
Last summer our family packed in preparation for our holiday. It
took most of the day to get ready and load the car, allowing for
everything needed by 3 children, 2 adults and 1 dog. A long drive lay
ahead and the car was loaded with gadgets and entertainment devices to
keep the kids happy. This included MP3 players and handheld games
consoles, mobile phones, a camera and a camcorder. Plus, of course, a
tangled mess of chargers, cables and power adaptors.
Continue reading "POWERMAT - an end to cable / charger clutter?" »

Although, for the British, queuing seems to be one of our national sports, I hate waiting in lines at stations, bus stops, shops,
Post Offices … the list goes on. In particular, I have always dreaded visits to
the Post Office. Cue flashbacks of endless waits in very slow moving queues.
This was, until last week…
Continue reading "Post Office no-queue system - is it ‘just the ticket’ or ‘too good to be true’?" »
Looks like I'm in for a bit of a walk...
Last weekend as I was browsing my local games shop I came across a copy of Operation Flashpoint : Dragon rising. Now I've never played any of the previous titles in the series before, so I bought a copy for my 360.
The case promised that the game would put you as close to war as you would ever want to get, and now that I've played it I can certainly agree with them. However if I was going to get close to war in my decidedly un-military trained self then it would help if I had a bit of assistance, especially as I'm placed in charge of three other men.
The first mission of the game placed me directly onto a very nicely rendered landscape with my 'squad', having been told to take out a target on the map. I spent a few seconds moving myself around, seeing what the world had to offer and then was ready for what they had to throw at me. Now the game is pretty realistic, too realistic some might argue especially as I spent the next 20 minutes walking to a target some distance away only to be killed at my first encounter with the enemy.
Continue reading "Operation Flashpoint : a flash in the pan?" »
Who wants a dedicated ereader? Not a lot of people. Not yet, anyway. But there are three groups, maybe four, that are hot for the Amazon Kindle, the Sony Reader, and the other wannabe contenders.
We've talked to scores of people in our studies, and we aren't yet seeing much demand for dedicated ereaders. People almost always like the ereaders better after they've tried them, but not enough to actually want to buy one.
Continue reading "Who wants a dedicated ereader?" »
Amazon's ebook machine, the Kindle, has just gone international making it legitimately available in my home country, the UK, for the first time. I'm excited -- I've been studying ebook readers for most of this year and this is the one that has the most buzz.
I've already been testing one borrowed from an American friend so I know what it's like. It feels great in the hand, just the right weight and with nicely curved edges and corners. The pages turn much more quickly than with the first generation Sony Reader I was using. I like the 'read aloud' feature and the large font sizes when my eyes got tired. And when I tried it out in the States, the shopping features were head and shoulders above any other ebook reader we've seen.
Continue reading "The Amazon Kindle goes worldwide" »

Sony launched the PSP go on the 1st October 2009. Here at ExperienceLab we like to think of ourselves as intrepid researchers, so I volunteered to take a look at the new device (well, someone had to!).
In this article I summarise my initial impressions of the new PSP and the setup process. Despite having owned the original for several years my experience with the new product was not entirely positive.
I have concerns about the physical design of the device, as well as a few gripes
regarding the setup process and associated Sony PlayStation websites. For further details read on.
Continue reading "The new PSP go: initial impressions are mixed" »
Games suffer from having an end. Games tend to work in one of two ways – either they work along a linear storyline or they continue indefinitely by ramping up the difficulty level. The problem with the former is that stories tend to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Once you’ve reached the end, there seems little point in starting back at the beginning again, unless you have the memory capacity of a spoon.
Continue reading "Why do video games have a limited play-time?" »

September 30th was National Freeview Retune Day.
This was a reshuffle of channels proceeding the introduction of High Definition
on Freeview. Despite it being widely trailed beforehand, the confused of the
nation still caused the website explaining the changes to crash and were
calling the Freeview helpline at a rate of 200 calls per minute seeking advice.
Continue reading "National digital retune causes problems" »