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Wow what a game, I must say having only played it for 3 hours this isn’t going to be an in-depth review but just merely my first impressions…

This has been on my wish list for some time and I pre-ordered it as soon as I could nearly going home at lunch time to play it but unfortunately a new suit needed choosing instead…

So in my 3 hours of playing I have completed the tutorials and done a couple of missions, the force powers are great this is one of those games that the Wii was built for wielding a lightsaber and force gripping a Wookie before throwing him in disgust or electrocuting a bunch of rebels.

I have dreamed of this…

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So the annual Mac fan camp is over for another year so what were the highs and the lows?

Well personally I think this is going to be slightly heavy on one side and most of the highs have low points…

Time Capsule – This was a kick in the backside for anyone who recently purchased an AirPort Extreme because this is basically an AirPort Extreme with a hard disk included. The idea being that you can simply backup automatically over the airwaves. The problem with it is you can’t add any drives to it so you either stick with the 500GB or pay for the 1TB but even then for true, proper backup you should still have something offsite and on rotation. This basically means that every so often you swap a backup out and hold it somewhere else so should something happen you will still have a backup available.

iPhone updates – These were good and useful but not outstanding and seemed like a bridge to stem people unlocking phones by saying we are doing things but at least it was free.

• Maps with location is by far the best app that has been added in this bundle being able to find where you are with one touch and then getting directions for a restaurant you just searched for, very cool.
• Webclips, I don’t really think this is the best name but certainly a useful feature, saving bookmarks on the home screen to your favourite web apps is brilliant especially when it is still the only way to get more out of the iPhone at the moment.
• Customizing the home screen/s is again a great feature as I won’t ever use the stock app and getting that as well as a few others off a cluttered home screen is a god send.
• Sending multiple SMS messages is one of those things you don’t do very often but when you do, you really miss it so another useful add-on.
• Chapters, subtitles, languages and lyrics are all just fluff and not something I can really see anyone using.

iPod Touch updates – Yep the Touch got an update too as well, getting pretty much what you see above (less the multiple SMS option) and a few extra apps including mail, maps, weather, notes and stocks. However the update to the iPod Touch came with a sting… That’s right Apple does it again for those early adopters and is going to charge you $20 (£12.99/ £12.66) for the privilege of getting what the iPhone holders get for free. Will people still do it, hell yeah, I already have!

iTunes movie rentals – This is a biggie. I buy movies but not many, as once I have seen it I very rarely go back and watch them again for quite some time so for me renting is better than purchasing. With rental from Apple we can now watch them anywhere on TV, computer or iPhone, the only downside at the moment is the time constraints. Once you select it to rent you have 29 days to start watching it but once you have started it you only have 24 hours to finish it. Now I don’t know about most but it isn’t often I get chance to watch a film all the way through in one sitting. Hopefully Apple will fix this.

Apple TV – following on from movies, Apple have made some changes to Apple TV. So Apple TV is the platform for watching the movies you rent on your TV and this includes HD movies, you can also now pick up podcasts to watch or listen to and photos from Flickr.

MacBook Air – Well there is no doubting that this was the highlight of the event and what Apple have managed to achieve is phenomenal in cramming so much in but was it worth it? I don’t know anyone who I have spoken to who would buy one, not because it is missing an ethernet port, not because it is missing a optical drive, partly because it has such a small hard disk of only 80Gb which in this day and age isn’t good for much. But mainly because they just don’t need one in their lives and the price… Well if it had just been a little less maybe it would have been something to think about and not just dismiss out of hand.

All in all it seems as though something was missing from this year’s expo – some nice things did get announced but more importantly it sets the stall out nicely for the coming year and the future so in the usual Apple way they leave more questions unanswered than answered but then maybe we are still dealing with the hangover of an iPhone last year.

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So it is that time of year when everyone gives you their opinion on what was great about 2007 and what to expect in 2008.

Well what was great about 2007 is probably repeated by everyone:

• iPhone
• Facebook
• Vista – yes you may laugh but despite its faults it still made improvements on the desktop market

But rather than predict what may happen in 2008, I would rather just tell you about what I’d like to see in the hope that someone sees this and can make it happen.

