All posts for the month August, 2011

HP Touchpad for £90… alright then!

Following the announcement that HP are giving up support of webOS, the operating system that powers the HP Touchpad, an onslaught of price cuttings of the device took place in the United States. Now however, it would seem the same savings will be passed to us Brits.

Mark Webb, official spokesperson for Dixons, announced on Twitter that the device shall be on sale in limited stock later today at Dixsons.co.uk. The 16Gb model will be selling for £89 and the 32Gb for £115, that is over a 70% mark down on both models!

The slashes in price certainly provoked mass sales in the States and so it’s fair to assume that the same will occur in good ol’ Blighty. Regardless of the ceased webOS support, it is still a hell of a lot of tablet for under a ton. Bizarrely it was the lack of support for webOS as a result of poor sales that led to HP dropping it, irony it seems is a cruel mistress.

Are you interested in picking up an unsupported, yet impressive tablet on the cheap? Or would you rather churn out the extra £300+ for a better supported device? Leave you comments and thoughts below.

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by TheJW on August 22, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Smart Phones/Tablets
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Posted by TheJW on August 22, 2011

http://social-gadget.com/2011/08/22/hp-touchpad-for-90-alright-then/

Super Fast HSPA+ MiFi Coming to Three

Three, who lay claim to being Britain’s most data-friendly mobile provider, are looking to be the first to provide a HSPA+ (enhanced high speed packet access) WiFi device in the UK in the form of the Huawei E586.

The new mobile dongle, developed by Chinese company Huawei, will provide download speeds of up to 21Mbps and upload speeds of up to 5.76Mbps; that is, once Three get round to updating their 3G network to handle HSPA+. With plans to have 80% of their network upgraded by the end of the year, it is encouraging to see UK networks finally getting round to improving mobile broadband speeds, although a true 4G connection would be more than welcome!

Three, who have recently been revealed as the nations ‘least satisfactory’ mobile network in the latest Ofcom report have released the pricing structure for the new device. The best of which I can see are:

15Gb will set you back £23 a month on an 18 month contract

5Gb will be £16/month on a rolling contract, with an initial £40 charge for the device

1Gb for just under £10 on an 18 month contract.

The device will allow up to 5 devices to be connected at any one time via WiFi and will will be available from next month.

Curious to see how the device will work? Well Three reveal all in this fairly idiot proof guide to using the new Huawei E586 available here.

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by TheJW on August 21, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Mobile
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Posted by TheJW on August 21, 2011

http://social-gadget.com/2011/08/21/super-fast-hspa-mifi-coming-to-three/

Bing Enter Social Location Sharing

Source: Bing

So there are a whole bunch of ways to share your location with your friends, an increasingly popular method of social networking. Whilst the undisputed leader in this field is Foursquare, there are actually a number of competitors. Google provide their Latitude service, Yelp have what is in essence a Foursquare clone running from their app and now, a new challenger enters the arena (forgive the Street fighter reference). Mircorsoft’s search engine Bing has decided to get in on the act.

We’re In is the apt name of this new service. There isn’t much that is new here, they seem to have adopted an approach similar to that of Latitude, avoiding the gaming aspect found on Foursquare. What is neat however, is the introduction of time limited invitational sharing. Simply, the user shares where they are to a group of selected people and decides how long ‘the invitation’ lasts. Once the time is up, you ‘magically’ disappear off the map; “Sorry guys, you missed me!”

Whether this feature alone will be enough to sway users away from the location apps they currently use is to be seen, although I personally like the idea of not having to tinker with my sharing settings quite so often à la Latitude.

Do you use location sharing apps to organise your nights out with mates? Comments and thoughts below.

More information available at Bing Community.

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by TheJW on August 20, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Social
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Posted by TheJW on August 20, 2011

http://social-gadget.com/2011/08/20/bing-enter-social-location-sharing/

Sony Confirms: No Cross Game Voice Chat for PS3

For years, PlayStation owners across the world have been requesting cross game chat for the PS3; a service readily available and compatible with the majority of games on rival platform, Microsoft’s X-Box 360.

Living in hope that with each software update, PS3 owners might one day have the same luxury, the dream has been official killed in a recent interview with Shuhei Yoshida (Sony Worldwide Studios President) for Eurogamer.

The reasoning for it’s absence on the PS3 is due memory restrictions. When the PS3 is running a game, it gives all of it’s RAM to the game, leaving nothing left over for other RAM dependent features, including cross game voice chat. This issue has been addressed on the upcoming PS Vita handheld due for release next year.

The Vita is actually packing twice the amount of RAM than the PS3 enabling this feature. Seeing that the Vita will be able to provided cross game chat suggests that this feature will be present in Sony’s next home console offering in the near(ish) future.

