Well what do we have here, yes a full list of the features of Gran Turismo 5, but no release date, will they hurry up already. Fingers crossed the released date won’t be far off but the signs look very positive. I think learning 60 yes 60 tracks will be interesting and I for one can’t wait to find out.

They have been comparing it to Forza recently but who will come out on to? Only time and a hell of a lot of game place will we find out. So have a read a drool over this lovely list of features, now what am I going to call the private race room then…….

With any luck it will be out well before Christmas as the signs are that its going to be launched before December, watch this space.

- models included

1,000 vehicles

170 Premium new models (full interior modelling, the interior corresponds to vehicle damage)

830 kinds of standard model (some are from Gran Turismo 4 that have been carried over to GT5) [Read: Cars we have seen in GT4 before ]

- Courses

60 courses confirmed with 20 or more to be revealed

- physical simulation of vehicles

Physics system simulation is brand new

Represented is full fall in vehicles [possibly rollover]

Damage representation (reproduced in full by real-time collision deformation)

faithfully reproducing the behavior of electric cars, i.e. Prius, Insight, hybrid cars and the latest Tesla model

- Arcade Mode

Single Race

2 player battle

- GT Mode

World Map

My Garage

Car Dealer

Tuning Shop (parts, tires)

Car Washes/Oil Change

Race Championship (Series system, point system)

License Test

- Online

Open Lobby

Text / Voice Chat

Private rooms

Online Photo Album

Online Replay Album

YouTube replay output

- Photo Mode

Photo Drive (Circuit)

Photo stage (Stage Photo mode only)

- Gran Turismo TV

Video output to a PSP or PSP Go®

Progressive Download

Improved user interface

Continuous Play for videos

- Museums

The Gran Turismo 5 Prologue version, + more information at TGS

- Sound

Custom soundtracks (Use songs from your PS3 hard-drive)

Dolby Digital 5.1 and 7.1

- User Interface

The Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, and the same design concept. The icons change color

Able to track the movement of Cockpit Camera interface (confirmed in full 3-D. The camera can be fully manipulated and you can opt to have your head tracked by the PSEye)

We have bought handheld vacuums in the past, you know the black and decker £50 ones that really don’t seem to do the job, they just suck a bit, clog up and need to be emptied every two seconds. They don’t last that long either and the range of attachments is limited to say the least.

I’d looked at the previous range of Dyson handhelds and wasn’t convinced. But they have just launched a new range of which the flagship of the range is the DC31 Animal. The new vacuum comes with an all new patented digital electric motor that spins at up to 104,000rpm. This new motor helps to give the vacuum cleaner truly stunning suction power.

The model I decided to purchase was the DC31 Animal and it has turned out to be an excellent choice. The most useful element of the DC31 Animal is the motorised brush. Using it on the stairs its brilliant and better than using a normal vacuum cleaner. Its also very easy to clean the motorised brush, a simple turn of the end with a coin and the bar comes out and you can untangle anything thats in its way and then slip it back in and lock it in place.  Its not heavy to use either it feels surprisingly light in fact, my wife prefers to use it than the standard vacuum sometimes.

Battery life is good but not great, you can do the stairs and a bit more with ease or do the entire car with it no problem. Charging takes a good while but it is a Li-Ion battery so you should get any loss of battery performance for a long time after your purchase. You can use the boost mode (there is a button on the back to get full power mode) to get even more suction but to be honest I don’t tend to use it that much and on the standard setting there is more than enough suction for most situations.

Emptying the cylinder is easy peasy, press the button and bing, the rubbish is gone. It does fling out quite quickly so hold it in the bin not over it when you do it otherwise you will get the rubbish flying everywhere.

There is a filter that needs washing once a month or so depending on usage but do keep it clean. Many people don’t keep the filters clean on their Dysons and wonder why they aren’t performing as well as when they bought them.

The 2 year warranty is good and gives a good bit of piece of mind.

Conclusion

Lets face it at £150 its expensive but do you know what it just works and does a brilliant job in the process. It would be better if the price was sub £100 but to be honest it really is THAT much better than any other handheld I’ve used, and then some. You could go for the standard DC31 model without the motorised brush but I wouldn’t its a great addition that really is worth having. Oh and the colour purple does look great on it and very funcky sitting there in the house (did I really just say that?!?).

