Daryl Baxter.

Xbox + Kinect on 2 year subscription poised to launch soon.

Another great article from The Verge:

Microsoft is planning to launch a $99 Xbox console package with a monthly subscription as early as next week, according to our sources. The software giant will offer the 4GB console with a Kinect sensor at its range of Microsoft Stores in the US, subsidized with a monthly cost of $15. We’re told that the two-year subscription will provide access to the Xbox Live Gold service and possibly some additional streaming content from cable providers or sports package providers. Customers who sign-up for the deal will also be covered under a two-year warranty.

The fact that they’re trying to place it squarely against Apple TV, Roku, Playstation 3, only solidifies how they want it to be the focus of the living room.

Interesting development that you wouldn’t expect from Microsoft.

Spotify for iPad.

A review from The Verge:

While Spotify’s iPad app is truly excellent at what it does, I can’t give it a pass for exhibiting many of the same faults I have with Spotify’s iPhone app, Android app, Mac app, Windows app, etc, etc. The useless What’s New section, inability to see your Play Queue, and lack of sorting options make the app harder to use, as competent and complete as it is by Spotify’s standards. If you know exactly what you want to listen to, the app will make you happy — but it’s quite poor for discovering new music.

Perhaps most importantly, it seems like Spotify has deliberately decided to keep playlists as the sole means of organizing content instead of a unified “Collection” that lets you view songs you’ve saved by artist, album, and inside playlists you’ve created. Only being able to save content via creating playlists is a long out-moded method — just ask iTunes, Grooveshark, Rdio, MOG, Amazon, and just about any other company that offers music jukebox software. I hoped that this feature, among other things I’ve mentioned, would pop up in the company’s iPad version — especially since competitors have had some of these features for years. So while Spotify’s iPad app and catalog are both exceptionally solid, the company’s product-related priorities are confusing. It spent months building a beautiful and speedy iPad app that will elate Spotify users but doesn’t actually do anything new for discovering music. In short, it’s exactly what we expected and nothing more.

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Puzzling as to why the Apps aren’t available, but that could be to do with Apple’s guidelines.

But, it’s finally here in an update released this morning. If you’ve got a subscription, go get it.

Raspberry Pi: The Next Step.

The Raspberry Pi, which is a small linux based computer selling for $25, has only just started shipping to its many customers after being introduced back in February.

I think this could be greatly used in schools, given out to students taking ICT, and being given an introduction into how a computer actually works. A great introduction like this would be really beneficial for them.

BBC News has a review of the device:

This may be the perfect opportunity to push coding easily into the classroom, with the Pi’s readily available installations of Scratch and Python, and may indeed encourage more girls to get involved if it is put into schools in the right way - proactively.

After all, kids tend to follow their friends: intrigue follows intrigue.

As the operating system can only be put on an SD card, which has very limited capacity, they won’t become mainstream Windows machines, and that will get Linux into schools. A great step forward.

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iPad app made on an iPad.

The future: 

Cargo-Bot is the first game on the App Store developed using Codea, an iPad app for rapidly creating games and simulations.

Cargo-Bot was developed by Rui Viana using Codea. After creating an initial prototype he spent several months polishing and perfecting his design. The completed Codea project was then imported into the Codea Xcode Template (to be released soon) and published as a native iPad application.

Potentially the start of something incredible.

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Intel ‘Ivy Bridge’ launches.

Intel’s processors for 2012 have finally launched, with a lot of fuss over the ‘tri-gate’ transistor:

Intel hopes a new transistor technology, in development for 11 years, will help it challenge Arm’s reputation for energy efficiency. 

“For the user, that means the benefits of better performance and energy use will continue for as far as Intel sees on the road map.” 

“What Intel has been able to do is instead of just shrinking the transistor in two dimensions, we have been able to create a three-dimensional transistor for the first time.”

How Technology has no limits to anyone.

Something i posted on my Twitter a few weeks ago:

Inspiring, heartwarming, an amazing example of how technology can work, of how it has limitless possibilities.

His iPad is the ‘laptop’, his Macbook Air is his ‘desktop’.

No, I no longer wish I had an 11in Air. What I have here – a third-generation iPad and an Apple Wireless Keyboard – is better. I have better-than-good native iOS apps to handle almost all of my mobile needs. When only a desktop app will do, I have VNC, and/or the wonderful OnLive Desktop service that allows me to run Microsoft Office on a virtualised Windows 7 server.

My MacBook is still the go-to machine when speed and convenience are required. At 10 megabits per second or faster, VNC works well enough for live typing and editing, but, yeah, it’s not As Good As Being There. And in most hotels, you’re lucky if the in-room internet doesn’t require you to drop a phone handset into an acoustic coupler and then insert some coins.

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The proof is out there that it definitely can be done, especially in the last six months since iOS 5, but, there’s a majority out there, myself included, that doesn’t yet feel comfortable with using a tablet for everyday use the same way i do with my Macbook.

For example, I like to have a tab of BBC iPlayer or YouTube running while browsing something, but if i do this on an iPad, the YouTube or iPlayer link will pause/stop and i have to dedicate the screen to their apps or tabs to keep it playing.

I love the way magazines such as Wired or The Guardian run on the iPad, and i’m sure it looks even better with the retina display, but i’ll wait and see for what iOS 6 brings if it can brings features more on par with how i use my Macbook.

