Browsing Gmail, Google’s email service, wasn’t particularly great when you did it from a mobile … until now. With the new release of gmail mobile that was launched today.
Gmail for Mobile Devices (GMD?), to give it its full official name, is a Java app that can be downloaded and run on any Java-enabled handset. The previous version was browser-based and pretty basic.
It’s an interesting change of approach for Google, who has near-exclusively focused on browser-based applications to access their services (except for Google Local).
GMD isn’t the only Java-driven email client. Flurry was pointed out to us by Cristian Streng. It’s had close to 1 million downloads from getjar.com alone and is used in over 200 countries.
Clearly not wanting it to get used too heavily, Google has officially only made the application downloadable in the US, where until recently people didn’t really use their phones for anything except making calls. While they’ve been doing that, the rest of the world have used their mobiles for everything from gaming to text messages.
Gmail Mobile app Mobile access Only
Flurry
The festival has been developed by Bloc (Creative Technology Wales) and Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. They have managed to accommodate a large number of complex yet accessible projects. This collaboration is all the more impressive in its scale when you realise that both organisations have their own projects running concurrently (Bloc are developing Northern and Southern pilot projects in Wales with accompanying seminars; Chapter are hosting the first UK showing o the artists Olaf Breuning). 
To join in you can access a number of computer terminals at the National Museum and Gallery or at one of the festival hubs at Chapter or g39 (cor). If you are unable to visit you can play from your own 
The artist group Second Site will be displaying new video works in the windows of a empty bank on Bute Street, while Chris Evans will project his interactive game onto St John’s Church in the centre of Cardiff. 
It’s a fact of life – almost everywhere we turn we are surrounded by technology. From mobile phones and digital cameras to TVs and video games. But as well as making our lives easier and providing us with entertainment, more and more artists are now turning to everyday technologies when they create their work. 
“The event will be held at various sites across the capital and will illuminate the city with dynamic and individual work using a range of new and existing technologies,” said festival co-director Emma Posey. 
“We want to create a vibrant creative technology sector in Wales, with the festival celebrating this every two years.” 
The BBC has teamed up with Hewlett-Packard Labs and Gavitec to provide a digital collaboration based around the BBC TWO series, Coast. 
For phone-allergic types, the BBC will also make MP3 audio from the project available as a free download from bbc.co.uk. 
Xbox 360, Microsoft’s successor to their popular Xbox gaming console, will be “unleashed” tonight at a celebrity-packed launch broadcast on MTV, which shows at 8pm in the UK. It was launched on US MTV last night. 
The Xbox will ship with a 12X dual-layer DVD-ROM drive – supporting progressive-scan DVD movies and a host of DVD and CD formats – three USB 2.0 ports, two memory unit slots and support for four wireless game controllers. 
“Xbox 360 marks the beginning of a renaissance in video games,” whooped Don Mattrick, president of Worldwide Studios for Electronic Arts. “The unbelievable Xbox 360 games in development at Electronic Arts will accelerate the industry’s mission to make video games the pre-eminent form of all entertainment.” 
Naturally, gamers love to customise their experience, so there’s a camera option to let vain players add their mugshots into games or even see their friends onscreen as they frag them to an inch of their worthless lives. 
Xbox 360 players can also access recorded TV and digital movies, music, video and photos stored on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005-based PCs through any Xbox 360 system in the house. 
If you’ve ever accessed the Web through a mobile phone or PDA, you may be familiar with the annoyance of finding some sites inaccessible, hard to read or just a right royal pain in the Bluetooth. 
“Mobile access to the Web has been a second-class experience for far too long,” Web founding father and W3C director Tim Berners-Lee said in a statement. “MWI recognizes the mobile device as a first-class participant, and will produce materials to help developers make the mobile Web experience worthwhile.” 
“Web access today is so fundamental, that it shouldn’t be hampered by wires,” table-thumped Philipp Hoschka, W3C’s deputy director for Europe. 
See our interview with co-founder of OurMedia, 
Because it’s a community site, multimedia files can now potentially be seen and shared by thousands of people, with film makers and video buffs able to link to each other’s work, pool resources and share tips. 
Evidence is beginning to amass that two of the most hyped products in the early digital home market will be lucky if they manage to reach niche market status in the next few years. 
The European Parliament has voted in favour of a new programme to promote the European digital content market, setting it a budget of €149m (~$194m, ~£103m) for the next three years.
It’s worth clarifying that the Internet figures include any listening of the radio on a computer, whether live streaming, using services like the BBC’s RadioPlayer/Listen Again, or Podcasting (download and play). 
The largest area of growth has been in people listening to UK National radio stations over the Internet. This has increased from 8.3% a year ago to 10.8% of the UK population, equating to just short of 4.8m people. It is thought that this is probably due to an raised awareness that the Internet can be used to listen to the radio, helped in no small part by the BBC pushing the service. 