Source: Mashable

Oh this will make the gamers happy. For long us South Africans had to use strange methods to be able to use Xbox Live, we had to masquarade as yanks in order to play our games online. What made this doubly insulting is that we pay full price for our Xbox games, and these days the online component of a game is even more important than the actual game. Just ask any Halo or Forza fan.

Microsoft has finally announced that SA will be getting Xbox Live within the next three months. A definite date was not given, but we can be assured it is before the end of September. This was of course hand in hand with the announcement of the “Kinect” peripheral (called “Project Natal” in the past) and the new Xbox 360, which is slimmer, shinier, quiter and better looking than the original Xbox 360.

So will you be getting the Kinect? And will you finally sign up for Xbox Live now that it is officially in SA?

Image from LazyGamer.co.za

FIFA.com and Google have collaborated on a range of online features to help supporters keep track of how each team is doing throughout the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Here are a few of the special features introduced for the World Cup:

• The FIFA.com Chrome extension gives you a live feed of results, news and match statistics, and can be personalised to alert you as soon as a goal is scored by a particular team.
• Google.com is including special search results relating to the World Cup: try search terms such as [world cup], [world cup spain] or [world cup group g] to see live scores, latest results and match schedules at the top of your search results. Quick links are provided to game recaps, live updates, standings and team profiles on FIFA.com.
• The iGoogle World Cup Gadget will provide you with the latest information on FIFA World Cup teams, players and matches, and you can click on the “venues” tab to find out more about the stadiums.
• FIFA.com and South African Tourism have used Google Maps to add information about the host cities, stadiums and attractions, giving people easy access to these sights with Street View and 3D views. See maps.google.com/exploresouthafrica.

Matt Stone, Head of FIFA New Media, says, “From live feeds to in-depth data on matches, teams and venues, FIFA.com and Google provide every internet user with a privileged, personalised experience of the World Cup.”

Visit google.com/worldcup to access these features.

OK – we might be a little late on this one, but I am pretty sure any reader of this blog would have known about the iPhone 4 already. But to the uninformed/uninterested/android using reader, here are some of the things that stand out:

Hardware:

In typical Apple fashion, the new display is called the “Retina” display. First off it has a much higher resolution, about 4 times more in fact. So if you thought the current iPhone screen was good, I can only imagine what it will look like. Secondly, it uses IPS (In Plain Switching) technology which means that the display can be viewed at a much wider angle. The display is also fused with the glass, which means there is no space between the glass and the actual LCD panel. Apple decided to skip the OLED craze, and it seems the first impressions agree with this choice.

The iPhone is also sporting a new look. Yes, it still has the all-display front, but it now sports a stainless steel edge, very much in the same fashion as the current macbook pros and the iPad. True, in their case its aluminium. But with the iPhone, the casing frame is used as a antenna, so thats why its stainless steel. The rear of the device is glass this time round, getting rid of the cheaper feeling plastic of the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Glass – but a new type of glass, which supposedly the same type used by helicopters. Time will only tell if it is indeed scratch proof and can withstand a bit of torture. It sure looks more solid than the old one. Jobs mentioned at the announcement that it reminds him of old Leica cameras, and that is pretty spot on. It looks very classy.

On the inside things changed a lot as well. Apple is getting rid of the old Cortex processor and going with their own custom designed silicon, the Apple A4 chip. This is the same chip that is in the iPad, and its very brisk in there. This chip also gives better power efficiency, and the new iPhone also gets a slightly bigger battery, so it gets slightly better battery life. 7 hours of talk time on 3G, 10 hour video playback, 6 hours of browsing on 3G, and 300 hours of standby time.

The camera is also improved  – it gets a 5MP backside illuminated sensor, and finally also gets a flash, which will improve pictures at night. While 5MP does not sound a lot, any photographer will tell you its not about the number of megapixels, but the size of the sensor – and apparently the pixel density in the sensor is the same as the old 3GS, which means the sensor size has increased, which leads to better low light photography as well. The new camera is also capable of recording 720p HD video at 30 frames per second.

Apple is also pushing their own new method of video conferencing, called Facetime, with the a new front facing camera. While its pretty same old, same old, Apple is opening up the standard for use by other vendors and software designers. Only time will tell whether it will be used at all. Video calling has been available for a long time, and people still dont do it. You know why? Because people dont like to use their double chin. Really.

iOS4:

The iPhone 4 will ship with iOS4, which was previously known as iPhone OS. Now that its running on other devices than a phone, its an apt renaming. iOS4 gains a lot of new features, but the standout ones include multitasking, unified inbox, folders, iBooks, better camera controls, Faces in photos etc. But I want to focus on multitasking. Long the fuel of Android fanboys everywhere, the iPhone finally gets its own implementation of multitasking, where apps can access certain services that are allowed to run in the background, where the app itself is paused for use later.

I can actually not see where multitasking would make such a big difference, except with GPS apps and audio streaming apps. But thats the wonder of the Appstore – I am pretty sure someone will code an indispensible app that needs to run in the background.

Luckily for current users of iPhone in SA, iOS4 will be a free upgrade in afew weeks. Msot of the new features will be available to all users, but multitasking will not be available to iPhone 3G – apparently it needs a bit of horsepower.

I will be testing the iOS4 Golden Master seed in the next week, so come back later for my opinion on it.

PS: Vodacom has confirmed that iPhone 4 will come to SA, but has not confirmed a time. My bet is late August / September.

