they'll say anyway

Happy Holidays

2007-12-27T18:24:00.001Z

Hello everyone, hope you're having a wonderful festive season.

I know I am. On Christmas day, I got one of those new Daleks, the Voice Command ones which are a foot and a half tall and whose heads (Eye and Dome) can be controlled manually from the Remote Control or who can be set little tasks by simply saying words.

Today, I finally upgraded to a new iPod. I went for the Touch. Mainly for financial reasons, but also because I decided I could do without the hassle of a contract phone. It's an 8GB - that's where finance comes into it, I had £200 in cash.

Of course, tonight at midnight I'm being paid £193, but then I would have had to have paid all my money into my bank account and that would have delayed matters...I really wanted my new iPod ASAP. And hey, the iPod Touch kicks ass.

So I'm loving my new iPod. Video, internet, touch controls. It's awesome. Loving my new Dalek, he's a badass. Looking forward to buying a Blu-Ray Drive for my computer. A LiteOn for £95 which will also finally give me some decent disc playing software.

Then I'm gonna grab The Simpsons Movie on Blu-Ray. Going to kick ass.

By the way, Parker make the best fountain pens on earth. I got one for Christmas and damn is it good. Smooth, consistent, nice weight and good feel. If you write anything and you can get a Parker fountain pen, do it.

Jens Out

Last.fm

2007-12-16T15:58:00.002Z

Some of you are likely to consider me late to this party, but please indulge me. I recently joined Last.fm, mostly for the purposes of tracking playing statistics, something I find myself oddly interested in.

A while ago, I used My iTunes to place an artists widget on the sidebar of this place, you might have seen it. It broke. I couldn't be bothered to fix it. And so, I went back to having no music widget. Then, as I described above, I got Last.fm.

And I placed the Album Quilt in the sidebar to replace the old Artists Widget. I was pleased with it, it's nice and graphical. It does its job well.

I'm also adding a Recently Listened Tracks widget and Top Artists Overall.

Last.fm kicks ass.

Jens

Regarding iPlayer

2007-12-13T15:58:00.001Z

Huzzah and so on, the BBC have moved to a streaming system for the iPlayer, in line with similar efforts by the American broadcasters. This change makes it much simpler for us to view content - we no longer have to download the ghastly Kontiki platform or use Internet Explorer.

Furthermore, now the system no longer requires registration to use it.

Good job BBC.

Jens Out.

Drag and Drop Vs. Plug and Go in the Media World

2007-12-13T13:31:00.001Z

A long time ago, I described the ongoing battle between Twin-Sticks and Pointer/Directional input in First Person control - a battle already convincingly won by Pointer/Direction input (Mouse/Keyboard and later Wii remote/Nunchuk). And yet the debate raged on, despite overwhelming evidence in favour of the Mouse/Keybaord and the Wii (And some arcade systems).

There is another debate, long since decided in one sides favour, which also refuses to die. Drag and Drop or Plug and Go, which is better for managing media?

Of course, this is a slightly more complicated debate. Although the winner overall is already decided, making the debate slightly pointless, the other side does win in some ways. The problem with the debate is that it is used in a similar Geek Vs. Mainstream way as the Twin-Sticks Vs. Wii Remote & Nunchuk argument (Ironic considering the Twin Sticks were themselves on the Mainstream side in their own battle with Mouse/Keyboard).

The number one selling line of personal digital media players on the market is the iPod Line. Don't try and dispute it, it's absolute fact. Consumers love it for its convenience and simplicity. Plug it in, iTunes loads it up, and you're done.

However, some people within the geek community feel that Apple's simple, easy solution lacks the customisation features they want (They like to be able to choose which songs go on and which don't. Clearly they have never heard of Playlists.) and prevents them from performing certain actions.

