Gerhard Potgieter

Monday Nintedo went head on with Microsoft and Sony when it launched WiiWare, its new online repository of downloadable games.

From appearance a service where Wii gamers will be able to shop for new, independant games. WiiWare seems to be Nintendo’s answer to Microsoft’s XBox Live Arcade and its XNA Studio, and to Sony’s Playstion Store.

WiiWare launched with six games: Square Enix’s Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, Frontier Development’s LostWinds, XGen Studios’ Defend your Castle, Nnooo’s Pop, High Voltage Software’s V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack, and Gameloft’s TV Show King.

Nintendo said that they would add new games to WiiWare each Monday, as there are currently more that 100 WiiWare titles in development.

And while many gamers would like to see more games in the system at launch, the fact that there are so many in the pipeline already means that Nintendo will likely not have to worry about populating the service with new weekly titles for some time.

For independent developers, the service also provides a new avenue for getting their work in front of gamers, and on a new platform. Microsoft has been very aggressive with using its XNA platform as a way of bringing independently created games to the Xbox community, and now Nintendo will be able to compete for some of those developers’ time.

Google has joined the revolution to make the web more social by introducing Friend Connect to enable people to interact with their friends.

Friend Connect follows just after announcements last week by social networking sites Facebook and MySpace to open up their data availability to be used on personal websites.

Data Availability and Connect let users move their personal profiles and applications to other websites.

Google says with Friend Connect, any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running right away without any complicated programming. This will run the complete range from invitations to member’s gallery and from message walls to reviews.

As 99% of sites are not currently socially enabled, Friend Connect has a big potential market in front of it and the route to all things profitable in this space will be through tapping into “the deep profit and user data flowing through Friend Connect.” In other words, mining that information through advertising.

Google is being cautious about approving sites to use the new code and is creating a waiting list for requests to use Friend Connect. It says it expects to give the go ahead to a few dozens sites in the next few days.

Meanwhile MySpace and Facebook anticipate rolling out their offerings over the next few weeks.

Rumor has it that Telkom will be launching a 8mbps ADSL trial anytime soon. According to several users from the MyBroadband forum, Telkom techies told them that Telkom will soon be launching a 8mbps ADSL trial.

This comes to no surprise as cellphone companies MTN and Vodacom has launched their 7.2mbps HSDPA services as a trial a month or 2 back.

According to the techies the 8mbps will be first run as a trial to current 4mbps users. My question is just with all this speed when will we have uncapped accounts or high cap account to accommodate all that speed for a fraction of the cost it currently goes for.

So lets just have a look at what the requirements are to have a 8mbps line running at its full speeds. Currently there are various 4mbps users that can’t even achieve their full line speeds, this is cause of the fact that they live far from a exchange. ADSL works at a maximum distance of about 5km from the exchange for normal low end speed. According to the graph below to achieve a speed of 8mbps you’ll need to live about maximum 1.8km from the exchange and that is the worst case to sync at 8mbps. Just take in consideration that there are other factors that can also influence sync rates to the exchanges such as.

• the length of copper wire from your premises to the exchange - this is always higher than the distance ‘as the crow flies’.
• the number and type of other digital services being used by other customers over copper pairs within the same cable sheath.
• the configuration and line quality of the copper wire pair between the exchange and your premises.
• electrical interference from outside sources (such as electric motors).
• the configuration of the copper wiring within your premises (ie use a central splitter for optimal performance).
• the software configuration and application on your computer (in particular how it uses the uplink back to the exchange).
• your ADSL hardware.
• the capacity of, load on, and access data rate of the destination host computer which you are accessing.

All and all I wont say no to a 8mbps line, and sure the majority of users out there won’t either. Maybe this is just what is needed to bring down the cost of faster ADSL speeds and maybe introduce cheap uncapped or high cap accounts. You can follow the MyBroadband thread here.

Not many South Africans know about the ZA Tech Show yet, but its popularity is growing with every podcast.

The ZA Tech Show is a weekly South African technology podcast where they discuss all the latest trends and technologies thats happening in South Africa. The podcast is now at their 10th episode and can be download for free from their website.

The ZA Tech Show is led by a panel consisting of Simon Dingle from Hypertext Media, Duncan McLeod from the FM and FM Tech, Jon Tullett from IHS, Benedict Kelly from Finweek and Brett Haggard also from Hypertext Media.

