I can now exclusively reveal more! You may recognize some from projects you’ve already worked on but didn’t know had a name much less a recognized methodology.

ADD, Agro Driven Development

Developers code features directly proportional to the amount of heat they are getting from users, sales or managers. Results in a jack-of-all-trades, master of none.

CDD, Clone Driven Design

Features and design are achieved by cloning somebody else’s product thereby removing the pesky overhead of having to come up with ideas of your own. Sure fire way to stay firmly behind the leader.

EDD, Ego Driven Design

Where the direction of the project is dictated purely on an individuals ego and their ability to shout long and hard until they get their own way. The individual involved is rarely the target audience for the product which is often the ego-bruising trigger in the first place.

GDD, Golf Driven Design

Where features and specifications are agreed on the golf course by people who neither use the software nor are responsible for implementing it but want to write off the whole trip as a business expense. With any luck they won’t check the final product.

LDD, Lunch Driven Development

Where features, goals and APIs are decided over lunch by the developers and users who care enough to meet up over their lunch-time. Lunch must not be provided or you stray into Golf Driven Design instead.

PDD, Psychic Driven Development

Where specifications are not so much decided through real communication but rather obtained via a psychic link with potential users with mixed results. Often seen in conjunction with Ego Driven Design.

QDD, Query Driven Development

Every page or screen starts with a question to the user what they want to see, writing that as a SQL/LINQ query statement and then dumping results out via a simple UI. Would likely be better off in Access or Excel but people involved want to claim they have intraweb experience.

XDD, Xenophobic Driven Development

Where the majority of development time is given over to making sure others can’t do anything BUT what the original developers wanted. Typically observed by large sets of exception messages, the absence of hooks and a sprinkling of the sealed keyword.

YDD, Yesterday Driven Development

Features added today are the ones the customers thought they were getting yesterday. Generally used in very-tight rapid methodologies.

ZDD, Zzzzz Driven Development

Every waking hour is given over to the development process at the expense of quality and design ideas that are only appreciated by the sleep-deprived. Normally observed on tight schedules such as those in the gaming industry.

[)amien

In the mean time I’ve been entertaining myself with the following comedy gems until I can at least find a proxy server in the UK to let me back into iPlayer (BBC) and Catch-Up (Channel 4) so I can watch QI, Top Gear and Grand Designs.

Podcasts

Adam & Joe – highlights from their BBC Radio 6 show has me laughing out loud in the office sometimes to the bemusement of colleagues.

Jonathan Ross – more highlights this time from Jonathan’s Saturday morning show that is always worth a giggle.

Comics

Weebl & Bob – two egg-shaped friends make sense of a purple world that never has enough pie but an abundance of silly voices, ninja pirates and tiny bovines.

Joy of Tech – geek cartoons from some Apple loving talent.

Pictures

ICanHasCheezBurger – because there’s no such thing as too many pictures of cute cats with crazy captions aka Lolcats. (My own attempt shown at the top of this post)

Videos

Fonejacker – George just needs your bank account details and sort code for your gas refund (3 million Ugandan dollars) and the sales pitch of Internet service providings who offer a better level of Internet service providing.

MineSweeper The Movie – the only computer game left to convert into a movie. (Well, except for Half-Life which is just dying for a good movie). Some of the other strips on this site include Street Fighter: The Later Years.

Zero Punctuation – video game reviews full of more great English humor, quip and amusing animations to take your favorite games down a peg.

[)amien

Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series were both spot on, Paycheck was very much off the mark.

Here’s a few in the pipeline or already released elsewhere but yet to hit the UK.

Stardust (2007)

One of my favourite authors, Neil Gaiman, wrote a grown-up fairytale about a star that falls to Earth (a little like 10th Kingdom but with less comedy).

Much of the cast, the directory and writing team are all English although the ‘star’ role goes to the very lovely American Sienna Miller. The film is scheduled for an October 19th release here in the UK and is already out stateside.

Neil also has Beowulf and Coraline coming out in 2007 and 2008 respectively.

Northern Lights / The Golden Compass (2007)

The first book in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series will no doubt be compared to Harry Potter in that it is a series aimed at children, features magic and has a strong female character in the lead. The similarities extend to the first book in the series having a different name in the USA and England but thankfully end there.

Whilst the casting of the film looks good abandoning the religious aspects is worrying – why DO the directors and film companies feel the need to excise or alter important parts of source material that has already proven a commercial success?

