No matter which flavour of Windows OS you use, you are bound to get some really unnecessary shortcuts lying in the corner of that desktop. Here we list some of them, and this is a topic open for discussion.

1. Adobe Acrobat Reader

Really, who needs this shortcut. When was the last time you opened up Adobe Acrobat Reader, and then hit Open PDF. This also applies to other PDF readers.

2. Briefcase

So, this is like a Dropbox for the offline world. Totally unnecessary.

3.Show Desktop

You are already there. Why need it?

4.IE6 (or any other version of IE)

Well, ok so this one is from a Mozilla/Chrome fan. So the only time I had to use IE was to download Mozilla/Chrome.

5. AOL

No one uses AOL IM anymore. And even if someone did, with GMail integration, this one is about to be lost in the every deep recesses of technological oblivion.

6.Terrible SW: Real Player/Bonzai Buddy/Quicktime Player

Self explanatory isn’t it. Who uses them anyway?

7.Printer

Similar to the Adobe Acrobat Reader, we just print documents from the document window itself, rather than turning on the Printer from the official HP/Canon printer application.

So, the verdict is: <insert drumroll>

I respect you, Internet Explorer shortcut, and Imma let you finish, but Adobe Reader 9 shortcut is one of the most unneeded shortcuts of all time.

Kindly leave your thoughts, suggestions for additions to this list, and comments below.

Right, so here we are with not one, but three official carriers who are providing the iPhone in the UK [ unlike the US, where AT&T still has the exclusive rights]. We had O2 originally who were the sole carriers in the UK, but when the contract between O2 and Apple expired this year in November, Orange sprung into action. Yet, the rate and plans revealed by Orange for the iPhone were of no noticeable change than the ones of O2.

And now, UK’s biggest retail supermarket – Tesco – in partnership with O2, is posing as the third official carrier of the iPhone in the UK. The rate plans were released today [ visit: Tesco iPhone website]

So which one of the three is actually the one to look out, or has anything changed at all? Has the addition of 2 more players in the iPhone market brought any real value addition for the customer. We’ll try to answer that question with comparative spreadsheets of the various rate plans. Hit the jump to view the spreadsheet.

O2:

The first carrier of the iPhone offers the rate plans shown below. [For the higher resolution image, click the picture]

[Rates Source: O2 iPhone Website]

So, the O2 offers the iPhone in Pay & Go for £342.54 (8GB), £440.40(16GB) and £538.30(32GB). But the main competition arena for the carriers is the Pay-monthly deals.

We tried to calculate the per-month(including) for O2′s pay-monthly deals. [All rates are per month, including Phone costs, and averaged over the contract period]

On the 8GB iPhone 3G- it ranges from as low as £34.26 [for 24 month contract -600 mins/500texts and Unlimited internet] to £73.41[ for 18 months contract-3000 mins/500 texts].

On the 16GB iPhone 3Gs-the lowest rate was for £37.89[for 24 month contract-600 mins/500texts and Unlimited internet] to £73.41[for 18 months contract-3000 mins/500 texts]. Now this is a redundant plan, which pretty much leaves the 8GB iPhone plan as a stupid addition.

As for the 32GB iPhone 3Gs – the lowest rate was for £41.56[24 month contract-600 mins/500 texts and Unlimited internet] to £78.79[for 18 month contract-3000 mins/500 texts].

The iPhone certainly does not come cheap, and O2 has no unlimited talk+text plans similar as offered by Orange and Tesco.

Orange:

[Rate source: Orange iPhone website]

[For the higher resolution image, click the picture] The Pay & Go iPhone rates for Orange, O2 and Tesco are not much different at all. But the major difference between O2 and Orange is the offering of Unlimited mins, text and internet on the Orange plans. Of course, Orange caps the unlimited internet usage at 750 MB per month-as per the fair usage policy – which is in fact complete bull crap.

