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Apple, the most indispensible brand to global consumers?

So says a new survey this morning, commissioned by Steve Jobs himself... Kidding.

The findings are courtesy of marketing consultancy Interbrand's Brandjunkie survey which ranks Apple as the brand consumers around the world cannot live without. Interbrand is well known in the advertising and marketing industry for its annual brand study that attempts to estimate the value of a consumer brand. Usually, Coca-Cola wins that derby.

The Brandjunkie findings, which took the pulse of nearly 2,000 professionals and students in an online survey conducted earlier this year, sought rank the emotional value of the brands in our lives. The questions were the typical anthropomorphic, touchy-feely queries brand consultants like to ask, including:

Gran Turismo 5 is launched in a car park

I went to the launch of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue in London last night. It was held in an underground car park in Marble Arch and all of the cars featured in the game were there for people to have a gander at. It was an impressive set up with lots of chequered flags but, bizarrely, there were only four gaming booths for the 150-odd people there.

To play, you had to queue for 20 minutes or so and, as many of the folk there were proper game journalists, if you weren't very good there was all sorts of heckling from the waiting masses. Did you know that the game view where you are above and behind the car is called the 'angel view'? I didn't, but using it rather than a first-person perspective will get you all sorts of disapproval.

I took along a friend called Chuck who does various bits of TV production and directing. He's not much of a gamer but he has had training on and driven a Renault Formula 1 car for some filming work he did. A nice bloke set him up with what he believed was an automatic car. After burning round the track and crashing a lot less than the guy who played before him – and bragging loudly – it was pointed out that he was in fact in a manual car and 'burning' round the track in second gear. He wasn't so good when he went up to fifth.

If you are a fan of driving games then Gran Turismo is a very pretty game with beautiful graphics. You will crash though. A lot. If you have read any of my other articles you may have noticed the point of me writing about games is that I am an average gamer. I love games, but I'm just not an alpha male when it comes to furious button pushing. Proper game journalists may think their witty comments are funny, but being told I drive like a trained monkey can be very cutting.

I did meet a nice guy called David who is one of the PR folk at Sony and we had a chat about my previous post about Blu-ray and HD movies on the PS3 and whether it would be a big selling feature in the coming year and he had some interesting comments. Essentially, he sees the ability to play HD movies a nice plus but the big point of having Blu-ray going forward is being able to put out huge games that would take five or six DVDs. The push from their point of view is getting companies to develop games that will really take advantage of this. Looks like it's going to be an interesting year for Sony and Microsoft as the formats up the ante.

‘I’m on the plane’: the disturbing idea of airborne phone calls

On many flights, the ban on mobile phones is observed only begrudgingly, with cabin crew prising handsets from the fingers of besuited businessmen. Soon, new rules mean they’ll be chatting away merrily throughout the flight, and that’s going to add a whole new kind of pain to the already fraught business of long-haul air travel.

Most of us struggle to believe that something we carry in our pocket could bring down a Jumbo Jet. As Toby Ziegler says in The West Wing: "We’re flying in a Lockheed Eagle series L-1011. It came off the line 20 months ago and carries a Sim-5 transponder tracking system. Are you telling me I can flummox this thing with something I bought at Radio Shack?"

Personally, I’m always happy to turn off my phone, regardless of whether it threatens the navigation system. It’s one of the few times when no one can reach me, and I enjoy the feeling of dropping off the grid. For others, being constantly on call means being constantly productive, and for them making calls in the air could be very lucrative. For the rest of us, it’s just going to be annoying.

Public use of mobile phones has proved beyond doubt that the least interesting people have the most to say and the loudest voices with which to say it. They also tend to have annoying ringtones. Sitting next to one of these people on a transatlantic flight is not going to be pleasant: apart from the usual irritations of an inane and one-sided phone call, which will be the same in the sky as it is at sea level, airborne mobile use will introduce several new annoyances:

Mario Kart and the joy of fake racing

I don't like 'real' racing games. No matter how exactly the physics match the real world, it's just never going to be like a real-world racing experience. The problem as I see it is the lack of peripheral vision in games. When driving, obviously I look straight ahead but it’s what I see out the corners of my eyes that lets me know how fast I’m going. This tells me if I am going too fast or too slow to take a corner or, as a teenager, to donut my mum's Nissan Micra.

