CNN have put together a great slideshow of the evening, see it by clicking here.

A truly fascinating and momentous night. Unforgettable.

This little wonder is out officially tomorrow, but I got a sneak peak.

Firstly, I was really impressed with the shape and how it fits in your hand. I was not originally a fan of the bent bottom, but the way it moulds into your palm for calls is excellent. Within minutes I found the whole interface very intuitive.

The screen flips out very easily to reveal a perfectly functioning keyboard with great responsiveness. I was navigating so easily with the keyboard and buttons, I forgot about the touch-screen!

The applications are too many to mention, but even Google Maps has a nice twist to it. Run it, it’ll find your location, and with the built in e-compass as you turn the street view changes to actually reflect a 360 view. Very strange, but clever and cool.

I’m told the battery life is good, even with 3G on all day with average use. The iPhone 3G’s battery from experience isn’t too good for an average user and won’t last the day.

The camera is a powerful 3.2 megapixel one, with autofocus. Even down to a macro-level I was impressed with the quality. A neat application I saw was a bar code scanner linked to the camera. Scan a bar code in a shop, and instantly it brings up the details - and even links to Amazon to see what they’re selling it for - and buy it there and then. Clever.

The whole look-and-feel, UI and navigation has been given much thought. Again, after a short time, I was moving around the screen and applications like a pro.

I don’t think it’s a serious contender in the corporate space yet, but as soon as the applications appear similar to ActiveSync and security is proven, it’ll be a winner for sure. These will still fly off the shelf tomorrow without a doubt.

Something like a blog takes a lot of upkeep, (it’s been well over a month since I last blogged. The gap between the posts before that was only a week)

Then you have Facebook, Flickr, Vimeo, Friendfeed, Twitter, etc. Perhaps it’s time for me to rationalise? If I was to keep all this afloat it would take a fair chunk of my day.

That’s my point. Times change, priorities change. Workloads change. It really is a full-time job. Priorities and workloads have changed for me. I’m so behind:

• I haven’t updated my 365day Flickr project for well over a week. I have the photos, but haven’t uploaded them
• I haven’t ducked into Facebook for a long time now
• I Twitter regularly as I can do that easily on the move in downtime via my Blackberry
• I haven’t encoded and uploaded my backlog of video to put on Vimeo for a long time
• My career related networking sites such as Linkedin are getting out-of-date
• The photos I’ve taken over the last few weeks are backing up on my memory cards, rather than being edited and uploaded

It’s all mounting up. Have you thought about giving up some parts of social networking? If so, what are you cutting back on?

They beat the conventional way of doing things by the major mobile providers by negating the following:

• contracts
• deposits
• rebates
• activation fees
• number porting
• complex bills and billing
• overages

It looks pretty cool too.

I’m an advocate for getting back to basics and keeping it simple. I think it could be a winning formula. What do you think?

I’ve been using it non-stop and getting great results. I’ve had the Sony DCR-PC9E MiniDV Handycam since 2001, it served the family well, but a change was needed. Moving from tape to memory card is a delight.

To take the flash memory out of the camera, download and edit on the PC in full HD has to be seen to be believed. The camera is well spec’d with:

• 30p progressive
• AVCHD
• HDMI sockets
• Full HD 1080 (1920×1080 recording)
• Dolby Digital
• Cinema mode - 24p

I’ve created a very quick clip in the cool Cinema 24 mode, downloaded it to my iMac and edited it in iMovie and then uploaded it to Vimeo.com (which I highly recommend - if you haven’t got an account yet, get one!)

Here’s an embedded test clip. For full HD, you need to visit the Vimeo.com site.

First trial of my new Canon Vixia HF100 - in HD from David Burden on Vimeo.

My friends and colleagues are scandalised that I won’t be buying an iPhone 3G tomorrow. “Why?” they asked - I’ll tell you why:

• The camera is no better than my Blackberry Curve, in actual fact it’s worse. It’s the same resolution, but there’s no flash
• Battery life. The iPhone battery life will not be great if you use 3G all day. If you switch it off to save battery life, you might as well get the original iPhone and use wifi
• The tariff for a new iPhone 3G is more expensive than the last. If you don’t live in a 3G area, you will still need to pay the 3G network fees
• You cannot send or receive MMSs
• From the home page I can read an email with a spin of the wheel and two clicks - the iPhone is a long navigation route
• I can do multiple selects, deletes, moves, read/unread selections - and shortcut key strokes
• If the room was full of smoke and I needed to call the local fire department or send an email to friends to say my feet were on fire - I could not touch type with the iPhone
• You cannot capture video clips on the iPhone 3G, unless you download some dodgy software
• No spell check on the iPhone
• You cannot copy and paste - this I cannot believe it’s a huge detractor. However, a new phone wouldn’t solve this, but new software would
• You can search your contacts, but you have to type the contact name specifically. The Blackberry lets you make mistakes. On the Blackberry you can do a remote Exchange search - you can’t do that through ActiveSync
• The iPhone might have ActiveSync, but you won’t be syncing your notes and task list anytime soon

Some of these are obviously a little tongue-in-cheek, however I think I will stay with the original iPhone and the new OS 2.0 for now. But for those of you buying, I’m still envious…!

