iPhone 4 Announced

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and a host of partners and colleagues took to the stage at the WWDC event in San Francisco on Monday in order to unveil the iPhone 4.

The latest addition to Apple’s smartphone line up represents the biggest step forward since the first iPhone was launched in 2007 and it has got even the cynics excited, desperate to get their hands on a retail version.

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Nintendo 3DS to wipe floor with Wii

Rumours suggest that the next handheld from Nintendo, which has been tentatively nicknamed the 3DS because of its 3D gaming capabilities, will be much more powerful than the full sized Wii home console.

Some have claimed in the run up to the E3 gaming expo that the 3DS will have a graphics chip and central processing unit so powerful that it will be able to directly compete with the Xbox 360 and even the monolithic but often under-utilised PlayStation 3.

Although critics have continually derided Nintendo’s choice to make the Wii a cheap, cheerful but ultimately underpowered console, if the rumours about the 3DS are true, it would pose a serious threat to the other handheld gaming platforms.

Nintendo’s strategy of courting the mass market and offering its consoles at a low price point has made it billions over the last half decade, but it has seen its profits tumble as the Wii’s popularity wears thin, partly due to a lacklustre catalogue of games and a disinterested casual audience who will not invest in software on a regular basis.

The rumours about the 3DS and its powerhouse performance capabilities have come from developers cited by gaming site IGN, with industry murmurings suggesting that the 3DS will be able to match up to the major HD home consoles in terms of graphical fidelity. Since the 3DS is going to have to generate 3D images, this news of processing prowess may not be a huge surprise.

PlayStation 3 having 3D teething troubles

Sony has said that the process of bringing 3D gaming to the PS3 is not running as smoothly as it had hoped, with assurances of full backwards compatibility with older titles not being made.

Sony’s Simon Benson said that many PS3 games would be compatible with the 3D gaming experience, but that there were still franchises that Sony could not optimally convert to operate using the format.

Mr Benson told Official PlayStation Magazine that Sony was fully behind the 3D gaming experience and it appreciated that updating older games could make them much more immersive and engaging for the player, perhaps resulting in increased sales of the PS3′s back catalogue.

Games built with 3D in mind are simple to convert, but Mr Benson said ensuring that games which are not currently able to output two HD signals simultaneously, as per the requirement for 3D gaming, are trickier to integrate into the system.

Games arriving this month will bring the first full 3D ready compatibility to the PS3, including classic space racer reinvention WipEout HD and Super Stardust HD.

The PS3 is definitely going to support not just 3D gaming but also 3D Blu Ray movies, although it was announced that the firmware update that enables movie playback will be coming along after the PS3 is readied for 3D gaming, which makes a lot of sense considering its core functionality.

Sony is one of the only console manufacturers that is talking about 3D gaming on a frequent basis, but to the average consumer who won’t be picking up a 3D TV any time soon, it could seem a little irrelevant.

3D TV to ditch glasses in five years

A Taiwanese firm has said that by 2015 the use of polarising or active shutter 3D glasses in home cinema systems will be a thing of the past as technology evolves to make them unnecessary and obsolete.

The first crop of 3D TVs are all going to use the slightly wacky glasses to provide the 3D effect in the home and at the moment this is being seen as an added expense that increases the price of the already expensive 3D equipment.

The Industrial Technology Research Institute is developing parallax barrier technology which will provide native support for 3D without the need for any eyewear and it showcased its potential in a 42 inch display which it thinks will be market-ready in five years.

The biggest problem with parallax barrier in its current form is that the effects are only visible to people sitting in a particular spot in front of the screen. Hopefully this obstacle will be overcome before we start getting glasses-free 3D TV at home, otherwise fighting over sofa space will become even more of a battle.

The first products to use the parallax barrier technology being developed in Taiwan will be digital photo viewers and signs for advertising. Rumours also suggest that the next handheld console from Nintendo, tentatively titled the 3DS, is going to use similar technology. Clearly, with a handheld, getting the user to view the display from a set angle is a far easier proposition.

Sony previews 3D digital cameras

A series of standalone digital cameras which can capture still images in 3D have been created by Sony, which is hoping to ride the wave of consumer interest surrounding upcoming 3D TV and gaming systems.

The Alpha range of cameras is not heading straight for the professional market, as serious SLR lovers will probably have a hard time accepting that 3D photography is the way forward. Instead Sony has made sure these devices are compact enough to appeal to a mainstream audience.

The Alpha cameras will have interchangeable lenses and on-board software that is capable of adding the 3D effect. This is because the stereoscopic technique used by filmmakers requires two cameras essentially melded together and such a technique is not really convenient for a pocket-sized digital camera.

The Sony Alpha range will work in tandem with the 3D Photo Viewer from Nvidia, allowing for the 3D effects to be added retrospectively to the images.

The majority of people will have been exposed to the incoming 3D technology relating to TV and filmmaking, but the Alpha range is Sony’s attempt to get people talking about 3D still photography. This announcement comes hot on the heels of its rival Sharp revealing that it had been working on a 3D camera that could be attached to mobile devices, such as smartphones.

Adding depth to still images could reinvigorate the stand-alone camera market and with Sony working on a range that appears to offer this functionality with a user friendly approach, many cameras could soon come with a 3D function as standard.

Brits pay over the odds for iPad

New figures show that Apple’s new iPad is costing customers in the UK far more than their international contemporaries.