These people champion Drag and Drop. Some people who champion Drag and Drop also berate those who use Plug and Go for being "stupid" and "babies" for using simpler methods. Not all Drag and Drop supporters feel this way, and those who do not are often embarrassed to be associated with these people (Usually the same or similar to people who support PS3 and say Wii is for children only).

The major feature Drag and Droppers cite is taking music to other computers. I don't know about you, but I've never done that, nor can I see any real world situation where I will ever need to. I'm not saying noone needs it, but in my experience its application is so infrequent as to be meaningless. But whatever. Proponents of Drag and Drop also often cite it being cross-platform. What, like iPod?

The fact of the matter is, most Drag and Drop players are Plays For Sure. In English, that means that no, they are not truly cross platform. They cannot be used to they're full extent on the leading multimedia computer platform, OS X. Plays For Sure is Windows Media DRM.

iPod & iTunes are Mac and Windows.

*Linux may be ignored for the purposes of this discussion as the lack of support is more related to small market share and its fractious nature.

Plug and Go proponents, such as myself, enjoy the fact that Plug and Go works thusly:

Plug in iPod/Other media player, iTunes/Competing media manager does all the work, unplug once satisfied with power.

Whereas Drag and Drop works like this:

Plug in device, navigate to media in file explorer, copy media, navigate to device in file explorer, paste media, unplug once satisfied with power levels.

Furthermore, Plug and Go adds features of its own, like play count tracking. Something I use much more than the ability to plug into another computer.

But it's beside the point. Plug and Go has won, it is by far the dominant system.

And yet, I still see people avoiding iPods so they can make use of the less successful Drag and Drop.

I got news buddy. iPods can do both.

Jens Out

Kyoto, Wii have a problem

2007-12-09T14:48:00.001Z

As a Wii owner and a current Nintendo man, I put up with a lot - especially living in Europe. But things like Mario Galaxy and Club Nintendo's new status (Including the Stars to Wii Points dealie) make it worthwhile.

But the delays make me want to kill. Super Smash Bros. Brawl? Europe won't get it until Q3 '08 at the earliest. It's not the most important game in the world for me, but I do want it. And that delay makes me angry.

We've had to wait an ungodly length of time for Nintendo to make good use of the internet on Wii, with the exception of VC and the Internet Channel. Finally, online games are trickling in.

And guess what? The best one (Medal of Honor Heroes 2), has been delayed for Europe. Not cool.

Another great implementation of the internets is the Everybody's Nintendo Channel. I want that channel. But the US and Europe/Australia haven't seen hide nor hair of it. Excluding it's now obvious beta The Metroid Prime 3 Preview Channel.

But what makes me most pissed at the Wii and Nintendo is bigger. And don't get me wrong, I love my Wii and I love Nintendo, they're being good at the moment and have great characters like Mario. But they make mistakes and they make me mad sometimes. I've explained where Nintendo annoys me, now here's the number one Wii annoyance:

Where are all the driving games?

Oh sure, I know it's been a bad year for driving games anyway, but the only good driving games on Wii are Need for Speed: Carbon and Excite Truck. I'm going to try and get Carbon, primarily because I want another driving game on Wii, but I'm having difficulty. Stocks are low, it's a year old.

Of course, February will bring Ferrari Challenge and Mario Kart is due in the first half of '08, but that's not now is it?

Jens Out

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men

2007-12-02T15:16:00.001Z

We've already discussed that this game lost Jeff Gerstmann, Mr. GameSpot, his job. However implausible it may be, that's what happened. Here's the thing though...When Kane and Lynch got a 6 and was described as an "ugly, ugly game", I wasn't in the least bit surprised. If you were, you're nuts.

GameSpot's advertising deal with this shitty game was apparent long before "readers [could] skin the entire site with Kane, Lynch or with Kane and Lynch...Together". GameSpot's Video Game game show featured the game as Round 3, Owned in its final episode of the season.

