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• Twitter gets ready for Wimbledon with a new set of emoji
• Apple starts production on its Force Touch iPhone 6S
• Running Man of Tech: Would you want a personal trainer strapped to your head?
• Week in Gaming: Video games need fixing, but we must stop blaming the little guys

Twitter gets ready for Wimbledon with a new set of emoji Posted: 27 Jun 2015 05:45 AM PDT Twitter has announced a new set of Wimbledon-themed emoji via the timeline of Serena Williams. The new characters are part of a broader push to get fans engaging on social media during the tournament. Aside from #Wimbledon (which brings up a tennis racquet), the hashtags let you broadcast where you're watching from: #TheQueue, #TheHill (Henman Hill) or #TheWorld (anywhere outside SW19). Twitter says it wants to create "a friendly battle of conversation" between fans no matter where they're watching, and there will be more emoji characters available as the tournament progresses. Going live Twitter knows that live sports (or live events of any description) are where it still has the edge over the likes of Facebook and Instagram. It's also trying to capitalise with special promotions on Periscope and Vine. To get people engaged, you can try and get your face on the big screen at Wimbledon by tweeting a selfie with the hashtag #TheHill. There's also a large topiary @Wimbledon sign to take photos next to. It's not the first time that Twitter has introduced custom emoji either: you might remember a few new symbols popping up to promote the upcoming Star Wars film The Force Awakens. With CEO resignation, is Twitter ripe for Google's taking?

Apple starts production on its Force Touch iPhone 6S Posted: 27 Jun 2015 03:08 AM PDT A new report from Bloomberg backs up the rumours we've been hearing about Force Touch coming to the iPhone. "People with knowledge of the matter" say production has already started on this year's handsets. For the Force Touch newbies, it's a pressure-sensing technology that reacts to the lightness (or otherwise) of a touch on a display. It can already be found on the Apple Watch and the new MacBook. Bloomberg's sources say the new pair of phones are going to keep last year's designs as well as the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch sizes. They might get a little bit thicker but that's about it as far as looks go. By the numbers It's by no means certain that the new iPhones will have the 6S moniker - Apple could jump up to the iPhone 7 with its naming system, but we are expecting minor upgrades for the 2015 refresh. Apple usually announces new iPhones in September and we're expect the same this year. As Bloomberg notes, handset availability will depend on how quickly Apple can churn out the new Force Touch screens. It's one feature to look forward to when the iPhone 6S/7 rolls round later this year. We're anticipating a few bumps to the processor speed and memory capacity, and of course the arrival of iOS 9. iPhone 7 Plus: What we want to see

