Hey all, first of all, we just want to say a massive thanks to those of you who’ve been keeping up with the blog over the last few months, you’ve made it a joy to write and keep up to date.
Anyway, we’ve updated the Komplett.ie blog and moved it from WordPress, so we can keep everything tidier and in one place without suffering the various minor headaches that having the blog hosted on WordPress.com tended to bring. To cut a long story short, we’ve moved our blog, and you can find it at:
I hope you guys like the new blog, we’ve been toying with it for a while now, so it should make keeping up with the blog that bit easier. Moreover, it lets us keep the content that people seem to enjoy having around on the front page, so it doesn’t just keep getting knocked around… which is always nice.
I’ll stop here, before I start to gush, but suffice it to say, we’re happy with it and we hope you are too.
We’ve enjoyed keeping the blog so far, and we hope you keep reading 🙂
It seems that Google is continuing its push into strange territory with news that the search giant is working on translation software that would see users able to translate speech directly.
Word comes from the Times of the Google project that it believes could well be the early steps of direct speech-to-speech translation, using smartphones as the middleman. This is something that Google has already started pushing towards with the speech recognition technology in versions 2.0 and 2.1 of its Android mobile operating system.
LG may well find itself in some trouble with studios after its user manuals were found to contain details of how to watch illegally downloaded material on LG’s hardware.
Seems like a bit of a misstep...
The whole kafuffle stems from the release of a line of HDTV’s from LG that boast USB ports, allowing users to plug external storage directly into their displays and watch any content that they’ve got stored on those drives directly on their LG TV. Of course, the assumption might be that such content has been legally obtained, but LG’s own manual doesn’t seem too fussy, showing pirated content in its diagrams of the functionality.
It seems that those who’ve found that they have issues with Bioware’s phenomenally successful Mass Effect 2 on standard-definition TVs are out of luck, with the developer indicating that a fix is impossible.
For those who’ve been blissfully unaware of the trouble, it seems that anyone trying to play Mass Effect 2 on a TV that doesn’t display in some flavour of high-definition (it seems that 1080p isn’t a requirement, you should be fine with 720p) has been having trouble with text. The issue stems from the face that the text in Mass Effect 2 seems to have been sized with high-definition TVs in mind, meaning that it’s so small that it essentially becomes unreadable on older displays.
Sales of Google’s Nexus One smartphone are still slower than the search giant might well like it to be, with reports indicating that Google has managed to sell somewhere in the region of 80,000 devices.
Initial reports had indicated that Google’s Nexus One had had a very slow opening week indeed, and it seems that things haven’t improved much. According to the mobile analysts over at Flurry, the first week of sales for Google’s self-described “superphone” saw the search giant shift the fairly unimpressive number of 20,000 Nexus One devices. Now that we’re at the first month of sales, things are looking no more impressive.
It seems that Samsung is nearing the release of its transparent active matrix OLED (AMOLED) displays, with the company likely to release devices boasting the displays over the next 12 months.
Transparent displays are both impressive and a little confusing...
For those who haven’t encountered the AMOLED arrangement, the image above should give some impression. Essentially, the display itself is transparent, meaning your desktop (or whatever else you happen to be watching) is not quite fully transparent, but still pretty hip nonetheless. Still, the technology will likely be more interesting in devices other than notebooks, so it’s curious to see that Samsung does have other devices in the works.
Good afternoon all, we’re not sure about you, but it’s been a long week here in Komplett Dublin, so we’re pleased to be able to sign off at the end of it all and looking forward to the weekend. Hopefully everyone else is feeling at least as cheery as we are now, but we know that the short days can get people down, so we like to post something just for laughs at the end of the week.
Someone sent me the above YouTube clip in a mail earlier on in the week and… well, if you’ve seen it I hope you responded in a similar fashion. Aside from that, a few interesting bits and pieces hit our inboxes this week, not least of which this image:
It seems that location-based social-game affair FourSquare has seen something of a popularity boost in the last two months, with traffic to the service tripling, cementing its position.
For those who haven’t had a chance to give it a go yet, FourSquare isa relatively simple game that allows users to accrue points based on their location. Users can “check in” at a particular location flagged as being nearby based on their current location, as pulled from their phone. Players are awarded points based on their various check-ins, with badges being awarded for specific criteria.
VOIP was, for a very long time, something that we couldn’t get away from in tech media. It’s convenient, it can save you money, it’s not a total pain in the face to set up (something that can be true of traditional phone options), and it’s something that, for most people, hasn’t quite caught on as much as expected.
While a vast number of people have a Skype account and indeed, at any given time there seems to be anywhere between 15 and 25 million people actually logged in to the service, the fact is that there just doesn’t seem to be too much drive towards VOIP for general home use. Still, it’s worth considering, given the potential savings to be had, and especially with the existence of services like SkypeIn, which mean you’re still contactable at the same phone by others.
It seems that Amazon’s ability to offer ebooks at a lower price than Apple’s announced iBook shop is being eroded more quickly than even dire predictions had supposed it might.
Looks like physical books could turn out to be cheaper...
Word comes from Gizmodo that more of Amazon’s “big six” publishers have been pushing prices up to the higher price point for “hardcover bestsellers,” which is an interesting term to use in an entirely data environment. After MacMillan’s move on Monday to see prices bumped to the $15 mark on certain titles, it seems that other publishers have come pouring in with similar requests to make of Amazon’s Kindle Store.
Komplett Ireland 
Smile Time All – Work’s Over
February 5, 2010Good afternoon all, we’re not sure about you, but it’s been a long week here in Komplett Dublin, so we’re pleased to be able to sign off at the end of it all and looking forward to the weekend. Hopefully everyone else is feeling at least as cheery as we are now, but we know that the short days can get people down, so we like to post something just for laughs at the end of the week.
Someone sent me the above YouTube clip in a mail earlier on in the week and… well, if you’ve seen it I hope you responded in a similar fashion. Aside from that, a few interesting bits and pieces hit our inboxes this week, not least of which this image:
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Tags:cheer up, friday, ice skating, Locke, lost, smile, weekend, work
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