9/10 for me, a little improvement to the battery life and reduced cost and this would be 10/10

# Motorised brush bar for pet hair pick-up
# Dyson digital motor
# Dual power mode for 10 minutes of high constant suction or 6 minutes with 40% higher suction
# Lightweight – only 1.5kg for easy handling
# LED low battery power indicator
# Patented Root Cyclone technology
# Quick and hygienic to empty – just press the button
# No extra costs – no bags or filters to buy
# 22.2V lithium ion battery – recharges up to 3 times faster than others
# Crevice tool converts to brush tool for dusting
# 2 years parts and labour guarantee

Firstly I hope they do because its good to have camera shops dotted around the country, but will they survive?

Lets face it most of the stores are very tired and poor by modern retail standards, compare it to the look of the updated Currys Digital stores and you can see a vast difference. Step into the store in the Trafford centre for instance and its dark and poorly lit like they don’t want to replace broken light bulbs.

The lack of strength in the pound is also hurting the premium SLR sales and especially lenses. A canon 70-200f4 IS last year was £700, now its barely below £1000. Thats a big difference thats delaying many potential purchases, certainly from me anyway.

They still insist on charging a small fortune for memory cards but even then they are often very poorly stocked, so when you are in a hurray you are stuck, not great. The ordering system isn’t that slick either, the person in the shop said call us if you want to check stock as he has lost count of the number of times a customer has reserved an item for it not to be in when they arrive.

Fingers crossed the economy starts to free up and Jessops have a good summer and Christmas period, if they don’t sort out their funding problems then we might lose another store from out high street. But if they do survive, put some money into a refresh program hey.

Ok so I like my gadgets but in the past have been VERY anti iPhone. I mean its not small really, its battery life is terrible and the resolution of the screen is ok no better.

But I’ve got one now and oh my is it a fantastic device. As many annoyingly say ‘it just works’ well it does. Installing applications is childs play, browsing is a dream and setting up getting e-mail from just about anywhere is an absolute doddle.

If you want a good phone that you can play games on and the games are incredible and there are thousands of them so you aren’t going to get board anytime soon!

Yes the battery life isn’t great but you get used to just needing to charge it every night but then I do have wifi and bluetooth on all the time and they both get regular use. I’m not using it on 02 in the UK either I’ve jailbroken it to work on T-Mobile to which it does and everything still works.

The screen never appears to need a higher resolution either and the number of free applications that you can use to get the best out of the devices is just amazing, if you can’t find the app you need you aren’t searching for the right thing.

And when you do have 50 applications on the phone how do you update them? Well again thats easy, every time you go into the app store it checks all of your installed applications and then tells you which have updates. You click update date all and it just does it, no installing and downloading on a PC no hassle just easy.

I’m not going to rate it 10/10 because elements of it are a compromise. So I will give it 9/10.

Fingers crossed the camera improves as does the battery life, but other than these few things its an amazing device that deserves all of the plaudits that have been showed upon it.

I will post some application and game reviews in coming days and weeks.

Now Wireless N has been out for a while, ADSL out for a lot longer and gigabit ethernet out for well… you guessed it a lot longer than both. So where are all the routers that have it all then? Well there aren’t.

So what I want this

Dual Band Wireless N
4x Gigabit Ethernet
ADSL+ 24Mb supported modem, all in one box

And do you know what in the UK, it just doesn’t exist. Netgear, nope, Belikin, erm nope, oh hold on D-Link erm … nope, Vigor well nearly everything but the 4x Gigabit, I mean why have 3x 100m and then 1Gigabit, that is just stingy for a router that costs £180.

Now if you check out the Cable models they have it all and plenty of them, dual band, loads of Gigabit ethernet ports and plenty more besides. So come on all you manufacturers out there where is my erm ‘Dream wireless router’ then, surely it can’t be that hard to produce can it?

On Monday Apple announce the upgrade of the current iPhone the 3GS, its not a major upgrade, no OLED screen, major increase in battery life or many of the numerous rumours that surrounded the announcement.

There was also no news on the iPhone Nano that many say is still in the wings, but maybe its not that far off. So every year in September Apple upgrade the iPod range with new models but it seems they might have a suprise in store, how do I know?

