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Techradar |
- Review: Mad Catz Cyborg R.A.T. 9
- Halo makers looking to mobile gaming
- JVC announces new 3D HD camcorder
- Microsoft: Windows Phone 7 is our portable Xbox console
- Rumour: INQ Cloud Touch is first 'Facebook phone'
- US iPhone war starts as Verizon Wireless iPhone 4 launched
- US iPhone war starts as Verizon Wireless iPhone 4 launched
- Mobile World Congress 2011: what to expect
- Official: MySpace cuts nearly half its workforce
- Official: MySpace cuts nearly half its workforce
- Analysis: ARM vs Intel: the next processor war begins
- Samsung Galaxy S2 en route to MWC 2011?
- Blu-ray discs wave goodbye to HD analogue compatibility
- Korean hackers wield Twitter and YouTube as weapons
- 9 reasons why you should switch to KDE 4.5
- Botnets back from Xmas break as spam doubles
- Winklevoss twins hone in on Facebook cash
- Winklevoss twins hone in on Facebook cash
- Google working on fix to Nexus S reboot problem
- Microsoft working on FaceTime competitor
- In Depth: How Microsoft made the Touch Mouse
- Google Docs gets video playback
- Amazon Kindle comes to Mac App Store
- T-Mobile defends mobile data allowance cull
- T-Mobile defends mobile data allowance cull
| Review: Mad Catz Cyborg R.A.T. 9 Posted: 12 Jan 2011 01:30 AM PST  Strangely it seems like aeons ago since we first laid our hands on the MadCatz Cyborg R.A.T. 7, a mouse so weird-looking Zaphod Beeblebrox would get it free with his breakfast cereal. But bizarre as it no doubt looks, it's one of the finest gaming mice I've ever laid my cramped-up claws on. The R.A.T. 7's accurate, responsive, solidly-built, fully adjustable and incredibly comfortable to use. In fact if it wasn't for the £70 price-tag I would urge everyone to go and pick one up with their Christmas money. What we have here then is the Cyborg R.A.T. 9, the wireless equivalent of the R.A.T. 7 in every conceivable way. The only thing you're missing out on is the material-covered cable tail stretching out of its front. This is instead replaced by a 2.4GHz wireless connection, boasting a fairly minuscule 1ms response time. Now, I'm no pro-gamer, which my Black Ops scores unhappily attest to, but that's a decent reaction time that could maybe convince some to step away from their wired up rodents. But I suspect they're already too stuck in their ways now to change… Realistically then this is a home gamer's device, and a home gamer with a fair bit of disposable income to play with. As the R.A.T. 9 sits somewhere around the £120 mark it represents a fairly hefty chunk of investment. When I checked out Razer's competing wireless Mamba gaming mouse, another 5,600dpi beast, I almost spat out my coffee all over my keyboard at the touted £120 pricing. Strangely, I'm less stunned at the cost of the R.A.T. 9, but equally I'm finding it tough to find anything here that warrants my recommending this product as a worthwhile controller. There's no new innovation here; no plug and play mechanic, which both the wireless Mamba and Microsoft's Sidewinder X8 use to good effect. So you're stuck with a dual battery setup and having to switch batteries when power levels go south. The wired version is pricey enough and you really don't get enough on top of that version to justify the extra £50 price premium MadCatz is putting on this wireless mouse. Related Links
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| Halo makers looking to mobile gaming Posted: 12 Jan 2011 01:17 AM PST  Bungie, the makers of the bestselling Halo games, are looking to the mobile phone world for its "next gaming universe." The gaming developer is advertising for a senior mobile application programmer who can help roll out the company's next major series to our handsets. The advert reads: "Bungie is embarking on a new and challenging journey and if you have a serious passion for mobile application development we want you to be a part of it." Real-time connectivity "Our mobile development team is focused on establishing real time connectivity for millions of users and terabytes of data. "Join our team and define the interface of Bungie's next gaming universe to the world." Bungie's reputation means that the next gaming universe it created will garner plenty of attention and it cannot be denied that mobile gaming is becoming increasingly sophisticated. With the arrival of dual-core chips and phones more capable of dealing with 3D graphics, the gaming environment is increasingly akin to the portable consoles that have been popular for years. With Sony working on a PSP Phone, Microsoft bringing the Xbox brand to its Windows Phone 7 OS and Apple's massive success in selling gaming apps, you can understand Bungie's desire to expand to new platforms. 
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| JVC announces new 3D HD camcorder Posted: 12 Jan 2011 01:12 AM PST  JVC has announced what it claims to be the world's first consumer camcorder to offer 3D recording in Full HD. JVC's latest 3D consumer camcorder follows announcements of 3D video cams from Sony and Panasonic at CES 2011.
High speed processing JVC has developed a 'high-speed processor' that can produce two simultaneous Full HD images. The GS-TD1 uses two camera lenses and two 3.32 megapixel CMOS sensors - one in each lens – with which it is able to capture three-dimensional images in full HD "much the same way that human eyes work" according to the company's press release.
JVC's new high-speed imaging engine processes the two Full HD images - left and right images at 1920 x 1080i – within a single chip. JCV's new camcorder is also capable of shooting in 2D and a number of other modes, including "Side-by-Side Format" for AVCHD (3D) and conventional AVCHD (2D) shooting. Pricing on all these new 3D consumer camcorders is still to be confirmed, so we will be sure to bring you that information as soon as we have it. 
