#vLondon - Chris Pirillo London Meetup

So it's a typical British summer day (bright but showery) when non other than YouTube personality/Tech website creator/all round geek +Chris Pirillo decides to meet some UK fans - outside. Of course it was raining! He had flown over to the UK as a social reporter aboard British Airways UnGrounded flight from San Francisco to London Heathrow.

This gave Chris an opportunity to meet local fans in the UK and to provide fans an opportunity to meet each other. The Facebook event had over 100 attendees who said they were going, on the ground the figure of 75 was banded around a fair amount. Not bad for a vlogger/geek/tech meet up in Hyde Park with less than 48 hours notice.

The event was impromptu and unscripted, it harnessed the power of community on social media websites. Drawing together like minded individuals who may never have found each others online content, and almost certainly would never have met.

There was a lot of filming! This has created a collection of YouTube videos which show the event from almost every angle. It's a fascinating way to witness the event, even having been there in real life. Recently there was talk of crowd sourcing video at music gigs (on BBC Click). I can really see this working as it is very immersive.

Check out my video of the meet up below and be sure to check our the various other videos of the event, each with their own perspective.

OS X Mavericks Wallpaper

Apple's next desktop OS will be version 10.9, called OS X Mavericks, as announced at the recent developer conference WWDC2013. The OS will feature huge improvements on optimisation of both performance and power consumption, particularly useful for MacBook's. Other features include Maps and iBooks on your Mac, which sync with your iOS device, naturally. Improvements to other apps/workflows such as Finder and Calendar. Support for multiple displays is also improved.

If you can't wait to get your hands on the version of OS X you can at least get the default wallpaper which is below. OS X Mavericks also breaks the naming convention of recent years where Apple named Mac OS X after big cats (Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion).

Download the full resolution image here.

PS4 vs Xbox One - Game Sharing

Both Sony and Microsoft announced more details about their future consoles at this weeks E3 expo. One aspect which has got people talking is the different approaches that Microsoft and Sony have taken to used games.

With the PS4 title's on disc can be passed to another person, and played on their PS4, as shown in the Sony instructional video below! This video mocks Microsoft's proposed DRM (digital rights management) system which is thought to inhibit sharing of titles, even those purchased on disc...

The Xbox One may allow you to share the game with up to ten family members, reports n4g.com. But details are unclear to say the least. The DRM restrictions on the Xbox One include having to connect your Xbox One to the internet so it can communicate with the Xbox Live servers at least once every 24 hours, otherwise your games will not play! Historically there have been instances where Xbox Live has been down for days.

There are some Xbox 360 games, including Codemasters F1 2012, which separate the multiplayer license from the disc, meaning if the disc is leant or sold that the new owner has to download a licence from Xbox Live in order to play the online multiplayer feature. I'm not a fan of this policy (who would be?) and am not thrilled that Xbox One will be even more restricted.

Does the Xbox One DRM concern you? Will it sway you towards the cheaper and less restricted PS4? And since the Xbox One is not backwards compatible with Xbox 360 then Xbox 360 customers may be tempted to switch to PS4? Feel free to discuss in the comments section below!

iOS7 - First Look

Apple's WWDC2013 conference keynote did not disappoint. One of the announcements, and probably the one which will affect the most number of Apple's customers is iOS 7. Apple's mobile operating system has a brand new UI which looks great. It will be available on the iPhone 4, 4S and 5; the iPad 2, 3, 4 and Mini; iPod Touch 5th Gen.

Some of the new features such as the new music app look really good, but this post is just a quick first look of the new UI. From Apple's page: www.apple.com.

The new look is as per the rumours in some ways, simple colour palette, radical change from iOS 6. But in other ways it is just incredible. The apps apear to 'float' on a pane above the wallpaper. By tilting your device you can see 'behind' the app icons! There is a huge amount of translucency and the app icons look fantastic. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 - Unboxing

Join me live on YouTube as I unbox the Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500, and give you my first impressions.

The mouse features BlueTrack technology so it glows blue from the bottom rather the familiar red. It combines optical and laser technologies. Its a great little mouse, a perfect companion for your laptop.

More information from Microsoft: Click Here

WWDC2013

Apple's World Wide Developer Conference 2013 (WWDC2013 for short) kicks off in a weeks time on June 10th in San Francisco. The 5 day conferences promises to showcase to developers the direction that Apple is taking it's world class operating systems iOS and OS X.

The Apple fan base eagerly await new of features which will need to compete with the recent updates to Google Android operating system and the latest Samsung hardware such as the Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy S4 Mini (due in July).

Many predictions include a larger screen size for mobile devices. This may be more difficult to achieve with backwards compatibility unless it's equally scaled in both directions. Apple where keen to stress on the creation of the iPhone 5 that the iPhone was the perfect width for the human hand. Based on this I would not expect a huge size increase unless they run two models at different sizes. This is a habit they have previously made with the iPod and more recently with the iPad and the iPad Mini. Much like Samsung they would then cater for more screen sizes to suit individual consumers.

The conference may even hint at new hardware releases such as a much awaited retina display iPad Mini or 3G/4G connected MacBook Air. For OS X I predict there will be even further integration with Apple's iCloud and a more 'iOS' approach to desktop computing. This has been a theme for the past couple of years.

iTunes Match may be revamped to include a streaming service to compete with Google Play All Acess, Spotify, Rdio, Bloom and Last.fm. Many rumour mills refere to this Apple services as 'iRadio' which would certainly fit nicely along side iTunes, iCould and their iDevices.

The buzz around the event is already building. See the latest tweets #WWDC2013 below!

Tweets about "#WWDC2013"

Feel free to post your predictions to comments section below.