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Techradar |
- Gary Marshall: Twitter trials are no joke
- Report: Xbox Kinect costs just £35 in parts
- Details leaked on new flagship Samsung Android phone?
- Twitter Joke Trial appeal comes back with guilty verdict
- Tutorial: 10 tips for removing a program that won't uninstall
- Hands on: Medion Erazer X6811 review
- Medion Erazer X6811 budget-friendly gaming laptop arrives
- Pure i-20 iPod dock offers quality audio and video sharing
- Tutorial: 25 internet security tips
- Sony Bloggie Touch now available in the UK
- Mac OS X 10.6.5 released by Apple
- BT Vision to offer BBC iPlayer catch-up service
- Review: TEAC T-R650DAB
- Google to offer Samaritans number to suicidal searchers
- iPhone Flash app makes $1 million in a weekend
- Virgin Media seals deal for Five catch-up TV
- Review: Audiolab 8200CD
| Gary Marshall: Twitter trials are no joke Posted: 12 Nov 2010 01:36 AM PST  I would like to punch David Cameron in the face. I want to drop a tractor on Carol Vorderman. I want to cover Nick Griffin in jam and throw him into a room full of angry bees. I want to fire Glenn Beck from a cannon face first into Mount Rushmore. If I'd posted that on Twitter, I might have been arrested. In the real world we know about context. We know that people often say things they think are hilarious and that everyone else is appalled by. And we know the difference between someone posting "I'd like to smack Adrian Chiles with a plank to see which one's more wooden" and posting somebody's address and telling people to go there and hurt them. Not on Twitter, though. A throwaway comment about blowing up an airport loses you your job and gets you dragged through the courts. An unfunny joke is interpreted as a threat of violence and its author is arrested. I'm no fan of internet abuse, whether it's the default "you suck!" response of online commenters or the more serious, more scary and - thankfully - more rare abuse from the sick, the thick, the bad and the bullies. But the prosecution of Paul Chambers is a travesty, and the reaction to Gareth Compton's stupidity is a massive overreaction. Dangerous developments These are dangerous developments, and not just for the Twitter users concerned. If you can be arrested for saying something unpleasant, if obvious attempts at comic hyperbole can get you prosecuted, then Charlie Brooker, Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr had better get out of the country fast. The laws we have on malicious communications are there for a good reason. Some people use online anonymity to say terrible, hurtful things, to harass, to victimise, or to incite violence. Of course that's unacceptable. But that's not what we've got here. We've got people being arrested because someone else didn't find their jokes funny - jokes that in any other context wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. Gareth Compton's tweet was offensive, but it wasn't threatening. Paul Chambers' bomb joke was ill-judged, perhaps, but he said it to his friends. He wasn't phoning in bomb threats to the airport switchboard and there was clearly no malice in what he posted - and yet he has been prosecuted under a law designed to crack down on malicious messages, his life ruined for no good reason. To involve the police isn't just a sense of humour failure; it's crying wolf in a new and chilling way - and it's wasting resources that would be better spent on the people who use the Internet to hurt and harass. If the Communications Act can be used to ruin lives over innocuous tweets, then that law is an ass. 
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| Report: Xbox Kinect costs just £35 in parts Posted: 12 Nov 2010 01:36 AM PST  A report has suggested that Microsoft's claim to be making a profit on each Kinect for Xbox 360 it sells is by no means an exaggeration, with a predicted bill of materials cost of just $56 dollars per unit. The EETimes report on a teardown by UBM TechInsights suggests that the total cost of materials is just under £35, which given that it sells for £130 in the UK, represents a significant mark-up. Considering that Microsoft is apparently spending a billion dollars split between marketing Kinect and its Windows Phone 7 mobile OS, you can safely project that a good percentage of that profit is going on advertising. R&D Of course, there are other factors such as research and development to consider, something that Microsoft has already publicly stated cost hundreds of million dollars. The console is already selling well in the UK following its launch this week, with demand outstripping supply for the time being. And with the busy Christmas shopping period now in full swing, you'd imagine that Microsoft's big investment will begin to show some returns in the coming weeks. 
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| Details leaked on new flagship Samsung Android phone? Posted: 12 Nov 2010 12:49 AM PST  Samsung's next flagship Android smartphone could be with us early next year, with a powerpoint slide leaking some of the specs for the next-generation handset. Samsung's Galaxy S has sold well for the company and the company will be keen to build on that success. A slide discovered by Engadget has pointed to the arrival of a next generation phone that brings some pretty impressive specifications – inevitably including the company's well-received super AMOLED screen technology. WVGA That WVGA screen is a either a whopping 4.3 or even larger 4.5 inches (the slide gives both sizes in different sections) and the inclusion of an 8MP camera, Full HD playback and a super-speedy 1.2GHz processor will have phone aficionados licking their lips. Other details include 16GB of internal memory, the latest Wi-Fi and an 'ultra sleek design', with Android Gingerbread as the OS. The slide does have some rather strange inclusions – including a picture of a VoIP handset from Apiotek – which inevitably cast some doubts on the entire rumour. But, specs wise, this would appear to be a relatively believable next generation handset from Samsung; large screened, faster and sleeker, as it looks to establish itself as the home of great Android phones. 
