But are you really enjoying what you’re listening to? Worse yet, is everybody else on the train, waiting in line at the bank, sat around you in the packed lecture theater, or worse yet, the library even remotely enjoying what you’re listening to?
 
Deep down you know that the answer is a unanimous no. If you’ve ever decided to rip a lossless version of your favourite CD, bought a mid-range Hi-Fi system for your living room, or wondered why after only two months your headphones are crackling to those heavy dubstep tracks you listen to, then it’s high time you grasped those glossy white menaces tightly in your fist and disposed of them in the nearest bin. Here are a handful of reasons why you should wisely spend some of that Christmas card money on improving your life in a very easy way:
 

So, disregarding the pretty small library at launch, here is a little list of some of my other gripes with the service, and what Apple could or should possibly change in future updates:

1. The UI – it’s such a dramatic shift from the rest of the GUI within iOS, right down to the inclusion of Times New Roman as the default font (I thought Apple were all about Helvetica?) I know it’s meant to resemble a casino table (that is what it’s meant to resemble, right?) but I personally feel it looks a bit garish
2. No Automatic Game Searching – at the time of writing, Game Center will only display the games it supports after you’ve opened them up on your device, there’s no auto-searching just yet. It’s not a massive deal, but it’s a bit of an annoyance when you’ve downloaded an update to an app that clearly states that it now supports the service.
3. You Can’t Send Messages to Friends – as far as I’m aware, there doesn’t seem to be any way to get in touch with a friend on the service – sure, you can view games you have in common, and even launch  said game from the page, but with Apple supposedly trying to break into the social scene (read: Ping), you’d think it would be featured.
4. You Can’t View Friend’s Friends – I currently have only 4 friends on the service, having to manually add them in or add their manual friend requests. I’ve posted the nickname to my Facebook and Twitter pages to make it easy for them to find. The one thing that I don’t understand is why Apple haven’t made it possible to view the friends of your other friends – it’s a feature of every social network, and even other gaming services like OpenFeint, Xbox LIVE, and PSN. It would make the spread of the service happen a lot faster, and it could make finding mutual friends easier to locate and add.

Is there anything else you would like to add? Feel free to leave a comment, or join the discussion here.

Popular messenger application WhatsApp is now available for all Android devices running 2.1 or higher. A tweet earlier this month revealed that the beta version was ready to download for all 2.2 users by following the link in the tweet. Having only a 2.1 device I was initially disappointed at the news, as 2.1 support was coming “soon-ish”. But after hitting up the link little more than an hour ago I can confirm that it is now available for all Android devices 2.1 and above.

Now available on iOS, BlackBerry OS, Android and Symbian S60, WhatsApp links to your mobile phone number, instantly adding any contacts in your address book already using it, regardless of platform. Many people will see little point in downloading a messaging app when they already have close to unlimited SMS messages to send, but it is a godsend for those that frequent places with poor or no signal, but with Wi-Fi available (University buildings being a good example). It also gives people considering purchasing a BlackBerry for the sole purpose of keeping in touch with buddies over BlackBerry Messenger more choice, and there is no PIN-sharing required.

Hit up the link above for the download site, or the source link at the bottom of the post. I can’t get screengrabs of the app at the moment, so I’ll throw in some images of the iOS version from WhatsApp’s website.

Source: WhatsApp, inc.

Well, that was going to be the plan. As I couldn’t seem to get the application to show up using various QR codes shared online, I decided to get the app pushed to me from AppBrain’s website. I now understand why it wasn’t initially showing up for me – it clearly isn’t designed for devices like mine (HTC Hero) – the graphics on-screen were clipping with each other or overlapping, and some buttons crucial to progressing in the menus were almost completely off-screen. I would have really benefited from a 3.5″ screen, and it really cut short my testing of the application.

From what I could get out of it, it ran smoothly enough, but a lot of the graphics had no textures and white blocks featured in their place. There was the occasional stutter when the birds made any collisions with the environment, too, which is the key mechanic of the game. I’ll keep an eye on it over the coming months, hopefully the next update to it will add support for smaller screen sizes.

