Gadgety News

If you’re fed up of searching the interweb for a particular TV show or film then you need to check out OVGuide.

OVGuide (Online Video Guide) is a comprehensive link portal to just about every mainstream video and online television site on t’internet.

Most shows are listed but some are of, let’s say, not quite HD quality - but if you’ve missed a crucial episode of Heroes or Desperate Housewives it’s a good way to catch-up.

The listings cover Anime to Adult; so chances are that you’ll find pretty much whatever you’re looking for.

With over 3,000 sites on its listings I think it’s worth a try - it’s not like it’ll cost you anything

OVGuide via RedFerrett

After revealing that the Xbox 360 was the hotty for teens it seems that it’s the Wii who is winning the Christmas shopping battle - according to online shopping data from AOL Shopping UK and PriceGrabber.co.uk.

The funky ‘n’ friendly motion-sensing console has managed to grab 44% of searches since the start of December compared to the Xbox 360’s 35% and the Sony PS3’s 20%.

It’s not over for Sony though, as other stats show that Sony Blu-ray players are the choice this crimbo for spinning those Blu movies nabbing 44% of the crop, with the company’s BDP-S350 likely to be under most trees this Christmas.

Panasonic Blu-ray follows with 43%, then there’s a drop to Samsung’s 7%, Pioneer’s 3% and Sharp’s mere 0.53%.

The top ten most popular “digital” products searched for overall, according to the data, is as follows:

1. Sony Bravia KDL-32V4000 32-inch LCD TV
2. Acer Aspire One AOA110-Aw notebook
3. Sony Bravia KDL-40W4500 40-inch LCD TV
4. Sony KDL-40W4000 40-inch LCD TV
5. Panasonic DMC-FZ28 black digital camera
6. HP Compaq 2133 Mini-Note notebook
7. Samsung NC10 white notebook
8. Asus Eee PC 901 black notebook
9. Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5EB-K black digital camera
10. Pioneer PDP-LX5090 50-inch plasma TV

Are you expecting any of the above under your tree or stuffed in your stocking this year?

It seems that Nokia have slipped out details of the N97 whilst my back was turned!

Their new flagship phone packs a 3.5-inch, 640 x 360 pixel (that’s a 16:9 aspect ratio) resistive touchscreen display with tactile feedback.

Nok have also slipped a QWERTY keyboard into this sliding communicator that features an “always open” window to favourite internet or social networking site.

Nokia is calling the N97 the “world’s most advanced mobile computer.”

Well they have crammed in HSDPA, WiFi, and Bluetooth radios, A-GPS, a 3.5-mm headjack, 32GB of onboard memory with microSD expansion (for up to 48GB total capacity), and a battery capable of up to 1.5 days of continuous audio playback or 4.5-hours video.

As befits the N9* series it has that rather spanky 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss glass and “DVD quality” video capture at 30fps.

It does read as being quite the special smartphone but will the S60 5th Edition OS can support it?

Also for that “mobile computer” claim it will have to drag the likes of me away from the simple and effective iPhone interweb browsing experience.

The N97 will launch early 2009 with a retail price set at around €550 - don’t forget to add on all those lovely taxes as well.

Nokia N97 announced – via Dialaphone

I’ve got kinda used to flicking past ‘Black Friday Sale’ notices on my feeds and emails but, fortuntely, I hit reverse when I saw this and now have decided to share.

Apple is bringing a Black Friday sale from the US and delivering it to us folks in the UK. Thanks Apple - Thapple!

Log onto the Apple Store’s website this Friday and you’re promised bargains in excelcis.

We’re being spoilt here - first it was Darling’s VAT cut and now this!  Lumme!

Apple’s being coy as to which products will see a price drop - iPods, MacBooks and Mac desktops? I just don’t know.

What I do know is that Apple mentions the iPhone specifically

I think a date with Apple for cheaper Crimbo gifts is called for

I’ve only just got back into regular reading again this year.  Shameful I know. Even more shameful is that since moving to London in February 2004 I’ve yet to join a local library!

Well, a new multimedia venture has just been launched that will bring together the content from more than 1000 cultural organisations across Europe in a free online resource.

The British Library is amongst the institutions that have signed up to the new European online library called Europeana.

The European Commission and the Louvre Museum are also to add content.

This is sounding fantastic!

The ambition is for internet users to be able to access more than two million books, maps, recordings, photographs, archive documents, paintings and films.

More lazy students……..I didn’t think that was possible!

The project was created by the European Commission and is run by the European Digital Library Foundation, and will launch in 2010.

BBC News

Good ol’ Auntie Beeb!

After bringing us the joy of the iPlayer the Beeb is going to be showing content from BBC One and BBC live online.

From the 27th November web visitors will be able to watch shows including Never Mind The Buzzcocks (fab!), EastEnders (never mind eh?) and Heroes (Yatta!) as they are broadcast.

BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies and BBC News are already broadcast on their channel websites.

Director of BBC vision Jana Bennett told BBC News that this move “completes our commitment” to make channels available online.

“From 27 November licence fee payers will be able to watch BBC programmes live wherever they are in the UK on their computers, mobile phones and other portable devices,” Bennett added.

Via - BBC News

I dread to think of the queues that this is going to cause if high-street stores bring this in but if it actually makes my transactions more secure and the threat of fraud lower then chalk me down for one.

