new earth online

Since I got my Nintendo 3DS (I got the 25th anniversary Zelda edition) I'd been unable to connect to the eShop or use the social features of the device. The error message I got when searched for online indicated in pretty much every post that it meant the Wi-Fi wasn't working and that I should check the "Hotspot"... wish they just call it a router, anyway I digress, and I knew that wasn't the case.

The reason I knew otherwise was that the network test worked okay and the web browser did too - I did a search on Google and loaded up the website of the company I work for. This made little sense whatsoever as it was the same issue on my home network and also when trying the device in the office. Although on my home network there's very little diagnostics I can do (in part due to shockingly bad router firmware) I was fortunate enough to get some diagnostics done whilst in the office. When browsing around I'd seen mention that the eShop app uses port 9103 however unblocking this still didn't help. Fortunately a colleague was able to get a list of the ports via our firewall and the list was actually a little longer. In the end though it provided the information required to reconfigure my router at home and I can now enjoy the social aspect of owning a 3DS as well as downloading small games, etc. that Nintendo make available in their eStore.

To start with I've downloaded the Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition - I'll review this at a later date. For now though I'm pleased to see my 3DS working the way it should!

When I said I intended on blogging more this year I certainly didn't mean three days running. Yesterday however after having spent 5 hours on Star Wars: The Old Republic (in which time I constructed a lightsaber, did a flashpoint, and arrived on Coruscant) I decided to try out Command and Conquer 4.

For those that have played previous games in the series, including other spin-offs such as Red Alert 3 will remember that there are always minerals that you have to mine in order to create units, and buildings such as power plants that are required. Other buildings would normally affect what units from the tech-tree you can build. In co-op mode at least, this is very different in C&C4. The first noticeable difference is the choosing of a class. These are:

• Support
  
• Offence
• Defence

With Support you get "powers" similar to those you'd get in Generals. Though for Support and Offence you get no building other than your MCV. If you're playing as the defence class then you do get defensive structures. Instead of buying units you instead expend command points which for the first couple of maps at least is around 50. This gives you the ability to construct a very limited force. A tank for example is 6 command points so you have to plan ahead as much as you can. You can change your class if you decide you've chosen the wrong one, but your MCV must be destroyed first. This can be done a maximum of 3 times.

It does feel like a dumbed down version of C&C where you can just keep on playing until you win. For example the first GDI mission was to save 12 vehicles from the convoy. We must have lost twice that before we eventually figured out what we were doing and started to save some.

Quite a disappointing instalment, but it's one I'll still try to complete at some point and wasn't too bad for the £3.74 price tag I bought it for off Steam during their sale.

As I said in the previous post, as I pretty much neglected this blog last year this year I intend on posting more articles and reviews starting with an article on "Compression methods". If there are any topics or reviews you'd like to see here, please comment! Over the next few weeks I also plan on finishing the new design and putting that live, but will be finishing the design for http://davidgpaul.co.uk first.

Yesterday I played Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, a game intended to be played on the Xbox 360 using Kinect. Sadly I've not yet got round to getting one so it does restrict what challenges you can do in the game but does not restrict you from playing the story missions (there also 3 non-Kinect series of challenges too). This game has been a huge change from the previous two Harry Potter games that I played in that it no longer feels like a "chore simulator" but closer to what the early Potter games were like. The story varies drastically from both the book and the film and includes extra side missions that are compulsory as a way of artificially lengthening the game. These side missions feel repetitive as they generally follow a "Free X number of captured Muggle-borns from Y" pattern where Y might be Acrmantulas or Deatheaters. It seems it's possible to complete the game mostly using "Stupify" and can be completed in very little time. I'd only recommend this game if you\'re a fan of Harry Potter otherwise you may get fed up of this game quite quickly.

It's taken me months to get round to playing this game, and as I've now finished as much of it as I want to it's time to move on to Part 2. Hopefully this one will be better... 

Happy 2012 to everyone! Last year was a pretty busy year and I never really felt like blogging that often with the exception of the Apple related events that were on. In February I did a bit more diving at Stoney Cove, to complete my Dry Suit diver specialty qualification. I had started that one a few days before Christmas but the friend I was diving with got hypothermia due to the icy cold temperature of the lake (it was 4 degree Celsius on the surface and snowing!).