Secondly, for the lower rates, Orange offers better value for money.
Such as for £29.36 a month, Orange offers 150 mins/250 texts [ for almost similar Phone prices on 18 and 24 month contracts]. Whereas O2 offers 75 mins/125 texts for the same amount of monthly pay-plan [half of Orange].

But this difference is not there for the higher pay-monthly plans. So if you are going for the higher pay-monthly plans, there is practically no difference between choosing Orange or O2 as the Per-month cost works out to be quite similar.

And then enter – Tesco Mobile

[Rate Source: Tesco Mobile iPhone Website]

[For the higher resolution image, click the picture] So Tesco’s offering is a bit different from the pay-plans that we have seen so far. Or is it? It does offer a 12 month plan which no other carrier offers. This means, we won’t have to wait for long before we upgrade the next version of iPhone, as and when it rolls out from Cupertino. But the per-month rate calculated is repulsively expensive. Tesco has  its own £30 sim only plans which allows customers to avail unlimited texts/calls and internet. An additional 30 quid per month and £50 up-front will now get you the iPhone 3GS 32GB. It works out to just £64.17 which stands at almost half of the rate offered by both Orange and O2. But again, this is a 24 month contract.

Also, as I mentioned earlier – the 12 month contract flexibility is the one to look out for.

So, how do the prices of the three compare to each other.

Best Phone Price:

8GB: Tesco sells at a total of £462 for 12 months – which inflates to £693 for 18 months. But comparing 12 and 18 month deals is not fair. So we’ll just drop it.

So, as 12 month deals are only offered by Tesco, Round 1- goes to Tesco. Also the £20 month pay-monthly gives back £60 monthly credit and also for every pound you spend on your bills, you earn Tesco Clubcard points which you can redeem for your Tesco grocery shopping.

For 16GB:

24 month contract: Tesco’s rates:  £1440 for 24 months.

The closest that Orange comes is at £2936-for unlimited stuff and O2 offers something similar for £1321.38

And for 32GB:

24 month contract: Tesco’s rates: £1490 for 24 months [Just £50 more than the 16GB version, hmm!]

Orange offers almost the same for £2936.16 and O2 for £1761.84

The final verdict:

Pay & Go – Either of the three. Maybe Orange, coz it has Orange Wednesdays – offering 1+1 free movie tickets for Wednesdays.

12 months – only available on Tesco – clear choice.

18 months – Orange or O2 doesn’t matter. But if you’re choosing the £29.35 tariff, go for Orange.

24 months- Tesco ftw!! Unlimited Text, Calls and Internet – including Web and Wi-Fi which includes BT Openzones.

Now, it will be a tough act to follow for Vodafone when they release their rate plans early next year. As for Christmas time, I think Santa’s iPhone gifts will come with a Tesco Mobile Sim!

Please leave your comments on this comparison post! Cheerio!

So we do have our own daily visited websites. I can’t live without my daily dose of Techcrunch and Lifehacker. And then, there are the usual ones – Facebook, Twitter, GMail etc. Now, although browsers like Chrome, Opera and Firefox with addons do allow users to have a start up Fast-Dial page which has links to those highly visited links, there is still a big link missing in the amount of stuff we want. Of course, that void has been filled to some extent by the father of all start-up pages – iGoogle. iGoogle is highly customisable, with gadgets, widgets and feeds. You can add a lot of stuff to keep your iGoolge engaging, but again, adding too much stuff makes it cluttered and takes ages to load. And not to forget, you have Themes on iGoogle.

Enter a new alternative to iGoogle – 44tips.com, a website run by some awesome developers at picturesque Amsterdam [ I am imagining that they have an awesome view in their office ] The first thing you notice about the UI [user interface] on 44tips is that the site design is simplistic, clutter-free and quite minimal – yet, pretty. The colours are basic dark grey and Orange with a twang. Both remind me of Firefox somehow, which means-it works for me. Let’s explore the usability and the features on this website, and if it is worth making it your homepage. Shall we? The first thing once you hit the website is that it asks you to create a new account. Although you can use the features on the upper tab without creating an account. However, you will not be able to save your favourites [which we'll explore later]. But it’s better to just go ahead and create an account – coz it’s easier rather than relying on your browser cookies. Also do remember to change your country preferences. Else, you’ll end up watching a lot of stuff in a language you wouldn’t understand. [That happened to me ] Also, when you create an account, you are asked to add your delicious account name and/or flickr account if you want to integrate it with 44tips, which is great.

