I wonder

if there's any reason not to do this with google's voice servers instead?

Google's systems recognise English (not American English which is a different thing), including regional accents, not to mention actual other languages. Much more useful than Apple's rather limited system.

It's available to android apps already, so there's an API interface in existence, it just needs a widdle tiny bit of reverse engineering. And, of course, no iPhone unique ID.

odd thing

Every unbranded handset I've had on VF has worked fine.

Every branded one I've had has been ridden with problems, including buggy software and bloaty crapware.

Perhaps I've just been unlucky.

I had a T10

Back before Sony even got in on the act. Since then I've had one non-SE phone (which I hated).

I had a P900 and it was excellent. I could text and email using the handwriting recognition from inside my pocket - no phone I've used since has been able to do that. Then I had an S700 and it rewrote the rules about how good a camera in a phone could be - something SE keep doing with each generation, it seems: I've printed photos from my C905 at 18*12" and people haven't believed they've come from a phone. I have a friend who had a t610 from launch until *last year*

I think my favourite was the T38. It was so incredibly teeny, and the little flippy thing was so much fun. Answering the phone was like being in a sci-fi film.

I don't usually do brand loyalty, but SE have consistently made the best - for my requirements - handsets around. I'd jump ship in a moment if someone else made something I liked more, but that hasn't happened yet. I hope Sony can keep up the standard.

touching eink?

Given how fastidious I am about cleaning my screens, perhaps on my ereader most of all, I'm not entirely sure I want to be swiping my greasy fingers over the reading surface all the time.

Sometimes buttons are the right answer. Make 'em capacitative buttons or a swipe pad or whatever, but keep my mucky hands away from the display!

didn't quite get one

I nearly bought an Arc S but in the end plumped for the incredibly tiny (and much cheaper) Ray. But it was a close call, they're both very nice devices.

I agree that the Arc S is probably the nicest looking phone on the market right now. Good to see SE back in the game.

Demon's Souls was great

and Dark Souls is even better. A very welcome respite from brown worlds full of waist-high walls to "cover" behind and regenerating health.

Difficult is a good thing, sometimes, and boy this game is hard and unforgiving. It's genuinely scary in parts, frustrating in others, beautiful in some, yet the sense of satisfaction when you finally trounce that giant, unspeakably dangerous boss is something I haven't felt since the days of Doom (Demon's Souls notwithstanding.) The feeling from finally ringing the bell in the Upper Gargoyle Church, looking out over the glorious landscape with soft light from the permanently-setting sun above, was a mixture of intense relief at having made it, and immense foreboding at having to fight my way back down again, and then on into The Depths where things were no doubt orders of magnitude more horrific and dangerous. Utterly brilliant. Moments like that are so rare in gaming these days.

The lack of pause button or save/load - the game saves constantly, so you can never use the "save here, try X, reload if it doesn't work" tactic - just adds to the already massive tension.

I'm going to call it - even before I've played Skyrim which I'm looking forward to hugely - Dark Souls is my "Game of the Year 2011"

I'm not Unity's biggest fan

But I don't dislike it enough to bother logging in under Gnome 2.x instead.

It's OK. It works enough that I can do the things I need to do (ie, load a terminal and a web browser.) If I really cared, I'd install something else, but I don't. It's really not a big deal. My laptop has Linux Mint Debian + Gnome Classic on it these days, but that's more to do with a network driver regression that arrived in Natty than anything else.

Lots of my non-techie friends I've upgraded from Windows absolutely love Unity though, and I'm sure a more polished version will go down even better. The ungeek is who Ubuntu are aiming at, and that's a good thing - there's a lot more of those people than there are of "us."

I wonder where they get their codenames from

Weeting is a tiny village in Norfolk, Tuleta is an even tinier place in Texas.

Presumably there is some sort of system, or maybe someone just spins a globe and jabs a finger..

"text heavy" isn't a complaint I have

"incredibly slow" is though. PSN Store usually feels like I'm living in the bad old days of dial-up.

£25 quid

Is quite a lot for an app which doesn't appear to be all that much more clever than the already-installed Google Navigation.

I guess if you drive a lot, it might be worth it, but I would have liked to hear why this is better than the free alternative.

circles eh?

Almost exactly like the system of "aspects" that Diaspora uses, even down to the drag-and-drop interface and the little puff of smoke when you de-aspect someone.

Which was, actually, the best thing about Diaspora. If Google+ can hook into Facebook so I don't have to manage both sites at once (Diaspora did this fairly well) then I might be interested. I dislike almost everything about Facebook except the fact that all my friends are there, which is why I still use it. Google I dislike slightly less, and trust slightly more. Slightly.

paying RRP is silly

I bought a 160GB PS3 complete with two games for £239 from Toysaurus a week ago. Game still have the 160GB listed at £199 (online only) although are currently showing as out of stock.

If the RRP drops to £200, it's possible some retailers could be selling at £150 or so.

Preparation of a liquor of tea

Has a British and International standard already

BS 6008:1980 / ISO 3103:1980

http://sub.spc.org/san/docs/BS6008.pdf

some benchmarks

suggest it's not quite the supercomputer-in-your-pocket that AMD would like us to think, although it doesn't look all that shabby.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4444/amd-llano-notebook-review-a-series-fusion-apu-a8-3500m

The comedian Richard Herring

Suggested replacing the black dog with a red one, and calling it "Ginger" instead.

Which makes a lot more sense than "Digger"

I for one

welcome our new laser-enhanced overlords.

how long until I can get my shark upgraded?

pics

Or it didn't happen.

Research purposes only, naturally.

mine was £1.50

although it's host powered, but as my eReader has a usb socket on the top edge, that's no problem.

Not sure why you'd buy something this hefty and pricey. Especially as I thought a lot of Kindle cases come with lights built in?

"I repeat, you must remove the head or destroy the brain"

As any fule kno, a lawnmower can easily be employed for this purpose if you've mislaid your chainsaw or shotgun.

I recently "downgraded"

From a cheap 1920x1080 37" LCD to a nice quality 1024x768 42" plasma and can't tell the difference in terms of resolution. Picture quality is through the roof though.

I'm buggered if I can figure out why the apparently square pixels on the plasma manage to have a 16:9 aspect at that resolution though.

I shall patent

A mechanism for making money by acquiring an excessively broad patent on a very obvious idea or system, then suing people for infringing on my so-called intellectual property.

Then I shall troll the patent trolls.

Oooh, nice

The 500 series is based on the 2003 Panda chassis, iirc. I like my Panda, it handles well for a low-end non-sports car, but it's not quite as fun as it could be. It's comparable to a Pug 205 in terms of driving experience, which is good, but it's no Mini (and by Mini, I mean an actual Mini, not the fat ugly crap BMW make)

If this compares well to a Mini, I might be interested. Does better mpg than my current Panda diesel too. I agree on the styling, I think the 500 is one of the few reimagined classics which actually works. The Panda is too, thinking about it. Fiat are doing a lot right these days.

Much as I like Use of Weapons

I rather think that Surface Detail would translate better to film, not to mention being a better first contact with the Culture for the uninitiated.

Bank's publicist is on this story already, btw: http://www.iain-banks.net/2011/05/11/use-of-weapons-tops-poll-of-best-sci-fi-films-never-made/