Month / May 2012

by Ali Wilson

Techslice: Some random thoughts about Siri

Techslice is a column by Ali Wilson. Views expressed are not necessarily those of Digixav.

Siri is truly excellent voice recognition software that Apple introduced with the iPhone 4S and probably the new iPhone I spoke about last week. Siri is useful in many ways, as you can simply tell Siri to do what you want and it will do it almost instantly. It is also very entertaining, as I found out when trying it out on my friend’s iPhone 4S. If you ask something it cannot answer, Siri strives to give you a witty and entertaining response.

Siri is also easily accessible, with two extremely simple ways to activate it. The first is by pressing and holding the home button and waiting for the Siri toolbar to appear. The second is able to be turned off and on, and all you have to do is raise the phone to your ear, wait for the beep, and then say your command. This is very useful as it would be nonsensical if you had to go searching for Siri when you could just as easily have found what you were looking for in a shorter time without your voice.

There is only one minor flaw that I can see from my extensive tests, and that is that you must speak very clearly. If you don’t speak clearly enough, Siri has trouble recognising what you say and will normally answer with the wrong thing. This is time consuming and is a regular occurrence if you try and speak in a normal voice. This was proved by Henry and Xavier when they tested it in October.

Overall, I found Siri excellent and it is by far the best voice recognition programme that I have ever used. However, I don’t see why Apple has made Siri exclusive to the iPhone. As the owner of an iPad 2, I am strongly disappointed by this and am living in hope that soon, Apple will add Siri to the iPad. Not to finish on a bad note though – as I said above, Siri is excellent in almost every way and definitely top dog among mobile voice recognition platforms.

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Introducing Digixav 4.0 Ginkgo

Hello there,

We’re over 7 months old now, and things have changed. It’s not just me any more, and I have been joined by many fantastic writers in the quest to get tech news out on the interweb. We’re getting more hits each day than we ever expected, and we’ve had readers from over 100 countries around the globe.

Today, I am pleased to unveil Digixav 4.0 (aka Ginkgo) and a new wordmark/logo-type thing.

We were on the hunt for a new theme after being accepted into the WordAds program, but then I discovered Oxygen. It doesn’t support ads yet, but I think you’ll agree that it looks awesome and has a slider that changes automatically. We also used the magic of the Ubuntu font to make the site look even better, and new menus make it easier to navigate the site than ever before. Bearing in mind that this is a work-in-progress, you may notice a few widget and CSS changes, but we think that Ginkgo is the best version of Digixav yet, and we hope you do too.

Thanks for sticking with us,
Xavier

by Alex Kowszun

Future of paper books doubtful as Waterstones strikes deal to sell Amazon Kindle

Waterstones have announced that they will sell Amazon’s popular Kindle e-reader in its UK stores along with their standard paper books. James Daunt, managing director of Waterstones, stated that it is “a truly exciting prospect”. He claimed that there is no point in competing with the best digital electronic book readers and so will instead partner with the Kindle, after sales of paper books have fallen in recent years due to the emergence of e-readers such as the Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

null

Kindle has a massive market share of digital book reading in the UK, and Waterstones will start to take a cut of it

Although Daunt claims that they will harness “the respective strengths of Waterstones and Amazon to provide a dramatically better digital reading experience for our customers” surely they are just shooting themselves in the foot. By selling them in their shops they are further promoting their rivals in the book industry.

Waterstones have even said that they are currently planning their own e-book reader, but whether that will kick off and keep Waterstones alive is yet to be seen.

James Daunt was appointed in his position after Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut bought the bookstore chain from HMV last summer. This new deal comes as a surprise since Daunt accused Amazon last December as being a “ruthless, money-making devil” and said “that they never struck me as being a sort of business in the consumer’s interest.” It now seems that they have given in to the ever growing popularity of the Kindle, even though it was believed that they were negotiating with US bookseller Barnes & Noble to bring the Nook to the UK.

This isn’t the only case of Amazon trying to take control, after they released a mobile app where you scan products in a shop and compare it to Amazon’s rival price.

null

Personally I think that although this could help with Waterstones’ sales, which have fallen over the last few years due to these new ways of reading, they are potentially damaging their book sales and the integrity of their shop. However, I think that they have no choice to keep their company alive and keep customers coming to their shops by offering special Waterstones discounts on the Kindles and hope to draw people in to browse around. Although it seems Waterstones are doing all they can to stay in the now highly competitive market, you can’t help but feel that this is the next step in the decline of the traditional book store we all know and some of us cherish, but also the rise of the e-books, where it will be odd in the future if you don’t own a device capable of displaying such content, as it will become the normal thing for everyone to have. Major publishing companies need to watch out as they too need to change if they are to survive in this rapidly changing market.

null

by Eddie King

Birdwatching: Fus Ro Damn I’m bored

Birdwatching is a column by Eddie King. Views expressed are not necessarily those of Digixav.