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| Microsoft: Windows Phone 7 is our portable Xbox console Posted: 12 Jan 2011 01:05 AM PST  Microsoft has described Windows Phone 7 as its mobile console ahead of the launch of the PSP Phone and the Nintendo 3DS. Although it has enjoyed great success with its Xbox brand, Microsoft has not taken a stab at the mobile console sector dominated by Nintendo in recent years. Sony's PSP has been less of a success, but the PlayStation brand is set to move into the mobile sector with the PSP Phone from Sony Ericsson,. Mobile platform for games With Nintendo's latest portable console – the Nintendo 3DS – launching in a week's time, Microsoft's senior director of PC and mobile gaming Kevin Unangst told Kotaku that its new mobile OS Windows Phone 7 represented the company's mobile gaming efforts. "This is our mobile platform for games," said Unangst, "The same people who make the Halo game, the same development folks, work on this, this is our mobile console." The Xbox brand has been heavily used within Windows Phone 7, with the OS utilising the brand for its games. Talk of an Xbox handheld has persisted for some time, but it appears that Microsoft is concentrating on its home entertainment console and leaving the mobile gaming to the mobile phone and tablet – for not at least. 
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| Rumour: INQ Cloud Touch is first 'Facebook phone' Posted: 12 Jan 2011 12:38 AM PST  A new Android handset called the INQ Cloud Touch has been revealed, rumoured to be the first of two 'Facebook phones' in development. Rumours of a partnership between INQ and Facebook have been circulating since last September and the latest INQ Cloud Touch is looking likely to be the first fruit of the deal. One of the new phones is said to feature a Qwerty-style keyboard and touch screen. The second device is said to resemble Apple's iPhone, being solely touchscreen based, according to Bloomberg's anonymous sources late last year. Facebook baked in Description of the INQ Cloud Touch in a Bluetooth certification is as follows: "An Android smartphone built to make messaging faster and smarter. It's designed around the way people naturally communicate and has Facebook built into its core. "The homescreen features multiple entry points to different Facebook functions, while a dynamic widget displays a feed of status updates, albums, videos and photos." It's unclear which of the two rumoured models the INQ Cloud Touch is, as there is no mention of a Qwerty-keyboard or touchscreen in the Bluetooth certification. No doubt we will be hearing a lot more about INQ's partnership with Facebook in the coming weeks in the run up to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month. TechRadar has contacted Facebook and INQ for further information and updates on this story. 
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| US iPhone war starts as Verizon Wireless iPhone 4 launched Posted: 11 Jan 2011 11:58 AM PST  The iPhone 4 is no longer available to just AT&T customers in the United States after the long-awaited CDMA version of the Apple device was launched on the Verizon Wireless network. The new handset, which is all but identical to the original iPhone 4 aside from a shift in the aerial to the side of the device above the volume buttons, will be available on February 10th February. That means millions of Americans who've been frozen out of owning the iPhone since its inception in 2007 can now get their hands on Apple's flagship device for the first time. From GSM to CDMA Verizon and Apple had been in talks since 2008, but because Verizon is a CDMA network and the AT&T iPhone is a GSM device, extensive testing was required. Mobile phones in the states either run on CDMA networks (Verizon, Sprint) or GSM (AT&T, T-Mobile) and now the CDMA iPhone 4 is ready to go. Verizon's rival network AT&T (these guys are continually beating hell out of each other in US TV commercials) had enjoyed a long period of exclusivity in the US similar to that held by O2 in the UK before the other networks broke the stranglehold in 2009. Up until now, Verizon has thrown its weight behind Android devices like the Motorola Droid X and the HTC Droid Incredible, so it'll be interesting to see if their support wavers now they've achieved the holy grail. 
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| US iPhone war starts as Verizon Wireless iPhone 4 launched Posted: 11 Jan 2011 11:58 AM PST The iPhone 4 is no longer available to just AT&T customers in the United States after the long-awaited CDMA version of the Apple device was launched on the Verizon Wireless network. The new handset, which is all but identical to the original iPhone 4 aside from a shift in the aerial to the side of the device above the volume buttons, will be available on February 10th February. That means millions of Americans who've been frozen out of owning the iPhone since its inception in 2007 can now get their hands on Apple's flagship device for the first time. From GSM to CDMA Verizon and Apple had been in talks since 2008, but because Verizon is a CDMA network and the AT&T iPhone is a GSM device, extensive testing was required. Mobile phones in the states either run on CDMA networks (Verizon, Sprint) or GSM (AT&T, T-Mobile) and now the CDMA iPhone 4 is ready to go. Verizon's rival network AT&T (these guys are continually beating hell out of each other in US TV commercials) had enjoyed a long period of exclusivity in the US similar to that held by O2 in the UK before the other networks broke the stranglehold in 2009. Up until now, Verizon has thrown its weight behind Android devices like the Motorola Droid X and the HTC Droid Incredible, so it'll be interesting to see if their support wavers now they've achieved the holy grail. 
