Last Thursday saw the launch of the Wii across Europe.
As we’d detected after we saw the demand to play it at the Eurogamer has got some great shots form the UK launch.
Category: Software
Software
MySpace to Kick Off Sex Offenders
MySpace has announced that they will be scanning the user accounts on the service, deleting those of registered sex offenders.
They’re teaming up with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp to create Sentinel Safe, going even further to block convicted sex offenders from accessing the site.
They’re using all publicly available sex offender databases, converting them into a real-time searchable system, which MySpace’s Chief Security Officer, Hemanshu Nigam labeled, “The creation of this first-of-its-kind real-time searchable database technology is a significant step to keep our members as safe as possible.”
Shockingly there’s 550,000 people on these registers, which will be compared against the 320,000 accounts that are currently being signup daily now. It will also compare against the 135m accounts that already exist.
MySpace has had to juggle with the fear of parents that their children are making themselves targets for unwelcome attention from those wishing to do harm to them.
John Cardillo, CEO of Sentinel Tech said “Before todays announcement, no efficient method existed to identify convicted sex offenders online,” which given the work done by Kevin Poulsen of Wired, when he created a perl script to do a very similar thing to what is being announced today. His work resulted in the arrest of Andrew Lubrano, a sex offender.
As the NYTimes points out,
The system, by MySpace’s admission, is not fool-proof. If registered sex offenders sign up but do not give their real names, physical attributes, locations or post their real picture, they could elude detection.
We assume that given the news, many people within the affected category will be deleting their accounts sharpish. It will be interesting to see how many accounts disappear.
Halo 3 TV Ad Now Online. Watch It Here
There’s always a lot of interest around Halo, the signature game for the Xbox.
The original Halo sold a ton of Xboxes as it just looked so incredible and was a big step forward in gaming. Halo 2 received a huge amount of PR support and therefore created one heck of a buzz when it was released in 2006 with a grabbed by pirates before its launch. We found Halo 2 had improved but wasn’t the wow it had widely expected to be.
Two years later and the machine is grinding into action again to let the public know about the non-imminent arrival of Halo 3. It’s expected for release during the third quarter of 2007, and will, of course, run initially exclusively on Xbox 360.
The promotional video released last year at E3 got some attention, but there had been a lot of excitement about the next promo installment that was shown last night on US TV.
Thanks to some willing fellow/fellow-esses it’s hit YouTube, so those interested worldwide can watch it as well. Frankly it gets us no further forward in understanding what it’s about or how it will look, but for Halo fans that doesn’t really matter. Any further sightings of Master Chief are appreciated.
BitTorrent Ups Its Game: Funding And Content
The one-time force for evil (in the eyes of the film industry), Bit Torrent has had a good couple of days, first they sign a distribution deal with some of the major film and TV companies, then today they announce that they’ve closed another funding round.
Content deal
The content deals add to those they signed back in May this year and will provide films with a Download-to-Own (DTO) basis or for rent on a Video-on-Demand (VOD) basis.
Pricing for them hasn’t been announced, as they plan to disclose pricing details closer to the time of the launch of their online retail marketplace, which is set for February 2007.
It’s not just the old junk that the studios don’t care about anymore that will be available. The majority of the deals include new film releases day-and-date with the DVD release, popular TV series, deep catalogue titles and cult classics.
The exception is Palm Pictures, as they plan to be the first studio to utilize the BitTorrent platform to release full-length feature films before the theatrical and DVD release dates.
The most recent partnerships are with 20th Century Fox, G4, Kadokawa Pictures USA, Lionsgate, MTV Networks, Palm Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Starz Media, which build on the previous deals with Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Egami Media, Hart Sharp, Koch Entertainment and The Orchard.
What about the money!
Today the series B funding has been announced (although TechCrunch scooped it a couple of days ago). They’ve raised $20m from new investor Accel Partners leading the round, with participation from initial investor DCM.
Given Bram Cohen wrote the majority of the code for BitTorrent himself, what, you may ask do they need the money for?
Almost to prove how corporate they’ve become, BitTorrent (BT) use the cut and paste phrase that it will “support the company’s growth, building on its leadership in high-performance content distribution on the Internet.” So more jobs for people will large salaries it sounds like.
What is more interesting is the longer terms plans for BT. They intend taking the technology, using it to “power other websites with the performance and efficiency of BitTorrent’s content delivery service.” It’s words like these that will get companies in the content delivery game worried.
