Teen Technology

Why are Sony not doing what the consumers want?

Sony has made an operating loss for a few years in a row now and one of the few sectors they are not cutting down on is their gaming sector. I completely agree with this, it’s one of the things that they do best at! But why are they not listening to what we, the people who pay for their goods want?

It’s been around 4 months now since the release of the PS Vita and there is still not a decent web browser which supports HTML5 or Flash, we want YouTube!
    We cannot see our Vita trophies on PS3, we cannot even sync our Vitas with our computers without them being connected to the internet.

Instead Sony is working on things like Nasne. Why not introduce a decent update to PlayTV which should be as Nasne is.

I have been a dedicated Sony fan all my life, have a PS1, two PS2’s (buying another after the first broke),  two PSP’s (buying another after the first broke), a PS3 and a PS Vita. However I fear that unless the PS4/Orbis brings something really revolutionary, I may end up just getting a gaming PC, after all the only thing I shall be missing out on is trophies (I am a trophy hunter) but I shall have thousands of mod’s instead.

It’s time to choose Sony, listen to your customers, or lose to Microsoft whether that be through Windows or Xbox. 

Why the new iPad will not replace your games console

I saw this article on Time’s Techland section earlier and quite frankly, it annoyed me.

1. Cost
The new iPad is £559 for a 64GB Wi-Fi only version whereas a 160GB PS3 currently retails for around £200. Is it really plausible that consumers will spend £359 more for Apple’s new iPad?
For this price I could get a PS3 a PS Vita and a couple of brand new games, giving me the portability of an iPad and also a full, home console.

2. Lack of Physical Buttons

It is admitted by most pro gamers that computers, with a good keyboard and mouse make gaming much easier, then you have the standard consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3) with less buttons, butstill relatively good controllers. Having played games such as Call of Duty: Zombies, Real Racing and the Modern Combat series on iDevices, I can tell you that playing console style games without buttons is extremely difficult.

3. Storage Space

With everybody banging on about the new iPad’s screen quality, having console games, or even portable console games play at that resolution is going to take up a hell of a lot of memory. Uncharted: Golden Abyss on the PS Vita for example, takes up 3.4GB of space if you download it, which you would have to on the iPad. Although I may have quoted the price on a 64GB iPad, I don’t actually know anybody who has a 64GB iPad, and if quality games are coming in at the 3GB mark, a 16GB iPad is going to be filled pretty quickly.
The storage space is not expandable like my PS3’s is (a 1TB HDD will cost me £100) and the Xbox is also expandable.

4. No Multiplayer

Ok, the iPad has great multiplayer on games such as Draw Something, but we are talking about getting rid of a console. No iOS developers have yet proven that multiplayer gaming can be, or even will be, good on an iPad.

5. “It’s powerful enough”. Really though?

It has a dual core, 1 GHz A5 chip and 1GB RAM. That’s all very well but how long is the battery going to last when playing a game using all this power?

Don’t get me wrong, I like the iPad but even suggesting it could replace a home console is ludicrous. The iPad is a portable tablet, designed for small tasks and playing arcade style games, let’s leave it there.

(Source: teentechnology)

PS Vita Review

My PS Vita (WI-FI) came in the post late yesterday so today I have been playing with it. There are many reviews already out there so I’ll keep it nice and short.

First off, the screen is absolutely stunning! The colour of it and also the responsiveness is great, although sometimes I feel it’s too responsive, if that’s possible.

The only games I’ve played by third party developers so far are F1 2011 and Fifa Football, Royal Mail decided not to deliver Uncharted to me on the guarneteed delivery date for some reason. But the games both have great graphics and don’t try to use the touch screen where it is not needed which I fear that some games will.
   There’s a built in game called Welcome Park, which is fairly good for a free game, but is really just a few arcade cames to get you used to using the touch screen and rear touch pad. I only really played it to obtain the trophies.

Talking of trophies, you can earn trophies in all games that have a cartridge version and they will currently show up on your Vita, but not on a PS3. The number of trophies you have earnt on a PS3 and Vita combined will show up on the PS3 but it just won’t say where they were acquired if they were earnt on a Vita. When you earn a trophy, it brings up a much nicer message box than you get on a PS3.

I’ve also tried one AR game, called cliff diving. It is good but could be much better if the Vita had a better camera(s), although I am with Sony that they couldn’t really make it any more expensive.

All the PSP games I have work on it fine, but there is currently no support for PS1 Classics unfortunately unless you play them through remote play.

The user interface is very well designed and flows through seemlessly. Every app has it’s own ‘Live Screen’ which shows information about the game, and you can find all udates etc. there.

Things I would like to see in an update:

Support for PS1 games

The ability to have a game and an application open at the same time, as when I paused F1 2011 to go on Facebook, it would not let me on without first closing F1

When using a picture as a wallpaper, it shows in less quality than it does in your library, I guess to speed up transitions but make it optional, Sony.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Ok, so I know I’m a bit late but I’m downloadig it now, although for my old laptop so it’ll be an upgrade from Windows XP! However I’m a bit wary about it getting rid of Ubuntu from my other partition…

I’ll be downloading the add on for Visual Studio for it tomorrow and I’m going to attempt to make a half decent metro style app

A tip for websites looking for user responses

I recently saw this poll on indexmundi whilst doing some college work and thought I’d be helpful and respond to their poll assuming that they would use it to improve the experience users had when using their website. When I clicked on “School Homework” a message box appeared prompting me to sign in before I could vote! Do they not want my response?! Admittedly I could have done it without registering directly with them, I could have used my Twitter but the point is, A, it’s too much hassle for me, when quite simply I’m doing it for them. Also, B, they do not need any of my details just for me to help them in improving their website, what do they plan on doing with it, tweeting me a “thank you” or selling it to a third party company?

(Source: teentechnology)

From Distributed Files to Distributed Websites

Technology, from a teen's point of view!

2012, the year CAPTCHA dies, (hopefully).

With gesture based unlocking becoming increasingly popular on smartphones and Microsoft already having confirmed that gesture based unlocking will be a feature on Windows 8, is it about time that CAPTCHA’s become obsolete? With spammers becoming better and better at what they do, security has to increase accordingly, obviously, but it’s time for a new method of security altogether, such as gestures. CAPTCHA’s were good when they first started being used, admittedly, but with them being so ‘advanced’ now, some of them are quite literally unreadable.
   Unreadable CAPTCHA’s can be very heavily damaging for businesses, although to be fair it is mainly the more established companies such as Microsoft and Tumblr that I seem to have the most problems with when using them. Smaller companies often have them much easier to read or request you to answer simple sums but these are much more easily cracked by spammers.

(Source: teentechnology)

iTV Copyright?

Surely itv has a patent or whatever they need on their company name to stop it being used by somebody else? Would this not stop Apple from using iTV as the name for their tv?

(Source: teentechnology)