It sucked then too. Alex Navarro and his colleague Justin Calvert were clearly not having a good time with the game's controls. Everyone playing it (Which included 2 members of the development and/or PR teams - it's hard to tell if people are really "developers" these days) were making an assload of mistakes thanks to sloppy controls.

It also looked like crap. In the immortal words of that same Alex Navarro (Regarding RoboCop on Xbox), "This looks like crap. [It plays] a lot like crap too".

But it's hard to see where the hype for this game actually built up. It was at E3 and it looked and played like crap there too. In a year that has seen Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Call of Duty 4, Half-Life 2: The Orange Box, Mass Effect and Bioshock amongst many more great, modern games, Kane and Lynch is an un commonly old-fashioned film wannabe.

Were it made from a movie as a cash-in, it would be exactly what you expect. instead, Eidos wants to make a movie from it. The Angry Video Game Nerd says when you take a great movie, you get a shitty game and when you take a not-so-great game you get a slightly less shitty game. How does that work for making games into movies? I sincerely doubt you just flip the first half of the statement.

I can see some promise in the Kane and Lynch concept, which is probably the only reason sites like 1Up gave it the time of day at E3, but the execution is shameful. It's 10 minutes of good concept wrapped in 10 hours of shitty gameplay. Think of it as being like Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor (Half an hour of great action wrapped in 3 hours of tedium).

So, Eidos, tell me. Did you really expect this game to get a good review?

You did, huh?

Even though it is and has clearly been shit for months?

Why, pray tell, then did you expect a good review?

Oh, of course.

Josh Larson & Stephen Colvin promised you.

Jens Out

Jeff Gerstmann and why Ziff Davis pwns CNet

2007-11-30T16:22:00.001Z

Yesterday, Jeff Gerstmann, Editorial Director of CNet's GameSpot and (Since the departure of the huge asset that was Rich Gallup) host of GameSpot's Live Weekly video show On The Spot. Gerstmann ascended to the role of head honcho at GameSpot following the departure of Greg Kasavin, former Editor-In-Chief.

He took over hosting of GameSpot's On The Spot as he was formerly Rich's number two on that show. After a shaky first episode, he got it together and along with Ryan Davis managed to put together a generally good show.

Jeff has been a fixture at GameSpot for 10 years. He is GameSpot. They put him in charge and allowed him to renovate the review system in a bold, abstract way which - despite some unpopularity amongst certain quarters of the GameSpot community - was generally seen as a pretty good system. I have heard reviewers wondering what everyone's problem with it was pointing out that movie reviews carry half as many different possible scores and they are not criticised for it.

As a critic myself, I agree. As someone who has twice held positions similar to Gerstmann's role, I agree. In fact, in that position, I used scales with half the GameSpot system. Never hurt us.

Why then was Jeff Gerstmann, a key CNet and GameSpot asset, who had been appointed the leader and face of GameSpot, summarily fired on the day he was due to appear live in front of millions of gamers worldwide?

Current information points to one thing. Kane and Lynch.

Gerstmann gave Eidos's Kane and Lynch a 6.0. Eidos, who had splashed out on an over-the-top advertising campaign on GameSpot (Which mimicked that given to Halo 3, an easily more deserving title), were none too pleased.

However, apparently this only prompted a change to link the adverts instead to the game's site and not the review.

What seems to be fact is that Gerstmann's video review (Below), which does little more than summarise the points of his text review in his usual casual, likable and irreverent style, was the last straw for CNet's paymasters.

The corporate overlords that run CNet have pulled the video review from GameSpot's site and Gerstmann is now no longer a GameSpot employee.

GameSpot posted no reviews, did not broadcast On The Spot and did indeed do very little of anything yesterday. Rumours abound that the staff are "skittish" - they all seem to have been very much Jeff's men for one thing. For another, they likely approved the review since that is how GameSpot roll.

Furthermore, they can likely see their readers slipping through their fingers. Their journalistic integrity has been wiped away. CNet has sent the message that GameSpot reviews can be bought, editors fired at an advertisers request...What's next?

