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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

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Sony Tablet S1 unveiled, will take on Apple iPad

Posted: 26 Apr 2011 01:25 AM PDT

The Sony Tablet S1 has officially been announced, optimised for rich media entertainment and aiming to hit a UK release date of autumn 2011.

Sony Tablet S1 is one of two new tablets announced by the Japanese electronics giant – lining up alongside the dual 5.5 screen mobile communication-friendly S2.

Although the S1 is only the codename, the tablet's specs are not so mysterious, with Sony confirming that the Sony Tablet will bring Android 3.0, WiFi and 3G and play nicely with Sony's premium network services, including the PlayStation Network for gaming and the Qriocity media service.

9.4 incher

The tablet will feature a 9.4 inch display for "enjoying the web and rich content on a large screen."

"Its off-centre of gravity design offers ease of grip as well as a sense of stability and lightness, offering comfortable use for hours," adds Sony.

Interestingly, the Sony Tablets can control home entertainment devices, with the inclusion of infrared meaning that you can control a variety of AV devices (although it will begin with just Sony Bravia support).

There is also DLNA functionality to allow the streaming of content to TVs and wireless speakers.

Head in the clouds

"Sony Tablet delivers an entertainment experience where users can enjoy cloud-based services on-the-go at any time," said Kunimasa Suzuki, Corporate Executive, SVP, and Deputy President of Consumer Products & Services Group.

"We're aiming to create a new lifestyle by integrating consumer hardware, including 'Sony Tablet', with content and network."

"Android 3.0 is a new version of the Android platform with a new holographic user interface that is designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets," added Google Android head Andy Rubin.

"I'm excited about "Sony Tablet" as it will further spur the development of applications and network offerings which users are looking for."

Exclusive: Sky: We feel the pressure to innovate

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 09:49 AM PDT

Sky's Brian Lenz has told TechRadar that he feels the pressure of bringing the latest technology to the UK living room, admitting that making things simple for the mass market is the biggest challenge.

Sky is keen to be seen as a company that brings the latest kit to our houses, with the current focus on companion device apps like the Sky News iPad offering, but the likes of Sky+, 3D and HD have all been major past projects.

"We are willing to innovate and that does bring pressure," said Lenz.

"The longer we go on bringing innovative products to market the more challenging it is, because simplicity is complex in this world .

"We know that we do something we are taking it out to a huge number of people; our smallest group is with our Sky+ HD consumers and they number 3.5 million, so anything we do will touch a lot of people."

Sky anytime

Box lifecycle

Lenz has been pleased to see that the most recent Sky+ HD kit has been capable of coping with the arrival of things like Sky Anytime on demand and 3D.

"You have more freedom when you introduce a new box but you also have to think about where you are in the life cycles of that kind of product," he added

"The last couple of years has been about unleashing the potential of HD satellite pictures with IP Connectivity and PVR; bringing those together in the home.

"Releasing that potential for our customers is challenging and we have to ask "can we do something in a way that will resonate with many customers"



Nintendo 3DS sells 3.6m units

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 08:45 AM PDT

Nintendo today announced that the new 3DS console has shipped 3.6m units since its launch, falling slightly below its own forecast.

The company is describing the figures as a "smooth start" to investors, despite missing out on the four million mark it had originally predicted.

Nintendo also announced that is has sold 9.43m games for the console, which was launched in Japan in February and in US and European markets at the end of March.

Profits way down

It's no surprise that Nintendo chose today to confirm the Wii 2 successor as its profits are way down for the financial year ending March 31st.

Net income was down 66 per cent to 77.6 billion YEN (around £545m) with the blame being pointed at stagnant sales of the Wii console and software.

Wii sales are likely to fall 14 percent to 13 million units during the forthcoming fiscal year, while the world awaits the arrival of the successor system in 2012, the company said.

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Nintendo confirms Wii successor for E3

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 08:18 AM PDT

Nintendo has finally let the cat out of the bag: The Wii 2 is official and there'll be a playable version of the console on show at E3 in June.

However, those hoping to put the item at the top of their Christmas lists are in for a disappointment. It won't be available to buy until 2012.

The confirmation comes from an official statement on Nintendo's investors' website, confirming that the as-yet-unnamed "Wii successor system" will arrive next year.

The statement reads: "Nintendo Co., Ltd has decided to launch in 2012 a system to succeed Wii...we will show a playable model of the new system and announce more specifications at the E3 Expo, which will be held from June 7-9, 2011, in Los Angeles."

New approach

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has also said that Nintendo "would like to propose a new approach to home video game consoles," so expect the Wii successor to have some surprises in store.

However, those surprises are very unlikely to involve 3D gaming, with Iwata adding that "It's difficult to make 3-D images a key feature, because 3-D televisions haven't obtained wide acceptance yet."

It has so far been speculated that the Wii 2 will be more powerful than the Xbox 360 or PS3, will boast HD graphics and will feature a new controller with a playable touchscreen.

It's not long to go before we find out for sure.

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How to make money from app development

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 05:48 AM PDT

According to the media hype, the new phone app market is like a modern day gold rush.

Headlines like 'Infinity Blade makes $1.6million in five days', 'Make $100,000 a year selling Android apps' and 'Angry Birds makes $2million a month' are enough to make a lot of hobbyist programmers sit up and listen.

Developers from all walks of life are rushing into previously unexplored territory and staking their claim in the hope of finding their fortune in them there hills. So should we all get involved? Who's really making the money here? Are the app markets truly a level playing field?

Make no mistake, mobile phone apps are big business. The potential profits are now big enough for people to dedicate themselves to app-building as a career choice.

The Apple App store alone has already had 10 billion apps downloaded since its creation. Add to that the millions more from Google's Android Market, Nokia's Ovi Store, Research in Motion's App World, Microsoft Marketplace and Samsung Apps, and you can see why this growing marketplace is encouraging a hive of activity in app creation.

The creation of the phone app has been a revolution - it's a whole new way to sell software, to advertise, to provide avenues for social networks and to inspire brand loyalty. Best of all, the app users carry their phones with them 24 hours a day. It's no wonder so many big brands now have their own apps, and that increasingly professional outfits are competing with the amateur developers for a place on customers' phones.

