Is the handheld console still relevant?

Uncharted and Zelda are great, but are people happy enough with Angry Birds in their pocket?

PS Vita looks great. Sony's new handheld has twin analogue sticks (for COD on the go) and graphical power to match PS3, all for only £280 - which is very cheap considering the technology involved is right on the cutting edge.

PS Vita smashes iPad, iPhone and 3DS in terms of graphical power, and gameplay experience. A full set of buttons is always going to be more useful than just a touchscreen - and Vita's got one of those, too.

But PS Vita could be a huge failure. The handheld market has changed so much in the last five years since the original PSP release, and PS Vita may just represent an outdated business model.

The 3DS, Nintendo's newest handheld, has had a stuttering launch, and while the lack of games must be partly to blame, it's tempting to see the rise of the smartphone as the real culprit.

Do people still want to play on a dedicated handheld? Do the masses want to lug around a hefty handheld console when they already carry a smartphone everywhere they go?

That smartphone, too, already has games. Nothing on the scale of Uncharted, like PS Vita, or Zelda 3D, like 3DS. But thousands of games ranging from free to a few pounds/dollars. Why spend £40 on a new 3DS game when you've got Angry Birds expansion packs at no extra cost?

The smartphone, whether iPhone or Android, is clearly a huge threat to the handheld gaming market - and threatens to destroy the market entirely.

There is one thing that can save PS Vita and 3DS though: Differentiation.

What Sony and Nintendo must do is show people that these consoles offer a rich enough, a different enough experience to warrant the extra expense; the extra pocket weight, the dedicated games machine.

Sony need to show that having a PS Vita means having a PS3 in your pocket. Uncharted: Golden Abyss (Pictured, right) is basically a full-fledged version of the blockbuster franchise, and it looks every inch as beautiful as its bigger brother, but it's portable. The iPhone will never have that - and even if one day smartphone graphics caught up, the iPhone lacks the twin analogue sticks, face buttons and Trophies.

Will it be enough? Not for some. But there will always be a crowd looking for a deeper experience and I think Sony still has a market to aim for; a market who want Smartphone + 'proper' games machine.

Nintendo has a bigger task on its hands. Aiming mostly at casual gamers, Nintendo has a tough time persuading the people who bought a DS with Brain Training, or Professor Layton, or Sudoku, that the 3DS is what they need next.

The 3D is the key differentiation for Nintendo, but even that will not last - Glassesless 3D capable smartphones are coming, and they're going to be here by Christmas.

The only thing Nintendo have left are their big franchises: Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, etc. These games will never appear on an iPhone, and the company now more than ever needs to rely on these games' appeal to push the 3DS into peoples' hands.

But it all seems a little desperate. In reality, both companies' business models are beginning to look a little dated.

Differentiation may save them for now - but one day, iPhones or other Smartphones will figure out a way to close down these differences, too - and both game makers will have to try to stay one step ahead or risk falling behind.

Looking at the 3DS sales, I fear it may have already happened.

Skype's buyout: The end of free web calls?

Yesterday, Microsoft stunned the technology world by announcing it had bought up internet video chat company Skype for an eye-watering $8.5billion.

That's a lot of dollars. Enough to buy about a squillion M&Ms, according to some rough maths.

Skype, though, is a free service which makes very little money. Its only source of income is from a few small adverts placed in its side panel.

So why has the American tech giant spent so much cash on a company which produces free software? And more importantly, does this mean the end for Skype as we know it?

Currently, Skype is available on all platforms - including Apple's iPhone and Google's Android products. While Microsoft would be crazy to suddenly block all competitors, we can surely expect that the best new features will come to Microsoft's much-vaunted, much-overlooked Windows Phone first. Perhaps some features might even stay exclusive to Windows PCs and mobiles.

Non-Windows users' losses are Xbox players' gains, of course. Skype represents a great opportunity to add another string to Xbox's bow - video calls over Kinect, with voice control, is a perfect example of the different features of the games console coming together to offer something exciting.

