All companies want to keep your custom. Now, most companies try to win you over with brand loyalty, but the frustrating thing about tech companies is that they can use their technology to trap you. The very gadget or software that you’ve spent your hard earned money on, will make it as difficult as possible, for you to switch to an alternative.

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,

Well 2009 went out with a bang, we attended some spectacular events and even hosted one of our own. Here’s what we’ve been upto this winter:

Le Web

Paris is an amazing place for a web conference. People from all over the world gathered together in this beautiful city to network and attend some really interesting workshops. There were a lot of top industry people speaking at the event, but none of that compares to the appearance of Her Royal Highness, Queen Rania of Jordan – who’s on Twitter! Queen Rania spoke about changing the world with online media, it was an inspiring speech, which I’m sure is on YouTube somewhere.

hanukkahLDN

So the idea was simple, let’s host a party for the winter holidays and raise some money for charity. We acquire the splendid G Casino in Piccadilly Circus, MoonBingo sponsored the bar, and we gambled, drank and had an amazing night of fun and stories. We raised money through Poker & BlackJack, which went to support JHAfrica.

XmasCrunch

Another fantastic 2pears event. XmasCrunch ended the year with startup pitches, presentations and drinking games. There was the now traditional 3 minute pitch, followed by a very odd one minute pitch. I’m all for short pitches, but I feel the one minute pitch barely gave presenters enough time to say the company name and tagline – stick to the three minutes I say. Speakers and Pitches video content is available on TC.

After all the official business was over, the 2Pears/TC party got under way. We had the TC Air Guitar Competition, Raffle prizes, lots of free booze and the traditional ‘run around with Mike Butcher around on our shoulders’ to congratulate him on another good event/year and say thanks. All the video proof is here. Really, really fun event in a great choice of venue; Gilgamesh (Covent Garden) offers something a bit different. The event ended in the AM, which was followed by a pub crawl around Covent Garden.

Great end to the year. May 2010 bring many more.

I spoke about this briefly during the GodisaGeek podcast at Eurogamer, but I wanted to elaborate a little.

At the moment 3D is gaining a lot of attention, and rightly so. This is the next innovation in not only film, but television and games industries. The next “HD”, if you will. In the near future we’ll all be able to watch our favourite TV programs & movies and play our games with full 3D effects. It’s all about enhancing the viewing experience.

Right now there are two different technologies (as always) competing for market-share. You might call it competitive capitalism, I call it an annoyance. This is looking to be another ‘Betamax vs VHS’ or ‘HD-DVD vs BluRay’ all over again.

There are “passive” glasses, which are the kind which are currently in use in cinemas, these work by the screen displaying a slightly different image to each eye – two different ages. The glasses don’t require any kind of power, and are extremely cheap to produce. The downfall with this technology is that the resolution is limited, because of the passive glasses. Meaning you won’t see any HD content with this option. We’ve only just got HD into the mainstream, I don’t think we should be taking a step backwards. Unfortunately I don’t think general consumers will even know. Of course gamers will rant and rave to high heavens about this – not that gamers are pickier, they just know good quality when they see it .

The other type of glasses use shutter technology. These do need power, and basically they refresh the lenses rapidly. For such a high fps, the glasses require a monitor of 120hz or higher. Unfortunately most current monitors are only half that. 50 – 60hz are standard refresh rates for monitors, but if this were to change, we could be playing PC games in full HD and 3D. The problem here is that this is nVidia technology (GeForce 3D Vision), and requires one of their graphics cards – meaning this is an option for PC gamers only. You won’t be able to use shuttter glasses on a TV with a BluRay or games console any time soon. The good thing is that GeForce 3D Vision supports all new game releases, the hardware converts the games to full 3D on-the-fly.

It looks like PC gamers will get the fuller package for the moment, and tv/film views and console gamers will be left with the lower resolution option. In all honesty television has been poor quality for years (until HDTV), and console games have always had lower quality graphics than PC games. But is this something we want to encourage more of?

There is actually 3rd technology, but nobody can get it right at the moment. This is 3D television without the need for glasses. Not only are there resolution problems, but in order for this to work, you have to sit directly in front of the TV. If you move slightly to either side, you lose the 3D effect and end up with blur. Obviously this technology is going nowhere for now, but we can hope for it to mature.

At the moment there are only two 120hz monitors available on the market, one from ViewSonic and the other from Samsung. Unfortunately their both 22inch, and neither of which feature higher resolutions than 1680×1050 (that’s right, no 1080p). Saying that, they are surprisingly cheap, both coming in at around £200.

Nvidia’s GeForce 3D Vision is only about £120. As a gaming peripheral that’s pretty acceptable. I guess it’s just a waiting game now. As soon as I can replace my 27″ TFT with one that supports 120hz, I’m grabbing a GeForce 3D Vision and getting my game on!

Google Voice is going to change the mobile space.

Think about it, when you buy a new mobile phone, you’re usually focusing on the hardware – you find something you really like, then you have to battle with yourself and the providers, to try and find a tarrif that fits you. For the most part they’re overly expensive. If there’s ever a reason you don’t buy a new phone, it’s usually because of the contract surrounding it. Wether that be having to move network, or getting locked into another x month term, it’s never pleasant.

Google are big enough to bring VoIP into the mainstream.

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I have been a member of Grooveshark since they first launched, so this post is in no way biased towards Spotify, regardless of the fact that Spotify has been the subject of 4/5 posts lately.

Grooveshark started out as something really interesting. It was a peer-to-peer music sharing platform with a difference – legality. You had a little system-tray widget installed on your computer, which would gradually upload your enitre music library to Grooveshark’s servers. Users could then purchase these tracks from Grooveshark, who would give you a cut (we’re talking pennies here), and pay the royalties, making the whole thing quasi-legal.

However somewhere along the lines the business model switched.

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