Gadget Trip

What do you do if you are in a strange city thousands of miles from home, you've had two hours sleep over the last day and you take twenty seconds to answer a hard question like "How are you?"

Well, we went gadget shopping. Having checked in, grabbed some food (in the most amazing place - pictures tomorrow) and sorted out a few bits and bobs we boarded bus "B" to the Techno-Mart. Apparently this is not the biggest one - only 10 floors of hardware -  but it is pretty darned huge. Think Harrods but with technology and you are about there. Although, unlike Harrods, there are actually lots of individual traders in there  - we saw a huge number of somewhat identical displays of hundreds of cameras.

The place to be

10 floors.

After a while we found two solid floors of computer stuff; including brand new, original copies of Windows 98. I wonder how many of them they sell a day...

These girls were outside. No idea what they were selling, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Sculpture

Seoul street

View from Bus B

Street corner

After an hour the jetlag was really getting to everyone and we staggered out onto the bus again. And I had bought nothing. I'm so proud of myself. Lots of tempting toys and and the credit card stayed firmly in the wallet.

But we are here for the next few days. And I know where it is.....

Wonderphone

Well, I'm sitting at the Crowne Plaza in Heathrow typing on the teeny tiny keyboard on the teeny tiny machine and marveling at my little Smartphone. It is the best phone I've ever had (of course it should be, it is also the newest phone I've ever had - but I have been known to go backwards)

It can make phone calls, send sms, send mms, send email, receive active push email (like a Blackberry, but better). It has two movies and season one of Spaced on it, along with several hundred music tracks. I can browse the web, get maps, send pictures to Flickr, all kinds of stuff. In short it is pretty much everything I want in a mobile device.

As I write this it is providing a very useable Internet connection which just worked. Just worked! When I recall the grief I used to have trying to get on line with my phone I just can't believe how easy it was. Vista and Windows Mobile 6.0 really do get on well in this respect. I've had three hours of high quality music on the train on the way here too.

It is the HTC S710. And it rocks.

Very posh hotel room desk. But Internet at eight pounds an hour? I don't think so...

Taking your memories with you

I've been spending some time scanning old photographs and loading them up onto the computer. It helps to pass the time whilst watching dross TV and I've found some gems in amongst the albums. The thing that has impressed me most is the quality of the results though. Using a fairly modest Canon scanner and 6x4 inch prints I've been able to get some very nice looking results, even when viewed on the big screen telly.

Today I used the Vista Media Centre option to burn a whole bunch of pictures onto a DVD. This is wonderful. It gives you a lovely, ever changing slide show of pictures which works in any DVD player. I've been dishing these out to family members, who have been very impressed. Even though the images include one of me wearing shorts.

SPOT that Watch

I quite like watches. Not expensive ones, just different ones. I've had a hankering for a Microsoft SPOT (Smart Personal Object Technology) watch for a while. If you live in the 'states these are actually very useful. You can get news, appointments and even messages beamed onto your watch.

Unfortunately the service has yet to roll out in Europe. But I still want one of the watches. I mentioned this to Colin Miller of Microsoft (he's the chap that wrote the forward to our book) and he was good enough to say "OK, Ill send you one then", which was very nice.

It arrived on Monday and I love it. It actually runs the .NET Micro Framework. All I can do with it is tell the time, but that is good enough for me, and some of the watch faces are rather cute.

Spot watch on spotty wrist

This face is rather clever. A tree grows up the middle of the watch face every hour. If only there was a kind of XNA for watch faces, then we could design our own.....

Wonder of Webguide

Some time ago I bought a thing called a Slingbox. Then I sold it. Never used it much and it was too fiddly to make it control the TV. And if I did do this I got into terrible trouble with the family for switching channels from a hotel room in India. (I didn't want to watch anything, I just wanted to prove I could do it).

The underlying idea (get at your recorded programs from anywhere in the world) is a great one, but it relies on fairly kludgy technology, with the Slingbox digitising an incoming video signal before sending it off down the network.

