Oh hai Christmas Eve!! This means that another year is almost done SOOO I thought I'd have a quick run through of the very best 'things' I've come across in 2011 ^_^
iPad 2
Yes, I was sceptical at first but the upgrade to last years Must-Have gadget is a DAMN good upgrade. First off it's wicked fast. I found with my iPad 1 that page turns in magazines and just loading up the settings app was a bit sluggish especially when running iOS 5. The iPad 2 has totally got rid of this general sluggishness and when typing quickly it actually can keep up with me! The device itself is beautiful, the rounded corners and ultra thinness make it a real joy to hold and use for long period of time, and the weight of it really lets you use it for hours without your arms getting sore. The battery life as well is nothing less than epic! The only issue I have with it is the speaker, which is still mono and annoyingly faces away from the user. This is an issue when using it to watch TV or video content on the device but obviously sliding in a pair of earphone can solve that problem.
iPhone 4S
Much of what I said about the iPad vs iPad 2 is true here. The responsiveness of iOS 5 on the iPhone 4S is much improved and is especially noticeable when launching and using the camera app. The main thing I LOVE about my iPhone 4S, besides it's hefty 64GB capacity, is the camera. It's actually amazing what kind of images you can get out of this phone, it's easy to forget that it is just a phone. It totally replaces most people's needs for a compact camera and has resulted in me not bothering to bring my DSLR out with me anywhere unless I am going to specifically take photos. Siri voice dictation and natural language voice recognition is damn good fun and is incredibly useful. I can imagine it being indispensable if you spend a good deal of time driving. Apple have released the best phone available, again. And although externally it is near identical to the iPhone 4, the internals allow you to take joy in using it like no other phone has ever allowed you to do.
(I should say at this point that iCloud is also a HUGE thing this year but it warrants its own blog entry as it's too big a thing to go over in a paragraph)
Lady GaGa - Born This Way
The most hyped album release ever?!?! Likely. On launch day Gaga took over the New York subway with adverts and on the London Underground on every newspaper cover was the album cover. BUT the album delivered a lot of substance. A real eclectic mix of genre types infused with Gaga's fun and intelligence to the point of making almost every track deep and suitable for repeat listens to tease out any meaning therein. The title track Born This Way is an anthemic rallying cry for all the people 'normal' society consider freaks, but it marries it with a real disco stomping bass and a wickedly good video. Other album stand outs include Judas, Marry The Night, Government Hooker, You and I and The Edge of Glory. The album feels almost like a greatest hits album if it weren't for the one theme running through the whole album, accepting who you are and loving it! To quote RuPaul "If you can't love yourself, how the hell you gunna love somebody else gurl!"
I'm a podcast whore, and one of the major failing of the iTunes app on the iPhone is for allowing you to automatically download new podcasts that you are subscribed to. Instacast does this for you flawlessly! It syncs all of your subscriptions and listened history with iCloud so you can be kept in sync between your iPhone and iPad. It's an app that doesn't warrant much conversation, but if you have an iPhone or iPad and listen to podcasts regularly, you owe it to yourself to get this app!!
One of the major themes running through 2011 for me has been the dominance and controversies surrounding social networks and your information. Google have launched their 'social network' Google+ this summer, but it's not really a social network. It's a sharing platform for everything you do online, and for some things you do offline. I am in love with the resposiveness of the development surrounding G+ every week or two there's a swathe of new features which make it more easy and fun to use, but also allow you a degree of control about who sees what that Facebook doesn't seem to want to make obvious or easy to do. Hangouts (10 person video chat) alone is a damn good reason to make an account and use it but the fact of the matter is if you use ANY of google's services, from search to GMail to YouTube, your experience will be enhanced by using Google+ and by having people you care about in your circles.
Game of Thrones
So I was late on getting into this one, about 10 years late, but George R. R. Martin's epic A Song of Ice and Fire series is the best thing to hit fantasy literature since Tolkien published The Lord of The Rings. A Game of Thrones, the first book in the series, has been made into an HBO show which is religiously faithful to the book and has an amazing cast and very high production values making it very very very watchable and the cast is fantastic!! It's my choice for the best TV series of 2011 only to be rivalled by Downton Abbey.