A 3G iPhone I think we all know is coming in 2008 but I’d like to see this on more carriers in the UK than just O2 who are the devil incarnate. If this doesn’t happen then I can see a lot more pressure to get iPhones unlocked and portable between networks.

I’d also like to see a new Apple notebook based on similar tablets that are available on the PC side which incorporate touch technology similar to the iPhone. I’ve always fancied a tablet but the only one that I have ever come close to buying was the Toshiba Protégé R400 though that is still a disappointment in certain areas and I now feel only Apple could get it right.

I would also like to stop seeing cases like the current Opera browser against Microsoft. I think Opera need to look in the mirror to work out why they aren’t getting market share rather than trying to jump on a band wagon almost and bash Microsoft. Apple package a browser and in either case it hasn’t done anything to hurt Firefox, maybe it is just because the Opera browser just doesn’t work as well. The only good thing that can come out of this case is to see Microsoft becoming standards compliant, which as a developer I stand right behind Opera on.

I’d seriously like to see the Zune challenge the Apple iPhone next year – at the moment Apple is running away with it and that’s fine, they are great products but a little competition has a nice way of keeping people on the straight and narrow which would be ironic for Microsoft

Oh and finally this -

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I’ve had chance to play around with the beta for Firefox 3 and so I thought I would jot down a few notes on what I have seen so far this first post will focus on security which is close to my heart.

In short I love it, I’ve always been a fan of Firefox and although the last version had a few issues that wound me up almost to the point of reverting to the previous version this version as far as I can tell addresses those issues and continues to build on what is a really great browser.

continue reading…

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The question at thembid.com’s blog was ‘What are your essentials?’ after a windows re-format, however I want to touch on the actual process and how that can me made easier.

House keeping is one of those tasks I used to love to hate a few years ago but an unfortunate necessity with a Microsoft Windows based machine.

Back then backing up wasn’t an easy task, reinstalling everything took almost a day to get up and running and there was always something that was forgotten or missing or just not quite right.

Over the years I have practiced and perfected my technique and with the software available at the moment it is even easier.

What I have -

• NAS (network attached storage) or USB/ Firewire drive
• Disk imaging software such as Norton Ghost
• VPC (Virtual PC) software such as VMWare

I now have basic ‘build’ for each machine I have whether it be my laptop, desktop or development machine as they all have things slightly different. I also make use of VPC‘s for my development machines to make things even easier.

continue reading…

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Microsoft has had Windows Live Mail in beta now for a while, but after hearing a friend was still using Outlook Express I thought a quick post would be in order to let people know that there is something better!

Outlook Express has been out since Windows 98 and during its life has had holes found and holes plugged, unfortunately more holes have been found than have been plugged and the way it was integrated into the OS and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer didn’t help it.

However an alternative and much improved mail application from Microsoft is available. Microsoft launched an e-mail client to supercede Outlook Express in the form of Windows Mail (which came with Vista) and Windows Live Mail is the upgraded version of that which is available to all.

The Windows Live Mail beta can be found at ideas.live.com and I don’t think it is restricted so anyone can get it and it can be used with any POP3 or IMAP email account.

Because this is a beta you shouldn’t expect it not to have a few gremlins and because it is a Microsoft product you can’t expect it to be without a few gremlins. But on the whole, this is a very mature beta and, well, anything is better than Outlook Express…

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Taken from the BBC.

AOL has joined Microsoft in supporting Open ID, giving the free identification scheme 63 million new users.

OpenID is a decentralised identification system that lets individuals use a single password for any site that supports it.

This is great news for Open ID which has been slow to take off despite its promise.

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Yahoo have released a service and it is one straight from the labs of Yahoo and not bought in for a change.

It is also a first and a brilliant idea!!

It is called pipes and is a free service that lets you catch popular feed types and then manipulate them and mix them up to create a data ‘mashup’.

It comes with a nice looking ui which makes creation of the pipes a simple process. These can then be saved, shared and output in either RSS, RDF, JSON or Atom formats.