Cross your fingers and hope it hasn’t lost too much for the UK release on December 7th.

I Am Legend (2007)

Will Smith is leading the role as the last human being alive on the planet after a condition turns the rest of the population into vampires. He goes hunting by day whilst they sleep and ensures his home is fortified for the nightly onslaught when they wake.

Richard Matheson penned the novella in 1954, any novel still in print 50+ years after it was written signals to me the book must be good.

One worry is that Hollywood will turn this into a massive in-your-face action flick instead of the brooding horror of the book. The trivia at IMDB notes large budgets, sets and military vehicles/extras so this is a very distinct possibility. Hollywood have done this several times with Philip K Dick’s books and just not getting the point that his stories show ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

We will find out here in the UK January 4th and Mr Matheson has The Box and The Incredible Shrinking Man due out in 2008.

The Golden Man / Next (2007)

Philip K Dick’s book is the story of a golden man, the next evolution of humanity, who can see into the near future and his attempt at escaping his pursuers (kind of like the escape scene in Minority Report).

Not technically forthcoming as it hit the UK shores in April but I missed it being that it had a totally different name to the book. Being that the guy who can see into the future is now a Las Vegas magician played by Nicholas Cage I’m not sure I’ll bother.

If there was a point to the book about how we will react to our own evolution it’s lost. Perhaps Hollywood think that’s been covered enough by the X-Men franchise.

Altered Carbon (2009 ?)

Richard K. Morgan writes the story of one Takeshi Kovacks, an ex-military elite soldier in a future where your body is easily replaced providing the metal backup device implanted in the base of your skull is in tact. Kovacks is egotistical, violent and methodical in his new job as a private investigator seeking out why his rich client apparently committed suicide (and was promptly restored from backup but lost some essential hours).

The book is gritty and certainly not aimed at children. Would Hollywood pay the big bucks required to get the imagery right for such a grand undertaking of a film that would be limited to an adult/18 category is unlikely but somebody has the rights and is penning in a 2009 release date.

If the film is a success there are two more books in the series which will demand grander sets and even larger budgets.

Rendezvous with Rama (2009 ?)

Morgan Freeman picked up the rights to Arthur C. Clarke’s fantastic novel about a large cylindrical object that enters our solar system briefly and the subsequent exploration of it’s interior but has seemingly done little since.

There used to be a web site with some renders and notes but that has long since gone and the ‘producers are still working on the adaptation’ and Morgan’s schedule seems to indicate he is rather busy on other projects.

Morgan claims that part of the delay is getting a studio on board that doesn’t want to turn it into an action movie (great news and can be a success as Contact shows) and that they are still working on the script (get David Peoples on the case).

Whilst the film is on a grand scale it would probably be relatively cheap to film as most of it could be green-screened against rendered backgrounds being that everything inside Rama is not man-made anyway.

[)amien

Here’s a few tricks that may… or may not cause some amusement. Just make sure you step in before they need to call their IT support guy!

Simulated operating system crash

An operating system crash sends a shiver up the most confident of spines.

Windows Blue Screen of Death

Install the SysInternals teams BlueScreen Screen Saver complete with genuine looking reboot sequence.

Mac OS X Kernel Panic

Try out Doomlaser’s Kernel Panic Screensaver although be prepared for genuine confusion at their first exposure to an operating system crash ;-)

Confused keyboard

If they are a hunt-and-peck typist confuse them by swapping a few keys around on their keyboard (make sure it lets you pull the tops off, some of them don’t and leaving them with a broken keyboard isn’t fun at all).

An alternative if the keyboard doesn’t allow you to remove the key tops or if they’re a touch-typist is to change the keyboard map to one similar but not the same. Favourites include US for Brits and and British for Americans if you want something very subtle that may take a few hours to be noticed (when they hit some symbols, pound signs etc.) or German for something a bit quicker (W and Z reversed).

Head to the Windows Control Panel or Mac System Preferences to activate.

Permanent hourglass (Windows)

A simple trick that just involves heading into Control Panel > Mouse Properties then choosing the Pointers tab and double clicking on Normal Select. From there choose hourglas.ani

Google goes abroad

Google remembers which language you you last used so simply head to something like http://www.google.com/ru (Russian), http://www.google.com/cy (Welsh) or http://www.google.com/fr (French) then close the Window and walk away.