A quick run through the website shows that the different tabs on the top divide the site into sections such as – collections, feeds, news, music, social, photos, etc. Add to that there is a search bar in the middle. Like the design, but there is a problem with the navigation. It is a huge page of content when you go for any one of – Music, Video etc. And so, to go the next page, you need to go to the bottom right, and find a small arrow button as the one shown below.

Its a bit annoying to place the mouse pointer precisely on that small space. It should have placed somewhere in the middle of the page, and please make the arrow bigger. A quick round-up of what the pages do:

Collections: Shows some nice goodies -like Facebook apps, and lotsa other goodness. I believe this links are collected from Del.Icio.Us.

Daily Tips: It’s something similar to the above, but worth checking out.

Feeds: Need I say. You can add your own feeds, and ditch that Google reader. Kidding. I cannot ditch Google reader.

Friends: Creates a Mosaic of the pictures of your Facebook and/or Hyves friends. But nothing more than that. All that you can do is to send them message informing about 44tips, or visit their profile via 44tips’ mosaic. A very pretty UI must say.

Games: The best one of all the tabs. It features legendary games such as Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia, and Solitaire. But there’s no Bejeweled here #fail. Games are divided into Men, Women, Kids I and II, and Girls. Apparently, Women like to play Deal or No Deal . But playing Prince of Persia was awesome, and it brought back a lot of happy memories.

Messages: You can add your Twitter, Facebook, Hyves of Linked In account here. It will act as a status updater. But to use this, you’d have to be registered as a user with 44tips. There are no provisions to add multiple twitter accounts, or lists from Twitter.

Music: It collects links from YouTube and Last.Fm.

News: Brings in news feeds and is sub-divided into different sections – Tech, Politics, Science, Health etc. This is great, but you can’t actually replace Google News.

Photos: It’s a well thought out Visual search which aggregates images from Flickr. I like it.

Radio: Even on the USA-selected website, the Radio tab shows the following.

I translated it using Google Translator – from Dutch to English and it means: Click and listen to your favorite radio station I tried clicking it, but it didn’t work. So, as of now Radio is not here on 44tips.

And finally Video: which accumulates YouTube links only. I haven’t seen any video links being gathered from other video sites such as Vimeo or DailyMotion, which is a bummer. As for customization, you can add/delete any of these tabs using the + button in the end.

Final Verdict: 44tips is definitely a very useful content aggregator. It is ad-free at the moment, and most of its features can be used without even registering. It’s social skills are still quite limited, although you can still use the basic tweeting feature if you are not too fussed about using Lists etc. The music and the video tabs are a breeze to work with and the Flickr image search is pretty awesome.

I’d like to see the Radio working, along with a Tiny URL generator somewhere. And I need more Games. That’d surely make me happy. And with time, we could probably see more regions been added. I am however sceptical about the revenue-model of this website. Does it only use the user-email IDs as contacts for future marketing avenues, and well, the other accounts associated? It is a tough model to generate revenue, as there are no ads on the website. This is a good thing for us users.

But at the end of the day, 44tips has a lot to offer, but there is no real amount of user customisation that is available on iGoogle. iGoogle also has a lot of themes, gadgets and widgets to choose from which we would like to see on 44tips. But taking 44tips for what it is, my verdict is – It surely is worth being the homepage on one of your browsers. Works just fine on IE7 and above, Firefox, Opera and Chrome. Haven’t tested on Safari, but should work fine. Do lemme know in the comments, what do you think about 44tips and if this review was helpful. Cheerio!

