techblogs

Det är lätt att underskatta Microsofts webbsatsningar efter att man blivit plågad med MSN och liknande i flera år. Det börjar dock hända saker borta i Seattle. Igår avslutades Microsofts konferens MIX10 i Las Vegas. På keynoten där så visade de upp lite nya funktioner i Bing Maps och det var ett gäng rejält coola saker man fick se.

Det ska tilläggas att Bing Maps är byggt i Silverlight som är Microsofts motsvarighet till Flash. Det hade förstås varit än mer imponerande om det var byggt i HTML 5, men det kan mycket väl vara på gång. Efter att ha sett presentationen av framförallt Internet Explorer 9 så förstår man att Microsoft satsar mycket på HTML 5 just nu.

Vad är det speciella med Bing Maps jämfört med Google Maps då?

Det första man reagerar på är att allting går mycket mjukare. När man zoomar in och ut mellan kartläget och streetview så får man en riktigt skön kameraåkning från kartan och ned på gatan. Själva gatvyn är mycket snyggare i ”ihopklistrad” också och när man går runt i gatuvyn så flyger kameran fram och känslan blir mer som lång slutartid på en kamera än att det bara laddas in nya bilder som det gör på Google Maps.

En annan riktigt kul funktion är integrationen av Photosynth som vi tidigare skrivit om. Photosynth är en teknik där man genom att använda väldigt många bilder tagna vid samma plats kan bygga ihop en 3D-känsla och panorera bland massa bilder. Det som gör det snäppet coolare är att Bing automatiskt tar bilder ifrån Flickr som är satta som Creative Commons och då såklart har GPS-information lagrade i sig. Jag har satt ihop en liten demonstrationsvideo nedan om du inte känner för att testa själv.

Och sist men inte minst. Funktionen ”Birds Eye” är ännu en funktion som Bing har men som Google saknar. Med Birds Eye vyn så får du en vy snett uppifrån som faktiskt känns ganska exakt som att spela Sim City.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Länk: Bing MapsMer hos Ohsohightech:

• Search Engine Rap Battle av Ola, tisdag, 14 oktober 2008
• Photosynth imponerar av Ola, tisdag, 20 januari 2009
• Du suger på Photoshop! av Ola, fredag, 14 mars 2008
• Exempel på företag som håller koll på nätet av Ola, lördag, 18 oktober 2008
• It’s a commercial about nothing, nothing Jerry. Nothing! av Ola, fredag, 05 september 2008

Bing Maps lanserar nya riktigt coola funktioner

Med Stella Utopia EM, tror Focal-JMlab att de har fått fram en högtalare som kan vara ett prisvärt alternativ till ultraexklusiva flaggskeppet Grande Utopia EM.

The week before was mostly reassessing the Trust project communication and making notes on what might need to be redone and what might need to be tossed out. The communication itself has a good rhythm although the last share of it — well, basically it felt like falling while skating, but never quite hitting the ground. Kinda cartoon-like. In the end, it was okay but I felt shit.

Other than this work, there was general housekeeping, some house buying and preparing a bit for what I might present for the Design Fiction panel at SXSW, which was to happen on Saturday the 13th. That was a bit poorly planned on two points. The first was that I expected to cover what I normally covered in an hour or 90 minute talk in 7 minutes. The second is that I wanted to cover some new material in addition to that. And there was a third thing — I wanted to use much more video rather than still images. Fail on all points, but at least the prep helped me work through the new stuff and cutting lots of video has given me some good exemplars for a forthcoming bit on genre conventions in science fiction film, which I’m super excited to work on in the coming weeks, house moving permitting.

Related Dispatches:

1. Design Fiction Panel at SXSW 2010 Well, last Saturday the SXSW panel I had proposed on Design Fiction presented our stuff. It was 7 minutes each for myself, Sascha Pohflepp, Stuart Candy and Jake Dunagen...
2. The Week Ending 050310 Man..was *that a week. No one’s counting, or probably even noticing, but I missed my weeknote from the week before — there’s a gap — so this is really...
3. The Week Ending 120210 Well, this is getting preposterous, but I’ll keep plugging on in the hope that my weeknotes will be done, at the least, during the week they purport to cover....