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| Mobile World Congress 2011: what to expect Posted: 11 Jan 2011 10:06 AM PST  After the sheer madness and reams of shiny gadgets (as well as crippling fear) of CES 2011, we barely have time to pause for breath before the annual mobile phone-a-thon of Mobile World Congress 2011 is upon us. While CES saw a near-record number of top end mobile phones released from the Las Vegas jamboree, MWC 2011 still promises to be the place to see all manner of new handsets and tablets. So we've trekked across the digital rumour-space and looked for all the info on what to expect from the Barcelona event - keep coming back as we'll be constantly updating it whenever some new morsel of info or spy shot comes into view. Microsoft Last year we saw Microsoft unleash Windows Phone 7 officially onto the world in a Barcelona hotel, with Steve Ballmer calling the announcement a 'mile post' in the launch of the company's new OS. Well, the launch has happened and the fanfares have died down - but that doesn't mean Microsoft won't have something up its sleeve for the Barcelona show, with a 'big update' apparently being detailed to offer some new features for the burgeoning OS. LG LG used CES to good effect when it showed off the world's first dual-core smartphone, the LG Optimus 2X, as well as one of the slimmest with the Optimus Black. However, the much-vaunted LG Android tablet (possibly the Optimus Pad) wasn't shown - although the re-badged T-Mobile G-Slate was - so it's possible we could see that shown off in full glory. We reckon there's more to come from the Korean firm too, possibly in the mid-range and another high-end handset, so stay tuned for that press conference.
Motorola Motorola is traditionally more active at CES than MWC, which may be the case this year as it released the world's most powerful mobile phone with the Motorola Atrix, and stole the tablet show with the Android 3.0-powered dual-core Motorola Xoom. However, we don't think the phoenix firm is all done just yet with its renaissance trail in the early part of 2011, so expect to hear a glut of new rumours in the near future. Samsung Samsung has been oddly quiet for a while (apart from the Nexus S, which is manufactured for Google) which means that we're likely to see a lot from the firm. The main handset is the Samsung Galaxy S2, which will likely be a rebadged (and possibly dual core) Nexus S - but also something about its own Bada OS and other mid-range phones is exceedingly likely. Nokia Nokia is still fresh from its own Nokia World conference in September, where it launched the E7 and C7 handsets, but we should see some more from the Finnish firm at MWC, despite announcing nothing last year bar MeeGo. However, we're already hearing rumblings of the new E6-00 as well as already spotting some MeeGo-powered smartphones at the tail end of last year... expect to see more from that story in the near future. Sony Ericsson Is the joint venture finished after the Xperia Arc? Far from it - we predict big things from Sony Ericsson at Mobile World Congress. The first is the PSP Phone or the Xperia Play - it's been so often leaked it's practically boring now, so Sony Ericsson needs to announce it already. A Vivaz reboot, under the codename of Hallon, has been tipped to TechRadar as appearing in the near future, and the X10 Mini Pro looks set for a refresh if Chinese pictures are to be believed.
HTC Ah, HTC. Often the headline grabbers of MWC, this year it needs to go some way to manage that feat again. The HTC Scribe, the company's first proper tablet, looks very likely, but we're sure some high-end phones will be announced as per usual. We hope for a Desire and Desire HD refresh, as well as something to reboot the beautiful-but-overlooked HTC Legend - but surprisingly for the Taiwanese firm, leaks have been scarce this close to launch. Google needs to show of a little bit more of Honeycomb (Android 3.0) in the near future, as we didn't get nearly enough from the search giant at CES. Whether Eric Schmidt's on-stage talk will reveal anything or a handful of tablets dotted around will do the job, the fact Google is releasing the Honeycomb SDK later this month means we should see a lot more in the near future. RIM RIM is traditionally quite quiet at MWC, although it will still have a presence this year. This means that we should get some more time with the BlackBerry PlayBook, and hopefully some clue about the mysterious battery life - is it going to be as poor as some people are suggesting? Palm/HP Palm is dead, long live Palm! That's what HP is hoping for the brand, and the much-rumoured WebOS -powered PalmPad (Hurricane) HAS to step into the light soon, as the parent company will be desperate to see a return on its substantial investment. And given the smartphone line is still alive inside HP Island, we'd hope that more devices will turn up soon too - where better than Mobile World Congress 2011? 
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| Official: MySpace cuts nearly half its workforce Posted: 11 Jan 2011 09:11 AM PST  It's official, MySpace has announced that it is to cut half its workforce, some 500 jobs, in a massive restructuring of the site. MySpace CEO Mike Jones issued a statement regarding the heavy lay-offs, which will affect 47 per cent of the site's staff, saying: "Today's tough but necessary changes were taken in order to provide the company with a clear path for sustained growth and profitability. "These changes were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of the new product." New MySpace The new product Jones is referring to is MySpace's transformation from social-networking site to a hub for music and entertainment. To reiterate how 'well' the new MySpace is doing, Jones noted: "Since the worldwide rollout of the new MySpace, there have been more than 3.3 million new profiles created. "We have already seen a rise of four percent in mobile users just between November to December, now totaling over 22 million." It's not looking good, however, for the UK contingent of MySpace. The UK side of the company is set to have something of a skeleton staff with "partnerships" coming in to handle advertising for the UK, Australia and Germany. The new MySpace logo is unfortunately prophetic of the state the company is in. Whoever decided to lop off half the logo (My[___]) and replace it with a blank space will be kicking themselves, now that half the workforce has gone the same way. Interestingly, this snipping of the workforce may mean that MySpace, as the rumours persisted in saying, won't be sold after all. 
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| Official: MySpace cuts nearly half its workforce Posted: 11 Jan 2011 09:11 AM PST It's official, MySpace has announced that it is to cut half its workforce, some 500 jobs, in a massive restructuring of the site. MySpace CEO Mike Jones issued a statement regarding the heavy lay-offs, which will affect 47 per cent of the site's staff, saying: "Today's tough but necessary changes were taken in order to provide the company with a clear path for sustained growth and profitability. "These changes were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of the new product." New MySpace The new product Jones is referring to is MySpace's transformation from social-networking site to a hub for music and entertainment. To reiterate how 'well' the new MySpace is doing, Jones noted: "Since the worldwide rollout of the new MySpace, there have been more than 3.3 million new profiles created. "We have already seen a rise of four percent in mobile users just between November to December, now totaling over 22 million." It's not looking good, however, for the UK contingent of MySpace. The UK side of the company is set to have something of a skeleton staff with "partnerships" coming in to handle advertising for the UK, Australia and Germany. The new MySpace logo is unfortunately prophetic of the state the company is in. Whoever decided to lop off half the logo (My[___]) and replace it with a blank space will be kicking themselves, now that half the workforce has gone the same way. Interestingly, this snipping of the workforce may mean that MySpace, as the rumours persisted in saying, won't be sold after all. 
