So the first thing I would suggest if you have not already read it, is go and take a look at part 1 of this 3 part blog post. In this weeks entry we will be focusing on the games themselves, whats hot right now and what you can expect in the lead up to the holiday period.

So first out of the blocks has to be the XBox 360, given that when it comes to the latest generation of consoles it has been available for the longest period of time. I remember picking up the console on day1 with the likes of Call of Duty2, and Project Gotham Racing 3 and being simply blown away by the graphics and gameplay on offer. In fact even right now those games are still worth picking up on the cheap, even if it’s just to expand your gamer score. Since then we have seen many more triple A titles with the likes of the Ghost Recon series, Saints Row, and Pro Evolution getting plenty of gametime on many consoles. A couple of games which any self respecting XBox360 console owner needs to have include Oblivion, which although single player has such an expansive and interactive world that it quite often feels as though you are playing it online. For the First Person Shooter fan then Gears of War is another must. This game, for some, stands head and shoulders above all others in the graphics department and gets pretty close to the top in the gameplay department. And finally, but by no means least, I couldn’t give a run-down of the must have games for the Xbox 360 without mentioning Halo3. For some the graphics were not up to the likes of Gears of War but what this game perhaps lacks in graphics punch it more than makes up in the single player story (for me the end of a 5 year journey with Master Chief) as well as the multi-player campaign. The success of Halo3 in my opinion is based around the community and this is where, through the multiplayer, Halo3 will continue to get more gametime that most in the coming months.

So next up is the Nintendo Wii which as discussed in part 1 of this blog post never professed to be taking on the big two in terms of raw power and graphics. Probably one of the most widely played games is Wii Sports which came free with the console. In it you can take on the role of a golfer, tennis or baseball player, boxer or ten-pin bowler. To control your players various actions you use a series of swings, punches, chips and bowls through the Wii controller. This game especially comes into its own when you have a bunch of friends around as it can get quite competitive, especially when you get the boys vs girls challenge going. For the more serious gamer then the latest Zelda game, Twilight Princess is a must. Even seasoned Zelda campaigners will get a number of pleasant surprises along the way. In fact one of the mini games involving fishing can take up a lot of your time as you use both parts of the Wii controller to cast your line and look for a bite. Speaking of fishing if you do fancy yourself as a bit of an angler then you may want to consider Big Catch: Bass Fishing, which again allows you to fish from the comfort of your own home. One thing I would say about the Wii is that given that the majority of games involve you getting up from the sofa and flailing your arms around to control the action you may want to consider closing the front curtains to avoid your neighbours calling up the funny farm police.

Finally we have the Playstation 3 which has been the newest addition in the UKs latest generation of console offerings. Two games stood out for this console at launch. Motostorm which drops you into the non-stop action of an off road ATV, Big Rig or Motorcycle driver and then takes you online to pit your skills against up to 16 other players. Motostorm differs from the normal off-road racer by bringing an element of kill or be killed - that’s right to win you need to think about survival. In the FPS genre Resistance Fall Of Man was hailed as the Halo3 beater. Well perhaps not but it still delivers plenty of action along the way with both a single and multiplayer online mode. Other games you may think about picking up for the Playstation 3 include Forumal One, WarHawk or Heavenly Sword.

So this has been a brief introduction into some of the top rated games currently available for all 3 consoles. The 3rd and final part of this blog post will focus on the future of the consoles and how the big three in Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft hope to keep us, the gamers, coming back for more - so stay tuned.

So the Apple iPhone was finally launched in the UK on Friday and with hundreds of yearning Apple lovers queuing overnight and from the early hours of the morning outside Apple’s London store, it could only be described as “mayhem”. After the doors opened and the rush to the counter was over, customers had a chance to reflect on their brand new purchase. One man said “It is a great piece of hardware. It is a great thing and I love it.” while another man described it as “love at first sight”. I can understand the happiness and joy i really can but love at first sight? It just goes to show how deep the feelings can run towards the iPhone for some. I’m sure all of you die-hard Apple fans already know just about everything there possibly could be about the iPhone but for those of you who don’t why don’t i let you in on the basics behind the iPhone, if the iPhone actually has basics that is.

