Darren Straight's Blog

The grand unveiling of the Apple iPad by Steve Jobs last week resulted in a mass scramble to get on the internet, as online shoppers were desperate to find out more. 

Statistics from InvisibleHand, the real-time shopping price comparison add-on, show that in the hours following the announcement the iPad accounted for almost five per cent of UK online shopping searches.

Robin Landy, founder of InvisibleHand, says, “Anticipation over the iPad has been building up for months and our data shows that people were not disappointed with what they saw. Interestingly despite not being available in the UK until March, British consumers were whipped into more of a frenzy than the US. Over the pond the iPad accounted for just under three per cent of online shopping searches.”

“The iPad is going to top most wanted lists for months to come. As consumers look to get their hands on this new gadget they need to make sure that they have the right tools to get it at the best price. Real-time price comparison is essential if early adopters are to take advantage of an iPad price war,” concluded Landy.

The Namco Arcade is open! The new digital discovery and delivery service from Namco Bandai Networks Europe (NBNE) is available on Facebook now. Users will be able to try out popular games, and have exclusive sneak previews of exciting forthcoming titles.

Launching with classic NBNE games including Time Crisis Elite, PAC-MAN™ Championship Edition, Rolling with Katamari, PAC-MAN™, Inspector Gadget, PAC-MAN™ Pinball 2, More Brain Exercise with Dr Kawashima, and Namco Arcade Golf, Namco Arcade hosts iconic titles for Facebook fans to enjoy.

Namco Arcade will also see the return of Ridge Racer to mobile gaming, with Ridge Racer Drift arriving soon. 

Playing in the Namco Arcade booth, users can write mini-reviews, become a fan of those games they just can’t walk away from, and share games over Facebook, Twitter, Digg and email.

Becoming a Fan of the application allows users to share their reviews and meet new people who love the same games they do.

Buying your favourite game so you can play wherever you go is easy. Simply click on “Buy Now” after the demo, enter your phone number and you’ll receive an SMS link on your phone to download the game from the NBNE WAP site. Users will not be charged until they click on the “download” link on the WAP page.

The Iron Fist Tournament is coming in the spring, so get training…

ipadio – the live phonecasting & social media service, has announced that its technology is being used to share exclusive content and speaker insight in the lead up to Melcrum’s Social Media Conference on 9th and 10th February 2010.

In the run up to the conference, interviews with all the speakers will be broadcast live via ipadio at, http://www.melcrum.com/socialmedia/index.html, allowing delegates to get a sneak preview of what’s to come at the conference. People who can’t make the live broadcast can listen later. And, with ipadio’s full integration into other social media platforms, listeners are able to post questions and get them answered by the speakers in real-time.

Abi Signorelli, a communications consultant who’s conducting the interviews said, “This is a great example of how true social communication should work. It’s creating a conversation and dialogue well in advance of the actual event itself – allowing the speakers and organizers to respond and react to what people think and want to know”.

James Bennett, Melcrum’s Head of Content, said: “This is the second time we’ve worked with ipadio ahead of an event and the technology and format works brilliantly.  Delegates are able to tweet questions on Twitter, the interview is live on www.melcrum.com  and our readers, listeners and crucially our members, are able to get a glimpse of the great content, information and advice that our speakers & experts will be able to give them on the day to make their jobs as internal communicators that much easier.”

Dr Mark Smith, CEO of ipadio said, “We are thoroughly enjoying our work with Melcrum – they continue to innovate in their use of ipadio – and the audience for this conference are engaging well with the pre-conference interviews, getting their questions posted live.  As a result, this conference is no longer a 2 day flash event, but a month long learning and networking experience – which given it’s a social media & communications conference is ideal.”

To listen live the interviews and ask questions, http://www.melcrum.com/socialmedia/index.html and follow Twitter hashtag #MelcrumSMC.

Snow surrounded the Aral Sea in early January 2010. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image on January 8, 2010. A band of snow extends from southwest to northeast, crossing over the Aral Sea. The band of snow thins along its southeastern edge, so snow barely covers the southeastern shore of the water body.

