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Darren Waters

My tech highlights - 2007

  • Darren Waters
  • 29 Dec 07, 15:28 GMT

Looking back on a year in technology and choosing the most interesting/impactful/surprising announcements or moments is always a tough challenge – it’s like picking a favourite child when you have an entire brood.
But I wanted to share the 10 moments that stood out for me personally in the last 12 months as a way of kickstarting the blog.

And so, in no particular order…

1. Remote play – PlayStation 3

Sony’s “unloved” console has taken a battering in the media and the number of exclusive titles that are also high quality can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
But the steady flow of software updates for the machine are beginning to bear fruit. The ability to access your connected PS3 anywhere in the world via a PlayStation Portable could one day be a killer application. Right now in ranks in the “very cool” territory.
It may not be that practical to play original PlayStation titles via your PS3 over an internet connection and on to your PSP, but it points to a very exciting future for Sony fans.
The ability to stream media – especially video – coupled with the release of a digital terrestrial TV tuner for the PS3 in the new year, could make the device a Slingbox killer.

2. Twitter

Twitter is one of a number of micro-blogging tools, which are pioneering a new form of online conversation. You can send messages, links – and thanks to tools like Twittergram and Qik, even audio and video.
It still feels like conversation at a pretty exclusive dinner party of geeks, but Twitter’s ease of use and ability to inform people and converse from almost any connected platform makes it a highly functional tool.
For sharp opinion and the latest news I tend to use my Twitter feed as my first point of call.

3. Call of Duty 4

Halo 3’s multiplayer elements may have been the best use of online in gaming in 2007 but Call of Duty’s single player campaign was the most intense and brilliantly realised piece of action.
The gulf between Hollywood immersion and gaming interactivity has always seemed unbridgeable, but anyone who has dropped into the long grass on Call of Duty 4 and tensed up as the enemy soldiers and armoured vehicles rolled pass knows that the distance is narrowing.
From skulking through the deserted remains of apartment buildings in a post-disaster Chernobyl to the impact of a nuclear explosion, Call of Duty 4 was the game to take your breath away in 2007.

4. Visiting Industrial Light and Magic

From the moment that giant starship elegantly passed overhead in the opening sequence of Star Wars I have dreamed of one day visiting Industrial Light and Magic, the visual effects geniuses.
I had the chance this year – and it was a delight to wander the corridors, filled with movie memorabilia such as the disc section of the Starship Enterprise to the model of Harrison Ford in carbonite, from The Empire Strikes Back.
I also had the opportunity to visit the nerve centre of ILM, the data center.
But most exciting of all was the chance to meet the people of ILM, including Oscar winners, who were gracious indeed to spare me their time.

5. My hybrid PC-Mac life

I use Macs at home and on the road, but a PC at work, so I often run into problems sharing data and information across two operating systems – from my e-mail to calendar and contacts information.
There are enterprise solutions – none of which are embraced by the BBC – so I’ve had to find my own systems.
This year I stumbled across two programmes which have made my life so much easier – Plaxo for sharing contact information across devices, and Spanning Sync, which syncs my Google Calendar information with iCal, on the Mac.
It’s still not a perfect solution, so if you have a better suggestion, let me know.

6. Breaking the terabyte limit

My first-ever hard drive was for a Commodore Amiga and it had 20MB of storage - and I never believed for a moment that I would fill it.
But a recent purchase of a 500GB external hard drive for my desktop – in order to back up photos and music – prompted me to add up all the storage at my disposal at home.
Including games consoles – PS3 and Xbox 360 Elite – plus various pocket drives, I realised I had more than a terabyte in personal storage in the house.
At the moment they exists as islands of storage- for example I can’t move content from my Mac to my Xbox, or from the Xbox to the PS3, but in the coming years I imagine that networked storage across devices will become more and more common.
Combined with the rise in online storage, soon there will come a time when any file you have ever downloaded, created, or altered will be available to you at any time, anywhere in the world, and on any device.

