So, here it is everyone: The full-length video for Samsung’s product announcements at IFA 2011 in Germany. I hope you enjoy it
Tag Archives: 2011
IFA 2011 Samsung Announcement Roundup
Today, it was Samsung’s turn to take the limelight at the annual IFA expo. IFA is the world’s larget show for consumer electronics and home appliances and Samsung had a press event where they announced some new products.
Let’s start off with the camera announcements. Samsung announced its new NX200. It has a 20.3 megapixel interchangeable lens and can shoot HD video at a resolution of 1920×1080 at 30 frames per second. Alonside the NX200, were two other cameras. They were the MV800 and the WB750 camera.
Samsung will also be updating it’s smart TVs with 3D videos from YouTube. With the lack of available 3D content and the fact that you may need 3D glasses just to watch 3D TV, this should be welcome news. The smart TV will also have the ability to run Apps. perhaps we might see a Samsung smart TV that plays Angry Birds.
On the mobile computing side, Samsung announced the Galaxy Tab 7.7(which is a tablet computer) and the Note(a halfway house between the smartphone and the tablet). Last but not least was the the Wave 3
Samsung also introduced two new lines of the 7 series and 9 series laptops.
Stay tuned for a full-length video of Samsung’s announcements.
Microsoft’s Press Conference at E3 2011(Video)
Nintendo’s Press Conference at E3 2011(Video)
Announcement Week 2011 Roundup
So there were a lot of announcements this week. Apple had their software announcements for their newest software.
At E3(the big annual gaming expo), sony had some new hardware to show this week, nintendo had some new hardware to show off this week and Microsoft had some new software to announce this week.
Of course, sony was the first of the companies to make their announcements this week. The biggest announcements in my opinion being the hardware. Sony announced their next generation portable gaming device called the PlayStation Vita, which has a touch panel. It no longer uses the same home screen that you would find on a PS3. They also spent some of the time during their press conference apologising for the network outage that may of you PS3 and PSP gamers have been experiencing. If you want the full breakdown of what went on during the press conference, then check back for another article where I will post the full press conference for your to watch.
Up next, was Apple, who had their worldwide developers conference, which was all about software this year. Apple announced OSX Lion, which will be released in July for just under $30 US or £21GBP. iOS 5, which will come out sometime during Autumn 2011. The third of the announcments was iCloud. This is Apple’s cloud computing solution that would allow you to keep your photos, music, movies, apps and other content in sync accross your iOS devices, macs and PCs. iCloud will hopefully be ready for us in Autumn 2011. There was also the iTunes music match which would take any music that you have acquired from sources outside of the iTunes store and automatically upgrade them to a higher quality audio. For the full keynote, please see my article which contains the video of the WWDC 2011 Keynote.
Nintendo had some hardware to show off as well. Their new Wii U games console was their big headline as well. The controller that was shown has a 6.2 touch screen which only does single touch. It has two control sticks and a directional pad as well. You also had a speaker and a microphone. Alongside that, the new controller for the Wii U also has a built-in gyro, accelerometer, and a camera. The console itself now sports a HDMI port, meaning we will see some games with some good graphics. The new Wii U will also have full HD video output, that means we will be able to see our games in resolutions up to 1920×1080 pixels. Of course, there was some new software titles announced for Nintendo’s 3DS. Please check back here for the full video of Nintendo’s press conference, which will be posted in another article.
Microsoft also had their press conference. They had announced some new software titles for Xbox 360 which make use of the Kinect camera. Alongside that, there was the announcement of titles such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Mass Effect 3 and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. On top of the games, Microsoft also announced that they were going to do a complete revamping of the dashboard(the XBox 360 home screen). Check back here for another article where I will post the full-length video of the press conference.
Thoughts on iMessages
Welcome to the latest in my “thoughts on” series of articles. On 6th June 2011, Apple held the keynote for their WWDC where they announced new software(see my WWDC 2011 keynote roundup article for more details).
When apple announced iOS 5, there was a feature that caught my attention called iMessages. Essentially, this will allow you to send text messages, pictures and videos to other people for free. It does this over your Wi-Fi internet connection or 3G connection. Essentially, this means that iMessage is Blackberry Messenger for iOS.
However, I think that Apple might have some trouble when getting the 3G side set up with the mobile phone networks. Here is why they might have this trouble. Your mobile phone network will give you an allocation of text messages (SMS messages) a month as well as phone call time. This is a contract that you are signed into for a period of time such as a month or a year or more.
