Jalopnik Car Pack Available now
The latest round of Forza 3 DLC is out. Jalopnik is a Gawker Media blog that focuses on everything car-related. Naturally they’ve partnered with Forza to bring a hot new lineup of cars to the game in the for of DLC. The Jalopnik Car Pack which contains 10 cars will set you back 400 Microsoft points (A$6.60).
Jalopnik Car Pack includes:
2008 MAZDA FURAI
2010 HONDA CIVIC TYPE R MUGEN
2009 #40 ROBERTSON RACING FORD GT
2010 ASTON MARTIN RAPIDE
2011 BMW Z4
2010 AUDI TT RS
2010 #33 RSR JAGUAR XKR
2010 PORSCHE 911 SPORT CLASSIC
2010 ASTON MARTIN V12 VANTAGE
1992 BUGATTI EB110SS
More @ ForzaMotorsport.net
Forza Update
Forza fans shouldn’t forget there’s a major patch due for release in the next 24hrs. Codenamed Title Update 4 (TU4), the patch will be rolling out between 2AM and 4AM PST. There’s lots of changes coming, best to read all the info over at ForzaMotorsport.
Adobe shows off Flash/AIR on the HP slate
The last time we seen the HP slate was during Steve Ballmer’s keynote speech at CES. Information has been so scarce that many were starting to call it vapourware. With no confirmed ship date, specs or price, it’s easy to understand why, especially with it’s greatest competitor – the Apple iPad only a month away from shipping.
Adobe shows off the HP slate running Flash in the browser, based on 10.1, it makes use of GPU acceleration to reduce CPU cycles. Also showcased in the video is the ability to run Adobe AIR apps in Windows 7 on the slate. These are out of browser apps that make use of the Windows 7 on-screen keyboard for input. Those familiar with the on-screen keyboard would know this is resizable so as to adjust to your hand size.
Update
There’s now an embeddable version on YouTube.
Watch the video @ Adobe
YouTube Audio Transcription broken, hates Australians
Announced on the 5th of March, YouTube had added audio transcription to videos in an effort to increase accessibility. Just hover over the CC button in the player, then select the ‘Transcribe Audio’ option. Available in 50 different languages, it’s an ambitious venture from Google. One that could potentially open up videos to truly world-wide viewing.
The Transcribe audio feature is currently in beta and they’ve certainly got some work to do. I tested it on one of my videos (obviously have an Australian accent), it got this sentence completely wrong.
In the example below, I actually say the words:
“Hi this is Jason from Wodonga Australia and I think the story of the decade has..”
YouTube Translate interprets what I said as:
”but is this just in from would over a stray a and I think the story of the day Kennedy has”.
Clearly it’s not even close, naturally I wasn’t expecting 100% accuracy here, but this translation is so far off, it’s completely unusable. Have you experienced the same results ?
More @ YouTube and the YouTube Blog
Office 2010 release date announced
Microsoft have officially announced May 12th, 2010 will be the launch date for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. This date represents the retail launch of the products, with the RTM date scheduled for sometime in April. This means MSDN and TechNet subscribers should have the bits before the end of April.
Office 2010 provides some important updates like the ribbon UI across all apps, new backstage view, threaded email conversations, social connector add-in support and some much needed updated same templates. Ultimately its a very polished Office 2007, using the same .docx, .xlsx file types. New in 2010 is the web apps, although we’re still yet to see editing of word docs online, this should be available at launch.
Here’s a good comparison video showing what’s new in Office 2010 and Office 2007.
SharePoint 2010 on the other hand is a massive upgrade on SharePoint 2007. A completely new UI features the ribbon that users are familiar with from the using Office products. There’s also an extended range of in-built site types. Integration between SharePoint and Office has been improved with a new SharePoint Workspace application added to Office. This allows important SharePoint content to be available whilst offline. If you create any new documents while out on the road, you can easily sync these back when you return to the office.
More @ Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog
Will you pay for games and apps 3 times ?
In a demo a Tech.Ed Middle East, Eric Rudder showed how a single project (in this case a game) could be published and run on 3 entirely different platforms. Running on Windows, Xbox and Windows Phone 7 which all have different input mechanisms – keyboard and mouse, controller, touch-screen and accelerometer, this begins to get very interesting.
This gets a whole lot more awesome when you find out that your game/app can sync across platforms. So hit the save point on the Xbox, run out the door and continue playing on your phone. Someone should sort through the old beyond 2000 footage, this technology is probably in there somewhere. It sounds like futuristic and probably will be some ways off before you get a triple-platform app in your hand.
My biggest question out of this is the pricing model. Are we expected to buy the game 3 times to get ultra-portability ? It’s important to also recognise that this isn’t functionality everyone wants. So building it into the price of the first purchase will hurt those who only want it on one platform. For the right price, those that want ultra-portability should pay for that feature, but at a subsidised price. Maybe after the primary purchase, you could then pickup the same app/game on the other platforms for 5-10% of the original cost. I think that’s a model that would work.