Instead of over complicating things i will just tell you it straight. The Apple iPhone has 3 essential qualities.
1) Touchscreen interface.
2) A Widescreen iPod.
3) Web browser.

Of course the key to the iPhone is the touchscreen interface. It is the first touchscreen that you can use 2 fingers on. Unlike others where as soon as you add more than one finger the phone goes all over the place , you can type at keyboard level using its virtual keyboard. The virtual keyboard can also predict what you are going to type so it sorts out those typo’s for you before you even realize you’ve made a mistake. One thing that is for sure is, the interaction you get with an iPhone is like no other phone. The touchscreen interface is also the key behind the built in iPod as well. The scroll wheel you get on your regular iPod is no longer needed, you simply throw your finger around the screen to scroll through the iPod. It also boasts a Coverflow feature. This works by flicking the phone over on its side and it will scroll through all of your albums, think of it as turning the page of a book. As for the Web browser, it is a full version of Apples very own Safari which makes it extremely easy to use and has all the qualities you’d expect your browser at home to have, bookmarks, RSS feeds etc. You can also download songs from iTunes straight onto your iPhone and for Internet connection it will use EDGE but will switch to Wi-Fi automatically if you are in a Wi-Fi hotspot.

These are the foundations of the iPhone, the purpose of the iPhone, the basics. Whichever way you want to describe them, one thing is for sure. No other phone will have
basics quite like these. It is a piece of technology in its very own class.

So you know the feeling, the weather has started to turn nasty (hang on hasn’t it been nasty all summer), you don’t really fancy heading to the cinema and you don’t really feel like watching a repeat of Last Of The Summer Wine. What’s a person to do? Well take my advice, draw the curtains, take the phone of the hook, crack open that bottle of red and settle in to a broad range of movies right in the comfort of your own home. Yup that’s right, it’s time to review some of the latest movies to be released on DVD.

Now more than ever there is something for almost everyone, no matter you personal tastes be it romance, comedy or action, you can normally find something suitable.

Halloween may have just passed but there is no reason why you can’t continue to scare yourself silly with the likes of Hostel (part 1 and part 2 if you dare), a movie that has made me think twice about my grand plans for a backpacking holiday. It’s certainly not a movie for the faint hearted and in fact I think the sequel delivers more disturbing scenes than the first one.

Perhaps you want something a little less on the fright but no less on the action, then you may want to consider the likes of King Kong a classic remake of the original directed by Peter Jackson (who of course also directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy). Being a huge Jackson fan I enjoyed this remake immensely and must admit I shed a few tears as the mighty Kong met his inevitable death atop the Empire State building. For those who have seen the original know that it was indeed beauty who killed the beast and Jackson captures this perfectly in one particular scene as Kong is captured on Skull Island.

On the romance side of things I would highly recommend Moulin Rouge, a story of love told in both spoken word and song which has its fair share of laughs along the way. I was surprised how much I enjoyed this given the fact it was basically a bit of a romantic musical. Take my word it has something for everyone and you won’t be disappointed.

So that’s just a short overview of some of my recommendations when it comes to movies and of course you can also pickup some of these on either Blue Ray or HD-DVD, something which adds so much more to your viewing pleasure.

The Carlsberg Draught Master is the gadget that has caught my eye the most recently, planting itself inside my head begging to be bought. Wether it’s because Carlsberg are telling me “It is probably the best gadget in the world” or just the fact that i am a man and beer is one of the main things on my mind anyway, nothing is going to stop me owning one of these. The Carlsberg Draught Master gives you beer, on tap, in your very own home. Wether it’s because you want to play “Barman” or simply that you want to have a good, cold, pub quality beer in a tall glass in your very own home, I’m sure this will be top of most guys Christmas want list.