Any further visits will show in that language, even searches made from the built-in boxes of Internet Explorer and Firefox. To set back head to http://www.google.com/en (English) or whatever language you normally use.

Swap short cuts (Windows)

Choose properties on either the desktop, start-menu or quick launch icon they use to launch their favourite applications and change the target to a different but perhaps similar application. i.e. iTunes and Windows Media, Word and WordPad, Excel and PowerPoint. They’ll probably think they hit the wrong icon or that something has messed up the file associations.

Change the display gamma

Head into Control Panel > Display (Windows) or System Preferences > Display (Mac) and adjust the gamma or colour profile for their display. No amount of fiddling with the displays brightness or contrast settings will get it quite back to how it was.

Jeff Atwood has futher suggestions for people who don’t lock their machines. Remember kids, Windows Key + L is your friend.

[)amien

Music you don’t know the name of

If you get a song in your head you’d like but don’t know what it is then Midomi might be what you are looking for.

The site takes 10 seconds or more of your attempts at singing or humming the track and then tries to match it against the songs it knows about. The catalogue isn’t particularly comprehensive right now but it has a reasonable selection of tracks. You can also help it improve results by singing a fragment of a song that it will use for matching providing you don’t mind anyone being able to listen to it.

Educational tracks for free

This May Apple launched iTunes U – a section of the iTunes Store featuring free educational content from various US colleges and universities.

The tracks are mostly unedited and lack polish but some of the content covers everything from philosophy to economics and technology so there should be something to interest you.

Audio books for free

• Simply Audiobooks have a small selection their library available for free as well as a rental club and purchasing options that ship physical media. The download club option is not compatible with the iPod. (Microsoft’s PlaysForSure is worst name ever – it doesn’t play on the iPod or Microsoft’s own Zune)
• LibriVox use volunteers to record chapters of books available in the public domain and put the completed audio books up in mp3 and ogg formats. The quality of speaker can be variable and the content spans classical literature.

Podcasts for free

The podcast scene just keeps growing but finding what suits you can be tricky. My favourites currently include:

• BBC Focus podcast of the popular monthly science and technology magazine
• DotNetRocks developer podcast with guests including Phil Hack, Rob Conery, Jeff Atwood, Scott Guthrie and Miguel de Icaza
• Productive Talk – an 8-episode podcast with David Allen on the subject of Getting Things Done (GTD)

Improve audio quality with iTunes Plus

Apple’s plan to remove digital rights management (DRM) whilst increasing audio quality on iTunes gains momentum with music publishers each day – no doubt enticed on by the increased margin and ability to get an extra few pence or cents from existing owners.

Besides the crisper sound and larger file sizes the other noticeable difference is that iTunes music sharing works with these tracks (Sharing protected AAC involves an authorisation landmine).

Head to the Tunes Plus link in the Quick Links box at the top right of the main store page. You should see an option to upgrade your library if any tracks can be upgraded but bear in mind it’s an all-tracks-or-nothing deal that costs £0.20 per track.

Watch your DVDs

Why not take a DVD you like, or better yet one you haven’t yet seen, with you on your iPod Video.

There are a number of tools to help you with the job of copying from DVD into an iPod friendly format but Handbrake is free, cross-platform and easy to use. As a bonus it also includes presets for other portable video devices such as the PlayStation Portable.

Watch YouTube

Why should iPhone owners have all the phone when the iPod Video is perfectly capable of watching YouTube content providing you upload it to your iPod before you set out.

There are a number of tools to do the download & conversion job but DVDVideoSoft’s one for Windows works quite well. For the Mac the latest 1.9 version of Squared 5 would appear to do the job but I haven’t yet tried it.

