Since the paradigm shift in the smartphone market when Nokia and Microsoft joined forces, much of what future lay ahead remains a mystery. That is, until this afternoon when Akihabara News broke a rumor surrounding the F-07c tablet, a slate created by Fujitsu, destined for release on Japanese carrier Docomo. Are we headed for a dual-booting Windows 7/Symbian tablet future?
April, 2011
If you were hoping to land HTC’s latest UI, Sense 3.0, on your circa 2010 or early 2011 HTC smartphone we’ve got a bit of bad news. According to HTC, by way of their official Twitter account, only its newest devices will be able to support the upcoming UI. Due to new hardware requirements, specific to Sense 3.0, Desire HD owners will not be boarding the flight to version 3.0.
LA Noire, Rockstar Games’ crime thriller heading to consoles next month, is not what you expect. If you were hoping for Grand Theft Auto meets James Ellroy, think again: this is an adventure game like none the controversial games publisher has ever tried before. We got hands on with the title today at Rockstar’s London HQ and uncovered some surprising facts about it – read on and see the evidence.
Some of our best iPhone apps choices are highly practically (see Nebulous Notes), others aren’t. Today’s entry is 3Frames which sits firmly in the second camp. It’s a curious photography app that allows you to make short clips that you can turn into animated gif files. It grabs a burst of pictures then produces a nicely jerky finished product.
We’re especially taken with the UI design of the app which uses short animated gifs itself to create a consistent experienced (saving a file gets you an animation of someone twiddling their thumbs). 3Frames is a totally bizarre app but will easily provide you with way more than £1.79 worth of entertainment. You can see one of the .gifs we made in the app after the jump…
Another morning, another bevy of headlines to tuck into. We’ve got some bad news to relate regarding online music, as well as some exciting tablet titbits: read on for it all in the lunchtime lowdown.
The Royal Wedding is approaching like a posh Godzilla wearing a veil and like any good monster it aims to crush everything in its wake. The nuptials of William “with-the-huge-forehead” Wales and Kate “call me Catherine” Middleton will be the first royal wedding to be offered up as an iTunes download.
Frighteningly, the recording will be made available as soon as the ceremony ends. That’ll be the cue for the old folk who buy commemorative plates and thousands of royalty mad Americans to click buy like their lives depend on it. And they must be stopped!
Google funds a lot of intriguing research. It’s latest punt is putting cash into a team at Tel Aviv University which is working on an algorithm to teach computers to gain “hindsight” and experience “virtual regret” by documenting negative events like sudden spikes in traffic or increased attention to an online product and learning from them.