new earth online

Once again the eyes of the world are on San Francisco, where Apple have invited the world's press to reveal their latest creation. For a long time there has been much speculation about an Apple tablet in the works, and most people think it a certainty that this time it will be uncovered. The event started as normal with Steve Jobs presenting their latest sales statistics for devices such as the iPod and the number of applications that they now have in their App Store.

They didn't waste any time then explaining how the face of mobile computing has changed and what mobile devices are used for and that a device between a laptop and a phone are needed - such as a netbook, but the problem with them is they are slow and have low quality displays. This is when they announced the iPad, a device which is coined as being better than both Macbooks and iPhones. One of the most pleasing features is unlike the iPhone you can customise your homescreen to have different wallpapers, and the screen turns round as you turn the device round so it doesn't matter which way it's facing. It's designed to be able to read newspapers easily, and includes a nicely sized QWERTY virtual-keyboard. It also features a lock screen similar to the iPhone, and recognisable applications such as Maps, Mail, Contacts, Calendar and iPhoto to name a few. All of these applications have undergone design changes specifically for the iPad, and they look kind of cool - as though they're now resembling the items they're "replacing" more closely.

It has a 9.7" IPS multi-touch display (1024 x 768 native resolution with 132ppi), and is only 0.5" thick and weighs around 1.5 pounds. The CPU is a 1GHz Apple A4 and comes in 16Gb, 32Gb, and 64Gb versions. Connectivity isn't too bad with it supporting Wi-Fi 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. In addition to the GPS it also includes accelerometer and compass which means the battery life could never be expected to be great considering the screen size, and they're reporting it to be around 10 hours. So this means in practice you're probably looking at around 6 hours.

The best thing for developers is that all existing iPhone applications should work on the iPad, but it will mean developers who want their app to run on this new platform will need to take scaling into consideration. Apple have made some provision for this though in that existing applications can be run at either the same size as the iPhone, or using the "double-pixel" mode where it enlarges everything. They have also released a changed SDK so that developers can take advantage of the increased screen size. As you'd expect the App Store is available on the iPad, just as iTunes and the iTunes store can be used.

They've not been content with squishing the netbook competition either - they're setting themselves up to take over the eBook market as well with their new iBook application. To supplement the iBook app there is also an iBook Store where you can buy your books from. They mentioned some of their biggest names publishing books through the iBook Store include Penguin, Macmillion, Simon & Shuster; though there are also many more names. The format for the books is ePub - the same as what the Stanza iPhone app uses.

They haven't stopped there though, they have also ported iWork to work on the iPad. Personally I didn't find this particularly interesting, but I guess I may think differently after I've seen it in action properly. It does however include some new custom keyboard layouts which are designed to help increase productivity by speeding up data entry. Each program which makes up iWork will be priced at $9.99.

The 3G comes with various different plans for 250mb/month for $14.99 and unlimited for $29.99 a month. I'm hoping a 3G plan isn't required as if I choose to get one of these then I'll only really need the Wi-Fi option. Presumably this will be the case as you can set up the data plan from the iPad itself, and is contract free and are not locked to any network even though they're pushing AT&T. The SIM is an international microSIM The shame however is that these are not going to be available internationally yet, and aren't likely to make it to the UK until about July. Even though the 3G offers aren't going to be available just yet, the devices themselves will be available worldwide in 60 days, and the 3G models in 90 days. The pricing is as follows:

• 16Gb - $499 (or $629 with 3G)
  
• 32Gb - $599 (or $729 with 3G)
  
• 64Gb - $699 (or $829 with 3G)

Also announced were a number of accessories to help make the iPad experience better - a dock, a keyboard dock, and a case.

I think considering the price it's going to sell very well, but I think I may wait until the next generation of the iPad to see how it evolves over the next year or two. A lot of people seem quite interested in a future version including a front and rear camera for both taking photos and for use in video chat. Of course another missing feature is multi-tasking, so we can only hope that one day Apple add this. The design I think looks great, and I can't wait for the local Apple store to start stocking them so I can see how it feels. I'm also interested in seeing first hand what the video and sound quality is like as this will determine how appropriate it is for a mobile media device, though the fact it's going to be perfect for reading is probably one of it's best features.

I'm now waiting to download the updated SDK and the iPad simulator and will report back ASAP.