Furthermore, Gerstmann's exit follows an exodus of key people from the GameSpot team. First to go was Carrie Gouskos. Gouskos was de facto number 2 to Gallup in the GameSpot Live team, at least to the public (Gallup answered to Ryan MacDonald). She was one of the 3 faces of On the Spot (Along with Gallup and Gerstmann) and ran relief for Gallup during live events like E3.

She left to work on the development of Warhammer Online.

After Gouskos, the next big name to leave the GameSpot team (One who went to work at EA on Command & Conquer 3 - and presumably its sequels etc.), was Editor-In-Chief Greg Kasavin. Greg was the boss, He was very much in charge. Respected and liked by all.

Following his departure, there was no clear leader. 2 men, Gerstmann and MacDonald, appeared to have a power share. Gerstmann controlled Editorial content, whilst MacDonald was in charge of GameSpot Live. It was a departure, but the team worked.

The last big name to go, before Jeff, was of course Rich Gallup. Gallup, the face of GameSpot left without a job to go to. He literally walked, apparently to get married back on the East Coast.

If you're a suspicious guy like me, this makes no sense.

Gerstmann was a huge asset, Gallup was huge talent who they let go - seemingly without a fight. But more pressing than these curiosities is the why.

With 3 key people leaving and one of the absolute most important being fired, it begs the question.

What's really going on inside CNet? Did Kasavin and Gallup Leave because they were unhappy with their corporate overlords? It now seems conceivable. Think about it, there could be a huge amount of turmoil in there.

Gallup might have been happy to walk, unhappy with conditions. Kasavin might have been tired of the way CNet was treating him. Gerstmann stood his ground. They shot him down without a second thought.

No other explanation is logical than this: CNet and GameSpot are bitter enemies. Why else would CNet offload the popular head of GameSpot, alienating staff and fans, with the only reasonable explanation anyone can find being a video review of an advertised game. Without warning. On the day he was due to host the site's flagship show?

Until CNet provide answers, this is the view I'm sticking with.

Another key matter: Who replaces Gerstmann?

Assuming half the staff doesn't simply quit in disgust, CNet will likely continue their habit of promoting from within GameSpot. But then, who can they pick? The popular choice would be Alex Navarro. But Navarro is Jeff's man through and through. I doubt they would name him.

As is Ryan Davis, the probable second choice. Brian Eckberg would be best left to sports, to liaise with SportsGamer.Com, which GameSpot now own. So who could they put in Jeff's place?

Noone other than those 3 is an obvious choice. Brad Shoemaker is a wild card candidate, but that would seem to entail promoting over the heads of others and at any rate, he too appears to be a Jeff man. Even simply expanding MacDonald's duties is not going to work - he carpooled to work with Jeff and Alex every day, he's "one of them" from CNet's point of view.

So CNet will have to name someone new. They'll either poach someone from 1Up or IGN, or else name someone from CNet. Should the latter happen, make no mistake, GameSpot is screwed. We've already discussed the possible friction, the staff wouldn't like a corporate move like that were the friction real.

Update: CNet opted to name Ricardo Torres, a senior staffer who'd taken a slightly backroom role in recent times as Jeff's de facto successor.

You might think I'm being melodramatic. But I'm deadly serious here. This is bad news.

Jeff is great. Check out his band here

I'll be watching Tournament TV tonight. After that, I'm going to have to consider leaving GameSpot in protest unless some good explanation is given for this mess.

Jens Out

I was supervising the Points for Stars Program

2007-11-24T22:05:00.001Z

As of Monday, Nintendo Europe is changing their website from the current, tired design to an all-new one. Don't be surprised if it's white with blue and pale grey accents and many curves.

More important than revising the tired site design, we believe that as of the transition, we will finally be able to exchange Stars for Wii Points. I am making a point of converting as many Stars as possible into Wii points. I want me some VC games.