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| Twitter Joke Trial appeal comes back with guilty verdict Posted: 11 Nov 2010 09:06 AM PST  Paul Chambers, the man who threatened to blow up Robin Hood airport in Doncaster on Twitter as a joke, has been found guilty at his retrial. The original trial was back in May, where the judge failed to see the funny side of the 'joke' tweet, which said: "Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week... otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!" Chambers was initially told he had to pay a £1,000 fine and that he had been given a criminal record for his actions. An appeal was granted and this lead to the recent retrial, which subsequently came back with the same verdict of 'guilty'. Guilty as charged The verdict has sparked off the #twitterjoketrial hashtag on Twitter once more, with celebrity backers of Chambers appalled at the results. These include Dave Gorman, who said: "I can't tell you what I'd like to do to the judge at the #TwitterJokeTrial for fear of it leading to another #TwitterJokeTrial. Awful news." Meanwhile Stephen Fry told Paul Chambers over Twitter: "My offer still stands. Whatever they fine you, I'll pay x" After the original conviction, Chambers lost his financial manager's job; after this one he seems to have found celebrity. 
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| Tutorial: 10 tips for removing a program that won't uninstall Posted: 11 Nov 2010 07:03 AM PST  If you find that sometimes you can't remove programs from your computer, read on. We have all the top tips you need. Most programs can be relied on to act with reasonable decency when asked to remove themselves from your computer. That's what the built-in uninstaller is for, after all - but sometimes things go wrong, or programs appear to come with no installer at all. What can you do then? You don't want it cluttering up your computer, so how do you get rid of it? In this guide we'll show you what to do when you can't remove programs in XP, Vista or Windows 7. 1. Check Control Panel All program installers should be registered in the Add or Remove Programs (XP) or Programs and Features (Windows 7/Vista) Control Panel. Check here first for the program in question - some may appear in the "View installed updates" section, such as Internet Explorer 8 in Vista (look in the Microsoft Windows section). If you see an entry, but can't remove the program from Add or Remove Programs due to an error, keep reading for an alternative solution. 2. Search for installer If you can't remove a program from Control Panel because there's no entry, see if the uninstall utility exists elsewhere. To do this, click Start > All Programs and check the program's shortcut folder for a possible uninstaller. If nothing is found, look inside the program's main folder for a program like uninst/uninst.exe or unwise/unwise.exe. Also look for any text or ini files that might refer to the program's installation - open these and you may find details you can follow to manually remove the program from your computer if all else fails. 3. Reinstall the program Some incomplete or corrupted program installations can be fixed simply by reinstalling the program over the top of itself using its setup utility. If you're really lucky, the setup utility might even recognise the existing installation and give you the option to modify, repair or - better still - uninstall or remove the program from your computer. Even if it doesn't, reinstalling may recreate that elusive uninstaller. 4. Get some help Check the program's documentation or website for uninstallation instructions or a manual removal tool - you may find the program is a "portable" application, which means it's self-contained in a single folder. All you have to do then is delete this folder along with any shortcuts you've created. 5. Ditch your security tool If you're trying to get rid of a security program, try using the free AppRemover tool, which works with most security programs and in many cases does a more thorough job of removing the program than its own uninstaller. If you have problems installing another tool after trying to uninstall your security program in the usual manner, try this.
6. Use a third-party tool IOBit Uninstaller is a free, lightweight portable application that might just help if you can't remove a program. Use it in Standard mode for a basic uninstall, or choose Advanced mode to hunt down leftover Registry entries and files, ensuring the program is thoroughly dispatched from your PC. It can also help with programs that come with no uninstaller or entry in Add or Remove Programs: just click Forced Uninstall to select the program file and see if IOBit Uninstaller can find the Registry entries and files needed to remove the program from your PC after a powerful scan has been performed.
7. Clean up partial installs Some problems may be caused by the Windows Installer. If the setup program has a MSI file extension, was only partially installed and now refuses to go quietly, this is the likely problem. If you're attempting to remove Office 2003 or later, visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301 for a free tool that should be able to help you removed the failed install. If you're running a different program in Windows Vista or earlier, then you can try the Windows Installer Cleanup Tool instead. It's been known to cause problems with Office 2007, so use it entirely at your own risk: Microsoft has retired it for this reason, but it's still widely available from download sites such as Softpedia. Once installed, launch the tool, select your problematic program from the list and click Remove. If Windows Installer keeps throwing up error messages when you attempt to uninstall a program, try the troubleshooting steps at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555175, or update to the latest version (3.1) through Windows Update. 8. Close running processes Some programs refuse to uninstall because other files are in use - reboot your PC and try again, or look for a Notification area icon you can use to shut the program down. If all else fails, right-click the Taskbar and choose Task Manager > Processes tab: identify the program's process from here, select it and click End Task. Once done, try removing it again. Certain files may refuse to delete because they're currently in use: try a clean boot following Microsoft's guide to see if you can now remove the program; failing that, use KillBox to delete the stubborn file.
