Gadgety News

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!

Hello lovely people!

Please excuse me whilst I test out the TwitPress plugin that I’ve just added to this fabby chunk of gadgety goodness!

What am I doing? Well, if you haven’t subscribed to my RSS Feed or email notifications praps you are on the micro-blogging site that is Twitter?

I am on Twitter<– click this link and add me and through the wonder of technology each time I update this gadget news blog there’ll be a notificational Tweet appear

Hope this works….although probably with a lag…..

J

Update: TwitPress is working wonderfully

MP3 music downloads at seven big UK online stores are to be marked with this highly attractive, new and cutting-edge MP3 compatible sign. How cool is that? ~insert sarcasm where applicable~

It’s part of an initiative (to spend pointless money) led by the Entertainment Retailers Association to make consumers aware of the “advantages of the format and the fact that it can be used across multiple brands of music players and across PCs and Macs”.

7digital, Digitalstores, Tescodigital, Tunetribe, Play.com, HMV and Woolworths are all on board for the launch. The ERA digital chairman Russel Coultart said the move was to take the message to music fans “that they can legally buy downloads which are not locked to specific players or computers or mobile phones”.

7digital said consumers much prefer the MP3 format because it is so easy to use. If the MP3 logo is successful, it could be rolled out by the equivalent trade bodies internationally and Coultart also said it is in discussions with music retail organisations globally “to make ‘MP3 compatible’ an international standard”.

This is all very well but how long have MP3’s been with us? Surly it’s not far off from being old enough to smoke and drink? I would understand all this fuss if there hadn’t been a new version of this tech available – I’d call it MP4 or something

The other thing that confuses me about this ‘push’ is that MP3’s aren’t that great quality and now that even small players can manage 4gb why can’t we be upping the quality? Surly we should be pushing CD quality by now?

If it’s a problem about downloading – most people have access to broadband now (especially with all these mobile interweb dongles flying about the place – you don’t even need a BT line!).

Soon there will be a generation of music lovers that will expect that highly compressed low quality vibe – weren’t we dragged away from vinyl and promised a golden-age of high quality, high fidelity listening through a surround sound immersive environment at one point? Or did I dream it?

ERA credits MP3s with much of the growth of music downloads sales, which have risen 41% year-on-year to October this year, according to the Official UK Charts Company, and album sales are up 69% - Before anyone hails iTunes as the leader………….as far as I’m aware (and please correct me if I’m wrong) iTunes started by using MP3 but then quickly moved over to AAC……

~End Rant~

I downloaded this yesterday while it is still free

iTalk is a new sound recording app for iPhone, iPhone 3G, and 2nd generation iPod touch.

This natty little app allows you to create one-touch, high-quality recordings which can be transferred over to your Mac or PC.

You’ll need to download the iTalk app from the iTunes App Store and whack it onto your iPhone/iPod touch for the recoding/playback bit while the buddy prog, iTalk Sync, runs on your computer to transfer recordings from iPod or iPhone for editing and sharing. 

iTalk Sync connects to your iPod touch or iPhone wirelessly via your local Wi-Fi network, with recordings saved as high-quality AIFF files, playable in iTunes and most other media players.

I’ve only had a quick play around with it and the quality sounds pretty good for a free app - handy for a quick recording of a riff before I forget it or a melody line that comes to me on the bus or tube - it happens!

Griffin’s iTalk is free for a limited time, and is now available at the iTunes App Store.

iTalk Sync is now available as a free download at www.italksync.com.

Grab it while it’s hot (and free!).

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

Softbank has just come up with this rather interesting mobile TV add-on for Japanese iPhone and iPod owners.

it’s a separate unit with tuner and aerial that retransmits the signal over Wi-fi to the phone.

The rechargeable device will give about three hours of TV eye-candy and connects to a special iPhone app that’ll be distributed free when the device hits the streets in mid December!

It’ll cost somewhere around the $100 mark but also doubles as an iPhone battery top-up when you link it via the dock connector.

Just gotta wait for it to be adapted and shipped over here.

AVWatch

Hello folks!

My Top 10 Halloween themed gadgets has been posted on the lovely Newslite.tv site.

Pop along there and witness bookmarks, pumpkin carving kits and little Devils and Angels that get shoved in your ears!

The Sony Rolly has always been an enigma to me.

Ok, it’s cute - It’s probably one of the cutest small speakers around.

But.

It’s a portable, trundling, dancing speaker - but the sound isn’t great for £250.

It’s a music player able to stream via A2DP Bluetooth or play from its internal flash but there’s no place to shove your 3.5mm lead.

 Sony are now updating it - and it will be controlled by YOU!! MWAHAHAHAHH!!!

Ahem.  Next month, Japanese Rolly buyers will be able to get the new SEP-50BT version complete with Bluetooth controls thus allowing them to make Rolly dance and spin like a performing monkey-bot all directed via their mobile phones.

I can imagine the high jinks and thoroughly wicked japes to be had through controlling the egg-shaped dancing speaker under somones chair and then unleashing a choice cut from ‘Cannibal Corpse’ as the little mp3 player starts its own circle pit :) 

The new system will actually give you control of up to seven of the little blighters at the same time using a mobile phone or laptop.

I reckon it’s time for some synchronised dancing……….

Gizmodo

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

Fancy yourself a butler/maid/skivvy but can’t afford the wages?

Well, a one off payment of around $10,00 could score you the “Home Assistant Robot”.

