The few photos I took with my Nexus One are on Flickr and the videos are on Youtube.

Met some great people, played some fantastic games and ate some bloody good food in LA! Make sure you tune into the next episode of GodisaGeek Podcast to hear our thoughts on the games and our ‘Game of the Show’.

As far as conferences go, I think Nintendo won it this year, with the launch of the 3DS and a bunch of great titles to go with it. Closely followed by Microsoft, who also have a load of brilliant titles and some shiny new hardware (I must get an Xbox 360 Slim). Sony flopped on the conference front this year. Although they had some decent title announcements for their existing franches, they had no new hardware and they lost huge points for the disrespecting of both Microsoft and Nintendo during their conference. This wasn’t funny, and it only highlighted Sony’s insecurities.

The Playstation Move  is essentially an advanced Wiimote. There’s no denying that. I must say, what it does, it does well. This to me, is exactly what the Wii should have been. I didn’t buy a Wii because of the poor graphics and the rubbish responsiveness of the infra-red system. With the Playstation 3′s graphics and some epic responsiveness with the Move, we now have something that could actually interest me.

Xbox Kinect is another kettle of fish altogether. Now this is something new and innovative. Although it came in response to Nintendo’s motion controller, it’s not a direct copy like the Move. This is something new and refreshing. I think Dance Central showed off the Kinect’s potential best, with a dance game that requires you to actually dance (rather than stomping on pads). With dance/yoga/martial arts titles on this platform, gamers will get a lesson or two while playing.

Myself and GodisaGeek‘s Asim Tanvir were asked out thoughts on the Microsoft Kinect at E3:

Xbox Kinect Impressions One
Xbox Kinect Impressions Two

Nintendo did it again with the 3DS. This is why they’re on top. It’s innovation after innovation with this company. There’s no doubt the 3DS will sell well and keep Nintendo at the top of the handheld market for years to come. This is just what they needed, with Apple’s iOS devices creeping up, having already overtaken the Sony PSP. The 3D camera alone is enough to make me want to buy one – fantastic piece of kit! The games may give users a headache after a while, but the 3D aspect can be turned off/down. Nintendo also announced the option of partnering with movie studios to release 3D titles on the device. Interesting!

EA were probably the publisher with the most to offer this E3. Especially with upcoming come-back title Medal of Honor. Their booth was one of the most interesting places in the whole expo, with a whole range of big titles including Crysis 2, Need for Speed, The Sims 3 (for console) and Tiger Woods. I’m not going to talk about their shameless marketing scheme at the event (the Raybans were a lie!).

Don’t forget, tune into GodisaGeek Podcast for our Game of the Show.

A few questions were answered. A few questions were made up specifically to be answered. The questions that nagged at us for six seasons however, pretty much remain unanswered. The ending felt like a cop out to me, yes they’re all dead now, what we thought were “Flash Sideways” were actually still Flash Forwards, but showing the Lost crew in their afterlife. The place where they go and meet up, before moving on. Wait, didn’t I see this finale just last week, in Ashes to Ashes? I’m sure I’m not the only one who want’s to know what actually happened on the Island with Hugo as ruler, and Ben as his No.2 and what happened back in Society when the rest of the crew returned home (again).

The mysterious Polar bears were just some Darma experiment. Nothing mystical about that.

The Darma Initiative themselves we spent 3/4 seasons wondering about, were just a pointless group of scientists trying to harness islands power. They had no place in the finale. Neither did “The Others” who were just another group of miss-lead people, trying to protect the island from outsiders.

The Light at heart of island keeps was on of those questions made up at the end of this season, in order for the writers to have something to answer. The light itself keeps the island static.

Attach a wheel to this light and you can travel through time/space.

Apparently if you remove a stone from the light, the island falls apart. It has been suggested that this would cause the end of civilisation - but there was no evidence of this when the stone was removed in the finale.

It had also been suggested Jacob’s Brother (who I refuse to call the Smoke Monster or Man in Black – surely the guy has a bloody name?) was Evil incarnate and released into the world would also cause the end of civilization as he corrupts society. Not sure if that’s actually true, since he was just a boy, like Jacob, who happened to be raised by a loony islander. There was no Good vs Evil battle here, just two misguided sons, doing what they think is right by themselves and/or the island.

Jacob isn’t mysterious, he’s just ignorant. His job is to protect the light from outsiders and to prevent his brother from leaving the island.

