Steve Litchfield

I've posted about this before , by the way... Having been driven to distraction by other video editing software under Windows, I thought I'd try Adobe again, give them one last chance. After all, Premiere Elements was supposed to be a top video solution still, and there was a shiny new version 4 to play with. I started the download going, via their 'Download Manager'. 2.7GB. That's GIGABYTES. For a single application! Nero Vision 5, another video editor is ten Megabytes or so, FIFTY times smaller. I gritted my teeth as 2 gigabytes crawled down by ADSL connection, whiling away the time by browsing for reviews of Adobe Premiere Elements 4 - to be met by a barrage of 'buggy', 'slow', 'broken' and worse. So not much change then for an Adobe product. I cancelled the download. How can any company issue a product (for download) that's 2.7GB in size? Where's the common sense? Where's the efficiency? Developers these days, especially in th

SNAKE Game in the Student House - video powered by Metacafe You just knew that students were behind this escapade - programming a modern building's lighting circuits to play a game of Nokia's Snakes! Awesome and yet a complete waste of time. Wish I were young again!

The modern world is just ridiculous sometimes. Looking at my latest phone bill from BT, I see they're now charging an extra 'Payment fee' for the privilege of paying them!! Sure, businesses have admin costs, but aren't these suppose to be built into the price you agreed to pay for the service in the first place? If it wasn't for the 12 month contract I signed with UK Online for Internet access, I'd ditch my BT line right now, out of protest. It's a LOT cheaper to go for a combined Internet/phone deal with any number of cable suppliers - and that's exactly what I'm going to do in 2009.

Well, maybe not . But certainly too old for The Gadget Show. You see, people keep saying that with my phone/smartphone expertise and style, I'd be a natural for The Gadget Show . And, content-wise they're absolutely right. But have you seen what they expect their presenters to do? Snow-boarding, hang-gliding, let's-see-how-dangerous-and-exciting we-can-make-this for each feature. Good example: they were testing multimedia smartphones. So was I. I did it in my home, in painstaking detail, every expense spared. They did it by shooting photos and video from aerobatic planes, no expense spared. Then there are the times when Jason and Suzi end up falling from bikes, rolling down hills or bungee-jumping off bridges. I'm sorry, but The Gadget Show is not for me. I'm 46 now, I'm starting to feel frailer than when I was Jason and Suzi's age (mid thirties?) and I have a feeling that if I started on The Gadget Show I'd end up with a broken hip...

I have to admit, I'm a bit of a fan of the Nintendo Wii - I just love the sports sims and getting up and involved with my games. But the graphics are very obviously computer-generated and couldn't be mistaken for reality. Yesterday, I chanced across a demo stand for the Sony PlayStation 3 - and I was blown away. They had the demo sequence running for Gran Turismo 5, with the touring cars screaming around the sun-kissed track and, for a few seconds at least, even on a 48" screen, I thought I was watching a TV picture. The lighting, the textures, the smoothness of the real-time 3D rendering of the cars was utterly spellbinding. Only when the pit scenes were shown, with simulated human beings, was it obvious that this was a virtual world. Would I now buy a PS3? Before yesterday I'd have said no, but the lure of those shiny engines of steel, glinting in the sun......

This might all go wrong, but below you should see the new 'urbanista' widget from Nokia, which will display where I've been and what I've been snapping. Well, for test purposes, anyway... 8-) (By the way, if you see an empty white space, try right-clicking and choosing 'Play') In order to view the Nseries Widget you need JavaScript and Flash Player 9+ support