The week before was mostly reassessing the Trust project communication and making notes on what might need to be redone and what might need to be tossed out. The communication itself has a good rhythm although the last share of it — well, basically it felt like falling while skating, but never quite hitting the ground. Kinda cartoon-like. In the end, it was okay but I felt shit.

Other than this work, there was general housekeeping, some house buying and preparing a bit for what I might present for the Design Fiction panel at SXSW, which was to happen on Saturday the 13th. That was a bit poorly planned on two points. The first was that I expected to cover what I normally covered in an hour or 90 minute talk in 7 minutes. The second is that I wanted to cover some new material in addition to that. And there was a third thing — I wanted to use much more video rather than still images. Fail on all points, but at least the prep helped me work through the new stuff and cutting lots of video has given me some good exemplars for a forthcoming bit on genre conventions in science fiction film, which I’m super excited to work on in the coming weeks, house moving permitting.

Related Dispatches:

1. Design Fiction Panel at SXSW 2010 Well, last Saturday the SXSW panel I had proposed on Design Fiction presented our stuff. It was 7 minutes each for myself, Sascha Pohflepp, Stuart Candy and Jake Dunagen...
2. The Week Ending 050310 Man..was *that a week. No one’s counting, or probably even noticing, but I missed my weeknote from the week before — there’s a gap — so this is really...
3. The Week Ending 120210 Well, this is getting preposterous, but I’ll keep plugging on in the hope that my weeknotes will be done, at the least, during the week they purport to cover....

The variety of permissions and their signals in Austin Texas during SXSW 2010. No firearms, smoking’s okay — and no firearms — licensed or unlicensed — because of this peculiar 51% law in Texas, versus only the forbidding of unlicensed firearms which means, like..there exists unlicensed firearms. Just people buying guns and walking around with them. In Texas.

Related Dispatches:

1. Brand Obama In the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul, where every other store-keep on the main drag is trying to measure a tattered, soaked urban scout for a new suit, this garment...
2. When Characters Cross: Extradiegetic Imbrication Jack Bauer as interpreted. Seen in a local art supply shop. First off, I’m being tongue-in-cheek with the blog post title, so lower your weapons. And I’ll be brief....
3. Peculiar Dog Driving Practices and Other Mobile Daring-Do Definitely not a viable near future human social practice, especially with gas approaching its inevitable $5 USD per gallon prices, here in the US. This non-staged dog driving was...

The variety of permissions and their signals in Austin Texas during SXSW 2010. No firearms, smoking’s okay — and no firearms — licensed or unlicensed — because of this peculiar 51% law in Texas, versus only the forbidding of unlicensed firearms which means, like..there exists unlicensed firearms. Just people buying guns and walking around with them. In Texas.

Related Dispatches:

1. Brand Obama In the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul, where every other store-keep on the main drag is trying to measure a tattered, soaked urban scout for a new suit, this garment...
2. When Characters Cross: Extradiegetic Imbrication Jack Bauer as interpreted. Seen in a local art supply shop. First off, I’m being tongue-in-cheek with the blog post title, so lower your weapons. And I’ll be brief....
3. Peculiar Dog Driving Practices and Other Mobile Daring-Do Definitely not a viable near future human social practice, especially with gas approaching its inevitable $5 USD per gallon prices, here in the US. This non-staged dog driving was...

Sometimes you start watching a YouTube video and you realize that it's not very interesting. You pause the video, but YouTube continues to download the file. What can you do to stop the download?

Until now, a simple trick to stop buffering a YouTube video was to fast forward to the end of the video. The good news is that YouTube added an option to stop the download: right-click on the video and click on "Stop download".