Somehow the light turned Jacob’s brother into a smoke monster that can take the form of others, although his body was physically dead. Only Desmond can walk on the light because he has a resistance to electromagnetism. Saying that, Jack somehow survived the light – he didn’t die or become a smoke monster.

Drinking water and incanting a spell makes one invulnerable. Magic!

Questions I’m left with are;

If everyone is dead now (Jacob, Jack, Hugo), who’s protecting the light?

Who was the woman who used to protect the light, where did she come from? How did this all start?

Where was Michael / Walt at the end. They played pretty prominent parts throughout the series, but were nowhere to be found when the rest of the gang met in ‘purgatory’ during the finale.

How could ghosts appear to Huge, especially if they don’t remember that they are dead. Was it Jacob impersonating Hugo’s dead friends, or Jacob’s brother?

[Update]

There’s a great round-up at MSNBC.

I’m so frustrated about this ending. The flash-sideways were a timeless afterlife, therefore they meant nothing. We learnt nothing about the past 5 seasons of the show, none of the mysteries were solved. The only answers we received were to questions made up in season 6 with the specific purpose of being answered.

When it comes down to it, Lost was poorly planned. The writing was both fantastic and absolutely shit, at the same time. While it kept you gripped, with a suspense there was no payload at the end – six years of questions, and absolutely no answers. Disgusting.

The worst thing is, I know I’ll be buying the DVD set, simply because they’ve promised to provide some answers as extra features. But the fact that they’ve had to do this, instead of gradually providing answers over 6 seasons, or even during one epic finale, simply proves the poor writing of this show.

This story has been published on Sporkings.com.

It all started with a ~£300 graphics card. Me being me, I had to get hold of a GeForce 9800 GX2, back in April ’08 – when they were the first graphics cards to offer 1gb of memory. The card promised ridiculous speeds.

Unfortunately what I was not to know at the time, was that this graphics card suffers over-heating problems. Of course it’s well documented now but that’s the price we pay for being early adopters.

The graphics card has always been a bit iffy, when used for long periods of time. Recently it got so bad, that after 20 minutes of heavy-load usage, the card would simply cut out altogether – forcing me to restart the system in order to get the display back.

After checking when I purchased the card and finding out it was still within the two-year warranty, I sent the card off for repair via an RMA at the retailer: Overclockers. This was my first mistake. If you learn anything from this post, know that you should always send products for repair directly to the manufacturer, that way you skip the man-in-the-middle.

Overclockers informed me that they had checked the graphics card and had indeed found it to be faulty. They mention that they had returned the card to the manufacturer on my behalf “for repair or replacement“ and that I should receive it within 28 days. Well over a month went by, so I contacted Overclockers for an update on the status. Their reply was utterly shocking;

At first I assumed this was a mistake, how on Earth can a £279.99 graphics card incur a £12.00 refund? So I called Overclockers to find out – after all, there was no explanation with this e-mail.

Overclockers informed me that the manufacturer couldn’t repair the card and didn’t supply a replacement, so Overclockers have refunded me the cost of one month’s warranty, which is all that was remaining on the product. Now I may be wrong, but it was my understanding that if a product is within warranty, it should be either repaired or replaced with a similar product of equal value. The graphics card is still being advertised on Overclocker’s website, at £211.49. The customer support personal refused to budge and passed me to his manager ‘Chris’, who offered the same sentiment “The refund has been issued now, there’s nothing more we can do”.

I requested the cheapest graphics card that Overclockers offer, one that retails at £34.99, as a good will gesture to a disgruntled customer. Chris informed me that he has followed policy, and it’s of no interest to him whether the customers are happy and that he has no interest in good gestures or even positive PR for that matter. Unhappy with this resolution I reminded Chris that my PC is useless without a graphics card, and could he at least return my broken graphics card – I would earn more from the parts than this measly £12 refund. Chris refused to return the product to myself – at least the card worked for daily use, even if it meant I couldn’t play games or use any apps with a heavy/3D load, that’s a better compromise than no card at all. The only compromise Chris would agree to, was that he would ask his manager about the good will gesture, to offer me a graphics card at a value of less than £35 (double the silly refund offer), although he made it clear “I wouldn’t bother, personally, if it was up to me. We’ve stuck to our policy”.

Chris got back to me with this response: “I’ve spoken to my manager and basically he said he feels after what we’ve already done he doesn’t think he should be giving somefing[sic] for nothing”. That’s it then. No repair or replacement (as promised in the original e-mail), not even a refurb. Just about enough cash for travel card to a decent PC/Tech store.

