IT is a far cry from the traditional school trip of being dragged around a museum.

Instead, London schools have been trialling a very modern alternative - a visit to Apple’s computer shop on Regent Street.

Rather than a a tour of priceless artifacts, pupils are instead let loose with a plethora of gadgets to film and edit their own movie.

Today Rosendale Primary School in Dulwich became one of the first to try the scheme.

“It seemed like a really interesting alternative to the normal trip,” said Doug Cranston, who teaches ICT at the school. “We’ve just opened a new computer centre, so we thought this was the perfect trip. A lot of the children are used to using computers, and several of them are really interested in art and design, but had never used a Mac, so this was a great opportunity for them.”

“We tied the work into the national curriculum, and the children have learnt a lot about digital photography. It’s also been incredibly popular with parents - I’ve never had so many volunteer to come on a trip.”

Apple gives over part of its store, which includes a lecture theatre, for the one hour trips. It also supplies staff to teach children, and computers and materials for them to use. For the computer firm, never one to miss a marketing opportunity, it's an easy way to boost sales of its machines. After a few hours playing with its latest iMacs and slick software, the chances are the children are going to throw major tantrums when the children go home and boot up dad's old and clunky PC.

Despite this, the children were impressed. “It’s been really good fun,” said Thomas, 10. “We got to take cool photos and make a video from them, which we then burnt to a CD to take home. We also got to play with putting different effects onto the pictures - I really liked the mirror ones.”

WAITING for the bus could soon become a thing of the past thanks to Transport for London's new iBus system.
Today TfL said all of the capital's buses have now been fitted with electronic tour guides and onboard satnav systems to give passengers information.
Known as iBus (until Apple's lawyers find out about it,at least), the system gives on board ‘next stop’ announcements, and has now been fitted to all 8,000 London buses.
It uses a combination of GPS satellites to pinpoint the bus’s location, and GPRS mobile phone technology to transmit information to a control centre. This can then be used to update the ‘countdown’ boards that have been appearing at bus stops.
More importantly, it paves the way for some potentially great mobile applications for the system.
Boris Johnson has already pledged to introduce a mobile phone version of the service, allowing passengers to easily see when buses will arrive from their home, or while walking to a bus stop.
“This system will lay the foundation for the delivery of bus information direct to mobile phones or the internet,” he said at the system's launch.
For commuters, it could be a dream come true - you'll be able to glance at your mobile phone to see a live departure board for your local bus station, meaning you can stay at home a bit longer and time your walk perfectly to arrive just as the bus does.
However, there is a problem - TfL seems in no hurry to launch these web and mobile phone applications. In an ideal world, the data would be made available online in a format third party firms can use, but so far there is no sign of this happening.
In an era when even the Government is thinking about how it can 'free its data' online, it seems this is the perfect test case for TfL, and one can only imagine how useful some of the applications that would be created would be.
So come on Tfl, give us our bus data - if ever there was a mobile phone application every Londoner would welcome, this it is...

A church in Pentonville is set to become the first in Britain to replace its entire roof with solar tiles.
Saint Silas Church says it will generate around 47% of its energy from sunlight, saving over 7000kg of carbon each year.
Church staff are even planning to sell excess power back to the National Grid in a bid to raise money.
The grade II listed church is currently raising funds for the tiles, which is says looks like the same Welsh slate tiles it uses now. It has already raised £155,000 to fund the new roof, but still needs more donations to reach its target of £369,000.
It's a fantastic idea, and something the Diocese of London says it is considering for other churches. While homes tend not to have enough roof space to make solar panels economically viable, a church has none of these problems.
Father Shaun Richards, the Parish Priest, said: “A church roof is replaced once in a lifetime, so this is an exciting opportunity to build on the commitment Saint Silas has made to reduce its carbon footprint, by installing solar energy.”      
Rather than using large traditional solar panels, the church has opted for hundreds of tiles, the same size and shape as the existing tiles, which contain photo-voltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity.
“This is an innovative project that offers an excellent example of how our churches can take a lead in addressing the challenge of climate change,” said Brian Cuthbertson, Head of Environment Challenge at the Diocese of London. It is hoped that if the installation is a success, similar tiles could be used at dozens of London churches.