In 'real' racing games, I can't tell the difference between 60mph and at 160mph. I tend to crash a lot and spend vast amounts of time skidding around in gravel at the side of the track.

Fake racing games are another matter. The one I’m most looking forward to at the moment is the Nintendo Wii edition of Mario Kart. I had the original Mario Kart on the SNES and have had every version since. It’s about as far departed from real driving and real-world physics as is possible. I like watching a giant dinosaur with a spiky shell on his back burning round a track in a tiny go-cart without tipping over, no matter how top-heavy he is. I enjoy throwing banana skins all over the track and firing red shell homing missiles to take out other racers.

The question is, will the game be as good as it should be or will it suffer from too much programming?

If I had to choose between Mario Kart on the SNES and Mario Kart on the Gamecube, the SNES version would win hands down. The graphics weren't as good, it wasn't in real 3D and there weren't as many features, but it had a good feeling of speed and the gameplay was set at the perfect level between fun and frustration. I did like the Gamecube version and it was very pretty, but it just didn't have the sense of speed or the same feeling of fun. For me, if you are making a racing game, make it fast and make it fake.

If all of this is new to you and you have never experienced a Mario Kart game, get hold of the version for the DS. It has tracks from the original SNES version and loads more besides. I've missed my stop on the Tube several times because of an all important time trial speed that had to be beaten.

I haven't had a go of the new Wii version yet, but I hear that there are motorbikes in it. I am a little worried: just because you can add something, it doesn't mean you should. But there is going to be online racing with up to 12 people which should be great. I'm sure in a month or so you will be able to read a post on here with me complaining about 12 years olds beating me at racing as well as Call Of Duty 4.

iPhone to sport twin cameras?

There is never any shortage of pundits adding grist to the Apple rumour mill, but some contributions merit greater consideration than others.

One of the more noteworthy speculations of late comes from Kevin Rose, founder of the social news website Digg, who has said that the next incarnation of the iPhone will be capable of 'video chat'.

In particular, said Mr Rose, the new 3G iPhone, which will be capable of transferring information at much higher speeds, will be distinguished by a unique piece of hardware: it will have twin digital cameras - one facing the usual way, for photos, the other sitting behind the transparent touchscreen, so as to capture the owner.

The idea is that, with the much faster 3G network - and existing large screen, there will be an appetite to see the person one is phoning, rather than just hear them. This purported capability of the new device was lent weight by the fact that Apple was restricting third parties from developing applications that may compete with a mobile 'chat' feature it was developing, Mr Rose said.

Mr Rose has made predictions about Apple in the past - not all of them correct. In the lead up to the launch of the first iPhone last year, he suggested the device would have a slide-out keyboard and two separate battery compartments, neither of which materialised.

As the founder of one of the most respected web 2.0 starts in Silicon Valley, however, his comments - made on his weekly Podcast show 'Diggnation' on Friday - will be seized upon as one of the better educated guesses on record at the moment.

Turkey bans photo-sharing service for insulting Ataturk

You're not a proper social media application, it seems, until you've been banned by a humourless, censorious government. That's the upside for Slide today, the Web 2.0 outfit whose popular photo-sharing application is stamped onto so many blogs, MySpace and Facebook profile pages. According to the Slide Blog, the application has been blocked by the Turkish Government for "harboring pictures and articles that are considered to be insulting to [the republic's founder] Ataturk."

Slide is trying to reassure its Turkish hosts that it has nothing against Attaturk as it tries to find a remedy to get the application running again for its Turkish users. The problem is that Slide has no idea what the offending material is. Slide's general counsel John Duncan told Reuters that Slide never received formal notice of the action against the company, nor has it received the details of a court order that effectively shut down the service. In the meantime, Turkish Telecom had complied with the court's order.