At the moment, though, it's still a wide open market, where anyone can strike it rich. All you need is a laptop and the willingness to have a go at some programming. And people are. Individuals, small groups and major corporations are all joining in the frenzy to exploit this burgeoning market, and it's led to some impressive and unexpected success stories.

As Donald Mustard, the man behind game app Infinity Blade, told us: "It really is like the Wild West."

Bubbles vs Birds

One of the most famous examples of the unpredictable nature of success in the app world is the battle between Angry Birds and Bubble Ball in the game download charts. Angry Birds is the most popular game in the app world: it's been downloaded over 50 million times since its debut in 2009, it took eight months to make and cost a reported $100,000.

In December 2010 it was knocked from its top spot on the App Store by Bubble Ball - a simple physics game with very basic graphics, cooked up by a 14-year-old called Robert Nay from America with the help of his mother and some books from the library.

With four million downloads in a month, Robert is the latest App Store success story. Don't be fooled, though, there is a big difference here - the paid-for Angry Birds is making millions a month for Rovio, the company that created it; the free download Bubble Ball has made its creator nothing. Well, nothing apart from worldwide fame and the likelihood of his choice of programming jobs when he leaves school, of course.

Cut the rope

COMPETITIVE MARKET: Cut the Rope was hugely successful, but was eclipsed by Infinity Blade

And here's the crux - half of the apps that make headlines for achieving a million downloads in a matter of days are free. Yes, these people are 'app millionaires', but they won't be seeing a single penny from sales.

Free the adverts

That isn't a problem with foresight. Rovio released a free version of Angry Birds on the Android Market with an advertising bar on it, and the ads are now making the company more per month than the paid-for version - millions of dollars.

This isn't an option for every app, though. This revenue system relies on the amount of time people spend playing Angry Birds - and they play it a lot.

As Rovio spokesperson Ville Heijari told us, "What has been most impressive for us is the estimated 200 million minutes that our users spend on average with the game every day." That's the equivalent of the viewing figures for a small TV channel.

That didn't happen by accident - a great deal of research went into creating Angry Birds. As Heijari said, "Rovio had produced 52 mobile games prior to Angry Birds since 2003, so the core team [already] had a pretty solid experience at developing games."

Rovio specifically concentrated on the retention of users - it didn't want to create an app people would download once then forget about. To help this, every month the Rovio team releases an update for the app (and 80 per cent of people with the game accept that update).

Oddly, these free updates also lead to an increase in new downloads of the app, probably because as the updates encourage people to play it again so new people (users' friends, for example) are exposed to it.

With all this experience and the eight-month development cycle, did Rovio expect the success it got? "When we released the game," said Heijari, "we had a strong gut feeling that we had a hit game in our hands, with the potential for at least 200,000 downloads. So we can honestly say that we did exceed our every expectation."

Rovio may not have expected the response it got, but it quickly turned it to its advantage. Angry Birds is now a brand, and Rovio is examining a whole wealth of possible profit-making spin-offs - keep an eye out for the Angry Birds TV series, board game, soft toys and PC games coming your way soon.

Smaller scale profits

Don't be put off by the Angry Birds figures, though - there are developers out there making a tidy profit from advertising on free apps that are nowhere near that scale.

One of them is Neil Inglis, the creator of Sleeps to Christmas, who took time out of his busy schedule to talk to us. We asked him how he got into developing apps:

"I've been a software engineer for six years, but always on large systems that took months to develop and even longer to deploy!" he said. "The idea of being able to produce a small, self contained app that satisfies the needs of a user and lets you see results instantly really appealed to me."

Inglis has developed a few apps, but what has been his best creation so far? "Sleeps to Christmas has been my most successful. It's a small, fun application that really appeals to children and families. I've had over 1.5 million downloads and [the app has] spent some time as the number one top free app in the UK. The app is ad-supported and brings income in the tens of thousands of pounds a year."

So, is developing apps now his only source of income? "I'm at the point where I could sustain myself purely on developing apps," he says, "but I'm somewhat nervous about the stability of the income so I'm not quitting my day job - yet."

What model does Inglis think works best - selling apps for free with advertising, or just publishing paid-for apps?

"It very much depends on the type of application," he explained. "For apps marketed at the 'mass market', advertising works really well, but you need to ship in large volumes. For specialist apps, you'll never make enough out of advertising, no matter how targeted, so paid is the way to go. There are still issues convincing users it's worth paying the price of a cup of coffee for an app, but I hope this changes in the future."

There's another way you can make money from free apps, but you have to be in for the long haul and you could be disappointed at the end.

Some creators of totally free apps are concentrating on the advantages that come with building a social network. One such app is Instagram, a photo-sharing app that hit the headlines in December and already has investors showing a keen interest.

Instagram

INSTAGRAM: Photo-sharing site Instagram had a million people download its app within three months of its launch

We asked Josh Riedel, Instagram's Community Manager, whether the company expected the app to take off as it did:

"We never expected the overwhelming response we received," he said. "We went from literally a handful of users to [being] the number one free photography app in a matter of hours after our launch. In just three months, over a million people are using Instagram as a way to communicate with their friends through photos. We've also seen huge adoption internationally, and as a result, we've translated the app into seven different languages."

He was a little less forthcoming about exactly how the company plans to make money from the app. "Our focus is on producing the best possible product for users and growing the user base," he explained. "We have many potential business models, but all of them make sense at a larger scale."

In-app purchasing is yet another way for developers to make money from free apps. This begins with you offering your app for free so it can get to the greatest number of people possible. Then, once you've proved that it's something people want in their lives, you offer them the chance to extend its functionality for a small fee.

With games, this could mean granting access to more levels, removing the advertising bar, or even just kitting the player's character out with personalised clothes or better weapons. Utilities would simply offer more functions, or the ability to share data with more devices.

With in-app purchasing, you're advertising to the most direct market possible - people who have your app and are using it.

Bad Piggy Bank

In-app purchasing is clearly of interest to the big players in free apps, as the planned appearance of the Bad Piggy Bank in the Android version of Angry Birds demonstrates.

The Bad Piggy Bank is an in-game payment model, which lets users remove advertising from the free version of the game or purchase the upcoming Mighty Eagle update. Rovio is currently testing it in Finland, and provided it can negotiate the necessary deals with mobile phone operators in other territories, it will be making its way elsewhere too.

