Apple just released all the details of their new tablet computer called the iPad. The short of it is its a 9.7 inch LED multi-touch screen computer, great for browsing, email, photos, video, music, games and eBooks. The iPad can run all the existing iPhone apps full screen and apps are being developed as we speak for its launch (Estimated 1st April in USA for WiFi version and 1st May for 3G version).

The iPad 3G is unlocked to any network and includes a deal in the USA for unlimited web use for $29.99 (offers are expected to be arranged for other countries in the future). Battery life is 10 hours and the iPad comes complete with built in speakers and mic as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack and 3 USB sockets.

Prices are as follows:

iPad

16GB

32GB

64GB

WiFi

$499

$599

$699

3G

$629

$729

$829

For pictures look below (click to zoom in). For full specs visit http://www.apple.com/ipad

         Sony Ericsson very kindly lent me their new Entertainment Unlimited branded phone called the Aino over the festive season and so I thought I would finally share with you my thoughts on it. To make things simple I have broken it down into my likes and dislikes. Likes: Firstly the Aino has a fab 3” hi-res touch screen, when the slider is closed the touch screen works very well allowing you to easily browse pictures, music, movies or radio. The keyboard and user interface are up the usual easy and logical to use Sony Ericsson standards. The phone also comes with a nice built in 8GB  Micro SD card, great Bluetooth headphones (great speakerphone too) and a very neat charging dock. It was also very easy to connect up to my laptop and sync all the contacts as well as working great as a mobile modem (wireless or wired took only a few minutes to set up). I didn’t get a chance to try out the Playstation 3 remote play feature, I’m more of an Xbox chap, but this feature allows you to stream music and films stored on your PS3 wirelessly to your Aino anywhere in the world !. Finally the Aino is also remarkably durable, after a couple of months heavy use it doesn’t even have a scratch on it.  Dislikes: The only slight problem with this phone is that the touch screen is for some reason deactivated when you slide out the keypad. Every person I showed it to tried to use the touch screen to navigate from around the menu, including me the first time. I guess once you know though you soon forget about it, but still think its a bit odd. The only other problem was when I first had the phone the software was very buggy, however after a week I updated it and now it’s been behaving nicely. Overall: A great phone if you want to get a touch screen / number keypad smart cellphone. The camera works well (see pics above) and as an entertainment unlimited phone I can honestly say its lives up to its name. More apps are constantly being released and the phone comes pre-loaded with facebook, Google maps and a nice selection of games. For full stats see below: Aino Touch Phone Specs

• 3 inch widescreen 16:9 touch screen and slide out Keypad
• 8.1 megapixel camera with Photo flash and intuitive touch focus, Video VGA 25fps
• Bluetooth™ stereo A2DP portable headphones included with docking base for phone/headphones
• 55MB Phone memory and 8GB MicroSD memory card included
• Remote Play for PLAYSTATION®3, Exchange ActiveSync®
• A-GPS with Google Maps™
• 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi, (Quad-band GPRS/EDGE and tri-band HSDPA)
• Talk Time: 13 hours, Standby time: 380 hours
• Dimensions: 104 x 50 x 15.5 mm, Weight: 134.0g
• PlayNow™ arena and Track id, Built in Step Counter and GPS tracker
• DLNA Certified™ (connect wirelessly to other electronic devices via Wi-Fi. i.e: See your photos on your TV)
• Media Go: Transfer your files from PC to phone wirelessly & automatically when docked (using Wi-Fi)

Very clever work from Euro RSCG 4D. Most car brands leak teaser pictures of their new models, but not Volvo. RSCG and Volvo decided to do something very different for a change. To help launch the new Volvo S60 they employed Turkish artist Esref Armagan, who is an artist, but with a difference, he is blind !

They have released the above video on youtube and facebook showing Esref at work painting the new car. The end result is I think you will agree, something special, maybe he should replace Peter Horbury as Volvos chief designer, we would certainly be driving around in some more interesting cars !

Below is the real new S60, its hard to tell the difference between the painting and the real thing.

(Hat Tip to the legend that is Patrick Collings)

The wonderful people at LimelightPR just sent me a fantastic new new augmented reality iphone application from Acrossair for Stella Artois called “Le Bar Guide”. The app works similar to Layar, using your iPhone’s GPS, camera, accelerometer and magnetometer to pick up where you are, and which direction you are looking at, allowing you to see through your camera screen the exact location / distance of bars nearby. You can then click on the venue for more info and directions using Google maps, you can also filter the bars shown by atmosphere type, ratings etc.  When you are at a listed bar you can also leave messages under that venue name for other users, rate it, or send the details to friends. The app even allows you to easily find and call taxis in your area ! Look at the video above to see the app in action, I especially like the way you can point your phone towards the ground and see arrowed directions to the nearest bars on the ground. At the moment the application is being launched for free initially to the US market, but there is a comprehensive global roll out planned in the New Year – with the UK top of the list. Great to see Stella taking the initiative and pushing the boundaries. At present the app is not live but it will be later today so will pop up the link as soon as its available.

