The guys and girls at DionWired have offered me 10 sets of double tickets to the official Nintendo 3DS launch happening this Friday at Montecasino. If you would like to attend, leave a comment below, and I will pass it along to the guys at Nintendo.
Unfortunetly you only have till 4pm today to do so :)
Go go go…
A few weeks ago a package arrived at my door that had an XBox & Kinect nicely packaged inside, to try out for a few days. I have been lusting over an Xbox for the last couple of weeks(months), and was really excited to get one to try out. So, I opened the boxes, and literally in 5 minutes, I had the whole system up & running in my lounge. Within in a few more minutes I was jumping around like a mad thing, trying to make my imaganry raft float down an imaginary river in my lounge. Soon after I had the wife next to me trying to get the damned raft to the end of the river, while collecting our imaginary coins. As you can see, so much of fun !
But. That’s where my Kinect fun ended :(
Well actually, my fun ended and my kids fun started. Over the course of the next couple of days, I was relegated to “game disc changer” & supervisor. I was banished to the couch to watch, and given the dirty evil eye, that only a 6 year old knows how to master, whenever I attempted to play.
In all seriousness, the Kinect got rave reviews and a sturdy “Thumbs up” from the kids (and the wife). The guys at XBox sent me 3 games to try out.
Kinect Adventures,which is the standard game that comes with all Kinect devices. This is the fun one which allows you to play a whack of games, including the river raft one which got us all excited at the beginning. The other game was Dance Central which my daughter loved and had all the moves down to Lady Gaga down to a T after the 2 weeks. The last game we got was called Kinectimals, which is a really cool adventure game for the kids, where you get to take your pet tiger across an island. Another sure hit with the kids.
I also managed to get the XBox live portion of the console working, which works really well (and simple to setup), and allows you to connect to friends and play against them. I am also keen to try out some of the sport & fitness games which will help with the weight loss mission I am on at the moment.
All in all the Kinect & XBox was a sure win in our house, and made things tough to explain when the daughters Birthday came around last week. I know for definet that the Kinect will be high on the “must have gadget list” for the year, even if it is just for the kids.
Thanks to the guys at Microsoft & XBox for the chance to give it a run, you have potentially made me a bit poorer :)
[twitter style=”vertical” source=”MarcForrest” float=”left”] As I mentioned in my other post about the Johannesburg U2 concert, I got to meet Tinus and the guys from FanCam. I have been a huge fan of Fancam who produce the most awesome 360 Pano’s of various events. They have recently captured the US by storm by capturing Fancams at a Colts NFL game, Duke Univeristy basketball game, a Celtics NBA game !! as well as the Vodacom Tri-Nations game at the FNB stadium last year. This weekend, they will be at the Daytona 500 in the US capturing what could well be the biggest FanCam ever captured.
They were asked by U2 to capture the crowd at the concert on Sunday and as you can see below it went off brilliantly. You can check out the full pano here -> http://www.u2.com/gigapixelfancam/. Once you have found yourself you can double click on your image, and tag yourself. You can then share the image on Facebook, Twitter or Email.
The guys at SAFindit, another “straight outta Durbs” startup, have recently launched their new look site. SAFindit is a fantastic service which allows users to the site to search for restaurants, accommodation, plumbers, electricians and and and…well, pretty much anything that offers a service :) To get a better idea of what I mean, check out this listing for Gateway Shopping centre or The Toad in the Village pub in Noordhoek
The site has some really cool social integrations like geo-location services like Foursquare & Gowalla, as well as showing latest tweets about the venue/service. The listing also shows you where to find it on a Google Map, as well as the streetview of the location. Another really cool feature of the site is their collections, which group together some of the best venues/services in that specific category. So for example, if you want to see a list of recommended places in Ballito, you can check out @TheBallito‘s list here ->http://www.safindit.co.za/collections/the-ballito/. Another recently added addition to the site is their “Specials” section which collates all the daily specials from sites like and other service providers listed on the site.
This is a really great service, and after chatting to the guys at SAFindit, they really are growing huge, fast. This means that they are also looking for two or three of the best Web developers that we have on the East Coast. A strong background in web development using technologies such as PHP, ASP.Net, JavaScript, MySQL, SQL Server etc is required to join in one of the fastest growing startups in Durbs. There are a whole bunch of projects on the horizon for the team, which sound really exciting. For more info about the job spec & requirements, check out the job spec on Thirst4Work -> http://www.thirst4work.com/candidates/job.php?jobid=53
I can’t wait to see what they come up with next ! Well done guys, another perfect example why sunny Durbs is the place to be :)
It seems that CellC are at it again. They really seem to have captured a unique portion of the South African mobile market, and it seems the “social media generation” are loving it. Just a couple of days ago they announced MyTools, which allows you to manage your cellphone contract & network from the web, and this evening they took it to the next level.
Tonight, Red Bull Mobile was launched in Jozi, at what seemed like an awesome event. The headline act for the evening was Faithless, alongside Goldfish & DJ Ready D. I would have loved to be there !! They also announced their new packages which they will be offering on the CellC network. Originally Red Bull Mobile was speculated to be a MNO in the same fashion as Virgin Mobile, but in fact it looks as if it is simply a diversification of the Cell C brand into a new market.
The packages they have announced look awesome, and they will be offering Android powered devices on launch. I’m still not 100% convinced about the Android devices though, as I still feel that the full use of them can’t be warranted in South Africa, where you aren’t able to buy apps, only get free apps (another post for another day)
The 2 packages that they will be offering are very well priced in terms of competitors, and I can see a huge uptake with this one !
The 2 custom branded phones they are offering are both made by Huawei and are the Huawei U8150 IDEOS (RMB C) & Huawei U8800 IDEOS X5 (RBM HD). The phones will also come preloaded with a couple of Android apps, including a Fitness app, Red Bull Radio & Red Bull X-Fighters
The other cool thing is that the new packages will work on the new high-speed CellC network, which will make for some great on-device browsing !
All in all, another great innovation from Cell C, and I can’t wait to see what they have next on their plate ! Well done :)