April saw another diving course to get the "Peak Performance Buoyancy" qualification just in time for a 2 week trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands at the end of the month. It was a great trip and had many memorably moments such as free-diving with Galapagos Penguins and scuba-diving with white-tipped sharks and rays.

In the gaming world May saw the end of a long running joke wait with the eventual release of Duke Nukem Forever. Sadly May was also a time when Smallville came to an end after 10 years, but the release of Team Bondi's L.A. Noire sure helped pass the time without it! I also placed a large order with Jedi Collectibles that month, which to this day I'm still waiting for and doubt will ever actually arrive.

In July I returned to Stoney Cove yet again to do my Advanced Open Water qualification - this one consisted of some underwater navigation, wreck diving, deep diving and multi-level diving. I also had another holiday to Weston-Supermare and finally got to see the Roman Baths in Bath.

In August I went camping for a weekend, something I'd never done before. It was at Silverstone for the Renault World Series - prior to this I'd barely seen any racing whatsoever as it's just so boring on the television, yet it was an enjoyable weekend with plenty of photography and hopefully something we'll do again in 2012. About a week later I then went with some fellow Jadugars to Wales to retry Mount Snowdon. Our previous attempt whilst doing the 3 Peaks failed due to high(ish) wind speeds making the climb unsafe. This time the winds weren't nearly as bad but we pushed on and made it to the top (and found there was a 4x4 up there which later made the national news - when we were there we'd assumed it was a park ranger). The rain had been severe and despite  heavy waterproofs still managed to get drenched.

In October there was a lot going on - the Harry Potter film series came to an end in an epic conclusion. The iPhone 4S was released, and Steve Jobs died. In the gaming world there was the release of Rage amd Batman: Arkham City.

November was a month to remember - the release of Skyrim, the fifth game in The Elder Scrolls series. Over the weeks that followed many hours were sunk into that game which also meant I'd not got round to playing Halo or Assassin's Creed. December was the release of The Old Republic, though that was not without it's issues.

In 2012 I'll be visiting Iceland and China as well as a few Harry Potter related places (the film studios being one of them) so it's looking like it may be another busy year. This time however I'll attempt to blog and/or post a review at least once a week.

Hope everyone has a great 2012!! 

With no announcement of a new iPhone at WWDC 2011 the rumour mill started working overtime with most rumours slating two new iPhones would be released in October 2011 - an iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5. A few short weeks after Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple to be replaced by Tim Cook, they announced they'd be holding a press conference at the Apple campus on October 4th simply titled "Let's Talk iPhone". Apple have always big on symbolism so it didn't take long before people drew conclusions that the "1" on the phone image meant there would be one phone announced. Just minutes before the event was due to start Apple accidentally let slip on their Japanese site that the new phone is indeed the 4S and apparently dual-mode (both CDMA and GSM).

They announced that iOS 5 and the associated iTunes update would be released worldwide on October 12th. For the iTunes Match feature this will come later, an end of October release for the US and an unspecified date for elsewhere (but by the end of the year). They then went on to detail how their iPod line-up would change with a minor update to the iPod Nano to have bigger icons, 16 new clock skins, etc. and would be $129 for the 8Gb model, and $149 for the 16Gb. In bringing out iOS 5 it will also be added to the iPod touch which will massively update it's capability with iMessage and iCloud. This updated model will be priced at $199 (8Gb), $299 (32Gb) and $399 (64Gb).

Finally, after about an hour of these minor news bits from Apple they finally announced the iPhone 4S, an update that keeps the same general design as the iPhone 4 but with an A5 dual-core processor. What this processor means is improved performance and increased graphics capability. Despite this upgrade it will still offer battery life as follows:

 3G Talk Time 8

2G Talk Time 14

3G browsing 6

Wi-Fi Browsing 9

Video 10

Music 40

The new wireless system will now intelligently switch between the two antennas between transmit and receive to make even better call quality. They claim this should give a theoretical maximum speed of 14.4Mbs which is twice as fast as the iPhone 4. There will also be a new 8MP camera bringing the resolution up to 3264x2448 which is also faster at taking pictures meaning only 0.5 seconds between shots. In updating the camera it also means that video recording gets a bit of a boost to allow 1080p HD recording with image stabilisation and noise reduction.