Recently we have been seeing a ton of innovation in the print media to digital media conversion arena. This latest wonder is from The New York Times and comes in the form of a PC or Mac compatible reader. The Times reader 2.0 uses Adobe AIR and allows you to read a full digital edition of the NY Times just like a real newspaper but with the advantage of video content and more. The programme updates automatically and delivers the entire day’s Times in seconds, so you can carry it wherever you go. If you’re a subscriber the digital edition is free, or you can get just the digital version for $3.45 per week. There is currently a free scaled down edition available too, to try it out for yourself just click here.

UK creative magazine Distill have just made their latest edition available to buy on the iPhone app store. From the video above this has to be the best adaptation of a print mag to iPhone conversion I have ever seen (Grated there have not been many). The iPhone app work was done by a London digital agency called Ustwo. I bought the app to try it out and I must say  navigation is very simple, text easy to read, and pictures are easy to scroll and zoom around as you would expect from the iPhone / iPod touch.

Why more main stream publications haven’t figured out / done this yet boggles my mind. There is huge market for digital versions of their magazines, especially on products like the iPhone and even the new android phones. Screen sizes seems to be about right now and file sizes don’t need to be huge, the Distill mag is pretty extensive and is only 40mb (and costs £2.99).

Distill magazine is a UK creative magazine featuring the “The finest fashion and art photography in the world”, the content for the mag is selected by an Editorial Board consisting of the likes of John Galliano, Donatella Versace, Manolo Blahnik, Matthew Williamson, Giles Deacon and many more.

To download the Distill iPhone edition click here

Last week I was kindly invited to a Nokia roundtable event called “The way we live next 3.0”. The event was held at the new One & Only hotel in Cape Town and Nokia invited Missing Linking entrepreneur and legend Richard Mulholland to be the guest speaker. He shared his vision on the latest trends in the mobile space and where he sees these trends going in the future. The short of it was that mobile phones/devices will eventually replace computers and that for companies and leaders to be successful they will have to heed Alvin Toffler’s wise words: “The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” The other speaker was Nokia’s product marketing manager Patrick Henchie who talked about Nokia’s vision of what the future (see video above) and how mobility might evolve. Nokia also introduced us to some future products and let us have a play;

• N900: This is the first Nokia phone to run on the open source OS Maemo. Its basically a 3.5” touch screen phone with slide out keyboard. My brief impression was its a step in the right direction but still not an iPhone (and a bit fat). For the specs PDF click here.
• X6 touch phone: I didn’t get to play with this for too long but it was my favourite product on show. Its a 3.5” capacitive touch screen phone. It runs Nokia’s symbian OS and it just worked great. Also when you get the phone you get access to unlimited free music downloads from the Nokia Ovi Store (For the phone only but still is a great bonus and the phone has 32GB internal memory).
• Nokia Booklet 3G: This new Nokia laptop is pretty exiting, its made from a single piece of machined aluminium and feels great. It has shortcuts to the Ovi store and maps built in, as well as an integrated 3G HSPA modem. The machine runs Windows 7, has a 10.1” screen and has an incredible battery life of up to 12 hours. After a little play I thought it was very sluggish, but then I turned off the power saving mode and it worked fine. Great bit of kit if you travel lots and want to use it to access cloud services and do some light work on the go. For the specs PDF click here.

Overall the event was a great initiative and I liked the way they made the sessions intimate with only about 15 influential journalists, developers and bloggers invited, it gave us the chance to interact very easily with the speakers and products. On another note thanks to Olga from Nokia South Africa for inviting me even though she knew I’m a Sony Ericsson fan !   

   Recently the legends over at Sony Ericsson let me try out their new C903 Cyber-shot camera phone. The phone itself is pretty impressive, 5MP camera with Xenon flash and smile shutter, aGPS, and a host of other features (will list them below).  The unit I was sent is a polished white with cool blue lights that come on when the camera function is engaged, its looks great and as soon as I started to show it to friends one thing became clear, girls in particular loved the look and feel of this handset. So as I’m a nice chap I decided to lend it to a good friend Candice Heyns, who just so happens to be one of Cape Town’s great socialites, DJ, model, and manager of local hit band The Dirty Skirts. Below is a gallery of some of the pictures taken by Candice from the C903 on her travels around Cape Town and from a recent Dirty Skirts concert. C903 key stats