This new card from MBNA has a built-in numeric keypad, and when you put in your PIN, it’ll display a security code like the one sites always ask you for now - perhaps you already have one of those small calculator code jobbies for online banking as well?

Hopefully this extra stage will make spending a lot of money with a stolen card significantly harder if not impossible online.

Now, if my next laptop comes with a biometrically secured keypad to go along with my keypad locked hard-drive………………..

EA is using Torrents to distribute the Warhammer Online: The Reckoning beta to gamers.

Blizzard has been using BitTorrent for World of Warcraft patches for a while now so EA wont be the first company to embrace the protocol.

The beta has also made its way onto the likes of Pirate Bay.

Of course, without proper login credentials, you’ll be downloading over 9GB of data for absolutely no reason other than just because you can :p

I think Torrents are the way forward though - what do you think?

This has just been mailed to me and I felt that I should really share this brilliant classic coin-op clone.

As you can tell by the screen-shot and the title it is of course, Defender!

It’s got everything going for it - it’s free, online and classic!!!

Go to Stupey.com and have some retro fun!

Thanks Dean buddy!

Righty - I’m back up to protect the land from alien invasion!!!

Pew, pew…….!

Pipping the Kindle v2 to launch here is Sony’s reader!

The second-gen book replacer from Sony, the PRS-505 Reader is smaller than a hardback, has memory to store up to 160 e-books, which is expandable via an optional Memory Stick or SD Memory card, and it can also be used as a mass storage device for file transfers.

Weighing a comfy 260g it is said to have a battery life

“equivalent to approximately 6,800 continuous page turns“

- When I turn a page I use no battery power…..odd that :0P

Reader’s display uses E-Ink technology that means the “pages” are viewable in direct sunlight at angles of up to nearly 180 degrees.

The Reader comes with a USB cable, soft protective case, Sony’s “e-Book Library” software, 14 pre-loaded excerpts from new and recent books, and, in addition to electronic books, Reader can also store and display personal and business documents in the ePub, PDF, RTF, TXT and MS Word (converted to RTF automatically on the supplied software) formats as well as JPEG images. 

You can pre-order it from Waterstone’s either in store or online from July 24th.

e-books will be available to download from the e-bookstore on the Waterstone’s website from early September.

Pricing, and exact launch dates TBC.

Sony

Yessirreee another WiiMote-alike but this one is for the PC.

It’s GoLive2’s Stix collection (200 / 400).

They are wireless motion-sensing controllers designed to play PC and internet-based games, with Games for Windows titles and “thounsands of free web-based games”.

According to Brian Zheng, the president of Plahut,

“[Stix will] completely change the way people experience online and PC gaming”.

Ok - if you say so Brian.

The Stix 200 will apparently only be compatible with 2D games, while the Stix 400 gets to play with the flashier 3D ones.

Due in August when I’m guessing the prices will be let out also.

I4U News

Here’s a pretty cool bit of kit and it’s Free!

FonStruct is a cleverly named online font building tool.

You create the font, and the service then turns it into a “high-quality TrueType font” ready for Mac or Windows.

You are encouraged to share the results of your excellent design knowledge via the online gallery which features tags, voting and intelligent categorisation.

I realise that, at best, this is a bit niche but I still think that it’s rather cool.

Making a decent, legible font isn’t as easy as I thought but if you know what you’re doing then it’s definitely worth a try.

Redferret.net

What a surprise!

There must be something happening concerning Apple in…………ooooo……about 2 and-a-half hours.

I can’t even begin to imagine what Apple could possibly be announcing today that would cause a whole bunch of its international stores (Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, etc.) to go down.

And is that a new iPhone tab showing up on those sites?

Any ideas?

PlayStation Home will be here later in the year it seems in “open, working beta” format.

I know you’re thinking “Google use this” but in their defense, Sony has actually come clean describing Home’s rollout as “similar to Gmail.”

Could this be a way of covering their backs if parts fall over?  Nah.  Well.  Could be, I guess…….

But hey - Playstation Home is nearly here!

Wired

If you want to check out how noisy an area is before you move there - or to see how powerful your stereo is you can now search DEFRA’s noise map by postcode to monitor noise levels.

The 23 areas include London, Manchester and Sheffield.

Defra said the maps would help to tackle “unreasonable noise pollution”.

The mapping process was carried out during 2006 and 2007 and incorporated the noise maps produced for the 18 English airports that were published in December last year.

The website also includes information on the number of people exposed to these levels of noise.

BBC

If the totally awesome Lego Chess-Set is not enough all you Lego fans will soon be able to create your own virtual Lego Universe brick by brick.

Next year will see the launch of a multiplayer online game called Lego Universe, in which players will be able to create online Lego versions of themselves and interact with each other.

“We want to make the connection between digital play and physical play,” Mark William Hansen who is in charge of Lego Universe told Reuters.

“The physical experience is our core, the digital experience will never replace the physical experience, but it’s a nice add-on.”

Lego fans will actually be able to order a real version of the online Lego avatar they create of themselves - fantastic!

The game will inititially launch as a PC game that will be available to buy in stores as well as a download, but rumour has it that it will also come to other platforms.

Hansen added that the game will operate as a pay-as-you-go subscription service at a “competitive price” but didn’t reveal how much and players will be able to buy bricks (there possibly may be as many as 6000 types of brick to pick from!) to build their world; and the more you play, the more virtual cash you earn.

Via - Reuters