Maybe we’ll have to add a seventh flame to our rating system. The gameplay of GT 5 Prologue is just incredible and it’s a shame I don’t get to spend 5 hours playing it every day.

The visuals are simply the best you could ever imagine in a game (as of March 09 that is). Racing against a field of pitiable but awesome looking Audis, Jaguars, Ferraris (and so on) through the mountain course of Eiger Nordwand, feeling the car slide through curves, the nose dipping down when you slam on the brakes, hearing the wind noise drown out the engine at 120 mph in the tunnel and flying, literally, over the finish line is so much fun, it’s ridiculous.

Of course the experience is only really complete with a steering wheel like the one my wonderful wife gave me for my birthday, the Logitech Driving Force GT. Very solid grip, adjustable steering feedback, shifting paddles, anything the racer heart, and hand, desires.

Just make sure you have a sturdy table to screw it on tightly. The courses on GT 5 prologue from Eiger Nordwand to the London city track take quite a strong hand to keep your Auto from bouncing into the Leitplanke. Speaking of bouncing: The absence of car damage might be the only non-realistic thing about GT 5. Apparently car engineers are even using the game to compare their products with the competition.

We had a great time in Miami as well (ahem, see the two ganstas below), meeting some very interesting people and spreading the word about groopi.es. And, of course, I’m sure we came in a close second in the competition .

Currently in Miami at the WeMedia conference – pitching our idea to a group of very smart Media people. I was first up this morning and had a fun time presenting groopi.es and where we are in the development. Definitely very smart other contestants in the game as well – keep your fingers crossed for this afternoon when we find out who the winner is!

Loved SeeClickFix.com as well…

Too bad that they had to pick a bridge-and-tunnel-club in midtown (Touch on 52nd, see pic) instead of going where the real action is these days, e.g. in Dumbo.

Anyway, we’ll be back next year with a launched site .

Amazing how Apple does it. 1 week after the launch the iPhone lines have not really gotten much shorter.

After an hour and a half of waiting for at least the cash register to come back to life I was able to pay for my phone, take it home and make first calls (which btw sound the same in 3G or GSM/EDGE). The activation of data and SMS services didn’t happen until Monday morning, also because AT&T doesn’t help its customers outside of regular store hours. Bummer.).

The phone itself rocks. The voice quality is much better than on my T-Mobile Blackberry. And after a week of frequent use I’m pretty happy with my typing skills on the virtual keyboard. The word recognition is really powerful and straightens out most of my typos. My gadget-heart gets especially excited about the map with GPS and the quality of the camera. Again, soo much better than on the B’berry.

And what you really only begin to grasp when you start using them are the famous applications. They are going to change the usage  and bandwidth of mobile devices dramatically. Basically a whole new software market has been born with everything from really fun entertainment (thanks to games taking advantage of the accelerometer) to efficiency boosters like task lists linked to GPS mapping and fully functioning social applications that let you REALLY be “always on”, if you want.

My conclusion so far: The first week of being an iPhonista already changed my smart phone usage from mostly doing emails wherever to doing emails wherever, finding stores and restaurants on the go, listening to my music although my iPod was out of battery, being happy about having a beautifully designed piece of gadget technology in my pocket, and thinking about what application we should build for groopi.es. Basically I got way more distracted from my day job then ever before, ha. But I’m enjoying it.