According to the Spotify blog, it seems like Apple have finally de-clenched their assholes and allowed a competitor to have a good music app on the store. This is big news as it opens up what control the user has over their iPhone when it comes to music, due to the fact the Spotify app will allow subscribers (of it’s premium account) to download albums and store them on their phone.
All we need now is faith from the music industry in the service and a better share of profits for bands.
For those of you ‘lucky’ enough to own one, the Facebook application for the iPhone has been updated today. As you can see from the screenshots below it is actually looking quite good.
Shiny-shiny new Facebook app for the iPhone
With the updated app, you can now waste even more time liking updates, making notes, sifting through images etc. You can read more about it here, now get back to work!
Sometimes I really wish I’d bought one.
Courtesy of ifixit.
Nintendo has obviously been considering quite a number of different input methods for it’s little white box recently, including a bike and even an inflatable, vibrating horse.
The latest, which has surfaced in the online database of the European Patent Office, takes the form of “a foam, sponge, or plastic” American football with a handy notch for the Wii remote. According to the filing:
“The ball can be an accessory that comprises a model of a football that is provided with a depression which snugly accepts and retains the handheld controller. The handheld controller may sense motion, position and/or orientation of the ball model and provide inputs wirelessly or via wires to a video game system. The video game system may process such inputs to provide a simulated sports action game play on a video display.”
Obviously this deluge of cheap plastic won’t necessarily all make it to market, but if it does, I think Nintendo could well be open to accusations of having lost the plot. Doubtless some will sell, but do people really want yet another gimmicky peripheral cluttering up their living room every time they buy a new game? I thought the appeal of the Wii remote was supposed to be that it could mimic any activity all on its own.
Nintendo need to concentrate on their strengths, namely, making great games. Sure Wii sports is fun, but traditional controllers are far from obsolete. If I sit down for a few games of Pro Ev, I don’t want to jog on the spot and flail around like I’ve lost control of my limbs while the game makes vague approximations of my movements, I want precise control over the actions on screen. Admittedly, the Wii is marketed to casual gamers, but it’s still a games console. If you want the real deal, go do it.
Of course, Nintendo could just be filing these patents to prevent evil, profiteering 3rd party firms from making cheap knock offs. We can but hope.
With all the hype surrounding the entrance of Apple into the netbook market, we feel that there should be a bit of time for dealing with the fact that Nokia, the worlds biggest moblie phone manufacturer, entering into the personal computing market with this stylish new netbook.
The specs are not too bad:
Weight: 1.25kg
Connectivity: WiFi and high-speed mobile broadband (as from the name 3G and HSDPA)
Processor: Intel Atom
Body: Aluminum (more than 2cm thick)
Battery life: 12 hrs
Screen: 10.1 in
OS: Windows (version not yet revealed)
Other: HD video out, assisted-GPS, front facing camera, blue-tooth and SD card reader
Good to see a tad more competition in this market, and it will be refreshing to see what a mobile phone maker can bring to these devices. Still awaiting more on price and contracts, will keep you eager beavers posted as and when.
Little viddy here
The sale of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay is currently being investigated by the Swedish stock exchange BBC News is reporting. Earlier this year a deal for Global Games Factory to purchase The Pirate Bay was submitted for around 60m Kronor (£4.7m).
According to Global Games Factory owner, Hans Pandeya, there is confusion in the sale of an illegal site and it has rocked the boat among Swedish bankers. He said in an interview, “It’s quite unusual, buying an illegal site. Our system is legal, we just don’t want to tell anyone how this works [yet],”
The desire, once the sale is complete, is to take down the skull and crossbones and start distributing legal content, by paying the copyright owners and paying the file sharers, and also create some kind of massive supercomputing peer-to-peer grid.
This has caught attention of us here at The Processor as the number of users sharing files on the network must be massive and leveraging that kind of processing potential could in turn be sold on a pay for the content that was once being downloaded illegally. It really is clever uses of this technology that will get us a content download model that makes everyone happy.
Screeshot of future game (sorry about the low res)
The Iranian gaming industry made its debut appearance at a Western games show yesterday, with representatives from the Iran National Foundation of Computer Games manning a dedicated stand at Gamescom.
According to bbc news, games on offer included a tank-based shooter set at the start of the Iran-Iraq war, a platform adventure set in Persia (they didn’t confirm whether it involved princes), an adventure game where you play a young student caught up in the early stages of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, and a role-playing game based on Iranian mythology.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Any attempt to get Western retailers to stock Iranian products is likely to be politically charged, and even a good game could be engulfed in shitstorm of controversy, especially in the US.
The Iranian delegation did describe the event as a success however, and said they’ll be back next year. In an entirely unsuprising turn of events, they won’t be making a big deal of the LA-held E3 2010 however.
It’s not the first time Iran’s gaming industry has attracted global media attention. When Special Operation 85: Hostage Rescue was released in 2007, it was decried as nothing more than a piece of pro-Iranian propaganda, an entirely fair critique considering it was funded by the Association of Islamic Unions of Students. That being said, is it really any worse than America’s Army?
Yesterday was awash with news from the Gamescom trade show in Cologne. In amongst the major announcements, The Processor noticed Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli’s claims that we should not expect games to look much better than they currently do until the next crop of consoles in 2012.
Cevat Yerli addresses delegates
This is crap. The PS3 in particular still has a whole load of untapped potential. Many developers have not even fully exploited dual-core architecture, let alone it’s sophisticated multicore processor. There is still plenty of processing power left in the current generation of machines. Total data on disc is also a major factor. The amount of data a game can draw on is limited by the disc format, and while multi-platform games can only take advantage of around 5Gb of storage (because, in common with most PCs, the Xbox 360 does not have a Blu-Ray drive), PS3 exclusives can make use of a whopping 25Gb. I think there is a whole load of leverage until 2012, but it will take some clever programming to fully exploit it.
Well in fairness, everyone else did too. In a move that will come as a suprise to absolutely no one at all, Sony have unveilied a PS3 Slim for the rather sexy price of $299. Check out the vid (courtesy of GamesRadar).
At The Processor we blog opinions on the latest trends in technology, games, geeky gadget things we find and random internet crap that may be of interest to your eyeballs. So well done you, for being a smartass and getting in with the geeks.
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