I have been on a smartphone hunt for quite some time now. The basic feature that I am looking for in a smartphone is of a touchscreen phone with the flexibility of adding apps – 3rd party Apps. Apart from the extremely popular iPhone which happens to come in a repulsively expensive deal here in the UK, there are the other iPhone alternatives. So, in this section of Smartphone Hunt we will be analysing the iPhone alternatives one by one. And the biggest iPhone alternative in today’s mobile market is the family of Android phones.

Motorola’s latest offering in the Android phone section is the Motorola Droid known as Motorola Milestone in Europe. But throughout this review we’ll be referring to it as Droid [ coz it's easy]. While it is still to be seen where the Droid lands up with which carrier in the UK [ No one has confirmed it yet - though O2, 3 and T-mobile have backed out. Possible carriers could be either of Vodafone or Orange]. Here is a quick review of the different features that the Droid offers and we’ll finally decide if it is worth buying it or not.

To begin with, let’s have a close look at the aesthetic side of the model. It is black and well-built. The finish on the back and the body overall seems top notch. However, I am NOT looking for a phone with a QWERTY keyboard. Because it is a touchscreen phone, I believe it only adds to the weight of the model. Also, the huge D-pad on the right of the keyboard is just unnecessary. It is a touchscreen for Christ sake. If I wanted to navigate, I would use the touchscreen. Why add a humongous D-pad and instead cramp up the key spacing in the keyboard. Bad choice of design.

The screensize is 3.7 inches, which is greater than that of the iPhone and at 480 x 854 pixel resolution, the display is for sure one of the strong points of the Droid. So it will be a breeze when it comes to viewing websites [ even those only suitable for viewing on a PC monitor] or DVD quality movies. And like other touchscreen surfaces, it is a fingerprint magnet. I want someone to come up with an innovative solution to this.

One of the other strong points that comes with the Droid is that it releases with the latest Android release 2.0 – Eclair. From the early look of the Eclair, the UI is snazzy and easy to navigate. While the US version lacks multi-touch, the Europe version – Milestone has multi-touch. As for other smartphone features like multi-tasking [ you know like searching while on call etc], or voice-recognition and even the most essential feature of making calls, the Droid scores well on all these grounds.

And now for the cream. Motorola Droid is the only phone right now to feature Android 2.0. And with it, it offers Google Maps Navigation which offers 3D street view. As for the camera, it’s a 5MP camera offering a maximum of 2592 x 1936 pixels of resolution and clubbed with 16GB of extensible memory [Micro SD card], you have a digital camera ready to take quite good snaps. It has 4X digital zoom with image stabilization and also a flash. Video capturing is done at 720X480 resolution at 24fps. And of course, since Android offers facilities to upload on YouTube or Facebook etc, media sharing is going to be a breeze.

Most importantly, it has 3.5 mm headphone jack and so it can fit your favourite set of earphones or headphones to enjoy music. And the best thing about media syncing is that there is no iTunes with this one.

On the hardware end – the battery life that the Droid offers is 6.4 hours of 3G talk time and about 11 days of standby. This should be more than enough for normal users like me who use Wi-Fi, a few apps – like the media player and maybe maps sometime. And I am not one of those who are on the phone 24/7. With a processor speed od 550 MHz, the Droid is certainly a powerful piece of machinery. The question is however, how much will all of this cost.

There are no answers of who is going to be the carrier of the Droid in the UK yet.

My only problem with the Droid is the keyboard and the large D-pad. But given the many features that the Droid provides, it surely can justify to be a good buy. Unless it sports a ridiculous price tag, I guess, this is the Android phone to beat, as of now. Until maybe, the Acer Liquid takes off. More on the Acer Liquid later. For now, let me know in the comments what do you think about the Droid/ Milestone. Cheerio!

