A new video demonstration of some of Google’s planned changes to the Gmail interface has leaked to the interwebs.
It’s nothing mindblowingly different, especially if you’ve taken part in “previewing” the new Gmail look over the past few months, but there’s some welcome new changes such as a display density changing option and a more “conversational” view for message threads.
Don’t plan on dropping your jaw, but do plan on letting out a positive “hmph.”
I want to pooh-pooh this, but I’m still kind of in awe that Sony beat both Apple and Google to getting a cloud-based unlimited music streaming service up and running. Granted, the only thing different it’s really bringing to the table is home theater functionality with the Playstation 3 and various internet-enabled TVs and Blu-ray players, but still, it’s interesting that this launched yesterday to almost no fanfare whatsoever.
Let’s just hope that the only reason Apple and Google are taking this long to put out their streaming music services is that they’re really making it something compelling to users.
From Playstation Blog:
In addition to PlayStation 3, you may also enjoy Music Unlimited on your network-enabled BRAVIA TV, Blu-Ray Disc player, Sony VAIO or other PC and coming soon to Sony’s other mobile devices, including PSP. Music Unlimited will be available later this afternoon Pacific Standard Time (PST) for 30-day free trial of the Premium service, with monthly subscriptions of Premium at $9.99 or Basic at $3.99. For more information about Music Unlimited, check out the press release.
This whole “Playstation Phone” reeks of half-assedness by Sony. Not to take anything away from the Sony Ericsson guys, but it sounds like theres not a whole lot of synergy going on with them and the Playstation folks. I mean, they’re refusing to put any sort of official Playstation branding on the thing! What does that tell us? Probably that the Xperia Play is doomed to be a first generation flop due to the fact that the Playstation team really hasn’t finalized their mobile platform yet.
They’re going to need a whole lot more than emulated Playstation One titles and ported iPhone/Symbian game titles from Gameloft and EA to come up with a compelling reason to pick this phone because lets face it, you’re only getting this phone because you want to play games on it. Otherwise you’d get an iPhone or any of the more advanced Android phones.
I think the only way we’ll see a decent Playstation Phone is after the NGP becomes a reality and Sony finally gets their platform somewhat mature. Ideally this would mean adding phone functionality to the NGP, but that’s clearly not in the cards anytime soon. We’re probably at least a year and a half away from a “true” Playstation Phone.
Xperia Play may well be the best phone to play traditional games on, but it seems unlikely to divert the mobile market away from its focus on simple touch-screen games – unless Sony Computer Entertainment puts its considerable muscle behind the platform.
Will SCE insist on Xperia Play support as standard for all Suite games? Or will Sony Ericsson have to chase down developers individually, as it has done for the phone’s launch line-up? Just how integrated are the plans of Sony’s PlayStation business and its mobile phone manufacturer?
via Eurogamer – Xperia Play Android Hands On – Page 3 | Eurogamer.net.
Dan Lyons can be a prick sometimes, but I could not agree more with his assessment of the AOL/HuffPo merger.
Dan Lyons:
The other problem is that AOL’s chief executive, Tim Armstrong, is a sales guy. He ran sales at Google before he came to AOL in 2009. Nothing wrong with sales guys, except when they start telling people how to do journalism. Sales guys deal in numbers. But journalism is about words. Sales guys live in a world where everything can be measured and analyzed. Their version of journalism is to focus on things like “keyword density” and search-engine optimization.
Journalists live in a world of story-telling, and where the value of a story, its power to resonate, is something they know by instinct. Some people have better instincts than others. Some people can improve their instincts over time. The other part of storytelling is not the material itself but how you present it. Some can spin a better tale out of the same material than others.
But no great storyteller has ever been someone who started out by thinking about traffic numbers and search engine keywords.
Read More: Huffington Post and AOL: Why the Deal’s a Mess – The Daily Beast.
This is a fascinating article on why and how the Playstation 3’s software internals have become completely undressed.
Since shortly after its release, I’ve always wondered why there had been no jailbreak or “cracks” for the Playstation 3 when every other console had been broken.
Short answer? Because of the PS3’s option for users to install Linux, no hacker worth his salt cared enough to break the console.
I wonder if Sony knew they were signing the system’s death warrant when they removed the ability for users to install “Other OS” on the PS3. They probably had the hubris of thinking that their security measures were “unbreakable” after 4 years of relative unmolestation.
