Dienstag, 25. Januar 2005

Street art invades Counter-Strike. In Counter Street Art, Counter Strike players can now grab a spray and mark their territory with customised paint tags. Via Joystiq. [we make money not art] 6:34:55 PM    comment []

19 Days. I broke one of blogging's golden rules the other day when I wrote "20 Predictions for 2005". That golden rule is "keep it short" as we're all too busy to read and analyse long posts. So, following some email feedback, I thought it would be worth breaking the whole post into bite sized chunks and re-posting them over the next month - a sort of "one per day" approach. If you have read them diligently - sorry, but you can always just skip over them. That'll also allow people to comment in focused way instead of "Whoa - that's a lot, but yeah I agree with number 3 and 6, but number 7 sucks...or was it 5? Whatever..." Please leave a comment as all bloggers love feedback and it also makes it more interesting for everyone else. The first one was P2P file sharing on mobiles: 1. P2P File Sharing So far, the mobile world has been spared the massive assault on revenues that has plagued the record industry. Having said that, despite said assault, CD sales do continue to rise, so there's some muddled thinking going on somewhere. There have been quite a lot of small experiments, niche sites and geeky mobile users swapping files and ringtones, but it's far from moving into the mass market. You could get your hands on, for instance, a cracked N-Gage game within a week of launch, if you know where to look. But I predict that this cottage industry will boom in 2005 as kids get fed up of paying three times more for a few notes than they get charged for downloading the whole track at legitimate sites like iTunes. While a proportion of this will take place over the PC, I think Bluetooth and local P2P sharing will light this particular fire. There's even a possible business model here, if you think about it. And I don't mean relying on advertising. UPDATE: Since I wrote that a few days ago, we looked at the phenomenon of Happy Slapping where what are basically assaults are filmed on video phones. The resulting films are passed all over the UK by Bluetooth. [The Mobile Technology Weblog] 6:33:07 PM    comment []

Wind-Up Charger. Disposable batteries bad. Rechargeable batteries good. Human-powered recharging of batteries excellent. Weighing only 90g (3oz) this wind-up charger, comes with adaptors to fit many models of mobile cell phones including Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung and Siemens. Youâo[dot accent]ll get either 30-60... I often wonder what would happen if all electronic art were human powered... --dr [Eyebeam reBlog] 6:31:54 PM    comment []

The Sound Of A Tasmanian Devil. AIFF audio format. Horrible. [Eyebeam reBlog] 6:31:21 PM    comment []

Demon Blob Over Tokyo Bay. "The demon has materialized over Tokyo Bay!" "Use the gamma beam--now!" "It's not stopping--it seems to be eating the gamma radiation." "We'll have to lure it back into the wormhole, using the gamma cannon as a decoy--move the ship into position, and on my signal..." What would Francis Bacon have done with digital media? --dr [Eyebeam reBlog] 6:30:35 PM    comment []

rapidBox Skype Router. For as cool as $20 Skype USB handsets are, there's something a bit cluttered about having seperate handsets for both VoIP and regular phone calls. The rapidBox is a simple USB router with three RJ11 (phone plug) jacks that lets you use the handsets you already own to make calls over the Skype network (including SkypeOut). The slick bit is that both types of calls work at the same time, so that a Skype call will ring into handset just as easily as a regular phone call, and switching between modes is as easy as pressing the * key. And since there are three phone jacks instead of the expected two, you can also drop on a second phone or fax machine (although faxing over VoIP doesn't really work). Not bad for 50 clams. RapidBox Skype Adaptor Review [VoIPUser] Product Page [RapidVoIP] [Gizmodo] 3:16:07 PM    comment []

Rap Meets SMS. The artist, Frank Plant, wrote to me to tell me about the new installation, F2T (Free to Talk) he's created with his colleague, Thomas Charveriat. It's kind of rap meets sms meets robots! Check out the link here and watch the video. Viewers interact directly with the artwork by sending it a short text message from their mobile. Once received, the SMS is scanned for frequently used words and, when a match is found, the four elements are activated. The main piece, "Rapper" begins to twist and wave his hand while mouthing a rap based on the message sent, the new lyrics culled from more than 130 different hip hop phrases written by Amsterdam-based lyricist and composer Jim Barnard. The rest of the piece is simultaneously set into motion: "Boom Box" starts flashing and blasting out the song while "Joy Ride" a bouncing low-rider, and "Shake Ass" (looks like it sounds) begins to move, triggered by ambient sound sensors. When the song is finished, a thermal printer spits out a souvenir with the original SMS and the words of the "Rapper". Pretty cool! On a personal note, my 12 year old is disgusted that someone of my age likes Jay Z. Check out the fabulous Collision Course. I also like DJ Dangermouse's mash up of The Beatles' White Album and Jay Z's Black Album - the Grey Album, which EMI are currently trying to ban. They won't be able to, of course, as it's on all the file sharing networks. Gotta keep the lawyers busy, I suppose. [The Mobile Technology Weblog] 3:14:26 PM    comment []

eBay Problems. 'Integrity of eBay markeplace' at risk - sellers' group | The Register: All is apparently not well in the house of eBay. It has been a bad few days for eBay. Last week more than $12bn was wiped off the value of the dotcom auction house as it warned that its financial performance for 2005 is unlikely to live up to bullish expectations. Now discontent is growing among its big traders, who are dismayed with recent price rises imposed by ebaby and alarmed about the reputation of the online marketplace. [Gadgetopia] 3:13:54 PM    comment []

Mobile games get fancier, more social. Games tailored for cell phones are increasingly adding community-oriented elements, such as tournaments for top scores, head-to-head combat or chatting with other players. After all, the ubiquitous gadget is meant to connect people. "The mobile phone is really turning into... [Mobile Games & Gaming Blog] 2:24:42 PM    comment []

Vishal Gondal "We're the leader in wireless games". Indiagames Ltd is on Cloud 9. The Mumbai-based wireless game developer is in the process of finalising its new strategy and expansion plans after it signed a definitive agreement with TOM Online Inc, China that enables the latter to acquire... [Mobile Games & Gaming Blog] 2:24:06 PM    comment []

Location-based mobile phone games. Cool list of location based mobile gaming found here.... [Mobile Games & Gaming Blog] 2:21:25 PM    comment []