It was proposed a few months ago that the use of non-latin characters should be allowed in domain names to mean that countries who don't use the latin character-set an use domain names in their own characters. After a few months of consideration ICANN have now approved the use of "foreign"characters and may be offering domains using this new system later in the year. Apparently the first TLD's to use this new system will be in Arabic and Cyrillic.

Some people have complained that this will herald a more complicated Internet, but I don't think that is true. If you're native tongue is Arabic and have never learnt English then I think the existing system would be an awful lot more confusing than the ability to type in domain names using Arabic characters. This opens up the Internet to being a more interesting and culturally diverse place where the English language (or other languages using latin characters, such as French, etc.) isn't a requirement.

I hope maybe this may be a sign that more companies will be more accepting of other languages and cultures. However there have been some initial concerns that the use of similar characters in domain names (if you can mix and match character sets) it may open up the Internet to far more phising possibilities. Some people have also commented that if TLDs are added for other languages should the same also happen for programming languages?

Mozilla today release version 3.6 of their popular Firefox browser. Included in this new release was the former Mozilla Labs development, Personas which allows you to customise your browser easily skin your browser with thousands of pre-made skins and to develop your own. At the minute my favourite Persona features Totoro from the Studio Ghibli film, "My Neighbour Totoro". One thing I like about the way Personas works is you don't have to apply a Persona to test it - you can just hover over it on the Personas website.

In addition to a brand new feature is a small increase in JavaScript performance, but no where near as big an improvement as the one made between version 3 and 3.5; but any improvement is a positive move. Here are some of the other improvements they've made:

• Protection from out-of-date plugins to keep users safer as they browse.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen and supports poster frames.
• The ability for web developers to indicate that scripts should run asynchronously to speed up page load times.
• Continued support for downloadable web fonts using the new WOFF font format.
• Support for new CSS attributes such as gradients, background sizing, and pointer events.
• Support for new DOM and HTML5 specifications including the Drag & Drop API and the File API, which allow for more interactive web pages.

On the subject of out-of-date plugins I was expecting there to be some of the ones I use that would not be ready for the new release as there always are a few. Unfortunately, despite hoping otherwise, I was right and a number of plugins did indeed fail to work. Amongst the ones I use which don't work in Firefox 3.6 are:

• Gmail Manager
• Google Gears
• Html Validator
• Live HTTP Headers
• Page Speed
• SEOpen
• Tamper Data
• TAW3 en un clic

Some of those plugins I'm quite disappointed to see weren't ready, especially considering the release period for 3.6 was extended. Of course it's possible to edit the plugin to change the maximum version number they can be run on but it's not something you should really have to do. So because of third parties, and not Mozilla, I'll now be putting off upgrading Firefox on my Macbook Pro as I use some of those for debugging purposes.

UPDATE: One annoyance I've found is that I can no longer paste into Google Wave, presumably because Google Gears no longer works.

In the past week it's been a tough time for Internet Explorer. It all started when it was revealed that there was a critical vulnerability in the browser which meant applications could be run remotely. This flaw was revealed after Google's were attacked and this was shown to be the likely culprit. Such an announcement from a rival browser manufacturer is never a good announcement to be made, but it's also one which will prove hard for Microsoft to fix due to it's tight integration with the Windows environment. So, ironically it's the same thing Microsoft were originally brought up on for unfair practices that is now causing them further pain. Due to the nature of the flaw it is one which is not present in rival browsers.

Following that announcement came another from the German government (from their Federal Office for Information Security) advising their citizens that they should not use any version of Internet Explorer and should instead use an alternative. I think when this announcement was made it brought a ray of hope to those web designers and developers who shun the browser's quirks which normally causes more development time. Swiftly following this initial announcement was another announcement from the French government department CERTA was a similar sort of message and to also disable JavaScript and ActiveX.

TechRadar have reported that this was then followed by contact from Microsoft UK's Head of Security and Privacy whom stated that users who switch will risk using a less secure browser.

The net effect of switching [from IE] is that you will end up on less secure browser," insisted Evans.

The risk [over this specific] exploit is minimal compared to Firefox or other competing browsers… you will be opening yourself up to security issues.

He then goes on to say he thinks IE8 is a more secure browser than Firefox and that they're only talking about one vulnerability - granted that may be the case at the minute but it is a pretty major vulnerability. If Microsoft are going to start pointing fingers at other browser manufacturers they should back up their accusations with proof and should do something about fixing their own browser.