And then of course there's Live Messenger, the age-old instant chat service once known as MSN. While it has been offering free video calls for years, it would be a big suprise if Microsoft didn't work in the Skype experience (which has always bested Bill Gates' program) into its software. We might even see Skype calls from inside Hotmail, in much the same way that the company has started working in a light, free version of Office into its email service for all users, regardless of whether they own the full suite. This image shows off quite well what Microsoft has in mind for the service in terms of merging it into its own offerings:

All of this is very nice and happy, but the acquisition could mean trouble ahead for non Windows Skype users. Should Microsoft try too hard to monetise Skype, they could find the people flocking to another service, whilst excluding Apple and Android users from any future features could see Skype's marketshare dwindle at a time Microsoft need it to start making real money.

On that subject; Microsoft might try to split the market, offering a free version with very low quality video, stripped down to the basics, and a pay-per-use version with all the bells and whistles.

Equally, they could ram the service with adverts. Imagine having to watch an ad for Burger King every time you rang your girlfriend, or sit through a very loud, very long Call of Duty trailer just to ask your mum how to cook an omelette. There could even be ads during calls: "We interrupt this heartfelt apology to the love of your life to bring you this important message: Have you had an accident at work?".

As the immortal line in the Social Network goes, at the moment, it's cool. Start throwing ads around and it's no longer a party.

Microsoft has to tread very carefully not to ruin a great service by desperately trying to squeeze money from it, nor anger users on non-Windows devices by treating them as second class.

The reality is, Microsoft's acquisition of Skype smacks of desperation. Unable to capture the market themselves, or perhaps wracked with paranoia that cooler, hipper Google or Apple were going to snap Skype up and rule the world, they jerked their knee and opened their wallet just to spite their competitors.

For Microsoft, it looks almost a lose-lose situation. Keep Skype the same and they'll never get back their investment. Change it too much and they risk alienating the users and, er, never getting back their investment.

Play it right, though, and Skype could be the cornerstone of Microsoft's latest assault on the market, taking a bite out of Apple and helping Windows Phone and Xbox to scale new heights.

Just dont ruin Skype please Bill. Unlike Windows Phone, it's quite good at the moment.

Does liking technology mean hating the world?

So, it's Earth Day today, apparently. To honour it, I've been tweeting from my laptop while using my PS3 on a 40" TV and charging my phone, all at once. Again.

It's ironic that the rise of consumer technology has come about at the exact same time as the eco-revolution.

At one time in the mid-noughties it was estimated that computers took 12% of all the world's electricity useage. While it may sound fairly small, that figure means that for all the lights, shops, factories,businesses and heating systems in the world, computers still took this huge chunk of power just for Liking biscuits on facebook and watching iPlayer.

For the average tech junkie, you'll probably find any of the following running all at once in one room: a TV, games console, smartphone charger, laptop/PC, iPod/mp3 player, stereo, wireless box, freeview/Sky box. My living room is beginning to resemble the NASA launch centre.

And these are thirsty, thirsty bits of kit. An Xbox 360 will use 1000w of electricity every four hours; a PS3 every three. And while I don't know how much my HTC smartphone needs in juice, I do know it takes longer to charge fully than it does to run flat again.

Surely, then, you can only be a technology fan if you hate the environment, don't believe in global warming, don't care or all of the above.

Well, to a degree. But it isn't our fault.

Yes, we can try to do our bit. We can use rechargeable batteries, we can put our laptops on 'Power Save' mode and we can dim the telly. But there is so little information out there about how much power our tech actually needs that it's difficult to even think about it, let alone act.

I only know how much a PS3 uses because some time-rich anorak plugged it in to a watt-measurement device and put the results online. I certainly don't know how much an iPod, or a TV, or my laptop uses, but I'm sure it's a fair chunk.

Why don't I know? My computer lists endless, incomprehensible features on its side, like 'up to 1308 MB DVMT' (I don't know what this means) as well as listing its green credentials - 'Energy Star Approved' (I do know that this doesn't mean much, since it's on almost every electrical product ever), but nowhere does it say how much electricity it uses.