www.saint-silas.org.uk

The news the Beatles are to re-release their back catalogue in a new remastered form is great news for fans of the fab four.
After more than two decades of waiting, all of the band's original studio albums are to be re-released on CD in September in the digitally remastered stereo versions, as The Beatles, Apple Corps and EMI Music finally begin to take their first tentative steps towards releasing the material digitally.
However, don't expect to see it on iTunes just yet.
The companies involved will undoubtedly want to capitalise on CD sales before forcing fans to buy the same music in yet another format. For the online sales, whenever they may happen, there is also a huge problem - quality.
Engineers at EMI's Abbey Road studios spent four years on the Beatles remasters,  apparently "utilising state-of-the-art recording technology alongside vintage studio equipment and carefully maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings".
Put simply, listening to these songs (or any modern recorded music) as an MP3 file, or even Apple's higher quality iTunes plus file, is not a great experience.
If you're using Apple's stock headphones, and listening on a busy tube, of course you may not notice any difference.
But anyone with an iPod and a decent set of headphones should try a little experiment.
Take your favourite CD, and try importing it into iTunes as an Apple Lossless file (you can switch this in the preferences menu). If you're not using Apple software, try a format called FLAC. Now, listen again, either with your headphones or, for full effect, on your living room hifi.
The difference is astonishing - you'll find entire new instruments suddenly appearing, and rather than a 'blob' of sound from the middle of the speakers, on a well recorded CD at least, you'll find it easy to pinpoint instruments in the room. And more importantly, when you then go back to listening to a 'normal' MP3 file, you'll realise just how bad they are.
So why isn't every song sold online in this lossless format? Space. These lossless files, which are an exact digital copy of the CD rather than a compressed version, take up a large amount of space (around 50mb per song), and would radically cut the number of songs you can carry with you.
However, as storage costs drop, this is a situation that has to change.  It is now possible to buy hard drives capable of storing a terabyte of data for under £100, more than enough for lossless version of all your music. And with each new iPhone or iPod released storage capacities seem to be doubling.
But at the moment, it's virtually impossible to find music (in any quantity, at least) to buy online in these lossless formats.
While online music firms have upped their file quality, they have not yet made the move to lossless. In many cases the only way to get the files is to buy the CD and rip it yourself, which in an age of instant gratification, is simply not good enough.
In the fight against music piracy, consumers have to be given a legal choice, and for anyone interested in high quality audio, unfortunately there just isn't one.
Your only options are to order a physical CD and wait a few days, or turn to some of the more dubious sites to instantly download pristine digital copies. For many music fans, it's not a difficult choice - and ultimately, it's the record companies that are missing out by failing to offer their customers what they want.

So come on Apple, Amazon and the rest - it's time to finally abandon the MP3 and go lossless.

IT may look like a cross between an Ewok and a Care Bear, but  this is in fact a  virtual pet from Moshi Monsters, which is tonight staging its first art exhibition.
The Monsters Inked exhibition will open at the Idea Generation gallery in Shoreditch, and features monster inspired artwork from leading artists.
Those showing new work include Pete Fowler, who illustrates album covers for Welsh band the Super Furry Animals, and Flanimals illustrator Rob Steen.
The site behind the exhibition  was set up by London internet entrepreneur Michael Smith, and is based in Battersea.
It was set up in April last year, and despite having no marketing, now boasts 1.5 million users.
In fact, the exhibition is the first time the site will be marketed.
“It’s been amazing, as we have reached 1.5 million users with virtually no advertising,” said Mr Smith.
“I got the idea after seeing a tamagotchi, and realising how addicted children were to them. We simply moved that idea online, and let the monsters inhabit a virtual world.”
Children visiting the site adopt a monster, and that then customise its appearance. Your monster, a kind of online tamagotchi, must be regularly fed, and can interact with other monsters in the virtual town created by the site.
Users can also play games such as spelling or maths puzzles.
“We wanted to keep the site educational, and also ideal for short bursts - the idea is that a child spends five minutes playing a few games per day, not all day randomly wandering around the virtual world,” said Mr Smith.
The biggest hurdle to the site was privacy.
“We thought a lot about protecting the users, but we think we got it spot on. We collect no information about users, you can’t send private messages or post photos, and we also monitor things.”
The site’s users are mostly under 13, and although signing up to the site is free, parents can sign their children upto to an expanded version and buy objects for their monsters. The firm now employs 20 people, and is set to expand into mobile phone applications and even cuddly toys based on the monster designs.
The monsters look like small, crudely drawn cartoon characters, which inspired next week’s exhibition.
“Through the site I became interested in the art of monsters, so it seemed an obvious thing to do,” said Mr Smith.
The exhibition will also include 25 monster pictures drawn by the site’s users, and Moshi plans to choose one to be used on the site as a new type of monster, as well as being exhibited.

www.moshimonsters.com

www.ideageneration.co.uk/generationgallery.php

To Abbey Road for Keane's 3D TV gig. For anyone with even the slightest interest in music, it's an incredible place to visit. The corridors are littered with musical history, and the original instruments and recording equipment used by the Beatles is all still here, much of it still in use.
On arrival I managed to get lost, and happened across a huge selection of old mixing desks - and you can't help but wonder who used them.
But Keane are here in a more forward looking capacity, as guinea pigs for Sky's first attempt at broadcasting an event in 3D live - and they do not disappoint.
While the band were (surprisingly, to me at least) great, the real surprise was Sky's 3D system. I've seen demos of it before, and it is, without doubt, the future of TV.
Most people think of 3D as being dodgy pictures you look at through red and blue glasses. This is world's apart - full, high definition pictures, which really do seem to jump out of the screen.
It didn't start well. The gig itself was taking place in Studio 1, the giant studio usually reserved for orchestras, and Sky had set its 3D TV's up next door in Studio two, where the Beatles did much of their recording. While the footage looked amazing, the audio was non existent, so all we could hear for a few minutes was the dull thud of a drum kit from next door.
However, once it was restored, the experience was amazing. There is a real sense of depth to the 3D pictures, although the glasses are a little embarrasing to wear.
The only flaw comes when I asked Sky when I'm likely to see this in my front room. There is a real sense of 3D being caught in a chicken and egg situation - for broadcasters to launch 3D services, TVs need to be in homes, and that isn't going to happen until we see a lot of 3D content made available. While Sky is doing some great work getting their system ready, it's of no use at all until the Sony's and LGs of the world start selling affordable 3D TVs.
So for the moment the 3D living room dream still seems some way off - but believe me, it's worth the wait.