Archive for October, 2007

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Highlight: Bring back Wispa

October 24, 2007

Back in January, a Bebo page was created in the pursuit to bring back Wispa. In June, Wispa fans took to the stage during Iggy Pop’s performance at Glastonbury. I blogged about the campaign in July, three months later and more than 17,000 views of the page that was started after a rumble in the stomach of its creators, Wispa is back on store shelves.
I’ve doubted whether social networking platforms serve any other purpose than an outlet for bored teens to meet similarly bored teens. But success stories from the likes of the Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen and now Wispa. Maybe social networking is helping to provide a voice for a wide community of people who each want the same thing, whether it be success in the music business or simply to rekindle the joys of eating a Wispa chocolate bar. Apparently it’s only a limited edition bar, so get your fix before they run out. I’m holding out for the Wispa Gold, but probably will grab a few regular bars in the meantime.
Read: Bring Back Wispa Bebo page

Posted in Misc, Web | 1 Comment »

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iTouch the iPod Touch

October 3, 2007

Been in the Apple store today for my own hands on test. I found that the iPod Touch was good, Initially I found the virtual keyboard difficult to use, it took me some time to enter a URL without pressing the wrong letters. Over time, this became less of an issue, and when searching Google I found the predictive text recognised Kaiser well after only inserting a few letters. The wi-fi is an average speed, though that was via the Apple store network. I actually found the Touch to be significantly quieter than the Classic and the new Nano. Anywhere below half of the volume was inaudible, maybe an AVLS setting was switched on on the model I was using. Felt quite cool demonstrating to a couple of girls how to pinch to zoom in and out of web pages. Though obviously that means that it’s not quite as intuitive as Apple hoped for. Tapping twice on the screen works well to get most pages to the right size, as most reviews have already pointed out. I heard a girl say that it wouldn’t be right for her with only 16GB of storage, although she was quite taken. And who can really blame her, up until this generation I’ve hated iPods mainly for their weak battery lives, now even I’m being pulled into the reality distortion field created by the slick UI on the Touch.

Brief mention for the Nano’s incredibly trim waistline. It really is quite anorexic, considering it retains a healthy claimed battery life of 24hrs and up to 8GB storage (though the size of such chips aren’t particularly chubby). Priced at £130 for 8GB, the iWorld is beginning to become harder for me to resist. The Classic 80 and 160GB are easily told apart as the HDD on the 160GB almost doubles the size of the device. Still, 160GB being crammed into that space is still fairly cool. Battery life of around 40hrs is also pretty impressive, compared to the lame 8hrs of previous generations. Surely, the Nano could have had a better battery life then, since it uses more power efficient flash storage.

Posted in Apple, Portable Media, iPod | Leave a Comment »