YouTube's help center has more information about buffering. "The YouTube video player downloads a video as it plays. A buffer is a section of memory in your computer which allows for the simultaneous writing and reading of information -- on YouTube the buffered section is represented by the red section of the video timeline. The YouTube video player reads video information from one section of the buffer while writing to another. This kind of multitasking allows for smoother playback of video during a continuous process of downloading which is especially helpful for slower connections. "

New York Times reports that Google has partnered with Intel and Sony to create a TV platform powered by Android.

"Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes. (...) The partners envision technology that will make it as easy for TV users to navigate Web applications, like the Twitter social network and the Picasa photo site, as it is to change the channel. Google intends to open the Google TV platform, which is based on its Android operating system for cellphones, to software developers in the hopes of spurring the same creativity that the consumers have seen in phone apps."

The idea is not new, as many other companies tried to bring the Web to the TV. YouTube already has a version for large screens, Google already sells TV advertising and there are many Google apps that could improve the TV experience. New York Times says that Google's software will include a new interface for YouTube, a browser and other Android apps that will extend the functionality.
"Google has built a prototype set-top box, but the technology may be incorporated directly into TVs or other devices, like Blu-ray players. (...) A person with knowledge of the Google TV project said that the set-top box technology was sufficiently advanced that Google had begun testing it with Dish Network, one of Google's longstanding partners in the TV Ads program."

If you can’t pitch the press, pay them. That’s the proposition some review sites have for publicity-starved iPhone developers.

Several websites dedicated to iPhone app reviews are requesting payments from developers in exchange for writeups of their apps, Wired.com has learned. Those payments are not always clearly disclosed to readers, and the practice hasn’t received much discussion outside of gaming blogs.

Soliciting money in exchange for a product review is not illegal, but the practice should raise questions about the credibility and independence  of the review sites, critics say.

“They prey on people who need exposure,” said Oliver Cameron, developer of the popular iPhone app Postman, who has avoided pitching his apps to sites that request payment for reviews. “It strikes me as a paid ad, really. They never seem to actually ‘review’ it.”

The two sites that were most frequently mentioned by programmers who contacted Wired.com were TheiPhoneAppReview.com and AppCraver.com. Both sites appear in the top four Google search results for the search term “iPhone app review.”

With more than 150,000 apps in the iPhone App Store, rising above the crowd is a major challenge for developers. Getting a good review on the web can help drive sales and that, in turn, can raise an app’s profile within the App Store. While apps that earn their creators hundreds of thousands of dollars are rare, they do exist, and many developers seek publicity in hopes of achieving this dream.

Driven by that demand, app review websites are offering to “expedite” reviews — that is, bring apps to the front of the review queue — in exchange for a fee. But at least one site, ThePhoneAppReview.com, has gone even farther, and threatened to shun products whose developers haven’t paid for reviews.

ThePhoneAppReview told independent developer Michael D’Ulisse it would not review his app Pocket Labeler at all unless he paid a fee of $25. The demand is at odds with the website’s About section, which implies that fees only apply to reviews that are expedited. D’Ulisse provided a copy of an e-mail from a site editor:

I would be interested in writing a review and having it on our website (www.theiphoneappreview.com). We do charge a $25 fee for reviews (this is used to compensate our authors), so the decision is yours. If you want a review written, but have no promo codes left, I can purchase the app and add the price of the app into your invoice. Let me know either way. Thanks!

–Sarah Parker The iPhone App Review

D’Ulisse noted that on a separate occasion in November 2009, he received the same e-mail response from The iPhone App Review when he distributed press releases for his app 2,001 Easy Gifts.

“So you’ve got a reviewer, and she’s an editor at the site who wants to use my app personally but will not post a review on her site unless I give her $25,” D’Ulisse wrote. “What happened to journalistic integrity?”

