About bloody time

The announcement was made this morning that O2 are going to get the Palm Pre in the UK, Ireland and Germany, with fellow Telefonica subsidiary Movistar getting it in Spain.

But while this confirmation is nice to have, the carrier information was already more or less a given - very few people doubted, especially in the last few weeks or months, that O2 would be the one to take the Pre to market here. The arguably more important information about pricing and the release date - which was also rumoured to be getting a reveal this week - hasn't materialised yet.

I'm still hoping to get a Pre on release - and in fact the later it lands, then the easier it should be to get out of my current Vodafone contract - but it's frustrating to have so little firm information. They'll apparently be bringing the phone to market before the end of the year (in time for Christmas, allegedly), which is certainly pointing towards the end of November or start of December, if the verbiage used to describe the US release is anything to go by. Palm spent the first five months of 2009 telling people that the Pre would be out "in the first half of the year", and released it in early June - so it's a fair bet that a "second half of 2009" release won't materialize until early December.

(I realise this is turning into a bit of a one-track posting habit, but hopefully I'll stop talking about the bloody thing once I finally get it.)

Pre, post-launch

So, the Palm Pre is out now in the US. Anybody got one (or tried one out) yet? I've read a whole bunch of reviews and forum posts, but the opinions of people I know online are always much better than random blogs and forum idiots.

I'm dying to get my hands on a device to try it out for myself; even just so I can try out the keyboard, which seems to be the main area of complaints, and the only part of the phone I have any significant concerns about. There have been a few reports of overheating, bricking and screens being warped, but this is a first-gen device and I don't think anybody was expecting a perfect machine straight out of the gate. Sprint and Palm seem to be doing a good job of replacing faulty devices, but that can't be doing wonders for their already-low stock levels.

I've got it on good authority that the UK release for the Pre will be in October (pending supply; December if things fall through), on O2. Presumably we won't hear any official announcements until the stock situation calms down enough that they can forecast availability for the UK launch, but it's frustrating to have to rely on third-hand information and rumours for so long.

In any case, I'm hoping that the hardware and software issues that have been encountered during the American launch will be largely ironed out by the time we see the Pre arrive on this side of the pond.

otaSCOTIA

There's an online geek radio station called otaSCOTIA that I recently put together a WordPress skin for - it's just gone live, so check it out and let me know what you think (of the site, not the show - that's @otascotia's side of things).

Pre in September?

All current rumours point to the Palm Pre getting a UK release sometime around September, which is pretty good, I guess. The American release is, according to the same speculation, coming out early July, so it hopefully won't be too unbearable a wait.

Most rumours still seem to be pointing to Vodafone as the carrier here, so hopefully that one will pan out too, and I can keep my number and won't have to change my contract too much.

...

I don't know how to express how the news from Northern Ireland over the last few days makes me feel. The cynic in me wants to roll my eyes and think "it was only a matter of time", but Goddamn it I thought we were past all this shit.

What exactly does this accomplish for anybody?

Excuse me while I despair for my country and the people still living there.

Palm Pre: Can Has?

Since it was announced at CES in January, I've been following the new Palm Prē very closely. I don't think I've ever been this excited about a piece of gadgetry.

(In case you've not seen it yet, here's a pretty decent 26-minute demo.)

At CES, it was mentioned (probably in passing) that information about the UK launch of the device would be announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which has been running since Monday. I'm checking the "gadgets" folder in my Google Reader feeds every 20 minutes to see if anything new has been announced, but so far there's been nothing substantial; a few new features, some clarification on what it can and can't do (so far), and the first chapter of the textbook on developing new applications for its webOS operating system.

Rumours abound about the carrier that it'll eventually land on in the UK. The American version of the phone will be on Sprint, while a lot people seem to think that Vodafone will get the UK contract. The strongest evidence is that the phones at the MWC were running on Vodafone's network, but I thought that they would be too concerned about the impact on Blackberry Storm sales (and now, the HTC Magic) from the Palm Prē - which seems to have a buzz about it bigger than any I can remember other than the iPhone.

The MWC ends today, so there's only a few hours for them to announce the UK carrier - if it doesn't come out of the congress, chances are it'll be long after the (still un-dated) American launch before I get any idea of when I'll be able to pick one up.

Too much time on their hands...

Some joker here at work (I'm pretty sure I know who) has started a Twitter feed for our cat.

Lucy

We got our new cat just over a week ago (on the 9th). She's settled in very well, and took much less time to get comfortable in the house than I thought she would. Then again, she's already six years old so we probably shouldn't have expected her to be as jittery in a new place as a kitten might have been.

She looks fairly grumpy in most photos, though:

We're getting a cat

Since long before we bought this house, we've been wanting to get a cat, but since we've always been renting it's never been an option. Now that we own a house, there's no reason not to get one, so we went 'round yesterday to one of the cat adoption places here in Dundee to see what they had.

There's a gorgeous silver tabby called Lucy that we're quite keen on getting. I kind of wish I'd taken a photo of her, since the one on their website doesn't do the colour of her coat justice (not that my camera phone would either). The people at the shelter said she'd been returned twice before for being a biter, but she seemed happy enough to be petted when we were there.

We're going to be away for a while over Christmas, but we do hope to take her as early next year as we can, if nobody steals her from us first.

The adoption people have got to come 'round and look at our house to make sure it's suitable for a cat, but I don't think there's anything that would concern them about it. Maybe the gap under some cupboards in the kitchen, where we had to pull out the kick-board to get the washing machine in, but that should be easily replaced.

Please do it at a pub.

Apparently there's enough concern in the Japanese town of Toyohashi about drunkenness on trains coming up to Christmas and the New Year that they've started putting up these fantastic posters asking people to keep it at the bar:

I love the expression on the face of the guy in the foreground. He looks like he's about to give a stern narration to the viewer.

Via Gaijin Tonic.

And now, a message from the Auto Industry...

Hmm

We were supposed to get six inches of snow last night, but none of it materialised, so we just have the last couple of days' slush. Part of me's glad I didn't have to excavate the car this morning, but I'm still a little disappointed.

In other news, I have every Friday off between now and Christmas (only three of them, but it's three long weekends!), and our work Christmas party is this weekend.

Snow!

I don't know whether to be annoyed or happy about this.

California Fallout

Via sonia-leong

This photo leapt out at me from a series of beautiful, yet tragic shots of the Californian wildfires. This one just took my breath away - I don't want to sound flippant but it looks unreal, pretty much exactly like a screenshot from Fallout 3. Which is supposed to be set in apocalyptic wastelands 200 years after a nuclear holocaust. Life imitating art. Very scary.

New Xbox Experience

On Friday evening (the night before I headed to Glasgow for two days to attend Auchinawa), I got into the preview program for the New Xbox Experience. I basically just had time to create my avatar (see below) and install a couple of games to the HDD before we had to leave, so I've not had much chance to get into the nitty-gritty details of the "experience", but it seems like an improvement in a lot of ways.

I'm not sure the new placement of some options is as intuitive - changing your theme is now located under your Xbox profile rather than the system settings - but it kind of makes sense since it's not a global setting for the entire machine.

Still, I'm sure after a couple of weeks using it this second iteration of the dashboard will be as easy to get around as the old one was.

I was pretty impressed at how well I was able to create myself with the avatar system though - compared to any other character creator I've ever used, none of which has ever been able to create even an approximate likeness of myself, my Avatar is frighteningly close to how I actually look. I don't know if everyone else will be as fortunate, though - my girlfriend wasn't able to make one that's as accurate.