9. Remove manually If you know what you're doing, you could try removing the program by hand: boot into Safe mode, then look for the program's folder under C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86). Once deleted, use a program like Autoruns to locate and delete any start-up entries. Finally, make careful use of a Registry cleaner like CCleaner or search the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software key for entries relating to the program that you are happy to delete. It's by no mean a complete removal, but most of the program should have been dispatched. 10. Monitor future installs The best way to avoid this kind of problem in future is to use a tool like Comodo Program Manager. This monitors program installations enabling you to easily remove them even if problems occur during installation or the program fails to provide its own uninstaller. The current version (1.0) is a little flaky, so consider installing the latest beta from the Comodo forums if you run into trouble: free registration is required.
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| Hands on: Medion Erazer X6811 review Posted: 11 Nov 2010 06:03 AM PST  Medion announced the arrival of its first gaming laptop in the UK this week – the Medion Erazer X6811. The German computer company isn't known for gaming laptops in the UK, this is because it has primarily used Germany as its testing ground for the Erazer laptop range. This was deemed a success, with the 17-inch version of the Medion Erazer X6811 selling out on its day of release in Germany.
Medion brought the X6811 to TechRadar towers this week and we were impressed with what we saw. The Erazer laptop line seems a lot subtler in design compared to some of the heftier gaming laptops in the market. The only design flourish of note is the blue LEDs situated on the front. So if you are looking for a lappie that screams GAMER!! then maybe this isn't for you, but we liked the subtlety.
The X6811 we got our mitts on was the 15.6-inch model. This comes equipped with an Intel Core i5-460M processor with a NVIDA GeForce GTX460M graphics card (with 1.5GB memory), 4GB DDR3 RAM, a 640GB hard disk and second hard disk slot to increase storage capacity, The battery on the system is worthy of a mention, too. As there is a nine-cell on board, expect the machine to keep its power through even the most heated of gaming contests; for a while at least. The screen is LED backlit and offers 1366 x 768 HD resolution.
We were shown a number of game demos by Medion, including Call of Duty: Black Ops. The machine's specs meant that graphically the game looked rich and immersive and there seemed no lag even when were shooting up most of the area. Although sound wasn't exactly cranked up to maximum, the inclusion of Dolby Home Theatre certification, two speakers and a sub will mean that sound will be as beefy as you want. And if it is not, you can always put a new sub into the spare slot.
While all this was impressive enough, it's the price that is the real kicker. Coming in at a super-smart £949, the Medion Erazer X6811 is almost half the price of its competitors with similar specs. When we asked a Medion spokesperson how the company keeps the price down, they explained that its business model is to offer no customisation like other manufacturers, then buy the components in bulk at the beginning and this keeps costs to a minimum.
This and Medion's mass market appeal, selling in supermarkets and through online retailers. Incidentally, the Medion Erazer X6811 will be one of the first gaming laptops to be sold in Sainsbury's (online only), so it will be interesting to see if consumers will want to purchase the X6811 alongside their groceries.
The Medion Erazer X7811 15.6-inch laptop has a UK release date of November and will be available from Sainsbury's Online, priced at £949. The Medion Erazer X7811 17-inch gaming laptop will also available from www.sainsburys.co.uk and www.medion.co.uk. It has a price of £899. 
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| Medion Erazer X6811 budget-friendly gaming laptop arrives Posted: 11 Nov 2010 05:21 AM PST  TechRadar has just got back from a meeting with Medion who revealed its latest assault on the laptop market – the Medion Erazer X6811. The machine is the first gaming laptop released by Medion in the UK and comes packing some impressive specs and an even more impressive price tag. The Medion Erazer X6811 comes in two sizes – 15.6 and 17 inch – with the smaller of the two having the better specs appeal. The 15.6-inch (1366 x 768) model comes equipped with an Intel Core i5 processor with a NVIDA GeForce GTX460M graphics card (housing 1.5GB of memory), 4GB DDR3 RAM and a 640GB hard drive. There's even an additional slot for another hard drive or a place to house a larger sub. When it comes to audio, the X6811 has Dolby Home Theater v3 certified high definition audio with two speakers and subwoofer. Connectivity comes in the form of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 and a slew of USB 3.0 ports. Game on If you fancy the 17-inch (1440 x 900) version then you will be opting for a non-widescreen display but the chip inside is the more powerful Intel Core i7. USB slots are downgraded to 2.0, though, but this is reflected in the smaller price point. The graphics card in the 17-inch X6811 ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 DirectX 11. Battery life is also a little less. While the smaller-screened Razer comes with a nine-cell battery, the 17-inch version has a six-cell one. The Medion Erazer X7811 15.6-inch laptop has a UK release date of November and will be available from Sainsburys Online, priced at £949. The Medion Erazer X7811 17-inch laptop will also be out in the next week or so and also available from www.sainsburys.co.uk. It has a price of £899 and looks to be hot property as when it was released in Germany it sold out the day it hit online stores. 
