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Barnes & Noble continues British invasion, forges pacts with Argos, Blackwell's and Foyles
Barnes & Noble has continued its quest to stock the shelves of United Kingdom bookstores with Nooks, by adding Argos, Blackwell's and Foyles to the list of where you can get one. Those retailers will join John Lewis in carrying the Nook Simple Touch and its Glow Light-toting cousin, giving UK'ers nearly a thousand bricks and mortar sites to get one -- including bookstores at 55 colleges and universities. Those locations will join Barnes & Nobles recently launched online website in selling the e-readers -- but if you like to Touch before buying, the PR is after the break.
Nook headed for UK as Barnes & Noble goes international, dabbles in the Queen's English
Well, our English friends, today is a good day. Your choice in e-readers is about to get that much better as Barnes & Noble has decided to make your homeland the first stop on its highly-anticipated international tour. The Nook and its associated store will be making their big debut in the UK this October, though how exactly the prices will translate to British Pounds remains to be seen. At first, only the Nook Simple Touch and its Glow Light-equipped sibling will be available through the storefront, but we imagine it won't be long before the company's line of Android tablets make their own splash in the land of tea and James Bond. The e-book store will be launching with a rather respectable catalog of over 2.5 million titles, which should give the new comer a nice running start. You'll find PR after the break, but sadly it's a bit light on finer details. Don't worry, though, we'll be back with more info as we get it.
Nexus 7 pre-orders start shipping in UK and Canada (Update: model specific US details)
The Nexus 7 machine is in full swing. According to Google, all pre-orders placed by Friday the 13th in the US and Australia have been filled as of today (though some may still be en route), and our friends in the UK and Canada should be receiving theirs soon enough. Deliveries are currently heading out in waves, putting 7-inches of Jelly Bean in the hands of eager "footie" fans and beneficiaries of socialized medicine. Have you gotten your shipment notification yet? Let us know in the comments. Update: Google has since changed the wording on its site and, unfortunately, not "all" US and Australian have shipped. Now it's just "many." Update 2: Google has changed the wording yet again, now providing more detail broken down by model. As of 7:50~ ET, it indicates all standalone 8GB versions ordered on or before July 13th have been shipped, while standalone 16GB orders placed on or before July 11th will all be shipped by the 19th, and have also been upgraded to overnight shipping. Ordered with accessories like a case, charger or Nexus Q? Your slate will ship, overnight, this week although the extra bits may be following "soon." Got it? Hit the source link to get it all straight from the horse's mouth and to check whether it's (inevitably) been updated once again. [Thanks, Andrew]
Now TV launches in the UK, brings pay-as-you-go streaming to Mac, PC and Android
Sky is going online and ditching the contracts... sort of. The UK TV provider is launching a new service called Now TV that will take on more established properties like Lovefilm and Netflix. The streaming video service will initially be available on OS X, Windows and Android with iOS to follow shortly. By the end of the year it will also be available on Xbox, PS3, Roku and Youview. Initially Sky Movies will form the backbone of the service, with titles costing anywhere from £0.99 to £3.49 for playback, or you can purchase unlimited monthly access for £15. Eventually Now TV will expand to include Sky Sports, Sky 1 and plenty of other BSkyB owned properties. For more, check out the PR after the break.
Paradox sends a producer to England for War of the Roses
In order to promote its upcoming 15th-century combat game, War of the Roses, Paradox Interactive sent a senior producer over to jolly olde England to experience some of the history for himself. It's interesting, but if you're looking for either Michael Douglas or Kathleen Turner ... well, best to look elsewhere.
London minicab firm equips cars with free WiFi, says you don't need no stinking LTE
London may be late to the LTE party, but it's more than making up for its laggard mobile ways by bulking up its citizens' access to WiFi. The Tube's been acquiring hotspots in preparation for the crush of Olympic fans expected to use public transport, and now it's time for taxis to do the same. The Inquirer reports that Greentomatocars, a London minicab service, is now equipping every car in its fleet with free WiFi. Each cab has its own SIM that affords passengers up to 7.2Mbps downloads and 2Mbps uploads, and gaining access merely requires you profess your affection for gratis internet -- the password is ilovefreewifi.