In light of these recent announcements I don't think it's going to make a major difference - most users who know about other browsers and may want to change most likely have already. If the UK government was to follow suit and issue a recommendation it is likely that although some users may make the switch that the government itself would delay a browser switch themselves due to the logistics of rolling out a browser to all their systems. Fortunately some of the government is ahead of the curve and have already made the jump to an alternative, more secure browser.

A while back we saw a legal battle between Apple and Nokia when Nokia accused Apple of infringing on 10 of it's patents. Their claim wasn't raised until two years after the iPhone was initially launched and was timed just after Apple had overtaken them in the smart phone market (but Nokia still sells more handsets) - which means Nokia were likely filing that suit to try and get some money back from a market they were losing out on.

The ten patents in suit relate to technologies fundamental to making devices which are compatible with one or more of the GSM, UMTS (3G WCDMA) and wireless LAN standards. The patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and are infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007.

The argument from Nokia was that all mobile technology companies contribute standards for others to use, but do so expecting royalties for the use of that technology which they say Apple refused to. A couple of months after that initial suit Apple then responded with a counter-suit saying Nokia had infringed on 13 of their patents. It seems to be a bit of a childish and "one-up" sort of response to which I thought Apple were better than, but looking more closely it seems that in trying to catch-up with Apple that Nokia then copied the UI from the iPhone which does actually infringe patents. So if Nokia were to win their law suit it would only be right that Apple should also win theirs which would pretty much negate either one's win. So in copying Apple they did pretty much shoot themselves in the foot, if they wanted to win royalties for Apple infringing on their patents they should have been more careful with about copying technology.

In response to this Nokia then filed a complaint with the ITC to request that imports of the iPhone, iPod, and MacBooks be banned due to unfair trade practices. At this point they did re-iterate their initial complaint to say all the products they requested to be banned infringed on 7 patents.

Now Apple have retaliated with a request of their own to the ITC that Nokia handsets should be banned though details of this claim are not yet available. Should both companies succeed in the ITC banning the handsets (which is very unlikely I think) it could dramatically shift the smart phone market in the US.

Google Maps when used with GPS (and the built in compass of an iPhone 3GS) is a brilliant application, but it lacks an offline mode for times when you're in an area without a signal. If you're planning on going somewhere where you can't get 3G or EDGE then the application is pretty much useless. The only way it would be made more useful is if there was some way to cache a viewed map area at different zoom levels so you could peruse it at your own leisure - it is after all only a series of images that fit to specific geographical locations. This is where the application OffMaps comes in.

When I came across OffMaps it was purely by chance - I knew I'd need some mapping software that cached map images to use with GPS, but I thought it meant I'd have to write an application to do it. I chose to search the App Store for "offline map" and thankfully I found this application that fit the purpose. Rather than using Google Maps for providing the maps, they instead opted for OpenMaps but still has some familiar features such as being able to automatically locate where you are and to rotate as you turn round so that the map lines up with what you can see (iPhone 3GS only). If you use this feature then you can download a map of where you are automatically, and also download a "guide". These guides allow you to search the map whilst you are offline for various types of location such as restaurants or hotels. For example, if you download the guide for Sydney it contains 2347 points of interest, 69 restaurants, 197 bars, 137 hotels and fits into a 8.8Mb download. When you download the application you get to download two of these guides for free, after that you have to pay for them. It's not really that big a deal either as you can buy additional downloads at £0.59 for 3 of them which is nice and cheap and can be bought using in-app purchases.

The guides can also be accessed when not using the feature by tapping the same button on the tab bar and navigating through the places. I've found these guides to be quite useful as if for example you want to see the Sydney Opera House and you have already bought the guide then you can type it in the search and click on the entry, or click on the blue icon in the search box, switch to guides, navigate to the Sydney guide, and then find the Opera House under the list of sights. Once you've found it you see a small map showing where it is, a category in which it falls under (Theatre, Attraction) and then links to get from there to somewhere else, the route to there, or to add it to your favourites. I don't think the UX is the best in the world as it takes some getting use to in order to make the most of it (some of the features aren't obvious on how to find them).

