Xbox 360 Elite is real

So the rumours were pretty much spot on with this one. Microsoft today announced a new 'Elite' version of the Xbox 360. It has a new black paint job (and matching black accessories), 120GB hard drive and an HDMI port.



Sadly though, it seems it doesn't have any other new hardware like the expected move to 65nm, cooler processors. Hopefully that will come sometime later this year in another hardware update.

And there's no built-in WiFi either, unlike the Wii and PS3. But the good news is, it does come with HDMI and component cables, so you will be able to hook it up right out of the box.

It's been confirmed to ship in the States in April for $479. It has been confirmed for a UK release but no details about timing or price yet.

100% Mac

Ever since I switched my home PC for a Mac in 2002 and bought a 17" widescreen "sunflower" iMac G4, I've wanted to use a Mac at work as well and do away with PCs altogether.

That long-standing ambition has finally come to fruition in the last couple of weeks because in my new job I now use a MacBook Pro.

It's great to have finally gone 100% Mac and I am seeing a new side to using OS X, it's not all about iTunes and iPhoto any more, now I have to use it to get important things done like proposals, presentations, business email, development and other work-related stuff.

So far it's been working perfectly and I've been pleased to see how easily Macs really do fit into the enterprise. Mail works with Exchange just fine for email and you have the option of using Microsoft's Entourage, which is just like Outlook and includes all of the same contact and calendar management tools.

But you can even get Entourage to sync with iCal and Address Book, so you can effectively not use Entourage at all and just use the built in OS X apps instead, which is my preference.

What's more with the company about to roll-out the open-source Zimbra platform to replace Exchange, it will be a piece of cake using Macs and PCs in perfect harmony for email and calendaring.

It has also shown me how powerful OS X's built-in sync services are - this is what allows me to sync Entourage with iCal and Address Book but it also syncs my calendar, to-do list and contacts with my mobile phone and back home to my iMac G5 via .Mac (which I finally now make full use of), all completely seamlessly and automatically in the background.

It's been a pleasant experience so far and I find it so much easier to get my work done, there aren't any of the instability, crashing, restart or security problems that have plagued every PC I have ever used in my previous jobs and dragged down my productivity.

The integration into the network is seamless, joining wireless networks, setting up VPN connections and printers is ridiculously easy. Example: finding and setting up the networked Lexmark printer took about 10 seconds. My Mac just found it automatically on the network using Bonjour (Apple's zero-config network protocol) and started using it - no installation of drivers required, unlike the PC I'd had to use for my first couple of days. Joining the wireless network and setting up the VPN connection for when I'm away from the office were equally easy.

OS X also has loads of great software to help you complete your business tasks, whether it's great RSS readers, instant messaging clients or Word, Excel and PowerPoint, they're all available. Not to mention the great mail, calendar and creative apps that come built into OS X.

Of course, it helps that I work for a small, progressive company that allows and encourages me to use a Mac but in fact, I think I could have done this just as easily in any company, had they simply allowed me to.

I hope some of the antiquated IT departments out there wake up and smell the coffee. The Mac is perfectly poised to make an impact in the enterprise. Because it has to be, it is the most flexible OS out there and it can effortlessly integrate into Windows networks, in a lot of ways it's a hell of a lot easier to integrate than PCs themselves!

If I ever have to go back to using a PC as my main computer, I'm going to find it very tough. I've gone Mac and I don't want to go back. Ever.

Finally, I have Sky+

Oh it's been a long five years living in my flat with no Sky+, anyone that knows me can testify to that. You see, getting a second satellite feed into my flat through the central distribution system in the block has been hard to say the least. But I have finally triumphed through a mixture of good and bad luck and last Friday I finally had Sky+ installed.

The bad luck came in the form of a flood which destroyed all of the communal distribution system that led to me being without any TV at all for 2 weeks (well, I had channels 1-5 through terrestrial but that was like going back to the dark ages).

The good luck was that when the whole system had to be replaced after the flood, I made sure it was capable of distributing two feeds to each flat. Hence I now have Sky+ and my televisual life is complete.

Well, for now at least. You see, now that I have Sky+, I am also capable of getting Sky HD which also requires the second feed. So now I have the perfect excuse to buy one of those 42" 1080p HDTVs I keep blogging about. Happy days.

Geo-tagging - another reason to upgrade your camera.

In November I replaced my Sony DSC-P10 digital camera with a very nice Canon IXUS 850IS. This was quite a big step for me - to move away from Sony, I debated whether I should get a newer Sony and took quite a bit of convincing against it - but at the end of the day, I was replacing my Sony because it had failed, not because it was out-dated. The Canon had excellent reviews, was comparable in every way and I have not looked back since.

The research to find the right camera meant considering the specs and reviews - now I get the sneaking sensation that this spec search in future will need to take into consideration geo-tagging.

Geo-tagging, in the case of photography, is the process of including geographical meta data, usually latitude and longitude to your photographs to tie them to their position on earth.

JOBO have a device, photoGPS, which allows for geo-tagging to be fitted to your camera's hot shoe -like a regular flash unit. This unit captures the country, region and district, city, street, postal code, and even the point of interest (POI) which is closest to the captured image location and adds it to your photograph's meta-data.

This information can be used in a variety of ways. Google Earth allows users, through Picasa to match their photos to a specific location - this opens up all sorts of possibilities for travel writers, holiday makers etc. Or perhaps from a personal history point of view, a record through your photographs of where on earth you have stood - something your children and grandchildren might re-visit or yourself in later years.

Also geo-tagging would offer you a new search criteria, appended automatically to your photos - for those less keen on manual organisation. If you want to see all the photos you took at a specific place then you can.

So with this solution appearing as an add-on for hot shoe enabled cameras how long before it becomes a standard inside your camera? I think its certainly the sort of feature I'd love.

PlayStation Home confirmed

Well no surprises that the rumour was true after the Kotaku incident but Sony confirmed it today and announced PlayStation Home. It's like a blend of Second Life, The Sims, Nintendo's Miis and Xbox's achievements.

Basically it's a virtual world in which you have your own customisable house (you can hang your own digital photos on the wall as pictures) and all of it can be explored using your avatar, which can also be customised like a Mii but in far more detail. But this is not just some ramshackle or cartoon-like world, it's full on PS3 graphics and looks pretty impressive.



See more photos in the Joystiq gallery here.

You can chat to your buddies, play in-built games like bowling and pool, or arrange online multi-player games. There are also loads of public places where you can watch move trailers in a virtual cinema, for example, or admire game trophies in great halls.

Sony are thinking of it as Game 3.0, kind of like Web 2.0 for games, bandying about terms like social, localisation and customisable. That's a bit odd, I'm not sure it's quite that ground-breaking, there are plenty of MMO games out there that offer a lot of these aspects already but whatever, this does seem quite interesting and certainly brings the PS3 much more in line with what Nintendo are clearly trying to do with the Wii.

Having said that, those people that want it (and I'm not one of them) have plenty of options for MMO already and if Sony has proven one thing it's that cramming every conceivable piece of functionality into things doesn't necessarily translate into a compelling experience; people tend to like simplicity and elegance. The PS3 needs to be good at games first and this sort of thing is a great added bonus second.

At the end of the day, we'll just have to wait and see. PlayStation home goes into beta in April and should be launched properly sometime in the Autumn. Now if Sony would actually just release the bloody PS3 over here, people might just have one more reason to go and buy one.