All Gadgets Aside...

Sony Ericsson announced a new mobile phone today that sports some unique features that will make it stand out. The S500 is a 14mm slim slider phone that has constantly changing themes and illumination based on the time day of day or night. It also apparently contains some sort of "hidden illumination" that is supposed to make you stand out from the rest. Even without these features the mobile phone itself is a very attractive model and kind of side steps Sony's usual look. Beyond its look and odd new features it hs a basic feature set with a 2 inch screen, 2 mp camera and GPRS/EDGE. Expect to see this one on the shores of the US sometime in the third quarter. I am not quite sure when this is supposed to hit the rest of the world but when it does it's worth checking out.

All this excitement surrounding E3 and the 3 competing gaming systems got me thinking. I used to be a rather devout Sega follower. The problem was that although Sega was always on top of innovation they always seemed to release their system too early and then someone else came along with a system that was 1/2 step up the technological line. Right now it seems that Microsoft may have put themselves in the same position as Sega. Sure, the Xbox 360 is a great and powerful machine, but what about Wii and PS3? It looks as if so far the offerings from Nintendo and Sony will surely outdo Microsofts gaming lovechild.

As I was thinking about this I hopped on over to the Xbox 360 Site, the Nintendo Wii Site and found the most recent spec sheet for the PS3 at PS3land. The first thing I was trying to find was whether or not each one has a web browser, obviously we know that Wii has the best one, Opera. In a new video of PS3's interface on YouTube it appeared that the PS3 did indeed have a browser although it wasn't functional in the video yet. As far as I can see on the 360, there isn't one(correct me if I am wrong, I still have yet to play with one).

The next thing that I was curious about was wireless network connectivity. On the Xbox website I found out that if you pay more and get the souped up 360, they give you an ethernet cable($20 USD value at Best Buy) and if you want to go wireless you have to buy an additional adapter for $99 USD. On the other hand, both Wii and PS3 are supposed to have Wifi built in. Now if you are reading this now and you are using wifi, you know how incredibly convenient it is to not have to deal with wires, especially if you allready had a computer plugged in.

The one other thing I wanted to see was whether or not wireless controllers were standard for each of the systems. Once again I found that if ou went with the 360, you could pay more and have wireless(interesting trend). We all know that Wii has wireless controllers, and very interesting ones at that. The PS3 appears to have Bluetooth standard for the controllers.

Now the point of this isn't for me to bash the 360 but it's to show the similarities to Sega's trend in early release. This may not always be the smartest approach to releasing game systems. As you can see from E3, the excitement over the 360 has really died down and the excitement for the PS3 has gone up incredibly due to Sony's keep it quiet approach. Excitement for Wii has gone up because Nintendo intends to change the way that you game in general with all sorts of new innovations.

The more and more I read and hear about Sony's Reader the more appealing it begins to sound. The biggest attraction with this device is the eink technology. If you aren't sure what eink is as of yet then let me explain. Eink is a display that only uses power when changing the picture. When you are reading a page, the image essentially is stuck there until you tell it to change and the screen is actually doing nothing when you arent changing pages. Get it? So I am fan of Anime and I have never really read much manga but the idea of being able to carry an entire library with you is appealing to me. Being able to purchase an entire 10 book set of manga for less in an electronic format sure beats paying 10 bucks a book. And for all of those that enjoy the newspaper, imagine recieving the newspaper in your email each morning(not sure if any of the newspapers have thought of this idea, hmm I shoudl patent it). But this device is pretty incredible and is definitely worth watching. Anything that can get me reading more and sitting online less can't be half bad. Right?