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| Pure i-20 iPod dock offers quality audio and video sharing Posted: 11 Nov 2010 04:28 AM PST  Pure has announced a new iPod dock – the Pure i-20 – which takes the pain out of linking up your iPod to your audio setup. This is because it allows users to connect to a hi-fi or radio using digital or analogue outputs. At the moment, unless you go down the streaming route or cough up a lot of cash, connecting your iPod to a dock-less hi-fi means you have to use a 3.5mm jack. The problem with this is that the sound gets squeezed. Sound of music The Pure i-20 iPod dock uses PURE Clearsound digital tech to extract the digital signal from your iPod – a method which Pure believes means that you don't have to compromise with sound quality. For those with an analogue setup, there's a Cirrus 4353 hi-fi quality DAC and high-precision low-jitter clock on board to enhance the sound of your tunes. Pure has managed to get its product stamped with Apple's 'Made for iPod' and 'Made for iPhone', so it seems that Jobs himself likes what the audio company is doing. And it will also pump out video content and accepts analogue video formats (component, S-Video and composite), which is a first for a dock. The Pure i-20 comes with a remote control, is priced at £74.99, and is out now. 
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| Tutorial: 25 internet security tips Posted: 11 Nov 2010 03:47 AM PST  Only The Paranoid Survive is a tract on corporate fundamentals penned by Intel's ex-Chairman Andy Grove. The words should, however, be tattooed on the back of every PC owner's mouse hand. The internet is full of thieves and vagabonds united by one common goal – to separate you from your hard-earned cash. Here's our guide to staying one step ahead of the bad guys. Follow our internet security tips to stay safe online and you can shop, surf and socialise online, and sleep soundly afterwards too. 1. Guerrilla psychology Don't be fooled into thinking cyber crime is a technical problem with a purely technical solution. A firewall and antivirus software can protect your computer, but they won't keep you and your identity safe. Social engineering is the black art of influencing people, and it's the hacker's best friend. In essence, hackers can control us thanks to a refined understanding of human characteristics such as trust, ignorance, greed, the need to be liked, the desire to help and plain old gullibility. Not even the most sophisticated software can hope to protect us from ourselves. In order to stay safe, educate yourself about social engineering. Take a trip to the Symantec website for a brilliant briefing on the subject. If you get keen, check out The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security by Kevin Mitnick. 2. Avoid being a mule Working from home, earn £500 a week commission. It sounds to good to be true, and it is. Scammers pass stolen cash to unsuspecting people, who transfer it back to the thieves via electronic payment. Your job with the work taken out is money laundering. Beware. 3. Set a serious password If you're struggling to create passwords that will stump a hacker, check out Microsoft's guide to adding complexity to access codes in such a way that you can still remember the logon. When you've made a password, you should rate its relative security. Microsoft offers an excellent password checking tool, which can be found here. 4. Split your emails Rather than linking Facebook, Twitter, newsgroups, forums, shopping and banking sites to one email address, use multiple addresses. As a minimum, use one for social activities and one for financial business. Your social address will rightly draw more attention than your business one – that's the way you want it to be. If the former is hacked, it won't be as nightmarish as losing control of your financial address. 5. Take care on public networks Never, under any circumstances, use a public network for financial transactions. Only send your personal and financial details over a network you've set up yourself, or one you know to be secure. Who knows what horrors are lurking on the hard disk of that internet cafe machine, or somewhere between it and its internet access point? Hackers have also been known to set up laptops to broadcast networks with names such as 'Free Internet Access' in hotels. They'll let you pass internet traffic through them and harvest any juicy details as you type. 6. Virtualise The truly paranoid should virtualise. The idea is simple: create a virtual PC, use it to surf the internet and, when you've done, destroy it, along with any viruses that may have infected it while you were online. Running a virtual version of Ubuntu from within Ubuntu is likely to be the easiest way of achieving this style of computing, and it's likely to be very safe too. 7. Anatomy of an iffy shop By making online shops look slick, official and safe, online criminals hope to dupe us into disclosing credit card details. Fake shopping sites, like much online criminality, rely on social engineering. There are, however, some tell-tale signs that should help you spot an iffy shop. First, avoid sites that ask for cash, cheque or virtual cash payments only – only do business with sites that accept credit cards. Next, ensure that the shop has a physical address, ideally in the UK – shopping abroad throws up more potential problems. 8. Be wary of Facebook There are two key areas of social networking security – the technical sphere and the human one. Technical security is about setting up your profile correctly – your favourite site will explain how, so follow its guides. Next is the human aspect of security and our old friend, social engineering. No quantity of settings and checkboxes can prevent a user from willingly complying with the bad guys, and this is what they depend on. There's one simple rule to follow here: don't do or say anything online that you wouldn't do or say in real life. 9. A price on your identity If you're in doubt about the value of your credentials, visit www.everyclickmatters.com/victim/assessment.html. Complete the questionnaire and discover what you're worth to a scammer… 10. Beware geeks bearing gifts Social engineering can be our worst enemy when it comes to making us run malware installers.
