The release of Tony Blair’s memoirs yesterday caused a bit of a stir which you would expect when any ex Prime Minister lifts the lid on the secrets of Government.

It also marked a welcome change in eBook pricing. Amazon is selling the Kindle edition for £6.99 which compares quite well to the hardcover which is £12.50. It’s also pleasing to see it released on the same day. I checked the iBooks library, but it was not available at the time of writing.

Epic Citadel is now available to download. This is the game that was demonstrated at the Apple Keynote yesterday and is the first that has made me think “This is on a phone?” Unbelievably good.

From the circus bazaar on the outskirts of the castle grounds to the mysterious cathedral at the center of town, Epic Citadel will dazzle you with a visual parade of special effects that recreates a stunning and realistic world only imagined by Epic Games, and powered by the critically acclaimed and award winning Unreal Engine 3.

Epic Citadel was created using the same tools and technology used to develop high-end consoles games, now delivered for iOS devices.

A beta of Swype is now available to try for the Nokia N97, N97mini, X6, 5800, and 5230 with more devices expected to be supported over time.

From Nokia Beta Labs- “Swype provides a faster and easier way to input text on any screen. With one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard, the patented technology enables users to input words faster and easier than other data input methods—at over 40 words per minute. The application is designed to work across a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more.”

Check out the video demonstration below for more details-

Orange has unveiled High Definition Voice which sounds awfully catchy. It will work on select phones and claims to offer louder, clearer, sharper mobile calls. I will be doing some research into this to see what is really behind the product…

Orange today announced the first major advancement in UK mobile voice calling for 20 years with the launch of mobile High Definition (HD) Voice. Providing crystal clear sound quality for calls, mobile users will see the service set a new consumer benchmark, with today’s move testament to Orange’s continuing focus on innovation.

Orange HD Voice is available at no extra cost to all Orange mobile customers who take a HD Voice enabled handset. From launch, new variants of the Nokia 5230, Nokia X6, Nokia E5 and Samsung Omnia Pro will be HD Voice enabled with further manufactures expected to offer HD handsets in the coming months. All HD Voice enabled handsets will be labelled with the Orange HD Voice logo, helping customers to easily recognise those devices that support the new Orange HD Voice service.  HD Voice demonstration units will also be available in Orange shops.

This is for those of you using Windows to access the internet- approximately 90% of you. Will update this once the Keynote starts. The Apple store is currently down which means that new products should be online imminently.

• Steve Jobs is on stage wearing completely different clothes than normal. Just kidding. Woz is there as well. ‘Really Cool’ already used once.
• Apple now has 300 retail stores in 10 countries. A new store in Spain will make it 11. On some days over 1 million people visit the stores. 80,000 1:1 classes taught per week. More than 50% of people buying Macs are buying their first.
• 120 million iOS devices shipped to date. Activating more than 230,000 iOS devices per day. 200 apps are being downloaded every seconds. Lots of annoying applause after each statement.
• iOS 4.1 being introduced today and is available next week as a free download. Proximity, Bluetooth and iPhone 3G performance bugs fixed. HDR photos added.

• HDR Photos enhances photos which can be affected by too much light on the device itself.
• Game Center is all about multi-player games. Auto matching, challenge friends, compare scores etc. Fair to say that the interface is very un-Apple and actually quite ugly.
• A game called Project Sword is being demonstrated- WOW! It’s not out yet, but it shows the potential.

• iOS 4.2 is all about iPad. It brings all that we have on iPhone to the iPad plus wireless printing. AirPlay is also being introduced which is, you guessed it, ‘really cool’.
• AirPlay is the new name for AirTunes; you can stream audio, videos and photos to other devices over Wi-Fi. iOS 4.2 demoed on the iPad. Basically offering what we know from iOS 4.1 on the iPhone. 4.2 will be released in November for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.
• All new designs for every iPod model. The iPod Shuffle lives on. It is smaller, but the buttons return and voice functions remain. 15 hours (!) of music playback. Five colours and only $49.

• The new iPod Nano is 46% smaller. 24 hour music playback (!!), multi-touch touch screen and it looks like a tiny iPoad Touch. Actually looks usable despite the size. Built in FM Radio, has a clip and Steve is now demonstrating it. Impressed. It’s an iOS device and the screen can be rotated all the way around. 7 colours available including Project RED and is $149 for 8GB and $179 for 16GB.