I wanted to upgrade as, (a) I’m impatient, and (b) the upgrade brings massively improved functionality - the main ones being, better media player, video recorder, HTML email, better user interface, availability search for calendar invites.

So how did I do it? Here’s how. And please, do not contact me if you have problems. I don’t recommend this unless you think you know what you’re doing!

These instructions are only for owners with a Blackberry 8310. I am on the AT&T network in the USA. This method has not been tested by me on any other network or anywhere else in the world. Also, to get the full functionality of things such as HTML email, your BIS service must be running BIS 2.5 - but I believe they all are now.

This process may remove any applications you have installed and may remove your corporate policy if you have one. Be warned.

Also, start to finish, this process can take an hour or more. Once you start, you can’t stop, so make the time.

1. Ensure you have the latest Blackberry Desktop software installed. You can get it here: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/desktop/

2. Install the Blackberry Desktop software.

3. Download the latest OS firmware from here, the only place to offer it right now - the Germany Vodafone site. (By the way, the official release by US operators is looking to be released around September if you can wait that long)

4. Install the OS firmware download.

5. Plug in your Blackberry, your device will be identified and the upgrade process should begin. The process, as I’ve said already, can take a long, long time. Lots of rebooting and white screens are normal. Be patient.

If you end up with a white screen with small icons and the number 507/543, simply connect to Desktop Manager again and run the application loader once again.

Good luck and enjoy! I’m certainly loving the new look.

I made an appointment with a personal shopper in the Stanford Apple store. Fantastic service, the guy really knew his stuff. I even got really into the deep technical questions and threw some curve balls around PC and Mac wireless networking, filesharing and DNLA, but nothing seemed to phase him.

I walked out with a shiny new 24″ iMac with the following:

• 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 4GB memory
• 1TB hard drive
• 8x double-layer SuperDrive
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS with 512MB memory
• Microsoft Mac:Office 2008

Took it home, the setup was straight forward and even though the Apple Store offered to do it for me, I now begin the long road of transferring all my files from PC to Mac. I thought I might as well throw myself in at the deep end. Watch this space.

Other key takeaways:

• 35% of the Fortune 500 have participated in the iPhone 2.0 beta program. The top 5 banks, top 5 security firms, 6 or 7 top airlines, 8 of 10 top pharmaceuticals and 8 of 10 of the top entertainment companies
• Great mobile applications and games to come
• Apple will release a unified push notification service. It preserves battery life and maintains iPhone performance. It all works over the air over wifi and cellular - and it’ll be available in September
• There will be document support for all Microsoft Office files, addition of many new languages, bulk delete and move of email, ability to save files and pictures, new scientific calculator and parental controls
• Enterprise application distribution
• MobileMe, platform agnostic application suite; all applications looking like Apple native applications - looks nice. MobileMe is branded as Exchange for the rest of us - with proper ‘push’ functionality. Users of .Mac will be automatically upgraded, it will be available for $99 a year with 20GB of storage. Free trial for 60 days with iPhone 2.0
• iPhone sold 6m before running out, customer satisfaction 90%
• Need to make iPhone more affordable and allow sales in more countries
• iPhone 3G announced, black back, thinner at the edges, full plastic back, solid metal buttons, camera, flush headphone jack, improved audio
• With 3G, iPhone 36% faster than the Nokia N95 and Treo 750
• GPS included
• Full Exchange support, secure VPN
• Want to expand access to iPhones across the world, larger market, 70 countries in the next few months. iPhone will be sold for $199 for an 8GB - heavily subsidised. $299 for a white 16GB model

I see it as a challenge to post something daily and also be creative. I’ve been in awe of people doing this, especially my friend Paul.

The rules for the group are: “A self portrait is a photo of yourself taken by you - it is not a photo of you taken by someone else and it is not a photo of something you hold near and dear to your heart. Please don’t try to interpret ’self portrait’ into something drastically different than what it is. You are only allowed to submit one photo for each day. Only one. Feel free to do whatever you want to do within your own 365 Days set, but only send one to the pool.”

My first attempt was this:

001/365 - Tired eyes

This is my first photo for 365days. I aim to take a picture of some part of me for a whole year. This picture was taken on my Blackberry so it’s not a great quality, but I have been travelling all over the UK since mid May and am extremely tired. I looked in the mirror today and saw tired, red, eyes. Wish me luck on my 365 project…

My 365 day set is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dburden/sets/72157604705931719/

Or you can setup a RSS feed to follow my progress by clicking here.

