King Kong Trailer

So there's a new trailer for the upcoming King Kong film from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, and it looks like its gonna be pretty good to me!

Well worth a look.

Google Maps UK adds satellite images

The UK version of the great Google Maps application has recently added aerial images to the site.
Just click the Satellite link in the top right hand side.

Of course not much of the country has the high level images, but they seem to have the major cities. For example here is the London Eye.

Also, unlike the road maps, the satellite images seem to cover a lot of Europe, here is a slightly strange looking Eiffel tower for example!!

Its pretty cool stuff!! :)

Apple switches to Intel

Everyone seems to be talking about Apple's decision to switch to intel this week, so I thought I would add my comments.

Apple seem to be saying they are switching because IBM weren't providing hardware providing the right performance to power relationships needed to provide the latest high spec machines and laptops.

I find this curious though when all the next gen console makers have announced that they will be using PowerPC based systems in their next products.
I guess this will be a much bigger install base for IBM, so they are less concerned about loosing the Apple business.

The whole move does raise a number of questions though:

• Will you now be able to run OSX on a standard PC, and will Apple support it? What about a duel boot Windows/OSX system?
• Will apple start selling machines running windows? (I doubt it :) )
• Will the change enable apple to produce a tablet pc - the rumors seem to suggest so!
• Would anyone buy an apple machine now, knowing that the whole architecture will change next year??

At least the fact that Apple reckon they will be able to emulate the PowerPC architecture for older apps gives me hope that Microsoft will be able to do it the other way round to get full backwards compatibility on the XBox 360!! :)


What ever the case, at least we can take some amusement from this page on the apple.com website, saying how much better the G5 CPUs are compared to Intel's P4s. :-)

Are Simple Games the Best?

Since seeing this link on BoingBoing, I've been playing this 3D Cave game recently. Its about as simple as games can get, with just one button to move your ship up and down to try and avoid hitting anything. It's suprisingly addictive! :)

I'm finding I spend more time playing these sort of games than the 'proper' commercial ones, causing me to wonder which ones are best.

I reckon it all depends on time!
If I only have a few minutes to play, it's much more rewarding to play a 'simpler' game.
On the other hand, if I had a few hours to waste I'd probably get bored of the 3D cave and would be much better off getting immersed into something like Half-Life.

I guess this is why companies like Microsoft and Nintendo are announcing that their next-gen consoles will offer 'classic' games for free in addition to the normal retail games. This seems like a great idea to me. Not only will it broaden the appeal of the consoles, but it will make people more likely to use the consoles when they've bought them!

Now if only I could find a version of the 3D cave game with persistent high scores.....