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| Analysis: ARM vs Intel: the next processor war begins Posted: 11 Jan 2011 08:38 AM PST  It was a good CES for Intel. Sandy Bridge is out and the performance is ace. Our reviewer Jeremy Laird calls the new Core i5 a "huge leap forwards". But it was a great CES for ARM. The Cambridge-based company didn't even need to do anything. Microsoft came to them. Microsoft's announcement- while not a complete surprise - means we'll see next-gen tablet devices and even more efficient netbooks running undefined Windows-based operating systems on ARM-based SoC silicon as well as that of Intel and AMD.
LOOK WHO'S THERE: Steve Ballmer makes the SoC announcement to the masses at CES 2011 I met with Bob Morris, director of mobile computing at ARM on Saturday to hear his reflections on the announcement. "All the logos are all the same size which I thought was pretty cool," he chuckles. "This is a very interesting statement because now you've got a software company who has said we're going to do the best type of products for the best types of devices that do these types of things. This is a really interesting time." ARM shares rose by seven per cent as a result of the announcement." What it is is not architecture any more, it's a business model. You've got so many people that have good designs and they compete." Some technology pundits have begun to say statements such as "the beginning of the end for Intel" and "the year that a small UK chip designer began to eclipse the largest chipmaker in the world". These views are way too extreme. But it can't be denied that ARM-based chips will pose a growing challenge for Intel. Mind you, Intel is always better when it's challenged, so we'll get better products as a result. When AMD last seriously threatened on the PC processor front and Intel was hobbling along with the atrociously inefficient last-gasp variants of the NetBurst-based Pentium 4, it pulled things out of the bag with the first generation of the Core microarchitecture that Sandy Bridge is the latest phase of. Making up for lost time Intel says we will see Atom processors that can match ARM in the smartphone space. Indeed, one Intel insider at CES told us that "in a couple of years we'll have the best smartphone chip in terms of performance and power [efficiency]". We don't doubt Intel's ability to do this. But what we do doubt is whether it will make any difference for the phone and tablet manufacturers. When Intel launched Atom for smartphones last May, there were no design wins announced and we've seen little other action. While we'll probably see a Nokia Intel-based handset running MeeGo at Mobile World Congress next month, other handset manufacturers just don't seem that interested in x86. Too strong an ecosystem? What's more, the ARM ecosystem has unique and almost unrepeatable strengths – its universality and amount of partners: Qualcomm, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Nvidia - and that's just the key ones that Microsoft has on board. There are stacks more. Even Apple is invested in this platform. Apple is a unique case as it now has its own chip design firm – it bought PA Semi who designed the ARM-based Apple A4 chip. Barring a simply earth-shattering seismic shift, Apple won't be using Atom inside the iPhone 10 or iPad 5. ARM's other benefit is that, while it designs the architecture, it uses a licensable model. That means that manufacturers, such as Nvidia with the Tegra or Qualcomm with the Snapdragon, can make their own design adjustments before manufacture. Snapdragon, for example, features Qualcomm proprietary GPU technology. They can also pick the best ARM processor to go in their products and that freedom of design and manufacture is something Intel won't offer.
NATIVE APPS: Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky talked about native ARM apps and drivers at last week's CES press conference "People say how will we compete against Intel?" said Morris. "Even if they come down and have the same types of power levels and things like that, how do they compete against all these different companies, because they're going to be one of many." Where Intel may pick up business is in the netbook or convertible tablet categories, for more traditional, task-based computing but with extreme levels of battery life. It remains to be seen whether ARM-based chips could rise to the kind of tasks we now ask our PCs to do every day. Another disadvantage for Windows on ARM is that Windows programs will need to be recompiled. However, as we don't even know what kind of Windows will be on ARM devices (it could be a tablet orientated variant of the OS, for example) it's hardly worth panicking about at this stage. The tablet and smartphone markets are still in their infancy, so there's still a lot of potential for Intel to thrive. The PC is still hugely important, of course, and Intel and AMD will remain strong there. But elsewhere, there's a lot to play for. 
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| Samsung Galaxy S2 en route to MWC 2011? Posted: 11 Jan 2011 08:00 AM PST  Samsung could be about to unleash the successor to the Samsung Galaxy S at Mobile World Congress 2011. First mooted by a Korean newspaper late last year, new leaks of the handset known as the Samsung Galaxy S2 have been spotted, including what looks like a mock-up of the handset and some appetite-whetting specs. The new handset could well be the Samsung-branded version of the Google Nexus S; the specs certainly sound similar, with an on-board NFC chip and Android 2.3 making an appearance. The extra core makes all the difference One new feature on the Samsung Galaxy S2 is the inclusion of a dual-core processor; this is in line with comments made by a Samsung spokesperson at CES last week, promising details of dual-core additions to the company's line-up at MWC 2011. The Samsung Galaxy S2 is also said to have a larger screen; a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED as opposed to the Nexus S' 4-inch affair. Another differentiating factor is likely to be the inclusion of Samsung's proprietary TouchWiz 3.0 user interface. 
