Today we placed our order for a brand new 37″ Philips HDTV with a panel resolution of 1920×1080, or full-HD as it is becoming known. Unlike previous Flat Panels, this screen has the maximum number of pixels that HD can broadcast, most flat-panel TV’s have a resolution of 1366×768 which will allow them to only show the mid-range 720p resolution natively, whereas full-HD allows for the higher 1080i/p standards.
Although HD-DVD and Blu-Ray/PS3 players are a month or two away, we also upgraded our DVD player to a new video upscaling Philips player that displays standard DVD’s at 1080i through the HDMI output. This isn’t as good as HD content, but will make films look a lot better than they do presently.
Now all we need is the BBC to hurry up and switch off analogue signals so we can get our free-to-air HD television.
11.Oct.06 
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Since Google have recently launched (a beta version of) Picasa Web Gallery and tied it into iPhoto I thought I would give it a go. You get a nice 250MB of space which isn’t bad as it is completely free, but I do not know how this compares with sites like Flickr, Bebo or MySpace. Unlike those sites, Picasa Web Album is free of advertising.
The gallery itself is very easy to use due to AJAX being implemented site-wide. It is very easy to integrate with either Picasa (Windows, Linux) or iPhoto (Mac OS X), thanks to the free software and plug-ins that Google provides.
You can find out more about Picasa Web Album and Picasa at http://picasa.google.com.
You can check out my gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/polarisdigital where you’ll find pictures of holiday photos, parties and other random pictures all grouped nicely into catalogues.
Siân also has a gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/pinkymcsian where you’ll find her collections.
11.Oct.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
Mozilla have now publically released their FireFox 2.0 RC-2 (also known as Bon Echo) browser for public testing. In general a RC-2 release is considered a production release, with just the last few niggling bugs to be ironed out, although after using it for many weeks I think they are just about ready for general release now.
So what’s new in the next major release of this popular browser. Well the great Gekko engine has not been messed with and FireFox 2 goes further to support present and future W3C standards, especially CSS 3. Inline spellchecking is available for forms, plus the tab system has also been enhanced. All plug-ins that I use regularly are now working FireFox 2, the Web Developers Toolbar in particular. Behind the scenes, FireFix now notifies you of suspected phishing sites, helping personal security. In addition Wikipedia is now included in the search dropdown bar, and Google Suggest has been integrated into the search bar, allowing results to be suggested before you finish typing.
So all in all, Bon Echo is certainly a good sound coming from Mozilla.
You can download the RC-2 release of FireFox 2 at : http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/all-rc.html
09.Oct.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
The Boddingtons Brewery moved out of Manchester over a year ago, leaving behind a large empty warehouse. But wait, this is Manchester, home of the former Haçienda club and Madchester culture, thus an empty warehouse is a great excuse for a party.
Well not one party, but 12 weeks full of parties. Last Thursday Public Enemy kicked events off with John Digweed taking over on Friday night. This week Soul Wax / 2 Many DJ’s have a sell-out event (which I’m very gutted to miss). Coming highlights include DJ Yoda, Sasha, De La Soul, Giles Peterson, Daddy G, Goldie, The Fall and many others.
From what I hear from the first weeks reviews, this is a real return to true british club culture, something we haven’t seen for about 15 years. So expect lots of loud music, dancing and an air of chemical fuelled happiness long into the night… and of course, see you there (hopefully!)
The Warehouse Project web siteÂ
09.Oct.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
This video demonstrates, although it must be noted through clever editing, how David Cameron is modelling himself as Tony Blair v.2.0. Taken from BBC and posted on YouTube! you better look at this quickly before the BBC file a suite against YouTube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8gLYZV6Z4g&eurl=Â
04.Oct.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
JISC launch two new web sites this week and Polaris Digital has been involved from an early stage consulting on accessibility issues and content management. The new JISC web site and its new sister site, JISC Collections will be launched from today.
03.Oct.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
Today ‘Soup of the Day’ turns one year old. For the eagle-eyed of you out there you will notice that today is a Sunday, which means that last year the 1st of October was a Saturday. Well you would all be right and I would give you a medal if I knew who you were. But this being the case, why did I refer to my first ever post as a Thursday, when it was a Saturday.
Well blogs and any form of written work are not always what they seem. It was infact Thursday 6th October 2005 when I posted the first entry, but with the power of the electronic world I changed the date to October 1st, as that was the day I actually set the blog up. So today really is the first birthday of this blog, but Friday will be the first anniversary of the first post.
Just thought I had better clear that up.
01.Oct.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)
