September was a bit of a turning point for DigMo! Having made the decision to focus purely on education it was great to see the learning technology content featuring favourably in the top ten posts of the month. The top article (10 educational uses for flip video) has seen over 60 re-tweets and over 80 delicious bookmarks.
It is hard not to be excited by today’s news that Native Instruments are on the verge of releasing Guitar Rig 4 Pro, the next generation of its acclaimed guitar studio. The fourth version raises the bar on sonic authenticity with advanced new speaker emulation technology, and further expands on nearly all aspects that sets Guitar Rig apart as the most capable digital guitar solution.
If you are anything like me you know frequently find yourself in the situation when you wonder where the last few hours actually went. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube they all offer an attractive distraction to our daily computer based chores.
Well now you can manage these distractions with a great little app aptly named “Concentrate”.
It would be impossible to have missed today’s release of Apple’s much anticipated Snow Leopard. I have just upgraded and other than the new desktop background I haven’t spotted anything different yet but as most of the improvements are under the hood I guess that is to be expected.
A number of blogs have listed the various applications to “have issues” and I have to say so far none of the applications I use daily have caused any problem.
One blog stated the Elgato Turbo.264 HD no longer works and to be honest this is only sort of correct. If you own a Turbo.264 HD you need to install Quicktime 7 (on the Snow Leopard DVD) as the new Quicktime X doesn’t offer customised exports. I realise this is perhaps a bit of a work around but I will make sure to post more information as I explore the new Quicktime options.
Facebook 3.0
Also this week Facebook 3.0 for the iPhone and iPod Touch hit the iTunes store. The upgrade not only introduces massive UI improvements but also :
- See your upcoming Events and RSVP
- See Pages and post updates and photos to Pages you administer
- Write Notes and read your friends’ Notes
- Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
- Complete photo management (create albums, delete albums, delete photos, delete photo tags)
- Change your Profile Picture
- Like posts and photos
- See the same News Feed as the Facebook website
- Visit links in a built-in web browser
- Quickly call or text your friends
Flixel
On a personal note I have set myself a 12 month challenge to become a better photographer and so have set up a little photoblog at www.flixel.net to document my journey on a rather steep learning curve. I am aiming to post a new photo each day on there and would appreciate any feedback or advice from the experts out there. Why not subscribe to the RSS Feed.
You may remember we reviewed the brilliant Gorillapod SLR tripod (Read: The Perfect Photo Joby). Well Joby, have just announced the Gorillatorch™. Expanding the Joby family of unique, creativity‐inspiring solutions for the consumer, the
Gorillatorch casts a focused beam of intense light and allows you to illuminate any target, hands‐free.
The University of Ulster is hosting the 2009 International Symposium on Electronic Art launching in Belfast from the 23rd August. The week long conference will be running a series of events, such as keynote lectures and presentations, networking opportunities, exhibitions, themed screenings and workshops aimed at gathering the international art, science and technology community together.
Xbox have rolled out a major upgrade to the Xbox Live service. One of the key features of the upgrade is the ability for Gold members to purchase full Xbox and Xbox 360 games directly via the marketplace. Having had a look around the online store most of the games appear to be the platinum range and cost around the same price online (£19.99).
From Thursday users will also be able to purchase new avatar clothes and items. I personally can’t see me parting with hard earned cash so my Xbox Live presence can have a new pair of jeans but each to their own.
The upgrade features a range of user interface improvements, the ability to rate content on the Marketplace and a new veteran rating for Gold members of long standing. Netflix support is also vastly improved with this update so here is hoping there is a UK offering very soon (as apparently Love Film is up for sale).
Microsoft have a few more updates in the pipeline, in the Autumn Xbox LIVE will see the addition of the following new features:
Facebook
Twitter
Last.fm
Although many of the features in this upgrade involve invitations to spend more money (or microsoft points) it is definitely exciting times for the Xbox gaming community. Although I personally use the system to get into Call of Duty games some of the arcade games are exciting, the fact that games like Battlefield 1943 can be downloaded as an arcade game would have been unimaginable 3-4 years ago.
To read full details of the upgrade visit the Xbox website here.