Application tested on GSM HTC Hero (T-Mobile G2 Touch), Android version 2.1 (3.31.110.1).

To show off some of the capabilities of the service, Epic Games (creators of Unreal Tournament and Gears of War) demonstrated their port of the Unreal engine onto the iPhone 4, running a new game called Project Sword. The watching audience were stunned into silence, “is that really running on a mobile phone?!”. After the quick tech demo it was announced that an app called Epic Citadel was to feature on the App Store as a free download for all iOS devices. I downloaded it last night, and gave it a bash.

I was simply as stunned as the audience were during the show: in my hands, on a 3.5″ touch screen, were graphics capable of rivalling games that pushed the PS2 and Xbox to their limits. I was amazed at how crisp the textures were, and I only noticed frame rate stutters when I first stepped out of the walled citadel and out into a field complete with cliff faces and a waterfall. Keep in mind that I was running this on an iPod touch that had the same chipset at the iPhone 3GS, and you can’t help but be impressed with what they’ve achieved. I doubt that the finished game will run as smoothly on my device – this has been built from the ground up to take full advantage of that A4 chip in Apple’s iPhone 4 and iPad.

The control system isn’t as frustrating as I thought it would be, either, although in this tech demo we’re limited to simply walking around the environment. You can tap ahead of your location to automatically walk there, or use the small on-screen ‘joysticks’ to enjoy full 360-degree movement. The navigation pads seem to move relative to where your thumb is resting, too, so you don’t have to give much thought to where you’re swiping to get the desired action.

One thing I must say is that, whilst only running the demo for about 20 minutes or so, my iPod was starting to get uncomfortably and unusually hot – this thing was really pushing its processor to the limit, and sadly I don’t have an A4-equipped device to try it out on. Still, I was very impressed with what they’ve achieved, and you should definitely download it to show off to friends and family what these tiny little devices are really capable of. [iTunes link].

I was getting into Digg, using it only now and then, but since I started my blog up again I’ve been using it more. Now they’ve changed it all I’m really reluctant to keep using it – the homepage just looks like an RSS feed already set up for you and promoted by large companies or established sites (many of which I already look at individually).

I liked how smaller blogs would be able to share something interesting, it was my gateway to discovering new areas of the web and avoiding information saturation. They’ve taken that away from digg, and along with its new look and feel, I probably won’t be using it any more.

I also don’t want to use Reddit either, because its UI is the complete opposite of digg’s – it’s stuck in early 00′s and the main page is just laden with posts about making weed legal or something. Does that mean it’s an accurate portrayal of the Reddit userbase? Quite possibly.

I’ll check out StumbleUpon now, they’re in a pretty healthy position as far as I can see.

There’s a game that’s been circulating on a few forums for quite some time now, and it’s pretty fun. You can create some pretty cool and creative album covers just by using the random feature on a couple of websites. Hey, if you wanted to you could also use it for your real first album cover! (I’m pretty tempted to start up a band called Doxacurium Chloride).

Here are a couple that I made a while back, I’m about to make one now using the rules and I’ll post it at the end:

Right, on to the rules:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random — the first article title is the name of your band. If the Wikipedia entry is the name of a real band, then reload the page.
2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 — the last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ — no matter what, the third picture is your album cover (if the user has disabled downloading of the photograph, then reload).
4. use your graphics program of choice to piece it all together!

Here’s the latest effort that I got, following these rules:

I’d love to see what you can come up with. Upload them to your favourite image host, and post the link in the comments!

When Google finally released ‘their’ very own phone, the Nexus One, today, the internet was awash with talk of how Google have finally rose up to Apple and are ready to take the iPhone head-on. It’s all very impressive, but why do I feel like anybody who’s rushed ahead and bought one has been taken for a bit of a mug?

courtesy of engadget.com

Ever since the first shaky leaked photo hit the internet, the main focus has always been on the software itself. I defy anybody to say that the Nexus One (pictured above, courtesy of engadget) is the best-looking device they’ve ever seen. It looks very plastic and, to be honest, prototype-ish. It gives me the same impression as the Nokia N82 in terms of its design, it just looks unfinished. It has to also be said that Google haven’t actually made the hardware: it has been built to specification by HTC, already the leading manufacturer of Android handsets.

