Sales of Halo 3 have topped £84 million in just 24 hours. This sets a new record for sales for an entertainment product. Spiderman 3, the previous holder, only managed about £70 million. Just goes to show how long people have been waiting for it.
Mines sat at home. Been busy the past few nights so I’ve not been able to play it yet. I just hope it works. There’s been reports of scratched discs in the Limited Edition version. MS are replacing them free until 30 December. Fingers crossed!
Say that three times fast!
Moore himself today has stated that he expects his own law to reach its limits within 10 to 15 years. For those who have never heard of Moore’s Law, it predicts that the number of transistors on integrated circuits will double every 2 years. And computer CPU’s have followed this pattern accurately ever since.
But as we reach the physical limits of our current IC technology (silicon, and now hafnium) this will become harder to follow. For instance, we’re currently at a 5 molecular layer gate in a transistor. You cannot go beyond 1 layer, so you reach your limit.
What’s next I hear you ask? Well the main contenders are quantum computers and the yet to be developed photon based technologies. As there is already a commercially available quantum computer, my money’s there. For now.
By the end of October, Facebook profile will begin to appear on the major search engines. There was concern when some profiles could be search by anyone through the front end, and they are now opening them up to the world. Users can turn this off to protect their security though.
My question is this. Is Facebook succumbing to greed? By opening up to the major search engines they will get millions of addition traffic, boosting their coffers. When they first started it was a protected community. Now, almost a year after the public launch, we’ve had security problems, privacy issues and hundreds of pointless apps. Where are they heading?!?
Apple has recently launched the new incarnation of the iPod. A more standard design with a slightly chunkier Nano. Along with the new look there have been some UI changes. Most noticeably the “Cover Flow” browser that was a feature of iTunes, has now been added. This is the jukebox style way of flipping through your albums visually.
The biggest addition to the range is the iPod Touch. This is based on the look of the iPhone and incorporates the signature multi-touch screen interface. What this show’s is Apple breaking the industry standard mould of product convergence. Whilst everyone is trying to pack more and more features into a single device, Apple have decided to take a different tack.
Most people are happy with the phone they’ve got, and the locked down nature of the iPhone to a particular carrier has also turned some punters away. A lot of potential customers will not want to switch carrier, or they are locked into a long term contract so cannot switch to the iPhone. But by releasing the Touch they can grab this share of a market that would be out of reach with the conventional product convergence mentality. If they can also release it at the right price and at the right time, they stand an excellent chance of it becoming this years “must have” gadget.
For me, I’m not convinced of the iPhone’s ability to compete in the European market where there are a lot of mature vendors already. But the Touch is definitely on my Christmas list, and I’ll stick with the Blackberry. For now….
Just heading back from a party in Leeds for Julie, Andy and little William. Well he’s not so little now!
Congrats to Julie on her Phd. Good luck to flyboy Andy. And well done to William for not dribbling as much as his drunken cohorts!
Oh, and happy birthday!
It was a great party. There are some photos which I’m sure will grace Facebook soon!
I’m just on the train back from Leeds, more on that in another post.
To pass the time I decided to play sollitaire on my Treo phone. I’ve been playing for about half an hour and I cannot win a game. I’m convinced its not possible. Has anyone beat it?