Things are a lot easier now I've got my Sony media PC sitting under the PC, with a hard disk full of recorded TV. Because everything is networked I can navigate my way to recorded programs and view them over the network. But it is a bit of faff to find the program files, and I still have to go to the Media PC itself to set up my recordings.

That is I did, until I installed Webguide. This is a smashing little program that runs on the media centre and serves out web pages that let me set up recordings and stream media around the house (and onto the web if I open up the firewall and sort out IP address discovery).

It even works to mobile devices too. The idea is very simple and it works a treat. There are versions for Vista PCs and also Windows XP Media Centre edition machines.

If you have got a media pc you should (or even must) get a copy of this program. The installation is a tad fiddly, but it does most of the hard stuff for you automatically.

The price for this is only 18 dollars, or less than ten pounds. Well worth it.

Evil Weather and and Hungry Robots

Bank Holiday : like a normal day, but with much worse weather.

We had all kinds of plans for today. We were going to drive out into the country, walk round some rocks and eat scotch eggs in the car. And maybe even drink coffee from a flask whilst sitting on a piece of cloth on the grass.

As if.

After practicing on Sunday with a horrid display of freezing wind and rain the weather gave us a full on "Bank Holiday Experience" today with a pretty much perfect display of nastiness, even down to the hint of sunshine around teatime, when it was too late to go anywhere.

We stayed at home instead. We turned the robot vacuum loose in the bedroom and it ate my headphones. Not good. After spending a few minutes untangling the wire from the wheels I managed to get the robot back on the road (although I gave it a stern telling off) but the headphones looked to be a write off, with part of the earpiece missing.

So we went out and got a replacement set. At which point of course, the earpiece turned up and the original phones were found to be working fine. Wah.

I love bank holidays.

PS3 Firmware Upgrade

I really rather like the PS3. It is kind of growing on me. Late last week Sony released a firmware upgrade that made it even nicer. It adds quite a few nice features, including upscaling and the ability to fetch media from other devices.

I can remember when DVDs were the last word in quality. I suppose that compared to VHS video tape they probably still are. But these days we are used to bigger and better things. A lot of DVD players now have built in "upscaling" which attempts to take a standard DVD signal and convert it into one which will look OK on a high resolution display. This is a fraught business, in that the software has to add data where none was before, smoothing lines and filling in gaps when things move. Up until now the PS3 could play DVDs, but it couldn't upscale them. But now, with the firmware upgrade, it can. And it works too.

If you freeze the frame on an upscaled DVD the picture doesn't look that much better. But when the movie is running the effect is pretty impressive. I put on a high quality, action packed sequence (the car chase from Ronin) and the results were very good, to my eyes there is a significant improvement. Not as good as a proper HD source, but a good half way house, and good enough to stop me from re-purchasing all my DVDs in Blu-Ray (which is kind of a marketing own goal from Sony's point of view I suppose).

The PS3 can now also upscale old Playstation 1 and 2 games. First off I took my original Ridge Racer, bought with my PS1 all those years ago and popped that in to see what upscaling did. This was not quite as impressive, but then again each pixel was around a quarter of an inch square on the screen, so it was perhaps unlikely it would make much difference. I still enjoyed the race though. Yellow car, all the way.

My PS3 could see my media shares, and I managed to browse some folders but I ran out of time before I could get much going. They say you can also control your PS3 using a PSP via the Internet, but I've got to do some firewall fiddling to make that work. Maybe later.

Bottom line though, if you have a PS3 you really should upgrade the firmware. It takes around half an hour to download and install, but it is well worth the effort.

I'm in Love

I've seen my new phone. It's wonderful. And I can't buy it just yet. Which is unfortunate.To make matters worse, I saw it hanging from David's belt. I was going to advise him to buy one - after I'd got mine. Unfortunately he has taken my advice before I gave it to him. How temporally anomalous.

And annoying.

Anyhow, for those with a gadget bent and a drip proof drool tray, follow this link.

