Gadgety News

This has NSFW (not safe for work) written all over it. Even the name is a little suspect - but it actually is perfectly innocent.

Well, if two very knowledgable gaming ladies bouncing up and down on a bed is allowed at your place of employment. They are fully clothed by the way

What am I going on about?

A new game for the iPhone - Pocket Jockey

Pocket Jockey simulates those seaside arcade games where you have to propel your horse down a ‘track’ by either whacking something with a mallet, ball-rolling or water gun-squirting.

On this version for the iPhone the idea is to actually jump up and down like a Monty Python Knight - to recreate a horse’s gallop.

For those that need more speed: A firm slap to your own hindquarters (time to use that riding crop) delivers an additional boost via accelerometer detection.

Still confused about those ladies I mentioned earlier?

Watch them demonstrate the game for you in the video below.

1972 - I was one year old, still in Calgary and did not yet have a brother.

At the same time Pong, the world’s first successful video game, hit the market.  Nobody could even begin to guess how big video gaming would become.

But it has become huge; both financially and culturally. 

So much so that people are taking steps to ensure the preservation of the medium’s history.

On September 19th, Nottingham Trent University (NTU) announced the creation of the UK’s first official National Videogame Archive (NVA), a joint venture between Nottingham Trent University and the National Media Museum in Bradford, which will catalogue gaming’s history “from the humble beginnings of 1972’s ‘Pong,’ to the blockbusters of the 21st Century.”

The aim of the NVA is to “preserve, analyse and display the products of the global videogame industry by placing games in their historical, social, political and cultural contexts.”

So we’re not just talking about a collection of consoles and cartridges here!

October also saw the announcement of the Archive’s related initiative, Save the Videogame, where game developers have already begun making their cases for games they believe are worth preserving.

Check out: National Video Game Archive and Save The Video Game.

Thanks to Kareny Karen for the email!! 

iPhone owners - it’s time to get your chops, riffs, and deep-knee-bends ready as Guitar Rock Tour has finally made it onto the JesusPhone!

Gameloft have made it pretty much a mobile alternative to Guitar Hero - the app let’s you choose your weapon - Drums, Guitar or Bass.

It’s pretty easy to get into and the game definitely makes the most of the iPhone’s touchscreen - you’ll soon be finger tapping, sliding and scrolling away.

Become a virtual career-muso: Start off in a garage and, if you’ve got what it takes, end up by gigging in the biggest stadiums around the world!

Ah - the dream!

Living the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle means that the game throws in infrequent alcohol, cigarette and drug use references as well as the occasional sexual reference and a bit of nudity - but obviously nothing that will scare the parents!

There are 17 tracks to play along to including the great ‘Rock You Like a Hurricane’, get your Ed Van Halen on with ‘Beat It’, wear a grungey cardigan for ‘Heart Shaped Box’ and of course jam out the hallowed ‘Smoke on the Water’.

It’s available at the iTunes app store - Part with £4.99 and Rock on! \,,/ \,,/

Left 4 Dead – it’s almost here!

If you’re not familiar with the title let me tell you a little about it.

The ‘4′ in the name underlines that this is a 4 player First Person Shooter (FPS) (and not an homage to Prince’s whacky way of writing) and the ‘Dead’ bit is a nod to what will happen to you if you don’t work as a team.

Oh; and perhaps the fact that you’re fighting zombies!

The game comes from those great people, Valve (they gave you Counter-Strike and Half-Life), and is set in the immediate aftermath of the zombie apocalypse.

Theses zombies aren’t your Dawn of the Dead slow moving types – think more 28 Days Later. These deads move quick!

Thanks to “the AI Director” you can play the same level repeated times and it will be different each time you play – You’re actually meant to keep coming back, charging through each zombie-infested level again and again, in the company of your buddies.

The Director tailors the frequency and ferocity of the zombie attacks to your performance, putting you in the middle of a fast-paced, but not too overwhelming shooty-shooty-kill-kill game!