This is a long overdue review since the Sky Player was released on the XBOX 360 for UK users on the 28th of October. Well, I have been keeping busy. But nevertheless, I am here writing this review. Sky player’s introduction into the Xbox could be a major game-changer in terms of sheer innovation, control, and distribution channels that this medium opens up, and the game console can finally state as it has arrived. Frankly because, Sky is certainly the lion’s shareholder when it comes to Cable and Satellite TV distribution. All the major sporting events – Sky Sports; Movie channels – Sky; TV Entertainment – Sky 1 shows – House, Fringe, Modern Family and Stargate Universe amongst others. So there is no denying that Microsoft did choose the right partner to collaborate with. But does the Sky Player meet all the expectations or does it disappoint? The answer is a mixture of both.

After the Jump, Full Review of the Sky Player on the XBOX 360 including screenshots.

Now, to begin with, the Sky Player on the XBOX took sometime to get configured. I tried to get it on the XBOX Dashboard, and I have still been unsuccessful. If anybody knows how to get it there, please shout it out in the comments.

What you need to get it started is given here: http://skyplayer.sky.com/watch/xbox360/

I did experience a lot of problems to get it started initially. The morning of 28th Oct, even after proper installation, Sky Player kept on showing Access Denied: Failure to connect. Talk about successful rolling out. The Sky website page for XBOX 360 was down. And Sky even released an apology notice.

We’ll not go into the installation part, and get straight into the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The interface and the UI used is as simple as it can be. Just use the game controllers to scroll and browse around the contents.

To go to the Sky Player, I currently go to Quicklaunch–>Latest Downloads–>and then select Sky Player. This means, that unless I am not downloading much stuff in the coming days, I am safe to use this method. And so I need help here to get the Sky Player on the dashboard. Now, once it is installed, and you have configured your login settings using your XBOX Live card, and your Sky ID, what you get is this.

As mentioned, the UI is simple. The channels can be browsed according to genres, and also the movies – Sky Movies, Movies on Demand etc.

The TV Guide reminds of the new EPG – which is still to be rolled on the Sky Box that we got.

The Live TV section is the one which disappoints the most. There’s no BBC or BBC iPlayer, no Freeview channels, and not even Sky1. All we have in the Entertainment section is – GOLD. And some programmes are not viewable in Live TV Broadcast. A message is displayed when it is so:

The Live broadcast as suggested by Live TV isn’t actually live as on selection of a channel, the following clearly indicates Buffering:

Finally, when the Broadcast does start, the output is quite amazingly good. At the current average bandwidth, the picture quality at a selected High Quality is normal Standard Definition broadcast as shown below.

Although the OnDemand service shows a lot of channels, the content isn’t as flashy.

And by not flashy, I mean this: The On Demand service on Sky 1 contains only few programs- There is no House, Fringe or Stargate. What you get is UK Border Force.

And even though, I am a subscriber of Sky1 as well as Sky1 HD, I need to pay a rental fee to watch these on demand programs. How much you ask?

Yes, you saw that right. Almost a pound to see these programmes, when I can just simply Sky+ them, or may be not even care about Sky+ them, coz these programmes are just not good enough for me to record.

On a positive note, one of the most fun parts of the whole experience is : Party Room view.

Feels like you are viewing in a huge hall with a wall of Telly. What’s even more exciting is that you can rotate the view using the gamepad controller, and the back-view of the party room has a wall LCD TV too.

And yes, I was just watching Drake and Josh on Nick – for testing purposes!

Coming to the Movies section:

Can be browsed on the basis of Genre, Alphabetic, Latest Releases, Live Movie Channels etc.

So what’s the verdict?

Skyplayer on the XBOX 360 is a remarkable feature and is indeed a giant leap in the usability of the console. The simple UI makes it easily accessible to anyone and everyone and with a huge line-up of movie on demand, and movie channels and sports channels – this is a perfect choice – provided you have the relevant subscription. But to me, the content needs to deliver more to make the arrival more dashing.

The Good:

I’ll say it again, Love the UI.

The fun Party Room.

Movies on demand, and Good n Fast Live Streaming at Standard Definition.

And the best of all: To use Skyplayer on the XBOX, you need just £15 per month for the XBOX Live subscription and no dish at all. Each Sky Player account can have four PCs attached, as well as one Xbox, and those consoles and PCs needn’t be in the same household as the satellite dish.