One of the best new features for the iPhone 4S is the addition of Siri which is a voice control application with so intelligence behind the voice commands so you don't have strict things to say to get a result. You could for example say "What's the time in London" and it would return the current time in London, UK. In adding Siri they've also opened up dictation options everywhere so you can even dictate an email. At present Siri understands English (US, UK and Australia), French and German.

There will be 3 models available priced at $199 (16Gb), $299 (32Gb), $399 (64Gb) on a two year contract. The iPhone 4 16Gb will lower in price to $199 and the 3GS 8Gb will be priced at $49 (or free on contract). On October 7th you'll be able to pre-order the new phone, and in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan it will be available from October 14th.

Google+ is yet another foray into the social media market for Google. Although there were previous communities (mainly what Google had bought up), its first attempt was with Google Wave. When Wave first appeared on the scene it gained a lot of people quite quickly but was hampered by performance as conversations got larger and more people joined. Eventually its popularity waned, and what was a unique and interesting concept for social interaction on the web started to die out.

Google Buzz was another attempt; one that is still around today and is integrated with Google Mail (and now Google+) was a way of bringing a minimal degree of sharing between contacts. With Buzz you had the option of posting to it with links and/or photos and could even connect other sites to it so any updates from you elsewhere on the web would also get posted to Buzz.

Now, with Google+ they're setting themselves up as a direct competitor to Facebook. This is a comparison that is unavoidable, ever since Facebook became the most well known social media site any that have launched since no matter what their intentions, they have been compared to it. Whist there are a number of similarities between Google+ and Facebook there are also a number of differences (which I'll come back to shortly).

This being a Google project it is fairly obvious the focus will be on information. Once you're signed up to use Google+ the "Google bar" (I don't know it's official name) changes to include extra options to show the number of notifications you have on Google+ and a link to quickly share "stuff" with people on Google+.

When you share something you can type a message and then, like Buzz, you can attach a link or photo too it, though in this case you can also attach video or your current geo-location. Once shared this then appears in your stream and will be visible to those "circles" that you've chosen to allow the post to be seen by.

A circle, in Google+ terms, is a collection of people that have been grouped for easy categorization for when you want to communicate with multiple people. By default you have circles for Friends, Family, Acquaintances, and Following; but you can also add your own. To add people to a circle they have quite a nice interface where you visually see circles and thumbnails of people that are available to add/invite to join a circle. When you hover over the circle it expands out show who is in the circle and includes a nicely styled tooltip explaining the circle. To add people to a circle you can either drag and drop them in, or click on a circle and add them by searching for a name or email address.

The next new concept for Google+ is a "Spark" - this is a way of displaying news from popular sites based upon your interests. Each spark you add can then be viewed individually from the left-hand navigation and can be used to share posts with your circles.

Finally, there are hangouts. A hangout is where multiple people can have video chats using Google Talk - this does however require a plugin to first be installed to allow the use of your webcam and microphone. This currently supports up to 10 people in a single conversation.

Overall the design of the interface is nice and is a huge improvement over what Google Wave was. It's also similar in layout to Facebook which means anyone who has already used Facebook should find using Google+ to be a fairly familiar experience. The user experience when using the mobile application is actually even better though - it takes the familiar elements of Google's other mobile applications and builds upon them making the interaction feel smoother and easier.

When registering it will ask you to join your account with a Picasa account - this is what it will use for sharing your posted images with others. Hopefully there will also be a way of using Flickr, or at least automatically streaming from Flickr in the future.

From the point of view of a developer there are several key areas where you could potentially have API access for, and hopefully it won't be long before Google release an API for it. To some degree it is already possible to post to it due to the use of the Google +1 button but this is only for sending links to posts on other sites.

Over the coming few weeks as the site grows and evolves I'll carry on using this new site to see how it compares and to better determine what advantages and disadvantages it has.

Today was the release of the first Firefox update as part of it's shortened release cycle. The release of Firefox 5 does highlight what is currently wrong with the browser.

Extensions -  as you have to specify what versions of the browser the extension is compatible with when you're creating one a developer will typically go for 4.0.x for example, though this means unless extension developers update their extensions as regular as Firefox (and ahead of the releases) it means that the extensions will disable themselves when you update. Other browsers that use extensions, such as Chrome do not do this - they continue to work without a required update.