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by TheJW on August 19, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Gaming
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Posted by TheJW on August 19, 2011

http://social-gadget.com/2011/08/19/sony-confirms-no-cross-game-voice-chat-for-ps3/

HP Ditches webOS

The computer company formerly known as Hewlett Packard, HP have announced that they are giving up support for smart phone/tablet operating system; webOS.

Having acquired  webOS from Palm last year, the operating system found itself on the HP Touchpad and Pre smart phones. Praised for having the simplicity of iOS and the flexibility of Android, webOS certainly showed promise as a contender in the smart phone/tablet market. Sadly support for webOS was meagre at best compared with the two giants dominating the market.

Entering the market late is always a huge risk and it would seem HP are cutting their losses in pulling out now. With HP leaving the game it will be interesting to see how the other minority players in the market fair; will the likes of RIM and Windows Phone do the same?

Leave your thoughts and comments below.

2 Comments
by TheJW on August 19, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Smart Phones/Tablets
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Posted by TheJW on August 19, 2011

http://social-gadget.com/2011/08/19/hp-ditches-webos/

Foursquare adds Events

Location sharing kings Foursquare have added ‘Events’ to the mix of ways you can share what you’re up to and where with your friends. They have managed to team up with 3 media giants to cover their event bases with ESPN handling sporting events, Movietickets.com providing information for all you cinema goers and Songkick covering music concerts.

It seems a logical decision to support events given the number of new ‘venues’ that crop up surrounding big events. ESPN will also be providing fun facts and trivia associated with particular check ins.

Events are now live on iPhone and at Foursquare.com with support for other platforms to follow shortly.

More information available at the Foursquare Blog.

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by TheJW on August 18, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Social
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Posted by TheJW on August 18, 2011

http://social-gadget.com/2011/08/18/foursquare-adds-events/

Is There a Place for Dedicated Handheld Consoles Anymore?

There is no denying that mobile gaming is big, in fact it is probably bigger than it ever has been before. During the daily commute it is almost a guarantee that along side the dishevelled youth treating the bus to the latest Chipmunk release from his mobile phone, there too will also be a handful of people painstaking hurtling birds at a group of green pigs. In essence, whether they lay claim to the fact or not, nearly everyone nowadays is a gamer.

Infrequently though, do I see people gaming on the go using a dedicated console. The introduction of the iPhone and Android has brought mobile gaming to the masses. With a huge collection of top notch games, available instantly for only a couple of pounds, it brings into question the necessity for a dedicated handheld. This seems to be echoed in recent news of Nintendo, the giants of handheld gaming, who sculpted it from inception to where it is today, having to dramatically drop the price of it’s latest release; the Nintendo 3DS.

The 3DS has had a troublesome time since it’s launch in late March with a relatively weak offering of launch titles, all at a premium price (twenty times the cost of the average iPhone game). Of course, the games were all of a much higher production cost and complexity than most found on either iOS or Android so the premium price is to be expected, but the initial (and sadly the continuing) games released for the system have been somewhat lacklustre. It is truly a bad sign when the only game that could justify purchasing a system is an aged 15 year old title, yes Zelda, I’m talking about you!

Sony, who entered the dedicated handheld console market back in late 2004 with the PSP clearly still believe there is a place for it, with the upcoming release of the PlayStation Vita in 2012. Sony clearly know that mobile gaming is hotly contested by the smartphone and so has taken it upon itself to pack the Vita full of social applications to stay in the running. Let’s hope it proves more successful than the infamous ‘PlayStation phone’: the Sony Ericcson Xperia Play…

Do you think there is a place for dedicated handheld consoles anymore, or has the smartphone taken over the market? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

1 Comment
by TheJW on August 18, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Gaming
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Posted by TheJW on August 18, 2011

http://social-gadget.com/2011/08/18/is-there-a-place-for-dedicated-handheld-consoles-anymore/

PlayStation Vita Social Applications

What better way to start off a blog concerning “gadgets, gaming and social media” than with an announcement that encompasses all three!?

Sony announced yesterday at Gamescom that the upcoming PS Vita will be socially robust with a wealthy plethora of social applications. Confirming that there will be device support for Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Skype, the applications will be made available via the PlayStation Store.

In the modern, always connected age in which we find ourselves, it is not surprising to see Sony bring social apps to the Vita. The problem facing the Vita however, is that our mobile phones are already brimming with these very things. With a vast smorgasbord of games found on iOS and Android (at a much more wallet friendly price) is there a place for the Vita to exist when it is released next year?

More info at the PlayStation Blog.

1 Comment
by TheJW on August 18, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Gaming
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Posted by TheJW on August 18, 2011

http://social-gadget.com/2011/08/18/playstation-vita-social-applications/

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