When you want to download an area of map you click on the same icon as the guide, click on "Only Download Map" and then you drag out an area of the map you want. You then get the choice of how many zoom levels to obtain the map images for. If you've already downloaded the map at that zoom-level it does tell you at that point, but it would have been nice to have a way of browsing a list of what places you have cached (by giving the ability to name them).

The only problem I've really found with this application is that although you can see what filesize your cached maps have reached, there is no indication of what areas and zoom levels you have cached. Even if you've bookmarked several places you can't tell which of those are cached and that I think is it's biggest flaw.

Generally speaking it's a useful application and can save you money since you don't need to worry about getting data plans for abroad (it can stop you getting lost too!) and is certainly worth the download if you're going to a different country or somewhere without a signal.

By now you've likely seen the news which has plastered almost every technology site and news site on the 'net. After reports that Chinese human rights activists Gmail accounts had been hacked Google are now reconsidering their position in China, and whether to go on serving results but in an unfiltered state, or to pull out entirely. Google have reported that information from at least two accounts have been accessed, but not the contents of the emails.

sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China

Although their allegations are not aimed directly at the Chinese government and their practices, it is implied that they believe the government was involved. Due to seriousness of such allegations this has meant further involvement from US officials in order to get answers to the serious questions that these actions pose.

Once the news was announced Google's shares dropped by 1.1% which means no matter what they decide to do it has already cost them. It is estimated that if they do pull out of the Chinese market it will be costing them $600 million for 2010 which personally I think is an awful lot to lose! If they decide to go ahead with pulling out of the market then they are taking a stand against the Chinese government's policies - but I don't think they're going to actually pull out of that market, even if they don't manage to negotiate a way to legally unfilter the results. When Google initially entered the Chinese market they did so under extreme fire from people who thought it was wrong for them to be negotiating a filtered engine, but they did it anyway saying that it would benefit people more for Google's search engine to be available. If they were to remove it now, although justified and understandable, would be to go against what they had said to convince people they weren't evil.

I guess all we can do now is to watch eagerly as to whether the great firewall of China finally crumbles...

The CES Government event is part of the CES event which is held in Las Vegas every year and has always premièred new technology for government use. This year a offshoot event was held in London, UK for the first time which gave our own government a chance to showcase their latest technological advancements. The UK even had numerous speakers from the US from world famous institutions and agencies such as NASA and for the UK we had our very own Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. For those of you who are not from the UK you may not have encountered Boris before, he is a bit of an idiot - an amusing one. Boris has a tendency to say the wrong things and is often said to be out of touch with what the people of London think which is always fun.

As a major boon to Open Data it was announced by the Mayor that City Hall will be opening up a massive amount of previously unavailable data for people to use free of charge. This data will mean that application developers can use it to create richer hyper-local experiences and can also use this information to produce applications commercially.

The Datastore will contain over 200 different sets of information and will be fully open for business on 29 January.

I'm assuming there will be some sort of licensing procedure for this information, but the people of London are likely to see a sudden influx of mobile and web applications using this newly available data when it is released at the end of this month.

The superb new London "Datastore" will unleash valuable facts and figures that been languishing for far too long in the deepest recesses of City Hall. I firmly believe that access to information should not just be the preserve of institutions and a limited elite. Data belongs to the people particularly that held by the public sector and getting hold of it should not involve a complex routine of jumping through a series of ever decreasing hoops.

With this announcement came the revelation that some data is already available in a "prototype" form on data.london.gov.uk which already has a fair amount of data added. For example if you're interested in Census results for 2001 you could visit the "demographics" category and available there is information broken down into various categories for each area / ward as XML and CSV making it easy to consume for other sites and/or applications. It's not just data consumption that data provided in these open formats can be used for - with the available data you can also utilise it as research for your own articles. For example, if you were running an article on alcohol related accidents you could get accurate figures from the site also.

There is also the 4iP (4 Innovation for the Public) scheme which aims to get publicly available data available in digital formats to make the information more accessible. This also extends into other areas such as games, etc.

Having not been able to attend CES Government 2010 myself I'd be interested to hear your views, and any other information you may have about the event. So feel free to have your say in the comment section!

As always CES has been a big event with many exciting new products. I've already covered some of these in the first part, but fret not, what follows in this part are just as exciting and includes one of my favourite gadgets.

