Darren Straight's Blog

This morning Google Street View Coverage in the UK has greatly Improved by up to 95% – 96%. With this imagery update around 238,000 miles of public road are now available in Google Street View in the UK.

This update of 210,000 miles of UK public roads available, adds to the 28,000 miles currently available before this morning.

This move means that Google Maps users will be able to see 95 – 96 percent of the UK’s approximately 246,985 miles of public roads.

People will be able to view and explore 360 degree street-level imagery of places as far North as Shetland and as far South as Penzance; from Pembrokeshire in the West of Wales to Ipswich in the East of England or over the sea to Northern Ireland and many places in between. With this imagery update around 238,000 miles of public road are now available in Street View in the UK.

Google first launched imagery for 25 cities in the UK in March 2009 and since doing so has been working hard to process and stitch together more imagery collected by its cars. By increasing availability to cover almost all of the country, the UK joins countries like Spain, France, Italy and the US, which already enjoy nationwide coverage in Street View.

People can check out a restaurant before arriving, make travel plans, arrange meeting points, get a helping hand with geography homework, or just get to know their town better.

Businesses of any size can make the most of this technology for free by embedding Google Maps into their websites. An owner of a local B&B can promote it to visitors for example, or a local library or restaurant could ensure people can find them on a street level map. Many UK businesses have already benefitted from having Street View technology on their sites, enabling their customers to easily find the information they need.

Street View has already proved both popular and useful across the UK, with more than a 30% sustained increase in Google Maps usage since launch [source: Google Inc.].

Today, new findings from YouGov reveal how people use it in their daily lives. It shows almost two thirds (60%) of people who have used Street View have done so to find out where they’re going and get directions; one third (33%) have used it to look at places in other countries and one in five (21%) have already used it for house-hunting, despite up until now only being available in 25 UK cities [source: YouGov plc, February 2010].

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Over the last couple of days I’ve been playing Cod4 MW (Call of Duty Modern Warfare) Multiplayer, it’s just one of those games that once I start playing again I can’t stop! Anyhow I could’nt play any server that was using the Anti Cheat system PukBuster as I kept on getting an error message saying PunkBuster is not installed, I reinstalled and downloaded the latest updates but still nothing, eventually I fixed the problem as well as some issues involving being kicked out every time I tried and kill someone. :S

But then I started recieveing the following message:

NOTICE: Darren PunkBuster kicked player ‘Darren’ (for 0 minutes) … RESTRICTION: Disallowed Program/Driver [125120]

Took me a while but I found a solution on the steam forums here.

It seems that you need to do the following, open up Steam and Disable steam overlay in games, by going to: Settings > In-game tab > uncheck steam community. Not the best solution if you still want the steam community window open in game, but at leat it works. I’m sure someone else will have the problem so I thought id post my findings here. Enjoy!

Samsung, has announced the Samsung S2 Portable, a fully transportable external hard drive, pre-loaded with the movie ‘Michael Jackson’s THIS IS IT’.

Timed with the DVD and Blu-ray Disc(TM) release of ‘Michael Jackson’s THIS IS IT’, the pre-loaded external HDD will be available at major European retailers from February 22, 2010.

“We are excited to present this movie starring Michael Jackson, the greatest entertainer of all time, pre-loaded on the Samsung S2 Portable,” said H.S. Lee, Vice President, Storage Marketing, Samsung Electronics.

Samsung’s S2 Portable has an increased capacity of 500GB and its improved data recording technology makes it the perfect solution for the increasing number of consumers who are building their personal movie collections on their PCs.

In addition to the pre-loaded ‘Michael Jackson’s THIS IS IT’, the Samsung S2 Portable boasts USB On Board Technology and supports various user-friendly features such as Samsung Auto Backup that enables real-time or scheduled backup and SecretZone™ that encrypts and stores data on a virtual drive as well as SafetyKey™, a powerful data-security function that offers dual data protection through a password.

The special edition will be available through retailers in Europe from February 22. Availability in other regions will be determined following the initial launch.

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….