Installer - whilst Google Chrome silently updates itself, Firefox still requires an installer be run and the browser restarted. There are arguments that Google Chrome doing this is annoying if for example you're a web developer and need to test on a particular version, but even having an option there for it to be a non-intrusive update would be nice.

Performance - the performance has improved quite a bit since Firefox 4, and even more so since Firefox 3.5 - but from a cold boot it is still quicker to launch Google Chrome or even the ancient IE6 (forget IE7+ they have far slower load times). Whilst I put this down as a negative, I am quite pleased with the improvements they have made to the start up time, even JavaScript performance is faster.

The features added in Firefox 5 are:

• Added support for CSS animations
• The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
• Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
• Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
• Improved spell checking for some locales
• Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
• WebGL content can no longer load cross-domain textures
• Background tabs have setTimeout and setInterval clamped to 1000ms to improve performance
• The Firefox development channel switcher introduced in previous Firefox Beta updates has been removed

Out of these the CSS3 Animations is the most interesting point, and may produce some interesting results. Hopefully we'll start to see a lot more innovation with Firefox in future releases.

It was a big day for announcements, not only was it the start of this years E3, but also WWDC. Whilst the E3 event kicked off with an Xbox keynote featuring demos of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and the great looking new Tomb Raider game, it was announced that all future Tom Clancy titles would feature Kinect support - as will Mass Effect 3. Gears of War 3 was then demonstrated, as was Crytek's new Kinect supported game - Ryse. A big surprise for me was not the release of a remastered Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition (due out November 15th 2011), but the announcement of Halo 4 (to be released in 2012) being the start of a new trilogy. Peter Molyneux also announced Fable: The Journey would be the first Fable title to support Kinect and will be out in 2012. Plenty of Kinect empowered titles, but the one that may get me to buy a Kinect is the announcement of the Star Wars game for Kinect. It's been seen previously as a tech demo, but this time it's an actual game set in the Clone Wars era. Sadly it doesn't actually look that good, but I'll have to give a try anyway.

On the WWDC side of things Steve Jobs took the stage despite a leave of absence due to health problems and introduced the crowd to the topics of Lion, iOS 5 and "some interesting cloud stuff".  Out of the 250 new features they report as being in Lion they started with demonstrating 10 of these. To start with they're making a big deal of multi-touch gestures in Lion. If gestures is enabled you will no longer see the scrollbars - an interesting idea, one which I wonder how effective it will be as in some designs it may not always be obvious there is more to see if the scrollbar isn't there.

Full-screen applications was mentioned at the last Apple event, here they announced that it would be available for more applications. There was also talk of Mission Control, though they didn't talk of any aspects of it that were not covered at the previous Lion themed event. Strangely the Mac Store also got included as one of the 10 new features for Lion, despite it being available in Snow Leopard - only difference is it will come pre-installed. For all people with Mac Store installed it will be better though - when updating software it will now only download changes rather than the full application every time.

Launchpad was again mentioned, the interface that takes it's inspiration from the iOS interface. There was also more talk of "Resume" a feature that saves the current state of an application, just as the new Auto-save feature will auto-save your work. I'll be interested to find out what sort of support it has for existing applications - if any. The autosave feature will use deltas to store versions so that it will save space and will also allow you to halt auto-saving and allow easy creation of duplicates. This then follows into the new "Versions" feature which is basically a repository for version controlling your files, but will be easy for all to use whether you're used to using SVN or not.

The next feature was "AirDrop", an application used for sharing files with other users on your network using it. It uses auto-discovery to see people on your network, but will require confirmation to send and receive files using an encrypted transfer.

Finally they demonstrated some big improvements to the Mail.app which now features better searching and rule creation, conversation view - all of which brings it closer to being level with the Google Mail web interface. Also, as previously rumoured, the Lion upgrade will only be available to buy via the Mac Store (and of course with new Macs!) sometime in July for $29.99 and will be a 4Gb download. A single download will also work for all Macs that you're authorised for meaning you only need to download it once. Apparently it won't even need a reboot!