UK hotel ditching paper bibles for Kindles, Rocky Raccoon to get acquainted with the benefits of e-ink
Maybe papercuts aren't a part of the creator's master plan, after all -- not at the Hotel Indigo's Newcastle location, at least, which is ditching the standard hardcover bible in favor of a Kindle edition. The hotel's GM says the move, which brings Amazon's e-reader to its 148 rooms, is keeping with the city's rich publishing history. The device will come pre-loaded with the bible, with other religious texts available for the download. Customers can also download non-religious texts, which will be added to their bill. The move is currently being assessed under a trial basis, which will be revisited on July 16th. No word on whether the promotion will be expanded to other hotels in the chain.
Google Maps to soon include waterway travel in England and Wales
Here in America, avid motorists tend to tick that 'Avoid Ferries' option whenever possible. In England and Wales, however, travel including waterways is looked quite fondly upon. To that end, Google has reportedly started the process of mapping towpaths in the two nations, as it attempts to map bridges, locks and some 2,000 miles of canal / river paths. The Guardian quotes Ed Parsons, a geospatial technologist at Google UK, as saying the following: "Canal towpaths offer green routes through our towns and cities, and by working with the Canal and River Trust we're adding towpaths to Google Maps and encouraging people to discover their local waterway." As delightful as the news may be, we still can't help but focus on a single mental image. That image, if you're curious, is embedded after the break.
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier maintains top UK sales spot
Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and Rockstar's Max Payne 3 remained bosom buddies atop Chart-Track's UK sales chart for another week. The team of Ghost Recon kept their advantages position on the high ground for a second week, with Payne providing back-up in second. Capcom's love or hate RPG Dragon's Dogma slipped one spot into fourth, with FIFA 12 running up the field from fifth into third. Nihilistic's Resistance: Burning Skies for Vita debuted at the 12 spot. Chart-Track notes the previous handheld Resistance title was Resistance: Retribution for PSP, which failed to crack the top 40. The UK top ten invade after the break.%Gallery-149219%
Virgin Pure water purifiers launch offensive against tap and bottled water in the UK
English entrepreneur and chairman of The Virgin Group Sir Richard Branson thinks that your tap water is dirty. So much so, in fact, that he's partnered up with Strauss Water to get one of his new purifiers into your home and onto your countertop. The colorful Virgin Pure T6 (£299, $466) can dispense 1.3 liters of chilled H2O per minute, or 1.4 liters of hot water that's stored internally. The T7 (£379, or $591) delivers a bit more swagger to your crib with its minimalist, tapered design that offers 50 percent faster cold water flow. It even gets a small power bump to heat your hot water more quickly than its less-expensive sibling. It all sounds well and good, but we'll really be impressed when Virgin crams one of these into its seatbacks in first class.