In other words, Sky is offering here is a second subscription for use anywhere you like, or a second set-top box for those wanting movies and sports in a different location other than your main viewing area.

The Bad:

It is still £15 for the subscription which doesn’t even have all Live streaming channels of Freeview.

Again, no BBC, iTV or any Freeview channel. All we get in the name of Entertainment is GOLD.

MTV cannot be played all the time as some programs are not available for viewing on the Sky Player.

The Ugly:

On demand Service for Sky has very less and unlikely to be rented content.

More so, the rental fees to watch on demand episodes is just ridiculously expensive. Who’d pay a pound to watch UK Border Force?

Why there is no iPlayer in the On Demand service? The On Demand Service needs to carry all the On-demand providers contents on it – from BBC, iTV, Channel 4 and Five.

So, as I said before, that with the inclusion of much more content, and more features with a subsidised pricing, the Skyplayer on the XBOX  is certainly a catch. But as of now, it doesn’t dazzle me.

P.S. For the entire pricing plans go here: [Sky Player Pricing Details - Guardian]

Morgan Stanley’s report ” How Teenagers Consume Media ” talks about the impact, reach and relevance of different forms of media on the target section of the population – the teens. The importance of this paper is the very fact that today’s teenagers will be evolving into tomorrow’s workforce and the ones who will be shaping tomorrow’s consumer market. This in itself means that the behaviour of the teenagers and their reaction towards media cannot be overlooked.

However, the report is written by a teenager, 15 year old Matthew Robson. The report reflects how a normal teenager perceives media of the current world spanning across traditional media like TV, radio and print, to new-age media like social networking websites, cellphones, game consoles etc. Although the discussion provided in the report does reflect teenage behaviour in a lot of sections, it has its shortcomings.

The basic problem with the report is that it is not a wide study on teenage behaviour and hence, market research figures are not reflected at all. Rather, the behaviours noted and reflected in this report are a biased sampling of the close friends and family of the writer. This certainly would not entirely represent the true behaviour of teenagers. Besides, the facts stated in the report should be quite obvious to market researchers who deal with actual facts and figures and carry out surveys based on age-groups or regions or income groups. The footnote of the report introduction states: While these trends will not necessarily surprise, their influence on TMT stocks cannot be underestimated. Now, if it takes a 15 year old for market researchers to realise such trends, I believe, we can see a lot more positions being made redundant.

Re-Analysing the Media analysis.
Radio: The popularity of traditional Radio or FM is still relevant inspite of internet radio stations and sites like Last.FM. The peak periods of radio listening are early morning – more so as a wake-up alarm, as a baathroom accomplice etc, in the car or bus to work, and in the evening on the way back home. Distribution of radio over FM transmitters have been reduced, and portable media devices such as a mobile phone or PMPs are where radio is being listened to. And in a country where Radio DJ are national celebrities and have shows running on National TV, can we discard the popularity of traditional radio?

Television: In the UK, due to services such as BBC iPlayer, Sky Plus and Virgin Record, and similar services offered by ITV, Channel 4 etc, prime-time is quite non-existent. BBC has no system of advertising based revenue. Whereas Channels like ITV and Channel 4 are freeview channels and completely rely on advertising based revenue system. With On-Demand viewing which enables users to skip advertisements, ad revenues are set to decline.
For teenagers, the trend of watching their favourite shows depend on
a) no. of televisions in their respective house
b) Availability of a computer with broadband. As most channels offer online catch-up facilities.
c)The channels subscribed for by the earning members of the family.
Since more than often, teens are not the earning members of the family,the final decision of what channels their TV is subscribed to is decided not by them, but by their parents or elders.

The choice of Virgin Media over Sky on the price criteria is another example of sample bias.
Sep 2008 figures: Sky has 9 million customers, which is almost thrice the size of Virgin Media, which holds the second place. Television viewing hours are again dependent on the demographic of teenagers selected.

