Richard Alpagot's blog.

Thursday, 14 March 2013

SimCity Update 7

Details from EA of what they've been up to and patch 1.5 seeing to some of those trade transaction issues.

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-update-7

Monday, 11 March 2013

Vodafone UK Beat EE to Have the Most Valuable 3G and 4G Spectrum

This is kinda what I was thinking looking at who bought what spectrum in the auctions. The question is if Vodafone will capitalise on this and how. BT don't have any 800MHz spectrum so maybe a future deal could be struck there if BT requires it.

I was surprised but how little O2 invested given that this is their core market.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/03/vodafone-uk-beats-ee-to-have-the-most-valuable-mobile-spectrum.html

A Look at ST-Ericsson's THOR M7450 Category 4 LTE Modem with Carrier Aggregation

Not too fussed about the product it's self apart from the fact that it supports AMR-WB : Orange UK has this. Not sure about the other operators as its been a while since I looked it up but I hope their is a big push towards this as the voice quality is so much nicer!

Anandtech:http://www.anandtech.com/show/6800/a-look-at-stericssons-thor-m7450-category-4-lte-modem-with-carrier-aggregation

Sunday, 10 March 2013

RuneScape

Some times I wonder why people bother with making need MMO's... There are already so many good ones out there.

I didn't play RuneScape too much, although I did start when I first got an interview for them (I declined in the end) but it certainly was fun.

Here's a cool infographic to show just how expansive the universe of it really is:
http://www.runescape.com/200million/infographics.ws

Saturday, 9 March 2013

SimCity 2013 - Impressions

I've been waiting for this game for ages! Even happy to look past all the faults (of which there are a fair few). I've put in 15+ hours and enjoyed all of it. I am however starting to see where the regional limitations are. It's a great idea in theory, having regional cities provide to each other but I can see how this matrix of interconnected cities could soon get out of hand.

Sadly this is what I think they have 'fixed' in order to keep the service going. Kinda of annoying when you gear one city up to provide the others with water supply (It had a river so the water table wouldn't keep going dry) or when your mega police / fire station doesn't send units its volunteered to the neighbouring cities. Still as a single city game it does work well with a constant challenge. I keep wanted to go back for more so it's still got that old SimCity feel!

Here are some pics:

https://help.ea.com/article/simcity-patch-notes

Thursday, 7 March 2013

Sky dismisses network strain ahead of O2 and Be migration

The key bit in the CNET article is Sky don't traffic manage like most of the others with unlimited download usage.

Also I'm sure they've seen from other large buyouts such as the Tiscali / Talk Talk one that public opinion is a fragile thing, so they won't be wanting any large mistakes... They wouldn't chose to migrate them if they couldn't...

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/sky-dismisses-network-strain-ahead-of-o2-and-be-migration-50010583/

EA's Origin, Oh how I hate you.

So I got Sim City in the mail today, brilliant, it's a day early! Good old long in the tooth Game, thanks!

Then I put the disc in...

Up flashed Origin with:

So even though the content is sitting there on my disc I have to wait until midnight... Boo EA, what's a day in distribution terms. If anything is spreads the load of activations for the game on the actual release day....

Wednesday, 6 March 2013

TalkTalk offering better HomePlug AV adapters.

TalkTalk are offering re-branded Dlink HomePlug AV adapters to customers who struggle to get WiFi around the home. It's a nice move and if they can get a good wholesale price it might even be a bit of a money spinner.

I know Sky do the wireless adapters for the set top boxes and these are cheaper but sometimes aren't the best for streaming if you have a weak signal...

I've recently been given some Devolo dLAN AV Wireless HomePlug adapters (Even better was they were free when they cost >£50) so i'll have to give them a try sometime.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/03/isp-talktalk-uk-prep-new-500mbps-powerline-and-wifi-adapters.html

Mac Pro News

The Mac Pro is well over due a complete overhaul.

Media & VFX houses demand computational power and Apple has been losing market share for a while now. Yes they have a nice unix based OS vs but Microsoft has come a long way with Windows Server 2012 and software companies really driving their software to do more on PC!

It's good to see some rumours and developments on the Mac Pro front.

The Mac Pro is off the market in the EU at the moment and from the articles below it's going to be a while before we see a new one as Apple wait on Intel's new chips (a good call in my opinion).

I would love to see Apple experiment with some own brand Thunderbolt graphics solutions.

Nvidia with CUDA, SLI and some Thunderbolt arrays would be an interesting mix. Same goes for AMD and crossfire... You could turn a little Mac mini a rather dent little gaming machine and revive an ageing MacBook Pro.

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/03/04/apple-building-2tb-solid-state-drives-for-next-mac-pro-release/

http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http://www.pcgameshardware.de/AMD-Radeon-Hardware-255597/News/Sapphire-zeigt-Radeon-HD-7950-Mac-Edition-auf-der-Cebit-1058864/&authuser=0

Next-Generation iPads Due in April, iPhone 5S in August?

Since my iPad was stolen I've been getting rather frustrated without a tablet and having to resist a re-purchase. Part of me wanted to go for something else like a Surface but I have rather a lot of app purchases I want to use. Also I've already ditched the iPhone for a Windows phone and i'm happy with that.

Also on that note, Apple, you really need a iTunes blocking service based on device serial numbers if someone comes to you with a police crime reference number. Kinda appalling that manufactures don't do this, they make enough money on replacement damaged units let alone people being robbed.

Anyway Carphone Warehouse in the UK have had some pretty good deals recently such as the 32GB wifi and 3G iPad for £100 cheaper than Apple. So it's been getting harder to resist.

So it's good to see some rumours which will make me wait a bit longer! Still not sure if I want an iPad mini though. I do like that they have finally slimmed down the edging as it never needed to be that thick! It did annoy me that the late 2012 full sized iPad got a better chip than the mini also.

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/03/05/next-generation-ipads-due-in-april-iphone-5s-in-august/