In these eco-conscious times, green transparency, so to speak, is long overdue. It's high time companies like Sony, Samsung and Apple started listing how much power items need right on the box.

Why is it only washing machines that are energy rated? Computers, TVs, phones and games consoles should be marked from A* to F, too.

Not everyone will notice, not everyone will care. But at least we'd all have the option to make the green choice. It's certainly better than buying ever more powerful devices and wondering why our electricity bills are through the (poorly-insulated) roof.

I could go on, but I'm going to use my last sliver of laptop battery to watch the ice caps melt on YouTube.

iPhones can track our every movement - should we be worried?

Wherever you are, wherever you're going, if you're an iPhone owner,  Apple are going to know about it.


That's because iPhones and iPads are apparently tracking our every movement, according to researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden (original report - BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13145562 ).

It's a pretty terrifying use of technology we assume is designed to make our lives easier, rather than spy on us without telling us.

According to Warden and Allan, the spying is covered in Apple's terms and conditions, in a sort of PR-gibberish way, but frankly we could have all promised our lungs to fifty different companies several times over by now. No-one, no-one reads them, and Apple know it.

So they're being a tad sneaky, but should we be concerned that we're essentially being spied on, 1984-style, by Steve Jobs' Apple army?

In short, no. I want to be spied on. I want my data to be tracked. Yes, it's one small step between data tracking and my iPhone despatching police to my house because they can see I'm at the brothel again, but data tracking actually has the power to make all our lives much easier if it's done right.

Keep getting stuck on the M1? What if Apple send you a reccommendation for a Traffic Check app? Keep going for petrol at your local pump? Perhaps your iPhone informs you it's 3p cheaper to go a mile further afield. Keep shopping at Tesco? Perhaps your phone downloads you a Clubcard app you didn't know existed.

Though it's tempting to see data tracking as some looming freedom-destroyer, it can clearly be used to enrich our lives. We have waited years for technology to be able to do all it can to increase our convenience. We shouldn't shirk it now because we don't want to be a stat in a pile of anonymous data.

I can't wait for the day my fridge orders me fresh milk because it sees I'm running low, or my microwave suggests a dating service because it sees I'm eating a ready-meal lasagne for one for the fifth day running.

Yes, we should all be wary. We don't want our freedoms sold down the river, one app at a time, nor do we want our data handed over to governments to be used to make our lives hell instead. But as long as we keep that healthy caution, there's no reason technology can't be trusted to make everything better.

Don't like it? Sell your iPhone, or don't buy one in the first place. It's probably only a matter of time before a phone comes out which sells itself on the sole premise that it won't track your data, won't analyse your habits or make reccommendations.

But for everyone else, it's a brave new world. And it's damn exciting.

iPad 2 does 3D screen trick

Researchers in France have managed to get '3D' images to display on iPads using camera-based head tracking.

Jeremie Francone and Laurence Nigay, from EHCI research group have created a program which shows 3D images on the tablet's 9.7 inch screen.

The program uses the devices' front-mounted cameras to track your face. It then moves and tilts the image on-screen so it looks like a 3D image, with real depth.

The difference between this and a 3DTV or a 3DS is that it's just a trick - it isn't really showing 3D at all, and in fact it can run on any normal iPad or iPhone.

DSi's '3D' game, Looksley's Line Up

This trick has actually been seen before - on Nintendo's DSi. Looksley's Line Up, a downloadable DSiWare title, released last year and it used the DSi's front camera to create supposed 3D.

3D is all the rage this year, with 3DS recently becoming the first glasses-free 3D device to hit the mass market and phone-makers LG looking to follow suit with the LG Optimus, the world's first 3D smartphone.


Whether Apple actually take the French pair's research and apply it to their apps and firmware remains to be seen - but it shows how 3D content is being delivered in ever more clever ways.