Obviously the other aspect to the randomness is your 3 playing partners – you know how it goes: One will go off on a killing spree leaving the rest behind.  We’ve all been there and/or been guilty of doing that

Most games it’s ok and you generally can get away with it but this game reminds you to stay as 4.

But even then you could be handling the zombie horde as a group when suddenly a molotov is thrown, or a cannister explodes, and everything is engulfed in flames! You watch in horror as one of your team is caught by a lasso-tongued smoker zombie and dragged off to their doom and then….then……I sharn’t spoil it!

Here’s a quick look at those bad-guys:

• Boomers: Big, fat explodey meatsacks. Players caught in the blast/vomit radius become a great big beacon for a huge, bonus wave of zombies

• Smokers: These use huge Gene Simmons-esque mouth-snakes to grab a player from a good forty metres away, rendering him helpless until his mates save him

• Hunters: Stupily fast undeads that’ll pin a player to the ground, again until a heroic buddy intervenes

• Witches: Tend to sing a lot and remain motionless until disturbed by light, noise or an errant gunshot. Their eerie song and simultaneous sobbing are by far the most terrifying thing in the game. Upon waking up, they’re a whirling dervish of destruction. Fight every instinct to shoot the apparently frail things and sneak around them.

• Tanks: Are armoured and rather large. You’ll hear them stomping towards you from about half a mile away. On Normal, they’ll fall over before they do too much damage. On Advanced, their hitpoints are such that it’ll be the shortest route to an endgame situation.

If you like gaming, killing zombies and having your mates join in the fun you will want to click this link and try on the demo for size!

The game costs $44.99 through Steam and is available for pre-order now (you get access to the demo straight-away) and the full game is released on November 18th.

Good luck - keep your friends close!

Yup, those know-it-alls at Wired are going to open their fourth annual store from November 21 until December 28 in New Yoik.

There will be more than 150 items including the latest electronics, toys and transportation, which can also be purchased online from November 20.

The Wired Store will also recognise four different charities, and is set to feature a brand new green section created by Adrian Grenier and Peter Glatzer of Reconcile Productions as well.

Is Christmas coming or something?

Wired

A mighty big claim that, Mr YoYoTech Fi7epower MLK1610 - You up for the task?

Challenging something like the official record for the World’s Fastest Desktop isn’t something to take lightly - you’re gonna need something a little special.

Let’s say: something like a new Intel chip…………

The Intel Core i7 to be precise - but not just any Core i7.

It happens to be packing the Core i7-965 Extreme Edition, with a 3.20GHz clock speed and 6.4 GT/s QuickPath - it costs a credit-crunch defying £1,000 all by itself.

Backing up the new chip is an Asus P6T motherboard, which boasts Intel’s latest X58 chipset. Then added to that you’ve got a staggering 9GB of high performance DDR3 RAM (that’s 2GB per channel and an extra 1GB thrown in for good measure). Then they throw in an 80GB Samsung SSD to make things run even faster whilst staying completely silent.

Gamers will be salivating and getting all unneccessary wondering what sort of gaming specs this brings to the table.

Well, to be honest, they’re pretty average.

The Fi7epower MLK1610 sports the latest and greatest Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card with 2GB of DDR5 memory. But only the one of them. BOoooooooooooooooooooooo! 

The Asus P6T motherboard supports AMD’s Crossfire - a means of hooking up a pair of graphics cards to work in unison - so there’s no real excuse as to why there’s only one graphics card on board.

Saying that though, YoYotech do offer quite a fair bit of options for customisation so you can decide exactly how you want it kitted out - ie, add another Graphics Card

So - is it as fast as it sounds?

Apparently It has blown the former world record holder out of the water, and in practical terms it can be expected to perform twice as fast as anything powered by Intel’s former top-of-the-range CPU.

YAY!

The downside, as you’d expecty is the £4,000 for the version described above.

So, fast and mindboggingly expensive.

But a world champ none-the-less

Tech Radar

How time flies huh?

The gaming oscars that was the 26th Annual Golden Joystick Awards have already come and gone.

