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Consumer Technology UpdateBy Dave Wilby Microsoft ignites Silverlight: A genuine rival to Adobe's Flash Player? At the National Association of Broadcasters trade show in Las Vegas Monday, Microsoft unveiled its answer to Adobe Systems' Flash Player, but do we need it? ZDNet isn’t sure. Silverlight (formerly known Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere or WPF/E) is a Microsoft-flavoured web browser plug-in for playing media and rich online applications, and a proper Beta should be available before the end of this month. Silverlight is cross-browser, will work on both PCs and Macs and at under 2Mb download isn’t as flabby as some MS bolt-ons of the past. There’s no doubt Silverlight’s vector approach is going to look extremely slick – it’ll let users resize streaming video windows within web pages for example – and it will have a great advantage integrating Windows Media Video (WMV) which will entice the new generation of Vista users, but many believe that Adobe Flash Player penetration has simply penetrated too far to be reeled in at this stage. For its part, Adobe plans to launch its free Adobe Media Player (formerly Philo) later this year which will feature support for RSS Podcasts among other trinkets. Looks like the gloves are off. Videogames are certainly rather nasty but they’re not real, concludes extensive study Players of extreme video games *can* tell the difference between on-screen violence and real life, according to a new study by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the body responsible for rating new releases. Phew, thanks, we can all sleep soundly without listening out for chainsaws and incoming BFG fire now that the experts have sorted that one out! According to Times Online, BBFC interviews with gamers, parents and industry figures revealed that players really enjoy violent scenes of gore and find killing a character in a game more exciting than watching a character being bumped off in a film, but say the experiences won’t make them violent in real-life or desensitise them to real violence. Good-oh. Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto addicts were quizzed on their feelings, with most claiming the titles were just an escape from mundane life. Our favourite quotes included: "The sex clearly makes a contribution to the exhilarating sense of trashing the tedious constraints of everyday life." And: "You really were sticking an axe in someone and taking a couple of chops to their neck until their head fell off. I was quite addicted to it" Amaze your friends: Build yourself an Xbox 360 laptop! It isn’t authorised by Microsoft in any way, but custom hardware enthusiast Ben Heck’s laptop take on the Xbox 360 is a thing of beauty coveted by gamers worldwide. The Xbox Laptop Mk II is a one-off featuring a 17" widescreen display and USB keyboard. Ben isn’t taking orders for any new builds right now, but he has allowed Engadget to feature galleries, videos and step-by-step instruction courses if you fancy having a stab at some hardware hacking of your own. |
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Web 2.0 WatchBy Fiona Blamey Geotagging brings the outside in The web is often blamed for the demise of the local community. If you believe the mainstream media, people now sit alone in their bedrooms, frequenting insalubrious chat forums, typing mundane nonsense into blogs, and making worthless virtual friendships on MySpace. But while it’s true that more people are using the web to make online friends, there are signs that the web could also drive renewed interest in the local community. A new breed of entrepreneur is exploiting emerging Web 2.0 technologies to create community websites aimed at getting real-world neighbours together. One such entrepreneur is Steven Johnson, the author of several bestsellers, including Everything Bad Is Good For You. Johnson’s interests in city life and web technologies spurred him to create www.outside.in, a site that gathers information and online chatter about individual neighbourhoods and publishes it in one place. Outside.in exploits a technology called geotagging, a type of metadata that lets people assign a geographical location to web content. The site gathers all content – from blog posts to media articles, photos and maps – with the same geotag, and aggregates it into one place where it can be easily browsed. The result, as Johnson explains in his blog, is ‘a glimpse of all the textured, real-world issues and conversations and news unfolding in [that] location.’ People can quickly find out what the hot topics of conversation, or ‘in’ places, are in their community, and readily join in the discussion. The idea is that people will congregate around local places and issues, and start to socialise more with their neighbours. With its emphasis on participation, outside.in represents an evolution from sites like British dotcom survivor upmystreet.com, which displays useful information for a given postcode, but doesn’t include user-generated content like blog posts. While outside.in is currently limited to a few US cities, it is expanding thanks to recent funding. My guess is that similar sites will start to emerge in the UK even before outside.in arrives on these shores. |
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Tech Toon
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Welcome to the 100th issue of the Prompt Communications newsletter. We celebrated this momentous occasion by wearing party hats the whole time we were writing this edition. Schools in the developing world have something to celebrate too this week, as Microsoft announces plans to sell educational bundles of Windows and Office for $3 a go to countries like Rwanda and Thailand. All well and good, but we wonder whether it will be enough to convince them to turn their backs on pirated copies of the software.
Kay McMahon has been appointed as digital director for Wallpaper*. Previously, McMahon was the deputy editor of gomamatoday.com.
US Address: Prompt Communications LLC, 124 Mount Auburn St, Cambridge MA 02138, United States.