Square officially launched yesterday (on the iPad, initially) and the technology is already outdated. Square relies on the old fashioned ‘swipe and sign’ method of accepting credit card payments, which while still accepted in the US, is practically non-existent in the rest of the world. Most countries have either already switched to ‘chip and pin’, or are in the process of adopting this more secure method of accepting credit card payments. The US seems to be lagging behind – but I suspect it won’t be that way forever.

So what does this mean for Square? Does Jack have an ace up his sleeves, or is Square simply going to remain a US-only product, until America joins the rest of the world, with ‘chip and pin’ technology? As brilliantly designed as the Square app and device are – is there a plan for this business to survive in the long-run?

What brands do you love?

Google. Always innovating!
Apple – I love Apple’s products

What brands do you hate?

Apple – Yeah, I have a love/hate thing with them. I really can’t stand their company ethics. The way they restrict everything and practically force you to use their products in the way they dictate.

Microsoft. I know it’s cliché, but I can’t agree with the business tactics they’ve used over the years, and their products do tend to suck. To be fair, I’ve been hating Microsoft long before it was cool – I’m by no means an Apple fanboy.

Motorola – They’ve always made really ugly products, I’m a fan of good design.

3 (Three.co.uk) – Worst mobile network, poor signal coverage, incredibly poor outsourced customer services

Sega, for what they did to Sonic.

What brands CARE about you?

Google. They’re the only company I know that’s truly out there trying to make a differece, at their own cost, without looking for profitability.

Dropbox keeps all your files in the cloud, important documents and crap alike.
If you want to keep things 100% cloud based of course, there’s Google Documents – now that they allow uploading of any file type.

Spotify is my favourite app, music used to take up so much space on my macbook pro, now it’s all streamed directly from the cloud. If I know I’m going out of coverage, I can mark playlists for offline use. The libraries are vast, and once Spotify allows mp3 imports (which it will, soon), iTunes will be under a great threat.

Everyone’s familiar with Flickr. With programs like iPhoto you can upload all your photos and share them with your friends in a matter of clicks, or mark them as private for your own reference.

The best thing about all of these apps is that they’re not desktop exclusive – I have them all on my Google Nexus One and iPhone too.

I’ve never been very good at backing up – I bought an Apple Time Capsule for that very reason. It takes care of everything for me, in the background. I remember frantically searching through backup DVDs, CDs and even floppy disks, when I suffered a data loss in the past. Bloody hard drives are so unreliable! These days it’s so damn simple.

The ‘Documents’ directory on all my computers is an alias to my Dropbox directory. Everything is saved in the cloud. My mp3s are long gone, backed away on an iPod Classic in a drawer somewhere and all the images I care about are on Flickr. There’s no need for mp3s and photos clogging up disk space when all my devices are running Spotify Premium, Flickr Pro and Dropbox.

Of course, all these subscriptions add up. But when the basic services are so good, there’s not always a need to go pro.

Keep it Cloud™

VoIP on a Smartphone is the key. If you’re always in a WiFi environment, this is even easier for you to setup – if you still require a 3G connection, I’ll get to that later.

If you’re in the US, you can use services like Google Voice for calls. This isn’t available everywhere yet though (including the UK), so we have to look at other options. If you have a Skype number, you could use that – or you can use a SIP Provider like SIPGate. With most SIP providers you can select a telephone number from a selection of countries, and most area codes within those countries. You’re also not forced to stick with one inbound number – you could have several numbers directed to your mobile – one for your customers in the US, one for family in the UK and one for your friends in New Zealand?

Once you have a number, you’ll need to setup some VoIP software on your Smartphone. Skype, SipDroid, Fring, Truphone are a few examples. You can generally call Skype-to-Skype, GTalk-to-GTalk and SIP-to-SIP for free, so depending what services your friends are on, you may not even need to spend a penny. For traditional landline/mobile calls, you can use your SIP provider to make calls at cheaper rates that traditional telecoms can provide (including international), usually on either a pay-as-you-go or pay-monthly service – with no contracts. That’s calls taken care of.

Most of these services provide SMS messaging too (Skype, Google Voice). But with SmartPhones there’s not even a need to use traditional SMS messages. With more and more apps coming out like Ping! and WhatsApp – you can send free messages to your friends, directly from mobile to mobile.

