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What’s new in 2008

Posted on 18. Feb, 2008 in Daily

Things I'm liking at the moment:

• Xobni - quite possibly the best Outlook plug-in ever.
• Utah Saints Something Good '08 - I must learn the running man!
• Guitar Hero III - on the Xbox360. Loving the wireless guitar.
• Crysis - gorgeous DirectX 10 first person shooter. Okay, so you need a super computer to run it at anything other than medium quality settings, but it's still a great game and very very pretty.
• Philips 9" Digital Photo Frame - received this as a present, would never have thought to buy one myself, but my opinion has changed digital photo frames are great. Must have!
• this isn't happiness., FFFFOUND! and vi.sualize.us - found hundreds of vintage and quirky photos at these sites to put on my digital photo frame.
• GN Netcom 9350 - one at home, one at work. I use them for all my land line and Skype calling. One of my most used gadgets.
• Netvibes - I've been an iGoogle user for several months, unfortunately the product has seen little in the way of upgrades. Netvibes is so much better, I have my entire view of the net world arranged into 20 tabs (and it works mobile too).
• Shuttle XPC SG33G6 Deluxe (Glamour Series) - I'm using one of these as a Media PC running Vista Ultimate on the main TV in the living room. Comes with HDMI, eSATA and Optical connectors as standard.
• Retro Casio Calculator Watches - currently wearing a silver Databank 150
• Family Guy - I may well be the last person on the planet to discover the brilliance of Family Guy. Have been buying all the DVDs.
• Blu-ray - I was fairly neutral on the whole Blue-ray vs HD DVD at the start. The only factor that leans to me Blu-ray, is that my Xbox 360 with all it's cooling fans is way too noisy to be used for movie viewing, where-as the PS3 is whisper quiet - as a result I'll always opt for a Blu-ray disc if I can.
• Saitek X52 Pro Flight System - quality flight simulator controls without going too geeky.
• Skype - I have local numbers in Australia, USA and UK into my Skype account, automatic diversion to multiple phones if I don't answer on Skype, plus Pro gives me free calls to certain numbers and super cheap call forwarding for international calls on my mobile. Great call quality. Love using it on the main TV along with the Polycom Soundstation 2 for handsfree and a Creative Live! Cam Optia Auto Focus for video. Using it at both home and work with the GN Netcom 9350 headsets too.
• Opera Mini 4 - barely a month out of beta and already a million downloads. Excellent mobile browser. Have been using the beta for ages, so great to see the final build. Works on both my Sony Ericsson and BlackBerry.
• Behringer XENYX 502 and Tapco Mix 50 mixers - I have the Behringer at work mixing outputs from my Notebook dock and iPod dock into my headphones, and the Tapco at home mixing my Sky box and Media PC in the bedroom. Very handy little mixers and a tiny price.

• Super Mario Galaxy - on the Wii. It's okay. Still struggling to find something other than bowling to justify my Wii.
• Facebook - it's more of a tool now than a daily destination for me now. No matter how much I try and fight all the application spam, SuperWalls, Zombies invites, my feed is flooded with junk. I miss the old days when it purely contained relevant updates from your friends by the core apps: photos, groups and posted items.
• Sky HD - very few interesting channels, far too many ads, nothing on. Same old story.
• Mac Book Pro - it's okay. Thinking I might buy a new Thinkpad and get rid of the Apple (just as soon as I send it in to have all the broken things fixed before the warranty expires - dodgy power switch, sleep wakeup problem etc etc).
• iPhone's lack of 3G or HSDPA support - still waiting to buy an iPhone, but no way for an EDGE device locked in on an 18 month contract. Hurry up and release a device that is good for the UK networks Apple. No wonder the sales have been so dismal in UK compared to the US.

Tags: Daily