Not just to the PC
BitTorrent signed a deal with a number of consumer electronics companies back in the end of October. ASUS, Planex and QNAP are among the first CE manufacturers to implement the BitTorrent download manager into digital home devices. ASUS and Palnex will build it into a number of their routers, QNAP into their NAS Servers.
This alone is a major change for the once-feared BitTorrent – it takes them away from the computer and closer to the TV in the lounge, while eliminating the need for the user to get involved with setting up and running it.
Constant Contact: Problems Galore
We’ve had it with Constant Contact, the service that offers to manage your newsletter mailing.
We’ve been using it for the Digital-Lifestyles newsletter for the last 18 months and initially found it good to use. Over time its performance has dropped lower and lower, to the point that we now feel we have no alternative but to find another solution.
We only use it once a week while we’re editing the content of the newsletter, which we’re pretty quick at doing these days. Even in this short amount of time we’re exposed to it, we’ve found in the last few months that the service simply stops responding, with the server just timing out.
We’ve been taking this up with Constant Contact over the last month. Over a lot of emails, their approach is to simply refuse to accept that they have a problem with the service, trying to tie us up with question of unrequited detail, which we felt was an attempt distract us from answering our questions.
For us, it appears that they’ve grown so large that their servers are falling over with their attempt to keep up with demand.
The long and the short of it? – We’d suggest that you steer clear of it. Watch these pages for our quest to find an alternative, hopefully from the open source world.
We’d be really interested to hear from you if you have had problems with Constant Contact too.
Interview With Barry Hitchens About Game On (Podcast)
I had a fascinating conversation with Barry Hitchens, the exhibition consultant of the excellent Game On exhibition, which is currently at the Science Museum, it’s eleventh venue in a world tour that started in the Barbican in 2002.
You can listen in to Barry’s vast knowledge of video games and hear about the trials and tribulations of touring the show around the world.
The show has changed over the years, and Barry gives a lowdown on what has worked and what hasn’t, while outlining the history of significant stages of video gaming.
If you like video games, you’re going to love this.
Interview with Barry Hitchens – Exhibition consultant Game On
Excitement Building For UK Wii Launch
Following the success of the launch of the Nintendo Wii in the US where 600,000 units were sold within the eight days – that’s nearly one per second, the buzz about the UK launch continues to heighten.
First came Amazon.co.uk selling out its pre-order allocation of Wii’s within seven minutes – although the number of actual units sold were never disclosed.
During our coverage of its early public unveiling at the Game On exhibition, we noted that the people were really rather excited about the Wii coming out. It looks like it’s going to do pretty well here.
News of a tie up between HMV shops and Nintendo will see the now-expected midnight launch at their Oxford Street flagship store of the gaming platform.
Starting at 11pm the great-unwashed (that’s you and me) will be able to play against some ‘celebrities’ called Ian Wright, Jodie Kidd, Pat Cash and Ricky Hatton (whoever they are).
Globally Nintendo is planning to ship 4 million console before the end of 2006, a record for them.
Surprisingly the shipping in Japan starts on 2 Dec (the home country normally gets the product first) with the Europe-wide launch following on the 8 Dec.
The retail price of €249/£179 with Wii Sports game including Tennis, Bowling, Boxing, Golf and Baseball included in the box.
Included with every Wii console is one wireless Wii Remote, a Nunchuk, Wii Sports game, Stereo AV Cable and the sensor bar for Wii’s unique control system.
We can’t wait.
AutoRama Makes Panoramic Phone Photos Easy
Some clever-types at a Swedish company called Scalado have launched add-on software for mobile camera-phones that they say makes taking panoramic photos on a mobile a doddle.
The fantastically-named AutoRama takes up to 10 high-resolution images in succession and features eight different stitching mode. The photo stitching process is automatic.
The way it works does sound remarkably cool – “It’s made so simple, you don’t need to be an expert as you just point and shoot as the phone automatically does the rest for you, vibrating to tell you when to take the next shot to create the perfect high-resolution multi mega pixel panorama,” explained Mats Jacobson, CEO of Scalado.
Scalado don’t claim to be the first to do this, but they say theirs is the first to do it simply and at high resolution – but they would, wouldn’t they.
The self-declared secret of AutoRama is its patented RAJPEG technology that they say reduces memory requirements by up to 25 times. It’s also claimed that it increases performance and the speed for image manipulation by a factor of up to 10x.