If you do need a 3G connection, there are niche sub-providers like GiffGaff who offer free SMS/Calls inter-network, but more importantly free Data access. All you need to do is top-up £10 every 3 months. That’s £3.33 a month for unlimited data usage. If you pair this with VoIP calls, you could be running your mobile phone for significantly less than what you’re paying at the moment.

During Kevin Holley‘s (co-inventor of SMS) presentation at #140conf London last year, I recall him mentioning that text messages are extremely over-priced. They use up so little bandwidth that the actual cost is practically negligible - which is probably why most networks are quick to bundle these up to entice you into their 18month contracts.

With free Internet access becoming more regularly available, is there even any need to be sending SMS messages? I’m not making a statement, that’s a genuine question.

We have Twitter, Facebook, BlackBerry Messenger, and cross-platform Push-supporting applications like WhatsApp for sending direct messages just as quickly as SMS. Not to forget Instant Messenger programs like GTalk, Skype, AIM, MSN etc. All free. Most of these services offer other benefits – like not having to know your friend’s phone number. We take address books for granted, but if you don’t happen to have your friend’s latest number stored – there’s no way of reaching them. Whereas you can hit them up on Twitter/Facebook/Gtalk/Skype wherever you are, whoever’s phone/Internet connection you’re using.

I think the most important aspect here, is that we don’t need our phones to send quick text messages anymore. We’re using these programs to communicate with our friends all the time on our computers – so when we’re out and about with our phones, it just becomes second nature to continue the conversation over those platforms.

It seems to me that we’re right on the verge of a tipping point. We’ll soon have blanket coverage throughout the whole of the developed world. I think now, the most important question is which technology will become predominant. They can’t all survive, surely?

With 4G connections rivaling adsl and cable broadband speeds, and a lot of our devices being mobile – who needs a home Internet connection? It’s not only the mobile networks that are interested in this technology, in the United States private equity firms are planning to cover the whole country by 2015. The technology is certainly there.

On the other hand, with broadband connections becoming faster due to fiber optic roll-outs everywhere, mobile network speeds will soon be lagging far behind, again. Companies like Google are taking an interest in providing fiber to the home in entire cities. This is after they’ve already demonstrated their blanket wifi capabilities in San Fransisco. If there’s Free wifi everywhere, why would anyone need a mobile phone provider? We could all use VoIP technology straight from our Smartphones. Mobile apps like Skype and Truphone are already available, and most Smartphones also offer VoIP capabilities directly from the handset – not to mention VoIP codecs tend to be of better audio quality than regular GSM calls.

Of course, even Google doesn’t have the bankroll to provide entirely free wifi to the whole country, but with more and more wifi providers resulting to free access models – it’s only a matter of time until we’re totally covered.

So then again the question is raised, which technology will prevail?

Personally I don’t think the mobile network industry has a chance of surviving in the developed world for much longer than a decade, at least with the current business model. I think it’s quite obvious that once free Internet access is available everywhere, more and more people will discover that they don’t actually need to be paying extortionate monthly fees and be tied into 18+month contracts, simply to stay connected.

The average iPhone owner for example, spends £80 in Apple’s App Store. When I recently switched to a Google Nexus One, I lost use of all £80 worth of my apps. That money is now wasted, those apps have absolutley no use to me anymore, because I cannot install them on my new phone.

Online stores are become more and more popular with handheld devices. I’m not talking about your ebuyer or bestbuy, I’m talking about your App Store or Market Place. The problem is, they’re all locked-down to some extent.

Fair enough, if I buy another android phone I can install all the apps I’ve bought on my Google Nexus One, as I did when I moved from an iPhone 3G to a 3GS. The same is probably true for Kindle to Kindle 2.

But what happens when Apple stop selling the iPhone, or someone releases a better eBook reader than the Kindle, or if Google end the Android project? All of your purchased applications, books, mp3s become useless.

We need to make things transferable!

This is the exact reason I used to rip my mp3s (before the magnificence that is Spotify), instead of paying for a service like Napster or Yahoo Music. Most of those services were DRM based. There were just too many restrictions on what you can or cannot do with the music you purchase.

So before you splash out on the iPad, Kindle or any other eBook reader – and before you upgrade to an iPhone, Nexus One or other smartphone – remember, the money you spend on books/apps/music for that device, may well be thrown away with the device.

Why should you have to hack your Kindle in order to read eBooks you obtained from somewhere other than Amazon (see: over-priced)? Why should you have to jailbreak your iPhone to use apps that Apple doesn’t want to ‘approve’? If you ask me, you shouldn’t,