Samsung i780 - Just Another Blackberry Clone?

The Samsung i780 is, at first glance, another Blackberry clone – in fact, no matter how often you glance, that’s pretty much what it remains. It does throw in some pretty impressive additional features including the rather useful mini touchpad tracker pad navigational thing and HSDPA support for lightning fast download and upload speeds. But, like many clones it looks the part and tries to impress, but it has some imperfections compared to the original.

The 2.5 inch display is touch-screen – much like the Blackberry line. The QWERTY keyboard could easily have been physically removed from a Blackberry. Yet, it doesn’t seem to manage these things quite as well as a Blackberry – it just hasn’t had the same amount of practice is probably the problem.

The touch pad is a stroke of genius though. Once you program your brain to forget looking for the little directional buttons, and get used to the tracker we’re fairly sure you’ll love it and you may even venture so far as to throw away the stylus (or at the very least, not use it when in public – people will think you’re a real Brain Trainer geek).

Battery life is pretty good, and the design is sleek. Compared to its predecessor, the i600 it’s come on in leaps and bounds. If you’re looking for an alternative to a Blackberry then you could do a lot worse than the Samsung, but in all honesty, you’d probably still be better off with the latest Blackberry handset (or buy an N95).

Console Wars Update - XBox360 Reaches 10m US Units

Yet another update to the next gen console wars – a couple of updates, in fact, and one of them is a sort of cross last-gen/next-gen hybrid internal war. First up is news that the Xbox360 is the first next generation console to sell a huge 10 million units in the US. Obviously Microsoft are making a big deal out of it, and it is big news, but the PS3 has been hot on their tails in worldwide figures and the Wii is still the stand out leader (although conveniently not always considered to be a part of the current console war).

The other news is that the PS2 out-sold its younger and better looking sibling, the PS3, for the year 2007. While the PS3 sold just over 9 million units for the year, the PS2 sold a staggering 13.7 million units.

The console war lives on, as ever, with each of the three seemingly reporting the best results. While the Wii is sometimes overlooked in this round, it has to be the stand out winner. The cheapest, most innovative, most popular, and with the widest appeal of the lot it has easily outsold each of its competitors by a significant margin and continues to impress.

Nokia Tops The Most Popular Brands But N-Gage 4th Most Hated

Marketing magazine has conducted its fourth annual survey on the most popular and least popular brands in the country. It’s perhaps not that surprising to learn that 6 of the top 10 most popular are tech related brands but more surprisingly (considering how annoying some tech gadgets can be) only 3 of the least popular are in this same technology genre.

Nokia is the most popular brand according to the survey with iPod, O2, Facebook, Virgin Media, and BBC completing an impressive line up. Notably, the three that feature in the least popular category are AOL falling in behind only McDonalds, N-Gage, and 3.

Such are the way with these brands, though, many of them feature highly in both lists. (Thanks to T3 for doing the leg work on this one by the way) The five most popular handheld gadgets provide an identical, albeit dishevelled, list of the five least popular - iPod, Nintendo DS, Sony Walkman, Sony PSP and N-Gage.

The Marketing Magazine is typically read by a demographic of people that like gadgets and are technologically savvy. So, do you love or hate these brands? Do surveys like this actually mean anything?

Worldwide Telescope From Microsoft In Beta

Microsoft is never one to be outdone, and following news that they won’t be purchasing Yahoo to take on Google in the search engine industry, they have attempted to go one step further than the Google Earth (with the celestial add-on) application. Worldwide Telescope (how long before a full Google Galaxy is released?) is a downloadable piece of software that enables users to view images from land and space telescopes.

The Windows only software (who’d have guessed) then enables users to pan around the planets, zoom in and out, and locate an area relative to the rest of the sky. Not only does the software work according to current coordinates but can also be used to see how the sky looked in the past.

Aimed to bring out the astronomer in all of us, and provide some use to the professionals too, Worldwide Telescope has taken images from some major resources to create what looks an incredible bit of software. NASA has contributed substantial material and images are also provided by the Chandra X-Ray telescope.

Currently in Beta, the Worldwide Telescope which also includes tours around the galaxy by professional astronomers, has some hefty system requirements even by today’s standards. A 2GHz Processor and 2GB of RAM as well as up to 10GB of empty hard drive are required. Besides this you also need a graphics card with 128MB of dedicated memory so it’s not for the faint hearted but it does look incredible.

MacRobert Finalists Announced

The Royal Academy of Engineering has announced its four finalists for the annual MacRobert Engineering Award, which is to be presented at their annual dinner on 9^th June. The prestigious award recognises excellence in the field of engineering and comes complete with a solid gold medal, £50,000 first prize, and the prestige of joining a veritable who’s who of Engineering from the past four decades. This year’s finalists are:

• Polar – the Polar system is used to effectively monitor and maintain thousands of biological samples that are stored in temperatures as low as -80C. It is already used in the UK Biobank facility with excellent results.
• FAIMS – a spin-off of Cambridge University Engineering Department has created a chemical chip that uses a newly patented system called FAIMS (Field Asymmetric Ion Mass Spectroscopy) to detect trace amounts of chemicals. It could be used to detect explosive residue or to find disease.
• Bionic Hand – the trendily named iLimb is a prosthetic hand that first began development forty years ago. The hand works as a normal hand would and provides patients with the use of fingers as well as a whole hand. Over 200 patients have already been successfully fitted with an iLimb (as far as we know, it’s nothing to do with Apple).
• Diesel Catalytic Converter – the diesel soot filter is created by Johnson Matthey, who have previously won the award on two occasions and systems that have already been shipped are expected to prevent millions of kilograms of soot from entering the atmosphere.

