Google Street View covers 95% of the UK

Google Street View expanded its UK coverage today allowing  Googlers to now take a virtual walk down almost 95% of the streets in the UK.

Google first released street view (part of Google Maps) in the UK last March but until now only covered 25 of the main cities. Over the last year Google street cars have been busy racing up and down our streets capturing every last little detail, if you look carefully you might even see yourself or some one you know.

Google are updating the service allowing users to edit place markers and are even expected to introduce new features such as cycle routes which it now has for the US.

For those of you wanting to learn a little more about Google street view check out the video below or visit Google Maps.

Fancy killing a little time? Jump on Google Maps and start playing spot you and friends on street view. I’ve found 6 of mine, can you beat it? |:)

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Doodle Jump reaches 3 million sales

Doodle Jump has broken the 3 million sales mark.

The insanely addictive iPhone app/game has tripled in sales since mid December 2009 when it first broke its first million. At 59p in the UK and $0.99 in the US this means the application has grossed almost $3 million dollars since it was released in April 2009.  With roughly $0.70 earnt per $0.99 this works out as $2.1 million dollars for two man band that are Lima Sky.

The two brothers, Igor and Marko Pusenjak, created the application between them and are now responsible for the lost of days/weeks of peoples lives spent playing the game. Time well spent in my opinion.

Doodle Jump is by far the most addictive game on the iPhone at the moment. If you haven’t tried it youself and are prepared to risk loosing half your life try it! Its only 59p!…

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Microsoft Release Tag on Android

Microsoft have released Tag as their first Android application this week. This is a smart move by Microsoft to jump into competitor space (Google/Android) and push their products there also. They did the same with the iPhone in to 2008, first releasing SeaDragon and then Tag a few month later on the platform.

Tags, or 2D Barcodes as they are generally known, are 2 dimensional barcodes that can be scanned by mobile devices to transfer information about a product, a website, a contact, a location etc straight onto the device.

Although they haven’t fully been picked up by the public just yet its only a matter of time before they become part of our daily life. Forget carrying around a wallet of business cards or having to write down the details of a product, a gig, a link, or a new restaurant you might have found out about; just pull out your mobile, snap the barcode and you got it all on your Phone. Pretty Sweet huh?

Example 2d barcode images:

Examples of 2D Barcodes

Here are a few YouTube videos to learn a little more about Microsoft Tag and what you can do with 2D barcodes:

Sorry about the cheesy Microsoft commercial btw… what do you expect? Its Microsoft!

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PS3 clock problem fixed

Sony says PS3 clock problem is ‘resolved’ – but Sony aren’t saying exactly what caused it.

Yesterday millions of PS3 users where affected as they experienced issues attempting to sign into the Playstation network. Reports soon rang out amongst the forums that some users were also loosing saved game and trophy data.

When attempting to connect to the PSN the following error message was being displayed: ” An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)”

According to Sony, the error was caused by the older PS3 model’s internal clock thinking 2010 as a leap year (Whoops! after all the hype of  Y2K as well..); consequently the console was  seeing the 1st of March as the 29th of February. The new ‘Slim’ models were unaffected by the problem.

The following statement was made on the PS3 blog earlier today but as of yet there has been no further explanation as to why this has occurred and what fixed it. What’s the bet they just let the day roll over?…

Here’s a qoute off the official PS3 blog:

“We are aware that the internal clock functionality in the PS3 units other than the slim model, recognized the year 2010 as a leap year. Having the internal clock date change from February 29 to March 1 (both GMT), we have verified that the symptoms are now resolved and that users are able to use their PS3 normally. If the time displayed on the XMB is still incorrect, users are able to adjust time settings manually or via the internet. If we have new information, we will update you through the PlayStation.Blog or PlayStation.com.”

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Eric Schmidt

Whooooa, now there’s a ripe piece of nerd if ever I’ve seen one.