Moving on to iOS 5 they announced that with selling over 200 million iOS devices they now have a 44% share of the mobile operating system market. With the new iOS 5 upgrade there are over 1,500 new APIs available. First off, notifications have had a bit of an overhaul. To solve the annoyances of notifications not only have they introduced a new notification centre, but the entire system. If you're using your phone when a new push notification arrives it will slide down at the top of your screen (even if in a full screen app), and if your phone is locked it will display in a great looking list above the slide to unlock part. On the unlock screen and in the notification centre they are all categorised and are easy to remove, read, and use. The notification centre is accessible by swiping downwards from the top of the screen.

The second new feature is Newstands - a new application in a similar vein to iBooks, but is aimed at subscription based magazines, etc. that are issue based. A lot of magazine publishers have already signed up for this and popular ones such as National Geographic will be available from launch. Next up is Twitter integration - the iOS settings page will now feature Twitter settings that can be made available via an API to any iOS application. It will also be integrated with Safari, Maps, Photos and Camera including others so that you can tweet straight from the application. It will also be possible to automatically update contacts via Twitter.

Safari Reading List seems like Apple's solution to Instapaper with the ability to save things to read later, and a Safari Reader for reading articles without any distractions. The articles you bookmark in Reading List will also be synchronised with other iOS devices too. Safari will also be changing it's multiple window view for tabs - hopefully they won't feel too clumsy on small screens.

Reminders is another new feature to use for creating "To Do" lists that will synchronise across devices and with iCal. Each reminder will allow a title, location,  and dates. The Reminders can also be based on location so that if you go somewhere it uses the "geofence" feature to determine a reminder is applicable.

The camera is getting some improvements too - to start with they have added a camera icon to the lock screen to make it quicker to get to for taking pictures (hopefully it won't result in many people taking photos in their pockets!) as well as the "volume up" button. The camera will now support an AE/AF lock to help handle exposure of an image, and also has a good pinch to zoom feature complete with bar to show level of zoom. Some minor editing on the phone will now also be possible - crop, rotate, reduce red-eye and a 1-click enhance.

Mail for iOS has been updated with Rich text formatting, indentation, flagging, and dragging addresses between To, CC, and BCC fields. The new dictionary API being used with Mail on the iPad actually looks quite good and will show definitions as well.

Recently we saw that Windows 8 will feature a split-keyboard option for touch based devices - well so is iOS. In iOS 5 you can scroll up through the keyboard to split the keyboard for easy thumb typing. 

Inline with the Mac Store change for only transferring changes in updates they will be doing the same with the App Store. In addition to this it will no longer be necessary to own a PC in order to download large applications or to register in iTunes - updates will now be possible over the air. This iTunes synchronisation over Wi-Fi will also allow music to be copied over in the same way.

The Game Centre will be getting some updates to it's social features (including a friends of friends feature), and will allow games to be bought and downloaded directly from it rather than going through the App Store.

The messaging functionality on the iPhone has now been renamed to "iMessage" and will expand beyond being SMS and MMS to also supporting videos, contacts, group messaging, and delivery/read receipts. The messages will now also be synchronised so that they will be available on both your iPhone and iPad. Interestingly it will also show if the other user is typing a message - similar to a lot of modern IM applications making this application more like a combination of iChat and SMS. The iChat-like functionality will work over 3G or Wi-Fi.

The iOS 5 SDK is available as of today, and will be released to devices in the Autumn and will be compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod Touch (3rd and 4th gen), iPad and iPad2. 

Finally they discussed the iCloud -  it will automatically store your content in the cloud and wirelessly push it to all your devices. Apparently the way this will work is that it will synchronise all content without any interaction required. All the MobileMe applications have been rewritten from scratch to work with iCloud - for example any contacts added on a device will automatically be uploaded to iCloud and will synchronise with your other devices. All mail stored with a @me account will also be synchronised between devices - basically just like using IMAP.

As of now MobileMe will cease to exist, and iCloud will be free. It will also be possible to use this to see purchased applications so that they can be downloaded and synchronised on other devices - this is also applicable to purchases within iBooks. This means your entire device is backed up to the cloud and can be easily transferred to another device or restored if need be. Daily backups to the iCloud will be over Wi-Fi only. This is also applicable via "Documents in the Cloud" for Pages, Keynote and Numbers. To complete the iCloud picture it will also be getting it's own APIs for developers to use.

