Telecom has completed the roll out of its Rev A mobile broadband upgrade in the CBDs of Wellington and Christchurch. Mobile broadband users in the capital and the garden city can now look forward to lower latency, average download speeds of 800kbps, and, perhaps most importantly, average upload speeds boosted to 300kbps.
Telecom says it will have Rev A rolled out to half its mobile broadband network by June and the entire network by December of this year.

Posted by at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Sony's long-awaited PS3 will finally get its official launch here on March 23rd.

At $1199 it is a big-ticket item so Sony is sweetening the deal for the first 4000 Kiwis to sign up to the new online Playstation Network by offering them a free copy of box office Bond hit Casino Royale on Blu-ray disc. With a 25GB capacity, Blu-ray discs are able to offer a much-enhanced audio-visual and interactive experience.

Playstation Network is a new online environment offering PS3 owners downloadable games, game demos, game expansions and movie trailers. At launch, Gran Turismo HD Concept ( a sample game to show off the HD graphic capabilities of the PS3) will be free to download for anyone registering on the Network.

Downloadable games are a new feature of the Playstation experience with the idea being to offer smaller, snack-sized game alternatives to the full-sized disc-based games.

Posted by at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Nikon gave its Coolpix range of digital cameras a major makeover this week, announcing seven new models.

Chief among the new models is the 7.1-megapixel Coolpix S500, which boasts several points over competing compact cameras with optical image stabilization, according to Nikon. The camera is ready to take a picture in an industry-beating 0.6 seconds from the power button being pushed, has the fastest shutter release lag time of 0.005 seconds, and the most compact body, the maker said. It measures 88 millimeters by 51mm by 22mm.

The P-series gets a new model in the shape of the Coolpix P5000. The camera has a 10-megapixel image sensor and 3.5X optical zoom, both of which beat the other cameras announced Tuesday. It can simulate film speeds up to ISO3200, although at this speed it will only snap 5-megapixel quality images.

Both the S500 and P5000 will be available in Japan from March 16 for around ¥30,000 (NZ$350) and ¥45,000 respectively.

The company's third and fourth new cameras are the slim 7.1-megapixel Coolpix S50 and S50c. The latter model differs in the inclusion of a Wireless LAN adapter for cable-less image transfer to a PC. They will be available in Japan from April for ¥35,000 and ¥40,000 respectively.

Lastly Nikon is offering the S200, which matches the S500 on several major specifications but drops optical vibration reduction in favour of a cheaper electronic system, and the L11 and L12, both of which use disposable batteries rather than the dedicated rechargeable cells used in all the other cameras.

Overseas launch dates were not immediately available but are expected to come from local Nikon units this week.

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Samsung is setting out to impress at this week's 3GSM trade show in Barcelona by unveiling what it said is the slimmest cellphone handset in the world. The phone is one of four new handsets that refresh the company's Ultra line of phones that was first unveiled about eight months ago.

The Ultra 5.9 is, as its name suggests, just 5.9 millimetres thick. That's a millimetre thinner than the candybar form-factor phone it replaces in the Ultra range. It looks similar to the previous model, has a 3-megapixel camera and is compatible with the GSM standard.

Also introduced Monday was the clamshell Ultra 9.6 and two sliders, the Ultra 10.9 and 12.6. All three have 3-megapixel class digital cameras. The Ultra 9.6 is a tri-band GSM model, the Ultra 10.9 is a quad-band GSM model and the Ultra 12.9 is tri-band GSM with WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) 3G and HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) data.

The four phones are due on sale in the European market during the current quarter. Launch details for other markets were not disclosed.

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Microsoft have officially announced the New Zealand release date and price for their HD-DVD drive add-on for the Xbox 360 and in a fit of oneupmanship it'll arrive on March 29 -- a mere seven days after Sony's much delayed PlayStation 3 hits our shores. However, it's not only the timing of the release that will likely have Sony seething but the price too, it's only $249. This means prospective next-gen console shoppers will be able to choose from an Xbox 360 complete with HD-DVD drive for $968 or a Bluray equipped PS3 for $1199. That's quite a difference and it'll be interesting to see how both shoppers and Sony respond to this newly wrought console war.

Here's the official blurb from the press release:

Releasing at RRP $249.95, the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player comes packed with the Universal Pictures blockbuster film Peter Jackson’s King Kong on HD DVD, and an Xbox 360 HD DVD remote. More than 40 HD DVD films are expected to be on shelves by the end of March, including The Bourne Supremacy, Serenity, Miami Vice, Superman Returns, The Departed and Mission Impossible 3.

Posted by at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

Can't decide which digital music player to go for, or which download store to use? DRM doing your head in? Apple has posted an interesting essay from Steve Jobs on the use of DRM in the iTunes Store, MP3 players and in the music industry as a whole. He's not a fan (is anyone?).

The essay is well worth reading:

"Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player."

Posted by Annabel Crerar at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )