Saw this on the BBC news website:

http://stats.oecd.org/oecdfactbook/

In this amazing site you can find out facts and figures on global fertility, happiness, population, life expectancy, domestic products and so much more!

Facts have never been so much fun!

Al

The iPhone had arrived and the SDK had been fired up and we are on the road to creating our first app!

Looking through the app store it is amazing just how many, and how varied, the choices are!

Any suggestions for an app?

Al

I don’t have an iPhone, but I’ve been watching the amazing growth if the App scene with interest. Well, now we he have the SDK and an office iPhone on the way! We will be using our down time to work out what we can do with this fascinating piece of tech

We have some good ideas for some apps... you may well be seeing some Signals Apps on the iTunes Store in the near future!

Watch this space! J

Al

It’s E3 time (Electronic Entertainment Expo) in LA again and that means sneak peeks at all the upcoming games and other leaps in technology. And the biggest surprise so far? It’s from Microsoft and it looks COOL!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie02k3eAvxY

Richard’s team may never use a mouse to design a website again! J

Al

Just saw this (from a Tweet by Mr Stephen Fry):

http://www.myhandle.com/

Is it going to be the next big thing? Who knows... But the amount of spam I get every day to all of my accounts means I’ll be trying it!

Al

So it was the first Signals summer bbq of the year lat night and it was supposed to be a chilled affair in the sun. However in the middle of our game of rickets (think a combination of cricket and rounders with a navy blue ball which was impossible to see at dusk - well that's my excuse....Jo made up the rules as she went, weirdly she won...) we ended up berating a bunch of teenages for leaving a huge pile of rubbish in the middle of Mill Meadows. I then proceded to chase one of them (not sure what I was going to do if I actually caught him...). It really really winds me up when people litter - they were sat about 10 metres from a bin.... Not only is it environmentally unfriendly (we ended up recycling about 20 cans on their behalf) but it makes chilling by the river unpleasant for everyone else. I don't want to sound like I'm preaching about this but it's such a simple thing to avoid - and maybe Signals shouting at them made them think twice for next time?!

Lydia

I was enjoying a Halo 3 session when one of my fellow (computer controlled!) marines utter something with an amazingly familiar voice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTd4KNxnu3U

I wonder how many other cameos there are hidden away in modern games?

Al

If you have a spare few minutes check out Wolfram Alpha. It went online on Friday so this is just the beginning, but from the introduction demo it looks like it could be a really powerful new search engine. 

Standard search engines rely on information that has already been created by third parties to provide answers to our search queries. So if it doesn't exist on the net in a format that can be indexed and easily found then it won't reach you as an answer. This is where Wolfram Alpha is different - it essentially 'creates' the answer using knowledge from data sets which have been organised so they are computable. It intelligently builds the answers itself.

This may just rock the socks off of the future of search.... have a look for yourself. 

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Jo

Got sent this link... I had no idea games like this existed!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6_VyQLzVU4

I’d love to give it a go, but I have a feeling that it is a genre I would have enjoyed more in my early teens! I just don’t have the time to dedicate to gaming anymore!

Al

When every animated film churned out nowadays uses CG, it's surprising to hear a film that doesn't. Disney have decided to go a bit old school and make The Princess and the Frog using hand-drawn animation, what's more the quality is absolutely superb!

A selection of videos in various resolutions if your pc can take it!

1080p
720p
480p

- Scott