I'll probably also keep some back for Wii Software downloads. I really just wanna get Mario Kart 64. I might grab Sin and Punishment or Super Mario World. Dunno. Still think I'll keep some points back for Wii Software downloads. That being said, I may just buy new points for that.

Seeing is believing

2007-11-24T20:33:00.001Z

iPhone is like, so totally awesome

2007-11-18T12:29:00.001Z

Before work yesterday, but after grabbing some breakfast, I ventured into the Carphone Warehouse. They had iPhones displayed prominently on a classy wooden table resplendent with logos. Well, Apple's, iPhone's, Carphone Warehouse's and O2's.

These displayed iPhones were working perfectly and were there for all to play with. So I decided to take it for a whirl. I played some music through the speakers, checked out CoverFlow and browsed Apple.com in Safari.

Browsing (With Working Class Hero playing in the background) took up the majority of my demo. I was keen to try it out as I'd not had time when demoing the iPod Touch. I have to say, it's great. I was whizzing around the internets - Google for instance - without any trouble.

Next thing I did was go to Quicktime>Movie Trailers. I tapped the first one I saw - Children of Men I think - and it took me to the page. Where on a desktop the video would play in-page, there was a thumbnail and a little play icon. Tapping it started the video full screen. It, was awesome.

Anyway, that was my quick play with the iPhone. What really struck me about it was that it felt so nice in my hand. The aluminum back feels great and it's a really nice size.

Speaking of size, it's quite small. Very cute.

The demo completely sold me, I'm definitely getting an iPhone now. There's no way I'm not. It's just a matter of when.

Feel Good,
Jens

Breaking the Street Date

2007-11-15T21:52:00.001Z

Super Mario Galaxy is officially released tomorrow here in the UK. Millions of fans nationwide are waiting impatiently. I've already played about 3 and a half hours of it.

GAME sent my copy early, so I was able to play it once I got back today. It's actually probably a bad thing, I have some homework I need to do for tomorrow. But it's not too much, I should be able to get by.

To start, the game's freaking gorgeous. The water and the normal mapping in particular shine - as do the brilliant light effects. Pun fully intended.

Next, the controls are great. Mario moves perfectly and his various actions like spinning and jumping feel great to do. Spinning initially worried me. Shaking the Remote, you know? But it actually works very well.

Now, the game is a roller coaster in difficulty. There are some extremely fiendish levels that had me pulling my hair out to get the star, and others which simply require some effort to get through. It's all very satisfying.

All in all, deserved its hype.

To move on, Call of Duty 4 is awesome. We played it in 1080p - the first time we've played any game at that resolution - and it just looks fantastic. And watching my brother play it reminded me how much I like that style of gameplay. Which put me onto the Medal of Honor Heroes 2 thing again.

So I went and found IGN's review. Normally, I avoid IGN. I prefer to stick to 1UP and GameSpot. But IGN had a review and I read it. Game looks totally awesome. I can see myself spending hours playing and tweaking the controls.

I'm really pumped for it! 32-Player CTF on Wii? Hell yeah I'll pay £30 for that!

Well, £27 to me.

I've been looking into PS3. My father intends to buy a 60GB model, but I think I will probably also need my own model. As such, I'd likely grab a 40GB. But I'm holding out for the White one.

But this is after iPhone, MacBook, 360 (May buy my brother's off of him), and PC upgrades.

Jens Out

Housekeeping

2007-11-12T20:09:00.001Z

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that All Your Disney has joined The Disney Fan Network. I say eagle-eyed, but that's not strictly true. Many of you will have noticed I'm actually pushing the Network hard, both at All Your Disney itself and here.

But why not? Networks are there to generate collective traffic. Anyone who likes Disney who visits the blogs on the All Your Blog Network would be well advised to keep tabs on TDFN - run by the good people at The Disney Blog - easily my personal favourite Disney site.

