I’m going through the website of Cartoon Network and realized there are so many interesting characters.  Guess may be parents will know all about them.  Here’s one called Ben 10 who is pretty popular, managed to get their HTML codes and see if it works in my blog.

Microsoft today announced a new hardware called Surface which is essentially a coffee table-shaped computer with touch screen.  Forget about mouse and keyboard, the concept is to interact with human with voice, pen and touch.

This is a really futuristic design and idea.  Based on initial reports, “It allows people to touch and move objects on screen for everything from digital finger painting and jigsaw puzzles to ordering off a virtual menu in a restaurant.”

“It also recognizes and interacts with devices placed on its surface, so cell phone users can easily buy ringtones or change payment plans by placing their handsets on in-store displays, or a group of people gathered round the table can check out the photos on a digital camera placed on top” … according to a report by Reuters.

I wonder what will happen if someone places an ipod on top … may be it will be destroyed automatically like the recorder in “Mission Impossible” and a window poping up saying “time to replace your ipod with Zune”?

Anyway, the item will be selling for $5,000 and $10,000 each initially.  Can’t wait to see one of the real thing.  It will be installed in some casinos and hotels in the US first. 

I thought this ad was nicely done.  You really don’t want to miss any part of it once it has started!

Quite a new and different concept with the sports stars trying to communicate a message thru art. Check it out:

Haven’t been updating my blog the past week or so as I took a break during the Chinese New Year holidays.  During the holidays, I had my first experience with Nintendo Wii game console at my brother-in-law’s place.

I’ve heard so much about the wii but being a casual gamer, I still have doubt on whether I should make that investment.  Furthermore, there are only parallel imports from Japan and US at the moment so not sure if they are that reliable.

Nevertheless, my first experience with wii did not disappoint.  I only tried wii sports which comes with five games including tennis, bowling, baseball, boxing and my favorite golf.

The game control is quite sensitive and it does reflect on your motion on the screen.  For that I had a new term: WYDIWYG - What You Do Is What You Get.  Most of the games are quite easy to pick up except for baseball which I find rather difficult in timing for a nice hit or a home run. 

Tennis is nice as I can now rip a textbook style one-handed backhand down the line instead of using two hands in reality.  Golf is also nice as it allows me to practice my swing indoors.  However, there par 3 holes are very difficult as it does not provide a lot of landing space and you will keep getting OB shots.

Despite a much later release, the wii console has already outsold Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft X360 in the US by almost double at over 400,000 units.  Looks like Nintendo has hit a homerun on this.

One of six Samsung handsets unveiled at the 3GSM World Congress, the F700 features a QWERTY keypad, touch screen interface, 5-megapixel camera and large screen.

This may be the phone that I have been looking for (at least before iPhone is available). I’ve been thinking about the O2 Zinc and Dopod 838 Pro but they still seem a bit bulky. This one is really stylish and with a 5 Megapixel camera and a keypad, I could easily blog as I go. Wonder how much will be the price tag?

read more | digg story

Most of the recent talks on MS is about Vista. But without much fanfare, they also announced WM 6.0 during the 3GSM conference in Barcelona. It’s really an improvement of its way in handling email and that it suppose to sync better with Vista. I don’t see major breakthroughs here. Just hope that the new version will be more stable than before.

read more | digg story

You saw the first photos right here on Engadget. Now, Nokia brings the official specs on their S60-series E90 Communicator…

Looks like this gadget got all the right specs that any mobile warrior would like. But at a price of Euro 800? It’s going to be a challenge on how many units it will sell.

read more | digg story

So after about 5 years of delay, Vista finally arrives.

There are some reports saying that people lining up to get a first chance to buy the product but I think the hype is a lot less than years ago when MS launched Win 95 and Win XP.

Many critics especially Mac lovers will say that Vista is nothing really special as that is what a Mac OS is doing right now.  That may be true but to 95% (worldwide share of computers running Windows) of computer users, that is still something to look forward to.  Speaking of Mac vs Windows, I really like the series of recent Mac ads, a lot of them actually targeting Vista upgrades.

I find myself not really eager to the first batch of Vista converts as I have doubts on the bugs that may still running and on the computing power that it requires to run this probably.  So I guess I will keep a close eye on the early reviews.

Nevertheless, this probably is good news for the overall computer industry especially the hardware companies as many users have been delaying their purchase waiting for the arrival of Vista.

For those who are interested, here’s an interview of Bill Gates on Vista by Business Week.

Can’t help to write a bit more on iPhone.  The amount of press that iPhone received since its announcement has been phenomenol.  I’ve been reading from BusinessWeek, Time, CNN websites on their detailed coverage and analysis.  HK Local newspaper Apple Daily even covered the news on its front page. 

There are some doubters on iPhone, saying that it is too expensive and that it does not offer 3G.  People are also worried about battery life which was also one of my concerns.  However I understand that there will be 2 seperate batteries with one for phone and the other for iPod so that should work out fine.

As for the point about 3G, my view is that they will continue to push on product development and I won’t be surprised that Steve will announce a 3G phone in MacWorld 2008.  Probably also a iPhone Nano with less functionalities but price at a more attractive level.  Just look at iPod and you can notice that there has been so many new versions coming to the market since the first one was launched to the market.  It was not until iPod mini’s launch that it really made a big impact to the mass market.  I expcet iPhone to have a similar path.

It will be interesting to see how other big players react before the first batch of iPhone is being made available to the market.