Embed videos in Windows Live Spaces!
January 29, 2007
13th AIMIA Awards are in Sydney this year
January 23, 2007
The 13th Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) Award ceremony is on again this year in Sydney Australian on Friday 2nd March 2007.
Tickets are on sale now and for information visit the AIMIA Award website here, http://www.aimia.com.au/awards
This is a great event to be part of and as it is being held at the wonderful State Theatre in Sydney so promises to be an enthralling evening.
Hope to see you there on the red carpet!
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Comet McNaught
January 23, 2007
Just when you thought there’d be no more "look at my comet pictures"……….
More in the Comet McNaught photo album……
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Walking with Dinosaurs, The Live Experience
January 18, 2007
My 3 year old daughter has a thing for dinosaurs, so today we took her to go and see life sized ones chasing & fighting each other live.
The production is called "Walking with Dinosaurs, The Live Experience". The show is based off of the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs documentaries that aired a couple of years ago.
The dinosaurs are life sized versions that are animatronic and move around on the stage independently.
The show has started here in Sydney, Australia and is moving around to some of the other states. It was quite an amazing experience and I highly recommend it, especially if you have kids. http://www.dinosaurlive.com/
NB: The one negative thing about the show is that our daughter is pretty much constantly demanding an encore……. 🙂
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Mobile phones with mini projectors
January 16, 2007
Crave has a link to a company that has designed a Pico Projector for mobile devices. According to the company’s website, the mini projector can
"…enable a laptop-sized full color projection display for applications such as, streaming video, Mobile TV, high resolution photographs and surfing the Internet"
Sounds too good to be true, but we shall have to wait and see what types of devices this will eventually be put into.
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Cisco sues Apple over iPhone
January 11, 2007
You’ve got to hand it to Apple’s marketing department for naming their new device after someone else’s VoIP product, 
but unveiling their new iPhone has some intriguing new features that will change the way we use mobile devices.
The US market won’t be able to purchase the device until June this year, Europeans get their hands on it in late ’07 and Asian countries a further wait well into ’08.
Watching the Keynote address by Steve Jobs about the iPhone, you become aware of the incredible marketing hyperbole that surrounds highly anticipated product launches such as this one. With outlandish comments such as "5 years ahead of any other phone" or "we have reinvented the phone" they could make you believe they have, but have they?
Apple has produced a differentiating product that has some new features such as the multi-touch large screen interface that haven’t been seen on other mobile devices yet, but they have missed some key industry trends such as using inferior 2.5G connectivity (especially for such a heavy media centric device), implementing an inferior camera (only 2Megapixel) and no mention of how 3rd party developers can (and more importantly IF they can) build their own products into the device.
Apple however, has implemented something that has been missing in mobile devices for a very long time and that is a seamless intuitive interface that from the demonstrations seen on the keynote, give a superior user experience. Overall a major factor of why large portions of the new generation of mobile telephony do not use the new services, is because of the very poor user experience. Hopefully other mobile device manufacturers will see this and act.
The iPhone’s success relies heavily on partnering closely with a carrier, in this case US carrier Cingular for the launch in June, to ensure the user experience is positive across all the iPhone’s services. This can and will prevent the product from moving forward into other markets quickly. If Apple must partner with carriers to deliver these enhanced services, then this will greatly impede delivery in other countries, not to mention choice of carriage.
With the success of the iPod, all eyes have been focused on what Apple’s play in the mobile arena would be. Now that they have played their hand, they must back the gratuitous hype with actual sales of the devices. Their target is 10 million by the end of 2008.
Hopefully they do release a 3G version very soon and upgrade the camera out of the dark ages too, but more importantly, that they open the development environment for other 3rd party developers and not create yet another locked down proprietary Apple product.
Posted by Shane Williamson.
How many mobile phones in the world?
January 9, 2007
Can you guess how many mobile phones there are in the world today? To give you a hint, there were 950 million mobile phones sold last year alone.
Whilst you are still pondering on that Tomi T.Ahonen from Communities Dominate Brands has the answer and also has some interesting comparisons to other products and services. Such as the statistic that there are more mobile phones than registered automobiles in the world today.
The amazing growth of mobiles are an exciting statistic that is gaining momentum in not just 1st world countries, but it is also dramatically changing the lives of people in 3rd world countries too. For instance in Kenya 1 in 3 adults own a mobile device.
How mobiles are used by people versus what they were originally designed to do are changing far quicker than we saw with the early growth years of PC usage. Within the next 5 to 10 years we may see some incredible statistics that show large percentages (90%+) of the Earth’s population actively using mobiles.
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Technorati Tags – mobile – mobile statistics
New Years resolution, Get fit whilst mobile!
January 6, 2007
Whilst perambulating through the holiday RSS feeds over at Crave, I stumbled on a great idea from a company called PumpOne of getting exercise training through your mobile!
From their website…..
What is PumpOne Mobile?PumpOne is not just for your iPod, nano or other handhelds anymore. PumpOne Mobile is a new service that now makes it possible to get expert fitness guidance in an even more portable, affordable format – on your web enabled cell phone.
The original system was aimed at iPod prima donnas, but has now opened up to other more practical mobile devices 😉
Whilst the texting service seems to be primarily for the US market, they have setup a mobile web site that can be accessed by anyone. Point your mobile’s QR Code reader below for their site and check out the free preview workout.
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Amazon.com heading for outerspace!
January 6, 2007
Well not quite Amazon.com, but according to I4U it looks like Amazon.com’s fearless leader, Jeff Bezos, is getting the preliminary testing of his new spacecraft well under way.
His Blue Origin project tested a development vertical takeoff and landing vehicle with some very impressive videos on the site of the test. Whilst the test was only short lived and to a height of 285 feet, it is great to see a successful first step.
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Universal Convergence 