• Apps can stores documents in iCloud
• iCloud pushes documents to user's devices automatically
• Documents update on all devices when changed on any device

The iCloud functionality isn't limited to just iOS devices - it will work on PCs and Macs too! On the photo side of things it will have new photos automatically pushed to other devices using "Photostream". On the Mac it will be added as a new album in iPhoto (no mention of Aperture, but presumably the same). On the PC it will synchronise to a new Photostream folder in your "Pictures" folder - it will even stream to AppleTV. In the cloud photos will be stored for 30 days, and on devices it will store the last 1,000 photos - only on Macs and PCs will a photo be stored permanently in order to save space where needed.

The final iCloud announcement is for iTunes - it will now store your music purchases in the cloud so that it can be automatically downloaded on other devices. This can be done on a track by track basis, or by album and will not be chargeable for redownloading. It's also possible for new purchases to automatically appear on your other devices without manual intervention. It is limited to 10 devices, but will transfer 256kbps AAC files to ensure good quality.

The storage space available for iCloud will be 5Gb but doesn't include music, apps and books - these are counted separately. The synchronisation does also include non-purchases of music via iTunes Match - assuming the song is available in the iTunes store, but costs $24.99 a year to use. With iTunes Match it will automatically update the songs in your library to 256 kbps AAC DRM-free files, and comparitively doing the same with Amazon or Google would take weeks and would cost around twice as much.

As part of the press release announcing the agenda for the WWDC event next week Apple have not only confirmed that cloud based services will play a part in it, but that the name has been confirmed as being iCloud. Over the past few months there has been a lot of speculation about this and even sightings of trademark applications and domain registrations to confirm suspicions. A lot of music labels have reportedly already signed up to the new framework, but I would doubt it will yet cover the full extent of the library available in the iTunes store.

Both Google and Amazon have recently announced cloud based services for storing and listening to music so it would come as not surprise that the long anticipated offering from Apple would be imminent. There are also a lot of rumours flying around that Apple is also trying to sign up for distribution of TV episodes and films using the iCloud service as well. With the big push for digital distribution (which even DC Comics is getting in on the act with) it is starting to seem more likely that we'll see the end of physical media within the coming years.

So between iCloud, OS X Lion, and iOS 5 it sounds like WWDC 2011 is going to be good whether they announce an "iPhone 4S" or not.

The thrilling game by the developers of Max Payne available exclusively on the XBox 360 and powered using the Havok engine. It is the result of 5 years of hard-work by the award winning Remedy.

Alan Wake is one of those games which gets announced and instantly favours a lot of eager anticipation with "jaw-droppingly" good visuals. The problem then comes in the fact that between it's announcement and it's release a few years pass and it gets released at the same time as the critically acclaimed Red Dead Redemption. So basically the creators of Alan Wake, who previously made the popular Max Payne series, were up against a game by the creators of Grand Theft Auto. I think because of this the game didn't get nearly as many copies sold in it's first week as it should have because having now played it I understand that it's one of those games which you wish would last longer.

The premise of the game is that you play the titular character, Alan Wake, a massively successful writer who for the past couple of years hasn't been able to write any more novels. To try and cure his writers block Alan and his wife Alice go to the idyllic, seemingly quiet town of Bright Falls - a fictional, old mining town somewhere in North America. When they arrive he is given the key to a cabin on Diver's Island in Cauldron Lake. After a brief argument Alan storms out, but runs back after hearing Alice screaming. When he gets there the balcony is broken and he dives into the water after he thinks he sees Alice underwater. When next we see him he has just awoken from a car crash one week later with no recollection of the past week.

The gameplay then proceeds with teaching you that to kill enemies you must first bathe them in light to weaken the darkness that posses them. To do this you get a torch which has batteries than run out over time, and a pistol. Throughout the game there are other weapons that are made available such as a shotgun, flare gun, flares and flashbangs.

Over the course of the game you're then trying to solve the mystery of the island to try and get Alice back, all the while being pursued by this darkness. The game is split into episodes so that at the end of an episode (usually the end of a day) you then get a re-cap and some intermission music. The soundtrack is actually quite good with some great songs performed by Poets of the Fall (also under the pseudonym of Old Gods of Asgard). Even if you don't manage to complete the game (which I'm sure if you try it you will want to) I totally recommend listening to the song "The Poet and the Muse" which they wrote for this game.