So if you are a technology junkie and would like to keep up the trends then this podcast is a must for you. Big up to Simon Dingle - founder of ZA Tech Show - and his team for a great weekly podcast, i’m sure you’ll make it big with this show.

So I’m not a big Facebook addict like the majority of www users out there, but once in a while I would log on to Facebook to leave a quick PM to friends abroad or see what everybody is up to. Personally I think Facebook is one great piece of development, and has all the features one could think of except one which was a live chat function.

A while back I saw a leaked video of a live chat for Facebook and and first thought it was a hoax or something, but after thinking about it I realized that this was one feature that would make Facebook stand out even more and something that I believe every user would use if not abuse during work hours.

So this morning I logged on to Facebook and saw this bar at the bottom of my browser, and after looking at it realized that Facebook chat finally got implemented. I must say I’m quite chuffed with the addon, looks good doesn’t bother my browsing experience and is easy to use.

To the left is a picture illustrating the the chat program expanded showing your online friends and a open chat windows. Its as simple as clicking the online friends bar en a small window pops ups showing all your online friends. Then you just double click the friend’s name and a chat window opens and then your ready to chat.

After sending a message you can close the chat window and once you receive a new message it will automatically pop up. Without any windows open the chat applications sits at the bottom of your browser just as a small gray bar with 4 icons.

You also have the option to detach the chat application from your current Facebook page and view it in a seperate window if you feel that doing all in one browser window is to much.

So big up to the Facebook Development team for this fine addon, I’m sure you hits will now sky rocket even more. Just a shame now this will encourage more companies to block the Facebook website for their workers as this means productivity will go down the drain even more now. But non the less still a great addon.

So this is the NanoStation2, it gets described as “The Ultimate CPE for the Global WISP Community” but lets see what makes its manufacturers think that this device is so leet. Firstly this is the NanoStation2, where the hell was the NanoStation1? Me being part of CTWUG I have all my doubt in this little device as all devices I know that really packs a punch in the wireless industry is Mikrotik Routerboards. So lets have a look at the NanoStation2 specs as given by the Ubiquiti website.

• Processor Specs: Atheros AR2316 SOC, MIPS 4KC, 180MHz
• Memory Information: 16MB SDRAM, 4MB Flash
• Networking Interface: 1 X 10/100 BASE-TX (Cat. 5, RJ-45) Ethernet Interface
• Wireless Approvals: FCC Part 15.247, IC RS210
• RoHS Compliance: Yes
• TX Power: 26dBm, +/-2dB
• RX Sensitivity: -97dBm +/-2dB
• Antenna: Integrated 10dBi Dual Pol + External SMA
• Outdoor Range: over 15km
• TCP/IP Throughput: 25Mbps+
• Max Power Consumption: 5 Watts
• Power Supply: 12V, 1A (12 Watts). Supply and injector included
• Power Method: Passive Power over Ethernet (pairs 4,5+; 7,8 return)
• Operating Temperature: -20C to +70C (System PCB optimized for hi-temp)
• Operating Humidity: 5 to 95% Condensing
• Shock and Vibration: ETSI300-019-1.4
• Weight: 0.4 kg

Out of personal experience with wifi networking I dont think this devices comes close to the Mikrotik Routerboard 133c, and just to mention the 133c is not being produced anymore as its being replaced with the RB411 that packs a powerful 300Mhz Atheros Networking processor. And the lack of a high gain antenna puts me off, as 10dbi is not worth it for a CPE. The throughput listed there is hard for me to believe, maybe in a lab at a distance of 5m but still then i have my doubts as a 175Mhz Atheros cpu maxes out at about 14mbps. Sure it has a kinda powerful radio, but that anway illegal in South Africa. If I must take a guess the NanoStation would retail at about R700 - R900 here in South Africa and for that price I would rather buy a custom Routerboard CPE from scoop. All in all the NanoStation looks good from the outside but with the multitude of CPE enclosures you get nowadays there is better designs out there.

Just to sum it up, I dont forsee this device competing with any Mikrotik produk in the near future as Mikrotik has a good OS on their devices and has allot of power behind their devices that overtakes the NanoStation by far.