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barnskiblog

Barney's blog. Just a load of old shite really.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

It's here.

Just in case you haven't spoken to any self-respecting geeks or technophiles since last night, Apple have released a bunch of jaw-droppingly awesome new kit, chief amongst which is the iPhone.
There is also the Apple TV, and (ever so quietly) a new Airport Extreme base station.

All of them absolutely kick ass, and I don't have time for punditry right now, but quickly:
- iPhone not available in Europe until Q4 2007. Bummer, but I will be getting one as soon as they're available; every other mobile device available now looks old, and the Zune is doomed.
- Apple TV looks great, but still can't decide whether or not a Mac Mini might be a better buy for the living room. Need to see more.
- New Airport Extreme base station features 802.11n and ability to share USB disks over the network. NAS devices no longer needed in the home.
- Apple Computer now called Apple Inc.
- Keynote is here.

Update:
On the Apple TV vs. Mac Mini question; the mini has no HDMI out and costs twice as much, but that now gets you Core Duo since they seem to have stopped shipping Core Solo models. I need to see more of Apple TV to make my call on this one, but Mac Mini has built-in DVD player, full OS X with Front Row and all the possibilities that brings, and could be used for iChat via tha TV set with an iSight (if you could find one).......

Friday, January 05, 2007

I'd read about this property development called "The World" before, which is a crazy-ass creation off the coast of Dubai that consists of over 300 man-made islands that together make an approximation of a world map. The whole project is pretty awe-inspiring in it's scope, conception, execution, opulence, extravagance and expense. I'm not going to go all political, but I might just say that it might be pretty hard to explain to a poverty-stricken third-world farmer.
Anyway, I ran across an article on digg mentioning that the first completed island is Michael Schumacher's, which prompted me to poke around for a bit more info.
What I found was a page with some quick stats and then the official site. You can also check it out on Google Earth. I'm still impressed.
What really prompted me to post about it now though was the official video tour. I don't know what it is, but this really brought home to me how bizarre this is and what life can be like sometimes nowadays. It's like something from an Iain M. Banks novel or a science-fiction movie, you know?


Oh yeah, and what does this mean?.........


I've been keeping an eye on the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project for a while now, partly because I love the humanistic idea of utilising technology to drive improvements in education in developing countries, and also partly because of the interesting technology in use.
Read the website for details, but as an overview; the computer has no hard disk, runs a custom, slimmed-down version of a GNU/Linux O/S and uses a low-powered CPU.
Now, it would have been easy to make this a basic, low-end computer in the mould of what we are used to. However, they haven't; the thing has a webcam, sound and wireless networking and automatically creates "mesh" peer-to-peer networks with other nearby OLPC devices. It also promises a fairly radical UI (called "Sugar") that uses the mesh to interact with other users nearby in the context of social features and applications.
There's an article about the O/S here and a couple of great videos of the UI and social features in action here and here.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

I have long been a fan of Samorost, which I first blogged about way back in August 2003. In fact, if you scroll right down this blog there are a couple of links under the title "Other Stuff" way down on the right hand side, and it's been there since then. I still haven't finished it either; I just love the atmosphere of the thing.
Anyway, Samorost 2 is here and has been nominated in the "Best Web Browser Game" and "Excellence in Visual Art" category for the 2007 Independent Game Festival. It has also won a couple of gongs, but that's all on the site. All I can say is that it looks just as lush as the original.
Enjoy.

read more | digg story