Microsoft XP Home Available For £13

Although, unfortunately, not to you and I. Microsoft announced several weeks back that it would continue supplying the XP operating system to all countries, but especially developing countries – it also announced at that time, that they would drastically reduce the price for those markets. However, the actual price and details have only just been released and they are quite impressive.

Microsoft is attempting to take on Linux and Unix based systems by ensuring that new computers include one of their operating systems. While higher specification computers in the developed world will not be privvy to any price cuts, and will be expected to offer Vista, lower cost PCs will still be able to offer XP, and manufacturers will be able to buy a copy for £16.

In order to limit the number of manufacturers and systems that will receive this price cut, Microsoft has stated that only computers with screens 10.2 inches or smaller (but not touch screens) and with a hard drive of 80GB or less will be able to benefit these surprisingly impressive prices. This news comes in the wake of the fact that many manufacturers are finding a way to continue supplying XP – they are doing this because it remains much more popular than the Vista system.

A Brief History Of The MacRobert Award

The MacRobert Award is an annual award given to the most pioneering development in engineering over the space of twelve months. As well as the prestige of the award, the winning company also walks away with an impressive £50,000 first prize. The MacRobert Award isn’t for the light hearted or hobbyist though, and showcases some of the finest and most groundbreaking discoveries. Past winners have included:

• Freeman, Fox, and Partners – the first ever winners in 1969, and joint winners, of the prize were responsible for the engineering behind the Severn Bridge.
• Rolls Royce – in the same year, Rolls Royce were given the award for creating the Pegasus engine, which was used in Harrier planes.
• Johnson Matthey Group – first won the prize in 1980 for the development of the catalytic system for vehicle exhausts. More recently, won the award in 2000 for the CRT (Continuously Regenerating Trap) that controls the emissions from buses and trucks.

While the transport and medical industries are the two most popular, in terms of the eventual location of the prize, communications and structural engineering have also played a more significant part in recent years. This years winners will be announced and awarded on 9^th June and we have details of the four finalists in another post.

The Ultimate Bang & Olufsen Beoliving Home Theatre System

Bang & Olufsen has long been a name synonymous with high end goods with equally high end price tags. The equipment is virtually unsurpassed but you do need a large bank balance in order to be able to afford even the cheaper end of the remote control spectrum. But, hey, we can dream – and, in this particular dream, we live in a house that has the most exquisite home theatre system.

Beoliving systems don’t have to stop at the TV and DVD player either. For a little extra you can also have them integrated fully and seamlessly into your automated home system. This means that with a single click of your reassuringly expensive remote control you can dim the lights, close the curtains, turn the kettle on, start playing a DVD, and have the volume adjusted to just the perfect setting.

Add to that, the fact that B&O still produces some of the finest sounding speakers and greatest looking visual equipment on the market, and you’ve got a recluse’s dream. If you are interested, then pop along to the Beoliving website and you can arrange for a group of technicians to come and assess your house – presumably they check whether it looks high quality enough to house the equipment before you buy anything.

Iphone 3G Phone Might Not Be Released In June Then

Well, there’s good news and bad news for iPhone fans. The good news for those that don’t yet own one is that O2 reports they will soon be getting more stock of the 16GB iPhone on their website. The bad news is that this may mean a slightly longer than expected delay before we’re treated to the next incarnation of the ultimate in touch screen mobile phones.

Of course, extra stock doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be no new release during the keynote speech in June. But, as T3 reports, it does mean that the more likely outcome of a release in time for christmas is the most probably outcome.

Rumour had started to do the rounds (we’re not ashamed to admit that we did assist a little in their circulation) that the disappearing stock was because a 3G version was going to be announced and released during the eagerly anticipated Apple keynote speech in June.

Despite this potential set back, we are still in confident mood that there will be an announcement along these lines. Of course, the nasty thing about expectations and hopes is that they can (and often are) dashed.

Ofcom Report Findings

Ofcom has released its Tomorrow’s Wireless World report, indicating where they believe the world of wireless technology will take us in the future. The report predicts that there will be no major shifts in communication technology in the next ten years but that technology will continue to increase at a fast rate. However, health and transport sectors are predicted to face breakthroughs as well as impressive growth.

They believe that the health sector will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of improved technology and new technology breakthroughs. Home hubs could be used to monitor a person’s vital signs, administer the appropriate level of medication, and even arrange a GP appointment should it be necessary.

Bad news for drivers is that Ofcom also predicts that new technology may be used to increase occurrences of congestion charges. The report also suggests that advances will be made in areas where two or more sectors converge. Collision detection technology may be used to alert emergency services after an accident.

The overall aim of the report is to help Ofcom identify where and how changes will occur across numerous sectors. In doing so, they can also look at ways to advance the necessary infrastructures and create regulatory guidelines to manage the technology.

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