On the day StarCraft II was released, security firms reported a huge number of warez downloads for the game that were really wrappers for viruses. On the day Michael Jackson died, sites sprang up claiming video exclusives of the singer's last moments. Again, these were links to malware. Employing the lure of a hot topic as a means of walking us towards malware is a common hacker tactic. When you're tempted to click a link, follow the old mantra: if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. 11. Choose your flexible friend Never be tempted to use or enter details from your debit card – always use a credit card. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act (1974) make credit card companies liable to pay if you're the innocent victim of fraud. Card companies may, however, avoid paying out if you're proved not to have taken 'reasonable' care with your card – doing something like writing down your PIN, for example. Credit cards themselves also offer different levels of fraud insurance, so shop around before choosing a card and make sure you read the terms and conditions closely. 12. Pump and dump Don't be tempted to follow unsolicited dead-cert share tips. The senders will probably hold a lot of them. When you and other victims buy, the price will go up. They'll then sell, leaving you holding the baby. 13. Just like that A common online action site scam is to sell goods that are 'like' top brand goods. Your new watch may be like a Rolex insofar as it ticks, but that could be your lot. 14. Act on your doubts If you think an online shop or service is dodgy, do some checking. A WHOIS search may let you see the registration details of a site. Visit the website www.whois.net and check out your suspect site. Companies House also enables you to check out details about company addresses, owners and the like. Look for big discrepancies between onscreen addresses and physical offices. 15. We've found a virus Bogus security experts call unsuspecting PC owners claiming they've found a virus on their hard drive. All you need do is pay a fee and they'll remotely remove the nasty. In reality, the scammers are just working through phone lists, planting the seeds of fear and then collecting bucketloads of cash. 16. Ditch IE6 If you're still using Internet Explorer 6, shame on you. Not only are you likely to be getting less from the internet – Google and YouTube have now stopped supporting the ageing browser – but it's also riddled with security flaws. Do yourself a favour and download a newer browser. 17. Check out Virus Total If you've received a file and are worried about its provenance, upload it to www.virustotal.com. The site will run the file through a number of virus-scanning engines to find any hidden malware. It'll also send you a handy report document. 18. Listen to Bruce Schneier Renowned security expert, blogger and self-styled security guru Bruce Schneier has a thing or two to say about every aspect of the topic, ranging from the virus right up to national security policy. Visit his blog at www.schneier.com and add it to your bookmarks. 19. Check firewall logs Firewalls keep logs of traffic they've rebuffed. Check these and look for patterns – maybe a particular IP address is pinging your network or a certain port on your setup is spewing out too much traffic. These sorts of things can suggest a viral infection. 20. Stop redundant services The more software and services you're running, the greater the risk you could be compromised. Be ruthless – delete or deactivate applications and services you don't use. This will reduce the number of ways into your machine that are available to hackers. 21. Be cautious If you must use file sharing, do so with the utmost paranoia about security. When you've downloaded a file, isolate it and, if possible, execute it from a virtual environment to ensure it's safe before letting it into your true computing environment. 22. Update software Windows 7 and most major apps are happy to update themselves automatically, but you should still run their update systems manually to ensure they're working. Smaller apps may need updating manually, so check their makers' sites for updates. 23. Enter your own URLs Never follow links to URLs emailed to you and don't Google your bank's address. Google can be tricked into moving spoof sites up its rankings table by criminals looking to entice people to sites designed to harvest logon details. Enter important URLs yourself. 24. Check site safety Download McAfee's excellent SiteAdvisor from www.siteadvisor.com. The browser plug-in has a traffic light system that shows dangerous sites in search results. Following its green, yellow and red site rating icons will help you to avoid compromised web locations. 25. Test your system Test your antivirus system using the Eicar string. It's a text file that all antivirus engines should pick up, no matter how it's wrapped or compressed. Get it from www.eicar.org. It's completely safe and won't land you in legal hot water. 
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| Sony Bloggie Touch now available in the UK Posted: 11 Nov 2010 03:32 AM PST  The Sony Bloggie Touch is now available in the UK, some two months after it was debuted at IFA 2010. The diminutive camera is Sony's take on the pocket cam and offers Full HD video clips and still photos, a 7.6cm (3-inch) LCD touchscreen for viewing content, and a new auto macro mode. As with previous Sony Bloggies, the camera also comes equipped with a 360-degree panoramic video feature which is actually a lot of fun. Improved sensor Inside Sony has improved the Exmor CMOS sensor and has added something called Free-style shooting to the mix. While this sounds like something the Wu-tang Clan does in its spare time, Free-style shooting means you can capture movies in both landscape and portrait. Add to this four hours of HD movie shooting on its 8GB internal memory and a flipout USB arm for easy upload, the Sony Bloggie Touch is shaping up to be a decent mini movie maker. The Sony Bloggie Touch is out now and costs £219. Colour wise, you can get it in silver, black and pink. 
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| Mac OS X 10.6.5 released by Apple Posted: 11 Nov 2010 03:07 AM PST  Apple has released Mac OS X 10.6.5 – the latest version of Snow Leopard for its computers. The update brought a selection of fixes, rather than anything especially exciting, including improved reliability with Microsoft Exchange servers and improved stability and performance of graphics applications in games. Other fixes include a fix for an issue with some HP printers, an issue with Wikipedia information not displaying properly in Dictionary and, wait for it, improved Bluetooth pairing with the Apple Magic Trackpad. Camera enthusiasts For camera enthusiasts, the performance of some image-processing operations in iPhoto and Aperture has been improved and it adds RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras. Another minor issue with Ethernet connections has been solved and last, but not least, Apple has rolled out some security changes. The update can be installed in the normal way through the software update mechanism. The full change list can be found at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4250. 
