GadgetDotRed

Courtesy of Google Street View

Here’s a first look at Google’s Street View, a feature of Google Maps. This definitely adds more value and it’s a welcome feature as it opens up the possibility of turn by turn navigation based on Google Maps. Some interesting things to note tho – faces and vehicle license plates have been blurred out, although it will probably not take long before gems (interesting pictures) will be discovered

Have a go at it online – it’s pretty addictive!

The hype has been building up for Apple’s new operating system; and Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard is now available at Apple Authorized Resellers and Apple’s online store as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard users for just S$48! – My personal experience with the OS in the past few weeks has been a sheer productive and intuitive experience, pretty amazing for someone who switched from using PC’s almost his whole life. “Once you go Mac, you’ll never go back!”

Reviews of the new OS have been positive, with many in-depth articles. Here are some links to the flood of reviews.
[ Engadget] [ Gizmodo ] [ Macworld ] [ CNET ]

Apple is holding it’s 14th Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 8th to 12th 2009. The event brings together apple engineers and developers as well as fans and enthusiasts interested in the latest developments in Apple. Apple also releases news on upcoming products as well as uses the event to launch new products. Here’s a summary of the announcements made during the June 8th keynote.

New MacBook Pro Lineup

Apple® updated the aluminum unibody MacBook® Pro line to include 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch models featuring Apple’s innovative built-in battery for up to 40 percent longer battery life. Each MacBook Pro includes an LED-backlit display, the innovative glass Multi-Touch™ trackpad, an illuminated keyboard, an SD card or ExpressCard slot, a FireWire® 800 port and state of the art NVIDIA graphics.

The interesting thing about this update is that Apple managed to bump the specs of the notebooks, and in the case of the MacBook Pro 13-inch, the new price was lower than the MacBook it replaced. Another noteworthy tidbit is that on the 13-inch Macbook Pro, there is only one audio jack, which is user selectable for either line in or line out with one exception – it supports the Apple Headset with Microphone – The same one which comes with the iPhone!

Snow Leopard’s September Release

Apple® also unveiled Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™, an even more powerful and refined version of Apple’s Leopard operating system. Snow Leopard builds on OSX innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, new core technologies, out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange and new accessibility features. Snow Leopard will ship as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard users in September 2009 for USD$29.

There’s way too many features in Snow Leopard to go into detail here, but here’s 2 groundbreaking features.

64 Bit System - The OS has a 64 bit core, with nearly all system applications rewritten in 64 bits. This enchances the performance as well as future proofs the OS for “whatever computing enhancements might arrive in the future“

Grand Central Dispatch – This built-in technology allows full use of every core in multi core systems to be used by applications. This offloads thread management from the application to the OS, resulting in more responsive apps as well as full utilisation of modern CPUs.

iPhone 3G S

Last but not least, Apple® introduced the new iPhone™ 3G S, their fastest, most powerful iPhone yet, with improved speed and performance, longer battery life,a 3 megapixel autofocus camera, video recording and hands free voice control.

There is no news on Singtel’s apple-inspired site as of today on any informatioon regarding the new iPhone, possibly hitting the region in July. It would be interesting to see if current iPhone users get any upgrade options, and most importantly, at what price.

Images Courtesy of Apple. For more details, do check out the Apple® Website or you can catch the WWDC Keynote posted online as well.

Looks like Microsoft pulled the proverbial rabbit out of the hat at E3; introducing Project Natal - the code name for Microsoft’s new controller-free gaming and entertainment experience from Xbox 360.

Here’s some of the major features of the (still in development) project.

• Controller-free gaming and entertainment. No controller required. with body movement detection, face and voice recognition
• Full-body play. “Project Natal” utilizes full-body tracking to capture every move, from head to toe, to give players a full-body gaming experience.
• Personalized play. “Project Natal” provides an in-game experience in which the player’s face and voice are recognized.

 Instead of explaining all the dry details, here’s a video of Project Natal in action.