Noise Canceled

When I was in the 'states I got myself a pair of cheap noise canceling headphones. I wasn't expecting them to be up to much, but it turns out that they are quite effective. You turn them on and they do nothing for a few seconds and then there is a kind of un-thump and the sounds outside you vanish. It is a bit like having a wet flannel suddenly wrapped around your head.

I've been wondering what would happen if I played the same music into some speakers and the headphones, sat next to the speaker, and then turned the noise canceling on.......

Media Friendly

Number one son was supposed to be a restraining influence. He was supposed to drag me away from temptation and stop me doing things like buying Sony Media Centre PCs, even if they were half price. Unfortunately he was no good at all. So now I've got this Sony XL-201 thing lurking under the telly and I've thrown all the silver boxes out.

And it used to work very well. It was running XP and Media Centre 2005 but of course I wanted more. I wanted Vista. Well, today I got it. We left the machine upgrading while we went up town. When we got back all looked fine, which is bad. One of Robert's rules of computers is that "Everything useful requires payment in pain".

When things seem to work OK my heart tends to sink, because it means that the bits that are going to not work are going to be swines to fix. I'd much rather have a completely black screen and nothing happening, because I can attack that up front. With this variant of the hand of fate I have to find out what is going to be wrong before I can fix it.

Well, later today I found out what is wrong. Nothing too important, just that when you turn the TV on the computer crashes. The NVidia drivers just can't handle the fact that the TV is saying hello down its HDMI connection. They show their surprise by blue screening the box. As I am pitching this device to number one wife as the answer to all our problems, the media hub to end all hubs, the thing that only needs one remote control this is a bit of a sticking point.

We have tried various versions of the drivers and all have the problem to a different degree. By not turning anything off, ever, things work OK, but I don't see this as energy efficient. Actually, I see it as darned annoying. I have a Sony TV plugged into a Sony computer running drivers downloaded from the Sony site. And it crashes when you turn the TV on. Do they test this stuff? Do they ever turn it off? At the moment the best I can do is live with it until NVidia (for I suspect they are to blame) ship something a bit more resilient.

Then this evening we went round to see Ian. Everyone beat me at pool, which is bad. But I beat everyone at table football. Which is good.

And yes, I did churn out a bunch of book pages in the meantime.

Home Shopping with Sony

After the excitement of the last couple of days it is back to real life with a trip up town. One of my favourite shops (sort of) used to be Dixons, which was one of the few remaining purveyors of gadgety type stuff in the teeming metropolis with is Hull city centre. However, that has now changed to "Currys Digital", which seems to have resulted in a huge influx of white goods. I'm not impressed. If I want to look at washing machines I'll go into our kitchen. And the gadget potential of a fridge freezer is somewhat limited in my opinion. The result of this was that I spent nothing. Number one son actually spent more than me. This might be a record.

Fortunately, those awfully nice Sony people have found a way of relieving me of funds even when I'm sitting in front of the telly. Using my shiny (but irritatingly dust attractive) PS3 I can go to the Sony Store and purchase games and stuff. So, for fifteen quid I got Flow, Tekken and Lemmings. They are all set to download overnight, I'll let you know what they are like tomorrow.

Twitterified

Interesting. On the day that the papers are talking about how people are stopping blogging I find a new thing which takes the art of blogging to a new level.

The new thing is Twitter. This is kind of "blogging on speed". You post on Twitter what you are doing at regular intervals, short sharp messages that keep all your Twitter friends informed of where you are. I've not yet seen a Twitter post that says "going to the toilet" but I'm sure there is one somewhere.

I can see this as being great for students, and those with more than one friend. You could be continually in touch, a kind of message based digital herd. I'm not convinced that it will be much use for me.  Thinking of something pseudo-witty to say once a day is hard enough. Doing it every twelve minutes would probably cause my brain to melt.