The Draught Master is basically a bunker top beer tap similar to a coffee machine, by that i mean you wont have to wire it in or attach it to the wall not that it will dispense coffee too. The Draught Master contains the keg inside its casing so there is no need for running tubes from a basement or anything like that. One thing you do have to do is chill the beer first but once you have put it in there and opened it up, the Draught Masters twin speed fans and cooling functions will keep it chilled and fresh for up to 3 weeks! It has took the guys at Carlsberg 7 years to design and make this thing. I can only assume they spent most of the time drinking beer out of it than actually working on it! But 7 years does prove that this thing has a bit of technology behind it.

So ladies, if you are looking to score some Brownie points with your man this Christmas, get him one of these!

So after a recent holiday in Los Angeles and Las Vegas I finally convinced my better half to invest in a compact digital camera. Up until now she has been happy to use disposable cameras which in my opinion have had their day. Her disappointment upon discovering that a number of the photos had not come out as hoped further convinced her that it was finally time to go digital. Now I myself have had a digital compact for some time but it had been a while since I invested any serious time looking at the latest and greatest features offered - and boy was I impressed.

Firstly and probably one of the first things a number of you look for when considering a digital camera is the all important megapixel number. I was amazed to find cameras such as the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W200 boasting a very impressive 12.1MP or the Canon Digital Ixus 960, again capable of 12.1Mp. At this point however I would like to give a warning about being too focused on that magic megapixel number. A general mistake a lot of people make is that the better the megapixel number the better the image is going to be. Now in principle this is of course correct but given that a number of you will only be interested in uploading these to a website such as Flickr or printing them at 6×4 format the difference beween a 12.1MP camera and a 7MP camera will be extremely hard to tell. Of course if you are planning on printing much larger format photos then you may want to pay a little closer attention to the megapixel offering.

So apart from megapixels what other features do some of these compact cameras offer. Well when I started to look under the hood I was amazed at some of the features starting to appear such as 10x optical zoom on the Panasonic DMC-TZ3EB, or the exposure controls on the Sony Cyber Shot DCS-T200 such as adjustable ISO, white balance and multiple light metering options - something that up until recently was only available on more expensive Digitial SLR cameras.

And of course the really nice thing to report is that you can get all of these features in a very nice looking camera for under £200, fantastic !

Oh and don’t forget you will probably want to get yourself a case for you camera along with a memory card, again with falling prices something you can pickup very cheap. Oh and finally there are a number of websites out there such as Photobox which offer a simple to use service for printing your digital images so you can present them in an album or frame as you would with your normal photos from a non-digital camera.

If you are like me and you take pride in the fact that you have a much bigger collection of movies and TV programs downloaded than all of your friends but are fed up with watching them on your far too small monitor, then you are going to love this new player from D-Link.

See, the problem is, you have an over-sized flatscreen sitting in the corner of your living room going to waste because all your movies are stored on your PC. A lot of movies and TV programs that are available for download now are in the DivX format due to its high quality and small file sizes. It is all good and well when watching these files on the monitor, all you have to do is install DivX and its codecs onto your PC but what if you want to take advantage of the ridiculously large TV you splashed the cash on? Here is where the D-Link DSM-330 comes in!

The D-Link DSM-330 will stream your movies and TV programs straight from your PC to your TV via either a wireless connection or a hard-wire connection. The DSM-330 is by no means the only player that allows you to watch DivX files on your TV, there are other options. There are DVD players out there that support the DivX format. The Samsung DVD-HD870 and Toshiba SD-370E to name two. This however means writing files to discs and quite frankly i am a bit on the lazy side and can’t be bothered with all that nonsense! This is why the D-Link DSM-330 is special. There is no need to waste time writing files to discs, it can simply stream them straight to your TV via wireless for you and it has HDMI support (High-Definition Multimedia Interface). Other great features include accessing Stage 6 and other online video services with the player through your TV, deliver music and photos from PC to TV and you can add DivX Connected plug-ins for gaming and infotainment services.

Now, you may be thinking “Am i going to have a stroke getting it set up though?” Dont worry, it comes with a wizard (not a magic one with a pointy hat) to take you through the whole process of connecting it to your network and TV very easily. You also get all the DivX software with it for Free. The D-Link DSM-330 will be available early to mid November.

So with the holiday season fast approaching I’m sure some of you are considering starting or adding to your current console collection. This will of course be the first Christmas in the UK that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have their latest generation consoles available so it’s sure to be an interesting period ahead.