A major advantage of getting payment this way is that the cost of the additions is simply added to the user's phone bill, so no credit card is needed. Rovio is also planning to let other Android developers use the technology.

With all these possible routes to make money from free apps, what about those developers doing it the old fashioned way and putting their apps up for sale?

There are a few things to consider. Android and Apple will charge you 30 per cent of your revenue for hosting your creations on their app markets. This is attractive in that if you don't sell anything you lose nothing, but if you do, you only see 70 per cent of what you make.

Also, with Apple, you have to put up with its submission process, meaning all your hard work could be for nothing if your app is rejected. Lastly, with the way the app stores are structured at the moment, it takes a lot to knock those at the top from their lofty perch, because they get the most exposure and are likely to be the ones new users download.

Building the hype

Playing the long game in building interest in your app is a sensible business model, but it's possible to take a shortcut to success by piquing the media's interest.

Chair Entertainment, creator of the role-playing game Infinity Blade, managed to do just that by creating the most impressive looking game ever seen on a phone. It uses the Unreal game engine - the same platform behind the likes of console and PC games such as BioShock.

Infinity blade

BIG MONEY: Infinity Blade is the fastest app to make $1million to date - it took just four days

This led to a lot of hype before its release, which may account for the fact that Infinity Blade is reportedly the fastest game to make a million dollars - it was just four days, halving the previous record held by Cut the Rope.

To find out how Infinity Blade achieved this remarkable feat, we spoke to Donald Mustard, Creative Director of Chair Entertainment, about how useful the hype was in generating sales.

"Well it's actually a kind of a danger too," he said. "It was a worry that people were expecting a lot, but we were just making the best game we could."

Mustard was coy about how much the game cost to develop. When we mentioned that Angry Birds reportedly cost $100,000 to make, he replied, "Blade cost a lot more than that! Mostly because it's 3D, which takes a lot of time."

So does he think it was a risky strategy to invest so much money on a £3.49 phone app? "It was a calculated risk," he explains, "although we didn't really know."

Dot com 2?

With millions being generated by apps big and small, are they truly the future, or are we just experiencing the same kind of buzz we saw when the internet started to take off? Is the app trend all hype and no real substance?

There's undoubtedly a lot of silly money being thrown about by venture capitalists and investors in the hope of being in at the start of the 'next big thing', but with real, substantial profits now being generated, and proven ways to monetise apps being explored, there seems more hope that we can avoid financial meltdown than last time.

Of course, the surest way to make money from apps is to own Apple or Google - they're the ones making 30 per cent on all app sales without lifting a finger.

Review: Rega DAC

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 04:00 AM PDT

It's always hard to resist a sense of humour. When we opened up the Rega DAC the first thing we noticed was the large and clear text on the circuit board, saying, 'Best used with EL84 valves'.

Given that Rega has never made a single valve product in its several decades in business, this is clearly tongue-in-cheek. But then the whole idea of a Rega DAC was something of a surprise at first; the company having previously been in favour of keeping CD transport and DAC all together as one product.

Bit buckets

Still, it's not just, or even principally, CD that's the intended source for the DAC. With digital audio increasingly coming from computer-type sources, often at higher resolution than CD's 16-bit/44kHz sampling, Rega sees this more as an adjunct to non-audiophile 'bit buckets' including computers, servers and so on.

Accordingly, it has a USB input alongside the usual electrical and optical S/PDIF and is fully compatible with high sample rates, up to and including 192kHz. At least it is via S/PDIF, as the USB input only handles sample rates up to 48kHz.

Five filter fun

Front-panel buttons select between the five inputs and also the five filters. User-selectable filters are a popular option these days, not least because many DAC chips offer this internally. The Wolfson part chosen by Rega is such a device and the company has opted to make all its offerings available.

These are actually slightly different depending on sample frequency, but include as Option One the classic linear-phase filter typical of most CD players and also minimum-phase implementations. Filters Four and Five are non-aliasing types, which we would recommend as other filter slopes allow some aliasing distortion to occur.

We ended up using Filter Four for most of the listening. There's no 'upsampling' – except that there is, of course, because digital filtering in a DAC intrinsically involves upsampling and has done since the first Philips CD players in about 1983.

This is a well-made and efficiently assembled product. The back panel is neatly laid out and the insides contain few 'brand name' components. It locks almost instantly to an input and gave us no trouble at all in use.

Life and subtlety

Rega is one of those brands strongly associated in the general hi-fi consciousness with a certain 'house sound': pretty much the sound of the Planar turntables, which was always lively and rhythmic, if not necessarily always the most subtle.

Based on our experience with the company's audio electronics, we'd urge caution over making assumptions like that and this DAC certainly doesn't do anything to support them. Not that rhythm is slack, nor is life missing from the sound – quite the opposite, both are admirable.

It's just that they are very much in proportion with less 'Rega-ish' traits such as detail and finesse, silky-smooth upper midrange and treble and a generally delightful all-round confidence that we adored.

There's also a lack of hi-fi showoff tendencies; so no super-analytical detail or implausibly punchy bass. Instead, there's the kind of detail that's there when you want it, but not obtrusive when you don't.

Plus bass which may not always seem dramatic, but packs a serious punch when required. Treble extension is similarly effortless and unforced.

Distant images

If there's a weakness in the DAC's performance, it's a minor one and concerns imaging. It seemed to us, using CD sources and also high-res ones (some of them made by us), that images are just a little further away than we're used to. That's preferable to having them too close, which can be quite unsettling, but deserves mention.

We soon got used to it, though and came to ignore it. That apart, it's hard to find anything to criticise. The technical performance is as assured as the subjective and for the very modest price, this seems to be very much the product to beat just now.

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Review: Acoustic Signature Manfred

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 03:30 AM PDT

Just when you thought that you could relax with your record collection along comes another contender with a substantial range of serious-looking turntables.

What's surprising, however, is that despite having UK representation for some time, it's only in the last few months that we have discovered Acoustic Signature, of which the Manfred Mk II is one of the German company's more affordable offerings.

It comes with an outboard power supply and a free-standing motor and the diamond polished platter sets it apart from an increasingly large crowd of competitors at this level, as does switchable speed control.

It can be supplied with any Rega tonearm, or a base to the arm of your choice.