It is still in beta at the time of writing but go have a look and play with the pipes others have created.

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So what?! Should we all be rushing out to buy one or both of these products?

In short yes. Office particularly is a fantastic product and much improved over the previous versions; if you only buy one of these Microsoft Office 2007 should be it.

It has the brand new UI which makes things a lot easier and once you get to learn what is quite a radical departure from any other version of Office you will find doing even the most complex task easier.

So what do you get for your money below is a table from Microsofts site which goes though what each version contains.

Just one pitfall to look out for, as you will see the ‘Home and Student’ edition doesn’t come with Outlook which I don’t particularly agree with although Microsoft are probably only doing this so that users may pick up ‘Live Mail Desktop’ which is the replacement for ‘Outlook Express’.

So what about Vista? Well it got more of the attention rightly or wrongly, but should users be upgrading yet?

It isn’t an easy one to call, anyone getting a new PC should have no quibbles about upgrading, in fact I don’t think there will be much choice. For everyone else, I would say hold off until you upgrade. The improvements in Vista are great, it does look nice, it does things properly for a change but does that necessarily justify the expence of picking up a copy, not to mention the cost in possible hardware upgrade that you might need? I don’t think so. But don’t get me wrong Vista will run fine on a half decent PC that could run XP, you won’t get all the fancy stuff which some say is the main selling point but it will still run.

So what version of Vista should you get? The best guide on the product version is on the winsupersite.com where they have an in depth review which I’d suggest you read before doing anything.

Paul has also brought out a great book which goes into great detail about Vista and things it may take some of us a long time to figure out oddly enough called Windows Vista Secrets.

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Well Mozilla have announced the planned features that will appear in Firefox 2.. erm, I mean Firefox 3. Personally I still don’t think Firefox 2 had enough to warrant its launch as a major release, but hey – at least we getting it this time!

taken from mozillalinks.org

Among the list of mandatory requirements, read, what is the most likely to be included in Firefox 3 we have:

• Improved interaction with Add-ons: clearer, more coherent language; less steps to install; more visible way to configure add-ons, probably to be moved back to the general Options window, which I hope deeply; more noticeable alerts when updates are available; a permanent restart Firefox button.
• Support for remote bookmarks, bookmarks and history annotation.
• Files could be handled by web services. If I am reading this correctly, this could mean you would be able to click on an attached document and open it with something like Writely or Google Documents. And perhaps, as I asked Santa, the ability to redirect mailto: links to web email services.
• A much needed print support to prevent cut paragraphs and true WYSIWYG.
• The much requested MSI installer which will be a much welcomed improvement for IT administrators as it will ease deployment and updating of Firefox across a company.
• In the security front: support for Microsoft CardSpace and OpenID (check tomorrow’s article for more coverage on this). Smarter credentials handling.
• Airbag, the Google backed open source crash reporting tool will replace currently licensed TalkBack.

Among the highly desirable requirements:

• A private web browsing mode. I guess this would mean no cache, history, password or entered form information storage.
• Save web pages as PDF files, integrated with history. That would be just awesome.
• Support pause/resume downloads across sessions.
• Make Firefox help accessible only while online. Not sure how good and idea this is.
• Microformats support.

Nice to have:

• Unified bookmarks/history. Does this mean no Places?
• Support for Windows Vista parental controls. I really hope this one goes up in the priority list. This would be the first concrete downer for Firefox when confronted with Internet Explorer 7.
• Tab grouping and expose. This sounds like Internet Explorer 7 Quick Tabs or the foxPose extension.
• Windows Group Policy. Another blessing for IT administrators.
• Allow add-ons to be installed without rebooting Firefox.
• Simplified interface to manage downloads. Can it be simpler? Maybe exposing commands currently placed in the context menu.

Good heh? Well if you take out all the fixes and little changes here and there, again we see a release that barely constitutes a major release. Maybe if they had combined the stuff in version 2 with this we might be on 2.1 by now.

Anyway we will see how much of this makes it to the release date which at the moment appears to be the? third quarter this year.

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