Having said that, TwitterVision, a mashup where you can see posts from people appearing on a map of the world, is compulsive viewing. And I will be posting live reports from the Imagine Cup finals tomorrow and Friday on my Twitter account, it should be perfect for that.

Back on the 'phone...

I'm moved to wonder if people really care that I'm now using a Smartphone instead of a Pocket PC. Then again, I do see myself as a beacon of light, shining upon the path to gadget heaven and true enlightenment.

And anyway, it's my blog, so there.

Anyhoo, I've given up on the Pocket PC as a phone. I've gone back to my good old Imate SP5 Smartphone. This gives me pretty much everything that I had on the old machine, including the wonderful push email support via Exchange. What the Smartphone doesn't give me, and the reason I've gone back, is a need to use two hands, and frequently a stylus, to do something tricky like, say, phone someone from the address book or find out who called me last. It also makes a much smaller lump in my pocket. I've tried to love Pocket PC phones many times, from the Jasjar daddy of them all down to the neat little Vario that I used to use. But I always end up back on the Smartphone trail.

I've really no idea precisely why, but I think that it has to do with my austere upbringing, where putting fingermarks on things like glass tables and the TV screen was severely dealt with. I think this has left me with an aversion to touch displays that makes using a Pocket PC too hard for me.

I was worried that the constantly connected GPRS connection that Exchange needs might sap the battery of my little phone, but so far it is holding up very well.

PS3 Purchaser

Hull at 8:00 am this morning

I don't think that we needed to get up early and dash up town. But we did anyway. At 8:00 am there were around 10 people outside the Game shop, but in Virgin, where number one son had placed his order, things were very quiet. So number one son got his machine, and then I got mine. Hint: If you are a student you can get 10% of the machine and any games at the moment at Virgin, if you can find one in stock...

Actually, finding a Playstation 3 in stock does not look like too much of a stretch at the moment. Everywhere we went we saw signs advertising the fact that there are plenty to go around. Whether this is gamer apathy, good production by Sony or the high price of the console remains to be seen, but it does look like anyone who wants a Playstation 3 can just go and buy one.

Then again, the "sold out" phenomenon is not how it has always been, I remember buying a PS1 when it came out and that was certainly not an all night queuing job, I seem to recall getting that a week or so after launch. I guess it all started with the PS2, and everyone now expects demand to outstrip supply or the launch is deemed a failure..

Anyhoo, we got the machines home and fired them up. Mine is plumbed into the big telly and the decent sound system and fits very nicely. It was a bit of a pain to have to endure a twenty minute firmware upgrade before I could play with the games, but the results on MotorStorm were worth the wait. I got three game titles (I've been saving up for a while), the other two being Sega Virtua Tennis (so realistic that in my first game Tim Henman lost) and Resistance: Fall of Man (not played it yet but it has Grimsby in it so it must be great).

I must admit that MotorStorm is so good I've not played anything else much yet. It shows the console off for what it is, a very powerful beast. There are lots of different vehicles on the screen at any one time and they all bounce off the scenery and each other in a very realistic way. If I have one criticism it is that it shares with many other race games the "First to Twelfth" behaviour where slightly misjudging the final corner can take you from a winning position to last in the field as they all tear past you. But then again, this might actually be quite realistic.

The console itself is an impressive piece of kit. It runs very quietly, is immaculately presented and has one or two really neat touches. I loaded a bunch of pictures onto it and it has this very groovy viewer where your shots are dropped onto a tabletop as if they were real prints. I'm pretty much going to get my entire record collection onto the thing, and a goodly number of my photos too. I downloaded the demo of Gran Turismo and things look very pretty. Tonight we watched the Blu-Ray version of Casino Royale and it was awesome, with genuinely jaw dropping quality.

This must be around the best time to get a video game console. There are no bad ones out there. Each of the three has something to commend it. Hard core gamers moving into the next generation can go for the XBOX 360, where its maturity and good range of software pay dividends. Those after a quick fix of sociable good-times can go for the Wii. And those who want something to put under the telly which will serve as a media hub, get them into HD video and with the promise of some genuine innovation in the future can dig deep into their pockets and splash out on a PS3.

