Recently in Gadgets Category

Google and Apple seem to have taken on left- and right-hand roles, with neither quite sure what the other is up to. After Google’s long-hyped iPhone Voice Search application’s rocky launch, they have again hit a pothole:

Does Google Mobile use private APIs?

Surprisingly enough, Google appears to use both dynamic linking and calling unpublished APIs … it looks like Google decided that it was better to get the job done and provide a richer user experience to the end user than to live according to Apple’s exact dictates.

Google admits flouting Apple App Store rules

Google has acknowledged breaking the official rules of Apple’s iPhone software-development kit when it created the latest version of the Google Mobile application for the iPhone, but denied a more serious charge.

It appears that Vodacom, HTC and Google are hashing out a deal that will see the G1 hitting local shores sometime next year. I would love to get my paws on one of these just to play around with, though I don’t see myself purchasing one unless it’s cheap enough that it doesn’t need to be subsidised on top of a the existing cost of a contract *cough*iPhone*cough*.

Read the rest of the rather sketchy details at MyBroadband.

T-Mobile put up an emulator for the upcoming G1 where you can attempt to give Android a test run. I say attempt since my experience with this rather novel idea turned out to be rather short-lived. The actual emulator is largely dysfunctional and lacking many functions. Also on the site is a 3D view of the phone; it looks rather ugly to me. Its direct competitor, the iPhone, is certainly a lot prettier, but aside from that and the fact that it has an Apple logo on it the iPhone doesn’t have too much else going for it.

Whilst traveling overseas recently, I spied the Nintendo DS Lite in several shops, and on several big billboards in France, and after some deliberation (approx. 5 seconds worth) I decided to pick one up.

Back home, I found a very cheaply priced copy of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow at Musica. Having played and really enjoyed Aria of Sorrow on the GBA SP, I decided to pick the game up too. After four weeks of not-quite dedicated play I reached 100% soul completion, 100% map completion, and found all the secret items (Chaos Ring, woot) - it was now time to move on.

After a few days of research and bugging people, I decided to get an M3 DS Real cartridge - in the M3 DS Perfect package, which comes with the Real card adapter, a slot-2 rumble pack and an 8MB slot-2 RAM expansion pack, which is a very good deal. The adapter accepts micro SD cards, which means there is plenty of space to handle almost anything you throw at it. Unfortunately M3 have been cutting costs and no longer ship driver CD’s with the package, but they do include a handy piece of paper that asks you to please download the latest drivers, but fails to mention where from. Searching a bit I found the system software at HandheldSources which you must unzip and copy to your micro SD card (into a folder called ‘SYSTEM’). There is more software available at http://www.m3wiki.com/index.php/M3_software, but I haven’t tried any of it out.

Now with the ability to load 3rd-party software on the DS Lite, I went out looking for cool things to try and found out that the completely awesome ScummVM has been ported across!

ScummVM is a program which allows you to run certain classic graphical point-and-click adventure games, provided you already have their data files. The clever part about this: ScummVM just replaces the executables shipped with the games, allowing you to play them on systems for which they were never designed!

Ok.. so what games? Check these highlights out:

• Monkey Island 1, 2 and 3 (holy shit!)
• Day of the Tentacle
• Sierra’s AGI games (King’s Quest, Space Quest, …)

Full list here.

In conclusion, AWESOME!

Sherwood Forlee has an excellent idea to prevent your lunch being stolen by co-workers.

Anti-theft bag + sandwich:

Equals:

Although, unless your co-workers are exceptionally dim-witted, they will probably figure this out after the fifth “mouldy” lunch you bring to work.

Google has been in the press a lot recently, first strike was the rather unexpected Chrome browser launch, which was followed up by the launch of the first smart-phone using their Android mobile OS. Both subjects have been covered in almost ridiculous detail by just about every blog and news site on the internet, with tones ranging from informative to bat-shit insane.

Google are in a very strong position at the moment - I don't think this article on the Master Plan quite manages to capture why they are, but they are heading roughly in the correct direction. By distributing developer tools early and efficiently, and providing an open and transparent market place for applications, Google are on the road to fostering a very healthy and lively community.

Locally, the iPhone is launching tomorrow, or launched today, I'm really not sure - Vodacom seems to be doing a good job of being secretive (although a modification of Hanlon's razor might apply, "Never assume competence when stupidity will suffice..."). The whole situation seems to be a bit of a farce, complete with rabid fanboys and confused consumers. 

The world hasn't ended yet nor has it been ingested by a giant black hole, and it seems that it won't happen for a few months yet. Certainly all the conspiracy nuts must be breathing a collective sigh of relief as equipment failure appears to have caused a magnetic quench to occur. Considering the controversy surrounding this project, I'm sure there's another group of conspiracy nuts who are thinking "sabotage" right about now.

According to the articles the giant machine that smashes protons together will only resume operation in the second quarter of 2009. Such a pity, since I was really hoping to see some fireworks this year.