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| Blu-ray discs wave goodbye to HD analogue compatibility Posted: 11 Jan 2011 07:01 AM PST  Blu-ray players housing component connections have been hit by a new ruling, which sees image constraints added to Blu-ray discs in 2011. As from the beginning of January, Blu-rays can have something called an Image Constraint Token embedded into the discs. This is a piece of code that can restrict image quality to 540p – a smidge better than DVD – when played back through component cables. This is all because of the AACS Adopter Agreement, which came into force 1 January 2011. The reasoning behind this is that studios want you to start using digital only connections, which is the first step in phasing out analogue technology on Blu-ray players by 2013. Digital discussions Chris Jenkins, editor of Home Cinema Choice magazine told TechRadar that this was an inevatable change. "The reason the analogue HD option is going is that software companies think the 'analogue hole' in copy protection leaves their products open to piracy," said Jenkins. "Phooey, we say - pirates aren't that concerned about HD quality. But is this analogue Armageddon a bad thing, or a big 'so what?'. "Some specialist installers still like to use component video, as it's more reliable over long distances than HDMI, and easier to split into multiple signals; some projector users find it more convenient too. "But the vast majority of users will take to HDMI without problems, and, in the end, you won't have a choice. Analogue audio outputs are the next to go. Tear your hair all you like, but the future is all digital, and for good or ill we'll all have to live with it." If a Blu-ray has been authored after 1 January, and you still watch movies through component on your Blu-ray player, then you will have to watch out for a new Image Constraint Token logo on the packaging – or you'll be watching the movie through fuzzy eyes. 
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| Korean hackers wield Twitter and YouTube as weapons Posted: 11 Jan 2011 06:31 AM PST  Hackers from South Korea have been using North Korea's official Twitter and YouTube accounts to poke fun at Kim Jong-il and his son, Kim Jong-un. Although most North Koreans have no internet access, the ruling regime created Twitter and YouTube accounts in 2010. The South Korean hackers posted several tweets criticising North Korea's weapons program. One read, "point guns towards traitor Kim Jong-il wasting fortunes on nuclear and missile weapons instead of feeding his people". A video posted by hackers on the regime's YouTube account may have been the most damaging, showing an animated Kim Jong-un running over impoverished North Koreans in a gift-laden sports car. Retweet-aliation Retaliation by North Korea saw a South Korean website suspected of carrying out the attacks suspended. The North Korean authorities threatened "grave consequences" for any South Korean found to have insulted the Kim family, while South Korea has already indicted one Twitter user for praising the Kim family's regime on the micro-blogging site. Even retweeting a North Korean tweet can land South Koreans in trouble, with the Seoul justice ministry threatening punishment to anyone who tries to make contact over Twitter. Trading online insults may seem juvenile on the surface, but the situation certainly makes us glad to live in a society where we can send tweets to whoever we like without facing dire consequences - well, as long as we're not threatening to blow up airports or anything. 
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| 9 reasons why you should switch to KDE 4.5 Posted: 11 Jan 2011 06:08 AM PST  There are two kinds of Linux users in the world – those who use Gnome and those who dislike KDE. You can't blame them – to call KDE releases so far a disaster would be something of an understatement – but the tide has now turned. Over 16,000 bug fixes and 1,700 new features later, the KDE developer unveiled KDE 4.5. The release has started popping up in many Linux distros, and it looks and feels stunning. Here are nine reasons why it's time to log off Gnome and switch to KDE. 1. Performance leap If you want a fully-fledged desktop that looks the business, KDE is now as fast as Gnome. On a decent spec box, the boost in performance in KDE 4.5 is evident immediately; it loads quickly, and application launches and switching are faster than in previous releases. 2. Built-in eye candy You don't have to rely on the Compiz 3D desktop. If it's looks you want, there's a compositor built right into KDE 4.5, which saves you some space on the hard disk as well. The new KDE 4.5 compositor is stable and doesn't tax the system resources as previous versions did. It also features Compiz-like effects and several window decorations, including the default Oxygen. 3. Enhanced window manager The Plasma Workspace window manager, KWin, has been improved and now includes new tiling features. This allows it to arrange the windows on the desktop without overlapping. KWin also handles windows better by enabling you to move them around easily, using empty areas as drag handles. Try dragging an empty area inside an open window to see for yourself. 4. Plasmoids Applets in KDE are referred to as plasmoids. KDE's developer continued adding plasmoids, despite receiving a lot of criticism from the community, and the fruits of its efforts are finally showing with KDE 4.5. The latest release offers dozens of plasmoids in a wide range of categories. Don't miss the social networking and monitoring tools, as well as plasmoids that monitor changes in web pages. To top it all, the plasmoids are far more stable and functional than before. 5. Slick notifications The KDE development team has done a great job of integrating the notification area into the KDE panel. The notification area in the panel has also been polished visually, and its usability has been enhanced. For example, instead of popup messages, you can now track active downloads with a visual progress indication within the widget itself. 6. Activity Manager KDE 4.5's Activity Manager offers a new approach to organising multiple tasks on the desktop. It enables you to associate specific activities with particular desktops. An activity can have various apps or files. It works like the 'Add Widgets' dialogue box, and lets you add, remove, save, restore and switch between activities easily. It'll take some getting used to, but this is one feature you won't find on any other desktop. 7. Improved display for netbooks The KDE Plasma workspace for small netbook displays has been improved. It uses the search and launch (SAL) interface, enabling you to search through your emails, access your apps and even view information on websites such as Wikipedia within the constraints of the relatively small display. There may not be much visible difference here, because most of the improvements are performance-related. The new netbook interface is much sleeker and includes better support for touchscreen devices. 8. New and improved apps The KDE games team has improved its existing selection of games by adding new features and introducing a new title: Kajongg, the original four-player Mah-jongg. It's written entirely in Python, which makes it the first major Python KDE application developed as part of the KDE Games family. Elsewhere, you can now create and customise your own maps in strategy game Konquest, and kill even more time with the new set of levels in KGoldRunner. The educational apps have also been brought up to date – the vocabulary trainer, Parley, has acquired a practice interface and now features a conjugator. 9. Offline Marble This is KDE's virtual globe app and world atlas, which promotes the use of free maps via the OpenStreetmap project. It has a new route-planning feature thanks to the OpenRoute service, as well as the option to download and store map data that's accessible when there's no internet connection. 