Internet:
The popularity of social networking websites is evident amongst teenagers. While Facebook remains a favourite, Twitter seems to be not so popular amongst the teens. Even when Twitter occupies much of the attention in the internet buzz-zone, it is absent from the buzz-words amongst the teenagers, primarily because of lack of connectivity, or the cost of it. More of this will be discussed in a later post.

Much of the other information shared in the report regarding Newspaper, Viral Marketing, Cinema and Music is basic common sense stuff. Print media is struggling to get revenues; Viral Marketing works; Cinema has to look for other avenues to compete with Home Entertainment – hence 3d films, Movie experiences etc and Music industry keeps struggling with Piracy.

Please comment below and let me know your thoughts on the observations stated in this post. Thanks!

Image Courtesy: Service-Now’s Flickr Photostream

Soooo… Ninty has done the do at E3 and here’s some headliners for you hungry consumers of Gadg.

Wii MotionPlus™: The new higher accuracy Wii Remote dongle promises to provide even more immersive physical reality in its games, including a heightened awareness of it’s position with a 3D area.

Wii Sports Resort™: The main first new MotionPlus game, centred around a resort supposedly on the beach of the Wii Fit Island (You know – where you go jogging in Wii Fit). Events include Frisbee that your Nintendog can catch (Good grief!! I haven’t fed poor little Rex in about 2 years!!), Jet ski’s and Kendo to name but a few.

Wii Fit™ Plus: The much anticipated update to Wii fit. Now includes tailored workout routines. You can also work towards a goal such as Stomach Toning, Tightening Arms or Stress Reduction. I only hope it will include harder levels than Wii Fit as this soon became way too easy – Highest level Advanced Step anyone? yawn. The good news is that not only is this being bunded with the board again, but it will also be  available  separately.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii™: This is the Biggie! online multiplayer Mario. I say again - Online Multi Player Mario!! how cool is that! Apparently Shigeru Miyamoto has been dreaming this baby up for the past decade or so! I sooooo hope it’s as good as it looks and sounds. This has the potential to be another jewel in the Wii’s crown, shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Super Mario Kart and Super Smash Brawl.

Super Mario Galaxy™ 2: The game is planned for 2010. Expect more of those stomach churning, mind boggling levels.

Wii Vitality Sensor™: An interesting one, this…. Basically a small sensor that clips onto your finger. Looks like it plugs into the end of the Wii Remote, where the nun chuck normally goes. I believe that essentially it’s a pulse and galvanic skin response sensor. I hope they include this functionality in the Wii Fit Plus Game (I know it’s not supported in EA Sports Active but that’s hardly surprising). Looks like Ninty’s answer to Microsoft’s Natal to me…

Back in the day, we all used phones to communicate. Then Skype came along and changed the world. Sure, there were other systems before it, but Skype had it all sewn up with a neat little package that bundled the hallowed VOIP with a simple interface and of course – It was free!! Later, video was added (that Beta seemed to last forever!) and the whole thing really took off. Skype has always had some big hitters looking over its shoulder with the likes of the goliath Windows Messenger (Currently in its ‘Live’ incarnation) and the Gmail (With its flexibility and low resource usage) to name but a few.

With this in mind the major release of Skype 4.0 was much anticipated… What new wonders can we behold?… Well, I can tell you one thing – if you’re expecting better video you may be sadly disappointed.  :-\

Last week if you’d have asked me what my preferred video calling software was I’d have said Gmail and Skype were pretty much 50/50, this week however it has to be Gmail. The new Skype 4.0 video looks like a nasty police photo-fit or, worse, a deliberately pixelated news item. Yes it gets a little better if you give it a few minutes but the previous video was clearly better (IMHO). They have, however, done a good job with the voice side of things which is undoubtedly smooth, and sure, there are some new whistles and bells to play with (the “Open” or “Open with Video” seems so obvious now) but why would you release an update with worse performance on the one thing everybody stares at???…

Now if only Google could make their video a little more resilient to all those sudden crashes….