But is the video real or fake? We think it’s highly likely this is a clever bit of PR for something else. Why do we think that? Well apart from the crazy over the top but amusing elements of the video like smiling to fire the gun – the suidobashijuko.jp domain was actually registered by a company called Kaibutsu Inc last year – Kaibutsu Inc are a Japanese PR company. A little suspicious!

The Kuratas robot was ‘unveiled’ at the Tokyo Wonder Festival. Again highly suspicious, the Tokyo Wonder festival is a festival where exhibitors display and sell toys modelled on popular anime and mecha characters. It also usually showcases future releases by major toy companies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Festival.

We think it’s more likely there is a Mech based computer game / toy being released soon, and that Suidobashi Heavy Industry is part of the plot. Great marketing idea if true.

Whether real or fake, it is certainly a well crafted viral video.

Speaking of viral videos, did we mention we’d hidden the secret location of £2000 worth of buried gold in a free iPhone concert finding app called The Grapevine? Shhh, don’t tell anyone!

You can get The Grapevine from the Apple app store here

The Grapevine features a slick user interface and taps into many of the iPhone’s different capabilities to create a compelling user experience:

GPS is used to determine where the user is, and which posts are near them.

Search results can be viewed in a variety of ways including on the phone’s map view.

Gesture based searches allow the user to search for tickets by artists from their phone’s music library, and also to search for posts by people they know from their address book.

The Grapevine communicates with a custom Java server designed from the ground up by Candid Innovations architects, specifically designed for speed and scalability. The server is now handling well over a million posts.

Here’s what our CEO Edward Cooper has to say about The Grapevine:

“The idea came about from talking to people who were continually frustrated that concerts for artists they wanted to see would sell out very fast, then lots of tickets would appear on ebay with big price mark-ups, obviously being sold by touts for a profit.

I wanted to create and app that would allow real music fans to exchange their tickets for reasonable prices and so The Grapevine was born!”

And a word from our CTO Serkan Gunes:

“What we wanted to do with The Grapevine was design a classifieds app from the ground up specifically for the mobile platform, rather than try and port a web based solution just as a sideshow for an existing website.

And because we have no website to support, we have been able to avoid slower HTML based technology which really makes our search times truly impressive”

You can either search for ‘The Grapevine’ in the appstore or go here:

The Grapevine classified ads app for iPhone. A great eBay and Gumtree alternative. Free to post once downloaded

As the user shakes their phone, randomized guitar licks are triggered based on their motion to give the user a feeling of playing air guitar for real.

The app features full use of the iPhone’s audio capabilities including programmatic fades and a custom audio player created by Candid Innovations developers to allow users to play air guitar along with an embedded music track.

All the audio was edited in Candid Innovations state of the art studio by our skilled audio designers.

The app also generates revenue by allowing the user to use in app purchases to buy extra guitar styles, crowd noises and different skins for the app from the in app shop.

And as with all Candid Innovations apps, Ultimate Air Guitar features a slick user interface that allows the user to customise every part of the app to their taste.

Launcher features a number of powerful tools designed by our developers specifically for this project, including a custom website/css ripper that allows the client to bundle the launcher with a cached website in case the user has no internet connection.

Every part of the launcher can be customized by the client using XML, from design layout to button functions.

Samsung Smart Window

One of the most futuristic technologies. Samsung gave us a glimpse of Minority Report.

Mobile is the word

We have seen mobiles dominating the CES 2012. Android was at the core of nearly 90% of the mobile technologies. There were also lots of buzz around wirelessly mirroring your phones screen to your TV. And also using your phone as a controller while mirroring your phones screen to your TV.

LG Magic Remote

If you always wondered, why can’t tv remotes be more functional. LG has answered your needs. It has Wii style motion control and voice recognition powered by Nuance. Which currently powers iPhone 4S’ Siri.

There were also lots of hype about Ultrabooks but I found those news very stale and boring

Tell us what you think.

Sounds like some of you are doing really well trying to solve The Grapevine treasure hunt.

Clue 3 seems to have been a really tough one, but someone finally cracked it. If that someone was you let us know on twitter! Clue 4 is also pretty tough!

Good luck on the rest of the clues everyone, and let us know how you are getting on

We received a massive amount of feedback from iPhone users in other countries who all wanted to join in the hunt for the buried gold and so we’re pleased to announce the release of The Grapevine 2.0

In The Grapevine 2.0 we’ve added new functionality to allow you to solve clues from anywhere in the world!
This update was approved by apple today, and is now live in all app stores world wide (previously The Grapevine was only available in the UK & USA).

How does it work?

Click the pulsating dollar button on the app homescreen and you will be presented with more information, and also a screen where you can submit clue solution locations by manually setting longitude and latitude!

The FIRST PERSON to solve all the clues, wins the gold!

If you live in the UK and you win, you will be able to dig up the gold yourself. If you live outside the UK and you win, we will dig it up for you, and send it to you!

And now for the first time, we can reveal the first clue:

“What’s the point? Storm-tossed rock ‘n’ roll – lost and found, I ended up beside Old Father.
It’s just so much Sunnier back home
I just sit here on top of all this junk: photographs of a good-looking English women, a box of hairpins, a box of cigars, a set of imperial weights, a baby’s bottle, some children’s toys!“

Finally, to celebrate the release of The Grapevine 2.0 we have cut the price for one week only! Happy hunting!

Whats all this about?

We will be posting news and other things from the hunt as and when they happen.

Whats all this about?