SVG is one of those technologies that a lot of web designers would like to see more support for. The SVG file format is a special type of scalable image which uses XML to define the shapes and positions that make up the graphic. Because they are instructions it means that it is easy to scale he graphic to any size without the same issues you have if you blow up images stored in conventional formats such sa JPEG and PNG past their original size. At present there is support for SVG 1.1 in Opera, and incomplete support in Gecko and Webkit based browsers (Firefox and Safari respectively). Microsoft's Internet Explorer however has had no support as of yet even in version 8.

Microsoft has announced plans to join the SVG working group. This move reflects the company's growing acceptance of the important role that vendor-neutral open standards will play in enabling the next generation of Web applications.

By Microsoft taking these steps it means that we're likely to see some proper support for SVG in one of the next releases of Internet Explorer, though maybe not in version 9. Microsoft have been taking greater interest in participating in standards working groups so they can provide their own input to help shape the future of the web - something they should have been involved with to start with.

The mobile web is a growing market and there are now hundreds of devices available. At CES the ones worth noting include the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus from Palm. The main differences with these updated models is an increase in storage space and the addition of Wi-Fi connectivity for the Pixi Plus. Another addition to the mobile market is a 5" Dell tablet PC with 5 megapixel camera which is slated for a release in 2010.

For the iPhone we're actually going to see a full sized keyboard released in the form of a dock. The manufacturer, Ion, is set to release a standard QWERTY keyboard and looks like it will be available in silver and black. The way it works is it has a small slot at the top for the iPhone to fit in and connects via the iPhones docking port. They are also planning on releasing a piano using the same technology.

Another rival e-reader announced at CES 2010 was the Skiff, developed by LG for Hearst / Sprint. The e-reader utilises an 11.5" e-ink display at a resolution of 1200x1600 whereas the Kindle DX has a 9.7" screen and a 1200x824 resolution and the nook has a 6" display with 800x600 resolution. If these specifications alone were enough to win the battle then the Skiff would be the clear winner. Other factors also come into play though such as the range of books available, the international availability and pricing, and the battery life. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any solid facts for these factors yet, but the support for 3G and Wi-Fi is a promising start. As new details emerge I'll blog about it here with better comparisons to the Que, nook and Kindle.

The world of displays had a few new concepts being demonstrated also - from Sony was the OLED 3D television, and from Samsung was a laptop that sported a transparent OLED display. The Sony television is a 24.5" display is currently one of the largest OLED TV panels you can get. It may be a popular display because of it's size and vibrancy, but the problem is that OLED HDTVs don't come cheap and at this size it's likely to cost a fortune when it makes it to the shops. Samsung have also got a 3D HDTV which is billed as being as thin as a pencil. I think they key between which one sells the most is ultimately going to be down to price again. Samsung's other big revelation, the transparent OLED is pretty cool to look at and is actually quite amazing technically too. The display is 14 inches and is apparently 40% transparent which would be interesting to see how it will be used in the open. I can picture graphic designers sketching designs on paper and then holding it behind their screen to trace the lines in Photoshop - probably wouldn't happen, but it's an interesting use for it I think.

My favourite revelation for this years CES has been the remote controlled X-Wing. Unfortunately it isn't a licensed product so it's not likely to be available for long, but those attending the show could buy one for $299 (it will be $399 in the stores). The RCX4 Star Stryker uses four motors to provide it's control and is absolutely amazing how accurately you can control it. The range is a pretty amazing one mile as well which has me pretty much decided that I have to buy one of these whether it is a licensed product or not - it's amazing. Some of the video of it in action shows that it can pretty much hover in one location just as you can with modern RC helicopters, though each of it's four fans is worked into the fuselage in such a way that from certain angles it looks like it's flying without any rotor blades.

Google like to release new technologies for their search that push it just that little bit further in helping people finding what they want quicker. It's understandable really as the quicker it is to find what you want with a search engine the more likely you are to use it again. What Google have now done is to take their mobile homepage and to add a new feature to it which they call "Near me now".

"Near me now" is a way to use your current location to find the nearest restaurant, ATM, etc. by combining the geo-location reported from your browser (which could be obtained from the network or from a built-in GPS device) and then using that to search geo-coded businesses of that type within a particular radius. There are already a lot of applications out there that searches local directories such as Yelp and Local Picks, but a Google branded product is likely to get more coverage and is always something to keep an eye on for exciting new ideas.