The essentials

This is a superbly put together turntable; everything about it oozes quality, from the real wood veneer finish to the beautifully polished platter. There are not many examples of solid aluminium platters in the sub-£2,000 arena anymore. Perhaps because it's an expensive material to finish well and requires some means of damping to stop ringing.

The Acoustic Signature has a large damping pad on the underside of the platter for this very purpose. The platter itself is 34mm thick and weighs six kilos.

Acoustic Signature has used sintered bronze inserts that have been infused with lubricant in the bearing housing, so that you don't need to add oil which is a boon if you have to repack the deck at any time.

The thrust pad that supports the spindle is made of Tidorfolon, a material that Acoustic Signature developed specifically for the purpose. An alloy of vanadium, ferrite, Teflon and titanium, Tidorfolon is a relatively soft material which mates with a hard tungsten carbide ball at the tip of the bearing shaft or axle.

Manfred

The plinth is 38mm thick and made of veneered MDF. It sits on three large aluminium feet, which are adjustable for height using a metal button in the centre. The Manfred turntables shown on the Acoustic Signature website appear to have spikes in the feet which are no longer supplied, but are available on request.

We particularly like the way that the cleanly machined motor housing fits into a circular cut-out in the corner of the plinth. It looks as if it's integrated and contrasts rather well with the wood veneer.

The motor has a large drilled-out pulley that runs at a slower speed than usual. When it's started up, it appears to run anti-clockwise while it brings the platter up to speed via a square section rubber drive belt.

The standard arm mount for this turntable is an aluminium one for Rega tonearms, like the RB251 fitted here, but the company can supply alternative plates to suit any nine-inch arm.

tonearm

Power is supplied by a separate S Alpha motor controller; this converts AC mains to DC current and has a precision oscillator to deliver a 12-volt AC sine wave to the motor. This supply is said to be impervious to fluctuations in the mains and to isolate the motor from any noise.

The S Alpha also provides switchable speed change, but does not transform the mains onboard; instead there is a separate inline transformer with an IEC inlet. This means you have three elements connected together to produce a motor that spins at the desired speed. As it turns out, it spins very slightly faster than 33.3rpm (according to our strobe disc) probably to offset stylus drag.

Long-time running

In terms of build and finish, the Manfred is in the premier league of turntables at its price point. Separate power supplies are not common at this level and, as already mentioned, metal platters are pretty rare, too.

Competitors such as Michell have fully suspended models for rather less, however, and the Manfred's apparent lack of methods to keep resonance at bay will be a concern for anyone with a wooden floor.

There is nothing in the way of tonearm damping, either (Townshend and Well Tempered both have features on turntables at this price which seek to quell resonance in the tonearm so that the cartridge can do a better job). The only resonances that the design addresses are those in the platter, where a damping pad below and felt mat above attempt to minimise any problems.

The bearing is clearly interesting as Michell has developed a self-lubricating inverted bearing, but few individual companies have created a material like Tidorfolon specifically for a turntable. Thanks to this proprietary technology, the bearing design is said to reach optimum performance within 15 minutes and to operate flawlessly for at least ten years, the period for which it is guaranteed.

Another nice touch is that the inner part of the arm plate can be raised and thus used to adjusted VTA (vertical tracking angle) with Rega arms that otherwise require spacers for this purpose.

Crank it up

The Manfred, combined with an RB251 arm and a Dynavector DV-20X2L moving coil, produces a clean and taut sound that digs deep into the mix for the fine details and responds well to better recordings. It might look a bit similar to an LP12, but it has a rather more precise and grounded sound.

The RB251 also seems like a rather basic arm for such a well, put-together turntable and its relatively low mass counterweight is not perfect for cartridges like the Dynavector. Nonetheless, the results are pretty entertaining and revealing, thanks to its ability to resolve subtleties in the context of decent timing.

It's not as on-the-ball as some other turntables at this level, but it's no slouch either. When it comes to playing different types of music, it has the ability to distinguish between the instruments lower down in the mix, as well as those that take centre stage. Voices are clean and open, too, with good image solidity.

But even if this clear-cut presentation is a little short on romance by vinyl standards, the Manfred Mk II still has an honest, almost clinical sound that detail enthusiasts will appreciate.

What most appeals is the stability of the sound; it might not be as thrilling as some other designs, but its imaging and pacing are extremely consistent, benefitting albums like Keith Jarrett's Köln Concert with its repetitive motifs on solo piano.

Keeps you hooked

The Manfred Mk II has a lot going for it in terms of both detail and resolution. Its only shortcoming is a lack of spark and it doesn't always resolve the terra firma of recordings enough to convince you that they are happening right there in the room.

manfred

It's likely that a better tonearm would help in this respect, but we have not found the RB251 wanting in the past; it may lack refinement, but is not short on charm.

All-in-all, the Manfred looks great, but doesn't capture the imagination quite as well as the best in class.

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Tutorial: 12 SSD tips to optimise your drive's performance

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 03:00 AM PDT

Solid state drives have tumbled in price in recent months, which is great news for us demanding PC users.

There's a problem though: Windows isn't fully optimised to get the best from SSDs. There's also the lingering worry about the longevity of this type of storage device.

We say don't be put off - the benefits of fitting a solid state drive far outweigh any potential downsides. Happily, the negatives that remain can be sidestepped easily with some tweaks and tips. Read on and we'll show you how to make your solid state drive purr.

1. Reduce write-heavy tasks

One of the early concerns about solid state storage was that it wouldn't be able to handle the same intensity of read/write cycles that traditional hard disks manage. Many tips for extending the life of drives centered around reducing unnecessary writing to disk.

Things have improved considerably since then and, while this concern is still broadly justified, you'd have to write intensively to disk for many years before you'd wear out a modern SSD.

However, write times are still a little slower than read times for these drives, so in theory reducing the number of write operations to SSD should result in a performance boost. Moving temporary storage or working folders to RAM may help, but avoid merely transferring these to a slower drive, otherwise you won't see any improvement.

2. Enable write caching

Write caching

This is generally enabled by default, but it's worth checking that data written to the drive is cached in its RAM before it's stored permanently. There's a slight risk that a power outage will wipe out the data stored temporarily in RAM, but this is only really a problem with external drives that don't have their own power source.