If you own a digital camera then no matter wheter you take pictures to record memories of your holidays, as a hobby, or as a professional, you are likely going to want to keep your photographs safe from harm. Most people when they get back from a trip they will transfer their photographs from their Flash media to their computer. An increasingly common practice is to leave your photos on the card past this point until a time when you need to use the card again. This does offer some redundancy for you to fall back on should your hard drive fail - but it's a very temporary solution and is not practical once your photos start taking up many gigs of space. This is when you should start looking at alternative ways of backing up.

If you live in a hosehold with multiple computers then the easiest and most readily available solution is to transfer copies of your photos to these other systems. Even if you have an iPad this it will have enough space to backup some photos to. The main problem with this method though is that if your photographs start running into the tens or hundreds of gigabytes then that is a lot of storage space used on each machine.

Pros: Quick and easy to do using readily available hardware

Cons: Cumbersome, and can be impractical if storing a lot of photos 

On March 2nd Apple, with Steve Jobs in attendance, held an event to announce the release of the iPad 2. As always they started off with the normal statistics that would show Apple to be better than everyone else - so the usual type of marketing really. Apparently they have so far sold 100 million books via iBooks and with Random House now joining them it will add a catalogue of 17, 000 more books to choose from. After having sold nearly 15 million iPads in 2010 (April to December) and amassing more than 90% of the market share it's obvious that whatever they did with their latest release they'd have to stay ahead of the competition and continue pleasing consumers.

The new iPad 2 uses the A5 dual-core processor and is up to 2x faster than the old one. It has a front and rear camera, a gyroscope, and is actually a third thinner than it's predecessor now measuring only 8mm. This means the iPad 2 is actually thinner with than the iPhone 4, and unlike the iPhone 4 will ship in white straight away with support for both AT&T and Verizon in the US. The battery life is apparently the same as it was before with it being estimated to last 10 hours, and costs the same as the previous model also.

iPad 2 Pricing

	16Gb	32Gb	64Gb
Wi-Fi only	$499	$599	$699
Wi-Fi + 3G	$629	$729	$829

This new model will be shipped in the US on March 11th, and other countries on March 25th (including the UK). At this time it will be running iOS 4.3 which includes PhotoBooth, improved performance in Safari, and other improvements. This will also bring Personal Hotspot to the iPhone 4, and FaceTime to the iPad. Existing devices will also get the iOS 4.3 upgrade on March 11th.

At the launch there will also be a special new cover designed for the iPad 2 which attaches magnetically, and has a microfibre covering to help keep the screen clean. The iPad will turn on when the cover is removed, and turn off when it is put back on. 

New to the iPad 2 is iMovie with precision editor, multi-track audio recording, 3 new themes, AirPlay to Apple TV, HD video sharing, and is a Universal App so this new version will work with your iPhone 4 also. This new Universal app will be $4.99 and will be available at launch.

Garage Band will also be making it to the iPad with touch instruments (grand piano, organ, guitars, drums, and bass), guitar amps and effects, 8 track recording and mixing, 250+ loops, AAC emailing of your song, and is compatible with the Mac OS X version. This will also be available March 11th for $4.99.

Sadly no iPad 2 version of iPhoto was announced. 

Almost two years after starting work on an iPhone application for recording wildlife I've finally released a Beta - but not of the application it started off as.

Linnaeus was going to be released in Pro and Lite versions for the iPhone with some hope that I'd also do a version for the Blackberry. Just as I was about to release Linnaeus Lite to Beta testers I found that the species and taxonomy data I had compiled took so much space I was having trouble getting it to be included in the package. As a result the data was put on my webserver with the intention of getting the iPhone application to use this instead, however whilst testing the data I started using my Fauna.me domain as a place for testing query performance to make sure that getting an iPhone application to connect to it was going to be feasible. As a result the test became more and more detailed until it was on the verge of becoming a website, thus the Fauna.me website was born.

To tie in with the site being created on the fauna.me domain I have also changed the name of the application to match the domain name. Fauna.me is now available for people to start registering on and will allow people to add their sightings to a map. The details each sighting can store are:

• Species name (can be found using a search),
• Trip (a user can group sightings into trips),
• Country the sighting was made in,
• Location - a friendly place name such as a city or park,
  
• Latitude and longitude,
• Notes about the sighting,
• The number of sightings made at that time,
• and the date / time the sighting was made.

