Category
Hands On: Tony Hawk RIDE
So this is the game with the crazy plastic skateboard. I got to watch it being demoed by an Activision guy – and then saw some journalists fall off. Repeatedly. The level of enthusiasm wasn’t exactly overwhelming to be honest (even N’Gai just wanted to watch the demo).
Read more on Hands On: Tony Hawk RIDE…
Squeezebox Boom
A few weeks ago Slim Devices (now part of Logitech) released their latest network audio player, the Squeezebox Boom. In a departure from previous designs this model includes a built in amplifier and speakers, making it a great portable music source. Anyone who knows me probably knows of my Squeezebox obsession, and I’ve been testing this new one for a few months now.
The design is clearly aimed for three situations – the kitchen, the bedroom and outdoor use. The Squeezebox functionality works very much like the previous models (excellently) and as usual there are lots of neat design details such as a magnet in the remote so it will stick to the fridge door.
Sound quality is, for a device this size, amazing. Forget the Bose Waveradio, the custom DSP processing in Boom manages to squeeze exceptionally flat response over the full frequency range – and for times when you want a little more boom, there’s a connector to add a subwoofer.
From a portable point of view I’ve taken to running it outside during cookouts, synced to the indoor system so the music sounds great everywhere. Being able to plug in one power cord and having access to all your ripped CDs, radio and online services such as Pandora and Rhapsody is great – even in a house with as many Squeezeboxes as mine!
Tivo Series 3 Gets Un-gimped (at last!)
So the Tivo Series 3 (and the new, cheaper TivoHD) are awesome. The only problem is that there are some great features which are present on the older Series 2, but not on the newer machines. These features include things like Multi-Room Viewing (watch a recorded show on a different Tivo than the one which recorded it), Tivo-To-Go (download a recorded show to a computer/portable device) and the ability to stream your own video content to the Tivo.
Read more on Tivo Series 3 Gets Un-gimped (at last!)…
iPhone: Two Months On
So as promised, here are some random thoughts on the iPhone now I’ve been using it for a couple of months.
First, the good stuff:
- The interface is awesome. It looks great, of course, but it also works amazingly well. The response is usually very snappy, and the animation is smooth as silk. That’s not unusual for high end applications on full-sized computers, but it’s completely unheard of on a handheld device. I know a lot of people think the iPod interface is pretty snazzy (I’m not one of them!) but this thing blows it out of the water. The closest I can think of is the PSP’s menu system, but even that doesn’t really come close. All the little graphical flourishes add so much to the overall experience – delete an item and watch it get sucked off the screen, attach a photo to an email and watch the image shrink while the blank message comes up from behind it – it’s all 3D and feels like a flash demo rather than a real product. iPhone makes even the latest version of Windows Mobile, Symbian or Palm look like Windows 3.11.
Read more on iPhone: Two Months On…
Seam Carving
I just watched a short presentation (quicktime video) about a new technique for image resizing called “Seam Carving”. Typically images are shrunk either by simply scaling – which can make them hard to see or understand; or by cropping – which causes a loss of content, and even meaning in some cases. This new technique is essentially a very smart crop, which figures out which parts of an image are less important and removes those first. The end result is amazing to watch, the software seems to magically recompose the important parts of the image (people, buildings, etc) into a smaller space without visible distortion. Very cool stuff.