There’s a new Elmo toy out. Movement is standing, sitting, a variety of arm and head/jaw positions. These a combined with voice, as he appears to move his mouth at roughly the same time, so that he tells stories, jokes and generally makes quite a bit of noise.

In the demo they squeeze every last combination out - I’m not massively convinced but then I’m not the target market. For me to be held by this a greater vocal dynamic range would be the way forwards - fill the gaps with audio, let the imagination do the rest. It works in parts of the story.

Anyhow, here’ s the video:

Quite long but worth it for the commentary from “Chris Byrne - The Toy Guy” at the end. I’m not sure if he’s a celebrity in this world but when you’re able to get away with phrases like:

“children live in a world where there’s more realism around them than ever before”

then it’s a distinct possibility.

Sourced from: I4U

Our highly respected Senior Consultant has stressed that it is important to see and be seen in the digital firmament.

With that in mind, I’ve been putting it about a bit. Here’s an awesome piece of commentary on why so many tech brands are going in for rebrands at the moment. Brace yourself and then click on the tiny image for the full-force piece:

Expect to see me on Newsnight soon.

Incidentally, if you are looking for spokespeople (Newsnight or otherwise) do just get in touch.

Great article on the considerations of bringing Flash to the iPhone platform.

There are currently two ways to develop software for the iPhone (and iPod Touch): using HTML/CSS/JavaScript web standards, and using Cocoa. Cocoa is proprietary, but from Apple’s perspective, it’s the good sort of proprietary: a competitive advantage completely owned and controlled by Apple. Apple doesn’t control the HTML/CSS/JavaScript web standards, but neither does anyone else. And Apple does control and own WebKit, which is by anyone’s measure the best mobile implementation of these standards today.

From the excellent Daring Fireball.

Now, there’s a new-ish venture in beta called mydeco. The latest venture from Brent Hoberman, one of the two responsible for lastminute.com, boldly claims that it will “revolutionise the way you shop for your home”.

Rory Cellan-Jones on his BBC blog was skeptical about it’s chances of success and I’m probably of the same mind. Certainly the rise in interest in buying homes (Location Location), building homes (Grand Designs), selling homes (Property Ladder), decorating homes (Changing Rooms) etc. is unmistakable but I just can’t get past the interface of the site.

Strange logo placement (odd white space), mixed bag typography (too many faces in too many sizes) , unclear hierarchy and possibly non-existent grid system coupled with trying to offer quite a lot of functionality and content makes it all overwhelming. For me at least.

Perhaps as the community element starts to kick in then it will take off and the ‘realistic 3D tool’ will have an opportunity to deliver.

At the moment, if one has any attention to detail then purchasing a table or chair from a ‘Second Life’ quality rendering seems unlikely.

Having said all that, any new venture deserves a fair crack of the whip so fingers crossed for mydeco. Especially in light of the current, slightly terrifying global financial climate.

Gareth’s lunch:

My word.

Korea have received the first combined USB travel/creditcard/onlinecard device.  Looking like a memory stick it’s provides ‘over the air’ payments in physical locations, travel authorisation (Oyster) as well as handling online transactions without having to type in card details.

It’s not a bad looking thing.

Why is any rollout of similar technology here taking such an awfully long time?

Found by The Raw Feed from ETNEWS