Although Nintendo’s Revolution launch yesterday was a bit thin on detail, the company have now released full details of their itsy-bitsy addition to the Game Boy family, Game Boy Micro.
Sizing up at a diminutive four inches wide, two inches tall, and 0.7 inches thick, Nintendo are billing the Game Boy Micro as the “smallest and sleekest Game Boy product” they’ve created, claiming that it will fit comfortably into the pocket of your “tightest jeans.”
We’re not quite sure that they’ll find space in the straining waistband of Billy “20 Pints” McQuaffer, but it is a wee thing with dimensions only slightly larger than an iPod Mini and weighing just 2.8 ounces (“the same weight as 80 paper clips” as Nintendo bizarrely informed us).
The Game Boy Micro offers the same processing power as the Game Boy Advance SP models and plays all the same titles while, apparently, lending you an air of “industrial-hip cool.”
“We’re making the gorgeous Game Boy Micro for image-conscious folks who love video games, the ones who want the look of their system to be as cool as the games they play on it,” waffled George Harrison, who has one of the longest job descriptions we’ve seen for a while: Nintendo Of America’s Senior Vice President Of Marketing And Corporate Communications.
But Harrison (NOASVPOMACC) wasn’t quite finished with the ludicrous marketing tosh: “Because of its diminutive size and industrial-hip look, Game Boy Micro immediately identifies the person playing it as a trendsetter with discriminating style.”
So there you have it: any hopeless buffoon walking around with a Micro will automatically be transformed into a style icon….
Back in the real world, Nintendo are well chuffed with their new two-inch backlit screen – “the best Game Boy screen ever” – which lets users adjust the brightness of the screen to adapt to indoor lights or outdoor sunshine.
Wrapping up the feature list, the Game Boy Micro comes with a built-in, rechargeable lithium-ion battery, supports standard headphones and comes with a removable face plate for that all-important customisation thang.
Game Boy Micro is expected to be released this autumn.
Pausing briefly for breath after announcing the new PlayStation today, the busy bees in the Sony hive have announced the world’s smallest and lightest high definition consumer camcorder with full HD resolution based on HDV 1080i. 
The new camera also uses a smaller and more compact Carl Zeiss lens, with a diameter of 60mm compared to 92 mm on the previous model. 
A Memory Stick PRO Duo media slot is provided for transferring images captured on the camcorder’s 2.8-megapixel still camera. 
The Nokia 6680 imaging smartphone has been declared the new ‘Best in Class’ 3G device according to a report by Strategy Analytics. 
The report noted strong deviations (oo-er!) in the results of these evaluations by gender with the lay-deees preferring the Sony Ericsson and NEC devices, whereas the geezers exhibited a strong preference for the Nokia and Motorola handsets. 
Sony has unveiled prototypes of their new Playstation 3 console at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. 
Sony are currently collaborating with the world’s leading tools and middleware companies, to provide developers with extensive tools and libraries to make the best of the Cell processor and enable efficient software development. 
Shure have just released their E4c earphones. These are the in-ear type with various mouldings (sleeves) that fit on to the actual phones so you can get a comfortable fit. 
While sitting on the underground you could just hear the station announcements on the public address system, but not much else. The music playing was ambient dance music and you could really make out the nuances etc. Unfortunately the only downside of blotting out everything made you realise even more how miserable everyone looked. 
Natalie Mouyal of 
Generally, countries have tended mix the two strategies. Viewers have benefited from both an increase in the number of television service programmes available, as well as interactive television services. Yet, this combination has not always allowed for an impressive take-off of MHP based interactive services. In the case of Finland, consumers could choose between a zapper set-top box that allows them to access more television service programmes or an MHP-enabled set-top box that allows them to access both the increased number of television services programmes as well as the interactive services. However, MHP-enabled set-top boxes make up only 5% of all set-top boxes currently purchased. 
It has been assumed that many consumers will invariably prefer the cheaper zapper set-top box to a more expensive MHP-enabled set-top box. However, this reasoning disregards the type of interactive services offered. For example, should viewers find interactive services compelling and easy to use, they may be willing to spend the extra money necessary for an interactive set-top box. Thus, it would seem that consumer education is key to the successful roll-out of interactive services. 
Microsoft ubermensch Bill Gates foresees mobile phones overtaking MP3s as the top choice among portable music players, while dismissing the popularity of Apple’s iPod player as unsustainable. 
“If you were to ask me which mobile device will take top place for listening to music, I’d bet on the mobile phone for sure,” Gates told the newspaper. 
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. 
Microsoft has unveiled Windows Mobile 5.0, a new version of its Windows operating system for mobile devices. 
Although the underlying software code remains 90 percent the same as its predecessors, the new Windows Mobile removes some technological distinctions that gave the phone and PDA platforms different capabilities. 
Swivel action business folks will appreciate updates to the mobile versions of Microsoft Word and Excel, with the software providing more consistent formatting of documents created on a computer and allowing charts to be created from a spreadsheet. 
In Austria, a DTT trial with MHP-based interactive services provided 150 households in Graz with access to an interactive television service called !TV4 using the telephone connection for the return channel. Using their television remote control, viewers could retrieve information services and vote. Given the success of the trial, it is likely that MHP-based interactive services will be launched alongside DTT services. 
Of course MHP is not the only interactive television service system in the market. Proprietary systems such as MediaHighway and OpenTV have been installed in a large number of set-top boxes, often for cable and satellite platforms. In the United Kingdom, the MHEG standard is widely used on the terrestrial platform. As a result of the various products and services in the market, the DVB Project has been working on the development of the Portable Content Format (PCF) to deliver a wide range of interactive television services to multiple platforms with a minimum of re-authoring. It has significant interest for operators who wish to migrate towards MHP by allowing them to manage simultaneously a mixed population of devices.