For the past week I have been testing a 3D home entertainment setup in my lounge thanks to the guys at LG that sent me some equipment to combine with my own system. The picture above is of the wall in my lounge. Before we talk about the realities of 3D television, let’s take a look at the bits and pieces and their prices. (more…)

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Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS is a major release of the operating system Mark Shuttleworth and his company Canonical first released in 2004. In this interview with Simon Dingle Shuttleworth discusses the significance of the latest version of Ubuntu Linux, competitor operating systems, the move to cloud services, open source advocacy and how it has changed in recent years, application distribution, social networking, smartphones and other topics.

Shuttleworth is a South African philanthropist and internet entrepreneur who started the company Thawte in 1995 and went on to sell it to Verisign at the turn of the century in a US$575 million deal. He then became the second ever self-funded civilian astronaut traveling to the international space station as a member of the Soyuz TM-34/TM-33 missions. Upon his return to earth Mark formed the Shuttleworth Foundation and Canonical.

Simon Dingle recently authored a chapter on Mark Shuttleworth for the book South Africa’s Greatest Entrepreneurs. The publication will be available in September 2010.

Use the audio player above to stream the interview or click here to download the mp3 file.

Microsoft announced on Monday that it will be launching its Xbox Live online gaming and content service in nine additional countries, including South Africa. The service was first launched in the USA in 2002 and was made available on the Xbox 360 in 2005. Like the iTunes Music Store, Xbox Live has eluded South Africans. Until now. (more…)

Microsoft has unveiled a new Xbox 360 accessory called ‘Kinect’ that was previously known as Project Natal. Unveiled at the annual E3 gaming conference currently underway in Los Angeles, the Kinect enables controller-free gaming for the Microsoft console. Demos of the accessory included fighting, driving, dancing and other games all controlled by player’s actions without controllers. Checkout the video above for a taste of Kinect in action.

The device can also be used to control media playback on the Xbox 360 by just waving your fingers around in the air, which looks pretty sweet.

I personally like lying on the couch in a semi-vegitative state while gaming, but the Kinect is certainly the most impressive piece of console technology to hit the scene of late.

Kinect will be available worldwide from November 2010.