Well a friend that wants to get the new iPhone 3G S asked for his PAC code from Vodafone, they didn’t put up a fight and said fine we will send something through. But he got a call today to discuss another option, apparently Vodafone are in talks with Apple on a new un-announced phone that is set to launch in September. They said that talks are set to conclude in 60 days that may mean 02 loses its iPhone exclusivity deal and Vodafone along with all the other networks so O2 / Orange and T-Mobile might get the ‘New’ phone. For many a new phone available on not just 02 with be a massive change to the current deployment model, is 02′s exclusivity about to end.

So was this just to keep his business and delay moving off the network or was there some fact behind the information and we will indeed be sing another model being added to the iPhone line-up?

UPDATE

Well this was close but just not the Nano bit. It was confirmed today that Vodafone will be carrying the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Close but no cigar but either way the info on Voda announcing something was spot on. So a wait until January 2010 and we will have 3 operators offering the iPhone, may the prices reduce, everyone is a winner.

After a drought of news on anything new Gran Turismo we have another update this time the first video of GT on the all new PSP Go and some pictures, looks great doesn’t it? Yes the video you see below is GT PSP in all its 60fps glory, and it looks stunning. Ignore the driving they obviously haven’t got a clue but it looks great and better than it does on the PS2, but this is a hand held console. No news on a release date yet and nothing for GT5 on the PS3 either apparently its un-decided, great, come on Polyphony and Kazunori Yamauchi, hurry up!!

More info on GT PSP or GT Mobile as it might be called.

• Will have all the tracks of GT4
• Over 800 cars will be avaliable
• Can be bought for PSP Go and UMD disc PSP’s

Oh and if you missed it these are the specs of the new PSP Go, expect it in the UK for sub £200

• Approx. 128 x 16.5 x 69 mm (width x height x depth)
• Weight: 5.6 ounces (including batter)
• CPU: 333MHz
• 64MB memory
• 3.8-inch display (480 x 272 resolution)
• Built-in stereo speakers and microphone
• 802.11b WiFi
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
• USB 2.0
• Memory Stick Micro slot
• Analog video out
• 16GB storage

So Sony has just played the video that you see below at the 2009 E3 show and what do you see? Yes that’s it some damage at last, check out the front of that Subaru in the rally stages. They also seem to have added some Nascar racing to the mix, all great to see.

But no news on a release date yet or even any indication, how long do we have to wait? Its been over 4 years since GT4 that was launched on the PS2, are they trying to kill it off. Surely they can release it in stages with new downloads every quarter adding tracks and more features, but no its delay delay delay.

Anyway enjoy the updated video and all its potential new splendor.

Well its been rumoured for a while but here it is the all new Sony PSP and it looks like they could be onto a winner. But then again would you go for something like this or a iTouch or a Nintendo DS, well there is plenty of choice thats for sure but back to the new Go.

It looks nice and compact and the screen quite big but not too big that its not going to fit in your pocket. Gone are the UMD disks and it is all going to be via memory cards or similar and it fully integrates with the PS3.

Expected to be out before Christmas, get your order in early.

Spec’s

• 3.8-inch display (resolution is undisclosed)
• 43 percent lighter than the PSP-3000
• 16GB of Flash storage
• Bluetooth built-in; supports handset tethering and BT headsets
• No UMD drive
• Memory Stick Micro slot
• New Gran Turismo, Little Big Planet and new Metal Gear Solid (!) on the way
• Full PlayStation Network support (movie and TV rentals / purchases)
• Integration with PlayStation 3 (works the same as the PSP-3000 does)
• Sony views each of its products as “10-year lifecycle products,” so the PSP “needs to live on.”

For more info videos and links Check out Engadget

Well its been a while in coming and I was hoping to find loads of new and innovative applications on there, you know like the Apple store on the iPhone. Erm no, there was virtually nothing new and very little of it was free.

If you look on forums and sites regularly looking out for new applications for your 5800 then you will have or have seen most of what is on the Nokia store already. That is if you can cope with the fact that you need to register yourself (best done on a PC / Mac) and accept a load of warnings that you are going to download something and are you sure, this is almost as bad as using Vista.

Lets just say that I hope it improves in leaps and bounds because at the moment there isn’t much to make me visit it again and again. Maybe they need to add an app that can keep your password and make the whole experience that little bit more slick. I’d give it a 4/10 at the moment but surely things must improve rapidly. With Samsung and now SonyEricsson coming out with Symbian S60 Series 5 handsets the market is only set to grow, come on Nokia lets try and do something slick and user friendly hey.

Link – Nokia Ovi Store