Auto Trader for Windows Phone 8

I admit I know nothing about cars, apart from it gets you from A to B. And despite not being a keen driver (I haven't drove in ten years), I am rather fond of the Auto Trader people. While the print industry is being embattled, they have chosen to embrace the digital age by creating a slew of neat apps and digital magazines. I have also met several of them, and they are always enthusiast about the industry.

While it appears that their primary development platform is iOS, this is slowly changing. Still there is a bit of good news last week when an Auto Trader app appeared on the Marketplace. In fact last I heard, the parent company of Auto Trader, Trader Media Group, was planning a possible move to the Windows Phone platform. This evaluation has perhaps resulted in a more receptive opinion of Redmond's gorgeous mobile OS.

The Auto Trader app is rather basic, but it touches on the core of what makes Auto Trader such an institution in Britain - their extensive listing of vehicle adverts available from their website. The Windows Phone app isn't a straight up iOS port as the UI here follows the fundamental Metro modern design language. So not only is it pretty, intuitive and fast, it is also nice to see an app developer who respected why owners of Windows Phone went with the platform.

Rewired Reality

Rewired Reality is a new crowdsourcing platform designed to seek and help brands from the industry on coders need. There isn't a lot of information regarding Rewired Reality at the moment and how it works, but they have launched a website that explains a great deal more.

The concept behind the initiative is to highlight the growing need for developers in the country. According to the brains behind the initiative (who are also behind another initiative aimed at creating a network for young developers), there are plenty of unfulfilled software technology jobs in Britain, as coding isn't taught as a skill in this country any longer. This has created a long term problem in this country. Many small business enterprise has no means or resources to employ their own developer as the country has basically ran out of developers, many who has seek pasture abroad.

The idea here is to allow these businesses to seek the brains needed to innovate by creating bounties, which are then passed on to prospective software developers worldwide keen on designing prototypes for them. This is not too dissimilar to crowdsourcing marketplace, Amazon Mechanical Turk, but one more grounded with the needs for coders and small businesses in the UK.

Sony Xperia Z launch party

Sony officially launched the Android-powered Xperia Z on Tuesday at a launch event in Victoria House, London. The event was designed to showcase the Xperia Z's unique feature, and included a ball pit where guests could jump into. Guests can then use the Xperia Z to test out its burst mode ability, which can capture up to 999 9MP image in just over a minute. Impressive? I thought so. If you have an active kid, or an active lifestyle, this may just be the phone for you.

In addition to the Xperia Z, guests were also shown the new Xperia SP, L and Tablet Z, which I had a brief hands-on with. The highlight of the evening were the combination of an art/tech installation and music performance by French DJ Madeon (who at 18 years old, is probably just about legal enough to attend himself!). As if to highlight their Skynet ambition, Sony had two robotic arms installed and made to pour paint over an installation. Combined with a brilliant lighting and laser effects, I thought it was a rather electrifying and vivid display of (loud) music, visual art and technology coming together.

Sony Xperia SP brief hands-on

Sony announced the Xperia SP and L a couple of days ago. While the devices slipped under my radar during the initial announcement (hei, my life doesn't revolve around phones), it was the chance encounter with the new devices at the Xperia Z launch party in London on Tuesday that finally made me notice.

Of the two devices available for hands-on, the SP was the most impressive due to its great value of money when it finally gets launched in the next couple of weeks. Featuring a Snapdragon SoC with dual core 1.7GHz Krait processor and Adreno 320 GPU, the SP is a cutting edge device for those not willing to fork £500 for a phone. It has a 8 megapixel camera with backside-illuminated sensor, all the usual wireless stuff associated a 2013 phone should have including NFC (which will work with Sony Bravia NFC remote controls) and LTE (model-dependent). It will be available in three colours.

The 4.6" 720p display is a clear step up from the Xperia S, and while the pixel density (319ppi) won't blow your mind, it will still challenge your eyes. Unfortunately, the viewing angles is limited again, much like on the Xperia Z. At 155 grams, the SP is rather hefty, but isn't too uncomfortable to hold. The design is a clear evolution over last year's NXT line, conservative and yet has enough design cues to stand out from the sea of Android me-toos. My biggest gripe with the Xperia S was its rather annoying touch-(in)sensitive buttons, which has been fixed here as the buttons are now part of the display.

The Attendant coffee shop review

The Attendant in Fitzrovia, London, was recently brought to my attention by the budding London coffee snob community. This lovely new coffee shop's rise to fame is its venue - a refurbished Victorian public toilet, built in the 1890s and closed since the 1960s. For all we know, George Bernard Shaw and George Orwell, who both lived in Fitzrovia once, probably frequented this establishment - so there's a lot history in this place.

Now, the idea of turning an old Victorian loo into usable modern space isn't exactly new. Cellar Door, a cocktail bar in Aldwych is one such example. But The Attendant takes it further by retaining many of the original features. Things reserved  includes the cistern towering above two Hector BTC lamps, porcelain urinals since repurposed into bar tables, where you can have your coffee at; and even the original attendant's office, which now houses a kitchen.

Have a flat white on an old Victorian porcelain urinal

You might be tempted to think this is all just a gimmick, and I won't blame you. Too often have we been conned by new cafes and bars who would rather trade on the the niche of their venues, rather than the value of their food or drink. However, you will be glad to know however that the same care that was put into transforming the venue has been put into their food and coffee as well.

