So it was announced today that Spotify have released Spotify Open and Spotify Unlimited but what’s new?
Spotify Open.
Spotify Open
Spotify Open is the new ‘free’ version of Spotify, but where it differs from Spotify Free is that you now don’t need an invite to use the service and also you are limited to only 25hr listening time per month you also can’t use the radio feature.
Spotify Unlimited
Spotify Unlimited is the new paid version of Spotify and for £4.99 a month you do away with the adverts,
Check out the Spotify website for more info on all the different plans
Sony have announced that they will finally stop selling the storage format in Japan from March 2011.
3.5 inch floppy disk..
Earlier in the year Sony had stopped selling the Floppy Disk in most international markets because of reduced sales and the competition from other storage formats.
I’ll be honest, I thought the floppy had died out years ago, because lets face it there isn’t much you can keep on 1.4mb, not even one photo or one song. There was something nice, however, about putting a floppy into the slot, it was nice and clunky, like putting a cartridge into a snes or N64.
Story from BBC News
Avatar sold 1.5 million copies in Blu-ray on it’s first day of going on sale. Along with an additional 2.5 million DVD copies being sold.
Blu-ray.
Does the Avatar’s popularity on Blu-ray show that 3D is a format that we’re only interested in seeing at the cinema? This story seems bad news for 3D TV manufacturers, as the 3D version will not be available until early next year.
3D TV technology is new and 3D television are expensive, it’s also not surprising that far more DVD were sold than Blu-ray, showing that audiences either aren’t too interested in HD to spend more money,or haven’t made the leap into buying a HD/Blu-ray player.
It certainly might be sometime before 3D films will be the biggest buys, as Blu-ray is still playing catch up. Personally I’m not interested in buy a 3D TV at the moment simply because 2D works and looks fine and it has done for years and years.
Question
Are you excited for 3D TVs or are you happy with the one you have at the moment?
I saw this article in the news recently link about a small village which raised £37,000 to offer 200 homes the super-fast broadband that BT would not deliver.
Ethernet Snake by shadphotos.
Recently there has also been talks about a broadband tax so that the government could afford to offer everyone 2mps broadband. I’d be perfectly happy to pay a broadband tax if it were going to vastly improve the service, I pay for 16mps at the moment ad get between 10 and 16, so why would I pay for something that isn’t going to improve mine.
Why not aim to give everyone 40mps because then we’ll have an internet speed that will last a long time rather than 2mps which will need to be upgraded only years down the line.
I’d like to know whether or not you would band together with your local community to pay for faster broadband?
Image by shadphotos
I must admit the title may be a little misleading as I don’t think the new layout sucks. Is it perfect? No, but was the last layout perfect? Certainly not.
New YouTube Layout.
I suppose the question as to whether it’s better or not comes down to the amount of things that are better or worse than the last one.
Parts that are better
-@ replys in the comments
-Thumbs up and thumbs down rather than 5 stars
-Tells you the amount of videos that user has made at the top
-Video quality changer doesn’t seem to stick anymore
Parts that are worse
-Too much white
-Videos in the side seem to be random and I would prefer my videos there not related.
Verdict
So it seems that there are more parts to the layout that are better, When the option to use this layout came out in beta I chose to stick with the old one. The major turn off was the thumbs up button meant favouriting the video which was the stupidest thing ever.
But as YouTube decided not to go with that and just a ‘Like’ thumbs up (There is a ‘Like’ list that almost acts like a favourites) which I think is the better option. I’m fairly happy with the new change, hopefully they’ll slightly update it with some colour but otherwise it’s a change for the better.
New YouTube Comments system.
The video shown above is ‘Gabriel’ our Film Dash 2010 Entry. Watch it here
I have to be honest and say I have only seen one film in 3D so far, and it was the hugely popular Avatar. I would take a guess and say it may have been a lot of people’s first time experience with 3D in a cinema.
RealD glasses with circularly polarised lenses.
I think it’s safe to say that a lot of people would remember getting, when they were younger, a pair of anaglyph glasses (the one with Red and Cyan filters) in some sort of comic or magazine, it’s also safe to say that the majority of the time the results were terrible. In November 2009 Channel 4 started a week of broadcasting using similar anaglyph glasses, this time amber and blue filters to “allow full colour viewing”, again it semi worked but was largely disappointing.
3D Glasses
3D in the cinema works in a slightly different way, they use a circularly polarised projection and glasses system and this allows the viewer to see the film in its full colour beauty.
Avatar’s 3D was perfectly done, it wasn’t to ‘in your face’ and was easy to watch. The 3D enhances the illusion of depth perception and allows you to emerge yourself in the film.
Result
To answer “Is 3D worth the extra money?” I paid £10.10 for two tickets to see Avatar 3D and according to Empire Cinemas website it’s £1.50 extra per seat for a 3D film. I think the additional £1.50 to see a exceptional film like Avatar is well worth it, whether I will see every film that has a 3D option is up for debate, but in the case of Avatar is was well worth the money.
Question
What do you think of 3D?, what have you seen and what did you think of it?