• 5MP Cyber-shot camera, Xenon Flash, Smile detection / Shutter, Best pic,
• aGPS, Bluetooth A2DP (stereo music streaming),
• 3G 7.2Mbps enabled
• Geo-tagging for pictures, TrackID, media player, Mega Bass
• Exchange ActiveSync®, YouTube player,
• 3D games, Motion gaming (think Wii like controls)
• 400 hours standby battery life, 10 hours talk time
• video calling, Slider phone,
• 130mb built in memory, expandable to 16GB with Memory Stick Micro™

Always hard looking at lingerie ads ( no pun intended ). This latest beauty comes from Victoria’s Secret and is for their new Miraculous Bra range. They say it adds 2 cup sizes, nice, the spot was directed by Michael Bay ( Think Transformers, The rock and Bad Boys).

The Angels featured in the above spot are Marisa Miller,  Miranda Kerr, Alessandra Ambrosio,  Rosie whiteley Huntington,  Doutzen Kroes and our very own South African Lady Candice Swanepoel. To watch the making of the above ad just click here.

They would make a fine set of weather girls on SA’s favourite site 2OceansVibe !

(hat tip to AdRants)

  Yesterday Sony Ericsson announced their latest upcoming flagship phone called the X10,  based on the Google Android OS system. The phone runs the Android 1.6 OS and has been integrated with Sony Ericsson’s New UX (User Experience) platform. It’s the first SE phone to feature the soon to be standardised Micro USB connector socket for charging and data transfer as well the a great piece of custom software called Timescape™. Timescape™ aggregates all your contacts individual social web feeds like twitter, Facebook, emails and texts into one easy to read space and organises the data with time stamps showing the individuals latest updates first. This is an epic time saving device and one I have been yearning for from SE for ages. It also features clever face recognition software that can automatically tag pictures with the relevant persons names and save them as contact pictures amongst other thing.  The phone will be available in most markets including South Africa in the 1st part of next year, some say possibly as early as January. I could go on about this phone for pages but will leave you with the key stats below. X10 key features

• Available in Sensuous Black or Luster White.
• Touch focus 8.1 megapixel camera with LED light and flash
• A-GPS with Google Maps™
• 3.5 mm audio jack and Micro USB connector for data/charging
• Access to the Google Android Market™
• Google Talk™ and Google Voice Search™
• 4.0 inch, 262,144 colour TFT capacitive touch screen (scratch resistant)
• Android 1.6 OS
• 8GB memory with a new Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor
• Wifi & Bluetooth 2.0
• Sony Ericsson Timescape™ manages all your communication with one person in one place. Browse through your conversations the bright way to check out your Facebook™, Twitter™, photos, emails, and texts all in one go
• Sony Ericsson Mediascape is the smart way to get all the music, photos and videos you want from your favourite friends and artists. It accesses content from everywhere – your phone, YouTube™, PlayNow™ – and presents everything for you

Intelligence capabilities, integrated into Mediascape and Timescape™, can automatically recognise connections between contacts, content and media. By recommending alternative ways to communicate or guiding to new media experiences, consumers can discover more in a truly open way. For example:

• Pressing the new “infinite button” guides you through the connected world, aggregating all your interactions with one person into one view
• Intelligent face recognition features recognise up to five faces in any picture, automatically connecting them with your social phonebook and all other related communications with that person.

I want one now ! For more info click here

The Call of Duty franchise from Infinity Ward has to be one of the most epic games series to come out over the last 6 years. To celebrate the release of the new Modern Warfare 2 game, The Martin Agency on behalf of Walmart has come up with the above hilarious ad spot. Cant wait to dust off my Xbox360 again and get to play this little number. The game is released on the 10th November worldwide. Preview copies my way are welcome. (hat tip: AdFreak)

Recently there has been a lot of rumours floating around for Sony Ericsson’s first Android based touch phone, code named Rachael (or possibly X3 or even X10?). Yesterday this teaser site was released and seems to relate to project Rachael in its source code. Details are thin but I have added some pics below of spy shots of the phone and some as yet unconfirmed specs. I want one. Sony Ericsson Rachael Specs:

• 16 GB internal memory
• Wi-Fi, and 7.2Mbps HSDPA 3G data, Bluetooth 2.0
• A-GPS
• GSM Quad-band
• 8MP autofocus camera
• 3.5mm Headphone socket
• Mini USB jack (for charging and media)
• Micro SD / Micro SDHC Memory Slot
• Android 2.0 SE customised touch Operating System
• Li-Polymer Battery
• Processor: Snapdragon 1 GHz Processor with dedicated 3D graphics
• 4″ capacitive WVGA touch screen