the verge

Polygon

During the night here in the UK, Polygon launched. Polygon is the SB Nation/Vox Media video game website which was incubated in The Verge for a while and is now out on its own at www.polygon.com.
The Polygon.com front page at launch
I had registered on the Polygon landing page earlier in the year and received an email during the night to let me know that Polygon had launched. I found the email very amusing and have decided to share it with you. So here's the text from the email:

A long time ago, on a landing page far, far away, you ignored everything your parents ever taught you and entered your email address into a form on the internet. While normally we would join your parents in frowning on this kind of behavior, this one time it seems to have worked out! You asked to be notified when Polygon.com — the new video game website from Vox Media — was live and well, friend ... today's that day.
So fire up your favorite web browser, be it desktop, tablet, or mobile-based, and load up:
http://www.polygon.com-Team Polygon
So there you have it! They have launched and already have lots of great gaming related content on the site.

I also found Nilay Patel's article announcing the Polygon launch very amusing. You can check it out at The Verge here: Polygon is here!

Well done to everyone involved in the launch, lets hope this isn't a symptom of The Verge Fragmentation...

EE's UK 4G tariffs leak: :-0

I've been toying with the idea of switching my personal mobile phone contract to EE, the first UK 4G provider, since I discovered that Edinburgh will be covered from launch. This morning while reading The Verge I saw the table of the leaked tariffs and ended up making an impression of OMG cat.
I was making an impression of this cat.
The tariffs seem to be extortionate  but then if you think about it as well as limited amount of data you do get unlimited calls and unlimited texts. Here's the table of the tariffs, as compiled by the clever Ben Kersey from The Verge.
EE's 24 month tariffs at launch, courtesy of The Verge.
Well, that was an inertial dampener on my rush to be a 4G early adopter... I think I'll wait until there is more competition on the 4G market before switching, especially because for less than half the entry level tariff on EE I can get All You can Eat Data from Three UK.

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below. If you are of Orange or Magenta persuasion, feel free to troll in the comments section below, I'll just ignore you.

Ice Cream Sandwich Released [:-)], MoDaCo Down [:-(]!

As reported on The Verge, the Android Open Source code to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has been released! This means that anyone can start playing about with the open source code and using it in custom ROMs and ripping out some of the Ice Cream Sandwich goodness, if they wish to...
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Has Been Released!


My first reaction when reading the news was "Quick! I need to get over to android.modaco.com and see if any of the clever people have ported Android 4.0 to the ZTE Skate/Orange Monte Carlo/BAP!". Sadly at the time of posting android.modaco.com is down. Hopefully it will be back up soon and porting will be underway.
MoDaCo Down! :-(
On Twitter I noticed a couple of interesting tweets from CyanogenMod, the leader/bacon lover of CyanogenMod fame: the first tweet reads as follows: "..and we're off. check back in 2 months :) #cm9 #ics" This means that the CyanogenMod community has already started working on CyanogenMod version 9 based on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. They may have it ready in a couple of months. Why not check the ETA with them... (that's just a joke. The first rule of CyanogenMod is to never ask for ETAs).

The second tweet "We're still going to get CM7.2 out the door while CM9 is being worked on." means that the  current version of CyanogenMod is not deprecated, there will still be one last hurrah for the Android 2.3.x Gingerbread based ROM.

[UPDATE] MoDaCo is back up and running. When I got back from work everything was where/how it was supposed to be.

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions. Enjoy Android 4.0 if/when you get a taste of it!

The Verge Is Here!

I follow technology and consumer electronics news and views a lot. The internet is a great tool to do this, and as in real life the sources are important.
News collection, communication and redaction are of paramount importance in an industry as open, manipulated and secretive as it is. For many years Engadget used to be the first site I went to, and I even started listening to the Engadget podcast. Earlier this year Engadget went downhill. The Engadget protagonists Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel and Paul Miller and their "Special Guests" (among them Joanna Stern) left AOL (parent company of Engadget) and went off to start their new venture with SB Nation, as I blogged in this post.
The Engadget Fragmentation (it's a podcast meme applied to the team) lead to SB Nation and a site called ThisIsMyNext.com was started as an interim home for the crew and their new content and excellent new podcast. Later this summer a name was announced for the new venture: "The Verge".
The Verge is now live and it is an impressive new site. Much thought, effort and work has gone into the creation of The Verge, which is definitely something new. As well as a consumer electronics news site it is also a community hub (you can register and join in the forums), device database and covers more than just consumer electronics. The design is clean and magazine like, definitely easy to spend time reading and skimming.

Well done to everyone involved in the launch of The Verge, my new first click website for news and views on consumer electronics!
As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.