When talking about consoles I’m often asked which one would I choose and my answer is always the same - this choice should always be determined by the gamers’ requirements. Each console has something to offer everyone so I don’t believe the choice is a simple one of graphics, movie playing capabilities or internet connectivity. I myself own all 3 consoles and can say I get enormous enjoyment out of all 3 depending on my mood or indeed if I’m entertaining guests or not.

I’m actually going to split this review into 3 separate posts as there is a lot to cover. Firstly we will talk about the consoles themselves, the specifications, the key differences and why I believe each of them has something unique to offer everyone. Secondly, and for many most importantly, the games themselves. What’s currently hot and of course what can we expect as we get closer to Christmas. Lastly we will be looking at the future of the consoles, why would they keep you coming back for more as well as giving a final verdict on console choice.

So this week we will look at the consoles themselves and of course we are talking about the Nintendo Wii, Microsofts XBox 360 and Sonys Playstation 3.

When it comes to raw power then the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 stand head and shoulders above the Nintendo Wii, however Nintendo never professed to be building the Wii to compete graphically with the Playstation3 and XB360. What the Wii lacks in raw power it makes up with innovative design including the main controller, the Wii Remote, which can detect acceleration in three dimension - you swing the controller and tennis racket, baseball bat or frying pan (depending on which game you are playing) moves with you. Sonys Sixaxis goes someway to competing with the Wii Remote with support for rotational orientation and translational acceleration although this has seen limited use in the range of games released to-date. For me one major factor missing from the Sony controller is rumble, although they are addressing this and we expect to see support for the new rumble controller in 2008. One of the major issues with the original XBox controller was the size - you needed WWE wrestler size hands to use it. Microsoft listened to the feedback and the new controller design was born and for most it was good. The controller doesn’t have the ability to detect movement as the others do but does support feedback in the shape of rumble.

When it comes to graphics both the XBox360 and Sony Playstation 3 support High Definition- of course you need a High Def capable screen to take advantage of this (bear in mind your standard definition TV will still support all 3 consoles perfectly fine). One of the nice features of both systems is that the console will automatically choose the highest resolution your TV can support, something they like to call Dynamic High Def. The Nintendo Wii misses out on the High Def train with support for standard definition only - but again as I said at the top of this post High Def graphics was never part of the plans for the Nintendo Wii.

All three consoles have support for playing a range of the previous generation games which of course helps to justify the cost when it comes to handing over your money and indeed at the time of writing both the Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation 3 offer previous generation games through their online marketplace (more on that in part 2 of this post). Although Microsoft have a similar offering, XBox Live Marketplace, they have yet to announce the availability of previous generation games.

Aesthetically all three consoles have their good and bad points. Microsoft have reduced the size from the orginal XBOX which was one of the main complaints from customers. The Playstation 3 has gained both size and weight from its little brother, the Playstation2. Sony though have managed to get away with this size increase by making the Playstation 3 arguably the nicest looking console available today. The Nintendo Wii has also had a major design overhaul and ticks both boxes in terms of look and size, something which a number of potential owners like.

So that’s all I’m going to put in this particular post. I hope, if you are currently considering a new console for Christmas, it has started to help clear up some questions you may have. This of course is only part one of three so stayed tuned in the coming weeks for the next two installments of Battle Of The Consoles !

You are probably well aware by now of the rumours that a “Gphone” from Google was coming our way but now it seems those rumours have finally been put to rest. Unfortunately for some, Google have not come out and said “Yes that’s right, we have the Gphone”. To be honest i am kind of glad there isn’t going to be a Gphone, i mean, could you really have put up with another mobile monstrosity like the iPhone? Making mobile phones is not exactly Googles style anyway is it? There style is software, which means you shouldn’t be surprised to hear that the Gphone is in fact “Google Android” and it is going to be a revolutionary Operating System for mobile phones.

