Cinemas have been offering three dimensional viewing for some time now, so it was inevitable that our living rooms would follow suit. After all, with more and more movies filmed for 3D, eventually the DVD buyer starts to feel they’re missing something.

I imagine I’ll own a 3D set one day. So when offered the chance to see a range of demonstrations, it seemed foolish to say no, lest I be left behind in our manic dash for the future.

3D viewing shrinks into your living room

The basics, obviously, are the same. There is a screen, it shows a blurry picture, and you watch it through the darkening filter of 3D glasses to see fish swimming towards you. And let’s not forget, when it’s well-done, the effect can be amazing.

However, whereas the spectacles in cinemas are cheap plastic that you can throw away afterwards, or keep for beach season, the at-home versions include some of the technology for making the magic happen inside their very bodies.

What do these 3D glasses mean to me?

Firstly, they have to be recharged every so often, like your mobile. Secondly, they are bulkier. If you want to pretend you’re in a sci-fi movie from decades ago, this is the closest thing yet to VR visors; they even extend over your eyes to block out ambient light.

Lastly, the glasses being more than spindly Happy Meal toys means they cost a bit. The price I was quoted was £60 a pair, although this should drop as technology advances and Tesco Value alternatives rush to market.

But for now, having all your friends over for a 3D party will be an expensive exercise. Feel free to link to this post if you’re planning such a bash and want them to know how much you spent.

Do I want to throw a 3D party?

Much of the above is practical inevitability. One genuine annoyance is that 3D glasses often don’t work between different brands of set right now. So if your friend has a Phillips TV and you have a Samsung, getting him to bring his own glasses to your 3D party will not save you £60. You have to assume standardisation is coming, as that’s irritating.

But this shouldn’t become a moan about the need for glasses. Since we’re talking about the glowing technology of the future, I thought I’d finish on a shiny note. Apparently some 3D sets don’t just play movies already in 3D, they can also make existing 2D pictures pop out. Live football games, old movies and even Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles cartoons might be springing to life. Isn’t that exciting?

No, the quality won’t be as good as full professional 3D conversions, but again, this should improve as technology advances. I think we’re still in an embryonic stage with this, personally. Not for me, the teething, vomiting and expense of early adoption. But in a year or three, I genuinely believe this could be quite cool.

Having gone public on my complete bafflement as to what the iPad was supposed to be, it took only 23 hours post-launch for me to find myself in the Apple shop willing to part with proper amounts of cash for one. And I can’t help it – I frickin’ love it.

But you’re definitely a more considered person, which means there’s certain things you should know before diving in.

AKA, I make the mistakes, so you don’t have to:

1. Don’t bother loading up any apps that aren’t optimised for the iPad.

There’s nothing more disheartening than loading an app and finding it appears as a little box in the centre of that beautiful screen – it means you’re going to get a substandard, meh experience, and for the amount of
money you just spent on the thing, that’s going to make you sad. The apps that are iPad-compatible are a thing of beauty, and they make the most of all that lovely screen real estate (or ‘space’ for those uninitiated in tech-wank-speak).

2. It’s not destined to become a commuter-aid

When I get it out in my flat, I find myself looking over my shoulder to see if there’s anyone that looks likely to pinch it. I live alone. You can only imagine the amount of paranoia I had getting the thing home from the shop.

First I was worried I’d be mugged, so I hid the bag under my seat. Then I worried I’d forget it. So I wrapped the bag strap round my wrist. Sitting with your wrist awkwardly hidden under your seat is not the most
ninja-incognito way of travelling, it turns out.

3. Bedtimes are 3,000 times better with an iPad

Whether it’s video you’ve downloaded, looking up all those things that you spent the day thinking ‘ooh, I must Wikipedia that’ or one of the classic books you always meant to read (classics are free, innit) before you know it it’ll be 1.30am, and you’ve got to be up in five and a half hours. So when I said better, maybe I just meant later.

4. Wired magazine on the iPad is… mixed

Some of it’s gorgeous, some of it’s confusing (swipe right or down? Right or down?) and some of it crashes. But you may as well get it at least once to see what all the fuss is about. Who knows, this might be the future of publishing…

5. It’ll make you look a bit of a twat

I have been taking mine to both the gym and Starbucks, all the time being well aware that it’s still enough of a novelty for me to look like the most ostentatious type of early-adopter. Whilst it helped my slog on the treadmill to have the TED talks to watch, I was so busy hiding it when I left the gym I walked straight into the men’s changing rooms. Nothing says ‘nothing to see here’ like a girl wandering into a room of naked and surprised men.