The iPhone App Review’s editor-in-chief Shaun Campbell said he was unaware that his site’s writers were requesting payment in exchange for reviews. He explained that the reviewers work autonomously, so he is unsure of how they’re paid by app creators. As of this writing The iPhone App Review’s About section remains unchanged, stating that fees only apply to expedited app reviews.

“I have never once sent a request for a fee to a developer to review their app,” Campbell told Wired.com. “That is not our policy, which is why that is not stated in the About.”

Campbell said that his site’s policy is to offer expedited service in exchange for a fee because with the gigantic number of apps in the App Store, it would be an “impossible task to review all the apps we receive, paid or unpaid.” He added that very few talented writers would be willing to review iPhone apps for free and that providing payment ensures quality work.

“The iPhone App Review is not a PR charity,” Campbell said. “We’re a business, and like in any business, there are costs that need to be recovered.”

Requiring payment for product reviews is not illegal, but the Federal Trade Commission has frowned on the practice. The commission believes a paid review can easily be the same as a paid advertisement, and consumers as a result may be misled into purchasing a product based on a falsely positive evaluation that was bought and paid for.

To address the issue, the FTC in October 2009 published revised guidelines governing endorsements for bloggers, requiring bloggers to provide disclosure whenever a review is written in exchange for money or gifts.

Rich Cleland of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said he could not comment on specific websites, because they must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. He said that in general, so long as payments are disclosed clearly and accurately, it is not considered misleading to the public.

“If a consumer knows that a producer pays for the review to appear, the consumer can make up their own mind to what extent that affects the credibility of the review,” Cleland told Wired.com in a phone interview. “From our perspective the primary issue is not the payment but the disclosure of the payment.”

Still, paid reviews should raise questions about a publication’s credibility, he added.

“It’s reasonable to assume that a significant number of consumers wouldn’t give the same level of credibility to something they thought was a paid review versus something they thought was an independent review,” Cleland said.

Every time a review is written in exchange for pay, it should be explicitly disclosed on that review, Cleland said. Paid reviews on The iPhone App Review do not include such a disclosure in the text of the review.

AppCraver.com also seeks payment for an expedited reviews. Lore Sjoberg, Wired.com’s “Alt Text” columnist, told Wired.com he submitted his iPhone app The Cyborg Name Decoder to AppCraver.com for review, and in response the site offered to expedite a review of his app for $150. The letter included a promise to contact Sjoberg “prior to publishing a review that scores lower than 5/10.”

The e-mail also offered Sjoberg the opportunity to buy an advertisement on the site, along with the promise that every advertised app would also receive an editorial review.

AppCraver did not respond to Wired.com’s request for comment. However, it’s worth noting that AppCraver has, in some reviews, disclosed when reviews are “expedited,” providing a link to the site’s policy about paid expedited reviews, which states, “Simply put an Expedited Review is one where the developer paid to move to the front of the line. Developers can NOT buy a good score.”

Not all iPhone app review sites require money or gifts in exchange for writeups. The creators of 148Apps and Slide to Play authored a set of ethical standards called Organization for App Testing Standards (OATS) that they hope other sites will commit and adhere to.

“Steve and I created OATS out of our concern for the lack of ethics when we started seeing more and more of these sites,” Scott said. “While we strive to stick to standard practices of editorial integrity, there are others that seem to operate under a very different set of morals,” said Jeff Scott of 148Apps.

Slide to Play’s Steve Palley said paid reviews are detrimental to the community of iPhone developers and customers.

“Paid reviews damage our entire ecosystem because they harm consumers, period, full stop,” Palley told Wired.com in an e-mail. “People who think they are reading objective reviews are going to be disappointed after taking paid ‘advice.’”

Added Palley, “We decided that we needed to do something to put a stop to it.”

The FTC’s Cleland said that if blogs are not clearly or honestly disclosing payments for reviews, consumers can file a complaints to the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or by calling 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357).