I didn’t manage to impale a sharp projectile into my patella but regardless I have managed to lose my sense of humour over Digixav’s favourite game of 2011, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Yes, the small red flying feathered ball in the sky is going to be taking the big, scaly, fire breathing monster that is Skyrim. It was one of the most highly anticipated games since the release of Oblivion back in 2005 and when it arrived at school on a November morning even the quietest and most reasonable students became national standard rugby players and managed to barge past most of the school to play it. I did observe and despair, and this is why.

A game should stimulate you mentally. It should make you think and feel and it should be an experience. Skyrim is just a way to waste time. The mechanics of the game are repetitive and there are enough side missions to get lost in. Replay value? I think not because the chances are you will never finish the entire game before your mind is reduced to a whimpering mass at the back of your cranium. You play as a violent oaf who can somehow swing some stupidly large piece of some unknown element at some impossibly alive bag of walking bones which can absorb more damage than a Nokia. I guess what I am so angry about is that it claimed to be so good; it claimed to be a vast, open world to lose yourself in. Well yes, I certainly did lose myself in it, the problem being that I didn’t manage to find a way out. The story is just too big and there needs to be an end. An infinite story should not be allowed. I want to be able to enjoy understanding the various intricacies and twists instead of having huge amounts of nonsensical myths and obscure cults that everybody I meet seems to want me to join dropped into my lap and let me wonder what the hell I am supposed to do with it all. This is prominent when you get into the game and you check your mission catalogue, only to find about three pages worth of objectives that you have no intention of completing. Then when finally you do get round to starting AND finishing a quest the formula is the same every single time. Namely go here and talk to this person, pick up another two quests, go there and enter a mildly scary looking cave, wait at loading screen for too long, go inside and navigate a complex array of tunnels, encounter a few enemies which you can get rid of by button bashing which results in the same three moves until they die and finally collect your reward which is the ability to talk to some stars which help you in some practical way. Because stars now control how good we are at stuff, don’t you know.

The game lies to you, and after a few hours you have seen everything you are ever going to see. The combat systems are overly simplistic and movements are very slow. Now at this point those of you who are still reading and haven’t taken offence will note that I admit that Skyrim isn’t all bad as the graphics are insane and certain parts of the story are pretty epic. It is also a very good addition to the Elder Scrolls series and the people who have grown used to this style of game will have no qualms where I was tearing my hair out. Also, despite me claiming that it is a mindless game, some of the puzzles are quite challenging but the end is always inevitable. The slow and unrealistic fighting and repetitiveness of the gameplay unfortunately mean that this game becomes boring by the time you are in desperate need of a pee in front of laptop. Skyrim is a good game but is let down by being hyped up far too much and it isn’t the completely free universe it claims to be.

by Henry Hunt

Windows Phone App of the Week: Fhotoroom

This week’s app of the week is Fhotoroom. To put it bluntly, it’s Instagram for Windows Phone. With this app, you can take and edit photos and then ruin enhance them with effects, writing and frames. You then can proceed to upload these either directly to Fhotoroom or to a number of places such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Tumblr.

Upon entering the app, you are prompted to create an account and upload your first picture, which will be used as your profile picture. You are then able to proceed to edit and upload as many photos as you wish. Some of my personal masterpieces include a picture of bacon and multiple pictures of coffee.

But in all honesty, I recommend this app for the sole fact that the pictures that appear on the title screen are either really cool or contain boobs just hilarious.

Fhotoroom, Windows Phone, Free
Download from the Marketplace or visit the website

by Henry Hunt

Minecraft mod of the month: Mo’ Creatures

Recently I have been playing a fair amount of Minecraft as it is a great game (and unfortunately extremely addictive), so I have decided to take a break from building my castle and write about some of the many thousands of mods that are out there to improve this already superb game.

The first Minecraft mod of the month is Mo’ Creatures. This is by far the best mod that I have personally installed. This mod introduces a vast number of new mobs, including creatures such as snakes, birds, bears and even dolphins, but my personal favourite thing about this mod is the addition of werewolves. These mobs are incredibly hard to kill and thus simultaneously the best and the worst part of the Mo’ Creatures experience. The fact that they are almost impossible to kill with anything other than a golden sword is incredibly aggravating, meaning that they are the one thing that you do not want to meet on a dark night away from your castle/tower/hole in the side of a mountain. But, no matter how annoying they can get, killing you the second you go outside, it is impossible to hate them, due to the fact that during the daytime they turn into normal humans, screaming ‘OUCH YOUR HURTING ME!!!!!’ when you hit them. This makes up for the fact that the second the moon comes out they are out to kill you.

