Gadgety News

At the moment it seems that Nintendo’s Wii can do no wrong.

What could possibly be the next step for it?

Well, if you remember, Japanese Wii owners are already getting the food delivery service - but they also seem to be getting a full-blown television channel, delivered to the Wii via the interweb in Spring.

Called Wiinoma, The Times reports that Nintendo is planning to use the on-demand channel to deliver mostly free and original programming, produced exclusively for the service.

Brain-training quizzes, original cartoons, educational shows, even cookery and lifestyle programming, are all reported to be on the agenda.

It’s definitely a step up from the current on-demand content such as game info, weather and news.

The new channel would offer full shows and not just clips and trailers, adding to the other content available to the Wii from BBC’s iPlayer service.

The stumbling block could be the lack of hard-drive.

The likes of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 both have internal hard disks to store downloaded content and the Wii doesn’t.

This means that the content would have to be streamed to the console unless the Wii hard drive becomes more than a rumour this time around.

As this service is only being released in Japan at the moment I’m guessing that if it takes off it would be spread throughout the globe - possibly hitting these shores late in the year.

But with that comes a number of other issues.

All that content would have to be remade in English and other languages and also the regional channels would have to get advertisers in that area.

Personally I vote for dubbed Japanese content!  I very much doubt that UK made content would be so crazy and entertaining

Crave

More Brit based gadgety news that goes further to prove how addicted to the bleeding-edge of technology the UK is.

Neilsen Online suggests that mobile web usage has increased by 25% between July and September of this year and that 7.3 million (up from 5.8 million) of Britons are now logging on through their mobiles.

It is largely ‘The Young’ (37’s still young, right?) who are causing this upsurge with 51% of mobile web users under the sprightly age of 35 (darn it!) and a quarter between the ages of 14 and 24.

Praps, unsurprisingly only 12% of users logging-on are over 55.  They’ve just sorted out texting so web-browsing should be next……..just think of all those Bingo sites getting hit up via the olds mobiles.

This increase is being put down to a number of factors: Technology to access the mobile interweb is starting to be more readily available and so more people are giving it a blast. Most new phones come with high-speed internet connections and many even feature Wi-Fi giving us internet access at the sort of speeds we’re used to at home (and sometimes for free ). 

I guess this is a good point to mention my favourite at the moment - the iPhone 3G.

Before you lot poo-poo the impact of the 3Gesus Phone; don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence that the explosion in mobile web usage started in the same month that the iPhone 3G launched?  Yeah - how’s thems apples?

BBC news, Google Search and, of course Facebook, head up the leader-board of most viewed sites but it is maybe more interesting to see that, proportionally, a greater percentage of people view the BBC weather (how British?), Sky Sports and Gmail websites through their phones than they do on their home PCs. 

Kent Ferguson, Senior Analyst at Nielson suggests “this highlights the advantage of mobile when it comes to immediacy; people often need fast, instant access to weather or sports news and mobile can obviously satisfy this, wherever they are.”

With T-Mobile’s G1 and the Blackberry Storm (amongst many others) bursting onto the market the future of mobile web looks busy and bright.

The Telegraph

The Crystal Weather Station.

A gadget that will take this favourite subject of most Britains and make it into an aesthetic point of conversation.

This device will give you a weather forecast by illuminating a crystal-etched 3D icon.

As well as providing you with a stylish weather warning it will also show the time via the retro-styled, radio controlled clock.

An added bit of flash is that you can change the display mode from time to indoor temperature by waving your hand in front of it. 

Talking about the weather is now cool again - with a 40% chance of showers…………..

 
For some reason I have an urge to listen to some Weather Report………….
 

Gadgetshop

Doing a bit of snooping as I’m still lusting after the new iPhone (although it aint perfect) it seems that O2 have taken another step to improve their iPhone 3G offering in the UK. 

This is by multiplying the available WiFi hotspots that are available to get hooked-up.

Hidden amongst the small print on the O2 page they confirm that iPhone users will enjoy free use of WiFi hotspots from its existing partner, The Cloud, and be able to use hotspots provided by BT OpenZone.

This raises the number of WiFi hotspots available to UK users to 9,500 and O2 promise that all these hotspots will be made available for use from 11 July.

9to5 Mac reports the network may plan the creation of a ‘mesh network’ across London (yay for me and millions of others!) utilising WiFi hotspots from both The Cloud and BT OpenZone, saying: “Coverage is supposed to rival the coverage of mobile phone towers”.

In a rare move for rip-off Britain, O2 are seemingly offering UK users the best iPhone 3G deals of all those announced so far!

New iPhone customers can purchase the 8GB model for £99, or the 16GB model for just £159. You can then sign up to a regular £35 contract (600 minutes, 500 texts per month), or a new £30 contract (75 minutes, 125 texts).

T3 have some pretty cool info.

They say that they’ve had word that O2 has been warned that they are going to be “very busy” in the first week of July.

Also they’ve been told (as I have) that June 9th would also be a hectic day.

So the 3G J-phone should be with us in 4 weeks!!!

To read their wisdom click the link above or below :0)

UPDATE:

It sounds like the ‘press launch’ of Stevie J’s keynote will also be later for us lot in the UK as we’ll have to watch it after the event via the Apple website and not live streamed as per usual.

T3 iPhone News

Well this is as near as I can get to confirmation that the fabled beast that is the 3G iPhone will be released in the next month!

Apparently it is to be announced at the WWDC Keynote on June 9th and then the 2nd generation iPhone will be available worldwide right after the launch!

Now, interestingly the 3G Phone de Jesus will no longer be available at a fixed price, well at least in some countries, word has it.

More news as it comes - thanks to those that have emailed me with this stuff :0)

Gizmodo picture credit ESKN.com