January 2010 also brought the heaviest snowfall in decades to the Beijing region and Seoul, and unusually heavy snow to Western Europe, including Great Britain. Unusually cold temperatures throughout the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere in December 2009 likely resulted from a negative plunge of the Arctic Oscillation. Land surface temperature anomalies in the region of the Aral Sea, however, were mixed, both above and below the 2000–2008 average.

By the time MODIS acquired this image of the Aral Sea, the water body was a small remnant of its former self. Once the world’s fourth-largest lake, the sea was dramatically reduced by irrigation projects.

Snow around the Aral Sea

iH8sn0w.com, the creator of iREB, the utility that allows you to bypass certain errors returned from iTunes during/before restoring to a custom firmware version for your iPhone and iPod Touch, has now released Sn0wbreeze into a public beta download.

Just in case you don’t know, sn0wbreeze is a tool for Windows that will jailbreak your iPods and iPhones, setup custom boot logos, activate your iPhone, root partition size, build custom IPSW, and more!

Sn0wbreeze’s requires Windows XP, Vista or 7 to run but can operate on the following devices.

• iPhone 2G
• iPhone 3G
• iPhone 3G[S] (old bootrom)
• iPod Touch 1G
• iPod Touch 2G – non MC

For more info and the download check out: http://ih8sn0w.com/index.php/welcome.snow

I must say though I’m in no way responsible for what happens to your device, and can not  guarantee it’s safe, but hey those that don’t experiment shall not learn or know what they are missing out on – click and install at your own risk! :p

Snow this January is pretty bad everywhere around the UK, and I’m sure you’ve seen enough snow to last you a while but here’s some Photos I’ve took of Snow at Darland Banks countryside walk in Chatham, Medway, Kent.

BETT 2010 (The world’s largest educational technology event) is on next week:

• Wed 13th January 10.00-18.00
• Thurs 14th January 10.00-18.00
• Fri 15th January 10.00-18.00
• Sat 16th January 10.00-16.00

But have you registerd yet? If so what day are you going? And what stands are you hoping to visit?

Theres a lot going on from what I hear, here’s a list of exhibitors as of the 9th November 2009, it’s certainly a long list at that….

Snow blanketed Great Britain on January 7, 2010, as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite passed overhead and captured this image. Snow covers most of England, from the east to the west coast. (The large image shows snow cover over the entire island of Great Britain.) The cities of Manchester, Birmingham, and London form ghostly gray shapes against the white land surface. Immediately east of London, clouds swirl over the island, casting blue-gray shadows toward the north.

Frigid temperatures followed snowfall, leaving roads and sidewalks treacherously icy, according to news reports. As of January 7, overnight temperatures had plunged to -18 degrees Celsius (-0.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in isolated spots, with more widespread temperatures of -10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit). The heavy snowfall downed power lines, leaving several thousand homes in southern England without electricity.

According to the Federation of Small Businesses, transportation difficulties kept an estimated 10 percent of the workforce home on January 5 and 6, and thousands of schools were closed. Forecasters warned that frigid temperatures could linger for up to a week. Eurostar was operating at a reduced capacity and airports remained open although passengers could expect delays.

A contributor to the persistent cold and snow across much of the Northern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes in December 2009 and January 2010 could be the fact that the atmosphere was in an extreme negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation (AO). The AO is a seesawing strengthening and weakening of semi-permanent areas of low and high atmospheric pressure in the Arctic and the mid-latitudes. One consequence of the oscillation’s negative phase is cold, snowy weather in Eurasia and North America during the winter months. The extreme negative dip of the Arctic Oscillation Index in December 2009 was the lowest monthly value observed for the past six decades.

Snow across Great Britain

A behind-the-scenes look at the research and technology that brought Project Natal to life.

Skyfire 1.5 has been released for Windows Mobile. For those of you with high resolution (VGA) screens on your mobile phones, you will appreciate the crisp text and stunning graphics of this new browser. The Windows Mobile version has launched, and the company designing Skfire expect to have news for Nokia Symbian touch screen and high resolution phones very shortly.

Skyfire Labs has recorded a video discussing and demonstrating the new improvements, which you can check out here. I’ve been using it myself for a while now and definitely like it.

Skyfire Mobile Browser 1.5 – Windows Mobile from Skyfirelabs on Vimeo.