I recently moved house and, while this entailed dealing with a whole litany of woes, the most damaging to my emotional and mental health was the loss of internet. Of course, you’re supposed to be able to move properties and have your web juice redirected without a hitch these days, but it doesn’t really work like that, does it?

The result was spending the best part of a month using either cafes’ wifi or going to local libraries. In doing the latter I created a list of things that Someone Needs To Do To Make Libraries Better Places To Do The Internet And Stuff. So, you know, send this to the person who makes things like that happen, will you?

1. Upgrade the browsers

Library one astounded me by using Internet Explorer 5 on its machines. This is a browser that was released in 1999, before pretty much any website you use on a regular basis these days even existed. Now, I’m not one to brag, but I’m a 10+ tab kinda guy. With Firefox and Chrome (and, I suppose, whatever the latest IE version is) this is no problem. But at the library it was like going back to the 20th Century, when you ended up with a zillion IE windows all over your desktop. And don’t even get me started on how bumming horrid it is to use.

2. Allow us to use your ports

I’m not saying I want to rock up at the library with my ergonomic mouse and killer speakers – I just mean that, if I have something to print, it may be stored on a USB stick or external hard drive which I‘d like to connect. But while library computers coquettishly display their inviting slots, they prudishly disapprove of you actually inserting your foreign object lest it carries some kind of icky virus. So you end up sweaty, frustrated and unsatisfied. Especially if you made a lot of effort to dress up all nice, like.

3. Allow us to open bloody PDFs, you berks

I had to print out a plane ticket and itinerary, and figured it would be no big deal to print these out at the library. However, my documents were presented in some new-fangled format known as “PDF”, and of course the machines didn’t have the necessary software (is it “Acrobat”, they call it? Weird!). Fortunately Google Docs allows you to open things like PDFs, in a less visually pleasing but passable manner. If it didn’t, I’m still not sure how I would have printed my stuff out.

4. Get the pensioners away from me

I’m not saying pensioners shouldn’t use the internet. I’m all for the silver surfers. But most of them have no idea what they’re doing and, if a (slightly) younger person happens to be sat nearby, they won’t think twice about appointing them their own personal “computer whiz” (accompanied by the internationally-recognised finger-waggling “computers” gesture). And, like the lady on the plane who can’t work out how to “make films come on”, if you help them once you’re done for. Your important LOLcats session is going to be one long interruptathon.

What’s the solution? As is so often the case with social problems, it’s age segregation. Simple.

5. Install brain-scanners to filter out the lunatics

Any free-to-enter place with… stuff is always going to attract a wide range of personality types, and it’s no different with libraries. My visits saw me encounter:

- A man using a computer and becoming more and more visibly and audibly upset, until he was just rocking back and forth, huffing at a decent volume
- A man quietly (but not quietly enough) chanting to himself as he surfed the web
- A lady with a high-pitched voice complaining to the staff that her machine hated her
- A man in camouflage with a full camping kit striding purposefully about the place pointing out what was wrong with the library
Actually, he and I had a bit in common.

I realise I’m beyond help when it comes to the points that are to do with Other People, but what about the rest? Am I being too harsh? Is it enough for boroughs to offer free internet facilities? Or should they make more of an effort to provide I.T experiences more in keeping with what the majority of regular internetters enjoy? Do you even care? Have you ever even *used* a library’s I.T facilities?

I went on it so you don’t have to.

Things I saw:

1. A lady who had lost her clothes, but had distracted herself sufficiently, and in doing so, educated me regarding female anatomy in a way I hadn’t experienced since GCSE Science.

2. A man who had the camera trained on the rolls of fat round his stomach. It was a timely reminder to put down that biscuit.

3. A man who had the camera trained on his crotch. It was the neon green synthetic sports shorts (like the kind you used to have to wear in PE) that made this decidedly non-sexual.

4. A girl who looked disconcertingly like me, chewing on her fingernails in the exact same manner as I was doing at that moment.  Eek.

5. A man having a wank. Sorry, he just was.

6. A naked man, except oddly, he had the camera trained at his chest. Maybe he only went for the Big Reveal with people he’d built up a relationship with. Sweet, really.