Meet Heckerty, well-known British children's story, makes its way to the iPad
Meet Heckerty is a delightful British children's story starring Heckerty, a "zany, 409-year-old, upside-down-on-her-broomstick, green-faced witch," and her sidekick cat Zanzibar. The traditional story has made its way to the iPad with a wonderful adaptation that takes advantage of the interactivity offered by Apple's tablet device. Children can choose to read the book themselves or have the voice of Jan Ziff read the story to them. Each page is filled with at least one tappable element that'll jump, move or make a noise when your child touches it. The storytelling is outstanding and the story is the perfect length for the younger set who can only sit still for a short period of time. My children loved the iPad storybook, and there's little doubt that Meet Heckerty sets a high standard for other children's books to follow. We got a chance to speak to Jan Ziff and Allan Davidson, the husband and wife team that brought the Heckerty series to the iPad. We asked them about their experience in adapting the popular children's story to the iPad and their future plans for the series. You can read the interview below. You can also find out more about Heckerty on her website. The Meet Heckerty app is available from iTunes for 99-cents. At that price, it's a must-have for parents with young children. Q: One the first things I noticed about the book is its excellent storytelling. Can you tell me a little bit more about the Heckerty story and the storyteller behind the app? A: The Heckerty stories do have a "secret sauce" - it's the great British oral storytelling tradition that goes all the way back to The Canterbury Tales through Alice in Wonderland to Beatrix Potter and Winnie the Pooh, and recently to Harry Potter. Ann Rachlin created the Heckerty stories and refined them for many years in her renowned Fun With Music classes in London. Jan really was the original Fun With Music student, along with her two siblings, and often served as a test audience for ideas that were later integrated into Fun With Music, and became part of Ann's many records and books for 2-9 year-olds. That's where Jan learned to combine words with the rhythms of music, which you may not always hear but is definitely part of the what creates Heckerty's magic. And Ann's wonderful storytelling skills made all the difference as we developed and recorded the stories for this series. But to your question - it was in late in 2010 that Ann asked us whether we thought Heckerty could be brought to life on an iPad or iPhone. We loved the idea, did some research, thought about it and decided to do it. It's been a fascinating ride with all kinds of unexpected turns and plot twists but Heckerty's now out the door and everybody that's seen the app so far has loved it, something we've all found tremendously rewarding! Q: Did you use iBooks Author to develop the book? If so, can you summarize your experience with the tool? If not, how did you bring the book from printed pages to digital format? A: No, we didn't use iBooks Author for several reasons - first, it wasn't available when we launched, second, even though iOS was the dominant and most creative platform, it was clear that there would be other competing operating systems and that we'd need to serve them. That's how we ended up using Flash for this project. And Flash turned out to have been a great decision - it let us go straight from the original text and Ann's storytelling to the "living" graphics and child-friendly form factor that distinguish the iPhone and iPad and other mobile devices. We could really bring out the rich interactivity and audio that these devices are so perfectly suited to. From a production and technical perspective, we had to shorten and tweak them so that they'd work well, then let Colin and Dave, our extraordinary programmer and animator team do their magic with the images, design and the audio we had developed -- the collaboration turned into Meet Heckerty and additional stories that are already in production. Q: As someone who now has experience with both traditional and digital media, what do you think of the iPad? Will it replace or complement printed books? A: We think the iPad is arguably the most exciting development in the history of personal computing. From its form factor, the screen resolution and the superb audio in the latest version, the iPad is changing the way stories can be told and the way they are told. Will the iPad and similar devices completely replace the printed book? We don't think so but it will continue to rapidly take over many of the functions that many print products like books, magazines and newspapers have traditionally provided. And the reason is simple, we think - where the iPad offers a substantially better experience, people will naturally gravitate to it, and over time, the capabilities of the iPad will both grow rapidly and the cost will drop dramatically. There will always be people who want a book, who enjoy the smell and the heft of a book, and love to see rows of spines on shelves. And then there are the voracious readers who could never take 12 printed books on vacation with them, but who can easily take an iPad - each sees different benefits in the book experience, each for different reasons. We also believe that the iPad is changing the way stories are told. And that rather than replacing or even complimenting printed books, the iPad and similar devices will have material written and produced for them, bringing the best of the story and leveraging the strength of the device to better tell that story .... that's what we've tried to do with Heckerty. Q: What was your biggest challenge in producing the iPad version of the Heckerty story? Did you have to modify the storyline (make it longer or shorter, for example) to accommodate the digital reading experience? A: We shortened and tightened the story to suit the iPad and how kids use the devices - the most pleasant surprise was how well-suited the Heckerty stories turned out to be for the iPad and iPhone - the biggest challenge on from a story perspective was letting the story's strengths come through and let the iPad make each one a unique experience. Q: Do you have plans to bring additional titles to the iPad? A: Absolutely!! Several stories are already in production - the next one to appear will be "Heckerty Cook" (that's the working title). Let's say that Heckerty's cooking skills and menus leave a lot to be desired ... and her cousins decide to fix the problem. Until you see the story, we'll leave the ingredients of the story to your imagination, but we can tell you that we still break down laughing every time we come to some of the scenes as we work on them! Hopefully, you and your audience will have time to talk about Heckerty again once Heckerty Cook ships!
