Apple Analyst Gene Munster recently commented at the Ignition: Future Of Media conference that he believes that Apple will be launching its very own television in time for the 2012 holiday season. Munster was so confident about the project that he told the audience to wait for Apple, if they are planning to buy a new television in the near future.

ExoPC has developed what could be the desk of the future  - a new 40-inch HD multi-touch desk on which the user’s monitor, keyboard and mouse can be placed, called the EXOdesk.

ExoPC who will officially be announcing the product at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2012, has uploaded a teaser video onto YouTube to showcase just a few of its features. The video shows a widget hub in the corner of the desk that can launch applications on the screen and the ability to pull down a timeline populated with news information, RSS feeds, tweets and other alerts from the top corner of the table. All applications can be easily swiped away out of sight and widgets and screen settings are all customisable.

While the EXOdesk isn’t the first in multi-touch desk technology with Samsung  having recently announced its Samsung SUR40, a 40-inch, 1080p multitouch table running Microsoft’s Surface software, the EXOdesk differentiates itself with its affordable price tag. The SUR40, designed primarily for business use and as a computer replacement, can be purchased for a staggering $8,400 (about R71, 990) while the EXOdesk, more of a computer supplement and desk replacement is offered at just $1,299 (about R11, 130), a bargain in comparison.

Watch the EXOdesk teaser video below:

source: Gizmag

As the mobile app markets of the world begin to change the way mobile phones are used offering users a whole new world of fun, useful and interesting applications, it seems that South Africans are also embracing the app.

Vodacom recently revealed that its brand new app store, launched in September, has already received 429, 000 visits with 400, 000 downloads clearly showing that almost every visit results in a user taking away an app. Their’s are a mix of both paid and free apps. MTN has also launched a pilot app site called apps@play but all apps remain free while the concept is being fully tested.

With the Apple App store and Android market place offering over a billion apps combined, why would local operators then go ahead and launch their own stores?  Prins Mhlanga, Vodacom’s Managing Executive of Digital Media offers an explanation: “The biggest advantage is that we are able to work with different platforms. An Android Marketplace can only address Android users, Apple’s App Store can only serve Apple users. We can address all the popular platforms.”

Mhlanga continues to say that this results in local app stores better reflecting the phones most commonly used for apps in South Africa and highlights the fact that conventional feature phones,  as opposed to smartphones, are a key market for app developers especially in Africa. (more…)

In my previous post I described my hardware choices when building my new Home Server, something that I am handling as a weekend project. For the purposes of this article I am using a HP Proliant Microserver – a great compact little server with ample expandibility for home use. As a start I am using the built in 250GB Seagate drive as the boot drive, and then three Western Digital AV Green Power 2 Terabyte drives. You can choose whatever size drives you want, but look at things like power usage and reliability. This is a server after all.

There is a number of operating systems to choose from for home storage. We need an OS that is stable, has the ability to backup PC’s on your network, and also has drive redundancy to keep your data safe in case of drive failure (and yes, drives do fail). After looking at all the options, Windows Home Server version 1 is still your best bet. It is rock solid, and has a great community of add on developers. You can find it at most specialist computer shops for around $99.

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I have always been a great fan of Network Attached Storage in the home. With consumer’s ever increasing storage needs and the switchover to laptops, the need for a centralised storage area on your home network is becoming more relevant than ever. Sure, we can shift some of that storage to the cloud, but SA’s tragic state of broadband has made this more difficult than it should be.

Certain media just works better when stored locally. In the US you might have a great little AppleTV device that just streams you a HD movie quickly and easily, in SA we have to make do with other methods to get our media kicks on. If you store it locally, you also have a lot more freedom on what device you want to access your media from. Want to watch a movie that is stored on your home server on your iPad? Not a problem. But you first need the right hardware.

Luckily it is cheaper and easier than ever to build centralized storage on your home network. Sure, you can go buy dedicated NAS devices if you do not want the hassle of building something. And you can just connect a big external harddrive, but that loses most of the functionality of having a network attached device. There are some of us who like the thrill of DIY. And when it comes to WHS, your own efforts will in most cases lead to better results.

What hardware to get: (more…)

If you have ever needed convincing that manufacturers are finally fully switching to touch screens, this is it. The latest (cheaper) BlackBerry Bold, the 9790, will now also sport a touch screen and keyboard similiar to the Bold 9900 (which we loved). What is perhaps more interesting is that the new Curve 9380 will be touch only.

RIM has had a bad history with touch-only devices. The Storm and Storm 2 were big failures, despite sporting “clicky” touch screens that was supposed to simulate the feedback of a keyboard, but with a touch screen. Turns out BlackBerry users are quite attached to the their keyboards, so this is indeed a risky move for RIM to try a third time with an all touch device. Maybe it is third time lucky? Specs are pretty scarce right now, with RIM only stating a “brilliant 3.2 inch display” and 512 MB of internal storage. You might want to upgrade that with MicroSD card. Update: Turns out it runs a 800MHz processor.

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This Android Tablet means business...

The tablet market is in a peculiar situation right now – according to sales figures it is basically Apple’s iPad and then everyone else. This is however not because of a lack of choice. In fact, there is a multitude of Android tablets out there from a variety of manufacturers in all shapes and sizes. The danger with this situation is that the Android tablet market is becoming somewhat commoditized, and there is not really a lot of them out there that are truly unique.

So we have been looking forward to trying the Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet, which really does seem a bit different from the rest, and not *Just Another Android Tablet*. Yes, it is called the “Thinkpad Tablet” despite Lenovo making a variety of tablets on a number of operating systems. So why is this one different? First off, it carries the Thinkpad name, so it should have good performance and be built well. Right? And secondly, the Thinkpad Tablet has a decent stylus included (at least the one I reviewed) for handwriting recognition and notes. But we will get to that later.

Our current favourite Android tablet is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (see our review here), but the Thinkpad might just take that crown. So how does it do?

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One year ago this week, Xbox 360 set out to change the way we interact with games and entertainment with the launch of Kinect (see our review here). Controller-free games and entertainment – once the stuff of science fiction (think Minority Report) – had become a reality through the magic of Kinect.  Sales immediately soared with more than 10 million Kinect sensors sold, setting the Guinness World Record as the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in 60 days along the way.

Kinect opened up Xbox to a broad set of new audiences bringing new categories of entertainment to the platform. People were inspired, but wanted to use this interface for their computers as well. Six months ago, a diverse group of hobbyists and academics from around the world embraced the possibilities of Kinect. They downloaded the Microsoft Kinect for Windows SDK and began developing creative applications and innovative uses in healthcare, education, art etc.  Microsoft has recognized this phenomenon as “The Kinect Effect.”

Go take a look at some of Microsoft’s vision of the Kinect Effect – “Even though the world keeps asking us what we will do with Kinect next – we are just as excited to ask the world the same thing”.

Marking the 4^th of November anniversary of Kinect, Xbox 360 today announced that the Kinect for Windows commercial program will be launched early next year. The commercial program will give businesses the tools to develop applications that not only could improve their own operations, but potentially rethink the way businesses use interfaces. To date, more than 200 businesses worldwide—including Toyota, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Razorfish— have joined a Kinect for Windows pilot program to begin exploring the possibilities of Kinect.

Prepare to see some really creative implementations now that the Kinect is now longer tied to the Xbox…