Whilst this feature has already been rolled out to Google.com for iPhone and Android users it seems you can only see this new option if you are in the US - it doesn't make a difference for UK users whether you visit the .com or .co.uk addresses.

At CES there are always many announcements made by the various companies that exhibit there and there are always some which are eagerly anticipated, such as those regarding new technologies and changes to games consoles. This year at the show Microsoft announced that their "Project Natal" would be released in the holiday season of 2010 (which equates to it being November or December time). Those who remember it's announcement last year will remember that it is a revolutionary motion-sensor controller which utilises 3 dimensional motion capture technology and interprets into in-game actions by tracking where limbs are moved and compares them to predetermined controls. The hope is that this will produce a fun, and more immersive gaming environment but it will depend on how many, and which games decide to support it. This may be limited by the fact that it's been reported to use approximately 15% of the XBox 360's processing power in order to make these calculations - surely this would have been improved by the device having it's own CPU with sufficient power.

The next announcement from Microsoft is the XBox Live "Games Room" (developed by Krome Studio) due out in the Spring - this is a new virtual environment where you create your own arcade (i.e. you can customise the playing room) and can then buy classic games for it. Any games purchased there can be played on both Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live depending on the purchasing option you go for. Individual games cost 240 Microsoft Points (£2.00) each, or 400 MP (£3.33) if you want to be able to play them on PC and XBox 360. If you don't want to buy the game and just want a single go on it then it costs 40 MP (£0.33). The games getting released for the arcade are truly classic games such as Pac Man, etc. and are supposed to have been remastered for playing at 1080p and now include cross-plaform achievements and a cross-platform leader boards. So far a list of 30 games have been confirmed for the initial release.

"Game Room" replicates the old-school look, sound and feel of a retro video game arcade. At launch, "Game Room" will bring you a library of 30 original arcade and console classics such as "Centipede" and "Asteroids Deluxe" from Atari Inc. and other favourites from Activision Inc., Intellivision, Konami Corp. and more, all shown in their original cabinets. Create a brand-new social environment your avatar can explore, trick out your "game room" by arranging your cabinets, and decorate each room with themes and animated icons from your favourite games. With weekly new title releases, your arcade will soon be retrofitted to perfection.

HP have been working with Microsoft to produce a tablet PC (not the Courier) which uses the multi-touch features from Windows 7 but they have not yet been able to provide specifications, availability or pricing for this device. For a product that doesn't look that special it doesn't seem very "helpful" to not produce any details whatsoever as people don't know if they'll want it or not, and without knowing the specifications consumers would be more likely to buy an alternative product that reaches stores first (such as a possible Apple tablet). To maintain a captive audience they need to come up with something innovative, or at least make it a thing of beauty like what Apple do with their products.

One surprising product revelation was from a British company called Plastic Logic. Their new device is called the Que e-reader and is proposed as being a rival to the Kindle (no mention of the nook!) though will not be made immediately available in the UK (nor do they have any plans at the minute for doing so). It's good to see a new e-reader on the market as it's gives consumers more choice, however due to them having spent 10 years and $10 billion in developing it, they will be selling it for the high price of $649 and $799 (£407 and £501) which does not bode well if they want to compete with the lower priced Kindle and nook.

The gadget has a black and white screen and is aimed at "mobile professionals", according to the company. It is currently a lot more expensive than its rival the Kindle.

The 4GB and 8GB models are priced $649 and $799 (£407 and £501) while the latest Kindle retails on the Amazon website at $259 and $489 (£162 and £306).

It is the first of a new range of products that the company hopes to build using flexible plastic electronic displays rather than heavier glass-based screens.

Books purchased for the Que e-reader will come from Barnes and Noble so obviously they don't see it as competition for their own reader - more of a way to supplement their income from e-books and to pose more of a threat to Amazon. The main difference between this and other e-readers is that the whole screen is a touch screen and still has physical buttons.

Momento at it's simplest is a diary application (do Americans call them Journals instead?) for the iPhone which allows you to create new entries. The difference to a normal diary (other than the obvious fact it's on an iPhone) is that it encourages smaller individual entries referred to as moments - but you can post multiple ones for each day. Each moment can not only be rated out of 5 stars, but can also contain attachments such as places (which supports GPS), pictures, people, events, and keywords meaning it produces a very media rich diary entry.