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| BT Vision to offer BBC iPlayer catch-up service Posted: 11 Nov 2010 02:16 AM PST  BT Vision will soon have the BBC iPlayer, with two of the biggest British brands announcing a deal to bring the catch up TV service to the IPTV platform. BT and the BBC are already working closely on the forthcoming YouView, and the two will now collaborate on iPlayer for the former's BT Vision television over internet platform. The iPlayer will be introduced 'over the next five months' with roll-out beginning in December and all customers granted access by April 2011. Record breaker The BBC-branded application will be accessed through the programme menu and is the full iPlayer package – offering 'almost all' of the television and radio programmes available on the online iPlayer. Daniel Danker, BBC General Manager for Programmes and On Demand, said:"October was a record month for BBC iPlayer witha total of 139 million programme requests on computers, TVs and mobiles. "Over 20 million of those requests were delivered to TVs. Licence-fee payers love the option of enjoying BBC iPlayer's high-quality experience and vast choice of programmes on the living-room TV, and we're delighted to be able to bring the service to BT Vision." Significant move The move is a significant one given the history between the two – with BT the biggest critic of the strain that video applications like the iPlayer put on its network and, at one stage, traffic managing connections to the online player. Marc Watson, chief executive of television and online services, BT Retail, said:"We are really excited to be partnering with the BBC to bring the BBC iPlayer service to BT Vision customers. "The launch of BBC iPlayer on BT Vision adds to the vast range of quality entertainment already available to our customers." 
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| Posted: 11 Nov 2010 02:00 AM PST  Standalone 'real hi-fi ' tuners (as opposed to table radios and so on) are getting distinctly thin on the ground these days. No doubt one significant reason for that is continuing uncertainty over whether and when FM will be switched off, so if you're about to spring for a tuner it certainly makes sense to get one that's compatible with both analogue and digital broadcasts. This new model, the T-R650DAB from TEAC is just such a beast. It's actually a full three-band tuner, with good old AM included. And in a further link with the old ways, it has separate FM and DAB tuner sections. This is significant. Many current tuners (especially table radios) have a single tuner which pulls in both kinds of radio signal, doing quite a lot of the FM decoding digitally. That looks good on paper, but we've yet to hear a unit of that type that has really good FM performance. Typically, there's more background 'hash' than an all-analogue tuner provides and performance in the face of the insidious multi-path distortion is compromised. Audio buffering Instead, TEAC uses a typical modern tuner head from KSE, which includes basically the complete RF-to-audio circuit in one little module. The main circuit board carries little more than power supply components, some control functions and the most basic audio buffering. As you'd expect, FM implements RDS and, of course, DAB includes various bits of text information as standard, so there's plenty to look at on the display. DAB's Dynamic Range Control is available and there's a numeric signal strength meter which doesn't tell one much in absolute terms, but is useful for optimising the position of an antenna. Operation isn't quite the same as most other DAB radios as the 'Enter' button is separate from the tuning knob and there's a DAB feature we haven't seen before, manual tuning by frequency. Most users, however, will do as we did and activate the scan and station list functions. No ifs or buts DAB tuners don't tend to sound much different from one another, and this one seems to follow that rule of thumb. Actually, we felt it was perhaps just a touch clearer and more open than available comparisons, but really there's very little in it. Its radio-side performance on DAB is also par for the course and we had no trouble at all getting breakup-free reception from a casually draped wire antenna. In other words, this is a good DAB tuner with no ifs or buts. Roof-top antenna FM is much harder to optimise and here we felt the budget nature of the T-R650 does show a bit. For a start, it's quite fussy about signal strength and wouldn't give us an enjoyable stereo output, however hard we tried with an indoor antenna. We wouldn't expect truly noise-free reception under such conditions but some tuners can at least eliminate the roughest background noises. Fed from our roof-top antenna, the sound improved considerably and background noise decreased to just a little above the minimum one can expect. However, even in this case, the sound remained a little coarse and edgy. At this sort of price it seems rude to be too picky, but we recall better results from cheaper tuners of not very long ago. Energetic In terms of actual audio performance, the T-R650 is well-balanced tonally, with good, strong bass and decent treble too. It is at its best with energetic music, where its good rhythmic qualities are best appreciated. For many listeners, DAB may well be the preferred option, all else being equal, with music which majors in subtlety and detail. At the very least, it's good to have the choice! Related Links
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| Google to offer Samaritans number to suicidal searchers Posted: 11 Nov 2010 01:54 AM PST  Google will serve up the number for the Samaritans hotline for people who are searching for suicide information – following a successful test in the US. The search giant believes that it can provide people with a better option by giving them the number for the Samaritans help line, where people who are considering suicide can receive help and advice. Targeted search results have received plenty of criticism for being a little invasive, but in this case it appears a perfect use of modern search technology. Emotional support The Samaritans provide confidential emotional support 24 hours a day for people who are suicidal or experiencing feelings of distress or despair – on the number 08457 90 90 90. Google's UK Managing Director Matt Brittin said: "People turn to the Internet for information and advice all the time. "We hope that by adding a highly visible link on searches relating to suicide, Google can help guide those who are vulnerable, distressed or suicidal to the renowned expertise and support service offered by Samaritans." Samaritans' Chief Executive Catherine Johnstone added: "We welcome this positive step by Google and we hope this new search tool that promotes Samaritans' helpline details will encourage distressed or suicidal people to seek help from a safe source. "The Internet is a rapidly expanding phenomenon that allows people to access huge amounts of information, much of which is helpful but some of which can occasionally be dangerous. "It is therefore important that vulnerable and distressed people are steered towards safe places such as Samaritans." 