The YouTube clip below was taken from a local American television news network that was covering a story on an April fools day gag played on an unexpecting Eric Schmidt in 1986 when he was a Sun Microsystems.  For those of you unfamiliar with who Eric is, he’s the CEO of Google and former member of the Board of Directors of Apple Inc.

Seriously, you just don’t get nerds like this any more. Eric Schmidt, we uber solute you!…

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Distimo Mobile App Store Stats and Trends

Below is a really interesting presentation that was shown at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona by a mobile analytics/trends company called Distimo.

The data shows Apple winning by a mile for mobile app store size with Android coming in second and Nokia Ovi third. Android has however seen the fastest between December 2009 and January 2010 and has the most free apps (Android 57%, Apple 25%) .

In terms of what is being downloaded, Games wins hands-down. In the report Distimo state that 58% of all apps downloaded from the stores are games. The most popular categories being: Action (22%), Arcade(9%) and Adventure (9%).

Distimo also cover the fact that the most expensive apps are not necessarily the highest grossing – at the time of writing this DoodleJump (59p or 99 cents ) is the highest grossing app on apple app store. If you’ve played it, you’ll know why…

View the slide show below:

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Twitter Language Trends (source: Semiocast)

Paris-based Semiocast have released research today claiming that only 50% of Tweets are in English. This figure is significantly down on research ran in 2009 where they discovered two thirds of all Tweets were made in English.

According to the study, 2.8 million Tweets were examined between the 8th and 10th February 2010 which found the Top 5 languages to be: English, Japanese, Portuguese, Malay and Spanish. The graph on the left shows the break down.

Interestingly enough Twitter also released stats this week showing Tweet growth between 2007 and 2010. At this point in time 50 million Tweets occur each day which breaks down to an average of  600 Tweets per second!

Tweets Per day Jan 2007- Jan 2010

Tweets per day History

Its unlikely 2011 will  see the rate of growth seen between 2009 and 2010 but one things for sure, Twitter ain’t going away. Or will it?…

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IE6 Funeral

Yes, another IE6 post, but this ones funny. Trust me…

A Denver, Colorado-based design company (Aten Design) have created a website marking the death of IE6. http://ie6funeral.com claims that IE6 died on the 1st March 2010 and will be laid to rest on the 4th March at the company premises.

Visitors of the site can RSVP on whether they will be attending the funeral or are given the option to leave their remembrance indicating their ‘extreme bereavement’.

Here’s an excerpt from the site:

IE6 Funeral excerpt

My favourite message:

Google Chrome Will Not Be Attending

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YouTube Drop IE6 Support on 13th March 2010

YouTube made an announcement today that  support for IE6  will end on the 13th of March 2010, this follows a statement from Google in January saying they aim to drop support across all their apps.

Is that a cheer i hear from all the developers out there as we get that one step closer to getting rid of  the dreaded browser from hell?Yes it is a step in the right direction alright but could it be an opportunity for network admins out there to use to their advantage and filter YouTube and save their precious bandwidth?…

You just just know this one will stick around like a bad smell! Join IE6 MUST DIE, it’ll might make you feel a little bit better. Might…

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Happy Birthday Photoshop!

Happy Birthday to Adobe’s  Photoshop software, its 20 today!

It was 20 years ago to this day that Photoshop was born and I guess the  rest is history…

Photoshop, irrefutably the leader of all when it comes to  photo editing software, THE industry standard.  Photoshop has changed design as we know it and continually pushed the boundaries of what is possible to achieve with images and graphics. Long may it reign!

Here’s are a few quick Photoshop facts that you may not have known:

• Photoshop was originally created by Thomas Knowle  in 1987 whilst studying for his PHD at University of Michigan
• Photoshop was originally named ImagePro
• Photoshop v1.0 was first released in 1990
• Photoshop CS5 is intended for release on April 27th 2010

A few images out of the archive:

Photoshop v1.0.7

Photoshop interface in the early days

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