Where Momento is made even more useful is that it also aggregates feeds from other sources that you post to such as Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, and Twitter in such a way that it can download old posts and will continue to add new posts to Momento as you post in these places. When I associated my Twitter account with the app I was able to import 3,200 tweets immediately (it is limited how many you can import due to API restrictions); it does the same for the other services just so it doesn't import too many. From the settings view you can also add a 4-digit PIN to lock the application so that your entries remain private should anyone else use your iPhone or iPod.

I think the interface is really well designed, especially the design for the dates markers and the PIN screen in cases where you've locked the application. Even little touches such as the textured background for the title bar and tab bar make it a visually pleasing application. The default tab is the "Days" tab which produces a nicely styled summary for each day going back as far as your first entry (which can be a massively long list, but has a handy search option). The second tab shows a calendar view which uses little blue "blobs" to indicate which days have moments recorded for them. The third tab is for listing tags you've used on entries (with a nice wooden texture for the background), and the final tab shows which feeds you're currently importing entries from.

I'm not yet sure how often I'll use it, or how much use I'll have for it as I don't really keep a diary - but it could come in useful when I'm out and about and have a need for recording pieces of information. Even at £1.79 I thought the price was worth it just to see an example of an app that keeps the UX simple in clean and yet elegant design.

It sounds like a model of android from Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" but it is in fact the name of the latest Android-powered phone to be announced from Google. It was rumoured for months that Google would produce their own Android phone, but there was nothing set in stone until about a month ago when the name "Nexus One" was revealed. Today however, the phone itself has been revealed at a special event held in San Francisco by Google.

What the announcement of the Nexus One (@googlenexusone)means is that not only are Google providing a platform for other companies to use with their handsets, but they are also producing a handset of their own which can act as a benchmark for others. The handset is 119mm by 59.8mm which is more or less the same size as Apple's iPhone. The screen is a 3.7" WVGA touchscreen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels with a great response time and contrast ratio (1ms and 100,000:1) meaning there should be no evident ghosting effects and should be visible even outdoors. When it comes to it's camera I am actually a little impressed - it includes a Flash, and can record 20fps video at 720x480. The focal distance isn't too bad with it being able to focus from 6cm to infinity. The battery isn't that great, but it is about the same as the battery life for the iPhone anyway so I guess it is to be expected. It sports a 1GHz CPU, 512Mb Flash (SDD), 512Mb RAM and not only does it support up to 32Gb Micro SD (which in itself is cool as the iPhone doesn't) but it actually comes with a 4Gb card.

The interface looks really intuitive and looks similar to the UX on the iPhone - especially with the touch keyboard interface looking so similar and the sideways swipes between email screens. Google being famous for their search it shouldn't come as a surprise that a percentage of the homescreen is also given away to a search box which supports voice recognition. Although it looks very easy to use the best way as always is to spend 20 minutes trying out the UI and to see what you can achieve with it without getting stuck or breaking it. To give a good feeling for how the Android UX is on the Nexus One they have started a Nexus One account on YouTube which is filled with 13 videos (so far) showing different aspects such as Google Voice, search, camera and gallery, web browsing, email, etc. The video which follows demonstrates the YouTube support for the phone.

Obviously the most important factors of a modern phone is their ease of use when it comes to the essential tasks such as placing a call, collecting and sending emails and SMS, and also how well it can browse the internet. Looking at the email video for example, it looks easy to use and is very simple - it's interface when using Gmail accounts is similar in design to their web interface.

Since Android was released as a platform for other handset manufacturers to use it's not really offered a solid selling point which could help it to compete with Apple's iPhone OS, but with the release if a Google handset this means that they can now use their strong brand name and marketing power to push Android further and to truly be a challenger for the mobile market crown. Manufacturers such as Motorola have produced handsets such as the "Droid" (which is a licensed name from Lucasfilm) and have garnered more interest for Android, but has still not been enough despite increasing numbers.

The availability of the Nexus One isn't great - it appears to be limited to the US at the minute and is available as either handset only ($529) or on a contract 500 plan with T-Mobile for $129. In the US it will be opened up to Verizon and Vodafone sometime this Spring, but there is no word yet as to when it will be released in the UK. Although the availability is not great yet it does show promise and has it advantages considering the iPhone is currently locked to AT&T in the US. A move like this from Google could make Apple reconsider their position in the US so that it may get opened up to other networks sooner rather than later.