The local Gaming scene is about to get warmer with Licence2Play – a local gaming event supported by Singapore’s MDA. The highlights of the event include $10 Workshops and gaming competitions (Dawn of War 2, Battle Stations, Sudden Attack, WOW – With our very own Dark Moon Faire, Audition, Super Smash Bros Brawl and of course MapleStory). The workshops seem to be glorified talks but no details are available other than the summary on the website. In any case, it’s always a good thing to have gaming publicized and supported locally.

Event Details:
Event Name – Licence2Play
Location – Suntec City Convention Hall 6
Dates – 22-24 May 2009
Admission is Free except for the $10 ‘Workshops’

Microsoft’s MSN Messenger 2009 has been available for some time, and now includes an install of  it’s attempt at an iLife suite it’s software bundle. As you can see below, the bundle includes Mail, Photo Gallery, ANOTHER Toolbar, Writer, and a bunch of other bloatware which some users might actually find useful…

All these options are enabled by default...

BUT WAIT!! There’s MORE!
Users who are installing this latest and greatest version will be presented with the opourtunity to change their browser settings according to Microsoft’s recommendation, perhaps for the full MS Experience?

The great and complete MS Experience

Unfortunately, perhaps it was due to the new update and the rush to Live the new experience (pun intended), We keep having connection issues. Well look on the bright side, at least it’s a pretty face – Just like Vista!

The Internets are buzzing with updates from Apple and Microsoft.

Apple – Safari 4 Beta is out – Argumentatively the current fastest browser available mainstream.
Some of the reported 150 new features include Full-Page Zoom, a improved JavaScript engine (part of the webkit), pin-top sites, web page cover flow and full featured RSS reading capability.

Microsoft – Internet Explorer 8 RC1 is also out for Microsoft fans and includes features such as a Web Slices (with subscription options), improved JavaScript and Ajax processing, automatic Crash Recovery and Private browsing.

Apple – iPhone OS 3.0’s features are finally out of the bag, due to for a Summer 09 relase and will have long awaited features such as Cut, Copy & Paste, A2DP Bluetooth, P2P Connectivity over Bluetooth, Landscape Typing in all the core apps, MMS, Spotlight Search and Phishing protection.

Google recently launched Mobile Sync (in beta), a free service which synchronizes contacts and calendar entries /alerts between mobile phones and computers, with changes pushed to all devices. Currently, the service supports the iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms. For more details, check out Google Mobile Sync.

Microsoft gets it’s feet wet with recent changes to Windows Live and a whole lot of changes in the works. Leveraging on their huge base of Messenger users, Microsoft is transforming modifying the Windows Live service by linking its ‘related’ services such as

• Hotmail – The same old, same old
• Photo Gallery – A Photo sharing and basic editing web application
• Spaces – Personal web space ala Myspace
• SkyDrive – Sharable space online (5GB free)
• Events – Basic calendaring and group planning web application
• Mail (any see a repetition here?) – Multiple account handling / access
• Mobile – Mobile device interface for messenger, spaces and search
• Forums
• Online Auctions
• VOIP Telephony
• VPN ala Hamachi
• Video Sharing / Streaming
• Social Applications
• Music and App Store
  

This would be the second time the Microsoft has rebranded the Windows Live service, this time integrating it with other web services and basing most of their offerings from what is already available out there such as Picasa, Friendster, Facebook, Gmail (and the host of Google’s services), Calendaring and online storage.

Nothing new, just consolidated.

A windows update recently appeared and it looks like Microsoft is full steam ahead with covering up vista’s failbus with windows 7 it’s fight with illegal software. This “update” permanently installs into the windows operating system and is designed to constantly check the genuineness of the operating software with continual sending of information ( gasp! ) such as the user’s IP address and registration information.

Looks like Windows 7’s development is WAY ahead of schedule if engineers are improving the anti piracy features of an operating system which is “supposedly” end-of-life.

Way to go Redmond! Just don’t forget the Win95 Crowd!