I get the feeling that the device is being pushed as an engineering statement. They want to show the world what they can do with the next stages of the Android platform, and they also want to introduce a new way of buying devices – Google Checkout. The phone comes SIM-Free for the time being, with subsidies via network carriers coming in Spring 2010. They have also set up target shipping to the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong. At $529 (roughly £330 excluding shipping costs) it can be a pretty big gamble to those interested in buying it.

This is where my slightly strange link with a Japanese car manufacturer comes in. Recently, Lexus – well known for making bland, albeit exquisite luxury cars – surprised a lot of people by bringing out a supercar. No, really.

The Lexus LFA

It’s called the Lexus LFA. With around 550 bhp and a top speed of 202 mph, it’s clearly very impressive. Also impressive is the way they’ve made a V10 engine take up the same size of a V8, with the weight of a V6. Every part of the car is tweaked to make it as aerodynamic as possible. But at £340,000 not a lot of people are going to be driving it, and Lexus still aren’t going to make any money on it. So what is the point in its existance?

Well, much like the Nexus One, the Lexus LFA, I feel, has been created to show the world what their respective teams can come up with. Google with its software, and Lexus with its engineering. We’ll surely be seeing their USPs in other things in the near future. Especially so with Android, as the Nexus is only running 2.1 of the OS, meaning sooner or later it will be available to every Android handset out there. At this moment in time the Nexus One is a simple showcase of what is to come.

If you buy one now, you’ll kick yourself when the Nexus Two comes along. You heard it here first…

Image by Slashgear

News surfaced today that the Carphone Warehouse is to stop offering the Sony Ericsson Satio, due to instabilities within the software. Naturally, SE are working quickly on a fix and Carphone Warehouse will restock the device when it’s up and working properly.

You would assume that this is not that big of a deal then, as some phones (most notably Nokia’s) seem to be released too early for most people’s liking, with the first set of phones being seen as ‘test’ devices – advanced prototypes, if you will. However, it may surprise (and worry) a few of you to find that this is definitely not the first Sony Ericsson device to be recalled on a massive scale.

a worrying trend

In the past 3 years, there have in fact been 3 Sony Ericsson devices recalled by the manufacturer and “issues” with the handsets have been acknowledged.

The first recalled device was the Sony Ericsson K850i, spiritual successor to the K800i. It was nowhere near as good as its predecessor, featuring fiddly touch-sensitive soft keys, slow interfaces, and a pretty average 5mp camera that didn’t improve much upon the 3.2mp offering on the K800i. Around 6 months after it was released, the phone was phased out of the networks stores and Sony Ericsson were inundated with devices being sent in by angry users complaining of the non-working soft keys and buggy firmware.

Next to suffer the public’s wrath was the C905. Another flagship camera phone, it was an 8mp offering that was actually very impressive. It still has one of the best cameras seen on a phone despite having 12mp competition around these days. Sadly, the firmware was the problem this time – with Sony Ericsson recalling the devices earlier this year.

And now we come to the Satio. This too is a flagship phone, although its intended to be a jack-of-all-trades. While not only being a master of none, the phone doesn’t feature a 3.5mm headphone jack as seen on all high-end phones these days, and the UI is a heaily adapted version of Symbian, more commonly seen on Nokia devices. While most recent Nokia devices are having a few small issues with firmware and such, with the N97 being the biggest case of this (suffering both firmware and hardware issues, which have been resolved now) Sony Ericsson have reported the software being the issue. This would suggest that the problems lie in the software they themselves have included.

These are very worrying times for Sony Ericsson I would imagine. Not many manufacturers have to recall 3 devices in the same number of years – and the more this happens, the less confident consumers will be in choosing their handsets over someone else’s. At least they seem to be on form with the Xperia X10 (running Android) and Kurara (another Symbian device) – although I wouldn’t like to speak too soon.

Do you own a Sony Ericsson device? Are you satisfied with how it performs, or have you had plenty of issues with it? Feel free to leave your stories in the comments section.