You can check to see if write caching is enabled in Device Manager. To do this, right-click 'Computer' and choose 'Properties'. Select 'Device manager' from the left-hand pane and expand 'Disk drives'. Select the solid state drive, right-click it and choose 'Properties. Select the 'Properties' tab and tick the box marked 'Enable write caching'.

3. Tweak paging files

Using a portion of hard drive as virtual memory can lead to intensive writing to the disk for swap purposes, which can degrade SSD performance. You can achieve some speed boosts by moving the swap file to a different disk, or turning it off altogether if you have sufficient RAM installed.

Virtual memory tweaks like these produce varied results depending on the kind of operations you need to carry out.

To move the file, click 'Start', right-click 'Computer' and choose 'Properties'. Select 'Advanced system settings', choose the 'Advanced' tab and then click 'Settings' under 'Performance'. Choose the 'Advanced' tab and click 'Change' under 'Virtual memory'.

Clear the box marked 'Automatically manage paging file size for all drives'. Select the SSD and choose the radio button next to 'No paging file'. Click 'Set', then click 'OK' in each of the open dialogs to clear them.

4. Move temporary files

If you have another drive available, try moving your temporary Windows files onto it. Again, this reduces the need to write to the SSD during routine Windows operations.

Choose 'Start', then right-click 'Computer' and select 'Properties'. Choose 'Advanced system settings', pick the 'Advanced' tab and click 'Environment variables'.

You should see values listed for 'temp' and 'tmp' for the current user and the system. Select one of these and choose 'Edit' to move it to a different folder. Make sure you select one that's on a different drive.

5. Disable indexing

Disable paging

Disabling indexing on your SSD may help reduce writing to the disk, but think carefully before you decide to do so. Indexing can have a negative impact on your drive's performance, but it can also massively improve your productivity if you have a lot of data on the drive and you need to find something quickly.

The improvement in performance is likely to be negligible at best, but if you're keen to squeeze the most out of your system, it may be worth considering.

If you decide to disable indexing, open 'Computer' on the Start menu, right-click the SSD and choose 'Properties'. Towards the bottom of the dialog, clear the box marked 'Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties'.

6. Create a RAM disk

It's not always practical to move temporary files and so on to a different drive - you might not have one available, or what you have might be of markedly lower performance than the SSD itself. One way to get around the issue of moving the various caches to a different disk is to create a RAM disk, which will run at lightning speeds compared to any physical drive.

You need at least 3GB memory installed to use a RAM drive for caching, and the more you have available, the better its performance will be. You can install a RAM drive using the Dataram RAMdisk program, which is available from here.

Download and install it. Once the program is launched, you need to open the 'Settings' tab and select the filesystem you want to use for the drive. Enter the disk size, bearing in mind how much memory you have available, and click 'Start RAMDisk'. The free version lets you set up drives up to 4GB in size.

7. Move caches to RAM disk

Now that you've set up a RAM disk, you can move Windows caches to it, thereby reducing the strain on your SSD and prolonging its life.

In fact, even if you don't have an SSD but have enough RAM available to set up a drive, this is still a great way to improve system performance, because RAM is always faster than a physical drive. Just bear in mind that all its contents will be lost once the power is shut down.

8. Temporary internet files

You should consider moving your internet cache to the RAM drive too. To do this, go to 'Control Panel | Internet options', then select the 'General' tab and choose 'Move folder'. Browse to your RAM drive for the new folder.

If you use Firefox, enter about:config in the address bar and search for 'browser.cache.disk.parent_director'. You can now double-click this value and enter the new location for your browser cache.

9. Check TRIM functions

Trim

The TRIM command lets operating systems inform SSDs which data blocks are no longer needed so they can be wiped internally. This helps to keep the disk in optimum condition, and therefore maintain its performance. Windows 7 supports TRIM, but it may not be enabled in your system.

You can check the status of TRIM by launching the command prompt using administrator privileges. To do this, go to 'Start | All programs | Accessories' right-click 'Command prompt' and choose 'Run as administrator'. Now enter the following command:

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

Press [Enter]. If TRIM is working correctly, you'll get a response of 0 (zero). If the result is 1, then you'll need to enable TRIM by entering the following command:

fsutil behavior query|set DisableDeleteNotify = 0

10. Check disk TRIM support

Not all solid state drives support TRIM, although you'll find that an increasing number do. It's a good idea to check through your drive's documentation or go to the manufacturer's website to see whether or not it's supported.

There may well be a firmware upgrade available for your drive that enables TRIM, so this is worth investigating too. You should be able to get this from the support section of the manufacturer's site, along with instructions on how to apply it.

11. Advanced Host Controller Interface

Windows Vista and 7 natively support the AHCI SATA controller standard, which enables faster data throughput, but it's worth checking that your motherboard does too.

Enter the BIOS by restarting your PC and hitting [Delete] as it starts up, or watching for the key combination displayed for you to enter the CMOS utility. The location varies, but it's often in chipset settings. If you find it's disabled, enable it.

12. SSD Tweaker

SSD tweaker

As an alternative to tweaking Windows settings manually to get the best configuration for your SSD, you can get a tweaking program such as SSD Tweaker to do the hard work.

The free version lets you clear the paging file and disable indexing, system restore, NTFS 8.3 name creation and file date stamping. There's also a handy 'Auto tweak settings' button that sets the most common SSD tweaks in a single operation.

The pro version includes more advanced settings, like querying the TRIM status and modifying hibernation settings. There's also a TRIM optimisation manager that enables you to optimise TRIM for your drive.

Review: Cyrus Audio Stream XP

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 03:00 AM PDT

Streaming is the bandwagon to be on in 2011. Any electronics manufacturer worth its salt has realised as much and many are already fighting for a slice of what is considered to be the future of audio.

Cyrus has jumped in with three new streaming-compatible products that compete head-on with the leaders in the field, each contained within the iconic half-width Cyrus case and bursting with features.

The Streamline is the integrated solution with onboard amplification, the Stream X strips things right back to pure streaming functionality, while the Stream XP we have reviewed here combines that with a high-quality preamp and DAC.

The X files

These three products are built around the Stream X core, which can stream wired or wirelessly, has USB and digital inputs, offers TuneIn net radio and is designed to be driven with the rather clever Cyrus n-remote.