For a $100 Xbox 360 game, you should be able to get the PC version for an additional $10 and maybe an additional $5 for the mobile version. Currently pricing models don’t recognise that people game in different places, when in reality that’s very true. Imagine if you didn’t have to make the console vs PC choice, but could have the game on both for an affordable price. Crazy thought right ?
More @ Engadget
iPad delayed till late April, price so unbelievable it doesn’t exist
By now most of you would have heard that Apple have delayed the release of the iPad. Whilst there’s specifics for dates and prices in the US, the same can’t be said for Australia. The iPad pre-orders will begin on March 12th, and be available on April 3 for the US. Many other countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain Switzerland and the UK will have to wait till late April.
Late April was the original timeframe for the Wifi+3G version, so it’s probably safe to say that date will slip into May.
What’s annoying is we still don’t have official pricing here in Australia. On the Apple website it says ‘A magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price.’ however it fails to list what that price is. Naturally this will be revealed in the coming weeks, but given it’s been a couple months since the iPad announcement in January, that should have been enough time to nail down production costs, shipping, taxes, and partnership deals with Australian carriers.
Make no mistake, price is critical here. The delay is annoying, but consumers will bear a slippage of a couple of weeks, but if the iPad is too expensive, consumer adoption will be severely limited.
More information when Apple deems us worthy.
Review: Microsoft Arc Keyboard and Mouse
Keyboard
The Microsoft Arc Keyboard is unique in its styling and configuration. The name arc comes from the keyboards arc shape, curing up in the center which has 2 benefits, the first is that it’s supposed to match the natural configuration of the human hands, as well as being able to rest comfortably on your knees if used in a home entertainment scenario.
Typing on the keyboard does take some time to adjust to, especially after having the muscle memory established on flat, laptop-style keyboards. Over the course of a few days your hands adjust and typing is fine. Note: I am a touch typist, if your a hunt and peck style typist, this really won’t be an issue. Part of the adjustment comes from the increased distance between keys. The Arc keyboard has chicklet style keys, similar to that of recent apple products, the difference being that the keys are higher. This means the gap between keys is deep, this can prevent you from free flowing from one key to another.
After first opening the box, you’ll notice this keyboard is small and light. Microsoft have had to make some serious sacrifices to reach this form factor. There’s no num pad which isn’t uncommon in laptops, but is rare for a desktop keyboard. There’s also a condensed navigation section, with the up, down, left right keys being condensed into a single 4-way key. This takes a bit of getting used to.
Looking to the top of the keyboard, there left hand side contains the standard F1-F6 keys, but to access F7-F12, you’ll need to hold the function key. Move across you’ll find Home(/Printscreen), End, Page up, Page down, then media controls, which are incredibly responsive, then top right is a decent sized Delete key. Great for correcting mistakes without looking. 
Mouse
Designed for portability the Microsoft Arc Mouse folds in half for easier travel. In it’s folded mode, it’d easily fit in your pocket, but before taking your mouse on the road, just snap the USB Bluetooth module in the underside of the mouse. After using the mouse for the best part of a week, I’d have to say the arc is simply too high to be comfortable and the back button is way to far forward to be accessible. Overall the mouse works great, it’s super sensitive which is great when gaming, but even in general desktop use. I run 2 monitors running 1920×1200 resolution, so moving from one side to the other can require quite a lot of physical movement with some mice. With a sensitive mouse like this, I actually had to turn the mouse speed down and can now move across the 3840 pixels with a slight move of the wrist.
Connectivity
What was surprising to me is that the keyboard and mouse need their own separate USB Bluetooth module, taking up 2 of your USB ports. Sure a wired solution would have the same requirement, however there are other Microsoft keyboard and mouse solutions that have a single USB dongle. Admittedly the Arc system is easier, just plug in and go, rather than have to sync each device.
Gallery
Device Stage
If your not familiar with it, Windows 7 comes with a new feature called Device Stage. Designed to be an attractive, functional interface into new devices connected to your system. Unfortunately there’s very few devices that currently support Device Stage. The Microsoft Arc Keyboard and Mouse does support Device Stage, a welcome addition, and naturally you’d expect the company to support it’s own hardware. Lets hope more hardware manufacturers adopt Device Stage in the near future.
Update
After testing the Arc keyboard with the Xbox 360 I found a weird glitch. Whilst the keyboard works great in the standard Xbox 360 interface, it fails in Media Center. Strangely only the left and right functions work, up and down does nothing. This is possibly due to the keyboard combining the 4 arrow keys into a single key.
Disclaimer
After posting on twitter that my Microsoft Explorer 3.0 mouse had died, I received an email from Microsoft. They offered to replace the mouse and after further discussions sent me through a Microsoft Arc and Keyboard.
More info @ Microsoft Hardware