[)amien

• Ideal for the four instruments (Drummer, Singer, Guitarists) – no Bittersweet Symphony
• Well known enough that you all feel the music – no obscure bands or tracks
• Attention keeping – no massive 2-minute intros or solos
• Killer guitar track – this is rock after all!
• Not previously featured on Guitar Hero I or II
• Variety – no band more than once plus a mix of 80s, 90s and 00s

So here it is…

1. Opening Licks

• The Passenger – Iggy Pop
• I Predict a Riot – Kasier Chiefs
• Bad Medicine – Bon Jovi
• Wonderwall – Oasis
• All Right Now – Free

2. Amp-Warmers

• Money For Nothing – Dire Straights
• Let Me Entertain You – Robbie Williams
• Paradise City – Guns ‘n Roses
• Somebody Told Me – The Killers
• It’s Been Awhile – Staind

3. String-Snappers

• Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
• Boulevard of Broken Dreams – Green Day
• Going Down/Love in an Elevator – Aerosmith
• Bohemian Like You – The Dandy Warhols
• Holy Water – Bad Company

4. Thrash and Burn

• Summer of 69 – Bryan Adams
• Eye of the Tiger – Survivor
• Darts of Pleasure – Franz Ferdinand
• Inside – Stiltskin
• Sk8er Boi – Avril Lavigne

5. Return of the Shred

• Poison – Alice Cooper
• All The Small Things – Blink-182
• Walk This Way – Run DMC
• Danger! High Voltage – Electric Six
• In The End – Linkin Park

Okay so there is no way they’d ever put so many great tracks in one game – they’d be worried you’d not buy the next one to get more tracks and so we’ll get second-rate filler just like the record companies have been doing with albums for years.

Most of these are available at the iTunes store so enjoy my first iMix entitled Dream Rock Band.

[)amien

The latest secret under suppression is a short 16-byte key which locks away the content on HD-DVD discs that only licensed software and hardware can play it back and prevent you from making copies.

This type of protection used to be called copy-protection but these days it goes under the equally unpopular name of "Digital Rights Management (DRM)". It enforce the copyright holders rights whilst denying you yours and does it in such a way that in some countries re-asserting your legal rights means you end up breaking others.

The AACS Licencing Authority believe they can now protect by law what they failed to protect using technology. This is particularly amusing because their predecessor, the DVD-CCA, failed on both counts when the encryption on DVD was broken in 1999 by an enterprising trio. Apple gets it and is going down the DRM-free route and not treating their customers like criminals.

Basing an entire business model on keeping a sequence of characters secret defies belief and thinking you can wipe the secret off the face of the internet once it’s out is laughable especially when you consider the infinite number of ways you could represent it. The AACS are at it anyway with take down notices to the likes of Digg and others. Amusingly the take down notice itself includes the ‘magic key’.

Alternative 16-byte sequence where each byte is an offset on the previous one is "09 F0 18 F1 9B D7 6F 78 7D 69 15 6F 9E F3 32 38" which if run through the following program yields a certain magic key.

class Program {
    static void Main(string[] argv) {
        byte b = 0;
        string key = string.Empty;
        foreach(string a in argv) {
            b += byte.Parse(a, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber);
            key += string.Format("{0:x2} ", b);
        }
        System.Console.WriteLine(key);
    }
}

[)amien

Despite reservations we’ve found ourselves jumping around performing a variety of silly stances, head bops and special moves whilst we attempt to strum ‘n chord in time to the tricky yet rewarding tracks available. Once we got a second guitar and hit the co-operative (one bass, one lead) and VS modes (turns each or both together) then out-performing the other player off-screen as well as on became an integral part of the game.

The line-up of songs is a little disappointing – when there is one “made famous” by a well known band then it tends to be one of their less famous song. I say “made famous” as the game clearly points it out they are, alas, cover versions bar a small handful.

Extra tracks are available on-line in packs of 3 for 500 MSP‘s each. These are again cover versions presumably due to the developer being unable to licence the original audio mix to the songs so that they can cut out the guitar and bass lines when you fail to hit the right combination of colourful buttons and strum in time.

One pleasant surprise is that the guitar is just a normal USB device and can be used under Windows once the Xinput common controller driver is installed or on the Mac using TattieBogle’s Xbox 360 OS X driver.

Why would you want to do that? To play the free cross-platform Guitar Hero clone Frets on Fire with all the fan-created songs of course!

Whilst there are plans for Guitar Hero: 80s Edition and Guitar Hero III the franchise is being handed over to Activision’s Neversoft team (Tony Hawks) as they bought the rights to the name when they snapped up Guitar Hero’s publisher Red Octane.

Original music-game-only developer Harmonix aren’t whining about it or heading to the courts, oh no. They are fighting back with Rock Band that throws drums and vocals on top of lead and bass guitars.

Fantastic!

[)amien
PS: Under no circumstances consider playing either game with a keyboard or a regular controller – the experience just isn’t the same.