Oops.
The first custom firmware is already out for the system, although it doesn’t allow pirated games at the moment.
From Digital Foundry:
The Fail0verflow team says that hackers do the hard work in compromising a system to run Linux and homebrew code, while the pirates exploit that for their own ends. They suggest that the pirates themselves lack the skill to come up with the exploits, and that the PS3 was left unmolested for so long because Sony gave paying customers a way to run their own code on the system. In short, the real hackers weren’t interested in opening up a system that was already open enough.
“There is absolutely no doubt in our mind that the PS3 lasted as much as it did due to OtherOS. The security really is terribly broken,” the team posted on their Twitter page.
Read: Hackers leave PS3 security in tatters – Page 1 | DigitalFoundry | Eurogamer.net.
I always knew this was part of conventional wisdom, but I’m glad Digital Foundry did an empirical analysis on whether “higher quality” HDMI cables made a difference.
Unless your dog needs more adventures (read the customer reviews), you don’t need to spring for a pricier cable.
On the face of it, the conclusion is that you can run any HDMI cable – no matter how cheap – and get identical results. However, very poor quality cabling can present image problems in certain circumstances, and the accepted wisdom that with digital you either get an image or you don’t isn’t exactly true. A low quality, very long HDMI cable could work fine at 720p for example, but could introduce digital artifacts at 1080p.
Read: Digital Foundry vs. HDMI video – Page 1 | DigitalFoundry | Eurogamer.net.
Fascinating article by Microsoft Engineers on how the Kinect actually tracks your body and how they came up with the interface that they did. It’s a must read if you’re interested in the technology behind the magic.
At the heart of the skeletal tracking pipeline is a CMOS infrared sensor which allows Kinect to perceive the world, regardless of ambient lighting conditions. Think of this as seeing the environment in a monochrome spectrum of black and white: black being infinitely far away and white being infinitely close. The shades of gray in between these two extremes correspond to a physical distance from the sensor. The sensor gathers each point in its field of view and forms it into a depth image that represents the world. A stream of these depth images is produced at a rate of 30 frames per second, creating a real-time 3-D representation of the environment. Another way to think of this is like those pinpoint impression toys that used to be all the rage. By pushing up with your hands (or your face if you were really adventurous), you could create a simple 3-D model of a piece of your body.
It’s really no surprise the iPad is at number 1. I’d be shocked if it didn’t. It’s really been a game changer in terms of creating a new market, especially with the absurdly fast adoption rates.
It’s a bit interesting that a good percentage of Wired’s top 10 are smartphones, though. As a gadget fiend myself, I sometimes wish there were no required service plans so I could own devices from all of the platforms…
1. iPad
Thanks to Apple’s iPad, 2010 was the year of the tablet. The 9.7-inch touchscreen wonder created a brand-new product category that made digital content more attractive than ever.
Read: The 10 Most Significant Gadgets of 2010 | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.
Patton Oswalt writing for Wired magazine:
Everyone considers themselves otaku about something—whether it’s the mythology of Lost or the minor intrigues of Top Chef. American Idol inspires—if not in depth, at least in length and passion—the same number of conversations as does The Wire. There are no more hidden thought-palaces—they’re easily accessed websites, or Facebook pages with thousands of fans.
I can’t argue with his observations on how pretty much anything is grounds for any number of people to “geek out” on these days. Talk to the millions of “twihards” or “gleeks” and you have enough proof you need.
The last half of the piece gets a little loopy ridiculous, though his point is made. I remember designing Zelda dungeons on notebook paper as a kid after school. If I had access to all the content I do now as a kid, I would have probably spent that time consuming content rather than doing that. After all, nothing’s more discouraging than seeing other people do things way better than you.
Think of all the possibilities with this thing! Firefighting, Super Mario Sunshine remakes, maybe even a version of Epic Mickey called “Epic Dickey!”
I totally would want one of these installed in my home bathroom.
Known as ‘Toirettsu’, this is more or less a play on ‘Toy’ and ‘Let’s’, where the technologically advanced urinals will boast a sensor target which is capable of detecting when it’s being peed on, not to mention the strength of the stream. Such data will be relevant in the mini games that are displayed over an eye-level LCD display, including battling fires or shooting milk out of your character’s nose.