The majority of this information is private to the user, but each sighting is used anonymously with the country details to show species distributions on the map. This map can be viewed by anyone whether they're registered or not. By not having the specific location of endangered species on the map it helps protect them against poachers knowing their whereabouts whilst also helping the conservation community know a general location of where a species has been sighted. The data is used anonymously to protect the user's privacy and uses no no information other than "country" and "species name" - nothing can be linked to the user.

If you're a keen spotter of wildlife then you can also use the "life list" feature to see a list of each species you have seen without them being tied to a particular trip. By navigating or searching for species whilst logged in it will also provide a list of your sightings with each species record.

Whilst not yet available, the Fauna.me application will soon expand to include a "friends" feature so you can share your sightings with people you know; but you can already start posting links to species easily on Facebook and Twitter using the social networking links. If you're a photographer then feel free to also post photos in the Flickr group (at the time of writing we have 55 members and 803 photos), and let me know if you're willing to have your photos included on different species pages.

It is also planned that this will make it's way onto mobile platforms shortly.

Link: fauna.me

Clickjacking is a method where a user is tricked into clicking a concealed link meaning that user's could be tricked into doing something they did not intend. For commercial sites and social networking sites this can often have disastrous consequences.

According to security researching sites even the top 500 sites ranked by Alexa are vulnerable to clickjacking despite their attempts at blocking it. One of the more well known clickjacking attempts was in embedding Twitter on a site which would post status updates without the user's knowledge. Even after they closed up that vulnerability they had left open the vulnerability in their mobile version of the page which meant further attacks.

It's important to remember that this isn't about protecting your site, it's about protecting your users which does of course benefit your site as well. One of the most common ways of protecting against clickjacking is to use a "framekiller" JavaScript which will break the site out of a frame if it has been embedded inside one. A very simple example of this is as follows:

<script type="text/javascript">
  if (top != self) top.location.replace(location);
</script>

However this is very easy to work around so there are ways in which you can improve this. The problem though is that as long as you're only using JavaScript there will always be ways of working around it. For instance, if the end-user is using Internet Explorer then you could use the following to break the framekiller:

<iframe security="restricted">

This will prevent the JavaScript in the embedded website from working so any framekiller JavaScript you add to the page will not work. There are also ways of tricking the browser into thinking that the framekiller JavaScript is a cross-site scripting attack.

... or is it? I don't mean to be harsh, but as it currently stands it is true and likely the reason why Adobe Flash will not die just yet.

Historically, with the various methods of using the embed and object tags there was always the problem that the codec used with uploaded videos was dependent on the end-user having that codec installed. The biggest issue though was that different browsers required different code in order for the video to be embedded and playable. People eventually solved this by using a video player built in Flash to play videos - a method popularised by YouTube. To make this easier for the end user there would also be video encoding done behind the scenes to standardise the format used so it could be played by the Flash player.

Now flashing forward to HTML 5 we saw the addition of the video tag which promised to help solve this and it looked like it may have been the final nail in the coffin for Adobe Flash (after already being categorically refused from being supported by iOS devices). To further cement this we saw Google use the H.264 codec in a HTML 5 beta of YouTube and support for it was added to Google Chrome.

Between then and today though they started work on their own video standard and instead of adding support for that alongside H.264 they are in fact going to be phasing out support for H.264 from their browser. So that's it, Google are ditching H.264 and are replacing it with WebM. So what this means is that the codec which was most widely used (it's also used in other applications) is now going to be ditched leaving web developers with the same problem that drove them to Flash in the first place.

We expect even more rapid innovation in the web media platform in the coming year and are focusing our investments in those technologies that are developed and licensed based on open web principles. To that end, we are changing Chrome's HTML5 <video> support to make it consistent with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project. Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.

So the landscape is now going to be that IE9 will support H.264 and no other codec, but Chrome and upcoming revisions of other browsers will add support for WebM. So is it fair to see HTML5 video is broken? Upon reflection and thinking about the situation in more detail probably not. Unless Microsoft feel pressured to add WebM support to IE9 it will be necessary for web developers to have a solution of how to keep their videos cross-browser. This could mean having videos uploaded as both H.264 and WebM and switching between the file extension using JavaScript for example depending on the browser used.