Dark Alex is the guy behind the firmware but the whole scene/process is full of terminology and a bit complex. This are the steps that worked for me (via 2.71) and for a couple of friends (via 3.03)

This will invalidate your warranty and has the potential chance to leave your PSP useless. By following these instructions you are agreeing to take that risk and liability into your own hands – no warranty is expressed or implied, the author will not be held liable for damages, etc. Sony certainly do not authorise such modification.

You will need

• PSP currently running firmware 3.03 or earlier
• Memory Stick Pro Duo with some space
• Various files linked to from this post

Also, if your firmware is above 2.71 you will need:

• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (original with 2.0 firmware update on it not 2.6)

My instructions below are for the earlier TA-079 hardware not the newer TA-082 so go check this guide for details of identifying which you have – they also have information on what you need to do for the TA-082 model.

Getting enabled

So check which firmware you have in the PSP’s Settings > System Settings > System Information menu option – it’s called System Software.

If it is 1.50 already jump to Flashing Open Edition section.

If above 1.50 but below 2.71

Make a note of your network settings, they will be lost!

• download the 2.71 firmware
• create the folder /PSP/GAME/UPDATE/ on your Memory Stick
• rename the file EBOOT.PBP and move it to this folder
• put Memory Stick in PSP and go to the Game > Memory Stick menu
• choose the 2.71 firmware update option and follow instructions
• download the homebrew enabler for 2.71 (I used Rev C)
• copy the contents of the downloads MS_ROOT folder to the root of your Memory Stick
• put Memory Stick back in PSP and use the Photo viewer to look at the HENx folder
• your PSP should now crash with a blue/green screen
• check the System Information menu option again – it should say HEN at the end of the System Software
• if it does, skip to the Flash 1.50 downgrade section
• if it does not, power off your PSP and try viewing the picture again
• download the generic 2.71 downgrader and unpack contents of MS_ROOT to Memory Stick root folder
• download the 1.50 firmware
• rename the file UPDATE.PBP *then* copy to /PSP/GAME/UPDATE/ on the Memory Stick
• put Memory Stick in PSP and go to the Game > Memory Stick menu
• choose the x.yz firmware update option and follow instructions
• Agree to reset the corrupt settings when it reboots
• check the System Information menu option again – it should say 1.50!

If above 2.71 but below 3.03

• download the 3.03 firmware
• create the folder /PSP/GAME/UPDATE/ on your memory stick
• rename the file EBOOT.PBP and move it to this folder
• put Memory Stick in PSP and go to the Game > Memory Stick menu
• choose the 3.03 firmware update option and follow instructions
• rename your /PSP/SAVEDATA/ folder to /PSP/SAVEBACK/ or something
• download the homebrew enabler for 3.03
• copy the contents of the downloads MS_ROOT folder to the root of your Memory Stick
• put Memory Stick back in PSP and attempt to load Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
• the game should flash the screen blue before you get to play and reboot
• check the System Information menu option again – it should say HEN at the end of the System Software
• if it does not, power off your PSP and try loading GTA again
• delete the /PSP/SAVEDATA/ folder and rename /PSP/SAVEBACK/ back to /PSP/SAVEDATA/
• download the 3.03 downgrader and unpack contents of MS_ROOT to Memory Stick root folder
• download the 1.50 firmware
• rename the file UPDATE.PBP *then* copy to /PSP/GAME/UPDATE/ on the Memory Stick
• put Memory Stick in PSP and go to the Game > Memory Stick menu
• choose the x.yz firmware update option and follow instructions
• Agree to reset the corrupt settings when it reboots
• check the System Information menu option again – it should say 1.50!

If above 3.03

You’re out of luck for now.

Flashing Open Edition

Dark Alex’s official patch requires you grab a few Sony firmware images and run a patching tool… but there is a very unofficial pre-made package available. The steps are

• download the 3.10 OE-A Easy Installer
• unpack it to your hard disk
• copy the 310oeflasher and 310oeflasher% folders to /PSP/GAME/ on the Memory Stick
• put Memory Stick in PSP and go to the Game > Memory Stick menu
• choose the 3.10 Open Edition firmware update option and follow instructions
• check the System Information menu option again – it should say 3.10 OE-A.

Get your old favourites on there!