Every single 365 contribution, can be seen here:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/365days/pool/

I had to find a suitable replacement. I wanted to definitely get a Blackberry, and I definitely wanted a camera. I didn’t really think I would ever use wifi on a device - and if I had to choose between GPS and wifi, I’d go with GPS. I’ve never had a problem with the speeds over GPRS or EDGE when using a Blackberry.

I also thought about the new Blackberry 9000 that will be out later in the year. However, from what I’ve heard and read, the specifications sound great, but the battery life seems poor. The cost of the unit will be fairly substantial too. It’s supposed to have a high quality finish and the photos leaked seem to suggest that, however from people I know who have actually touched them, it seems to have a plastic feel to it. I cannot be sure that’s true.

The 8310 is my seventh Blackberry, but not my seventh phone. Can anyone out there beat that?! You can have a look at all the Blackberry devices I’ve owned at an old post here. A sample photo taken in bad light with the flash can be seen here. It doesn’t look too bad at all:

So, I wanted to go back to a bigger screen, a ‘proper’ keyboard and have a decent camera. Hence my choice of the 8310. So what have I noticed so far:

• The keyboard is great. A big improvement on the last wide Blackberry I had, the 8700g.
• It has a great feel to it, seems solid in its build
• The camera is a huge improvement on the Pearl 8100. Obviously it’s a 2MP camera now, but the interface, the larger screen and a flash that is much improved makes a huge difference
• The GPS functionality is great. I use the free Google Maps for Blackberry. When you run the application it first triangulates via mobile phone towers and locks you into around 500-1000 metres. However, in seconds, the GPS kicks in and pulls you into your actual position. I’ve seen it get as close as one metre.
• The general UI is very much improved and speed of the device is noticeably better than the Pearl. I can actually watch video and listen to music (in stereo) on my Blackberry now via my additional 1GB card
• I have a tethered modem tariff via AT&T and the speeds I get are fantastic

I’d highly recommend this Blackberry.

It got me thinking, how would my family feel if my PC and hard-disk died tonight? Probably nothing much initially, but after a couple days when the dust settled, you’d get that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach that you’d lost your whole life to a hard-disk failure.

Even though I do a weekly backup of my PC to an external hard-drive and I upload my pictures to Flickr, what would happen if my PC and external-drive died? Unfortunately for Paul, his 1TB hard-drive died without warning (as you’d expect)

Just at a rough glance this evening, I have:

• Around 780Gb of information on my PC
• 90Gb of photos that go back to 1999
• An iTunes folder storing 94Gb of music and video
• Email archives of 16Gb stretching back to 1998
• Websites I’ve produced racking up 600Mb
• 160Gb of family video
• And disappointingly (because the filesize is so small), but probably most importantly, 920Mb of family and personal documents

On Paul’s recommendation, tonight I signed up for Mozy. I didn’t want to leave it another day. It’s a piece of software that sits on your PC and copies your important files to a secure, remote server for safekeeping.

I’ll sleep more soundly tonight.

UPDATE - 4 August 2008: This evening, my iMac finished it’s first backup. Just over three months since it started. That was a long time! It took this time to backup 73,000 files which weighed in at 188.2GB. However, the incremental backups that are happening now are taking around seven minutes.

This video shows some of the new look interface, which hasn’t changed a great deal apart for a few new options and the version 2 firmware. The new 3G, GPS iPhone is a little slimmer with a matt-black finish instead of the polished silver we all know and love.

Take a look at the clip here:

Sony has announced the PS3 now has DTS-HD Master Audio support, which is one of the highest resolution audio formats for films, with Dolby TrueHD being the only other contender (the PS3 supports this too, by the way).

Most new Blu-ray players can output DTS-HD MA, however only a small amount of AV receivers can actually decode it. The popular format gives the user a 7.1 audio channel, which is as close as you’ll get to the original studio master. The update will output all 7.1 channels via HDMI, but only to those few receivers that can actually take a 7.1 PCM stream, like the Onkyo TX-NR905.

There’s also a revamped Playstation store - not such a big deal, but it’s a deal. It now seems that the store is an application on the Playstation itself rather than it all being web-based. It’s very slick.

This is my second WRT300N, the first one went back last year as it died. Before that, I had a Linksys WRT54GS router - and swapping back to that for a few days actually gave more stability but slower connection speeds and less range (as you’d expect)

The D-Link DIR-655 router I bought today seems to be a stellar improvement on the Linksys. It has more configuration items, but the way in which it has automatic Quality of Service (QoS) seems to be a winner - especially when I’m playing online. No more disconnects or game stalling, even when Sara, my wife, is also online surfing da web. The range seems to be more wide and long too.

I also have to say, from a support perspective, D-Link have it ’sussed’.

Easy install CD, a great online help site and a good user interface within the router menu options itself.

So far, the D-Link seems many times better than the Linksys. However, to be fair the Linksys router is nearly two years older than my current one even though they still both support draft-N.

I guess that’s the price you can pay when you’re an early adopter of technology…