Long story short - Activision pretty musch cleaned up: Call of Duty 4 nabbed four awards (Multiplayer Game Of The Year, PC GOTY, Online GOTY and Ultimate GOTY), and Call of Duty 5 taking the One to Watch award. Oh yeah, and Activision won publisher of the year too.

As expected Rockstar also swiped three gongs: Developer Of The Year, Soundtrack Of The Year and Xbox Game Of The Year for Grand Theft Auto IV.

If you’re looking for a list of all the winners, well you’re in luck people!

The Sun Family Game of the Year: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

Bliss Handheld Game of the Year: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Activision Blizzard Retailer of the Year: Play.com

The E4 Talent Mobile GOTY: Bejeweled 2

Nintendo GOTY Sponsored by Official Nintendo Magazine: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Nuts All-Nighter Multiplayer GOTY: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

BBC1Xtra Soundtrack of the Year: Grand Theft Auto IV

ARVATO Xbox Game of the Year: Grand Theft Auto IV

PC GOTY Sponsored by The United Kingdom e-Sport Association: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

The Play.com One to Watch: Call of Duty: World at War

CVG.co.uk UK Developer of the Year: Rockstar

PlayStation GOTY Sponsored by Official PlayStation Magazine: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Publisher of the Year: Activision

Edge Most Wanted: Fallout 3

E4.com Grand Master Flash award: Stickman Madness

Games Radar’s Online Game of the Year: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Virgin Media Ultimate Game of the Year: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Whatchya reckon? Is this a true representation of the gaming industry over the last 12 months?

Is there games that shouldn’t be there and which ones shoulda?

Let me know

The Nokia N85 has been released in the UK and is a great alternative to the N96.

I loved my N95 and it was probably the best all-rounder of a phone that I’ve owned - the N85 looks to be more up-to-date in its looks with the sleek, black fascia. It’s also 5mm thinner than the N95 and weighs 128g.

Like the N95, the N85 is a dual slider handset.  Slide one way to reveal the keypad, slide the other way to reveal dedicated media keys.

The screen has also been updated with a state-of-the-art 2.5” OLED screen. This offers enhanced colour and contrast but also reduces power consumption.

It keeps the good ol’ Nokia 5mp camera with Carl Zeiss lens, autofocus and duel LED flash.  All this ensures high quality happy snapping.

Videos are recorded at 30fps and a secondary lens on the front of the handset for vid-calls.

Now, unlike the N96 and its 16GB internal memory, the N85 only has 74MB internal dynamic memory.

However, it does have a ‘hot swappable’ microSD card slot available for up to 8GB.

The new Nok gives you direct access to the Nokia Music Store and has the all important 3.5mm jack socket. so you can use your fave cans.

A neat feature is the FM Transmitter. This lets you send your mp3 tracks over FM radio waves to the nearest radio tuned into the correct frequency. Clever; and perfect for use in the car!  No need to buy a little add-on.

Gamers will be pleased to know that the N85 features Nokia’s N-Gage gaming service.

The handset comes with 15 pre-installed game demos. Chose your favourite from the demos and Nokia will send a code to activate one of the games for free!

You can hook up to 3G as well as 3.6Mbps HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS, WiFi connection and A2DP Bluetooth.

I reckon this is a great, cheaper option to the N96

Love snowball fights but not the frost-bitten fingers?

Fed up of pulling your shoulder out with over-enthusiastic throwing?

Then, defrost and jog over to buy the Snowball Blaster!

It sculpts upto 3 snaowballs at a time and then, using the internal slingshot, fire them at your neighbours, friends, enemies or random cats from a safe distance of 50 feet.

Let the Cold Wars start a little more comfortably this year for the fun price of $30.

HammacherSchlemmer via OhGizmo

Happy birthday to this gadget blog. Happy birthday to this tech blog. Happy birthday dear Jay’s Gadget News.  Happy birthday to yooooooooooooooooou!

Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog!

Well, what started off as a test to see if there was room for another gadget and tech blog site a year ago has slowly gained enough of you lovely readers for me to carry on writing about things that have caught my eye and that you (hopefully) find interesting.