Your PSP is now ready to play images of your original PS1 games (image with Alcohol 120% or similar image making software then convert with PopStation) and third-party “home-brew” software like ScummVM to play all those great point-and-click adventures you’ve got lying around.

In both cases just create a folder on your Memory Stick inside /PSP/GAME/ and drop the EBOOT.PBP file in that new directory. Access it from the Game > Memory Stick menu as usual!

As a bonus the battery appears to last longer playing home-brew and PS1 games – perhaps because of the lower CPU requirements or the fact the UMD isn’t spinning all the time.

[)amien

Of course when the PlayStation 2 came out I jumped at the chance and have enjoyed some great titles too – more of the same franchise really but some great titles nether less and you can still use it to play all your PS1 games. It’s a great machine although it’s definitely due for replacement by now.

I’ve spent a fair amount of cash on those PlayStation games and hardware despite flirts with Dreamcast (yum) and Xbox 1 (which did nothing for me).

PlayStation 3 should be my logical upgrade path – all they had to do was more of the same but with better hardware and on-line support but the news this week was the final straw.

Not content with overcharging Europeans for the machine they’ve also decided to make the hardware a bit cheaper for them to produce by removing the hardware for backwards compatibility with the PS2 stating it’s "not a priority" for them.

So what we have is a machine that’s been repeatedly delayed, that developers won’t be able to harness the CPU power of, that is expensive, uses proprietary media from a company that has a long list of failed media formats, that offers no compelling titles, has a poor on-line experience, has no unique features at all, is expensive and late to the party.

I know, this isn’t a unique viewpoint there have been comics and even songs (thanks Lab) about how Sony are killing off their own PlayStation brand with sheer incompetence.

[)amien

Simon Pegg plays Nicholas Angel – one of the Metropolitan Police’s finest. The problem is he’s so good he’s making the rest of the force service look bad in comparison so he is quickly dispatched to the idyllic village of Sandford out in the countryside.

Angel soon meets the local constabulary who are used to dealing with the odd escaped goose or accident and have their own interpretation of alcohol and gun laws. Long-time friend and former flatmate Nick Frost stars as local officer Danny Butterman who images city policing to be much like Point Break and Bad Boys II.

Director Edgar Wright produces plenty of slick visuals much in the style of those found in Shaun of the Dead and Spaced albeit more action based yet finds time to slip in plenty of grisly deaths as the plot unfolds and the body count starts to rise as a bizarre series of ‘accidents’ befouls residents of this sleepy hamlet.

There are plenty of laughs including physical slapstick, in-jokes and movie references though it has lost some of the magical charm Shaun of Spaced possess. Despite the setting being firmly English west-country it feels like the script was written with more of an international/American mainstream audience in mind with both the plot and the genre nods being spelt out so much as characters holding DVD’s of the film to the camera and reading the tag-lines.

Some moments playing up to the action genre cliche go on too long – like talking slowly at the end of a joke hoping for someone to get it an laugh. Shave that down a bit and slip in a few more jokes and it would have been perfect but nether less worth the wait and certainly recommended providing you don’t mind a bit of gore in with your comedy. Adam Buxton (half of the legendary Adam & Joe Show) goes out in the most horrific way I’ve seen in a while (but then I avoid horror films :D)

Overall highly enjoyable and probably the best film I’ve seen so far this year – although it is only February.

Alas given the likely success this and the prior success of Shaun there is almost zero chance of that elusive third series of Spaced.

[)amien

The Xbox 360 enjoyed its second year and titles continue to impress although the count is still a little on the weak side. The addition of 1080p output was a great bonus but one many people (myself included) can’t take advantage of without a HDMI cable and nobody seems entirely sure if the 360 can pump out a digital video signal (I doubt it).

On-line support is blooming although can get very expensive if you want all the extras for games you’ve already paid for – come on guys we put £40 down gives a few freebies!

The PlayStation 3 on the other hand is vapour ware here still in Europe and was notably absent from Japan’s premier Sony Building in Tokyo. Online the only people raving about it are those that were raving about it before it came out…

Nintendo’s Wii has been getting a lot of press for being fun (if tiring and occasionally dangerous to your environment) but with the console itself is effectively a reboxed GameCube which didn’t impress 5 years ago and the graphics look very dated on the couple of titles I’ve been able to see. With rumours of a more powerful unit doing the rounds and nothing stopping anyone producing a similar controller for the 360 or PS3 can Nintendo stay a contender or will they go the way of Sega?