Motion LS800 Tablet

While I'm talking about gadgets, I really should give an honourable mention to my favourite computer of the moment, the Motion LS800. This is the tiny powerhouse that I took to the 'states, and it really is lovely.

I was a bit ho-hum about it when I first got it, it was the height of summer and the lack of an internal fan was a bit of an issue. However, two things have happened since then. I've doubled the memory and put Windows Vista on it. Doubling the memory makes it a lot faster and also seems to make it run cooler (this sounds silly, but I'm sure it is true - less hard disk activity generates less heat). And Vista, with its powerful handwriting recognition, makes the LS800 very useable as a pure tablet.

The teeny tiny nature of the machine means that you don't notice it in your bag. The screen is only 8.4 inches in size, with  800x600 resolution, but this is not a problem. If there were more dots, with eyes like mine I would not be able to see them anyway. And in a week of use, including some sessions with Visual Studio, I was never hamstrung because of the small size of the display. Battery life is good at around 3 hours with a bit of care, and all in all it is now my traveling companion of choice.

Zuneified

While I was in San Francisco I bought a gadget. Those of you feigning shock horror expressions can stop right now. The thing I bought was a Zune. I've fancied one for a while, and with the dollar/pound rate the way that it is I reckoned that it would be an excellent deal.

The Zune is Microsoft's answer to the Ipod. I'm not sure about the name, perhaps the plan is to get as far away down the alphabet from Apple, but I could be wrong on this.

Anyhoo, as a device the Zune is very like an Ipod. Slightly more chunky, and with a larger screen for watching videos. It lacks the funky scroll wheel thing, making do with a ring of directional buttons, but these work fine.

The software is based on that from the Portable Media Player, an ill fated device that was launched by Microsoft and a bunch of hardware makers a couple of years ago. Of course, I had one of those too. I bought it to make use of the then shiny Microsoft "Plays For Sure" technology that would let me subscribe to Napster's music service. This is kind of ironic because the new Zune completely ditches that copyright protection and uses a new, exclusive one. If I had actually bought any music from Napster I'd be a pretty annoyed bunny at this point, but fortunately all I'd have to do is switch to the Zune music subscription service and fetch all my content again.

As an aside, I've never, ever, actually bought any music protected by Digital Rights. My philosophy has been that if Robert is going to part with money for something, Robert is going to actually get something for the money. I like the fact that I have a shiny CD in a nice box to fall back on if I ever change computer or player at any time. And if I buy from somewhere like Amazon marketplace I can usually undercut the download price anyway.

So, back to the Zune. I love it. Small, light, portable, great sound and an OK battery life (although it could be better). The Zune on-line music store is like the Napster one, only a million times better (and it works through the university firewall - a major plus). While I was in America I signed up for the 14 day free pass which comes with the device. It allows me to download and play any content I like for a fortnight. I put my home address in the USA as the hotel, which was true at the time.... And therein lies the rub for the moment.

I'm pretty sure that if I try to use the paid service (which is a major bargain compared to the price charged by Napster to UK subscribers) the system will take one look at my english credit card and refuse to play ball. This would be a bit of a shame, but I'm not that bothered as I didn't get the device for the subscription service. And hopefully when Zune launches properly in europe I can sign up then.

Microsoft are working very hard to make the Zune "cool". Making things "cool" is hard. Even someone as cool as what I am appreciates that being cool takes considerable effort. However, they are doing as much as they can. The Zune comes loaded with some very cool content. There are some fascinating artistic bits and bobs that you can download onto it and a whole range of sites offering customised backgrounds.

Whether or not Zune can "out cool" the Ipod remains to be seen. There is talk of big plans involving games and phones and all kinds of stuff. The Zune itself has built in wireless networking, so you can share media with your Zune owning friends (if you have any). It also works with the XBOX 360 as a media source. The hard disk could be bigger, 30GB will not hold a lot of video, but I'm quite happy with that for audio.

