Flickr yet again does it

Flickr has very much impressed me lately.

For starters, it only took me until a few weeks ago that I actually had Flickr Pro. Well, my broadband is with BT Yahoo, so those people with BT Yahoo wireless, you get a Flickr Pro account for free. If it doesn’t work, you need to change your email address to that of your BT Yahoo one, ending in @btinternet.com. I now see the great advantage of this, as not knowing with a basic Flickr account you can barely upload the amount of pictures you would want to, whereas with Pro, its unlimited.

Brilliant. So, not only did that impress me, also the fact that I am able to download a desktop program from Flickr, enabling me to upload all of my pictures from my desktop, without logging into the site in my browser. Another plus. The fact that it uploaded my 55 pictures one set in what started out to be hours, but only ended up taking about 20 minutes. I discovered that your photos could be placed on a map to show exactly where they had been taken. Another plus.

I urge anyone who takes many pictures, or even if they just like doing it for the hell of it, to create a Flickr account. Stick with the basic if you’re not much of an uploader, and see how you go. Remember, if with BT Yahoo wireless broadband, hit your default email address into Flickr and you get Flickr Pro for free.

It’s great.

New Sony Walkman

 

Here’s the all new Sony NWZ-A820 Walkman Phone.

And yet again, reading about this shows that it is yet another to compete with the iPhone. I have to say, I am getting uite tired of this. For a while, I did ask the question: Why does every company of this generation feel they have to try and compete with the iPhone? Well, clearly because nothingas of yet has knocked the iPhone out of the spotlight. So far the Walkman phones have bee very successful.

So it comes with wireless Bluetooth headphones, and has a extended battery life of up to 15 hours music and video. Unfortunately for some, it shall not be compatible with anything outside of Microsoft Windows. How ironic.

So, out in April, no confirmed prices. I hope it does well.

Haven’t updated…

…In a few days. Been a tad busy. So here I’d like to tell you about a few things.

Firstly, I went on over and over again about digital cameras, and which one I would like for my birthday, which is tomorrow. Well, I eventually decided not to go for the Kodak or the Samsung. Mainly because the Samsung had some bad reviews, and the Kodak was out of stock, but also because, for they money, I was getting more with the Vivitar 7100. 7 Mega Pixels instead of 5 grabbed my interest. So, hopefully this shall do me well, I am also buying myself a Acer M540. Hell, they are pretty much the same, the difference is inside.

Very much looking forward to it. Littlewoods is also a God send, as I only pay back £6.00 a week.

All good .

 

OLED Update

Just a quick update from my previous post about OLED TV’s, the next generation of TVs. Sony announced today that they are backing OLED TV with $200 million. Alot of money. The first of Sonys OLED Television appeared on sale to us earlier this year, but like most things, not all of us bothered to pay attention to it. So as high-profit, major companies do – they decided to throw money at it. The same with Samsung, Sonys major competitor in this case.

However, both seem to have trouble at getting them larger than 11″ screens. I’m sure they will get there eventually.

Cheapest Laptop?

UK based laptop manufacturer Elonex recently announced their new product, a laptop aimed at children, to be sold at £100, in my eyes making that the cheapest laptop I’ve ever seen.

It goes by the name of the ‘One’ laptop, and aiming at a market of children. So I’m guessing the purpose of this is to get children familiarised with computers, which at this day in age makes sense. So what do you get for your money, which you don’t get when you spend the best part of £700 for a professional laptop?

Well, there’s alot of things as you may guess, so I’ll give you an insight into what you do get. The whole thing runs on Linux, and weighs at just 1kg, with a 3 hour battery life. And yes, it appears to come with the basics, well at least the very basics, than say a laptop running on Vista costing 700 quid. It has Wi-Fi, and a flash based hard drive. Which isn’t the best in the world, but the price says a different story. I’m sure you get all your basic word processing too.

Sure, the keyboard looks like an exact replica of the £2000 Macbook Air, and it’s not the best looking. But surely, £100 for a laptop running on Linux, with the basics including Wi-Fi, is worth the money? If I was strapped for cash and needed Internet, I’d buy one.