As the company notes, Slide is in fine company as the latest Web 2.0 phenomenon to be banned by jittery government officials. As it says in its blog, "Slide joins several other popular web services such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace that have been banned in various countries (including Turkey, Pakistan, China and the UAE) for user-generated content".

Just how big a deal is losing Turkey for a Web 2.0 start-up? Pretty significant. Facebook recently revealed usership by country and found Turkey in the top five, ahead of France, where other social networks dominate.

Why Blu-ray may not boost the PS3

A big jump in PlayStation 3 sales has been forecast for this year, based on Blu-ray emergence as the dominant format in the high-definition war. If you are after a new player, the PS3 a relatively cheap option, given that it's also a powerful games machine.

This argument raises the question of whether the HD battle was really about disc formats. Personally, I don't own a high-definition TV and I am currently perfectly happy with DVD quality films. By the time I decide to upgrade my TV set, probably in the next year or two, I'm not sure that I'll be looking for a new type of disc to replace my DVDs. What I'll probably want is HD downloads. I already convert a lot of my kids' DVDs to .avi format so that when we go on holiday I can take my laptop and hook it up to a hotel TV, saving the hassle of carrying around a load of discs that won't work in DVD players in other contries.

In the same way that Real, Windows Media Player and Quicktime were all were busy fighting over online video formats while the now-ubiquitous Flash player crept up behind them, Blu-ray may well end up being a format that gets killed off by downloads before it takes hold.

The real boost to the Playstation 3 is more likely to come from the upcoming release of the much-anticipated exclusive, Metal Gear Solid 4, but with other top titles such as Mario Kart and Grand Theft Auto coming out on the other consoles, Sony won't have it all their own way. As for me, I have my Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii so I don't see the need for a Playstation 3.

Data leaks: Forecasting the end of privacy?

Flowing Data ran an interesting post this week about leakage from large databases. It’s now almost a weekly event for us to report that the personal details of millions of private individuals have been compromised in some way by government or commercial institutions.

Their graphic (linked here) highlights the most worrying data-spills on a timeline covering the last decade. Notice how the frequency increases over time. Extrapolating, it wouldn't be too surprising if absolutely all supposedly private information will be in the public domain by the middle of the next decade. Our only hope is that with such huge quantities of information available, criminals will spend so much time wading through data that they won’t have time to empty our bank accounts.

Broadband speeds scrutinised (again)

Another week, another squeeze in the already strained relations between Ofcom and the internet service providers (ISPs) about how the latter advertise their broadband packages.

In short, the regulator wants ISPs to come clean about the kinds of speeds customers can expect from their broadband connection, given that in many cases 'super-fast' connections of 8MB/s end up only delivering speeds half that, if not slower.

The ISPs say they do their best to be transparent - by advertising speeds of 'up to' a certain amount, rather than giving a guarantee - but that it's difficult to be exact because the speed afforded by a particular connection depended on many factors, including the distance from the home to the local exchange and the network load.

Which?, the consumer body, meanwhile, periodically issues reports concluding that actual speeds to not measure up to those advertised. The latest was in August last year, which found that the average speed experienced by customers with an '8MB/s' connection was in fact 2.7MB/s. Only 30 per cent of customers were satisfied with their ISP, the Which? report suggested.

Today BT Wholesale - which sells a 'white label' product to other broadband providers, such as Virgin - weighed into the debate, saying that the industry needed to "join together with Ofcom" to agree "a set of principles" about how advertising messages "should be communicated".

Online games and the pre-teen killers

I have been playing online with my Xbox lately and while regularly coming last in any game I am playing, I do enjoy the unpredictable nature of playing against real people. Now, most of the games I've been playing have adult ratings due to the general killing theme of the best games online. The one I've been playing the most is Call Of Duty 4, which has a 16+ rating.