See Also:

• Apple Expels 1000 Apps From Store After Developer Scam
• iPhone Developer May Be Bribing Reviewers
• For the iPhone’s App Store, Quantity Really Does Matter
• With More Than Enough Apps, Apple Pushes for Quality
• The State of Mobile App Stores Summarized in Charts

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

I’ve used this for a year, and it can hold nails, pins, etc., on my wrist rather than in my mouth. Here’s a brief list of tasks I’ve used this for: Putting together a Huffy Green Machine for my son; hanging pictures; shortening pants/dresses. It really does make jobs easier, and I don’t think anything similar exists.

-- Sue Bettenhausen

MagnoGrip 311-090 Magnetic Wristband $11

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by MagnoGrip

Well, last Saturday the SXSW panel I had proposed on Design Fiction presented our stuff. It was 7 minutes each for myself, Sascha Pohflepp, Stuart Candy and Jake Dunagen with Jennifer Leonard doing an excellent job of wrangling and moderating. We invited Bruce Sterling up for the discussion session and he lofted several excellent flash-bangs, many of which are still ringing in the #defi search on Twitter. We’ll have to wait for the video.

There was, of course, so much more to finish and I promised myself I’d put together in a blog post what I had hopelessly hoped I would be able to cram into 7 minutes — but which I quickly realized as I was doing the final assembly would never, ever fit in that short a time. So, I limited myself quite a bit as we had agreed as a panel so that we could have a productive and fruitful presentation.

Thanks to Hugh Forrest and the whole South by Southwest crew for helping make this all go super smooth. -

Related Dispatches:

1. Design Fiction Chronicles: Brainstorm Opening credits, which encompasses also the early moments of the first scene of Brainstorm Well, this is one popped into my head the other day, but not for the...
2. The Week Ending 120210 Well, this is getting preposterous, but I’ll keep plugging on in the hope that my weeknotes will be done, at the least, during the week they purport to cover....
3. The Week Ending Today 181209 Some old-fashioned augments — I think that’s some Mario and an old-fashioned, chemo-tech *wheat paste* post-up — found in Paris, France over the Thanksgiving holiday — which means nothing...

Well, last Saturday the SXSW panel I had proposed on Design Fiction presented our stuff. It was 7 minutes each for myself, Sascha Pohflepp, Stuart Candy and Jake Dunagen with Jennifer Leonard doing an excellent job of wrangling and moderating. We invited Bruce Sterling up for the discussion session and he lofted several excellent flash-bangs, many of which are still ringing in the #defi search on Twitter. We’ll have to wait for the video.

There was, of course, so much more to finish and I promised myself I’d put together in a blog post what I had hopelessly hoped I would be able to cram into 7 minutes — but which I quickly realized as I was doing the final assembly would never, ever fit in that short a time. So, I limited myself quite a bit as we had agreed as a panel so that we could have a productive and fruitful presentation.

Thanks to Hugh Forrest and the whole South by Southwest crew for helping make this all go super smooth. -

Related Dispatches:

1. Design Fiction Chronicles: Brainstorm Opening credits, which encompasses also the early moments of the first scene of Brainstorm Well, this is one popped into my head the other day, but not for the...
2. The Week Ending 120210 Well, this is getting preposterous, but I’ll keep plugging on in the hope that my weeknotes will be done, at the least, during the week they purport to cover....
3. The Week Ending Today 181209 Some old-fashioned augments — I think that’s some Mario and an old-fashioned, chemo-tech *wheat paste* post-up — found in Paris, France over the Thanksgiving holiday — which means nothing...

Professor Ishikawa Komuro’s Tokyo lab is better known for robot hands which can dribble and catch balls and spin pencils between their fingers. Now, two researchers have taken this speedy sensing tech and applied it to the ripping of paper books.

The big difference between books and other kinds of media, like music and movies, is that it is very hard to get them into a computer. There is no equivalent of CD or DVD rippers like iTunes or Handbrake. This not only makes piracy laborious, it also stops you from turning your own books into e-books.