The housproud bot is the product of joint research between Toyota and the University of Tokyo.  It stands 5-foot tall on its practical wheels and weighs in at 286lb.

The HAR uses five cameras and six lasers to map and navigate round your home and has fairly free movement - the neck alone can be moved in three directions while the arms move seven!

The helpful HAR can open and close doors, tidy up rooms, mop floors, do your laundry and put away dishes - all this without a marriage certificate :P  ~ducks out of the way of flying frying pans~

What impresses me is that mechanical home-help is clever enough to move furniture out of the way to clean floors and such and then place it back in its original position when the chore is done.

I’m not exactly sure how the robot learns from its mistakes but the programming seems to operate on simple “Magic Eye”-type principals distinguishing what’s different about a room from its original room image and correcting the differences accordingly.

You can get between 30 to 60 minutes of graft per charge and can be expected to arrive at homes in the next decade.

So, save a grand a year…………..

Asahi via CrunchGear

Here’s one for those creepy Halloween phone-calls from your iPhone.

“Do you like scary movies?………………………”

Now the chance to disguise your voice either as Darth Vader or Mickey Mouse or just mess around with the echo layering effects is available at the app store thanks to SonicVox from Smule.

As an added bonus you can connect your iPhone through a 3.5 mm cable to the line-in of your computer and use it as a microphone with Skype.

Here’s the official blurb:

Tired of your same old voice? Seeking a little vocal variety? Get into character with Smule’s Sonic Vox, the real-time voice shifter.

• With Sonic Vox you can alter your voice with a swipe of your finger. Want to cross over to the Dark Side? Slide your finger to the left. Now say it. You know you want to. “Luke, I am your…”

• Or maybe you are feeling conflicted about having lost a “preciousssss” ring? Move your finger back and forth horizontally and go ahead, rant on.

• Transform your voice even more. Simply swipe your finger up and down and hear what happens… happens… happens…

• We recommend using Sonic Vox like a microphone: just plug your iPhone into speakers. You can test it out by just talking into your phone. Or try it with headphones.

• Adventurous? Connect your iPhone (speaker-out) to your MacBook (mic-in). Switch the system preference to Line-In. Launch Sonic Vox. Launch Skype. Make that call.

Here’s the link for it at the App Store

iPhone Firmware 2.2 - Cut and Paste, video and pics over MMS, typing emails and texts in landscape are all the things that aren’t going to appear!

What you will get, however, is Google Street View and walking directions - obviously more important than those I mentioned above.

There is something a little more interesting on the horizon though.  It sounds SDK is now supporting line-in audio devices - this could open up some potentially interesting apps.

If you are on of the few that’s been hankering over streetmap views check out iPhoneyap’s gallery.

Boy Genius Report

I am still lovin my 3Gesus iPhone.

But, it still aint quite the perfect machine - not yet.

Fullsix has launched a site dedicated to the more vociferous moaning-mini’s out there called “Please Fix the iPhone.”

The site gets owners to vote on the most pressing issues that’s ‘bugging’ them and their iPhones - hopefully Jobs and friends will get to work on them faster.

There’s even a version of the site specifically made for the Apple handest’s browser, so that you can complain about your iPhone via your iPhone.

Here’s the link: Please Fix the iPhone via Josh Spear via Gizmodo

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

Personally the thought of a brown laptop does not thrill me in the least.

But the Asus Eee PC S101 actually manages to make that brown casing not look so bad close up.

If you’re already gasping for this “mocha” coated chunk of Eee PC goodness you’ll be pleased to know that it comes loaded with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom chip, 1GB of memory, 32GB of solid state storage (split between a 16GB SSD and the rest via SD card), a 10-inch 1,024×600 res display, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and a copy of Windows XP.

It weighs in at just 1.06Kg and measures a mere 266×192×38mm.

It’s gonna cost you somewhere just shy of £500 though.

Those lucky folks over at UMPC Fever managed to get their grubby little mits on one of these and have published what can only be termed as an extremely in-depth report.

They start from staring at the classy black cardboard box right up to a loving close up of the hinge.

You’re excited; I can tell.

Go click on this now!

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

If you’re a fan of retro musical instruments or Rolf Harris - or perhaps you want to play a version of Telstar the Very Cool Software Company has recently announced its first iPhone application: The Dubreq iStylophone.

For those of you too young for the refereces made above; the Stylophone is an electronic musical instrument (kinda), originally invented by Brian Jarvis in 1968 and manufactured in the UK by Dubreq.

You’ll be able to replicate the instrument’s sound as well as other features by using the phone’s touchscreen.

But, is it worth the $5.95 (£3.49*) asking price?

We’ll see on the 1st December when it will becomes available.

I eagerly await the iWobbleboard for the full Rolf-tastic orchestra

* correction

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

By rebranding “Wii Points” into “Nintendo Points” you would think that this was to become an overarching account system between the Wii and the upcoming DSi.

But that is where you become disappointed to learn that the company’s new Nintendo Points won’t be transferable between the two consoles.

Instead, when you buy a points card (available in 1000, 3000 and 5000 points versions), you’ll have to pick a console and spend all the points in that one place.

Not exactly an ideal option, to be sure, but it seems like it’s one that we’ll be stuck with — unless Nintendo has some plans to make some major changes to the way the Wii and DSi do business.

Siliconera via Wiifanboy via gamesindustry.biz