But, to business. Final preparations are underway for my getting a job. You know what that means. Stuff. Stuff to write about. Games, movies, accessories, phones and computers.

Well, just one each of those final two. First off, the iPhone. Funny thing is, I didn't realise how much I really wanted iPhone in my life until fairly recently. And yet, it is without a doubt the culmination of desires I've had for a long time.

The MacBook meanwhile is the core of a long-standing desire to be untethered from this desk. iPhone represents another pillar of that - providing connectivity at all times.

But the MacBook is to allow me to browse the web, chat and play music/videos away from the desk. On my bed for example, or in the living room. The iPhone can accomplish this, yes, and will do so in some instances, but when I want a computer, the MacBook enables me to use one with more freedom.

That also frees this machine up for use as a gaming platform and a server. Fun.

In bad news, I have a terrible cold or a mild flu. One or the other. Either way, existence is hell. Grr.

You know, even though I love this monitor, I am sorely tempted by this, the Disney HDTV, lovingly adorned with Mickey Mouse symbols...Then again, I suppose I will probably need a second screen at some point. Plus, watching TV with Pinnacle TVCentre Pro is a real bitch.

I'll have to think about it.

Jens Out

Passing the 7th Position in the Rule of Doubling

2007-11-06T21:53:00.001Z

In a brief follow-up to the previous post, I have now definitely decided on the iPhone. It was the web that won it.

Now then, to the issue of the day. Portal. Hot freaking damn. Way back when Portal was newly announced and everyone was drooling over Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2 Episode 2 (I'm sorry, that is such a mouthful), I myself was more interested in Portal.

And man was I right to be. This game kicks ass. It's funny, crazy, quirky and above all, original. Truly it is the class of the Orange Box, as many have conceded in the time since the Box was unleashed.

Incidentally, what a freaking dumb name. Orange Box. It's so...Meh. Mind you, the box art is far worse.

Another great game is Metroid Prime 3 Corruption. Easily the best controls ina first-person shooter to date. I can't wait for an online game with similar controls - which I am reliably informed is inbound in the form of the 32-Player online Medal of Honor Heroes 2. Finally a reason to play a Medal of Honor game.

I know I can't wait to be blasting fools with my Wii. EA, I salute you.

Speaking of the Wii itself, my Remote Jackets showed up. I have my spare Remote in one - so newbies to Wii can't kill me - but my own personal Remote, with a rechargeable battery, is Jacket free. Well, it has one. I just don't put it on it.

The Writer's Guild is on strike stateside. Wowsers bowsers. That shit is real. I hope it gets resolved properly and fast - imagine the turmoil if the actors and directors went out in sympathy.

iPhone is out this Friday at 6:02PM. Yes, that's right. 02. O2. Get it?

Clever...But really lame.

Tomorrow I'm off to an interview for a job. Assuming I get said job, it should bring in moneys to buy all the things I'm wanting - starting with such games as Super Mario Galaxy, Medal of Honor Heroes 2, Guitar Hero 3 and some maybes like Geometry Wars Galaxies, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games and a Disney game I might pick up to review for All Your Disney dependent on how much I earn.

And then later, of course, the iPhone, ahead of the MacBook a couple months later.

I should probably also upgrade my Desktop. I'll do that after the MacBook though. Things that need doing:

Replace Graphics Card with a higher memory DX10 number
Replace Pentium 4 with Core2 Duo
Replace one Optical Drive with Blu-Ray capable equivalent
Replace one optical drive with HD-DVD capable equivalent.
Maybe add another Half-Gig of RAM

That'll bring it in line with the peripherals and its peers - read, my brother's media centre monster.

Lastamly, I'm soft-announcing a delay in Six's development owing to other commitments the team has. I can however just about promise a 2008 launch. We may launch, however, with some of our niftiest features not in place yet. The content uploading and everything will be there, it's just of the flashy stuff like in-page notifications may be released in our 1.0.6, 1.1.2, 1.1.8 etc. updates.