Running Man of Tech: Would you want a personal trainer strapped to your head? Posted: 27 Jun 2015 03:00 AM PDT Strapping fitness Has anyone noticed how the sun seems to be shining a little brighter these days? The air feel a little crisper, more satisfying? And how about them chirping birds, eh? Loads of them everywhere. It's possible that this is just my post-triathlon mind breaking free of the memory of being trapped in the Thames, the need to keep donning the sausage suit and throw myself in lakes no longer a part of my life. Instead it's back to the wonderful simplicity of running, where the only criteria are a pair of trainers, my legs and ideally some clothing (otherwise people throw rubbish at me). But that doesn't mean I won't have a challenge to be aiming for – and it's the same demon that's haunted me for nearly a year. After hitting my goal of breaking 45 minutes for the 10k before I turned 30 in 2013, I've been improving steadily until I was aiming for the 40 minute barrier last year. I got close: 40.31 in May. Then 40.13 in August. Then in September I ran a near-perfect race in London's Regent's Park… in 40.02. I nearly tore a muscle sprinting for the finish in that one, and I swear I saw a unicorn running alongside me, such was the out of body experience. But now I'm back. And gunning for that target. The Coach you can't see And what's the first thing I'm going to tell you about in this new 'all about running' world? A headset that helps you become a cross training master. OK, it's not running, but this is a new me, one who's been told by too many people that I need more strength to get faster. With that in mind I headed down to an overly fancy gym in London to attend a training session to check out the new Jabra Coach headset. If you've heard of the Jabra Pulse headphones (obviously you read about them in my first column earlier this year, because you're loyal and I've always liked you) then you'll get a good flavour about what these are about. Bluetooth headphones with inbuilt motion sensing technology, they're created to be your own personal 'do more get faster' trainer. The idea is simple: pair them with your phone, choose one of the four pre-made cross training programs, and just do what the voices in your head tell you. Each workout is pretty short, with nothing longer than six minutes, although they are slightly brutal, especially for a beginner. Squats, planks, lunges, kettle-bell swings and more are all in the mix, and what sets the Jabra Coach headphones apart from the rest of the pack is the dedicated button in your left ear to press when you've completed each exercise, pushing you onto the next set. The audio and build quality are also excellent, and help go a long way to justifying the slightly high £120 / $149 price – not too high when you consider the tech on offer, but a tough sell to someone new to fitness. It's there where I find the biggest flaw in these headphones though – trying to explain why someone should buy them. The free app would work with a normal pair of wired or Bluetooth headphones (although you'd have to tap the screen to progress, which is less desirable), so it's not like the fitness structure isn't there. And while the Coach headphones have oodles of technology packed in to track motion, that's only for letting you run without a phone strapped to your arm - which cheaper watches can already do. It seems odd, given the motion tech inside, that these headphones can't track your repetitions of exercises, knowing when you've done the required amount of burpees, sit-ups or squats, giving you a time limit to do as many as possible and tracking your improvement over the following weeks. I'm hopeful that this could possibly be added in at a later date, which would make these really awesome for someone looking to get in shape. I'm still definitely going to use them to help structure my strength sessions, but I'll use the 'create your own' workout feature as the onboard stuff is far too basic once you've used them two or three times. It's a shame there's no progression with the plans either – if only the brand used the fitness test section of the app to assess a new user's abilities at cross training, then gave that person a structured, progressive plan to help build them up - increasing reps and sets as they went. That would be something. Headphones that can monitor how well you do in your home fitness sessions and provide you with a path to get you into the shape you've always wanted – and there's no obvious reason it couldn't happen. Here comes the Zoom I'm going to try to do something I've not really managed before: review a pair of trainers. Like headphones, I've always struggled to tell the different beyond the obvious – option A is bigger than B, but B is sort of louder. It seems so subjective, and with trainers the amount of consternation about whether to get something that's a low-drop or high-drop or mesh or knitted or whatever makes me want to just tie ham sandwiches to my feet and hope for the best. (By the way, I've finally worked out what people are talking about when they speak about the 'drop' in a shoe – it's the difference between the thickness of the heel and the toe sections, essentially, and helps promote different kind of foot striking in runners. For a better, more intelligent explanation, read this.) But screw all that – I'm going to try and tell you my experiences about wearing some shoes, and do it in a way that doesn't make you put your phone down and stare idly into space for something more entertaining to do. What's on offer here? Well, it's only the Nike Air Zoom Elite 8 trainers! Getting past the 9 year old part of me that's screaming YES FINALLY SOME NIKE AIRS, let's get into what's on offer: Firstly, these trainers weigh very little indeed while offering a plethora of features that promise to help you get faster, run better and generally have a better life. Nike's big promise with the AZE8's is all about energy recovery, trying to nab back some of that effort you put into forcing your foot into the floor to push you forward. It's a lot like Adidas' Boost foam promise, where helping you run with less effort is the name of the game. Nike's trying to do it with the construction of the trainer though, using FlyWire technology that springs back when compressed to add force to your stride. As someone who's practically lived in the comfy slipper-like experience of Adidas' Ultra Boost for the last two months, this was going to be a tough sell. So, what's it's like to strap them on? In an effort to reduce weight, the tongue is pretty thin, which would normally bring up worries of laces digging into the top of the foot over longer runs. But the asymmetric design sees to it that this isn't the case, with the result being a comfortable fit. After the pain of previous trainers rubbing so hard on my upper foot during a marathon earlier this year that I thought they'd exploded, I'm certainly glad of that – although I've not thrown these through any great distance to check whether they'll offer the same torture. I'm very hopefully they won't though (I still have the scars). What I did find odd in this shoe, touted as lightweight and breathable, was the stiffness apparent throughout the chassis. The first few kilometres were rather clumpy, although after a while they seemed to loosen up somewhat. I didn't notice a huge amount of springback when using them over a longer distance, but they weren't uncomfortable. They did promote a mid-foot strike (which is a good thing for most runners) but there also seemed to be a fair amount of movement inside, leading to a slightly sore foot. They aren't as breathable as other trainers on the market either, despite being promised as such, with my feet getting a little toasty over time – which didn't help the soreness. But I'm a long way from bedding these fancy trainers in – and for looks alone, they're definitely some of the better trainers I've strapped on. I'll be giving them a speed test at the Parkrun on Saturday (and I can't tell you how happy I am to be getting back to being averagely stuck in the middle of the pack each weekend – beats being in a river) and the long run on Sunday, which I'm dreading thanks to not doing more than 10K for about two months. If you've got any tips, tech you want tested out or just want to mock me, I'm @superbeav on Twitter, and you can see my stumblings on Strava too. Read the rest of the Running Man of Tech story here