My first posts (ie not ones dragged over from my temporary test site) were posted this very day 12 months ago - I know, how Goth to choose Samhain/Halloween to start a blog

I would like to take this moment and space to thank all of you for coming here and making this place feel loved - whether you were here from the very start or have only just found this place.

If there are anythings that you would rather see more/less of now is your chance. Either email me or just leave a comment here and I’ll do my best to please - the new look was prompted by a comment a lo, it was done.

So, thanks once more and here’s hopefully to another year of gadget grooviness and tech tremendousness

Much gadgety love

Jay

The Mir:ror tag is a little misleading as it’s not reflective (as far as I can see) and you’ll need to connect it via USB to a puter so hanging it on your hallway wall maybe a little tricky.

Instead of checking yourself out before you leave home you’ll be waving your various possessions over its USB-connected sensor.

Why? Well by the magic of small RFID stickers, enhanced-reality style info will be displayed on your computer.

What?

Put simply: Wave your brolly handle over it and get a weather forecast, your TV remote to get tele listings and so on.

An oddly cool concept yeah?

It’s made by Violet who are also to blame for bringing us the animated internet “buddy” bunny Nabaztag.

The RFID bit is in the little ‘Ztamps’ you stick to your gear, and the magic all happens through Violet’s new website.

The mir:ror can recognise quite a few things straight off however with dedicated stamps, but through the site you can configure more of your stuff to work with it.

$70 buys you the sensor, a skin for the sensor “puck”, 2 nanotagz rabbits (those little Nabaztaglets) and 3 ztamps.

You can buy more RFID stickers for the rest of your portable gear.

I’m strangely tempted

Dynamism via Technabob

Like some scary sequel - Bill Gates returns

~insert onimous soundtrack using mainly flat 2s~

bgC3 is Billy Gates’ new venture and it has a federal trademark as a think-tank, covering:

• Scientific and technological services.
• Industrial analysis and research.
• Design and development of computer hardware and software.

The HQ is a small office near BG’s home and is said to be full of high tech toys including a Microsoft Surface used as a guest book.

Thing is - what does the C3 bit of the name mean?

What is he planning?

Should we be scared?

Is it gonna cost us money?

TechFlash via Valleywag

The results of a poll conducted by The London Games Festival of 500 gamers shows that Sega’s blue hedgehog is the most loved character and Nintendo’s Mario had to settle for second.

As you read through the full top ten below you’ll probably recognise that most of these iconic characters have been showing up in games for a decade or more.

The n00bs (comparatively speaking) in the list are Grand Theft Auto IV’s eastern European gangster Niko Bellic and the other Rockstar front-man, Max Payne.

1. Sonic the Hedgehog (24%)

2. Super Mario (21%)

3. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) (16%)

4. Donkey Kong (11%)

5. Pac Man (10%)

6. Link (The Legend of Zelda) (5%)

7. Max Payne (4%)

8. Pikachu (Pokemon) (3%)

9. Niko Belic (Grand Theft Auto IV) (2%)

10. Blanka (Street Fighter) (1%)

Do agree with the list - is there anyone missing?

Let me know
 

The Telegraph

Reminiscent of the tray tables in hospital this USB-powered computer desk features a built-in 2.1 speaker system for your laptop and sports two quiet fans to keep your computer cool.

Oh, and it’s foldable as well!!  You lucky people.

The 2.1 amp drives 2×5 watt speakers and a 10 watt sub and all connects via USB.

The two 1500 rpm fans are positioned under the keyboard and should keep your lappy nice and cool.

“But Jay, how is all of this controlled?!” I hear you ask…..

There’s buttons on the actually desk that will handle speaker volume, sound muting and even turning the fans on and off duties.

The Lap Computer Desk is available from Hammacher Schlemmer for $99.95.

I’ve tried to stop posting all the neato iPhone apps that keep cropping up but couldn’t resist this one.

All you folks ‘of an age’ will understand my excitement of discovering Pac-Man for the iPhone - and it being FREE!

This is the originally styled Pac-Man game and you can control the character through many ways, not just via the accelometer which is the case in some other games.