This high-speed scanner changes that, at least if you have the room and tech-skills to build one. By using a high-speed camera that shoots at 500 frames per second, lab workers Takashi Nakashima and Yoshihiro Watanabe can scan a 200 page book in under a minute. All you do is hold the book under the camera and flip through the pages as if shuffling a deck of cards. The camera records the images and uses processing power to turn the odd-shaped pictures into flat, rectangular pages on which regular OCR (optical character recognition) can be performed.

The technique is unlikely to be coming to the home anytime soon (although ripping a book by flipping it in front of your notebook’s webcam would be pretty awesome), but it could certainly speed up large scanning efforts like Google’s book project.

Superfast Scanner Lets You Digitize a Book By Rapidly Flipping Pages [IEEE Spectrum]

High-Speed Robot Hand Demonstrates Dexterity and Skillful Manipulation [Hizook]

See Also:

• DIY Book Scanners Turn Your Books Into Bytes
• 500 Pages–Per-Hour Book Scanner From Atiz Released
• Google Books Adds Workers' Hands To Classics

Kommande Rampage III Extreme från Asus är ett grymt läckert moderkort som bland annat kan överklockas från mobilen via blåtand.

Your next TV could be a Google TV, made by Sony and powered by Intel chips. The three companies have teamed up to build what will be called the Google TV, essentially a big-screen living-room computer.

The TV project, according to the New York Times, is still under wraps, but that hasn’t stopped the details from leaking. The GTV will be based on the Android OS, and come in the form of both a set-top box and actual TV-sets. There will be regular television, of course, but also Hulu, YouTube and other web-video sources, as well as games and apps for social networking.

It makes so much sense we wonder why we didn’t see it coming. TV is one of the few advertising markets Google isn’t yet in, the company has an OS ready to go, and Google’s simple UI designs are perfect for couch-surfing. The Google TV will even have the Chrome browser built-in.

The reason for a partnership with Intel is pretty obvious — we expect the TV will use some form of Atom chip. But why would Sony get involved? According to the NYT, Sony sees it as a competitive advantage in a very difficult market. It’s right. Who wouldn’t buy a TV with Google inside?

The Google TV appears to be close. Developer tools are expected in the next two months, and Logitech has reportedly been approached to make peripherals such as speakers and a QWERTY-equipped remote. This could be huge, and a further blow to the PC industry. If you have the internet in your television, and a tablet appliance like the iPad to carry around, who needs a desktop or even a laptop computer?

Google and Partners Seek TV Foothold [NYT]

TV Photo: Sony

Photo illustration: Charlie Sorrel

Ohsohightech är ingen spelblogg så det är inte så konstigt vi inte skrivit några inlägg om just spel tidigare. Men den senaste tiden har jag testat några spel som man kan ladda hem helt gratis och jag känner att jag måste tipsa om dessa. Och kanske framförallt få tips av er på andra kvalitativa gratisspel. Och då snackar vi riktiga spel som tillverkarna lika gärna skulle kunna ta betalt för och inte små flashspel och dylikt.

Trackmania Nations

Jag har alltid älskat spel som Trackmania Nations. För er som var med back in the days med C64 och Amiga så kan jag nämna spel som Stunt Car Racer och Stunts (aka 4D Sports Driving) så vet ni vad det handlar om. Helt enkelt helt orealistisk racing på helt tokiga banor. Man kan bygga egna banor och lägga upp dem på servrar och utmana någon fransman eller tysk. Eller helt enkelt bara köra på andras banor. Det finns även en stor community kring spelet med en massa turneringar och dylikt.

Spelet kan laddas hem helt gratis från dess webbplats. Vill man fördjupa sig så kan man köpa spelet Trackmania United för cirka 300 kr och då får man ett gäng nya bilar med helt andra egenskaper än de man kör i Trackmania Nations. Verkligen rekomenderat tidsfördriv.