They will stream most of the worthwhile music formats, the only notable exception being Apple Lossless, which could be an issue for iTunes enthusiasts. iPod users, however, are catered for with a digital USB input. The same input will also stream from a USB drive and the maximum bit rate for streamed inputs is 24-bit/96kHz.

To this roster, the Stream XP adds twin Burr-Brown DACs, a preamplifier with fixed and variable outputs on RCA phonos and a headphone output on a mini-jack socket.

Cyrus audio stream xp

It's also the only model in the range that will accept the worthwhile Cyrus PSX-R power supply upgrade. It's this latter feature that marks the XP out as the component with the greatest audiophile potential; without it you would be forgiven for thinking that the Stream X looks like the way to go for maximum resolution. Cyrus chose to offer the Stream X for customers who already had a decent preamplifier and DAC, which is fair enough.

The key to all three units is the incredible n-remote. This not only drives any other component in a Cyrus system (and third-party components, to boot, as it's a learning device), but has two-way comms, so it can display all the pertinent information about the music in your 'library'.

The n-stream is a pretty ambitious remote for a medium-sized company: it's both IR and RF; has a colour screen and a motion sensor to turn it on; backlit keys and a charging base. So, in many respects, it's a universal remote that specialises in giving access to your digital music collection.

The company's preferred suggestion for music storage is a wired NAS drive, but rather than simply connecting the drive to your router and then wiring that to the Stream XP, Cyrus encourages the use of a switch in between. These inexpensive devices are usually used to expand the number of ports on a router, but Cyrus has found that they provide faster and more reliable streaming between the drive and player.

As well as streaming stored music, the device can also bring you any station or podcast on the TuneIn net radio service. This offers 30,000 stations from around the world that you can save in presets using the n-remote. Usefully, chosen stations can be synced across multiple devices, so that you can find them on your smart phone as well.

The total absence of analogue inputs on this product is unusual and rather undermines the unit's potential for vinyl users, for instance, but as it's a totally digital product up until the output stage, adding them would have increased cost.

Cyrus audio stream xp

Cyrus also thinks that analogue inputs would go largely unused by its customers and as the company doesn't currently make a standalone phono stage, it probably has a point.

Extensive options

This Stream XP is built as per all the company's product; in a die-cast case that, while not the shiniest in the land is, for audio purposes, extremely well thought-out. It provides high-resistance to vibration and more than adequate heat-sinking on a compact half-width footprint and, as Cyrus has pointed out in the past, because of the initial outlay die-cast chassis are pretty rare in this market.

The value equation is greatly enhanced by the n-remote. Look at the competition in this sector and you won't find a handset that comes near it in terms of breadth of application and ease of access to your music collection. Having used the Naim UnitiQute with its basic IR remote, we can immediately appreciate the advantage of having a two-way link that puts all the information about the music in your hand.

Competitors offer apps for smart phones and Apple touch screens, but these can't drive IR components and, in our experience, tend to drain batteries when used for this purpose.

There is a growing array of competition for serious streamers and Linn's Majik DS at £1,880 has to be a key player. In spec terms, it lacks inputs of any flavour and has no facility for wireless operation. It does have volume control and accepts digital streams up to 24-bit/192kHz, so undoubtedly competes in sound quality terms, as would a Naim NDX, but that is an extra £1,000 and has fewer digital inputs. But it does do wireless (though not advised) and can also be upgraded with a power supply.

Smooth operator

A product like the Stream XP is as much about ease of set up and use, as it is about sound quality and Cyrus appreciates this. The company provides a quick start-up guide for setting up the NAS drive with the player and pairing the n-remote.

Both procedures are straightforward and we had the XP up and running in five minutes (wiring up the NAS drive and switch had been done beforehand).

It's when you come to search for the albums and tracks on the drive that issues can crop up; the most likely one is that files ripped as WAV and AIFF do not maintain their metadata. This makes them hard to find in the library, because album and artist info gets lost. Cyrus recommends ripping everything as uncompressed FLAC, because this format has the greatest portability. It's also the format that most hi-res downloads come in as well.

The n-remote's buttons are a little stiff and scrolling through the library is a bit jumpy, but it's significantly faster than using Apple's Remote interface for instance. The album artwork could also be bigger, but it's a clear display that is intuitive and easy to read.

We like TuneIn radio, and its online interface RadioTime, and this proved easy to set up and quick to find stations with. It would be useful to be able to store presets from the handset, as this is what you have when exploring stations, but in other respects it's a good system.

We used the XP in the prescribed fashion, with a Twonky Media-equipped NAS drive and network switch wired direct (wireless was tried, but even with the router in the next room there was drop-out). Few systems are reliable without a cable.

Class of its own

The sound quality produced is impressive for a streamer. It's not in the front league, but there are few streamer/DAC/preamps in this price range for comparison and we found the results very good indeed.

The bass is not the most weighty, but is never short on agility; sinuous bass guitar playing is very easy to enjoy as are great voices, thanks to a little added richness which helps to flesh things out.

It's not the most transparent midband in the business but voices do work well, revealing plenty of ambience and emotional intent. If you are after a hard-hitting sound, then there are more expensive alternatives, but those who want to relax with their music will find much to enjoy here.

As a digital preamp using an S/PDIF input, the character is a little more open and clear-cut (than streaming), but not dramatically so. We recalled that Cyrus likes DNM single-core cables, so tried an interconnect with the XP. This tilts the balance upward and gives a bit more bite to leading edges, which helps with dynamics.

The Stream XP is a remarkably flexible and capable piece of kit that's allied to a very impressive remote handset. Not having to point the thing in the right direction is a luxury in itself!

As an overall streaming package, the Cyrus approach is commendably straightforward to set up and use. The standard of sound quality is high and, while not quite up with pricier rivals, there is no alternative that offers so many features and this puts it in a class of its own.

Review: iMovie for iOS

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 02:30 AM PDT

When iMovie first came out for the iPhone and later the iPod touch, it was a revelation: in the palm of your hand was an app that let you edit video, complete with soundtrack, titles and transitions. Of course it didn't hold a candle to what iMovie can achieve on your Mac, but then again, you can't carry your Mac in your back pocket.

With the release of the iPad 2, Apple bumped the version up to 1.2 and made the program 'Universal', meaning it now works with the iPhone 4, fourth-generation iPod touch and iPad 2.

The first iPad isn't officially supported. So what does this new version have to offer?