This is likely to be a major boost for Google's profits and the popularity of Android, but with even greater numbers of web-enabled phones it could mean a greater strain for mobile networks and an increased desperation to get sites working properly on mobile devices. Hopefully this will also cause a change of pace for other handset manufacturers when considering features and design.

Voddler is a content delivery system for videos much akin to what Spotify is for music. It is an advert supported service that provides films (and eventually TV episodes) to the masses for free, though newer films are ones you have to pay for to "rent". So what is this brand new service like?

Even though the service is supposed to be only for the residents of Sweden, I got a beta invite through for this today. The registration is quite simple, but will only allow you to chose a 5 digit Zip code (postal codes not allowed yet) and you can only pick Sweden as your county. I was able to pick a random 5 digit code and chose Sweden, downloaded the application and installed it. The application is available for both Windows and Mac and doesn't take long to install.

The application itself runs in full screen an only accepts input from the cursor keys, the enter key and the escape key until focus is obtained on a text field. This means once the program is open and you have to log in you have to press enter, type your username, press enter, select the next field, etc. until you have filled in all the login details. I don't think it's an ideal system and it would have been nice to have been able to use the tab key or the mouse for moving between fields. I can understand why they've done this thought - it's so that you can control it easily using a remote control I presume.

Running the application at full screen is an annoyance, but I guess that once you've opened it you'll want to watch your movie full screen most of the time anyway. So once it's open at full screen and you've logged in you then see a table of film posters for what films are available. You can see the full poster which makes some of them a little awkward to tell what they are. The navigation is absolutely awful too and could really do with a search though I'm hoping these are both things they'll address before the final release. The problem with the navigation is if you browse all films there's no at-a-glance way of seeing what posters are for what without navigating around to get more details on them. When you reach the far right or left it wraps back round with no clear indication that it's just done that or is about to.

The film selection is pretty sparse at the minute, but I imagine once it's out of beta there are likely to be far more films added to the mix. Once you've picked a film (some of which are free to watch) you then get about 4-5 minutes of adverts before getting to see the actual feature. Depending on your connection you may need to buffer so much of the video before the adverts and movie begin playing. If you decide to pause it for any reason you also need to navigate using the cursor keys and then press enter to pause which is a little annoying if you need to pause it in a rush.

Just as this was a tale of two parts, this review is of two parts. When Season 4 ended in 2008 we were told we would instead be getting four features during 2009 instead of a season. Not long after that we were then informed that the journey of the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant would be coming to an end. One of the things that you'll notice about the end of a season of Doctor Who is that it ties together most of the stories from earlier episodes to show it is just one over-arching story that is made up of smaller adventures. This last outing for the Tenth Doctor is no different either.

The End of Time starts with a narration by Timothy Dalton explaining what is to come with the End of All Time and how the inhabitants of Earth are all having bad dreams about the future, but only one person can remember the dreams when they awake - Wilf, the grandfather of Donna Noble. For some unexplained reason he is suddenly drawn to church where he sees the Doctor's TARDIS in one of the stained glass windows there and he is told of a legend.

Meanwhile the Doctor has just arrived on the planet of the Ood after having been summoned there by Ood Sigma at the end of "The Waters of Mars". His last visit to the planet of the Ood he was told his adventures would be coming to an end after "he knocks four times". Whilst there he expresses to Ood Sigma that he has no desire to rush to his death and so did not come immediately after being summoned. However things take a disastrous turn he finds that in delaying a new threat has had time to emerge, and that The Master may not actually be dead. As soon as he finds this out he rushes back to Earth as the fate of all time hangs in the balance.

Back on Earth we learn that Lucy Saxon, the widow of The Master whilst he was under the guide of Harold Saxon, has been brought before a ceremony started by the disciples of Saxon so that they can resurrect the fallen Time Lord. Lucy had known this was a possibility and during the ritual to bring the Master back to life she throws in a chemical which kills everyone present and destroys the prison. Though the Master has returned.

The Doctor arrives on Earth and soon tracks down the Master but not before the Master has killed some humans whilst trying to satisfy his insatiable hunger. His resurrection has not got according to plan he does have some new powers. Whilst chasing after the Master he bumps into Wilf, who has been looking for him, and the Master gets away.