NXE

First, there is that firmware upgrade. Everyone gets it, and everyone will be pleased. Like a fresh coat of paint, it doesn’t change the fundenmentals but looks new. There is some notable features, like the “run from hard disk” function that make finally make the hardware silent.

Also, seeing that upgrade, I do think that the plan all along was to go toward a clone of Steam for 360 games. Seen in that light, the choice of DVD for the optical drive (as opposed to bluray or HDDVD) becomes obvious: it puts a 10GB size limit, that albeit somewhat big for many, shouldn’t be too painful over broadband.

Lineup

When asked how he thought the PS3’s Christmas software line-up compares to the Xbox 360’s, Maguire replied: “I think we’ve never been in a stronger situation. This is the first year for me that I can sit back and think, ‘yeah we’ve got five super strong titles’. Some of them ground breaking by creating almost a new genre and the others stiarting to really use the strength of the Cell chip and the graphics. When I look at LittleBigPlanet, when I look at Resistance, when I look at MotorStorm, and then I look at things like Abba on SingStar, before we even get into Killzone next year, I think we’ve got a line-up really to be proud of.” (Source)

Big budget FPS: Gears of Wars 2, checked. Song game: Lips, checked, bonus: ability for the user to plug an USB device to sing over its own songs and get a score for that. Exclusive first party titles: Banjo Kazooie & Fable 2, checked. Exclusive title stolen to Sony: Final Fantasy XIII, checked.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Little Big Planet

Announced hyped as the big Christmas title, I think only disappointment awaits Sony. Not only a western player prefers to play games, not create them, but Sony will understand why Microsoft put its policies against user originated content. Nonetheless, that following video leaked, showing a prototype of a similar project by Microsoft’s research team.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hardware

The Xbox is noisy, the Xbox has (had?) a big failure rate, but now, it’s so cheap. The Arcade pack was something like 179€, now every model gets an 40€ mail in rebate, so the Xbox is as expensive as basic PS2 packs, at least 100€ cheaper than the Wii, and almost 3 times cheaper than the PS3. Global panic helping, sales of the Xbox 360 are double of that of its competitor; plus attach rate is as high as it could get, so third party titles are usually more polished on the 360.

Competitors ?

Well, I’m a little more on the handheld devices, and if the DSi wasn’t region locked, I would have bought it for Christmas. At least Nintendo succeded in shifting global eyeballs from Sony PSP 3000, a sleek capable device hindered by a screen that is seen as faulty by many gamers, absolutely no lineup and a renewed protection against jailbreaking custom firmware. The worst about custom firmware is that they make the PSP better, even if you don’t want to pirate games, under custom firmware, games have very short loading times, battery life double, and homebrew software makes it much complete. And did I mention that an homebrew plugin allow composite output for games ?

Also, I can’t help but think bad about Sony refunding its DVB adapter for the PS3 because the French government allowed MPEG4 streams for HD content and Sony wouldn’t rewrite the driver to support these streams.

If you were selected for the preview program, you’ll have a surprise this morning for your dear 360.
If the screen stay black early on the update, wait a litlle and reboot using  Y + RT to reset video settings.

- It’s like a rebirth, fresh and new, like the first day.
- They copied our achievements, we copy their Miis.

Still have the “copy game on hard disc” feature to test.

—————–

Si vous avez été sélectionné pour le preview program, vous avez une surprise qui vous attend ce matin.
Si l’écran reste noir au reboot, l’astuce de Y + RT pour faire un reset de la résolution marche a merveille.

Premières impressions:
- Ca apporte un vent de fraicheur pour la Xbox
- Oui, c’est des clones de Mii, mais bon, les autres ont/vont volé les achievements.

Me reste a tester la copie sur disque dur (tout le monde dors encore)

Les autres photos / The other pictures

Well I had an hard time updating the server. I choosed a new wiki, wasn’t satified, then turned around and finally installed the new version of the old program. Wordpress was also fairly easy to update, time consuming maybe, but easy. The last one, Gallery2, was… well I messed it. Not only that, but I corrupted backups and had to reupload everything.

So:

• It’s not because it always works fine that you can skip a backup.
• Another copy in an adjacent directory is not a backup

Also, now that I have this SSL certificate, I should secure… well… something. Starting now, the login page is secured, I tried to secure the whole admin pages but I missed something and got ton of “mixed secure/non-secure” warnings.

Big day (from 10am to 5pm, took at least 2hours and a half to get there…) but I think it was worth it. Not sure I will have time to do everything I want with my new toys but I’ll at least try.

It seems that all these component are really very low power. Measuring and displaying temperature for 5 years on a battery, even years are achievable with wireless transmissions. Now, all I need is a low power screen.

As promised, I was offered the new “low-cost” dev kit but there is a catch: now I want also to experiment with the new ZigBee controllers and the future msp5x board.

J’utilise quotidiennement mon iPhone sur le réseau Orange depuis la semaine de l’Apple Expo 2007, et je voulais donner un petit aperçu de mes impressions.