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| Botnets back from Xmas break as spam doubles Posted: 11 Jan 2011 04:20 AM PST  If you opened up your email accounts over Christmas and the New Year, you would have found a distinct lack of Nigerian princes offering sackloads of cash, Viagra-like solutions to satiate your libido and online degree opportunities. This was because a number of spambots decided to take the Christmas period off, possibly to visit long-distance relatives and fatten up on numerous mince pies. But, like all good things, the spam holiday period has ended and major botnets like Rustock and Xarvester are back online spewing their unwanted missives. Spam attacks According to MessageLabs, 10 January saw a massive surge in spam mail, with a 98 per cent increase of junk hitting inboxes everywhere. "It is too early to say what effect this will have on global spam levels, or if this return is permanent, but at the moment it certainly seems as if the holiday is over and it's now back to business as usual," says MessageLabs about the spam increase. We've a feeling the spam kings missed a trick over the festive period, when extra money and a boost of Viagra were probably much needed to get us through the holidays. 
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| Winklevoss twins hone in on Facebook cash Posted: 11 Jan 2011 04:13 AM PST  The Winklevoss twins, the two brothers that claim to have originally come up with the idea for Facebook, are pursuing Mark Zuckerberg in the courts yet again, seemingly unhappy with the $65 million payoff already offered. The twins gained mainstream notoriety following the release of The Social Network film late last year. Rancorous litigation Unhappy with the $65m settlement offer from Zuckerberg to date (who wanted an end to the 'rancorous litigation') Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and their partner Divya Narendra are now claiming that Facebook misrepresented its stock price at the time of making the settlement offer, depriving them of millions. Still, today the Winklevoss twins plan to ask the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to undo the $65 million settlement previously agreed in order for them to pursue Zuckerberg for yet more money. "The settlement they reached involved $20m in cash and $45m in stock based on a valuation of $36 a share," said lawyer Jerome Falk, representing the Winklevoss twins and Mr Narendra. "Facebook failed to disclose that at about the same time its board of directors had approved a valuation of $9 a share which was to be the basis of stock options for key employees. Facebook did not disclose this significant piece of information. "This was a highly material fact and the fact they didn't disclose it is a violation of federal security law." Mark Zuckerberg was voted Time's person of the year last month. 
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| Winklevoss twins hone in on Facebook cash Posted: 11 Jan 2011 04:13 AM PST The Winklevoss twins, the two brothers that claim to have originally come up with the idea for Facebook, are pursuing Mark Zuckerberg in the courts yet again, seemingly unhappy with the $65 million payoff already offered. The twins gained mainstream notoriety following the release of The Social Network film late last year. Rancorous litigation Unhappy with the $65m settlement offer from Zuckerberg to date (who wanted an end to the 'rancorous litigation') Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and their partner Divya Narendra are now claiming that Facebook misrepresented its stock price at the time of making the settlement offer, depriving them of millions. Still, today the Winklevoss twins plan to ask the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to undo the $65 million settlement previously agreed in order for them to pursue Zuckerberg for yet more money. "The settlement they reached involved $20m in cash and $45m in stock based on a valuation of $36 a share," said lawyer Jerome Falk, representing the Winklevoss twins and Mr Narendra. "Facebook failed to disclose that at about the same time its board of directors had approved a valuation of $9 a share which was to be the basis of stock options for key employees. Facebook did not disclose this significant piece of information. "This was a highly material fact and the fact they didn't disclose it is a violation of federal security law." Mark Zuckerberg was voted Time's person of the year last month. 
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| Google working on fix to Nexus S reboot problem Posted: 11 Jan 2011 04:11 AM PST  Google has acknowledged the existence of a bug in the Google Nexus S that automatically reboots the handset, usually while the user is on a call. A Google representative commented on the help forum thread, saying, "We've successfully reproduced this issue and are in the process of investigating with Samsung." The Samsung-made Google Nexus S is the first handset to run Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) but it's not yet clear whether the problem lies with the handset's hardware or software. Chatterboxes most affected The help thread indicates that most users encounter the issue on longer phone calls; calls shorter than two minutes seem not to be affected. Just last week Google announced that it had solved the issue of Android text messages being sent to the wrong person. The text messaging bug took Google six months to replicate; given that Google has already managed to reproduce the issue, a quicker fix should be on the way to ease Google Nexus S users' pain. 