Google are developing Android with the “Open Handset Alliance” which is a group of over 30 mobile and technology leaders. Some of which include T-Mobile, Motorola, HTC and Qualcomm. This means that not only are some of the best technology developing minds in the world creating this thing but developers will be able to build cool applications that will run on Android right from the word go! Which we all know is the most important thing right? It also seems Google are focusing more on developing Android for mainstream mobile phones as opposed to Smartphones. Who knows? Maybe it will work on any mobile! Ok i may be getting carried away there but if you don’t want to break the bank balance on an iPhone or whatever, getting Google Android could be the answer you’ve been looking for. Exact details on Android and what it will contain have not been released just yet but I suspect it will have all the basics you would expect from an OS at the very least. Google are set to release a software developer’s kit next week so we may get more details to talk about then. So for now, i will leave you to stare at the “Gphone” mock up and let you think of “What could have been?”

So with exactly one week to go until the launch of the Apple iPhone I thought I’d give everyone a little reminder that there is another option if you want a mobile multimedia powerhouse - the Nokia n95.

I myself use an n95 and can hand on heart say it’s probably the most feature rich mobile device I’ve ever owned, and believe me I have owned quite a few over the years. First of course a brief explanation of the main specifications that make this such a killer device.

First the good news, and there is a lot of it so bear with me. It boasts a 5 mega pixel camera (Carl Zeiss optics) which can also record video at 640×480. For someone like me who loves to photo, and more recently video, blog the n95 is a dream come true. Crystal clear high resolution images and video in a device smaller than a candy bar just shows how much these devices have evolved. Then we have the connectivity options; GPRS, 3G, Wireless (that’s b+g), Edge and Bluetooth, should keep even the most demanding user very happy no matter what their connectivity requirements. What about basic phone functionality? Well once again the n95 has you covered with hands free, speaker phone, speed dialling and voice activated calling. As I said above this phone really is a multimedia powerhouse, and although I have other devices for audio and video playback on the move the n95 still gets its fair share of the action and I can confirm that it does not let the side down. The Nokia PC suite (for synchronisation to your desktop PC) is well put together with an array of options for both backing up your phone as well as controlling the media on it, and even with a large amount of data to copy across the USB connection handles this very quickly. Integration with social networks such as Flickr are also supported which means you can take a photo and upload this to your Flickr area with a touch of a button. Add to this 160MB of internal memory with support for an additional SD card. The n95 itself runs the Symbian operating system and this allows for 3rd party applications to be run on the phone. I won’t go into too much detail but I reguarly use my n95 for instant messaging, video blogging as well as watching and controlling my SkyTV box at home - as you can see this phone has many hidden talents. To round things off the n95 comes complete with a fully functional GPS chip and although the maps perhaps aren’t as detailed as some of the high end stand alone GPS devices it still does an admirable job.

So now the bad news - okay it’s not really bad but just trying to paint the full picture. First off the battery life. Now I can almost forgive Nokia for the battery life given the features that this phone boasts, and to be honest I think I’m a bit of a power user (voice, video, wireless, Bluetooth every day). The official specifications state 6.5 hours talk-time with 215 hours standby. I find myself needing to charge my phone every evening, but again I stress that during the course of the day I will be browsing the web, viewing and recording video, taking photos and listening to music (as well as making / receiving calls of course). My advice would be to get in the habit of daily recharges (which actually only take around 1 hour) or better still try and have a car charger to enable a quick boost between home and the office. My second issue is the GPS and mainly with the amount of time it takes to acquire a signal and then how easy it seems to loose this signal again when you are on the move - especially in a car. I myself have a separate GPS device so don’t see this as a real issue for me. My final grumble (see there wasn’t too many) is that the USB connection won’t also charge the device, when connected to a PC, which means when I travel I need to take a separate charger. Again not a big issue, more of an annoyance.

To sum things up I would have to go back to my original point that the n95 is by far the most feature rich mobile device I have ever owned. Of course come 9th November the Apple iPhone launches in the UK and the n95 will finally have its first genuine challenger for top spot. I myself though, and I think this backs up my love for the n95, won’t be picking up an Apple iPhone on launch day, something that when the iPhone was first revealed I never thought I’d say - the n95 is that good and I’m sticking with it (for now).