$99 Unimited Contract

 Today, US Network Carrier Verizon announced a new contract for its customers. This is a $99.00 a month contract – around 50 pounds sterling, which would get you a decent contract on O2 with an iPhone in this country.

So what do you get? For that amount of money, 1000 free text and minutes? More? Yes, it’s unlimited. You can send as many texts, and call as many people for as long as you want without no extra charge on $99. The catch? Nothing that I could find, though who knows what it may be when Verizon bring it out on Thursday, US only I’m afraid. But I have absolutely no doubt this won’t be for long.

Another US carrier, AT&T, have also jumped on the bandwagon. But more importantly, so have T-Mobile. Whether you know or not, T-Mobile is a US network carrier aswell as UK.

I’ll give it until the end of this year, and then T-Mobile will have a contract to compete with O2’s iPhone contract. And when I give it to the end of this year, even that’s stretching it a tad.

 

Archos 605

Looks pretty cool, doesn’t it?

This has been available for some time now. So I’ve done some research, and for a media player, I think that an RRP of around £250 is quite good value for money. So for a handheld media player, what would you expect?

Well, I personally would expect photos, music and video, as for many media players of this price you would get. But the Archos 605 goes a step further than standard. Yes, you can get TV.

So what? Portable TV has been available since the 70’s. True, but digital recording has not. This device can record TV, just like your Sky+ or Virgin Media box would. Also, don’t be fooled by the buttons on the right of the screen. The Archos also has a 4.3” touch screen. Not to mention the endless formats it reads, and the functions you can use with viewing photos, listening to music etc.

So, why waste your money totally on an iPod Video or touch? For the same money you get a hell of alot more memory – 160GB – and extra features.

Somethings do quite baffle me!

I’m in like with you

 

This is a follow on from my post on Blockles. Now I’ll tell you about the ‘main site’, I’m in like with you.

So, the whole site kind of revolves around their arcade, with at the moment, only Blockles can be played as a multiplayer game. But there is also another part of the site I never really paid much attention to until now.

They have these ‘games’, they call them. The basic concept of this is to create one yourself, or ‘bid’ on someone elses. Here, a question is asked, and the one with the best answer wins, deciding on the game starter.

OK, doesn’t sound as good when I explain it, as I’m not very good with doing that nine times out of ten. Have a look for yourselves, and make sense of it.

iLike

 

As I may or may not have mentioned, over the weekend I signed up to iLike. Now, I never really paid much attention since now. I firstly attempted with Last fm, but due to the complication of it, also the fact that for some reason certain features would not work for me, I decided to switch and sign up to iLike, which an account I previously had created on Facebook.

It’s really good. A favourite sector of it for me is the sidebar you can download at your own choice, which is added to your Windows Media Player or iTunes etc. Whilst playing music in one of these programs, the iLike sidebar comes up with related new music from new bands, which can be downloaded for free. At the same time of listening to various tracks, your own iLike profile is updating itself, as you listen, showing favourite artists, recently listened to music, most popular songs etc. Now for me, that is a great benefit, as I can just listen to music on my Windows Media Player as I usually would, without worrying about having to update my iLike.

So, why not go for it, and then  add me!

An end to HD DVD?

Reading through this, Toshiba are considering scrapping their HD DVD format. The competition between Blu-ray and HD DVD could end up the same way as Betamax vs VHS over 30 years ago. But at this day in age, I wouldn’t have thought the competition would be as high as it was back then, as with today’s modern technology, there is plenty of room to share.

Clearly not. What amazes me is that the idea of axing HD DVD, still in very early stages of production, as there are only around 380 HD DVD titles released around the world.

I make clear that Toshiba have not actually stated the reason for this consideration is because of the competition with Sony’s Blu-ray, but possibly because of low demand, still added to the fact that Blu-ray still seems to be a favourite between the two.

I hope HD DVD isn’t scrapped just yet. I would personally like to see the competition continue to play out just a little longer, and see in future which one will come out on top.