7. A man who looked like he might have been a very famous author, who I thought might have been interesting to talk to. I’m easily influenced by 60-year-olds with good haircuts and geek chic glasses.

8. A girl surrounded by smoke. I will forever now wonder if that was from a cigarette, or if I should have called the fire brigade. She seemed quite chilled, so I’m going to assume the former.

9. Someone who had the camera trained on the art on his wall. What a novel and yet somehow quite useless way of marketing your creations.

10. Someone else having a wank. I’m getting quite used to this now.

Things I have learnt:

• You’d have to spend an awful lot of time on there to come across any improv musicians

• Untick that safe search box, and you’re asking for… well, exactly what you’d think you were asking for

• There are many more men on there than women, at least in the non-family friendly area

• It’s probably not for me

Image from Flickr user Guerretto

This week, we’ve got a guest post from Jenny Williams.

In recent years, it has become quite acceptable to find yourself at a party being challenged to perform your best SingStar song. Since 2005, with the release of Guitar Hero, play-along gaming has got bigger and bigger. We’ve been given SingStar, DJ Hero, Lips, Rock Revolution and even Easy Piano on the DS.

Meanwhile, the Mix Me In iPhone app by Fried Green Apps has reached the ‘New and Noteworthy’ section of Apple’s App Store. Musical technology has reached every corner of the gaming market.

But, as we’re busy being Guitar Heroes, Elton John on the DS piano, in the Beatles’ rock band and a DJ for Jay-Z, has play-along music gaming reached a dead end?

I spent many evenings during my teenage years attempting to master hammer-ons and pull-offs, which is more innocent than it sounds. To surpass playing ‘Chopsticks’ or the introduction to ‘Smoke on the Water’ by Deep Purple, learning to play the piano or guitar is an often a painstaking process, requiring hours of practice.

However, within moments of loading Rock Band, I have received 100% rating at The Beatles’ Hello Goodbye and am boasting my musicality to my whole family. Result! What could be more fun than having your ego stroked while pretending to be a rock star?

Never mind that ‘Guitar Hero’ guitars look essentially like Early Learning versions of grown-ups’ guitars, teenage boys across the world are happily trading in requests for a real Fender Stratocaster for a Rock Band version with buttons big enough for inpatient beginners.

After all, this isn’t about achieving musical finesse, Rock Band is about mimicking your musical heroes in your front room.

Not everyone is happy about the rise of this musical gaming foolery. In February 2008, NanaOn-Sha CEO and PaRappa the Rapper creator, Masaya Matsuura, famously challenged play-along music games at the D.I.C.E Summit in Las Vegas, saying the genre was growing stale and was in need of new ideas.

Admittedly, this type of gaming has its limits. Once you’ve demonstrated your rockability to your friends and stayed up ’til the wee small hours perfecting your Rock Band drumming, there is nowhere else for the game to go. But musical games are beginning to bridge the gap between fantasy and reality.

Following on from the popularity of play-along games, the release of Easy Piano on the Nintendo DS last month saw the launch of a musical tutorial game, complete with plug-in one octave keyboard. It’s no substitute for piano lessons; the layout is much the same as Rock Band, responding to on-screen prompts. However, basic musical theory is introduced. It’s like your Mum sneaking cabbage into your mashed potato when you’re a kid: play-along gaming with educational benefits.

So, perhaps, as music games keep developing to incorporate more complex musical features and theory, gamers will continue to move closer to achieving musical hero status. Heck, gamers might even be inspired to pick up a traditional guitar and become real-life musical geniuses.

In the meantime, I’m merely happy with the delusion. the gaming market has made us all think we could really be music stars if we gave up our day jobs and transferred those colour-matching skills to the piano keys or guitar frets.

Jenny is a freelance journalist and editor of her very own tech site, Witch Tech.

Officially, James Cameron’s magnum opus Avatar is now the most successful film ever made. Having pulled in more than two billion dollars, the blue meanie crushed the previous residents of the chart, in a manner that runs a little contrary to its messages of love and cultural tolerance.

But many reading this may question whether it’s a deserving victor. After all, there are films out there with more ambitious storylines, better acting and less rare elements called “unobtanium”. Yet none of them are currently trouncing the competition by millions.

But to complain about how there are ‘better’ films out there for the position is to miss the point of what makes something successful, which isn’t the same as being good. The previous record-holder was Cameron’s own Titanic, despised by armchair film critics everywhere.