Click the pic for the full screen view and note the onscreen controller

Did I mention that it was free?

Now run my childern, run and get this app!!

Get get it at the App Store

It can be such a chore.

When you’re on a roll, blogging, working, writing or being creative having to break off to grab a fresh cup-o-Joe.

This little Desktop Coffee Maker could keep you nicely caffeinated throughout the day.

You don’t need special single-serving sachets just regular ground coffee.

The coffee maker also comes with two black cups.  You can actually make two cups at once if you want to make a cup for a nearby office buddy as well - or this could win your gaffer over

Check with your manager that you can have one on your desk

then nip over to  Firebox, pay your £19.99 and go get wired!

A pool table in the shape of a coffin seems a great idea to me and  Casket Furniture thinks so as well

Their Manhattan Casket Pool Table has a starting price of $4995 but that can swiftly rise depending on various options.

Some of these optional features include 14K gold ($5000), Maple Housing ($4,500) and a granite one piece playing surface ($18,000).

So whether you’re a Goth or just want to throw the bestest Halloween party ever…………..

………this table is dead cool!

Sorry - couldn’t resist.  It was difficult being dead-pan all through this.  Just glad I didn’t corpse…..

errmmm,,,,yeah…I’ll keep a lid on it.

You may be aware that there has been some rumours about new MacBooks.

No? Really?

Well Apple has given its range of MacBooks an external makeover and a serious power boost to boot!

Their graphics processors have enjoyed the biggest tune-up - each of the machines comes with an NVIDA GeForce 9400M GPU.  Allegedly five times more powerful than the previous MacBook offerings.

MacBook Pro users can choose to upgrade their chipset to the 9400M GT for a extra graphical boost.

The displays are new and nifty as well. The LED backlighting ensures brighter, more vibrant colours as well as requiring less power to operate.  How thoughtful.

That’s all very groovy but kinda par for the upgrading a laptop course really innit?

Hold onto your shorts!

The traditional trackpad has been binned in favour of a special new glass design.

Stevie J said that it took months for the designers to perfect, and it features multitouch gesture support capable of tracking four fingers at the same time.  Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!

Each model is hewn from a single piece of aluminium and the screen now has a black surround to match the keys.

Even I’m being tempted over to the fruity side! 

For all you stick-in-the-muds the plain old white MacBook is still going to be on offer at a lower price,

The MacBook Air has had a hike in storage - 120GB as standard - and there’s 2GB of RAM inside, with the option of 1.6 GHz or 1.86 GHz processors.

If you go for the big-boy they also throw in a 128GB SSD too for the exchange of an extra £500.

Prices start from £939 for the MacBook, £1,399 for the Pro and £1,299 for the Air.

Dear Santa…………………….

When playing first person shooters (FPS) using a mouse, no matter how engaging titles such as ‘Crysis Warhead’ are - moving your mouse around isn’t much like waving a gun around - unless you have the Novint Falcon pistol add-on.

Alec Meer from Rock, Paper, Shotgun got to grips with Zalman’s FPSGUN concept mouse gun thingy which aims to straddle the pistol and mouse gap.

On the plus side he liked the fact that the sensor is some distance away from the grip - i.e. the part of the mouse you’re holding.  That means you can achieve larger turns with less hand movement.

The colour-changing scroll wheel felt good and chunky but then things start going a bit poor………..

As far as ergonomics - seems that there aren’t any.

The buttons, designed as handgrip-mounted triggers, are angular protrusions that dig into the fingers, the necessity for a constant claw-grip adds its own aches after a few minutes of use.

So, I’m feeling that the idea is strong but the application falls down somewhat.

Well, Zalman are better known for designing PC cooling equipment after all

We all know that the Sony PSP 3000 isn’t due to be launched until next Tuesday but the PSP-3000 Ratchet & Clank Entertainment Pack has managed to slip into at least one Best Buy a few days early.

An Engadget friendly tipster, namely Aaron G, sent them a few unboxing shots.

It’s good to share - so for all of you that enjoy the voyeurism of vicarious unboxing………

Slip quietly over to Engadget and peek at the unboxing gallery