• iPod Touch time! The iPod Touch is apparently the number one portable game player in the world- outsells Nintendo and Sony portable games devices combined; over 50% market share. 1.5 billion downloads to iPod Touch alone. Here we go-
• New iPod Touch is even thinner- has a retina display, powered by the Apple A4 chip, 3-axis Gyro and FaceTime. HD video recording included as well. 40 hours of music playback (!!!).

• Starting from $229 for 8GB Touch. You can pre-order today and they will be shipping next week.
• Onto iTunes. The next version is iTunes 10 and now has a new logo with no CD.

• Ping is new in iTunes 10 which is dubbed a social network for music. Apparently it is ‘really cool’. You can check what the artists are doing and also share information with friends. You get a customised Top 10 based on the people you follow. Lady GaGa mentioned a lot so far- so where is she Steve?
• Ping looks like a cross between Facebook, Twitter and everything else- can see where this is going. For a start it is a great way to get people buying more music from iTunes. Lots of talk about privacy as well including how you can limit it to your circle of friends. Open to 160 million iTunes users straight away.
• Demonstrated Ping and played a tune plus a video from GaGa telling everyone what she is doing, concerts etc. Nice bit of promotion there…
• Ping also works on the iPhone and iPod Touch- could be HUGE! iTunes 10 is available today!
• One more thing… AppleTV. Not a big hit so far. Fair to say that the new Apple TV is small- you can hold it in your hand.

• All rentals, no purchases- you store nothing. Content can be streamed from a computer- photos etc. $0.99 to rent HD TV shows, $4.99 for HD films. ABC and Fox signed up already- waiting for the rest. You can stream from Netflix as well to the new Apple TV plus YouTube, flickr and mobileme. Apple TV interface looks quite simple and clean.
• Now demonstrating Glee on AppleTV. My daughter is happy with that one… The system plays streamed content from a PC really well- looks like an iPod for photo slideshows.
• Back to AirPlay. You can stream content from an iPad or iPhone to the new AppleTV. US, Canada, UK, France, Germany and Australia supported at launch. Price is now $99. I might buy one of those. Then again, my iPhone 4 is pretty good for films and TV episodes already- what a price though- available within 4 weeks.
• To sum up- ‘Really Cool’.
• The guitar is now on screen again. Steve is introducing Coldplay. Noooooo! Anyone, but Coldplay… or U2. Oh well, the products were impressive anyway.

Nokia has released update v51 for the E72 which brings with it a browser upgrade, the Ovi music client upgrade, new chat functionality and much more. The full changelog is here.

Co-Pilot for the iPhone and iPad has been updated and now includes ActiveTraffic which appears to be US centric at this time.

According to the AAA, 34.4 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles this Labor Day Weekend.  That means plenty of picnics, bbqs and a lot of TRAFFIC JAMS!

ActiveTraffic continuously monitors traffic conditions on over 260,000 miles of road for delays as you drive and will alert you if it finds a faster route.  If a faster route is identified, it will indicate the estimated time you’ll save and provide an option to preview the new route before you decide to detour.

When you consider the quality of Nokia smartphone cameras, we don’t see many apps that can enhance the resultant images. Nokia Beta Labs is looking to change that with HDR Capture and Low-Light Assistant for the Nokia N900.

The HDR Capture application is meant for situations with too much light, especially when the background is bright (e.g., sky) and the foreground has less light (e.g., a person). Using normal camera to capture a single image would typically lead to a black silhouette of the person with a nice sky in the background. HDR Capture measures the brightness of the scene, captures 1-3 images as the user presses the capture button, and combines them into a single image that should show details of both the bright and dark areas.

The live stream of today’s big Apple event will make it a lot easier to track. It is a shame you need an Apple product to watch it though, but let’s hope the servers hold up.

Apple® will broadcast its September 1 event online using Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on September 1, 2010 at www.apple.com.

This broadcast is the property of Apple and is protected by US copyright law and international treaties. Any reproduction or distribution is strictly prohibited without prior written approval from Apple. Please contact Apple Public Relations with any questions.

Would you pay for access to the websites you like? This is an initiative which is being explored by Newspapers, but I am curious as to if you would consider paying for access to your favourite websites? Personally, I wouldn’t and believe that websites need to stand on their own two feet to survive by other means.

I decided to give R-Type a run on my iPhone just for old time’s sake and what a blast it turned out to be. Not only did it brings back memories of the hours I spent playing it on my Atari STE, but surprisingly it has proved to be just as captivating as it was all those years ago. It is still frantic, still frustrating, and gloriously long. Very few games make me want to come back time and time again to get through a level and I am still hankering for just one more go.