If you play Minecraft, I highly recommend that you download this fantastic mod, created by DrZhark. If you don’t play Minecraft, go and buy it as it is scientifically proven to be awesome.

by James Trickey

Things That Should Exist: The Instant Rap Battle Machine

Things That Should Exist is a column by James Trickey. Things suggested are not always good ideas.

I know it sounds incredibly similar to the Instant Insult Machine and I can tell you now that it is indeed. I have my reasons for this, the first being that I have been running low on ideas lately, but to be honest I’ve been struggling for ideas since day one. The second being that it is another thing that should exist and so ended up here on Digixav.

I want to explain to you lot that it is an “upgrade” of the previous machine that looked like some odd tortoise thing and will look exactly the same but with a few different features. If you really want, I can throw in some accessories for it like sunglasses and a pimp hat (or anything else from that Build-A-Bear place). This means you could have a pimp beatboxer! Here is an example that I made on Paint yet again and, if you didn’t know, the purple thing sticking out of his hat is a feather, like pimps have. If you don’t get it, nevermind. We really need to get Photoshop.

The Instant Rap Battle Machine will come with a preset beat that you and your challenger or challenged can rap along to. You could enter your rap names into the machine (mine’s MC Jtrick) and as the beat drops the robot shouts “Get ready (I can’t think of a good rap name so I’ll) Eminem! Lets hear you rap in 3..2…1!” and then everyone listens to the intense rap that has been spat. This will be repeated for the other guy (someone crap so we’ll go for) “Justin Bieber!” and he will sing some song which technically won’t be allowed because it’s not a rap but we won;t go into details. And just so you know, Eminem won that one.

It will also feature a sound detector thing so if there is an enormous crowd present (which there will be) it will take the volume of the “OOOooooo….R U GONNA TAKE THAT FAM?!?!”s (as in the plural, you understand, no?) and the rap with the loudest  “OOOooooo….R U GONNA TAKE THAT FAM?!?!”s wins.

This new version won’t do the insulting for you but rather enhance your insulting enjoyment, because I know that I could do with something that makes hurting people’s feelings more fun since it’s just a bit plain at the moment.

As with the previous model, you could download different voices for the machine and different beats off iTunes or whatever. I’m sorry for having no imagination with the photos but meh.

And so with another week gone I say goodbye, but I’ve run out of stereotypical comic book noises.

POW.

Header image from spinningpixels

by Eddie King

Birdwatching: Porn, privacy and problems with hackers

Birdwatching is a column by Eddie King. Views expressed are not necessarily those of Digixav.

Yet again those suits in London who get paid to write stuff and put it on some of the biggest, most influential and most widely read websites on the internet have decided to take a sledgehammer to our subconscious, dulling it to the point where we will be soon living in a nanny state wrapped in bubble paper and drooling over the sacred book of political correctness. The bird has yet again been consumed with anger and will be doing his best to knock ten bells out of the foundations of stupidity. Luckily this time around I have, like Eminem, the ‘antidote‘ i.e. porn.

Yes, I mentioned the P word, but we must understand that we are one of the only species that actually has sex merely for fun and it shows intelligence. Unfortunately most people won’t admit this because it is a touchy subject, and there is nothing wrong with this, but subsequently as a youngster you will start discovering the world of puberty through some of the shadier corners of the internet. Why? Because it isn’t embarrassing, other people have said it is good and it is free and easily accessible. Why then has our illustrious Prime Minister deemed it necessary to call together a meeting with the biggest ISPs to block porn in all services unless you ask for it in the first place? Three massive problems with this:

  • Firstly, if you are in any form of relationship at all and your partner found out that you specifically requested porn to be allowed on your media it will be a basis for accusations of cheating, as for some reason girls don’t seem to understand that even if you were going out with a gorgeous specimen and love them very much, it doesn’t stop you being curious about what Tulisa looks like naked and at the height of pleasure. (No link there, but if you want to find out, Google’s a thing.)
  • Secondly, it will prevent young boys from truly entering teenagehood, as at the end of the day before you turn 13 you are not in the least bit interested in girls so you won’t go looking for videos of them with no cloths on and after that you don’t mind finding them so at what point are you protecting anybody?  Yes, there are some very dark corners of the internet where the adult industry takes advantage of people in ways which are truly sick and twisted, but the thing is not only is this a niche market but these bastards generally want money for their hard work and so that is a natural buffer against us ‘stumbling’ over it.
  • Lastly, you are starting to make choices for people based on the fact you have more power than them. You are now swimming in very dangerous waters as in places where the internet is available it prides itself on being the model of freedom. And after centuries of perfecting various ways of taking lives that don’t belong to them, humans are kind of protective of freedom because it works rather well.

