Archive for September 21st, 2011

Archos 80 G9 available to order

Looking for a low cost but highly specced Android tablet? Well the Archos 80 G9 could be a contender. Available for only £199 the price is right. Running Android Honeycomb this 8 inch tablet could well be one to watch.

• 1GHz OMAP4 Dual Core processor
• 8 inch (4:3) capacitive touchscreen
• Android Honeycomb 3.2 with Google Mobile Apps Suite including Android Market
• ARCHOS made multimedia apps for extra format and codec support including H.264 HP support
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n and upgradable to 3G via the ARCHOS G9 3G Stick (sold separately)

Order here

Full specs below:

Posterous’ last hurrah?

Simple (cough) blogging service Posterous has relaunched itself for what may well be the last time. Now called Posterous Spaces the the revamped offering has been given a complete redesign.

The old adage "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it" clearly holds no truck at Posterous as the UI on the web and both iPhone and Android apps has been completely redesigned to the point of self-destruction.

Far from making the service easier to use for newbie bloggers they have managed to complicate the UI so much even I can’t figure it out, and I’m an experienced user. By comparison Tumblr goes from strength to strength precisely because they keep it simple. Features are removed rather than added. The new Posterous Spaces seems to have been designed by a committee of Word engineers. Ironic since the founders launched the product with the aim of making blogging simple for ordinary folks who only knew how to use email.

Amazon Android App Store back to the US

Yesterday I spent some time trying to get it to work, in the end it just wouldn’t work so I didn’t mention it again. It seemed as though Amazon had finally opened up the App Store for Android to the entire world making many people very happy. However, this was too good to be true to last and Amazon has shut down the service for everyone outside of the US once again.

Whether it was opened up by accident or it was a test run is unknown right now and there is no word from the Amazon camp as to why it was available for everyone for one day. The end result though today is that it is shut down and there is no indication as to when it will open back up for everyone outside of the US to use it.

It is possible they are getting ready for the official launch of the Amazon App Store for Android on a worldwide basis when they announce their tablet plans. It makes sense considering Amazon didn’t officially announce anything about the service becoming available worldwide yesterday so it could have been a test run.

So for those of you who got to use it for a day, we hope you enjoyed it. For those of you who missed out don’t worry, the fact that it was working worldwide is a good sign. Hopefully we won’t have to wait long to use it again. You can also just use the workaround to get by the blocking of outside countries if you really want to use the Amazon App Store badly.

Posted by Gareth

A BlackBerry secret party

Last night in Central London RIM held a party to promote their new BlackBerry 7 devices as well as the launch of BBM Music. It has been a while since BlackBerry have had a UK party on this scale and what a fun night it was.

There were plenty of celebrities on the guest list. As well as a host of actors and actresses there were musicians galore, most who I didn’t know as I’m not cool and down with the kids! I did get to chat to three of the guys from McFly though. Nice chaps.

The main attraction of the night was Jessie J who performed a fantastic set. She really is amazing live.

It is great to see BlackBerry hosting something of this scale here in the UK. Looking at twitter during the evening the party was clearly a big success. I dread to think how much the bar bill came too!

Nice one RIM. Let’s do it again soon.

Posted by: James