(Including me. I hate that thing. It only gets slightly good when the boat finally hits the iceberg.)

Titanic, though, knew its audience. It realised that the historical detail had to take second place to its primary task of telling a straight-forward love story. Similarly, The Dark Knight greased its way to millions by combining the superheroism with crime movie tropes.

And Avatar, let’s be honest, is no different. It has sci-fi bits and bobs scattered throughout, including the intriguing body-swapping. However, despite being featured in the title, that idea is quite unexplored in the film, in favour of the culture clash-love story-Pocahontas aspect.

It may sound as if I’m complaining, but I can see the logic behind not spending untold millions on something that will appeal only to hardcore dorks like ourselves. After all, more nerd-friendly blockbusters like Spider-Man and the Lord Of The Rings trilogy did alright, but it took the comfortable pandering of Avatar to topple Titanic.

And, aside from all of that, at least it’s a proper film, y’know? Not a sequal, spin-off, romantic comedy or adaptation of something silly. A property developed for cinema and, regardless of the script’s much-discussed weaknesses, with a strong direction, vision and use of technology. It could have been a Pirates Of The Carribean sequel or some other internet hate figure.

Not to mention, if you’re a hardcore cinema-lover, Gone With The Wind is still number one if you adjust the figures for inflation.

Reserve Avatar on LoveFilm or book seats.

I’m sure you’ve noticed – Facebook has had another redesign. I’m beginning to wonder if we need to stage a KatiePriceAKAJordan-style surgery intervention, such is the number of times things have been whitened, tightened, and moved a bit right(ened).

But I’m not here to cast judgement (even though that is my FAVOURITE thing). After redesign #431 I decided it wasn’t worth holding anything on the site dear, since in all likelihood, I’d find it relegated to a sub-sub-sub-menu the next time I logged on. But I’m in the minority in my blasé attitude.

It turns out, people really hate a Facebook redesign. More than Gordon Brown, more than snow, more than Snog, Marry, Avoid (BBC Three. Watch it.).  I’ve seen fewer  ‘Get Facebook to change the layout BACK!!!!’ groups than in previous times (presumably because people have realised Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t really give two social networky hoots) but there are plenty of status updates that are there to provide me with a snapshot of feelings.

Maybe it’s because we all think of it as ‘my site’ – when you’ve got all your friends there, it stores your photos and you use it to arrange your birthday party it’s easy to forget it actually belongs to someone else.  And that someone wants to maximise the bits that make him money.

Maybe it’s because we (by which I mean I) hate change. I like to think I’m too busy to try and work out where the notifications sit now. Admittedly, that’s because I’ve wasted a whole day watching a snake eat a deer again and again and again (nature is MENTAL), but busy nonetheless.  I thought it was fine before, and this just adds an added level of ‘wha…?’ to my Facebook experience.

Maybe it’s because it changes too often – it’s unsettling, not to mention the few days post-redesign, where everything’s inevitably a little bit buggy. There’s little communication from on high, contrary to a company like Google, who keep a regularly updated blog to inform users of changes.

My advice to anyone who is bothered by the redesign is to take a screengrab of the site as it is. Whilst you might hate it now, in three months’ time, this will be the version you’ll be begging Zuckerberg to return to when he decides to mix things up again.  And watch out for Facebook nipping off behind your back to go and marry a cage fighter, somewhere in Vegas.

It comes as no surprise that wireless routers came top of a recent survey to find the most confusing gadgets. The hours I’ve spent slowly losing my grip on sanity as I try in vain to get the wireless router to find its backside with both hands. It really doesn’t bear thinking about.

To make matters worse, it’s very rarely my own wireless router that’s sending me to the brink of sanity. As the family member with the career most closely akin to an IT helpdesk call centre worker (or at least that’s what my family seems to think), I’m the go-to girl for any technological enquiry. This means I’ve found myself setting up quite a few wireless networks over the years.

Even now the memories haunt me.

The thing is, I write about consumer technology. Gadgets. In the old days, I used to know all kinds of admittedly quite dull information about graphics processors, but even at the height of my nerdlinger knowledge, I was still at the fluffy end of consumer gadget journalism. To this day I have yet to partition a hard drive. I’m not ashamed of this fact. It’s ok to think that programming the macros on a universal remote control is fun without giving a toss about kernals. There’s room on this planet for all kinds of geek.