With consoles traditionally being loss-leaders for the first few years perhaps Nintendo would have been better off producing controllers and software for the 360 and PS3.

Game: Oblivion

People often rave about how open-ended Grand Theft Auto is but lets be honest here – it isn’t a patch on Oblivion.

Like the aforementioned title you can follow the story or run off and do what you like. The difference here is that Oblivion is truly massive and is filled with interesting people, their stories and ultimately their sub-quests.

The graphics look absolutely gorgeous and show off the Xbox 360 very well – demands on the PC side are beyond what my desktop can deliver.

Surprise: Microsoft Office 2007

Microsoft took a brave step in reinventing the menu/tool bar that has been established for the last 10 years. Sure, the result isn’t a giant leap in terms of innovation but it is a joy to use and a big improvement over the older technology.

Importantly it shows a beacon of hope that there are people at Microsoft prepared to fundamentally change how people use their software for the better and not just deliver to developers (.NET, XML-HTTP).

Web site: YouTube

We were told repeatedly that this would be the year of high-definition yet despite large sales of HD ready equipment the content is still a bit thin on the ground (Sky HD, Xbox 360 and a smattering of HD titles). Sony hit another strike this year as another of their proprietary formats bombed – UMD video for the PSP – although sales of TV shows on Apple’s iTunes seem to indicate there is a market for tiny distinctly non-HD video.

The real winner on the video front has to be YouTube which goes on to show that whilst content is king there’s no reason you need to pay for it to be successful. Grainy, out of focus and copyright infringement seem the orders of the day but nobody cared – at least until a company worth suing brought them out (Google).

Communications: HTC

HTC phones and their branded variants have been popping up all over the web and in techies hands everywhere. Reviews are generally positive although I’m finding my TyTn sluggish in a couple of areas – something I hope the latest firmware will address.

Motorola meantime has been getting bad press over it’s Rokr variants.

Apple’s vapourware mobile phone continues to get insane coverage despite nobody having anything but speculation and rumours to go on. Cisco/LinkSys released an iPhone to which they own the trademark so I guess iChat Mobile is an option.

Web application: Google Reader

Google finally put it’s arse in gear and upgraded Google Reader to something not only usable but actually enjoyable to use. Now if only they could stream out the next 20 articles BEFORE I hit them so I don’t have to wait…

Rojo on the other hand deployed a screwed update and continually failed to pick up feeds complaining they were invalid or couldn’t be contacted despite other on-line tools were working just great. Bye.

With RSS becoming increasingly more popular something has to give and it’s news aggregation sites such as Slashdot and Digg which often reveal to you news you read several days ago and have already commented about at the original source.

[)amien

_{* Yeah okay, not a proper award ceremony but a useful ploy to group otherwise unrelated content into a single post.}

I’ve only played through A New Hope so far but all your favourite moments are there albeit with Lego’s new take on everything such as the Storm Trooper helmet machines and picking up Death Star crew with a crane and dropping them in a hole for bonuses.

There are some additions over the original too. As well as blowing almost everything in sight up you can now find piles of blocks to assemble into bridges, parts of robots etc. as well as creatures, Luke’s speeder and AT-ST’s to ride around. There are also new dark-force glowing objects to interact with reminding you to come back and play the levels again to unlock all the mini-kit pieces you need to build your own virtual garage of craft from the universe.

If I have one complaint it’s pretty much the one I have in all 3D games… the camera angle.

Often it goes off all over the place and some parts such as controlling the AT-ST is pure infuriation in two player as the camera attempts to follow one of you and slides the other person/their ride around uncontrollably before trapping them in a corner. I’d much rather have seen a split-screen mode or a camera that wasn’t afraid to zoom out more.

Perhaps on Lego Star Wars III… oh, there’s no more Star Wars left to cast into plastic!

I guess the their trilogy stops here.

[)amien

As the power of next generation systems increases so does the complexity and realism they can portray.

For some time now consumers have been unhappy with the rising prices of computer games whilst publishers are citing spiralling production costs as the excuse for sticking with “tried and tested” formulas and franchises.

Nintendo has been able to ride the wave somewhat by being more experimental on game play and cutting costs on realism.

Middle ware already exists for graphics, networking, sound, physics, AI and scripting – indeed engines such as Unreal and Steam bundle all these things you need into one of you own but you’re still left to deliver the content itself single-handedly.

