TechnoCloud

Future are launching FirstPlay, a video magazine covering gaming, on the PlayStation network.

FirstPlay offers HD reviews, previews and downloadable content and costs £0.99 an episode or £8.99 for a three-month subscription. FirstPlay will also include advertising with six ‘premium’ slots available per episode.

Future already launched a video games mag, Qore, on the US PlayStation Network in 2008.

If, like me, only a cruel lack of opportunity prevented you from being crowned F1 World Champion in Jenson Button’s place, then help could be at hand with Real Time Race.

This is a system that allows players to drive alongside the actual drivers in real-time as you watch the race. The technology maps the circuit just before the race so the virtual track would matches up to the one on TV. Although the game is unlikely to be ready until next year, a demo is available.

Of course, you won’t be able to drive Alonso off the track, no matter how much you want to, but it’s another example of the blurring of real world and digital experiences.

In a sudden rush of originality and inspiration, I’m going to share surely the first ever list of 2008’s most popular posts!

10. Gearing up for something more useful
The awful pun in the title didn’t stop the traffic as this look back at Google Gears’ first year scraped into the top 10.

9. Google will see you now
One of my pet topics, visual search, made it into ninth as Google joined the innovators trying to unlock this most difficult and potentially lucrative of challenges in the search marketplace.

8. Adding Google Adsense on Wordpress.com
The painful move away from hosted Wordpress and then back again, did at least have some benefits. A list of handy advice for those contemplating similar folly and a coveted position in the top 10.

7. Google searches related to
Clearly I wasn’t the only one wondering where that appeared from…

6. Wii want cricket
Well, beach cricket did arrive only to disappoint, leaving one of the big questions unanswered for 2009 - when is the massive cricket diaspora going to get wii cricket?

5. Google plays the April fool
Always a ratings winner, this year’s April fools were mixed in terms of amusement value, but not in traffic value, cracking the top five.

4. BBC News video embed
It may be a post on a woefully out-of-date experiment, but with BBC iPlayer embedding still to appear the Google searches keep delivering the punters to this old post.

3. Build your own supermodel
Can there really be that many fans of Weird Science trying to build their own supermodel? It appears there are, as this old post continues to deliver.

2. Review of Chrome - the good, the bad and the too early
No surprise to see one of the stories of 2008 high up the list, as this not entirely postive review of Google’s Chrome browser made the top 2.

1. Lies, damn lies and social networking statistics
Everyone’s looking for them and Google keeps sending them to Technocloud to find them, helped no doubt by the catchy title. This post bemoaning the lack of decent social networking statistics, while offering up some of my own, pipped even Chrome to the top.

It’s been an interesting, challenging and exciting year. Best wishes to all for 2009.

After a previous post on wii cricket deploring its absence, cricket of sorts has come to the wii.

Big Beach Sports includes cricket as one of its games, as you can see from the embedded video below.

Although I haven’t got my hands on a version yet to test it against my expectations, as ever the Amazon reviewers have with some very mixed reviews. In short, it works, but falls short of their expectations in terms of graphics and gameplay, suggesting more French cricket than Test cricket.

Cheap and cheerful it may be, but at least it is here and will hopefully lead to a more sophisticated game from the likes of EA Sports entirely devoted to cricket. Key requirements would be the ability to play Test, one day and Twenty 20 matches with national teams and named players, plus career modes including the all-important averages.

Although I’ve long had access to one, I’ve borrowed a Wii for a long overdue extended trial of the console and am working my way through the various Wii Sports games that came with it.

After initially being underwhelmed by the graphics and simplicity of the gaming, I’ve started to be pulled in by the points accumulation system and its ability to get even the most cynical members of the family playing instantly through its intuitive gameplay.

Baseball (Rounders surely, ed?) has been a particular favourite leading to the universal question from those who have played of ‘where’s the cricket?’

Given the size of the cricket diaspora and the suitability of the Wii Remote as an extended cricket bat, I expected a quick search to reveal the game.

However, Wii Cricket is not yet in existance leading to several internet campaigns to push the likes of EA Sports to develop it. Its development has been hindered by the lack of cricket played in key markets, such as North America and Japan, but it looks like the decision is about to be reversed if comments by EA Sports’ President Peter Moore are anything to go by:

We continue to look at Cricket, you will see us talk about a little bit more about the Indian market for Cricket. We continue to watch the 20/20 format and seeing where that is going, but the National Test game is still the preeminent way people want to play the game. We have not done a game in a couple of years I think.

To add to the campaign, if Wii Cricket does come along, then one household at least will be purchasing a shiny new Wii to play it…

Deep in TechnoCloud Towers is a room which I use to showcase consumer technology. This allows colleagues to familiarise themselves with the home entertainment gadgets that their budget or interests wouldn’t normally bring them into contact with.

There’s no doubt which two gadgets excite the most interest - the Apple TV and the Wii.

For all its limitations, Apple TV has a wonderfully intuitive user interface that people ‘get’ first time round. Simple, elegant and no manual required, it’s in theory a good mass market proposition, even though it’s shown few signs of breaking into the mass market…

The wii impresses in a different way. It’s always interesting to see the energy levels rise as soon as you show the motion sensor controller. It brings out the kid in almost everyone as they at first shyly and then with abandon launch themselves into Wii Sports, after a basic explanation of the principles behind the controller.

As the iPhone and potentially the Microsoft Surface are likewise showing, user interface design on consumer technology devices remains in its early phases as more intuitive and satisfying ways emerge to issue commands. That TV remote is already starting to feel pretty dated…