Quirk Education’s new digital marketing course, Applying Social Media to Business Challenges, kicks off on 28 June.

The content for the 5-week online course is largely drawn from Quirk’s own recent case studies, including campaigns that Quirk eMarketing has run for brands such as Mweb, Sun International, SA Tourism and Neotel.

Amongst other things, the course will look at:

• the challenges and opportunities in the social media landscape
• using platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs
• building communities around brands or topics
• how businesses can take a strategic approach to social media
• how to run integrated campaigns using both online and offline elements
• best practice for social media campaigns

This is not a basic introductory course, but rather an in-depth look at practical application.

“In the past year we’ve had amazing success with Social Media implementation for some of our big clients and they’ve reaped huge rewards as a result,” says Lyndi Lawson, Minister of Education at Quirk Education. “It’s on this experience that we’ve based the content for the course.”

Places are limited, and registrations close on 25 June. The cost of the course is R5,900 (including VAT), and there is a 10% discount on group registrations of three or more, and a 20% discount for OPA members.

Visit the Quirk Education site to register.

Finally, it is here:

And it works great! I tested this on my iPhone – easy enough to do. Go to an area where StreetView has taken pictures – in this example, Greenpoint. Click on one of the pins that drop on the screen, and you will see a small orange icon on the left of the description, and there you go. As you can see here I am looking at Main Road, and there on the right is the stadium.

In similiar fashion to overseas, all cars registrations and people are blurred out.

Thanks to Google!

I recently got contacted by the folks at ALK – they wanted to show off their new CoPilot Live product for South Africa. In case you dont know, CoPilot is available on iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile. I have been using the iPhone version for the past week, and yes, I am very impressed.

Key Features

I have used alternative solutions by other vendors on the iPhone, and over time certain things started to irritate me. It has gotten so bad, that in most cases I just fire up Google Maps instead of actual GPS apps. Their database is up to date, and their routing is good as well. But of course, Google Maps does not actually navigate you to the your destination, with a convulatuted next, next, next type of interaction which is downright dangerous to use in a car. (Maybe one day they will grace South Africa (or even the iPhone) with that feature.

So lets get round to CoPilot Live 8. The install is easy enough – it is on iPhone after all. Standard Appstore solution. At 100MB+ you do want to download it through wifi however.

First off, the interface is slick and easy to use. Buttons are large, and easy to interpret, which is necessary when using a GPS in your car. Most things can be understood at just glance, which I appreciate. It’s pretty clear when you open it that it is a ported interface (it is almost exactly the same as on the Android and Windows Mobile), which I normally dont like. But after playing around with it, I realized that it works very well, despite not following the typical iPhone app look. Integration with the iPhone keyboard is perfect, which is more than I can say for NDrive. The level of detail on the maps is also great – in fact much better than with my Garmin with the latest mapset. The maps move along at a good pace – and there is a very cool feature where the top of the screen is changed to indicate where the current lanes you are driving down is heading. Orientation switch between landscape and portrait is quick and without bugs.

Voice instructions are clear and loud enough (on the 3GS at least). Routing was very good, and seems to be very similiar to my Garmin dedicated device. Talking about Garmin – they bring out new mapsets, and still havent included my security village’s road, which is by no means new. With CoPilot, it is there, with all the streetnames. And here I thought dedicated devices like Garmin have always been the best.  Small issues include the strength of the GPS signal, but this is a iPhone issue, not the software. On cloudy days, it did take a while to grab the signal, but just leaving it under the windscreen seemed to do the trick.

The performance on the iPhone 3GS was very good, but it was a lot slower on the 3G, and I did get some warnings on the 3G about memory shortages. But it did not crash once, which is good. Battery life was also better than I expected, and a hell of a lot better than using Google Maps which has to continually download map tiles as you go along. A small thing I also appreciate is the integration with the iPod – and creating quick playlists were a breeze. Also, while playing music, it didnt stutter once while giving directions, and the music were slightly turned down while talking, and than smoothly increased back up to the previous volume. I really appreciate that.

Even if the interface of a GPS app is good, it comes down to routing ability. And this is where CoPilot really shines. It has calulated all my routes perfectly, and never once give me an error, or a situation where I had to second guess it. And just for that I really like CoPilot. I wouldnt hesitate recommending this to people who are still not happy to use GPS’s. In fact, I have stopped using my Garmin in the last few weeks.

One criticism I have is that the South African version of CoPilot is expensive – CoPilot makes versions of CoPilot for many parts of the world, and currently the only version that is more expensive than the SA one is a version for the entire Europe. Meanwhile, the entire US mapset costs $19.99 at the moment. What makes this even more unfair is that the SA one doesnt support many of CoPilot’s “live” features, such as traffic reports. Now I realize there isnt infrastructure in place for this in SA, but still, the price seems to target international travellers visiting SA for the World Cup. Maybe the map providers in SA ask very high prices, but I think the price should drop a lot. At least we do get weather, and you can easily ask for current location or just about anywhere:

Overall I am very impressed by CoPilot Live – it is clear that they have put more attention to detail in their product – it runs smoothly, and works well around the iPhone’s application framework shortcomings. I am actually very interested to see what how they will implement the GPS framework of iPhone OS 4.0 in the future.

Rating: 4 out of 5 (drop the price and I will give it a 5)

Pros:


Works well – nice speed, reliable
Routing works well
Very detailed mapset
Interface is excellent – good example of how porting is not always a bad thing

Cons:
Pricey for the SA version
Performance on the 3G is significantly slower than the 3GS