Anyway, I’ve meandered away from the point.

The point is that while I may not have a clue why my computer knows how to get to the  dslrouter setup page even when the internet isn’t working, I’m still the person in the family who, hour after hour, has sat there with despair, misery and an acute sense of my own insignificance within the universe gnawing away gently at my soul.

Wireless routers have probably sapped away more of my life than any other bit of gadgetry in the house. Apart from the time spent programming the macros on my universal remote control, but what I do with my leisure time is my own business.

You want to know, don’t you? You want to know which way to jump. Should you join the ‘OMG the iPad is RUBBISH! And it sounds like a SANITARY TOWEL!’ group, or go for the ‘OMG Apple have done it AGAIN! They have created something so excellent I wasn’t even aware I needed one UNTIL NOW!’ folks? Truth is, I’m not sure.

I’ve had a good think about which camp I sit in. In fact, I was most pre-occupied by it at about 5am this morning, but I just don’t seem to be able to come to a conclusion (I would understand at this point if you’d be wondering why you or I would bother with the rest of this article, but stay with me).

I’m not sure I get it.

So it’s an internet tablet, Steve says can be sitting in the kitchen waiting for you to buy your movie tickets. But it’s also a work tool that warrants its own copy of iWork? And it’s ‘the best internet browsing experience you’ve ever had’. But it doesn’t play Flash video. And typing with the on-screen keyboard is so freakin’ easy. But there’s a physical keyboard accessory you can buy. I’m not sure even Steve really understands this product.

In a presentation even more packed with superlatives than your average Apple love-in, he gave the impression that he was struggling to talk up something that was actually only quite good. In fact, after three minutes of watching him browse various web pages (‘and I can just put my finger on any of these pictures of animals, and look at any animal I like’… dude, seriously?) I was beginning to wonder if he had some kind of time slot he was struggling to fill.

There’s no help as to who this product is aimed at when it comes to pricing – taking the US conversions (UK pricing has yet to be announced) you could pay £310 for a 16GB WiFi version, or up to £514 for a 64GB WiFi and 3G enabled version. So prices start at a costly treat price, and go up to a considered investment price. They’re two quite different things.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens now – Apple don’t really do failure (not recently, anyway), but then up until now the world hasn’t really done tablet PCs.

It’s Steve vs the World. And I have no idea who my money is on.

I doubt there’s a single mobile phone owner out there who hasn’t been guilty of this modern malaise. It’s easily done, after all. But if you recently got yourself an iPhone, I’m prepared to stake a small sum that you’ve been making quite a habit of it of late. After all, crank calling and the iPhone go hand in hand.

Not intentional crank calling, you understand. I’m talking about the kind of crank calling performed by your backside when your phone is in your pocket. The kind where your handbag rings your nearest and dearest so they can listen to your keys disturbing some sweetie wrappers while you talk in muffled tones to some unseen companion. Or the sort that dials home at 1am to broadcast your drunken night out to your innocent, sleeping partner.

We’ve all done it, but when it comes to crank calling, the iPhone is king. I always know when someone has just changed their usual mobile for an iPhone because, after finishing a phone call, their bum always rings me straight back just to check that the phone lock hasn’t activated. It hasn’t.

Maybe it’s a special iPhone feature designed to give owners the opportunity to say “sorry, I’ve just got a new iPhone”. That way, they get to brag about their new lifestyle choice without having to resort to a vulgar “look at how fabulously shaggable I hope I’ve miraculously become”.

But crank calling isn’t the only way I can spot a new iPhone owner. Emails and texts that were once rendered in a perfectly coherent and well-spelled manner are now more akin to something you’d expect the kids in the special class to scoff at. “Hrllo, hpw’s it goinf? Linch later?”

People seem reluctant to admit it, but a touchscreen is not as good as a proper keypad no matter how much more attractive you feel while using it. And emails aren’t just filled with typos, they’re also a whole lot shorter than before because the iPhone owner just spent the best part of 10 minutes trying to write 3 sentences. I may have  a rubbish browser and an ugly phone, but at least my BlackBerry lets me write emails that don’t sound like I’ve had a stroke.

If a new iPhone owner has yet to make a bum call or send a nonsense text, it’s only a matter of time. Assuming their battery doesn’t run out first, of course…