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| Microsoft working on FaceTime competitor Posted: 11 Jan 2011 03:50 AM PST  Microsoft is working on a proprietary Windows video calling application, much like Apple's FaceTime. At least, according to a key Windows Phone 7 employee speaking to Neowin.net about upcoming Windows Phone updates. It has been suggested that the video calling app will integrate with Microsoft Live services in order to work with most recent Windows devices. Beyond the hand of Skype Comparisons to FaceTime hint at a closed loop video calling system, allowing users to call only those who also have the Windows app. Video calling capability would benefit from a front-mounted camera, which none of the Windows Phone 7 handsets currently feature. If the rumours are to be believed, we could see the front-mounted camera make its way into future versions of Windows Phone 7's (or maybe even Windows Phone 8's) minimum hardware specifications. The Microsoft employee is quoted as saying that the FaceTime imitator will "reach beyond the hand of Skype". Is this corporate hyperbole or can Microsoft truly create a Skype-slaying video calling app? Only time will tell. 
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| In Depth: How Microsoft made the Touch Mouse Posted: 11 Jan 2011 03:00 AM PST  Microsoft actually built a multi-touch mouse before Apple; at CES last year Stephen Bathiche, the head of the Microsoft Applied Sciences team, told TechRadar how his team designed a capacitive mouse and announced their research prototype at a conference a month before Apple announced the Magic Mouse. The Microsoft hardware team has taken another year to turn that prototype into a mouse they're happy with, collaborating with researchers in the Applied Sciences team and the innovation development team at Microsoft Research in Cambridge (many of whom worked on projects like Microsoft Surface). Hrvoje Benko of the Applied Sciences group showed TechRadar a selection of the prototypes from the three years he's been working on the 'Mouse 2.0' project. (Benko is behind the Lightspace project that uses a camera and projector "to make any surface, any wall - any body part! - into a Surface.")
CONCEPTS: Five different ideas for Mouse 2.0 - FITR mouse, Touch Mouse, the articulated franken-mouse, the hemisphere mouse and the mouse that shines a laser on your desk The idea was to combine the good old mouse - which has been around since the early 1960s without much change in the way you use it - with the multi-touch features of Microsoft Surface. You can touch, grip and gesture with your whole hand, but the mouse reduces all your dexterity to a single cursor and right-click. The Mouse 2.0 concepts went through several different kinds of touch sensors. A curved mouse made from acrylic sheet and an infrared camera (using the Frustrated Internal Total Reflection technique Perceptive Pixel uses for touch screens where the touch of a finger is detected because it allows reflected internal light out of the surface layer) looked good but could only sense the tips of your fingers. Putting a diffused illumination infrared camera in a half sphere produced an unusual shape that had too much internal reflection and while it made users more creative in the way they used gestures it also made their hands get tired. An articulated mouse made from the innards of two mice bolted together, with knobs for two of your fingers sticking out at the front, was accurate and comfortable - but only allowed two-touch gestures. One design with an infrared laser and camera detected your fingers touching the desk surface around the mouse, but only worked well if it was just the right size for your hand. More like a mouse In the end, the team picked a multi-touch mouse using a capacitive sensor, because that lets you have gestures without abandoning the familiar mouse shape (the sensor is small and you don't need to fit in a camera; it's not too expensive, either, because it's printed onto plastic using conductive ink). "The benefits of the mouse are that it's comfortable and precise," Benko told us. "We didn't want to come up with something that meant people have to change the way they use the mouse. You can still point and click." But when you click, it's not a button that's moving; it's the whole mouse (and that's more to give you feedback than to detect the click). "The whole surface of the mouse is a button so when you right-click and left-click it's really the same - but we detect where you click and that's what determines the click," he explained.
PROTOTYPES: Some of the many stages of designing the Touch Mouse, from the 3D printed (but fully working) first CAD prototype to the almost-finished wireless mouse. The diamond pattern is the multi-touch sensor - which is covered in later prototypes Clicking and gesturing on the mouse surface is very comfortable thanks to the textured surface, which is a grid of tiny laser-etched dots. "This mouse will be used a lot", boasts Benko, "so we used laser etching; you cannot rub this off." The mouse has a matte surface on purpose. "We spent a lot of time optimising the surface top coat. It's not glossy - try moving your fingers on a glossy surface for more than a few minutes; it gets really tiring," he points out. And the dots are there for two reasons. "They showcase where the sensor is, and they make the surface a little bumpy, so if you have oily fingers you can still make the gestures because it has some tactile feel to it."
INSIDE: The multi-touch grid senses your fingers, the optical sensor works like any other mouse and the microswitch at the front is the mouse button The shape of the mouse went through many different iterations and hundreds of protoypes, some with radically different designs; individual features that were popular with testers were combined into the final version. And the way that the touch surface on the mouse recognises gestures is based on how the hundreds of testers moved their fingers. "We thought about how to define the gestures - move your finger this many millimetres up and you trigger the gestures. We decided to record a whole bunch of people doing them; we had folks with really giant hands, people with really small hands, male, female, left-handed, right-handed. We asked them to do things like 'put two fingers down and move up' and we used that to define how we recognise that gesture." How many fingers make sense? You scroll by dragging your fingers over the top surface but you can do more than scroll up and down; move your fingers from side to side and you scan scroll and pan across a window. In a long document you can flick your finger up, down or across and then tap to stop scrolling when you get to the right page. Using two fingers to scroll controls your current window; move to fingers up to maximise a window or restore the previous size, two fingers down to minimise or restore a window - and two fingers to the side uses Aero Snap to fit to half the screen. Use three fingers and you control all your windows; move three fingers up to open the revamped version of the task viewer in the IntelliPoint software, move three fingers down to minimise your windows and show the desktop. "I'm a firm believer that the most dextrous finger on your hand is your thumb," jokes Benko - so you can swipe your thumb on the side of the mouse and move back and forward between web pages in the browser or slides in PowerPoint or images in Photo Gallery (it works in any app that has back and forward buttons).