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| iPhone Flash app makes $1 million in a weekend Posted: 11 Nov 2010 01:52 AM PST  SkyFire, the app that lets iPhone users view Flash video on their phones, has managed to generate a cool $1 million in its first weekend on sale. The SkyFire app for iPhone costs $2.99 in the US and yet is still not officially available on the UK iTunes Store. How to make a quick million bucks However, reports from the jailbreak scene indicate that there are plenty of British users with jailbroken iPhones already happily using the Flash app. SkyFire is available for free on all other smartphone platforms, but that is clearly because those platforms already offer Flash video support, unlike Apple's iPhone. The company told MobileCrunch that its download numbers for their first weekend on the US iTunes store were 2well over 300,000." After Apple takes its 30 per cent cut, this means that SkyFire walked about with somewhere between $600,000 to $700,000. Not bad for a weekend's work! The iPhone app has suffered a few teething troubles in its first few weeks on sale, with SkyFire putting this down to the huge demand for Flash on iPhone from its customers. 
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| Virgin Media seals deal for Five catch-up TV Posted: 11 Nov 2010 01:35 AM PST  Virgin Media has announced that it is has sealed a deal with Five for its Demand Five catch up and video-on-demand service. The cable giant has nabbed a key deal for the platform, with Five's catalogue now arriving on its admired Catch Up TV service – including content from the Five, Fiver and Five USA channels. The deal is a multiscreen offering, meaning that the programmes wil be available on mobile and internet through Virgin Media, and the addition will not cost customers any extra. You're a Mentalist! Programs that will be available include British shows like The Gadget Show and Fifth Gear and some of the Five's key US imports like The Mentalist, Grey's Anatomy and CSI: Miami. And who could forget the Australian behemoths of soap – Neighbours and Home and Away. Cindy Rose, executive director of digital entertainment at Virgin Media said: "We're delighted to add Demand Five to our pioneering TV On Demand service and to complete our offering of terrestrial TV catch-up services. "With a high calibre of shows including quality US drama, popular Australian soaps and entertaining and informative home grown programmes with many in HD, Demand Five has something for everyone." Jonathan Lewis, Head of Digital Media at Channel 5 Broadcasting Ltd added: "We're really pleased to be able to offer Demand Five through Virgin Media, giving even more consumers the opportunity to watch a selection of our great shows, at a time convenient to them whilst still being able to enjoy the high quality of a full TV experience." 
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| Posted: 11 Nov 2010 01:30 AM PST  Well, it's a funny old world. Here we are with CD allegedly dead in the water and one of the most keenly-awaited products in a while is a – wait for it – CD player! The experienced audiophile won't be too surprised at that, given the history of LP replay since the 1980s. And, as for the brand that's making the splash, Audiolab has been on and off the radar a bit over the years, including the spell as TAG McLaren Audio and is now very keen to ensure a lively future by launching eye-catching products. So just what's so eye-catching about a CD player? Basically two things: funky new design and internal technology. There are some unusual features externally, too, including multiple digital inputs and user-selectable digital filters. We've seen both those features before, but not often in quite this much detail and there's an attractive additional extra to the USB input, in that it receives and plays back high-resolution audio (24-bit/96kHz sampling). The majority of USB DACs are limited to 16-bit/48kHz as a function of the hardware in them, but new chips only recently made available have increased this to 24-bit/96kHz and Audiolab has got in quickly to implement that. Boutique design As for internal design and technology, it may ring bells if we mention that the designer of this CD player is one John Westlake. John was a bit of a cult figure in the late 1990s, thanks to his digital design work for Pink Triangle, which did nothing to diminish that company's reputation for individual, freethinking audio products. Products that included one of the earliest DACs with selectable filters, though in that case the selection process involved buying and plugging in a whole filter module.
Fast forward to 2010 and it's much easier to design filters in software and implement them at the touch of a (remote control) button. In this case, four filters are on offer, with fast roll-off (basically the 'standard' filter used in most players since the year dot), slow roll-off, 'Optimal Frequency' and 'Optimal Transient'. The last gives an impulse response completely lacking in the usual preand post-ringing, while Optimal Frequency has practically no aliasing at all and an extremely rapid roll-off between 20kHz and 22kHz. A fairly quick comparison was enough to convince us that, as we've often found, the fastest roll-off option (Optimal Frequency) gave the best fine detail and tonality and we stuck with that. The central core of any digital audio device is the DAC and Audiolab's choice here is a chip we haven't come across before, from Canadian company ESS. A most impressive spec is implied for this chip, 32-bit conversion at over 84MHz. As stated, that's actually largely meaningless, though if you are technically minded and care to read the white paper and patent details from ESS, you'll find that there is certainly some quite-clever thinking in there.
