If Digg is about the users controlling the content, then shouldn’t Diggnation be the same? Why should Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht (or David Prager) choose the stories, when we could?

Sure, Alex and Kevin only pick stories that are highly popular on the site - which means we do have some say in what’s on the show - but thousands of stories hit the front page of Digg every week.

What I’m proposing is an extra button in Digg a Firefox add-on that, once a user has Dugg a story,  will give the option to suggest it for Diggnation. A limit of five or so suggestions per week would be more than enough per user.

The result of this should be a list of what Digg users want covered on this week’s edition of Diggnation. The stories covered in the show would be entirely controlled by the users who have opted-in for this add-on.

On the other hand, it’s Kevin and Alex that make Diggnation what it is, so they would know which stories they can entertain us best with. Diggnation viewers may also not be Digg users at all - their reason for watching Diggnation could be because they don’t want to look through Digg.

What do you think?
[...]

There’s a recent phenomenon of IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) services appearing across Europe, the USA and some other parts of the world. IPTV is intended to be the next-generation of television — delivering content to a user whenever they want it, rather than traditional schedule-based TV that we’re used to today. It sounds great — but there is one major dilemma: Internet.

As I have posted before, the world needs faster broadband. Delivering short, low-quality video clips that are compressed is no problem at the moment — but when it comes into larger, even high-definition video, most users’ internet connections will struggle.

In the UK, the current leaders appear to be ISPs: BT’s BT Vision, and Virgin’s Virgin Media — both of which are terrible services. They claim to give entirely “on demand” services; as it turns out, this isn’t the case. Both services come free or discounted when you purchase the ISP’s internet service, which is appealing to the consumer. However, both services do not work at all.

BT and Virgin have tried to combine traditional over-the-air digital TV with IPTV, and it doesn’t work. For a start, the actual set-top boxes are ugly: No thought has been put into the design, and good design is key to a good product. It’s the same story with the interfaces — BT are using Microsoft (not a good choice), and Virgin appear to be using a proprietary OS for set-top boxes. The interfaces are hard to use, and rarely do what you want them to do. Also, the quality of the streams aren’t worth watching on a TV bigger than 26 inches, in my opinion. HD streams is what the next generation of TV needs, not to go back a step in quality.

TV over the internet can work, but none of the big ISPs seem to get it. I think IPTV should be left to companies who are dedicated to changing the way we watch TV, rather than ISPs who are in the game purely for the money.

Last week, I picked up a copy of one of the most anticipated games of all time: GTA IV. It’s almost impossible that you wouldn’t have heard of this game - it’s been everywhere possible in the media recently, and had its fair share of good and bad controversy. 

Graphics

As you would expect, this game is only available on the next-gen consoles: Sony’s PlayStation 3, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 - not the Nintendo Wii. With the graphics power of these consoles, some incredible quality images can be rendered. GTA IV’s graphics are a definite improvement upon San Andreas’ - but because of the map size, the graphics aren’t quite up to the standards of other games - for example, Gran Turismo 5. Overall, the graphics are more than reasonable on a High Definition screen; the game runs smoothly at a native 720p resolution, and it looks great on most screen sizes. 

Gameplay

The gameplay has much improved upon the San Andreas. The vehicles handle much more realistically, almost life-like. The controls have also changed, and the PS3 now uses a layout more similar to what Xbox users had from the start. You use the R2 trigger to accelerate, which gives much more precision than just the X button - you also use L2 to brake in the same way; both of these minor changes make handling cars much easier, and give you more control over vehicle speeds. The new cover and auto-aim systems are a nice addition, although sometimes don’t work as well as they should.

Audio

In 5.1 surround sound, this game sounds incredibly realistic. You hear cars, gun shots and people from behind you, and around you as you move. The ambient noises around the city, from the people and vehicles on the street, are also very realistic.

As with all Grand Theft Auto series games, the soundtrack is a key element to the game. As you drive around the city, you can tune into a selection of radio stations, varying in genre - the best station in my opinion is Radio Broker.

Conclusion

This game lives up to the hype it’s received over the last few weeks. Rockstar have re-written this game in a brand new engine, and you can tell this game is different to the previous ones. The entire game is a phenomenally realistic experience - from just roaming around Liberty City, to participating in activities with your friends. I’m only 25% through the game, but I’m already blown away by this game.

[I apologize for the horribly rendered photoshop job above - it's all I could throw together in 30 seconds. Of course I'm not part of those 60% of Photoshop users who pirated it *cough*. As you can see, with my skills, it's not worth the $6oo price tag - that's my excuse.]

If you’ve been following the Apple blogs and rumor websites recently, you will have noticed a sudden surge in rumors about product launches in June. It all started with MacBook and MacBook Pro revision rumors expected to launch at the WWDC, and lead to 3G iPhone rumors in June, too. Here’s a list of everything so far:

The Mac Mini is not dead yet - it’s going to live on with more processor upgrades, and possibly a smaller case redesign.

[AppleInsider], [MacRumors], [MacScoop]

Penryn iMacs are expected to be launched, after the success of the newly-launched Penryn MacBook Pros - don’t expect a redesign, though.

[MacRumors], [9to5Mac]

MacBooks and MacBook Pros have both been recently updated, but only in terms of internal specifications -the design still remains the same. Many are expecting a complete redesign of the MacBook and MacBook Pro in June, most likely launched at the WWDC.

[MacRumors 1, 2], [AppleInsider], [Ars Technica]

Last but not least is the iPhone. Walt Mossberg recently caused a lot of speculation when, during a conversation about IPTV & Broadband, he said that “the 3G iPhone is coming in 60 days“. Well, now he’s saying quite the opposite. However, analysts still predict a 3G iPhone worldwide for June.