I wonder about the whole age rating thing. The Xbox has a plug-in headphone/microphone set, so if you wish, you can communicate with other players, either to plan an assault or just 'trash talk' the person you wasted. I tend to listen in to what's going on with the microphone switched off as I can generally either play, or talk, but not both. Many of the players I have heard online appear to be boys who can't even be into their teenage years. This can be really irritating.

I would love to get on my moral high horse and complain that the parents of these children are obviously neglecting these young folk, that they should stop them playing violent games, that age restrictions are there for a reason etc, etc... but the reality is that while I'm sure that playing these games does have some effect on you, I'm not convinced we are raising a world of killers that can fit through a cat flap.

What we do have is loads of kids that have a huge amount of free time, getting really good at these games with their little hands and quick reflexes. In the real world, if a pre-teen child insulted me in the way these kids do online I would be tempted to go down the 1960s 'clip round the back of the head' route, but they are sometimes thousands of miles away and there's nothing I can do about it.

This is the real reason I want parents to enforce game restriction ages, so I can enjoy an evening gaming and even if I still come last, at least it will be last among my peers. As one adult American gamer put it at the end of a rather brutal game where most of the players were shouting insults in their pre-adolesent high pitches. "F***ing 12 year olds".

Facebook taps blood donors

Given that a good many of the groups that spring up on Facebook are of dubious motivation - one thinks of 'Let's go out and panic buy carrots', whose founder exhorts: 'If we all do this, we can make this global shortage of carrots happen!' - it's encouraging that the odd socially-minded application flourishes too.

A charity based in New York has set up a group which aims to improve the co-ordination of blood donation by sending out messages to donors in the event of shortages and encouraging a greater level of donation overall.

Takes All Types collates information about what type blood type is needed in which area, and sends out alerts to Facebook users who may be suitable to donate. It also sends reminders about regular donations.

"We were reacting to our sense that most of what was on Facebook was too academic or frivolous," said Ben Bergman, a New-York-based recruiter who set up the service and found that it immediately attracted the interest of hospitals and blood banks.

Facebook, which now has 38.5 million users worldwide, is widely recognised to be a platform with huge potential, and has been used by everybody from the US Presidential candidates to children's charities to promote an agenda.

But it is groups of a more inconsequential nature, such as the 'I'd go out of my way to step on that crunchy looking leaf', whose 138,299 members enjoy news updates like 'Guess what? Fall is here!', that tend to be the most popular.

Swiss bank backs down from muzzling "leaks" site

Score one for freedom of speech advocates.

A controversial lawsuit in the US between Swiss bank Julius Baer and the whistle-blower website Wikileaks.org appears to be coming to an end with the web start-up emerging victorious. Julius Baer last month tried to muzzle Wikileaks for allowing an insider to publish hundreds of classified documents about the bank's dealings with one of its off-shore operations. The leak may have gone unnoticed except that Julius Baer took the site to court to get the documents expunged from the web. In a move that stunned First Amendment watchers, a California judge sided with the bank in round one, incredibly ordering the site operator, Dynadot, to not only disable the URL, but to wipe any copy of the site off its servers.

This being the web, sympathetic mirror sites appeared everywhere and the matter of Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks.org became a cause célèbre for free speech online, painting Julius Baer as a villain.

But one by one, the case began to unravel. As the New York Times reports, the judge withdrew last week his original decision and then this week moved to withdraw the case entirely.

In the fickle realm of web controversies, the case will be no doubt forgotten in a matter of days, but Wikileaks no doubt will emerge the big winner here. A site few people had heard of has fought the law, and won. For a site that deals in discrete leaks, there is no greater promotion.