That’s all very nice, but the real story for me is how my 10 year old son greeted the game.

“This is too difficult!”

“Is this what you called fun when you were young?”

To say he has been struggling with the game is an understatement, and this for a boy who is way better than me at Doodle Jump, Angry Birds, Loopy Laboratory and countless other games. He is a bright kid, he cleared all of the levels in Loopy Laboratory in 1 day, but he struggles to cope with the challenge R-Type offers him.

And I am so happy that he is struggling because I can ramble on about how things were more difficult when I was young, you don’t know you are born etc. etc. It feels weird to reminisce about computer games, but we have reached that time where they are too old and difficult for some children today.

R-Type is an exception because the retro renaissance happening in the App Store has not always produced titles that are worth playing today. For example, the Commodore 64 emulator is going just too far back and the games are rubbish. However, I come away feeling slightly smug that some of the games from my day are slightly too tricky for my 10 year old son and that’s a good feeling. It feels even better to be playing the game on a phone 23 years after I first played it and to still be enthralled by the experience.

I am a person who is more likely to jailbreak and iPhone than most. I like the idea of shaking my phone to bring up Expose panels and I can see the benefit of many of the other apps and tweaks that are currently available. In theory you can customise and do much more with a jailbroken iPhone and it should be a no-brainer to make the jump and crack it open to enjoy all of the new possibilities.

It is not illegal and on the newer phones, like the iPhone 4, it should not have the performance impact that jailbreakers experienced on earlier iPhones, but still I haven’t made the jump and jailbroken my iPhone 4.

As much as I want to do this, I use my iPhone far too much to take the risk of bringing instability into my daily mobile routine. It would probably work perfectly and offer me much more flexibility, but I just can’t do it. Somehow Apple has made me believe that it will cause problems without implicitly saying so. One thing Apple is good at is making you feel that it’s core software configuration is always best and this is where the controlling nature is of benefit.

Palm has published details of what we can expect in webOS 2.0 and the features look ‘quite’ impressive. Original link is here.

Stacks
Experience the next-generation of multi-tasking

Palm’s groundbreaking card metaphor made multi-tasking on a handheld device easy and intuitive for the first time. webOS 2.0 takes it to the next level by grouping related cards in stacks, reducing clutter, and making it even easier to move quickly between tasks. webOS 2.0 automatically stacks cards for you when it makes sense, and you can also drag and drop cards to manage stacks yourself.
As a developer, you don’t need to do anything special to take advantage of Stacks—new cards resulting from user actions in your app will automatically be grouped with your app’s main card.

Just Type
Let users “just type” to search or act within your app

Universal Search has always been the fastest way to find stuff in webOS, whether that stuff is on your device or online. In webOS 2.0, Universal Search has gotten even better—and it’s not just for searching anymore, so we’ve renamed it Just Type.
Among the many Just Type enhancements is a powerful feature called Quick Actions. Start an email, create a message, update your status, search your favorite websites—all without having to launch an app. With webOS 2.0, whenever you want to do something on your phone, whether it’s emailing, texting, searching, or almost anything else, just type!
As a developer, you can expand your apps’ capabilities using the power of Just Type. You can hook into Just Type in a couple of different ways:
Enable users to search within your app. If your data is stored on device, Just Type will present real-time suggestions as the user types. If your data is online, users will type a query and then tap to launch your app, where you’ll present the results.
Define your own Quick Actions. Make it easier than ever for your users to update social status, set reminders, add items to a shopping list—or do whatever it takes to get things done in the context of your app.

Exhibition
Deliver all-new experiences for the Palm Touchstone

Run new apps designed specifically for phones placed on the Palm Touchstone™ Charging Dock. Set your phone on the dock and Exhibition launches automatically, showing you anything from today’s agenda to a slideshow of your Facebook photos.
A few Exhibition options will be built into webOS 2.0, but we’re counting on you and your fellow developers to make Exhibition truly great– think slide shows; stock, news and sports tickers; social network updates; virtual pets; a killer alarm clock–you get the picture! You can add Exhibition support to an existing app, or build something new just for Exhibition.

Sena has announced the Keyboard Folio which is the latest in a line if iPad cases designed to bring a keyboard to the iPad functionality. At $129.99 pre-order it is not cheap, but you get a Bluetooth keyboard thrown in.

How many of your most used apps need to be connected to work? I have noticed that when I have no 3G connection available my iPhone is virtually unusable. It is amazing how quickly the smartphone world has moved to a near complete dependence on wireless connectivity.