They say that they want to limit this to protect children, but who asked them to protect them? Was it some cow in a horrible pink frock at a garden party in the Cotswolds? Do you really think this will help society in any way? If you channelled that same time and effort into making the darker streets of London not quite so dark, then children and their guardians might feel a little more protected. Parents have more software options than hair follicles to save their children from the sight of someone getting banged, but they don’t have the same options in the real world as muggings, murder and rape are just a few of the things that you can’t download safeguards for but Mr Cameron can help with.

This brings me onto the subject of that brilliant yet totally arsehole-ish crowd who call themselves ‘hackers‘. These are the true lords of the internet who do not steal your money by building up databases on you and slowly taking over your life (like Google) but simply roll in and strip your card of all its value and then forget to tell you about it until they buy a car in Mexico. To be honest it is a far more comfortable way to get mugged and frankly shows how soft the 21st century really is. But the rascals have been rumoured to have designs on the Olympic opening ceremony. The question is where to draw the line. Generally I will say that people should be show how to not care about things that don’t really matter and to stick it to the man, but at this level I am talking about the same man every time – a man that I am proud to stick it to in the first place and one that I want no help in sticking it to. Turning the lights off at the opening ceremony in London and pasting a massive picture of someone’s breasts on the board may be a good laugh and it certainly would both stick it to the man and show just how free the little people can get, but then other people will no longer respect the man I stick it to. I think that hackers should continue with their 21st century muggings and displays of the innermost workings of top secret organisations, but the people who keep your Alienware desktops running are the same ones you will be attacking on this occasion so please reconsider and piss someone else off.

by Ali Wilson

Techslice: The new iPhone rumour mill

Techslice is a column by Ali Wilson. Views expressed are not necessarily those of Digixav.

In October 2011, Apple released their latest iPhone: the iPhone 4S. A lot of people were disappointed with the result that came 18 months after the 4 and were expecting something a bit more, well, new. By sight, the iPhone 4S is the same as its predecessor, the iPhone 4. The only major differences for a year of development were a dual-core A5 processor from the iPad 2, Siri and 3 additional megapixels in the camera.

null

So with so few differences in the last upgrade, we are expecting great things from the iPhone 5/iPhone 4G/iPhone 6/new iPhone. There has been a concept design released and, as you can see, it does look very different to the previous model.

iPhone 5

Straight away, the first thing we notice is potential design overhaul of the new iPhone. Apple may reverted towards their old curved design from the original models. The shape is a lot less square and is much more rounded, a lot like the new Samsung Galaxy S III. The screen size may increase from the current 3.5″, with rumours circling that Apple may enlarge it to a whopping 4.8″, although Steve Jobs would turn in his grave. He was in staunch opposition to larger screens as he (rightly) thought that they made the iPhone resemble an Android phone.

The sixth installment to the iPhone series is said to be being released just over a year after its older brother. It was thought that if it was released earlier, then the new iPad’s sales would not be as high. Apple have therefore left a six-month gap between the iPad and the iPhone’s release. It is rumoured for early October 2012.

So, if you’re thinking of investing in an iPhone 4S, think again. It should be worth the wait of (potentially) just six months, because Apple could change everything. Again.

by Ali Wilson

Techslice: Why Prezi is the new PowerPoint

Techslice is a column by Ali Wilson. Views expressed are not necessarily those of Digixav.

Two weeks ago, I came across some new web-based presentation software. Prezi uses one simple factor that makes it simply fantastic – it uses 100% zoom transition. No flicking between multiple slides with petty little animations. No, as Prezi uses only one slide that you can fit just about anything on. It then zooms in and out of your different pieces of information to give you the ultimate presentation.

It is also completely free if you have an educational e-mail address to sign up with. This is normally your school e-mail address. So, instead of paying over £100 for Microsoft PowerPoint, you can use something better for free. And it has an iPad app. It really doesn’t take much time to learn to use either, as it is really very easy and is explained in simple detail on the websites excellent tutorials.

If you want to see an example of Prezi in action then visit this Prezi I threw together in about 2 minutes. If the link comes up with “No search results for…” then simply press the search button again.

All in all, I think that Prezi is a much better resource than PowerPoint, being generally better in any thinkable way, and it is therefore going to the top of the Techslice Top 10 of Internet Things – of one thing.

Techslice Top 10 of Internet Things

  1. Prezi
  2. Coming soon
  3. Coming soon
  4. Coming soon
  5. Coming soon
  6. Coming soon
  7. Coming soon
  8. Coming soon
  9. Coming soon
  10. Coming soon