Capcom challenges you to find body parts in central London

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Fan of Resident Evil 5? Fan of body parts? Fan of central London? Combine your passions tomorrow morning, Thursday March 12th, as Capcom leaves miscellaneous body parts strewn around the area near Trafalgar Square.

Entrants will be required to find as many body parts as possible, and take them to Westminster bridge by 11am, where you have to hold them over your head and shout “Kijuju!”. Points will be allocated for each body part found – 2 for an arm, 2 for a leg, 3 for a torso and 5 for a head.

The players with the most points at 11am win a “trip of a lifetime” to Africa. Tech Digest will be there in force, trying to win it for ourselves, so we’ll see you there!

(via Capcom)

Seety: gazumping Google Street View for London

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Google’s been taking its sweet time over the release of Street View for the UK, and as happens when you take too long over something, another company’s gone and done it instead. Well, not the whole of the UK, just central London, but that’s good enough for me.

Visiting Seety.co.uk, you get a Google Map of central London, and you just click to open up a Street-View esque image of the area, which you can then navigate around with arrows. All faces are blurred, and some of the smaller roads haven’t quite been indexed, but the majority of central London is present and correct.

It stretches most of the way up Holloway Road to the north, and not very far south – just down to Elephant and Castle. Out east it stretches approximately to Bow and Limehouse, and west, you don’t make it much further than Shepherd’s Bush. It needs a bit of extension, then, but what’s present is very impressive, especially given the higgledy-piggledy layout of London’s streets compared to American cities.

It’s unfortunate, though, that as soon as Google brings out its own Street View product, which can’t be far off, then this will become mostly obsolete. Still, in the meantime, enjoy looking around London, and if you find anything interesting, send us the screenshot!

BT MyPlace – personalised location-based news, with a shedload of buzzwords and adverts

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Launching for the poor, embattled, snow-bound inhabitants of central London, who are currently IN CRISIS because they can’t get from Pret to Starbucks without getting a bit cold and possibly dirtying their limited edition lime green Nike Air Max 90s on the brown slush, BT MyPlace is what BT MyPlace reckons is the world’s first location-based, personal news service.

The service is co-funded by BT and Westminster Council, so is available for free whenever you’re in range of a BT Openzone hotspot in Westminster “Wireless City”. If that’s you, the “pocket concierge” service will send you all sorts of facts about your location, along with audio walking talks, guide books and restaurant tips…

Google adds tube map to Google Maps

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Google Maps launched its new ‘Transit’ section of Google Maps this morning, which focuses on public transport. Wonderfully, included in the update is a tube map that you can turn on and off on the display – immensely useful for planning ya route across the capital.

Be aware though – because it’s tied to real geographical locations, it might be a bit confusing, and not as intuitive as using the regular tube map. On the other hand, you might find out something useful, like how close Lancaster Gate (on the Central Line) is to Paddington, or Canon Street to Bank, saving you some trouble, and going miles out of your way to change tubes.

If you’ve got a local metro/tube/underground system of some sort, is it shown on Google’s new layer? Let us know in the comments. Now… if only Google would release street view in the UK…

Google Maps UK (via TechCrunch)

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ECCENTRIC BRITISH HEROES: Neil Laughton driving/flying his Skycar from London to Timbuktu

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Adventurer and after-dinner speaker Neil Laughton’s customised dune buggy can fly. So he’s going to fly it – taking off from London this Wednesday, and landing/rolling up in Timbuktu approximately 42 days later.

The buggy comes with a detachable ParaWing (parachute/aerofoil thing) and has a fan on the back of it, allowing it to take off into the sky when it hits 45mph – and it can then cruise at 70mph at a possible and terrifying maximum altitude of 15,000 feet…

Be Broadband steps up to the challenge, trial doubles 24Mbps service to near-match Virgin Media

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Not to be outdone by Virgin Media’s 50Mbps broadband announcement yesterday, Be Broadband has completed its trials of speed-doubling technology which would take the current 24Mbps broadband up to 48Mbps – almost the same as Virgin Media’s theoretical top speed.

The trial ran at the London Paddington exchange, with Be customers reporting real download speeds of between 30-45Mbps.

Be is keen to point out that its service will run through standard BT phone lines…

Wrath of the Lich King event was "biggest HMV has ever seen"

If there was any more proof needed that World of Warcraft fans are a force to be reckoned with, then last night was it. Somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 fans (there was no official headcount) crammed into HMV Oxford Street last night after the midnight opening. It’s the single biggest entertainment launch in UK history, beating the previous record holder (the previous WoW expansion!) by nearly 1,000.

People dressed up, as you’ll see over the jump, and Blizzard helped too, with a large chap dressed as Arthas the Lich King. There was an ice sculpture of the WoW logo, and senior execs from Blizzard and Activision showed up too. Best of all was the HMV logo over the shop door, which featured a Murloc instead of the usual dog.

Bomb-proof info-bins to hit London

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Since the IRA’s bomb attacks in the 80s, there have been remarkably few bins around railway and tube stations in the UK – the fear being that terrorists might stick a bomb in one. Well, now bins are back. A company called Media Metrica has designed BIN 2.0. It’s bombproof, has recycling sections, and feature screens with news, travel, and weather info on them.

It’s been tested in the New Mexico desert over the past five years, and costs £15,000 to produce and £3,000 to install. It’s hoped that costs will be recouped by local businesses sponsoring a bin. In the event of an attack, the bins can be changed to display emergency information, directing people away from danger areas.

(via The Inquirer)

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STATTACK: You're twice as likely to get your phone nicked in London than in New York

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If there was ever a reason to go to GameCityThree, rather than the London Games Festival, then this is it. Carphone Warehouse reckons that 25% of adults in London have had their phone nicked, compared to 15% in the rest of the country. 14% of British teenagers have had their phone stolen, compared to 9% of teens in the USA, and 7% of adults. In London in 2007, there were three robberies per 1000 people, whereas in New York, there were only 1.61…