7. DivX support for Xbox 360/PS3

Games consoles like the Xbox and PS3 want to be at the heart of your digital world – and both machines took a step forward in that regard when they belatedly embraced the DivX video codec.
DivX is a highly popular codec – an efficient format for compressing and playing back digital video – used by many people who swap TV programmes and other video content over the net.
You could argue this move actually facilitates copyright infringement because now it becomes easier to watch pirated content back on your shiny HDTV, rather than on a monitor. But I see it as a step towards embracing video content without DRM restrictions.
We’ll see….

8. The connected world

A truly connected world is still some way off but I got an incredible thrill when two colleagues sent me a link via text message to a video clip of their visit to a Nigerian school trialling the XO laptop, better known as a the $100 laptop.
The video was shot on a mobile phone, edited with free tools on an Apple Mac and then uploaded to YouTube.
I got my first glimpse of the impact these laptops were having on children’s lives thanks to a mobile phone, an internet connection and simple distribution tools, ie YouTube.
I also realised the true story-telling potential of simple consumer technologies for the first time.

9. Joining the PVR revolution, belatedly

This hardly counts as new technology, but the BT Vision box I was given by BT – after I threatened to move to a different ISP – has transformed TV viewing in our household.
The box is intriguing because it is part Freeview Personal Video Recorder and part IPTV device; I’ve yet to use the internet television facility because you have to pay to download programmes and I think they should offer at least some for free.
Yet given that the box is connected to my router, BT should be working on letting people move their content to laptops, PCs and other connected devices as soon as possible.
Come on BT – embrace the connected revolution.

10. Social gaming

Friends of mine will know that I am a long-standing admirer of the Halo series. I’ve always loved the SF schlock plot, the high production values and intense action.
I’ll admit, I was disappointed by the single player campaign in Halo 3 – the storyline was underwhelming, and took no risks - but the online elements were brilliantly realised.
The multiplayer aspects remain the gold standard for consoles – and probably for PCs too – while the ability to share saved films, screenshots, and modded maps, put Halo 3 at the forefront of the user generated content explosion.

That’s my top 10 – and I could easily have picked another 100.
I’d love to hear yours.

Rory Cellan-Jones

About Rory Cellan-Jones

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 29 Dec 07, 15:24 GMT

First, a confession. I never owned a Sinclair Spectrum; nor did I build my own PC out of spare lawnmower parts in my bedroom. I'm so old that the only computer at my school filled a room and only boys in white coats, who were prepared to feed it with ticker tape, were allowed near it.

I came late to technology, but that makes me all the more keen to communicate just what is exciting and important about it to as many people as possible.

Rory in 1991
16/01/1991

I am a BBC lifer, having started out at as a researcher on Look North in Leeds in 1981, and spending most of my career as a television reporter covering business and industry. You know the kind of thing - standing in the rain outside collieries and car factories threatened by strikes or closure, trying to interview people who didn't want to talk to you. Then in the mid-'90s, I discovered the internet. Okay, it had been around for 20 years by then - but for me, it was a life-changing experience.

As a business correspondent, it was the source of a whole new kind of story, as new companies were born, flourished and crashed within months. I covered it all for the BBC - they even called me Internet Correspondent for a few months in 2000 before deciding that the internet was over after the dot com bubble burst.

I went back to my old job, but at home and at work, kept banging on about the profound changes the internet was bringing to our economy and the rest of our lives. Finally, the BBC relented and made me Technology Correspondent at the beginning of 2007.

I live in West London with my wife and two sons who play a big part in my technology journalism. Adam, who is 17, is my consultant on the games industry - despite no evidence of musical talent he took only hours to become a Guitar Hero on the Wii, while I am still being booed off stage. Nine year old Rufus has strong opinions on all kinds of technology (Dad, why are there no good games on your phone?) and his review of the $100 laptop has won wide praise.

So while I lack geeky credentials - as I keep telling my colleagues, I'm not the man to defrag your hard drive - I am excited by all the big technology questions. Who has built a really smart smartphone? Will Steve Jobs ever crack the video market? Who will win the battle to bring cheap computing to the developing world?

And I'm also convinced there is a huge BBC audience eager to discuss these issues and more. Speak to you soon.

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