Londoners mourn as teletext goes dark, a victim of the DTV transition
Despite the many advantages of digital broadcast television, the transition is separating Europeans from a reliable source of information known as teletext. Citizens of London are the latest to experience the loss, as analog signals in the region were switched off just yesterday. Ceefax, a service of the BBC, has provided millions of Britons with news, sports, weather, television listings, subtitles and games for the past 38 years, and is now accessible only in Kent, Sussex, north-east England and Northern Ireland. Soon, it may cease to exist altogether. Seen as a precursor to the internet, teletext is a free service that's heavily rooted in analog PAL signals, where small packets of data are sent in the vertical blanking interval, which is otherwise unnoticed by viewers. Because the information is broadcast, users were never subject to network congestion, and only needed to wait a brief moment for their desired page to be transmitted -- more advanced televisions even cached this information locally. As part of the airwaves, the service is naturally free, and in that sense, it lacks a suitable replacement. As with all progress, however, there are casualties, and teletext was an unfortunate bystander. Those who cherished the service can take a moment to relive the memories in the links below.
UK's National Media Museum opens permanent 'Life Online' gallery
Planning to be in the neighborhood of Bradford, England anytime soon? Then you may want to set aside some time for a visit to the National Media Museum, which will tomorrow officially open what's being described as the "world's first gallery dedicated to exploring the social, technological and cultural impact of the internet." Dubbed "Life Online" the new gallery will feature one permanent section focused on the history of the internet, and another section that will change each year and feature different "experimental themes" commissioned by artists -- the first being an examination of the open source movement. As the BBC reports, that's the result of some £2 million in funding, as well as contributions from the likes of Vint Cerf, who's featured in some of the videos produced for the exhibit (you can see those at the YouTube link below).
PSA: HTC One X priced up to £330 in the UK, also available for free (update: $800 in Canada)
Chances are you're still melting over the impressive HTC One X benchmarks, and that's just the dual-core Snapdragon S4 taking care of business. As you may know, those of you in the Old Continent will see a quad-core flavor hit the shelves, and it's looking like that version is getting priced a wee bit earlier. So, just how much will you have to shell out to snag one of HTC's latest? Phones4U and Carphone Warehouse both have the One X listed as high as £329.99 (about $527) on contract, though you can also grab a free one if you take on a longer, more expensive plan on Orange, O2 and Vodafone. Carphone's site shows you can expect the device to land at your doorstep in the week of April 2nd. In the meantime, take a look at our hands-on to remind you how badly you need it. Update: It looks like Canadians can now also pre-order the HSPA+ version of the phone courtesy of NCIX, although they'll have to part with a hefty $800 (off-contract, of course).
Visualized: giant 'metal moles' ready to chew through London's underground
The city of London will soon have a new underground train to climb aboard, dubbed the Crossrail. But, before anyone can ride the line, tunnels will have to be dug. That means its time to break out the TBM beasts. Over 490 feet long and topping 1,000 metric tons, these giant metal moles will slowly carve new tunnels under the city at about 330 feet per week. At that rate the Crossrail won't open until 2018 but, until then, we can all sleep soundly knowing that machines -- more than thrice as tall as a man -- are slowly eating away at the largest city in the British Isles from underneath. For more images of London's mayor, Boris Johnson, standing next to the German-made monstrosities, dressed in his daddy's suit hit up the source link.