TOUCHABLE: The grid of dots is laser etched into the Touch Mouse; the texture makes it easier to grip and less tiring to use A little glowing indicator on screen shows you that you've used your thumb so you don't get confused (avoiding a problem that showed up in early testing when users sometimes didn't realise when their fingers were making a gesture) and this is a huge timesaver that immediately feels natural. There aren't any gestures that use more fingers even though the mouse knows where they are. "We can see all five fingers", Benko explained, "but it's hard to keep even four fingers in place." The limitation is not what the mouse can detect but whether more complex gestures would be easy enough to use. "We can actually detect 20 touch points," he told us, adding that his team wrote the underlying sensor code "and the actual underlying infrastructure is fairly similar to the code that's running in the Surface touch processing."
SIZE IS EVERYTHING: The gestures you can make on a mouse are limited by the size available - the Touch Mouse is big enough for most hands The signal processing that the mouse does can encode lots of individual points on the touch surface at the same time but, as he put it, even though the touch surface goes almost to the very edge of the mouse "we have a real limitation with space and with your hand." You can turn off gestures you don't use and switch the mouse to be left or right handed, but you can't make up your own gestures. "We spent a lot of time optimising the gesture set so you can do these three different functions. Given the amount of time it took us to nail this experience," he suggests it might not be easy to design your own unique gesture that won't be mistaken for anything else. "You don't want to have the crosstalk problem: is it this gesture or is it that gesture?" The future for the Touch Mouse The team is thinking about more ways to use the multi-touch sensors, though. "We've thought about the authentication aspect," Benko told us enthusiastically; the way you move your fingers is often unique enough to identify you, so just gesturing on the mouse could be enough to log you in or load preferences for a different user if someone else uses your mouse. "It would be really cool to do simple things - like we can totally detect handedness and we could switch the settings automatically. It would be really interesting - but at this point we're still nailing the basic experience. We want to come out with a great experience at launch." Now that the Touch Mouse is almost done (it will be on sale in May), Benko's team is experimenting with what else they can do with multi-touch. "We've built some different mice with this type of sensor," he told TechRadar, mentioning one particularly intriguing idea we hope we get to see at CES 2012. "We've wrapped the capacitive surface around a pen and used it as a sensor." 
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| Google Docs gets video playback Posted: 11 Jan 2011 02:58 AM PST  Google has added video playback to its Google Docs facility. Although users could already share videos by uploading and downloading them in Google Docs, the new functionality allows you to play them directly from the cloud without downloading a single byte. Videos up to 1GB can be uploaded, but you'll need to install Flash in order to watch them back. Processing time Some videos uploaded before the change to the cloud-based software may not have processed yet, but Google says these will be available soon. It's worth noting that Google needs a bit of time to process the video so it won't necessarily be available for watching straight away. For more immediate video playback, you may be better off using Google-owned YouTube. 
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| Amazon Kindle comes to Mac App Store Posted: 11 Jan 2011 02:45 AM PST  Amazon has revealed that its Kindle app is now available from the Mac App Store, the relatively new application store for Apple computers. The Kindle app may feel more at home on a portable device, but it seems that it is popular on other devices too, being that it is already the fifth most popular app on the store. Amazon has been strengthening its Kindle brand for some time now. The physical ebook reader is the best-selling product ever on Amazon and its app has found its way onto many a mobile device. Kindle on fire It was rumoured in December 2010 that a web version of the Kindle Store was just around the corner, which would give the service ubiquity. However, it is still app-bound for now, with the Apple version offering everything you expect from the ebook service – over 775,000 books and counting. Of course, Macs have had access to the Kindle service since last year but it has now been given a home on the Mac App Store and can lay claim to being the first ebook reader available on Jobs' shiny new service. 
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| T-Mobile defends mobile data allowance cull Posted: 11 Jan 2011 02:10 AM PST  T-Mobile has confirmed that its reduction of mobile data limits to 500MB also applies to Android contracts that previously offered a 3GB allowance. This means that T-Mobile's Android contracts have seen monthly data allowances slashed by 83 per cent. However, T-Mobile claims that most of its mobile data customers only use around 200MB per month, so a minority of customers will be affected. No additional charges The good news is that customers straying over the data limit won't be charged and will retain access to mobile email and web-browsing. A T-Mobile spokesperson told us, "T-Mobile will not charge its customers additional rates for exceeding these data limits, and those who do will still be able to access important services such as email and website browsing, but will have file downloading restricted. "Customers who have a need for higher volumes of data will be encouraged to take up a separate mobile broadband plan." 
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| T-Mobile defends mobile data allowance cull Posted: 11 Jan 2011 02:10 AM PST T-Mobile has confirmed that its reduction of mobile data limits to 500MB also applies to Android contracts that previously offered a 3GB allowance. This means that T-Mobile's Android contracts have seen monthly data allowances slashed by 83 per cent. However, T-Mobile claims that most of its mobile data customers only use around 200MB per month, so a minority of customers will be affected. No additional charges The good news is that customers straying over the data limit won't be charged and will retain access to mobile email and web-browsing. A T-Mobile spokesperson told us, "T-Mobile will not charge its customers additional rates for exceeding these data limits, and those who do will still be able to access important services such as email and website browsing, but will have file downloading restricted. "Customers who have a need for higher volumes of data will be encouraged to take up a separate mobile broadband plan." 
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