HTC 8X wins red dot award in product design

Amid all the bad news HTC has been receiving lately (the brilliant HTC One has been delayed due to manufacturing set backs), here's some good news for them. The HTC Windows Phone 8X and 8S has won the prestigious red dot award in product design for 2013.

Having been using the 8X as my main daily driver for close to two months now, I believe that the 8X thoroughly deserves the award (I never reviewed the 8S, but it does look neat). The HTC Windows Phone 8X features a fresh take on smartphone design - it not only looks great, but also feels great. In fact, the soft 'rubbery' texture used on the 8X feels a lot better than the fingerprint-magnet gloss and slippery matte finish preferred by other manufacturers. Well done to the engineers and design team behind the product!

It isn't perfect (nothing is), and if there is one problem with the 8X from a design's perspective, it is the awkwardly located power button. But let's not take away from the fact that the 8X is still a beautifully crafted product, which design complements the Metro design language well. Now, that's not to say that the Nokia Lumia 920 isn't beautiful, but for a design that debuted in 2010, it has somewhat lost some of its freshness. On the bright side, this will hopefully spur designers from both companies to further compete together and with the wider industry, as well as taking the leadership in product designs.

Incidentally, Windows Phone 8 has also been nominated for another design award, this time by London-based Design Museum. Good PR like these aren't dished out all the time, so if only HTC would leverage these and gave their Windows Phone products a bit more push, that would be swell. The 8X deserves a bit more than the indifference given by its own creators and their PR team.

via WPCentral

HTC One review

Last year's HTC One X was one of the best efforts put into by HTC. Announced alongside two other HTC One phones at MWC, HTC promised to reined in their portfolio, putting more emphasis into quality rather than quantity. Sadly that was proven not to be the case, as the One series was overshadowed by the release of a dozen of so phones throughout the year, diluting their portfolio and as a result, focus.

For 2013, HTC appeared to have learned their lessons regarding the desire to over saturate the market with identikit phones. Announced just last week before MWC, the HTC One is a flagship deserving of its own spotlight and launch. Sporting a new design, the former HTC M7 looks the part of how a flagship should - it is luxurious, beautiful and premium, and it doesn't skim on the specifications. Not to say that the One X wasn't beautiful (it was), but it is nice to see HTC discarding their typical old habits of recycling old ideas.

Special thanks to Three UK for loaning the device. You can pre-order the One from them now.

Before we head into the review, let's get the specs out of the way, shall we?

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 with quad core 1.7 Ghz Krait 300 and Adreno 320 GPU
• 2 GB RAM and 32/64 GB built-in flash storage (no expansion slot)
• 25 GB Dropbox storage for two years
• 4.7" Super LCD3 capacitive touchscreen with 1080 x 1920 resolution (468 pixels per inch density)
• Quad band GSM and 3G, 4G where available
• 42 Mbps DC-HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA, LTE where available
• 4 Megapixel UltraPixel camera with LED flash and 1080p30 HDR video recording, OIS
• 2.1 Megapixel front facing camera with 1080p30 HDR video recording
• Bluetooth 4.0 and WiFi 802.11a/ac/b/g/n
• GPS receiver with A-GPS, GLONASS
• NFC and micro USB with MHL (HDMI out)
• 2300mAh battery (none user replaceable)
• Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean with HTC Sense 5.0
• 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3 mm, 143 g
• Available in silver or black colour

The biggest upgrade over the HTC One X and One X+ is the screen. The 1080p Super LCD3 display has a resolution of 1080 x 1920, offering a retina-busting pixel density of 468 pixels per inch (ppi), or mind boggling 1404 sub-pixels per inch. To be fair, the jump from 720p to 1080p isn't nearly as apparent as say from 480p to 720p, but there is a very slight difference.

468 pixels per inch: eat your heart out Retina

Still, from a technology point of view, this is incredible. It took many years before PDAs with 240x320 and 320x480 displays were displaced by 480p screens, but it took only a year for 720p to flourish before going fashionably out of date. Suffice to say, you will need very good eyes to notice the difference, and 720p is still more than enough for the majority of people. Even then, from a technology's perspective, 1080p over a panel measuring a mere 4.7" diagonally is amazing.

Photosynth

Microsoft Photosynth is an app created by Microsoft and University of Washington, designed to create panorama 3D-dimensional models based on multiple images. Using the free software available from their website, users can stitch and synth their images and then share them on the Photosynth website. 20GB of storage is available for users.

Two type of images can be created - a panorama, which is created using an Image Composite Editor and the Photosynth app, or synth - a collection of high resolution images, which is more detailed, but lacks the seam-less transition of a panorama image. Here is an example of a synth I made using stills I took last December at Sushisamba in Heron Tower, captured on a Canon S90 and synth'ed and uploaded using the Photosynth desktop client:

And here is the panorama version of the same images when ran through the ICE application first before uploading to Photosynth:

The recently released Windows Phone 8 app also means that Windows Phone 8 owners can finally join their fellow iPhone and iPad users in capturing and creating Photosynth panorama easily and directly from their smartphones. Owners of the Nokia Lumia 920 and iPhone 4/4S/5 owners will get better results, as these phones contains the necessary gyroscope hardware, which combined with the accelerometer, will provide a more precise information over the devices' 6-axis movement in space.