Länk: Trackmania Nations

Battlefield Heroes

Svenska DICE har sedan urminnes tider producerat kvalitetsspel och när deras spel Battlefield 1942 dök upp så etablerade de sig som en av världens mest respekterade speltillverkare tillsammans med namn som Blizzard, ID Software och Valve. Battlefield Heroes är deras senaste skapelse och är alltså helt gratis att spela. Det hela är tänkt att finansieras av reklam och diverse prylar i spelet som man kan låsa upp genom att köpa saker.

Jag har bara testat spelet lite snabbt men grundprincipen är precis som i alla Battlefield spel. Man är två lag och man ska hålla så många flaggor som möjligt genom att sammarbeta så mycket som det går. Riktigt kul är det iallafall och om de tidigare Battlefield-spelen har varit ganska seriösa och försökt ge en realistisk bild av krig så har DICE i Heroes valt att en mer humoristisk väg.

Länk: Battlefield Heroes

Americas Army

Konceptet bakom Americas Army kan man tycka lite som man vill om. Att låta kids spela realistiska krigsspel där man samtidigt gör reklam för att man ska gå med i armén är väl sådär. Men man kan inte blunda för att Americas Army är ett bra spel. Spelet påminner mycket om Counter-Strike men vad jag minns så är det lite mindre ”arcade”-känsla och lite mer simulator.

Det var längesedan jag testade Americas Army men jag är säker på att det fotfarande är ett bra spel för folk som gillar att skjuta på folk som hatar frihet (citat lånat från Martin Kellerman).

Länk: Americas ArmyMer hos Ohsohightech:

• Game Booster: Ger dig mer minne när du spelar spel av Ola, tisdag, 16 juni 2009
• Jing – Ta screenshots eller filmer och lägg upp på webben av Ola, måndag, 25 augusti 2008
• Exempel på företag som håller koll på nätet av Ola, lördag, 18 oktober 2008
• Vad vi verkligen får i iPhone OS 3.0 av Markus, tisdag, 17 mars 2009
• Alternativ till Adobe Reader: Foxit Reader av Ola, tisdag, 08 april 2008

Spela riktiga spel gratis (lagligt)

You may still be undecided whether or not you're going to invest in a new 3D TV, but it seems that Americans (or at least a select, wealthy few with money to spare) are totally ready for the 3rd dimension....

Umang Dokey’s Windows 7 Phone Series tablet concept is rather enticing, and it even manages to feel genuinely like a Microsoft product, with its mixture of impossible sci-fi concepts (3D video conferencing) and gray office mundanity (a keyboard).

The (non-embeddable) CG video show the slim device in action. The keyboard is also a fold-out stand, depending on how far you rotate it from its hole in the back (and if you do decide to go all QWERTY, the rest of the unit will surely just topple backwards). The two webcams sit far apart on either side of the 8-inch touch-screen, and when used to make 3D would probably give you the viewpoint of Admiral Ackbar. The Bezel is really too small to let you hold the device without covering the screen with a thumb, and around the back are a couple of recessed joysticks for gaming. It looks lovely, and would probably be awful to use.

But the biggest takeaway from the demo video is that Windows Mobile 7 (sorry, but the official name is too much of a mouthful: just look at that headline up there) is perfect for a touch-screen tablet, with all its floaty, scrolling UI elements. This is what MS should be working on, not some awful Windows 7 tablet.

Tablet Concept [Umang Dokey via da Giz]

See Also:

• It's Not Easy to Make a Tablet, Stantum Slate PC Proves
• HP's Windows 7 Slate Strikes at the iPad

Sony and LOVEFiLM have today announced an agreement that could see as many as 67,000 LOVEFiLM titles become availbe to stream directly to new Sony Bravia Internet Video TVs, Blu-ray players and Blu-ray Home Theatre kits. Unlimited LOVEFiLM subscribers will...

Har du vågat slumpchatta på Chatroulette.com än? Om inte bör du förbereda dig på både det ena och det andra. Analysföretaget RJMetrics har nämligen kommit fram till att en av tio besökare är "perversa".