Aside from the old-style movie theatre look, the first screen is where you can finally rename your projects. The export feature is accessed through here too and you can upload your work directly to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and CNN iReport.

It's in the main editing section that most of the changes have been made though.

In landscape view on your iPad, your camera roll is displayed top-left of the screen. You're no longer forced to add an entire clip to your project, since you can now specify which part you need straight from there. An orange line above sections of your clips shows you which ones you've already used in your project.

In the portrait orientation, the Camera Roll is available as a pop-over window but all the features remain the same.

The audio tools have been greatly improved: you can now alter the volume of each clip (you still can't vary that volume within the clip) and you can work with up to three layers of audio in addition to the background music and your clips' own audio tracks.

You can record a voiceover straight from iMovie and you also have a handful of sound effects to choose from. Although the background music can now be trimmed, it still has to start at the beginning of your project.

You have a choice of three new themes, bringing the total to eight. Each comes with its own transition to add in between clips, or you can use a basic cross-dissolve instead if you prefer, so nothing's changed there.

One useful addition is the ability to rotate your footage. You also have access to a Precision Editor to fine-tune your edit points, in a manner very similar to the same feature in iMovie for your Mac.

Although your projects aren't compatible with iMovie on your Mac, it's possible to transfer them to another iOS device (you could start editing on your iPhone and finish it on your iPad), but the process is incredibly cumbersome since it only works via iTunes on your computer. You can, however, transfer your clips using Apple's Camera Connection Kit, so you could shoot on one device and edit on another.

iMovie for ios 2

On your iPhone or iPod touch, you have the new camera roll browser, and you can work with multiple audio layers, but you can't trim your audio tracks nor do you have access to the Precision Editor.

This new version of iMovie has a few useful features that will make editing much more enjoyable on your iOS device. It needs more transitions, title options and effects, but it's still a fantastic app for editing anywhere.

19 things we'd change about KDE

Posted: 24 Apr 2011 05:00 AM PDT

KDE has courted controversy in recent releases. It's improved now, but it's far from being perfect. We straps on our goggles, dive into the Plasmoidal soup and dredge up some suggestions for change.

01. Stop adding so many features

KDE needs stability - in both senses of the word. Stop moving things around and concentrate on making it fun to use again.

Stability in terms of it not crashing is a lot better these days, but having things move around with each upgrade is disconcerting.

It's like when they move the coffee in the supermarket, forcing you to trawl around the shop floor to find the life-enhancing stuff.

02. Easier-to-find configuration options

KDE's System Settings panel is a huge beast with a lot of separate modules, making finding the right place to change a setting much harder than it would otherwise be. The Search box is a great help, far improved compared to how it used to be, but rather too discreetly tucked away.

There needs to be something else. Perhaps a searchable FAQ built into the program where you click, 'How do I set up a…' to go to the correct module.

03. The program names

Do we really need so much help in identifying KDE programs? I mean, kome on, do they have to kall every program by some kontrived moniker that kontains a k somewhere?

You don't see the other Linux desktop starting every program name with g... Oh, sorry, you do.

04. Make GTK programs look good by default

It's taken as read that GTK programs look bad on KDE (and Qt apps look bad on Gnome), but this doesn't have to be the case. There are third-party options to theme GTK to fit in with the current Qt theme and this should be built into KDE.

There's no point pretending KDE users don't run at least one GTK program, even if it's only Firefox when Konqueror can't handle a site.

05. The name

There's nothing wrong with the name KDE, it's just that it's too similar to a popular but completely different desktop environment from a few years ago.

That desktop - called KDE 3.5, or often just KDE - did nearly everything its users wanted in a way they understood. Giving the same name to a completely different product was not a good move.

06. More tutorials

The KDE Help Centre is a good source of reference information, but KDE is a complicated suite of software that's capable of carrying out many different tasks.

What the current KDE documentation is sorely missing is tutorials or how-tos. A series of 'how to do this KDE 3 task in KDE 4' documents would have greatly eased the pain of transition.

07. Video documentation

KDE help manual

WHAT'S MISSING?: The Help Centre is a good reference manual, but where are the helpful tutorials, or even videos?

YouTube has shown us that video tutorials can be extremely useful and informative (and it's shown us a lot more besides, but we won't go into that here).

A set of introductory videos explaining what's what for both new users and KDE 3 migrators could go a long way towards improving KDE's reputation.

08. The name (the other bit)

KDE used to be a desktop environment, a term that conjured (konjured?) up visions of a fully integrated suite of software. Now it's merely a software collection, which implies a far looser connection between the various components.

KDE is an integrated whole - be proud of it!

09. Layered configuration options

There used to be a separation between standard and advanced settings, but sadly that's no more. We still think an option to show or hide the more advanced settings, set globally but alterable by a button in each section, would help tidy things up.

Maybe profiles could be introduced, so a desktop profile would hide network management, battery and touchpad settings, for example.

10. Network management

Where's the KDE equivalent of Network Manager? How are KDE-using road warriors supposed to switch between various wireless, 3G and VPN connections?

This is a basic requirement of laptop users these days, yet KDE offers no way of easily switching between networks without manually setting up each one first.

11. Reduce resource usage

There's no doubting that KDE 4 uses a lot of system resources. We may use it on a multi-core processor and with 4GB of RAM, but we'd rather use that power to run our programs, not draw windows.

Sure, the eye candy is handy for impressing Windows-using friends, but a leaner, meaner desktop that still retains all the KDE functionality would be grand.

12. Less bling

The popularity of Gnome-using distro Ubuntu shows that people don't necessarily go for lots of eye candy, or even attractive colours.

Dozens of colourful Plasmoids, often duplicating the functions of others, isn't necessarily the way to attract new users, which are what KDE really needs.

13. Improve power management

KDE 4.5 removed some power management options, particularly those related to CPU scaling. The management code is still there, but not the GUI to control it.

KDE has always been a good choice for those who like to extensively tweak their systems, so stop treating them like Gnome users.

14. A simple initial interface

Gnome is simple and uncluttered; ideal for new users. KDE has what the power user wants, but - and it's a big but - people don't want to change desktops once they're comfortable. Which means that when a Gnome-using newbie progresses to a more expert standing, it's too late for KDE to appeal to them.