"We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Jens

PS: Anyone else think an open, multi-platform competitor to Xbox/Games for Windows LIVE would be a great idea? I sure do. And I have some ideas for it.You better believe it. Anyone who would like to see that happen, get in touch.

iPhone Vs. iPod Touch

2007-10-26T23:16:00.001+01:00

I was sitting in a car today waiting for someone and it occurred to me that the internet would be a good way to amuse my self for a little while. I had my RAZR in my pocket, so I pulled it out and looked up some news on WAP.

Once again, I was struck by how lame WAP browsing truly is. I read a couple of articles then got tired of it. At this point I thought to myself about how wonderful it would be to have the real WorldWide Web in my pocket, available to me whenever I needed it.

And then my mind drifted to the device which can give me it...

iPhone.

My future is going to be governed by either iPhone or iPod Touch. There are upsides to both. iPod Touch would give me a bit more space, but as my whole library would fit on the 4GB Nano (Including video) that's not a primary concern.

The iPhone has the advantage of the full web anywhere. Sure, it wouldn't be blisteringly quick, but it'd be alright for reading news. Plus, I kinda like the idea of some of those apps it has.

The phone part, that is to say, calling and SMS is of secondary interest to me. The data usage though is very important.

Oh who am I kidding, I already made my mind up.

I have a photos folder called iPhone and I've told Hotmail to forward messages to my Yahoo account (Whilst maintaining a copy on Hotmail) so I'll be able to use the Push service.

iPhone it is then.

Jens

HD-DVD Vs. Blu-Ray: The Technical View

2007-10-26T01:26:00.001+01:00

In this cross-blog feature, I'm taking a look at the optical media format war currently raging across the world.

Optical media is currently dominated by the ubiquitous Digital Versatile Disc, DVD. The DVD was in the right place at the right time, smashed VHS thanks to better pricing, better quality and more features.

It also schooled the older CD standard in the data optical disc market, thanks in large part to an increase of over 300% in per-layer capacity. Most households in the West now contain at least one DVD player, many have several. Additionally, most computers ship with one or 2 DVD drives.

But with the HD era approaching and the capacity of the DVD not really sufficient to hold enough content at HD to justify the effort - never mind the increasingly bloated size of video games - a new standard is needed. 2 competitors have emerged to take this role.

HD-DVD, Toshiba and NEC's direct successor to the DVD (In name only, it is technologically different) and the one endorsed by the DVD Forum and Sony's Blu-Ray Disc.

Both have upsides. In this part of my cross-blog feature I'll be looking at the discs from a technological and data perspective.

The primary concern on this front is the overall capacity. Blu-Ray wins out at 25GB per layer, supporting up to 2 layers for a total of 50GB. HD-DVD uses 15GB layes, so a single-layer HD-DVD has 10GB less than a Blu-Ray disc with the same number of layers. This gap increases to fully 20GB - the difference between the two formats capacity-per-layer.

That would seem to close the debate. But, alas, no.

For you see, the DVD Forum has an HD-DVD spec for a triple-layer, 51GB disc. I don't know where they found the 6GB from either, but the spec exists. This means that the higher capacity format is technically HD-DVD with the caveat of being only at the high-end. And it is a piddling advantage.

So the next consideration from a technical standpoint is read/write speed. Blu-Ray is an easy victor here over HD-DVD being 10-18Mbit/s faster. HD-DVD is roughly 3 times as fast as DVD.

Of course, these numbers being both significantly faster than DVD reduces the importance of the comparison, but that is beside the point. From a purely technical standpoint, Blu-Ray is - by and large - an easy winner.

All Your Time Are Belong To Us: The Technical view
All Your Disney: A Consumer and Entertainment Value Comparison
All Your Time Are Belong To Us: It's Not That Simple