When it launches in the UK, as it surely must, it will be well worth a look.

Update on 2007-03-15 21:15 by Rob

I've just plugged the Zune into the XBOX 360.

It just works.

You can find and play any of the media on the device, including photos and videos. Watching music through the visualiser is amazing.

Idiot

I'm an idiot. No, really. Hard to believe, but it's true. Here's the proof.

I've been using my Motion LS800 tablet PC for a while and I really like it. It is tiny, works well and is on the way to becoming my traveling companion of choice. But it could really use more memory if I want to run Vista comfortably on it. And I do.

It is supposed to be a bit hard to take to pieces and upgrade, but to someone who had a lot of Meccano as a kid this sounded like a challenge. So I ordered a memory stick from Ebuyer and yesterday it arrived.

Getting the back off the device was OK, there were some nasty plastic catches but nothing I can't handle. A tip though, if you are thinking of upgrading a Motion Tablet, grow your thumbnails a little bit so you can slide them under the edge of the back and then use them to pop back the little tabs without scratching the case. I'm kind of due for a manicure at the moment, and that helped a lot. Anyhoo, I got the back off and pulled out the old memory chip. Then I get the new chip out of the package and I hit a snag. These memory devices have a little slot which aligns with a tag in the memory socket. Except on the new chip the slot didn't. It was around half a millimeter in the wrong direction.

And this is where the idiot bit comes in. A smart person would have just gone "Oh dear, have to send it back and get a replacement". But an idiot goes "I'll just grab a nailfile and open up the slot a bit so that it fits". So I did. And after a tiny bit of adjustment I had it fitting perfectly. But of course it didn't work. So now I have an expensive damaged component (which I probably damaged) that doesn't work. A situation broadly similar to taking a bundle of fivers and flushing them down the toilet.  In my defence, it had been a long day at work and I wasn't mentally at my best at the time I did all this. But I still think I'm an idiot.

I'm not sure if the slot was in the wrong place because it is a different type of memory (even though I took special care to make sure that it was the right type) or because the thing was badly made. I've sent the whole thing back to Ebuyer (with a note inside explaining what an idiot I've been and throwing myself on their good nature).

And to cap it all, after I'd put original memory back in and put the Motion back together I find I've lost one of the screws that holds the back on.

Idiot.

Cheap TV

If you have a laptop and a TV licence I can recommend this.  I just plugged one into a USB port on my Vista running tablet, gave it a pat on the head and told it to go off and find its drivers on the network and it just worked. I didn't bother putting the supplied CD-ROM in the machine, although it might be useful if you have not got a Media Centre PC or Vista with Media Centre, as it contains the TV viewing, recording and transcoding software.

The supplied aerial is a bit of a non starter in Hull, which is not very well served for digital TV, but plugging the device into the home aerial worked a treat, finding all the major channels.

They say that it will even pick up high definition broadcasts, but you have to be living in London to make use of that service. Anyhoo, for the price it is extremely good value. If you spend a few more quid you can get one with a remote control.

The Earth in Your Pocket

Where I work. All it took was the search term you see.

If you have a Windows Mobile device, and are lucky enough to be on an "all you can eat" GPRS tariff, you really should get a copy of Virtual Earth Mobile. It is a free download from here. It lets you search for places anywhere in the world and then display them in map or aerial photo view. What is really impressive for me is that the search facility works really well. I banged in my home address and it took me straight to a view of our house. With my car in the drive.

Performance over GPRS is a tad slow, but the pictures are worth waiting for. It will also do route planning and connect to a GPS device (although I've not tried that). And all for free. How can you go wrong?

Inside a Wii Controller

I was sitting waiting for an ebay auction to nearly finish so that I can pile in with a last minute bid when I wondered to myself if there was anything about the inside of the Wii remote controller out there on the interweb. Turns out there is.

Very interesting, and lovely pictures.