Balance Wii Fitness with feeling the fool

Wii Fitness: InGear preview

Later this year Nintendo plan to release a new game called Wii Fitness (or Wii Fit if you are outside Europe). Consisting of 40 or so fitness games, it also includes a 'Balance Board' that gives feedback on how the prancing folk in front of the TV are doing. Basically it's the workout version of the popular DS game, Brain Training. In Japan, Nintendo shipped over one million units for launch and have managed to sell them. Obviously there is a demand but, would you use one? I think it's safe to say that if you're a male sharing a flat with a couple of other male friends, then breaking a sweat on your Balance Board is going to invite all sorts of abuse. In a fatigued state, you may well be too exhausted to fight your flatmates off, verbally or otherwise.

However, an easy way to workout in your living room that can avoid boredom is bound to be popular with people. I could do with dropping a few pounds but I just don't know if this is something I want. I think it's due to all the ratings and feedback that are offered. I'm in my 30s and I really don't want a game telling me I have the fitness of a man in his late 40s. Perhaps if the fitness rating were based on animals I would be happier. I can live with being told I am at a badger's level in fitness so I could perhaps aim towards being rated as something such as a squirrel or a lemur. It's pretty much the same reason I have never played Brain Training on the DS. As well as yogic balance and press-ups (yawn) there are some fun mini games involved in the Wii Fitness, such as ski jumping and hula hooping, so I might find I love it when I actually have a go.

I do have a fitness regime idea of my own. My 'act like a child' regime is easy, free and pretty simple to follow as the rules are very flexible. You just act like a four year old. Seen a wall? Climb up it and walk along. Need to walk somewhere with a friend? Run to the nearest lamp post and back all the way. In a hospital, school or hall that has a smooth floor? Running knee slides are the answer. I think my scheme would genuinely work and would also make any commuting so much more entertaining for both participants and observers. I am happy to sell my idea if Microsoft or Sony are looking for an inroad.

Cheats always prosper

I've recently been playing a game called Zack and Wiki. It's a point-and-click game on the Wii where you play as a boy pirate with a flying monkey sidekick. You have to get the treasure chest in each level by finding solutions to various puzzles, ranging from mixing shrinking potions to dumping a vat of water onto a fire-breathing dragon. All well and good.

I consider myself an enthusiastic but not particularly gifted gamer, and this has led me to become unstuck and frustrated when I can't find a solution. I end up wandering around the level randomly pushing things, hoping that the answer will come to me. You can 'buy' tips in the game but even then it's not always obvious what you should do next.

Back in the heady days of my ZX Spectrum, this would be the end of the game for me, unless a friend had worked out the puzzle. You could normally guarantee that all your friends had the same games, because the mighty tape-to-tape ghetto blasters had come out and all the game-playing children in the country were copying each other’s game cassettes.

Fast forward to 2008 and all I have to do is a quick search on Google and there are a wealth of walk-through guides popping onto my screen. I generally try not to look at them unless I have been really stuck for at least half an hour, but this seems to be happening more and more frequently.

There are two ways of looking at this. One is that checking a solution is cheating and ruining the game by not playing it all the way through without any help, as its designers intended. This opinion is wrong. The second (and correct) way of looking at it is that it means I get to finish most of my puzzle and adventure games now with only a little online 'assistance'.

Unfortunately, the guides still don't help me out in Gears Of War when one of the enemy jumps out at me. My reactions still tend to favour the shooting wildly at the sky and ground in a panic before I'm killed. One step at a time though.

Can you blog away the blues?

Evidently, you can.

According to a new study by researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne who were looking into the psychological benefits of blogging, bloggers tend to feel a greater sense of connectedness to a particular community, and feel that they have a larger social support system behind them compared with those who do not blog. Using social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, the researchers found, also "lifted the mood of all participants (of the study) in some way."

Viewed in this light, blogging could be prescribed as a potentially cheaper (and drugs-free) way to help people overcome a feeling of isolation.

That bloggers derive an elevated sense of self-worth comes as little surprise to this blogger. Blogging has been dismissed as a  narcissistic pursuit, the equivalent of giving a megaphone to the most opinionated person in the room. But it can also be a tremendously beneficial pursuit -- for both the blogger and his or her readers. Most of the time, anyhow.