European prices for the iPad are much higher than in other regions of the globe and the UK is being hit even harder with high prices for the must-have gadget of the day. More on iPad Uk Prices

BBC One HD announced

The BBC has unveiled its plans to launch a high definition version of BBC One, which is set to begin broadcasting in the autumn.

At the moment the only way in which to get HD content from the BBC is to tune into BBC HD, which represents an amalgamation of various programs shot and shown in HD format from across the BBC’s catalogue, but it does not marry up directly with any of the BBC’s main channels. More on bbc one hd

New iPundit app mixes social World Cup match prediction with brilliant footie banter

iPundit, the latest app on the virtual shelves of Apples iTunes store, lets everyone from football-obsessed blokes and ladettes to fair-weather armchair fans and those who fancy Frank Lampard in tight shorts plot England’s route to the final of this summer’s World Cup.
 
iPundit, put together by a development team at Crieff, Scotland-based Creative Change with a visual concept from Soho’s Brilliant Path for client Thomson Sport, is part social match predictor, part footie banter network and part interactive wall-chart.
 
iPundit allows anyone, from scarf-waving “real” fans to England’s army of fair-weather armchair supporters, to predict the scores in each match of the tournament.  It lets you share your predictions with the mates in a social networking “mini league” of mates who have also downloaded the app.
 
It will appeal to anyone who belies that England will win two-one against the USA on the 12th, clinch a five-niller thriller against Algeria on the 18th and force a nail-biting one-all draw against Slovenia on the 23rd to reach the knock-out stages.
 
As the World Cup – which runs from 11th June until 11th July – progresses, iPundit users are awarded points for guessing the correct score, with seven points for guessing the correct scoreline, five for the right winning margin and four for getting the winner. The scores are pushed to the app after each match and your personal mini-league of mates updated.
 
At the heart of the app is Mr Pundit, a cheeky and controversial fan with opinions on everything and who just loves a good (and sometimes not so good) joke.
 
Creative Change used Appcelerator’s Titanium to develop iPundit and allow for rapid porting to other platforms, such as Android, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry. Thomson Sport, part of the TUI Travel group of companies, plans to extend the app to cover other football tournaments and leagues as well as other sports in the future.
 
The Creative Change team used an Agile development methodology to bring the iPundit app from concept to fruition in just a few short weeks.
 
Lead developer on the project was Paul Burrowes, a Dundee United and Liverpool-supporting Scot, best known for being the brains behind Satski, an app for GPS devices that tracked you on the slopes and allowed you to create maps of your journey. Burrowes has also developed the popular ScantoPDF app for Android and iPhone.
 
iPundit has been designed for use in the pub, on the train, in a nail bar,  in the office when the boss isn’t looking and even on the terraces in South Africa. It uses Apple’s push notification to tell users when a new bit of banter has arrived and integrates with both Facebook and Twitter, handling messaging between up to 100,000 users at a time.
 
Burrowes believes that the most exciting element of the app is the personal mini league you run on your own device, made up of the scores of all your mates who are part of your social network.
 
He says: “You link up with friends, they invite their friends and you both appear on each others’ phones. You choose the people you want to play against.”
 
Creative consultancy Brilliant Path has led the art direction and brand identify for the new app. The Soho-based firm has previously worked for clients in a range of sectors including technology, finance and the arts. Previous clients include retro club night School Disco and the Institute of Directors.
 
The consultancy chose the distinctive artwork of illustrator Mr Bingo, a person as mysterious and as creative as graffiti artist Banksy, as the face of the app. Mr Bingo, who is believed to live in Shoreditch, has illustrated articles in GQ and Esquire magazines as well as for big companies like Orange.
 
Thomson Sport’s Lynsey Devon said: “Everyone loves to predict a winner, especially during the World Cup. It is like those football wall-charts you use to have when you were a kid but brought bang up to date.
 
She added: “The excitement over England’ s progress  in the World Cup in South Africa is sure to grow to fever pitch in the next few weeks and we predict that thousands of fans will be downloading iPundit to their iPhones. It means that everyone from football-obsessed blokes to fans who only follow England when they do well can banter about England wherever they happen to be.”

Sony previews wrapable OLED display

A full colour OLED display that you can bend and wrap around a pencil has been showcased by Sony, giving a glimpse into the future of display technology.

The display is just 80 micrometres thick and measures 4.1 inches across the diagonal. Because it does not have any rigid internal components such as chips or backlighting it is possible to manipulate the display and make it fully flexible, which Sony demonstrates by rolling it up on a pencil in an impressive video online.

Sony has even constructed a rather complicated mechanism to automatically perform the wrapping and unwrapping to show just how malleable the display is. You can coil it up so that it has just a 4mm radius and it will keep on pushing out whatever video or images you feed into it.

The rollable OLED display has a 432×240 resolution and it is capable of displaying 16 million colours with a decent contrast ration of 1000:1. The brightness levels look rather good, which is always an encouraging sign and the chances are that this is even more impressive in real life given the difficulties of replicating OLED technology on standard LCD computer monitors.

Sony is working hard in this field and after Samsung unveiled its own transparent AMOLED screen earlier this week, it is clear that the competition in this market is becoming serious. We can only hope that the biros of the future will also be able to play back video for some wraparound amusement.

iPad launch tomorrow

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