If you are not on one of these contracts, then you are charged for every SMS message you send. When these networks see the iMessaging they are going to be so scared of it. This is because they are going to end up losing so much money because people are going to send text messages over Wi-Fi, instead of using sending SMS messages over their standard GSM network.
On the other hand, the mobile phone networks might not be so scared, because they know that some people will want to use iMessage on 3G, so they may be able to use it as a way to improve the way they advertise their deals.
Apple’s WWDC 2011 keynote roundup
Today was Apple’s WWDC 2011 keynote address. There was lots of good stuff in there for us users. This is just a few highlights of what happened. If you want to get everything, then check back later. I will have a youtube video of keynote speech with the updates in there.
Starting out like Phil Schiller did, Mac OSX Lion available in July 2011 and it will be only available from the mac app store for $30 US or roughly £20 GBP. It will have some interesting multi-touch gestures. This means that you can use many fingers on a trackpad to swipe between pages and pictures as well as different applications on your mac. It will also have something called launchpad. This will essentially be a screen similar to your home screen on your iOS device.
Next up was iOS 5. With over 200 new features, this is the biggest update for the iOS devices to date. It’s a free download which is supported by the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS. It will work on both the iPad 1 and 2. It will also work on the 4th and 3rd generation iPod Touches, and it will ship in the autumn. When you buy a new iOS device in the autumn, you take it out of the box and activate it right out of the box. Operating system updates will be done right on the device using Wi-Fi. To add to the awesomeness, you will only download the changes made to the operating system. Other parts don’t get downloaded meaning that you save on bandwidth. Finally, wireless syncing, this means that instead of plugging in a cable, you connect to your Wi-Fi network. Then, you will be able to transfer songs, video and other content without the need for a wire if you choose. I think that wireless syncing is something that should have been there since iOS 1.0.
The third of the main topics was iCloud. It will be a free service with 5GB of storage(that is enough data for just over 1200 songs) . This could mean that you can get more storage but there would be a charge of course. I cloud will allow you to take some of your data on your Mac or iOS devices and have it stored in the cloud. This means that data you upload to iCloud will be sent to the other devices. Also, any applications you buy on one device can then be downloaded to the other devices at no extra cost to you. This is the same for songs that you buy from the iTunes store on your mac or iOS devices. If you have an iOS device running iOS 4.3, then you can take advantage of iTunes for the cloud right now.
Of course, Steve Jobs had that famous “one more thing”. He introduced a new service called music match. This will scan for music people have on their PC from their CDs and re-create their library online. It will cost $24.99 US, no information on the release date of that.
Now there was some other awesome stuff that I really cannot wait to use. Be sure to check back here for a video of the entire keynote address.
Apple’s WWDC 2011 Live Text coverage
It is time for WWDC 2011. This is text only coverage of the event. Well the crowd are getting them settled down and an announcer has said to set the phones to silent mode. That means we should be getting started shortly.
Steve jobs is now on stage. We are underway. No live stream from apple this year. So now we are starting off with the usual statistics. As I said in the preview, Steve jobs will be talking about OSX Lion, iCloud and iOS 5.
First up, it’s OSX Lion. It has over 250 features, they will only be doing 10 today. first up, multitouch gestures. Showing multi-touch tap-to-zoom, pinching, two-finger swiping, “all with an incredible, physical realism that’s never been possible in a PC operating system before.”
All applications in Lion will be full screen. next up: Mission control, this will be a bird’s eye view of what is going on when you are using your PC, it’s Expose and Spaces unified into one feature. It’s demo time now. They are demoing how the gestures and the full screen apps, it looks like they have taken a few pages from the iPad.
with mission control, you can drag multiple apps at once from one “space” to another.
Up next, the mac app store. It’s already available for you to download your mac apps to your mac using your iTunes account. When you install mac OSX Lion or buy a new mac with OSX Lion, the mac app store is built right into Lion.
Next, is Launchpad. With one gesture, you get a screen that looks like the home screen of the iPad. Next is resume. when you launch an app in lion, then quit out, you will be able to pick up where you left off, as soon as you launch it. So it’s saving the state of the app.
Next: autosave, every 5 minutes, it will save a version of the document or whatever it is you are working on.
Next: versions. Along with autosave, it will save different versions of whatever it is you are working on. It’s simply time machine, but for your work.
They are now demonstrating the Versions of feature.