• Mes commentaires:
  • En tant que téléphone (voix)
  • En tant que PDA
  • En tant que Smartphone
    • Du coté lumineux
    • Du coté obscur
  • En tant qu’iPod
• Les fonctions qui manquent

Les commentaires:

En tant que téléphone (voix)

Les mauvais points d’abord : en tant que téléphone, l’iPhone est bien en dessous de n’importe quel Nokia en vente actuellement. La qualité audio est un peu moins bonne, la réception est aussi un peu moins bonne (j’ai mon baseband qui crash de temps en temps, avec pour conséquence la perte du signal pour 30 secondes). L’iPhone est aussi notoirement capricieux, surtout avec le réseau des autres opérateurs.

Mais ça marche tant bien que mal. Pour tout ce qui est interface, c’est pas mal, on se fait aux menus tactiles pendant l’appel bien qu’on aurait préféré (sans savoir trop comment) accéder plus facilement au clavier. La grande réussite c’est surtout l’intuitivité avec laquelle on sélectionne un numéro, ajoute un élément au répertoire ou place un contact en favori. On peste sur l’absence de fonction recherche et sur le manque de la fonction MMS. (Qui, je vous l’accorde M. Jobs, ne serait pas gênante si tout le monde avait un iPhone)

En plus, la gestion des SMS par threads est fantastique, et mérite d’être copiée par tous, même si il manque la possibilité d’effacer un message individuellement.

Ah, j’allais oublier : tout ce que l’on tape sur l’iPhone passe par un correcteur orthographique. Taper en langage SMS devient une vraie torture aussi pour l’expéditeur.

En tant que PDA

Avant, j’avais un vrai PDA, un Palm, (Les 2 Zires en fait, le lent noir & blanc, et le rapide noir & blanc) brave machine que je considère encore comme le summum pour la gestion Répertoire/Emploi du temps/Liste des tâches/etc… Après, j’ai eu une passe Windows Mobile. Outlook est un peu moins bien que Palm Desktop, mais toutes les fonctions y sont même si les programmes du PDA sont moins agréables à utiliser.

L’expérience sur iPhone est mi-figue mi-raisin : d’un coté leur clavier virtuel et leurs contrôles sont pratiques a utiliser, leurs visualisations sont relativement pratiques, d’un autre, créer des événements sur le téléphone n’est pas si intuitif. En fait, ce que je lui reproche, c’est de, contrairement a Palm, de ne pas valider les entrées par défaut. Certes, cela permet de réduire le nombre d’entrées blanches, mais cela cause aussi de perdre des données pas complètement validées.

En tant que Smartphone

Du coté lumineux :

En apprenant que le seul moyen d’avoir des applications seraient des applications 2.0 depuis le navigateur Safari, difficile de ne pas être sarcastique, mais bon, finalement, ça marche, et comme on est en contact direct avec un serveur en face, les possibilitées sont illimités. Il faut saluer les travail des milliers de webmasters qui on crée un site adapté.

Du coté obscur :

En attendant le SDK officiel et en espérant qu’il ne soit pas trop limité, il existe un grand nombre d’applications existantes. Des emulateurs Super-Nintendo aux simulateurs d’instruments de musique, on (commence) a trouver de tout. Actuellement, la seule application que j’ai installée est MobileScobber, qui permet d’envoyer aux serveurs de Last.fm la liste des morceaux musicaux que j’écoute et de pouvoir écouter de la radio à la demande en Wifi.

Grace a « Installer », installer de nouvelles applications est un jeu d’enfant, bien plus facile que sur Windows Mobile sans l’utilisation d’un ordinateur avec des dépôt plus ou moins thématiques.

En tant qu’iPod

Comme j’aime râler je pourrai me plaindre du manque de boutons physiques, car j’arrivait à piloter mon iPod 5G sans le sortir de ma poche, le manque de la fonction recherche est aussi incompréhensible et le système de création de listes « On the Go » est assez obscur mais malgrès tout, l’iPhone/iPod touch sont les meilleurs iPods jamais crées. Pour la première fois il est enfin possible de regarder de la vidéo sans soufrir les pires tortures occulaires. La navigation des albums en mode paysage n’est là que pour la frime mais tout cet « Eye-Candy » reste agréable sur le long terme.

