Author Archive

ThickButtons brings better typing to Android touch screens

by David Gilson

March 31st, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsNo Comments

Even though touch screen phones are more popular than ever, many people who enter a lot of text on their phone still prefer a physical keyboard (Ed. That’s me alright.) The need for tactile feedback is often cited as the reason. However, it’s likely that tactile feedback is preferred so that users know that they’re going to hit the correct letter, before they actually press it.

Which is why haptic feedback on touch screens doesn’t actually help typing speed as it comes far too late – it vibrates after you’ve hit the wrong key.

US start-up, ThickButtons, think they have the answer.

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Ubuntu One Music Store goes into public beta, Canonical calls for more testers

by David Gilson

March 23rd, 2010 | Posted in Audio | Comments3 Comments

RhythmboxU1MusicStoreLast week, we reported on Canonical’s moves to incorporate a music store into Ubuntu. Ahead of Ubuntu’s April release of “Lucid Lynx”, Canonical have officially announced the public beta of their desktop music store.

The key to the music store’s infrastructure is Canonical’s cloud storage solution, “Ubuntu One”. Purchased MP3’s are initially sent from 7digital to the user’s Ubuntu One storage account, which are then synchronised to the user’s PC. Purchased tracks are only permitted to be re-downloaded three times from 7digital. Although, having the tracks stored within the Ubuntu cloud makes this limitation practically irrelevant.

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Motorola unveils Android-powered landline phone, lacks Skype or Google's app store

by David Gilson

March 22nd, 2010 | Posted in Comms, Mobile | Comments1 Comment

motorola-home-phone

At this year’s CeBit, Motorola showed off a cordless landline telephone running Google’s Android operating system, as reported by Engadget earlier this month. Known as the HS1001, the device is built by Binatone, and is expected to ship in the third quarter of this year with a price tag of $150. The hardware sports a 2.8″ touch screen and loud-speaker. And as you’d expect, the handset uses DECT technology, but surprisingly, it also has WiFi.

The phone won’t carry the Android market place, however, or even have Skype installed, though you’ll still be able to access email and browse the web just as with any other Android phone.

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OnLive streaming games readies US launch, vapourware accusations put to rest?

by David Gilson

March 16th, 2010 | Posted in Other | Comments2 Comments

onlivePerhaps this will put the vapourware accusations to rest.

OnLive, the streaming games start-up, has announced that it will begin rolling out its subscription service ($14.95 per-month plus the cost of purchasing or renting the games themselves) to customers on the 17th of June 2010 to coincide with this year’s E3 gaming conference.

It will be a US-only offering, however, at least for the foreseeable future, restricted to “to early registrants throughout the 48 contiguous United States”. This is in-line with their beta test program which requires users to be within 1000 miles of one of OnLive’s data centres.

The idea behind OnLive is that rather than having a powerful games console in your home, OnLive handles all of the heavy duty computation and graphics rendering. Then, a video stream of the game is sent back to your screen, and your controller inputs are sent back to them, and so on.

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Ubuntu One Music Store – The new iTunes?

by David Gilson

March 15th, 2010 | Posted in Audio | Comments1 Comment

Ubuntu enters the music market

Canonical enters the music market

Canonical are making some interesting moves with respect to making their desktop Linux distribution, Ubuntu, more friendly to mainstream users. They now have a Dropbox like service called Ubuntu One. Of which, the short term goal is to sync users’ files and application settings, via the cloud, across all of their Ubuntu computers.

Further to this, it seems that Canonical clearly has aspirations to deliver DRM free music to desktop users. They have already given a vague outline of incorporating an ‘Ubuntu One Music Store’ into their default music player, RhythmBox. An alpha tester, “Popey”, of Ubuntu’s next desktop release, 10.04 “Lucid Lynx”, has already blogged that Canonical are likely to use 7digital as the back-end for this service (link). He has also blogged that RhythmBox has been prepared to both: feature the music store, and look for MP3 tracks stored on users’ UbuntuOne drive (link). The latter means that when a user buys music from the Ubuntu One Music Store, the MP3 files will be available to the user on any of his/her Ubuntu computers.

The final tantalising piece of the Puzzle is that another Ubuntu 10.04 alpha tester has reported that it is now possible to view tracks and playlists stored on his non-jailbroken iPhone.

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YouTube updated for Symbian, now supports user accounts

by David Gilson

March 12th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | Comments2 Comments

YouTube's new application homepage on S60

YouTube's new application homepage on S60

It’s taken a while but YouTube has finally added support for user accounts in its updated client for phones running the Nokia-led Symbian OS.

Announced on the 10th of March, users can now log into their YouTube account enabling them to access their favourites, subscriptions, and videos. YouTube stated that it has taken them this long because they wanted to focus on speed of search and playback. Also new to version 2.4 is suggested search terms as you type in a search query.

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