So I’m writing this blog post in Vision+Media’s CMS, accessed through the third web browser I’ve had running in as many days. Despite being advised not to stick to a single search engine or web browser so as not to allow any one corporation to completely map my internet usage and habits, I have to admit that I have become a little lax of late, and so being forced to switch browser over the last couple of days to access certain content has been a refreshing reminder, not only of the different UIs available to me, but also of my personal responsibilities as a web user to keep tighter control of my Internet privacy.
First off Google Chrome was required to view the interactive film The Wilderness Downtown which serves as both the music video for Arcade Fire’s new single ‘We Used To Wait’ and a Chrome experiment from the guys at Google created to demonstrate what the latest web technologies, including HTML5, are capable of. The video can be viewed here (however you will need to be running Chrome).
Secondly last week’s Apple event (01/09/10) could be streamed live, as long as you were on “either a Mac running Safari on Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard, an iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad.” The reason for restricting access to viewers using their hardware, it is rumoured, far from simply shunning their Windows (and Linux) users, could have been to monitor traffic load and quality, treating the live stream event as a real-world load test on its recently acquired iDataCentre ahead of possible upcoming features such as streaming from iTunes.
If you did miss the live stream, the full keynote is now available for download from iTunes, but let’s have a super-quick rundown of some of the announcements made:
- iOS 4.1 for iPhone and iPod Touch including iPhone 3G performance bug fixes amongst others, High Dynamic Range photos for better exposure across the whole of a photo, and Game Centre (the Xbox Live for iPhone as it has become known) as demonstrated through a graphically impressive project from Epic Games.
- New iPods (iPod Shuffle featuring both buttons and voice control for a fantastic $49, iPod Nano featuring multi-touch screen and back-clip likening it more to previous Shuffles than previous Nanos, and iPod Touch featuring Retina display and a front-facing camera for FaceTime functionality).
- iTunes 10 with brand new CD-less logo and also introducing Ping – a social network for music (think Last.fm and you’re pretty much there).
- Apple TV at a quarter of the size of the current Apple TV box has opted to support a rental only model to keep prices low ($0.99 for a HD episode of a TV show) and solve storage management issues. Also Netflix support and an interface featuring content including Rotten Tomatoes reviews, and perhaps most impressively a price tag of only $99.
Post continues with Part II