We’re looking forward to getting our hands on it and testing it out.
Andrew Ball, PR for Scalado tells us “The images shown were taken by AutoRama installed on a Nokia N70 (1.3 mpix) phone. The images were created by pressing a button and the camera shoots 3 frames and stitches them together. The examples here also shows a Clearshot filter applied for improving backlight, which is another of Scalado’s new CAPS features.”
Play PS3 and Wii Now At The Science Museum (Podcast)
The organisers of Game On, clearly have amazing contacts with the games industry having been running the exhibition for the last four years around 11 venues around the world. It’s contacts like this that has led to them getting hold of Sony’s PS3 and Nintendo before it’s launched in the UK – four months in the case of the PS3.
The Science Museum is currently the only place in the UK where Joe Public can play the PS3. There’s a couple of places around where the PS3 can be seen, but like the venue off Brick Lane, they’re invite only.
Even if you could get to see the PS3, not other venue has the PS3 right next to the Wii, so you can compare them.
So what are they like?
The PS3 is playing Motor Storm and it looks stunning, with amazing photo realism. The action is intense and it’s very clear that this is a major leap forward in gaming. The controller can be set in a mode where its physical movements control the action of the onscreen action. Being used to playing the PS controller without this, it take a little while to get used to the sensitivity on the movements needed to control it.
The Wii clearly has the movement sensors built-in (it’s the big selling point of the whole console). Playing with them is near-instantly understandable – feeling natural to wave your arms around to control a tennis racket or box the hell out of your opponent. The graphics are far simpler, delivered in the normal Nintendo cartoon style.
It is of note that the PS3 has a significant number of venting holes in its casing and a large fan under nearth to cool it – it draws 350w. The Wii doesn’t have any venting.
Who’s going to win?
If sales are going to reflect the public interest here at the Science Museum today, Sony need to look out, because the Interest in the Wii far outweighed that in the PS3. This could be down to the affordable price of the Wii, or indeed that the public actually have a chance of own it this side of xmas.
Speaking to the punters here, the feeling was that the Wii would give far more of a gaming experience, not just the gloss that the PS3 gives.
It’s no exaggeration to say that some people were literally running into the exhibition hall, shouting, “is it here, is it here?” as the made their way to the Wii. I had thought it would have been the other way around, with the PS3 being the big draw.
The rest of the exhibition is well worth the visit alone – charting the history of video games from the start, and put together with a lot of intelligence. With the Wii and PS3 added to it, you can expect large queues at the weekend.
We had a chat to the event organiser, Gaetan Lee to get an overview of how he got the hold of the Wii and PS3 before their UK release and the background to the Game On exhibition.
Click below to play the interview …
[audio:https://digital-lifestyles.info/media/audio/Wii-PS3-game-on.mp3]
Get Ready To Play PS3 And Wii At The Science Museum
The Nintendo Wii and Sony’s Playstation3 (PS3) will be available for play at the Game On exhibition at the Science Museum from Wednesday. Expect queues.
Don’t bother flying to the USA and queueing for three days to be the first to get your PS3, or splashing out £1,000 to buy one from eBay, that may, or may not actually turn up. If you live in the UK, it couldn’t be simpler – just get yourself down there when the doors open at 11am to get your hands on the first publicly available PS3 in the UK and the attention-attracting Wii.
The PS3 is scheduled for launch in March in the UK, while it’s emerging that only around 150,000 were shipped at the recent US launch. The Wii’s UK launch is much closer – 8th December, having had its US launch already.
The two new boys will be alongside the current exhibition, which cover the history of video games, starting back in the early 1960’s.
We went to the first Game On exhibition when it was at the Barbican in 2002 and were highly impressed with it. Not just the number of games and platforms covered, but the sheer depth of the knowledge on show.
We’ve spoken to the organisers and hear that quite a few of the exhibits have changed from the early days, including items that have been picked up over the years as the show has travelled over the world.
When you get bored of all the new stuff, by way of a stark contrast, you’ll be able to play the world’s first computer game, Spacewar!, from 1962 as well.
To book tickets or find out further details contact 0870 906 3890 or take a look at the site. The exhibition ends Feb.07. Ticket prices Adults £8.50; Children and concessions £6.50
Science Museum Game On Exhibition
The Original Game On Exhibition