BBC's Director-General confirms instant video on-demand store is coming
Just last week, rumors regarding the BBC's purported iTunes competitor were making the rounds. Now, thanks to Director-General Mark Thompson, we can confirm that it is indeed in the works. Currently known around the British offices as "Project Barcelona," the service is expected to be an à la carte media offering, allowing you to "purchase a digital copy of a program to own and keep for a relatively modest charge." Speaking of which, movies, TV shows and specials are expected to start at £1.89 and may be available minutes after they're broadcast on TV, though we've yet to hear an official word on pricing. The Broadcasting Corporation chief went on to say this isn't "a second license-fee by stealth or any reduction in the current public service offering from the BBC, it's the exact analogy of going into a high-street shop to buy a DVD." He didn't, however, give any deets on when we can expect the service to launch.
Is the BBC the next contestant in the quest to take on iTunes?
PaidContent is claiming the BBC has some pretty advanced plans to launch a video market, one meant to compete directly with the iTunes of the world. According to its source, the British Broadcasting Corporation plans to offer its vast back catalog of movies, TV shows and specials as £1.89 downloads. Though much of its newer material is already licensed through BBC Worldwide, older content is not. The idea is to make all of that material available digitally and through its own branded service. The public broadcaster even plans to offer producers a larger chunk of the profits (roughly £0.40 per episode) in an effort to get a leg up on its potential competitors. Of course, these plans could still collapse if negotiations with independent producers fall through. Or, the plans could be less grand and far more preliminary than we've been led to believe. Still, don't be shocked it the iPlayer starts telling you to buy old episodes for a couple of quid in the next few months.
Mobile Miscellany: week of January 30th, 2012
Not all mobile news is destined for the front page, but if you're like us and really want to know what's going on, then you've come to the right place. This week, we've spotted a leaked Android 4.0.4 ROM for the Nexus S 4G, and we've also come across a price and release date for the Droid 4. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride. Let's explore the "best of the rest" for this week of January 30th, 2012.
Sky TV to offer cable access via broadband in the UK
Unlike its unflinching US equivalents, News Corp-owned Sky TV is readying its service for availability via broadband, rather than solely through traditional cable box delivery. The company announced plans today to bring a mixed on-demand/pay-per-month streaming service to the UK in the coming months -- a move we've yet to see made on this side of the Atlantic from any major cable provider.Sky's first step is competing with the likes of Netflix and LoveFilm with an on-demand video service, as well as a pay-per-month unlimited option. And that service is set to expand not long after the initial "first half of 2012" launch time frame, with sports and entertainment offerings said to be coming "soon afterward."What does any of this have to do with gaming, you wonder? Well, silly, Sky TV is offered via both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and the plan going forward is to continue that support on "a wide range of connected devices, including PCs, Macs, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, games consoles and connected TVs." It's unclear how currently available apps will be affected, but we'll assuredly see more from the UK TV provider as we move through the first half of 2012.
EU online spending estimated to grow 16 percent, reach €232 billion in 2012
Pardon us Americans as we act surprised, but it turns out that we have one more thing in common with our Euro brethren: a growing number of us dislike shopping in stores. According to Kelkoo estimates, online spending in the European Union is projected to continue its upward trend, which is said to reach somewhere in the neighborhood of €232 billion before year's end. If the estimate holds, this would be a 16 percent increase over the €200 billion raked by e-tailers during 2011, and is naturally assumed to come at the expense of traditional brick and mortar outfits, whose growth is projected to increase by a mere 1.8 percent.The data gathered also suggest there's significant room for expansion, however, as online spending accounted for just 7.8 percent of all EU retail sales in 2011, with the UK, Germany and France being responsible for a whopping 71 percent of that tally. The 16 percent projected growth is a slight decline from 2011, which saw EU online spending grow by 18 percent -- although, Europe's growing habit for click-and-ship continues to outpace the US, which grew by only 12.8 percent in 2011. Now, since you've crammed all these numbers, why not check the funny pages?[Shopping button via Shutterstock]