Every object – be it building, car, character even lamp-post and trash can – needs a 3D model, appropriate textures, sounds for impact and detailed lists of how it should move and behave with regards to the physics.

Commoditising elements of digital content

What must arise is an industry providing elements of digital content.

For real-life licence objects such as cars it may well be the manufacturer providing high poly 3D models of the cars from their own CAD systems, audio samples from the engine and perhaps shaders from the companies supplying their paints.

Actors agents might commission and licence approved 3D body and face models with textures. Specific motion captured movements and audio dialog sold separately*

Other content might be provided by their real-world counterparts too. Houses provided by real-world architects and populated with furniture from designer brands.

These real-world objects can provide a whole new level of realism to the games they occupy whilst at the same time providing a more subtle form of advertising – the product placement.

Add an inquire” option that lets you point at the nice bookcase you blew to pieces and get some product details up from the manufacturer. Maybe it’s in your price range, maybe not… or maybe it’s a design being considered with a note thanking you for your interest…

Once the cost of building digital worlds has dropped then production houses can be more experimental. If not, the door is open for the indie developer to compete on the same playing field.

If these savings can also be passed onto the consumer maybe they can afford more than one game and will be happy to try new genre’s too…

[)amien

The DS Lite is tricky to compare to the PSP being that they take such different approaches. Sony has tried to make the PSP a portable multimedia station supporting UMD movies, video and music on memory sticks and it’s reasonably large wide-screen display as well as playing games.

As the saying goes “jack of all trades, master of none” sums up the PSP quite well. The UMD movies have been a bit of a flop – who wants to pay another £15 for a movie they already own to watch it on a smaller screen? Anyone wanting movies on the go would be better off with a portable DVD player or laptop.

Likewise it’s too big to be used as a portable MP3 player and the interface is years behind the likes of the iPod not to mention the fact there is no on-line music store to grab the tracks from anyway.

The PSP has impressive specifications for the games but basically it’s a PS2 in portable format with WiFi ability. Sure this is all well and good but with costs of games spiralling out of control the development houses want to stick to the same-old-formula of franchise titles and dull tie-ins something needs to be done. Sony cutting off PSP home-brew exploits with every release isn’t helping.

Which is what Nintendo are doing with the DS Lite. I brought a handful of the games which come on tiny cards resembling SD memory cards and while some of them are rather formulaic of the past – Sonic Rush for one – others take some innovative approaches.

Another Code is one such title and although the well-written story is a little too short and linear it features lovely artwork and includes those innovative controls methods I mentioned. Dragging, tapping, twisting and stroking the pen across the screen are the normal course while blowing into the microphone and shutting the lid all form part of the interface. It seems unfortunate that it only has two save game slots – I thought three was the course.

Brain Age is a far less ambitious title when it comes to control but one that is fun nevertheless and the way it continues to update and unlock elements each day as you progress through the tests and assessments keeps you coming back for more. The Soduku puzzles are also fun and can further unlock training and testing elements as well as hints and tips. The graphics and sound could have done with a bit more work however the ability to have four profiles and compare results between yourself and your friends/family keeps the competitive edge going.

Nintendogs…. well everyone raved over it but personally I really can’t get into it. There are dogs. You can teach them tricks… they remember their name. Okay, it has pretty graphics and cutesy appeal but it’s really not for me.

WarioWare: Touched! was one of the titles I got to try out when Steve brought his DS round a couple of months ago and the brief tapping fury needed a revisit. It’s good fun for a pick up and go but the lack of multiple profiles means the whole challenge element is a big missed opportunity. I guess you need two DSs for that…

Animal Crossing is currently at the top of the various game charts. I’ve spent an hour or so with it and again haven’t found myself particularly gripped – much like Nintendogs.

Sonic Rush I brought of curiosity and while the graphics and sound are up to their part it doesn’t really seem much different from the Sonic games I played on my sisters GameGear so many many years ago apart from the face it spans two screens and the batteries last longer than an hour.

The hardware itself seems well built, solid and glossy reminding me of the iPod and the screens are bright and solid to the touch (well, the lower one is). Apparently the DS Lite supports some kind of WiFi network although I’ve not been able to get that to do anything just yet. Perhaps it’s because the WiFi here is encrypted – I guess I should RTFM…

[)amien