Feature number 9: AirDrop. Go into AirDrop and you’ll see all the other users who are running AirDrop. To share a file, just drop a file onto the user in question. They then receive a notification and, hey presto, file exchanged.
In Lion: there will be a new version of the Mail application(Apple’s email). It turns out that it will look like the Mail application on the iPad. It’s time for yet another demo. It’s a more intelligent search feature.
Demo over, the only other thing that is useful to see is that the facetime feature will come with Lion and OSX Lion will only be available from the Mac App Store. It’s a 4GB download and it’s a $30US download and it is good for 5 authorised macs. The developers can get their hands on it and we will see it available in July.
It’s time for some iOS 5 action and it’s starting out with some numbers. It turns out that the iOS app store has 90,000 iPad apps.
There are over 200 features with the 10 best ones being shown today. First is notification center. It is accessed by swiping your finger from top to bottom. There will also be more information on the notifications on the lock screen. Seems like a security issue.
Also in notification center, there will be a widget for some of the apps.
So feature 2 is called newsstand. Turns out that you will get magazines on your iPad just like the iBookstore.
Number 3 is twitter: looks like twitter is going to be fully integrated. You can tweet your photos, and video straight from the camera roll.
Number 4 is safari: Looks like the new safari will have Reader to take all the unnecessary content and allow you to read the text. We are finally going to have tabbed browsing, thank god. Demo time and they are demonstrating the reader feature.
Number 5 is reminders: looks like you can set a reminder to do something and send it to your iCal so you can send the reminders to other devices you own.
Number 6 is camera: you can take a photo directly from the lockscreen, the volume up button to take a photo. You can now edit your photos right on the iPhone.
Number 7 is Mail: they are adding rich text formatting. You can drag addresses and they are also adding secure MIME along with a built-in dictionary. On top of that, they are also going to take a page from Windows 8 and have a thumb-friendly demo.
Number 8 is PC free: instead of plugging in to the computer, you activate the your iOS device on the device and you can update over the air using small updates.
Number 9: game center. They will add game recommendations so you can purchase and download games that you might like directly from game center.
The final one is iMessage: this is SMS for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches. The mobile phone networks are not going to like this. It is essentially FaceTime, but with text only. It looks like they are taking some inspiration from RIM’s black berry messenger(BBM) app. The mobile phone networks are going to be so scared that they are going to lose money because of this.
So those are the big 10 of the more than 200 features. As a part of the package, we will get air-play mirroring your display, wi-fi syncing with iTunes on your computer. No need for jailbreaking then!? LOL OMG.
So when are we getting it? Developers will get it today, it is going to available to us in the autumn. It will work on the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, the iPad 1 and 2 and the iPod Touch 4th and 3rd gen models.
The third topic is iCloud. It stores your content in the cloud and wirelessly pushes it to other devices. It is also integrated into your apps and “it just works”. For example, if you make a contact on your iPhone, it gets sent to the cloud and it is sent straight to your devices. You can also share calendars. Calendars made on one device, will get sent to other devices. As for the price, it’s free. Three more apps have been added.
First, there is the app store, any apps that you buy on an iPad will be sent to your iPhone at no extra cost. Same principle with iBooks and it all “just works”. Wireless backups are now part of iCloud. Once a day, your important content will be backed up to the cloud and when you buy a new device, it will be sent to the new device. There are also three new apps. So six new apps in total. first of the new three is documents, so if you create a new document on one device, it gets sent to the cloud and sent down to the other devices. It’s like google docs, but for for iOS and mac. same with your presentations and other docs. Changes to the docs will also be pushed to other devices via the cloud. It turns out that it will work on Macs and PCs.
Photo stream is being added. Works same as documents. Photos you take will be sent to the cloud and sent straight to your other devices. As with documents, it will be built right into the photos app on your iOS devices, your mac, your PCs and your Apple TV. Your photos will be stored for 30 days on the cloud.
Last but not least is iTunes for the cloud, you can buy songs from iTunes on your iPhone, and download them to your other devices. Looks like there are no demo failures at all due to too many wi-fi hotspots in the room.
All of these iCloud will be free with 5GB of storage. The developers get the beta today and we will get iTunes for the cloud from today provided you have iOS 4.3.
But there is one more thing. It’s called iTunes match. There are 18 million songs in the store. It looks like it will scan the CDs you have and upgrade them to a higher quailty audio version. It costs $24.99 a year.
And that is it. Some really cool stuff there. With that, I conclude my coverage of the WWDC 2011 keynote. I hope you enjoyed it.