Week in Gaming: Video games need fixing, but we must stop blaming the little guys Posted: 27 Jun 2015 03:00 AM PDT With the excitement of E3 behind us, the ever-present negativity in the games industry settles back down to its regular levels. At even the best of times, there's always this undercurrent of grumblings about frame rate, resolution and various other game-related things like DLC and exclusives and pre-order bonuses, and much of it is legitimate and worth pointing out. Like most people, I don't really want to see things like Dead Island's pre-order bonus - a bloodied female torso - being pimped out as a "bonus", like having the opportunity to display nearly-naked body parts around my house is some kind of reward, and nor do I want to be charged extra to buy two new maps and a different coloured helmet for my character when that sort of stuff used to come in the base game. While it seems like these are the sort of decisions a group of "lads" makes on a particularly heavy stag do rather than experienced and presumably well-intentioned business folk in a stuffy office somewhere, the latter is more often the case. Real people are making these design choices, so, of course, the blame has to fall somewhere. But more and more increasingly, the finger seems to point at whoever tries to deal with the problem first. This week in particular, and especially in the aftermath of E3, people seem to be baying for blood. Luke Smith, director of recently-announced Destiny DLC, The Taken King, spoke to Eurogamer about the issue of asking players to pay £40 for the expansion, and then another £35 on top of that if they wanted the collector's edition, which includes three new emotes - but also requires players to re-purchase the base game. He defended this decision by saying "you're feeling anxious because you want this exclusive content but you don't know yet how much you want it," following that up with "if I fired up a video right now and showed you the emotes you would throw money at the screen." Is he detached from the reality of consumers who don't have much disposable income? Potentially. Is he being overly defensive and unsympathetic towards players who have so far been loyal to Destiny? Maybe. But is it his fault that the price tag was set at £40? Perhaps not. Pricing isn't the sort of choice made by developers - that's a business thing. If you've ever worked in any kind of bureaucratic job - an office of any kind, really - then you know that sometimes, higher-ups make decisions that you then have to defend, whether you believe in them or not. Cranking cogs Every big game has these sorts of cogs cranking behind the scenes, which is why the pre-order business is such a burden on the industry these days - it no longer reserves you a copy as much as it just keeps you on the hook, and on the books. It's much more helpful for a video game publisher as it is for you, the consumer, because all you want to do is register your interest out of excitement, or get some pre-order bonus, but when game copies are so plentiful, and pre-order bonuses so often useless (hats, figurines, keyrings, etc.), all you're really doing is assuring the company that you will pay money before you even know how good the game is. The same goes for Batman: Arkham Knight, the release of which on PC was so disastrous that copies have been pulled from sale completely. With problems ranging from unplayable frame rates to incredible lag, combined with the fact that Nvidia released a "60 frames per second" video that was seemingly sped up to simulate 60fps, and that Warner Bros. were a little reticent to send out PC review copies, there was understandably a backlash. This was most prominently aimed at the QAs (Quality Analysts, who are hired to check for and report on bugs) - because if a game has bugs, some fault must lie with the people whose job it is to check for them. But of course, the QAs on a game don't have the final say - even if they report a bug, it doesn't mean it'll get patched out. Maybe there's not enough time, or money, or people to do the job. Likewise, Bungie is not the publisher of their own game - that's Activision - so they might not have the final say on any of this kind of stuff, because they're not the ones taking their game to market. These are decisions made by a bunch of different people, at different times, and for different reasons. But nevertheless, some people - mostly vocal ones, mostly on Twitter and in comment sections - have been blaming the most visible person involved in these situations, which is something that seems to happen time and time again in the gaming industry. Sometimes an apology is issued - as with Assassin's Creed Unity's problems last year, which resulted in free DLC, or Halo: Master Chief Collection's online issues, for which Bonnie Ross, the head of 343 Industries, apologised and gave out various free extras. Other times, people's reputations and jobs are ruined because they become the public face of a PR disaster. Sometimes mistakes happen, and often they tarnish the fun and our expectations for a game. It's a shame, and it's frustrating, but they still happen. There is a lot to be said for those who campaign for better work conditions for developers and coders, more transparency and better treatment of consumers, and all of this is important in an industry that's still finding its feet - but it's also our responsibility to avoid making one person a target when the bad decisions are often the result of many, many fingers in one pie. There's plenty to learn, too: pre-ordering is no longer a wise choice; if you're going to blame someone, make sure it's the people who actually made the bad decisions; and if a company is withholding review copy, be wary. But it's also important to remember that not everyone is the bad guy. The video game market is broken in many places and needs fixing - we just need to make sure we're fixing it by pointing the finger at the actual problems, not the little guys.

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