But we're not going to get bogged down in a sea of technical details, because that's not really relevant to how the thing actually sounds.... Get the power On the other hand, we're happy to give Audiolab credit for the sheer thoroughness with which this player has been designed. The power supply arrangements are something to behold, for a start. On removing the player's lid, there's a plethora of reservoir/smoothing capacitors and an impressive number of regulator chips too, signs that extensive measures have been taken against power supply contamination and cross-coupling. This isn't revolutionary stuff but it's well above par for a device in this price category. Ditto the use of discrete transistor (instead of op-amp) analogue stages at the output. Op-amps handle some of the audio processing, along with notably good-quality passive components. Less obvious internal stuff includes strenuous measures against jitter, applied both to the internal transport and data from the digital inputs. Again there's a certain degree of spin applied here and terms like '100 per cent jitter attenuation' require slight qualification, but it's clear that the DAC chip and the circuits around it have some very serious jitter reduction measures built in and, short of jitter so bad it causes stuttering (which would imply a seriously broken source), that particular bogey seems to have been rendered harmless. Build quality is highly creditable. You don't get a thick front panel, nor anything fancy in the way of display or controls, but both internally and externally the player is well assembled and finished and it's also pretty smart. The display does show CD text information, which is a nice touch to have and is unusually informative about incoming data when the device is used as a DAC, showing both sampling rate and word length. Balanced outputs are a plus, too.
Sounds like.... We're inclined to be a bit cynical about claims for millions of bits and super-high oversampling ratios because these things don't always translate into better sound, but it's always intriguing to see what the latest bit of super-tech does actually sound like. As it happens, the 8200CD was one of the first bits of review equipment we listened to via a recently revamped reference system (speakers cleaned inside and out, room rearranged and so on), so it was a doubly exciting experience. Bearing in mind the risk of getting carried away by such felicitous circumstances, we were at first disinclined to be too gushing in our notes on the new Audiolab, but as things went on and we became more sure of our reference points, we began to see some reasons why Audiolab's people are so full of beans over the new baby. We've become accustomed to high standards of CD replay, so we weren't much surprised to hear plenty of detail, good bass and treble extension. Other basics are also well dealt with, which is very commendable, but not eyebrow-raising. What really caught our imagination, though, was the sheer togetherness of the sound. More than anything, that seems to be the hallmark of this player. What do we mean by that? Prosaically put, it's that there's excellent integration between different aspects of performance. That always happens in live music, but not by any means invariably in reproduced sound. Bass may be good most of the time, but becomes uncertain when the midrange gets busy, or detail may suffer at times when the treble's particularly bright. In this case, by contrast, the firm bass just seems to get even firmer in the presence of activity higher up the band, while detail is consistently precise. As a result, music comes across with an unusually high degree of physicality, less vague than it often feels. Recordings are odd: since the earliest days of 78s, people have proclaimed that they sound 'just like the real thing' and yet improvements continue to be made and are readily apparent to anyone who pauses to listen. We're not saying that the 8200CD is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the world. Indeed, we've heard esoteric players and DACs that can match it in any and all areas, but it rather impressively exceeds expectations for a mere £700 and, in the process, does make the point that many of its competitors just don't quite gel sonically. A couple of concrete examples might help illustrate this. One recording we've enjoyed a lot is the Brahms German Requiem on Harmonia Mundi (we used the SACD layer to audition the players in this month's Blind-Listening Group Test). It's a well-made recording and on most CD players it has a lovely tonal balance, beautifully natural dynamics and very good imaging, too. But on the 8200CD it had that certain something extra, the last little bit of focus that made it all seem real, pinpointing the positions of the performers and crystallising their individual instrumental and vocal timbres. In similar vein, an old favourite by Ian Dury showed more than ever, just how sharp and snappy his band sounds. The 8200CD also brought out like never before all the musical invention of the accompaniment and the humour and biting sarcasm in the great man's voice. We'd spotted these things before, but the achievement here was in reminding us, dramatically and emphatically, of it all. Rediscovering familiar tracks like that is always one of the most joyful effects of good new hi-fi! Thrilled to bits So in summary it's very much the musical and communicative skills of the 8200CD that we found ourselves enjoying, however fine its measured performance (which at least comforts us that we weren't hallucinating). We'd have to say that if you're thrilled to bits with your current setup that's great, but if you audition this player it could just make you a teensy bit dissatisfied with things as they stand – and we all know where that road leads. No doubt there will be some who just don't click with it. That's OK too – musical and sonic tastes vary and we wouldn't dream of dictating on the subject. If you already own equipment of the dCS/Meridian class this won't make you turn unfaithful to it. But if you're in the market at anywhere up to, at least, a grand, the 8200CD could just be the piece of equipment that makes you want to say in the demo room, "Where's the cash register?" Related Links
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