Just a quick one to say that we can now confirm Phil Harrison will be attending the Three Speech event at the 3Rooms venue in London on March 13. A presentation/Q+A of some form will take place - we’ll confirm exactly what as soon as we have more details!

Three Speech bounces back to PS3’s 3Rooms venue in east London on March 13 (early evening onwards). Post the Games Developers Conference in San Francisco and just prior to the European launch of the PS3, there should be plenty to discuss and show off.

We’ll load up more details of the event as soon as they’re pinned down. Meantime, we’d like those who’re interested in attending to drop us an email. Travel and accomodation costs will be covered for those coming from outside of London (sorry, but only for those within the UK). Those who didn’t attend gthe previos Three Speech event will have priority this time around.

[email protected]

Here’s the vid from our last event -

Play Quicktime version

Three Speech’s event over at PlayStation’s 3Rooms was over a week ago now, but we’re still been receiving lots of questions asking about the night. So here’s a definitive round up from one of Three Speech’s regular contributors, Steve Boxer. And we’ll be back with news of further Three Speech events in the New year…

Three Speech took over Sony’s 3Rooms PS3 demonstration space in London’s trendy Shoreditch on 12 December, and attendees – many of whom had travelled considerable distances – were rewarded with perhaps the most comprehensive demo yet of the PS3’s myriad abilities.

Whether or not the PlayStation 3’s multimedia skills – which are way ahead of other consoles – will actually convince punters to buy the console remains to be seen, but the PS3 can certainly do some impressive stuff which we never suspected it would be capable of.

SCEUK PR guy Jonathan Fargher took the controls, working his way through the Cross-Media Bar, roughly from right to left. One slightly surprising development was instantly obvious – the PS3 was hooked up to an iPod via a USB cable, and Fargher was able to show how tracks could be easily played on or ripped to the PS3.

Next up was the photo library functionality, which included a neat mini-program that arranged photos into a scrapbook-style photo album – visual effects included making digital photos look like printed ones, and the software extracted date and time info automatically from the photos. A more conventional slideshow format had a neat twist – its software worked out the focus of each photo and zoomed slowly in on it.

The PS3’s web browser – with its ability to open multiple pages and let you flip instantly between them – looked impressive. We were briefly shown how to log onto the PlayStation Network using one username covering all games (below this piece, you will find a weblink that lets you register a PSN account) and add friends to your list. It was confirmed that individual games which generate a large amount of downloadable content will have their own dedicated areas of the PS3 Online Store. Later, Phil Harrison confirmed that Gran Turismo HD will be available as a free download, with its downloadable content also on offer without charge.

But perhaps the most impressive part of the demo was the interaction between the PSP and the PS3. Hook up a PSP via a USB cable or WiFi, and you will be able to use it to access all the content on your PS3. And thereby download any music tracks, photos, videos and so on to the PSP. Sony confirmed that, at some point in the future, it will be possible to access the PS3 from your PSP remotely (that is, beyond WiFi range), so if, say, you’re overseas, you’ll still be able to download all the multimedia content on your home PS3 to your PSP. There’s no doubt that the PS3 is the most multimedia-savvy console yet – but will that convince people to buy it?

By Steve Boxer

Here’s a film to give you a brief taster of what went on last Tuesday when Three Speech paid a visit to 3Rooms.

Play Quicktime version

A big thank you to all those who attended last night’s Three Speech event over at PlayStation’s 3Rooms venue and for making it such a huge success - especially those who travelled all the way from Nottingham, Leeds, Plymouth etc just for the occasion!

We’ll be getting some film footage and other info taken from the event up on Three Speech asap. In the meantime, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the evening, on what Phil had to say and on playing the PS3s. Also feel free to send in any pics you took - we’ll get some of them up on the site.

Here’s a couple to start with from Amit Tida:

For all those coming along to PlayStation 3’s new venue on December 12 for our Phil Harrison Q+A evening, here’s a quick preview of the space (and this really is only a small part of it). Situated in east London (near the Truman Brewery, it’s being used for a number of events over the next couple of months, so we’re pretty excited that we’ve been lucky enough to get some time.

When we were there Jonathan Ross and his kids were getting to grips with Lair and the SIXAXIS controls, PlayStation were looking to replace the 54″ HDTV with a 72″ version (because the first one wasn’t big enough) and we even got to watch a remote access PSP up on the wall in the gents! Elsewhere, there’s a bar, jacuzzi-style sofas, all manner of neat design features and a poker table.

Those who haven’t confirmed their places for the ThreeSpeech evening, you’d better do so quickly as we’ll be finalising attendees next week. The plan is Phil Harrison will talk us all through some of the PS3’s key features; then there’ll be a question-and-answer session, followed by an opportunity for everyone to get hands-on. We can cover costs for travel/accommodation for limited numbers of those coming from outside of London as well. [email protected]