Phone for the oldies
These days mobile phones are getting smaller and smaller, with smaller buttons and can do a lot more then make a phone call.
Australian vendor Emporia have created a ‘Life’ handset to make things easier, the handset has bigger buttons, a louder speaker and for the hard of hearing and a more eye friendly screen with an orange back light which is apparently more suitable for those with vision difficulty
On the back of the phone there is a panic button which can be programmed to phone up to 5 different numbers or send a pre made text message.
The Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) have endorsed the phone.
It is available from Royal National Institute for the Blind, Communic8 or Vodafone.
Crackle.com
On Monday Crackle launched
“Crackle, a Sony Pictures Entertainment Company formerly known as Grouper, is a streaming entertainment network dedicated to the discovery and development of pioneering video creators across a diverse range of genres. Crackle delivers programmed and customized video streams to a global audience via a multi-platform, syndication network that includes Sony devices, IPTV, leading social networks and one-click viral web distribution. Crackle launches the most innovative creators with on-going collaboration with Sony Pictures Entertainment and other leading media partners.” Crackle.com
Upon visiting the site I watched a great animation called ‘Papiroflexia’, a great example example of innovation in my opinion, *which I have embedded below* another great animation I found called ‘Handshake’, this was voiceless as Papiroflexia was, the music and actions worked very effectively.
There are in fact contests which act as an incentive to media makers, with prizes such as a pitch meeting with columbia pictures, a 2 day animation lab and a 15 minute set at the famous IMPROV stage in LA.
I will certainly be checking back on Crackle for videos like Papiroflexia now and then.
PlayStation Movie Download Service
In an E3 interview with Gamasultra, Peter Dille, Sony’s Senior VP of Marketing announced that a movie download service for PS3 & PSP will imminently arrive.
I imagine this would mean having Sony pictures such as Spiderman 3 and Surfs up up for download for a price on the PS Store, available in HD and SD?
It is unclear at this stage what will be offered, I wonder how many full HD movies on average would fit on the PS3’s 60gb hard disk, I imagine it would be quite limited, take Sky’s HD box for example, to my knowledge 60gb of the hard drive is allocated to user recordings, the average HD film at 1080i, sky’s HD broadcast resolution takes up around 10% of the disk space, what would that mean for the PS3? will the movies use a better video compression? you have got to take in the account all that other content clogging up your hard disk, those game downloads, music, photos etc
In my last post I mentioned that the new slimline PSP feature a video output to TV, I can imagine the movie download service would also in conjunction with it, it would would be good for PSP gamers on the move.
This is exciting news for PlayStationers, I will keep you updated
Sony reveals redesigned PSP
Sony have revealed a redesigned PlayStation Portable, 33% lighter and 19% slimmer, a slimline PSP pretty much, with a few
added features and improvements…
More efficient Battery
Wahey longer gameplay/video watching!
Video output
To allow gamers to connect the hand-held to view on a TV, ideally for sharing high quality video.
Increased UMD disk loading times
There was much speculation as to whether the UMD drive would be included in future versions of the PSP, due to it not selling so well, especially UMD movies, I guess because many chose to watch videos from the memory card, it is easy enough for someone to get hold of video conversion software, it is also more battery efficient running content from a memory card. well it’s still there!
The redesigned PSP will be launched worldwide Septembe this year, in the US it will cost $199 and come bundled with a 1gb memory stick, Daxter and a family guy UMD video.
PC World to sell Robots!
PC World are have announced that they are going to sell Robots!
(Left) Meet wireless (WiFi) controlled motorised bot Spykee, Spykee acts as a wireless surveillance device which incorporates video camera, microphone and speaker…oh it can also function as a harmless mp3 player by the way!
Sort of reminds me of Johnny 5 from Short Circuit (right)
In addition to Spykee there will also be a home cinema droid in the shape of R2D2, this will incorporate a CD/DVD player, ipod dock, projector which can project on to an 80 inch screen, the head of the droid will rotate and tip back up to 60 degrees, it will have video inputs so external devices such as a games console or video camera could be used.
In addition to the Spykee and multimedia droid, there are also plans for an educational companion bot for kids and a robot that can fly, it will be interesting to see how these turn out, I just wonder how much it will set you back.
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