Out of all the rumors mentioned above, this is the most likely one - AT&T’s CEO even said it himself.

[MacRumors], [Gizmodo], [TimesOnline], [Stuff.tv]

What do you think: Will any of these products come out in June, or will Apple wait until later this year?

Whatever it is you do, you need to backup your data. Until recently, there was no easy way to do this on the Mac - without having to buy third party software that backed up on a schedule. Luckily, Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has something called Time Machine built-in. Time Machine backs up everything on your hard drive hourly, so that you can “go back in time” and recover files that you may have mistakenly deleted. This works great, but takes up a lot of space. I have Time Machine backing up my MacBook to a Western Digital My Book Studio Edition - a 500GB FireWire drive.

For Windows users, Vista offers some backup facilities, but not anywhere near as intricate as the Mac’s. However, Windows users do have a vast choice of third party applications for backups.

But most of us only backup internally, to a drive connected locally to your computer. What if your house were to burn down? Your data would go with it. Fortunately, there are some solutions out there. Online backups are becoming better all the time . Mozy is supposedly a great service for doing just that, as is a free alternative, DropBox.

But online backups have one major downside for most of us: Speed. Even with today’s fastest broadband, upload speeds vary from 256kbps to 1mbps. Until fiber optic broadband with the same up-speed as down arrives, online backups aren’t going to be efficient for files over 100mb.

I haven’t really answered the question, “What is the best backup method”. There simply isn’t one right now. I would back up as much as possible, where possible - but keep it safe.

A lot of readers from the USA may be thinking: “What’s Bebo?”. Well, apparently, Bebo wasn’t ever that successful in the USA - instead, MySpace and Facebook took the lead. For those who don’t know what it is, it’s a social network just like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and all the rest. It’s been a huge hit in the UK, and most people I know have used it before and have an account.

I personally found Bebo a much better experience than MySpace; however, when I came across Facebook, it became my new favourite social network. At the time I found Facebook, it didn’t even support UK networks. But it was Facebook’s simple and intuitive interface that kept me coming back to the site.

If I were to guess, I’d say Bebo is about even with Facebook for UK users at the moment. According to the Telegraph, they are actually the UK’s second most popular social-networking website.

I think it’s a smart move for AOL to buy Bebo for $850 million, from both Bebo and AOL’s perspective. Bebo has been starting to struggle in the past few months, because of Facebook’s domination of the market - although Bebo is still a strong presence in the social-networking world. AOL is an internet giant that is now struggling to compete against new Web 2.0 start-ups. Bebo could be the key to getting AOL back on track; and AOL could be the key to bringing new, exciting features to Bebo.

Forget the Wii for a minute - although it’s a next-gen console, it’s not in the same league as these two consoles. The decision between a PS3 and an Xbox 360 is like Mac and PC. Different people have varied opinions on the matter; they will usually support the console they own.

I have a PlayStation 3 and love it; I see no compelling reason to buy an Xbox 360 at this point in time. The PS3 has the best graphics (in HD resolution terms, at least), Blu-ray built-in, free online play and a great selection of games. I’ll agree that the 360 has far more games than the PS3, but this is simply because the Xbox 360 has had an extra year of time for developers to make the games for it. I think the PS3 has a great future ahead of it - we’ve already seen a number of promising games confirmed for release this year. Blu-ray winning the format is an extra bonus for current PS3 owners, because now we don’t need to buy another player. Those looking for a Blu-ray player should consider a PS3, too - although there are some cheaper ones now.

The Xbox 360 only outputs a maximum of 720p (unless you buy the ridiculously-priced “Elite” version), only plays dual-layer DVDs and you have to pay £40/year to play online. Xbox users claim their Xbox Live online experience is superior to that of the PS3 - but to be honest I’ve played both, and the difference is marginal - definitely not worth paying £40/year for.

It will be interesting to see what Microsoft does next with the Xbox 360. Now that HD-DVD is dead, they are expected to release a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360. Sony will become its own competition, as it has a large stake in the Blu-ray disc association.

What are your thoughts on the console war?

…Actually I didn’t - because I didn’t have a blog back then. But I told everyone I knew on Twitter, IM, and whatever other social networks there are. If you don’t know already - Blu-ray has won the format war - it’s over. So what to do with your new, but now out-of-date HD DVD player? Well, Ryan Block at Engadget has posted the “top ten things to do with your HD DVD player”.

But why did Blu-ray win over HD DVD? What I’m about to say may or may not be true, it’s just my personal opinion on the matter. So, here’s my top four reasons why Blu-ray won the format war (in no particular order).

1. Playstation 3 -  This obviously means that every PS3 (and there are a lot of them - no matter what the Xbox fans say) counts as a Blu-ray player.The Xbox 360 doesn’t actually have an HD DVD drive in it. You have to buy one separately, and after you’ve added the cost of that, it will cost you the same, if not more than a PS3.
2. Better name - You would think that HD DVD is the better name - but it’s not. Saying it is just too much of a mouthful, and it sounds too much like DVD. Blu-ray doesn’t sound like anything else - and people will know instantly what you’re talking about (if they know what Blu-ray is).
3. Major supporters - Asides from Sony, the Blu-ray disc foundation has hundreds of major companies supporting it. Apple, Hitachi, HP, Dell, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, LG and more.
4. More movie studios supporting it - This is, of course, the final thing that made Blu-ray become the winner. The movie companies are the ones producing the content for these discs after all. Walt Disney, FOX, Warner Bros., Sony, MGM, New Line Cinema, Paramount and Universal Studios are just some of the big ones supporting Blu-ray. (virtually no-one is supporting HD DVD anymore).