Les fonctions qui manquent :

• Support des casques Bluetooth stéreo : Je tuerai pour cette fonction, surtout que tous les casques Bluetooth ont des touches de contrôle, ce qui enlèverait un des points négatif de la bête.
• Des fonctions de recherche partout, c’est un smart phone après tout non ?
• Copier/coller
• Téléchargement des nouveaux podcasts depuis le Wifi, des téléchargements Audibles aussi si ce n’est pas trop demander…

Enfin… les deux premières victimes sont

• Une tablette internet de Nokia (topic)
• Un iPod vidéo 60Go (topic)

iPhone optimized

MacRummors Live Page (iPhone)
Mac4Ever LoFi Version Mirror
MacScoop Page

French

MacBidouille Event Page
Mac4Ever Keynote (Mirror)
aidemac.fr live page
France-iPhone

English

Ars Technica
MacRumors Big Page
Mac Observer Live Page
Engadget Macworld’ Page (Tag Page - Big)
TUAW Tag Page (Big)
Macuser Live Keynote Page
MacWorld Live Keynote Page

AIO List - from here

Applegazette
Apple Matters
Loop Rumors
MacSpark
Uneasy Silence

RSS

Mac4Ever RSS (Mirror)
Apple Gazette
TUAW also han an RSS feed

Also, as you may not know, it’s possible to be up to date with some twitter updates and even to receive free SMS notifications on your phone. 

Twitter

macworld
TUAW
macrumors
arsMacWorld
macspark

Nowadays, the XO have less than a tenth of the processing power of a "normal" laptop and it is not stupid to think that they are at least 3 times slower than an eee pc. So a/two year(s) ago when that "thing" was shown to the public, everyone I knew laughed except me, because if "Linux", "laptop" and "$100" are describing a product, I’d want it. Even if it is green, and even if I don’t know how I could use it.

Good news is now I know why.

Let’s be a jerk for a few seconds: why a child in a poor country? (Dvorak) why a poor child of your country/state? (Someone in last week’s twit) why not OUR children? Ok we’re rich (sort of), but, would I share my laptop or even my desktop to a 4-year old? Even if tux-paint is configured with the you-can’t-escape mode? No. I use my computer all the time and there is valuable data: my digital memories of my life. I barely trust my girlfriend with my laptop so no ways a child could even consider touching it. Even if the computer is offline.

But I still want him to use something that looks like a computer, with some educational software on it. Something that he can’t break, or even if it does 1) it is HIS toy 2) it cost less than a MacBook. Visiting a supermarket last week, I’ve seen lot of toys that look like computers but have no capabilities (64×64 BW screen) and crap software, but they are child-proof and emit funny sound, so people buy them. Some years ago (haven’t checked back), you could event hook up an printer or a mouse, but it was still a very limited piece of hardware. See where I’m going?

I don’t mind paying more (but no the price of two, except if I really get two of them, but I would still accept to pay them more, to fund the project) for an OLPC to my kid because it is a REAL computer, it is open source, and there is always something to do with it because it is open. There will be software for everyone, from tux-paint to Smalltalk programming (and web services, you talked about it in a previous FLOSS weekly) including a decent word processor and so on. You don’t like the software, build your own distrib!

Furthermore, thanks Amazon, I would know now what to do with a tablet pc with free wifi access to Google Library, a outdoor-ready screen and a battery life of 20 hours (ebook-reading mode).

And Microsoft involvement? I’m more than happy, if they manage to tweak Windows XP to run on a 433MHz machine with at the same time an word processor, an IDE, and a web browser running, while maintaining an 5+ hours of battery life, I’ll take it for my overpowered laptop.

And Asus’ eee PC, Intel Schoolmate ? The OLPC project created a need for this sub-1 kg, internet-aware form factor, for us, western over-equipped people. Google own me, he has all my mails, he tells me what to read, (viva Google Reader) and will retain all my calendars once I would have understood how to sync my Outlook data. I stream music from internet, I download podcasts, I interact on forums and blogs. The iPhone is cool but the screen is small and I want a keyboard. On the other hand, my 15.4 laptop is too big to carry every second of my life, and everything smaller won’t replace a desktop screen when it comes to coding or watching movies. The Palm’s Foleo was a nice design, I own a N800 from Nokia (so small and same screen resolution as your Asus eee PC ! and I was thinking the iPhone screen was impressive, but nothing beats multi-touch, thanks Apple. ), Japanese sub-notebooks and other UMPCs had already done it, but these devices prove that it can cost around $300 (or even less).

Here come Intel, angered that someone tried to save the world without him. He wants to be nicer, faster, and cheaper. Same as Microsoft: try, I’d want to see the results! If Intel really wants to make something nice, he could beat everybody. Isn’t the Core2 architecture the most power-effective? A drastic reduction of the cache size, a  smart simplification of the architecture, a very cool, sub gigahertz design, an advanced 45 nm process, and of top of that if he doesn’t try to make irrational profits on these, or better, selling them at expected cost, it would change lot of things. And x86 isn’t the only architecture out there, Intel once made XScale, and very powerful and very power efficient platform.

For us, consumers, seeing all these people fighting to prove that their answer is at their advantage is fantastic, and they have to fight because a huge market was created. Another interesting idea would be for the OLPC group to port the XO’s operating system to another similar computer like the ones from Asus and Intel. More people would be using this software and OLPC team could prove his platform’s strengths.

I will try to only talk about tech news and about my projects. No politics here, not that I don’t want to, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison.