Announcing the 96 Hour iPhone 3G Net-Based Campout

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

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.

Xbox LIVE, AOL and the Changing Face of the Internet

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

Wanted Ad

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

Preparing for Eee

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

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

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

CES Las Vegas 2008 Bill Gates Keynote Predictions

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

Happy Holidays

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

Kyoto, Wii have a problem

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

iPhone Vs. iPod Touch

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

Telephone

Well, I bought the phone. There were only 3 left and 2 had fairly beat up boxes. But I got one and it's sitting on my desk right now, just waiting for me to grab the necessary box to connect it to the VoIP network.

I'll be doing a review just as soon as I have it set up. I'll be releasing it initially on All Your Disney, but I might reprint it here with a tighter focus on telephony rather than the phone.

Phones are a really interesting area right now. Between Apple's iPhone and the OpenMoko project, mobile phones are going through their long-awaited revolution. Meanwhile, VoIP is making "landline" telephony simpler and better - both through cheaper services and great ideas like GrandCentral.

And all the while, the conventional landline operators are making efforts to move outward - BT for example is launching an IPTV service - and their new competitors are moving in on their territory - BSkyB offers Broadband now..!?

Yes, it's truly a time of change for telephony.

And meanwhile, the allegedly advancing television sector continues to diapoint. Between lacklustre uptake of HD broadcast and slow changes to aging systems, TV has lost a lot of its wonder.

A lot of the problem is that companies are failing to see the bigger picture. The internet is the obvious venue for expansion, yet the companies with the power continue to limit the expansion of TV into the internet. BT Vision has internet, but it's a sandbox.

iTunes TV Shows is great, but the broadcasters are being jerks.

BBC's iPlayer is hideoulsy crippled.

4OD makes me feel sick just thinking about it.

Come on TV companies, get your heads in the game.

Jens Out

WiiDS Has Died

The GN Network is formally announcing the abandonment of the WiiDS Main Site as a result of lack of interest. The Main Site will be handed back to Trevsweb and the staff reporting to me, Jensonb, under the WiiDS Main Site can remain with the site if they wish. The Forums remain under the control of Trevsweb and their fate is not within our control.

The founders and heads of the GN Network are moving on to more community oriented projects, with GN Network changing its name to GizzedInc Content Delivery whilst development continues on a site to add to the successful GizzedInc site, hosting Gizmondo Homebrew.

We do not regret opening the WiiDS Main Site, however it has come to our attention that there is no real room for another Nintendo site.

Our next new project will be focused on games as a whole. We are very excited about the site, still in R&D.

Community is the future of gaming - since gaming is now heavily skewed to online with all consoles being able to go online.

We will reveal more on the project, including a codename once we commence Alpha. You can then expect a final name once it goes Beta.

Ciao,
Jens