YouTube adds more editing features to Audio

We introduced AudioSwap to let you replace a video’s soundtrack for free with a song from our library of thousands of tracks. With more of you using AudioSwap and giving us lots of feedback, we have some cool improvements to share today in YouTube Audio Editing:

• You asked for more tracks, and our library of songs now includes more than 150,000 tracks—and growing!

• You can now mix music into your video’s soundtrack at levels ranging from “soft background” to “completely replace.”

• Our “featured tracks” make it easy to find the best songs across genres for a variety of moods.

• We’ve revamped the Audio Editing user interface to make it easier to use.

I’m struggling to understand why Google Video is still active.

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Larry Page doesn’t think ‘Android is critical’ to Google.

File under ‘what you must never say when in charge’:

When asked if he believed Android was a critical asset to Google around 2010, Page said: “I believe Android was very important for Google. I wouldn’t say it was critical.”

When asked whether Google’s board of directors was told that Android was critical to Google, Page stated that he wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, but that he wasn’t sure he’d go that far. He elaborated that Android was a means to get pre-existing Google services to mobile users. “We’d been frustrated getting our technology out to people,” said Page.

Even though in a way it’s the best method of offering it’s many services on one device, it’s not the smartest answer to give when Android is one of the most popular mobile OS’s for mid to low end smartphones.

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Buying Instagram, the Zuckerberg way.

On the Friday & Saturday, he and the CEO of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, negotiated the small details, and on the Sunday, he told the board of directors he was going to use $1 Billion to buy them, no questions asked.

It was the first the board heard of what, later that day, would become Facebook’s largest acquisition ever, according to several people familiar with the matter. Mr. Zuckerberg and his counterpart at Instagram, Kevin Systrom, had already been talking over the deal for three days, these people said.

Negotiating mostly on his own, Mr. Zuckerberg had fielded Mr. Systrom’s opening number, $2 billion, and whittled it down over several meetings at Mr. Zuckerberg’s $7 million five-bedroom home in Palo Alto. Later that Sunday, the two 20-somethings would agree on a sale valued at $1 billion.

Mr. Zuckerberg ditched all that. By the time Facebook’s board was brought in, the deal was all but done. The board, according to one person familiar with the matter, “Was told, not consulted.”

If you want something, just go get it.

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Mobile Operators unconvinced by Nokia’s revival bid.

Skeptics among operators say the sleek, neon-colored phones are overpriced for what is not an innovative product, cite a lack of marketing dollars put behind the phones, and image problems caused by glitches in the battery and software of the early models.

“No one comes into the store and asks for a Windows phone,” said an executive in charge of mobile devices at a European operator, which has sold the Lumia 800 and 710 since December.

A spokesman for a third operator who did not want to be named said: “If they could lower the price we think they could sell more. It might be worth making it a bit of a loss leader to get it out of the door. It’s not rocket science.”

Operators are also frustrated that cash-rich Microsoft is not spending more on marketing Nokia Windows phones.

Telecom consultant John Strand, who works with many of the top European carriers, said operators want to see more cash being spent. “The operators say to Nokia: ‘We will try to bail you out if you and Microsoft come with the marketing money.’”

“But even if the operators start to give away the Nokias for free, it will not make Nokia a success,” he added.

One device chief at a European operator agreed. “We can open our stores to them and train our staff to sell the phones, but that’s it,” he said.

“Ultimately, Nokia and Windows are challengers and they either need to come to market with a really disruptive, innovative product or a huge marketing budget to create client demand. So far they have done neither.”

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I’ve tried the Lumia, and it’s design is sleek, easy to hold, lightweight, and i’ve thought it’s got a great chance to be the flagship to Windows Phone.

So far, i’ve seen no marketing anywhere to aggressively push it into the potential users, and if you look on O2’s site, you can easily have the phone for free on a 2 year contract for £27 a month, but there’s no link at the front page to encourage first time buyers.

If you go onto Vodafone’s website, you see a large banner advertising the features right away, with the same contract for £26.

A pity if this phone goes to waste.

Vodafone Nokia Lumia

O2 Nokia Lumia

Twitter’s Innovator Patent Agreement

Like many companies, we apply for patents on a bunch of these inventions. However, we also think a lot about how those patents may be used in the future; we sometimes worry that they may be used to impede the innovation of others. For that reason, we are publishing a draft of the Innovator’s Patent Agreement, which we informally call the “IPA”.

The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.

We will implement the IPA later this year, and it will apply to all patents issued to our engineers, both past and present. 

Brilliant move to protect innovative ideas for the inventors.

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Prince of Persia Source Code found and extracted after 25 years.

The creator of the game ‘Prince of Persia’, Jordan Mechner, had a call from his dad in New York finding the original code in a box 3 weeks ago, in no less than 20 floppy disks amounting to 2mb.

Luckily, the code has been able to be copied from an Apple II to a modern day laptop, and it was only finished today without fault, incredible.

Jordan Mechner on Twitter.

EDIT: Jordan posted an update to this describing the journey from floppy disk to Macbook. Link.

Free Dongle!

Although the Transformer Prime is not a professional GPS device, as part of our unwavering commitment to customers we are offering all Transformer Prime owners a free external GPS extension kit, called a dongle, which may help improve signal reception and optimize the user experience. 

Imagine if Apple had to deal with this.

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