15. Show how easy it is to use

A lot is made of the complexity of KDE. It certainly has plenty of options, but that doesn't make it difficult to use. A set of default configurations (profiles, if you like) to set it up quickly for different users and situations would help to dispel some of the 'difficult to use' myth.

16. Improve Konqueror

In the KDE3 era, we used Konqueror all the time as a web browser, file manager and even for remote filesystem access. The KIO-slaves that make this possible are as good as ever, but Konqueror as a web browser is too slow when compared with the likes of Chrome, and still struggles with some sites.

17. Work to win back lost users

The earlier releases of KDE 4 did a lot of damage. Many users switched to alternative desktops - some because of stability issues and others because they didn't like or 'get' the new KDE concepts.

Deep down, many of those lost users are still fond of KDE, or at least KDE 3, and they're the ones KDE should now be looking to tempt back. It's not a commercial endeavour, so more users doesn't necessarily equal direct rewards, but a larger community does give a stronger product.

18. Learn that fun trumps clever

There's no doubting that KDE 4 has some clever ideas, but where's the joy of using it gone? When using the desktop becomes a chore, the search for an alternative isn't far away.

We don't want clowns popping up on screen or the like, just something that lets us work as we want, which was always one of KDE's greatest strengths.

19 No brown. Ever

However much it appears to work for certain other desktops, please don't think that colouring everything a dull brown will ever improve your popularity. It won't.

Review: Taptrix Inkpad

Posted: 24 Apr 2011 04:00 AM PDT

From the team who brought you Brushes, comes this fantastic vector illustration app for the iPad.

Vector images are made using shapes and lines to create paths, rather than colouring in pixels, and so are perfect for technical illustrations and logos as they can be scaled without losing quality.

Inkpad shares many functions with apps such as Adobe Illustrator, and its path creation and manipulation tools will be familiar to Adobe CS users. Working with paths and anchor points can be tricky for novices, but with Inkpad's easy-to-use tools and a bit of practice you can get drawing quickly.

For more experienced users, Inkpad is incredibly intuitive – especially using a stylus – and makes you feel like you're more hands-on with your artwork.

Advanced tools such as merging and slicing paths, editable gradients for colouring shapes, and multiple layers means creating complex images is surprisingly easy. Files can be exported as JPEG, PNG, PDF or SVG, so work can be continued on your Mac.

But Inkpad lacks more precise functions. For example, there's no measuring tool or info palette for working out exact dimensions and the text editing options are limited by the iPad's incompatibility with non-Apple fonts.

Still, at just £2.99 Inkpad is a bargain and essential for any creative iPad user.

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Review: Wingnut Lo-Fi 1.1.0

Posted: 24 Apr 2011 03:30 AM PDT

The huge success of iPhone apps such as Hipstamatic shows that retro is 'in' when it comes to photography.

People can't get enough of making their snaps look like they've just stepped out of the 70s, or been taken with a Lomo camera held together by sticky tape rather than, say, a rather expensive iPhone 4.

Lo-Fi brings photographic effects like these to your Mac, although it also makes the unwise decision to bring an iOS-like interface with them.

Lo-Fi appears on your screen as a virtual camera. You drag one or more images to it, which appear in the camera roll, and you can then drag 'film', 'mood' and 'frame' strips at the side of the camera, which update your image accordingly.

Each of the three categories can be disabled at will, and there's also a shuffle button, which randomises the current setup for fun. When you're done, you can save your image or upload it to Flickr or Facebook.

The images Lo-Fi outputs are generally pretty good, adding character and texture to bland snaps (although the frames are poor and should be avoided).

However, we didn't enjoy using the app much. The interface is clunky and fiddly, wasting space with a fake camera graphic that would be better put to use showing your image and the various effects.

It's also too expensive compared to the competition: CameraBag Desktop is $10 cheaper and more usable, and PhotoStyler is about the same price, but has a sleeker interface and also enables you to change the settings of many of its available effects.

As such, we can't help but recommend one of those instead.

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Explained: How 3D TV works

Posted: 24 Apr 2011 03:00 AM PDT

In the 1950s, there was a craze for 3D movies. Not very well-made ones by any means - most were sci-fi or horror B-movies - but they certainly made a splash.

Film producers were trying to get their audiences back into the cinemas and away from their new-fangled TVs, and movies like Creature From the Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space served that role well.

These 3D movies (the first was a 1922 flick called The Power of Love) used a red/green anaglyph dual-strip system. Before discussing what this means, let's take a look at how we see in three dimensions and perceive depth.

Stereoscopic vision

Our eyes are roughly 2.5 to 3-inches apart. This separation means that the image each eye receives is slightly different. The light from distant objects reaches each eye roughly in parallel, whereas the light from nearby objects travels at different angles (the nearer the object, the more different the angles). This is known as convergence.

The other process that's going on is focusing. When looking at distant objects, the lens in the eye is relaxed (or rather, the muscles that squeeze the lens are relaxed). The closer the object, the more work the lens has to do to keep it in focus. The brain uses all this effort, plus the image recorded by the light-sensitive cells in the eye (the rods and cones) to produce depth perception.

When we're out and about, walking around, we're unaware of the amount of work that's going on to stop us accidentally walking into doorframes or walls. The eyes are continually feeding information to the brain, which it interprets as 'this object is close, that one is further away'.

In essence, the convergence and focus points are equal for scenes viewed in the real world. When we look at a normal TV screen or a monitor, there is no depth perception - our eyes are just focused on the screen, and it's as if we're simply looking at a flat object (which we are, of course). There's no convergence needed for the 2D image on the screen either - it's just flat.

So how do we turn it into something with depth? The early 3D movies made use of convergence (and ignored focus). If the camera recorded the same scene via two lenses positioned 3-inches or so apart onto two separate film stocks, then the two films could be played back in sync - one film for the viewer's left eye and the other for the right eye.

But how do we ensure that each eye only sees what it's supposed to?

Early techniques

Back in the '50s, the answer was to play back the black-and-white film in two different colours on the same screen. The film for the left eye was blue (or cyan to be more precise) and the film for the right eye was red.

If you looked at the screen, you'd see the scene blurred between red and cyan, but if you looked at the screen wearing glasses where the left lens was red and the right one cyan, you'd see something completely different. The red lens would absorb all the red light hitting it and would only let through the cyan light. The cyan lens would let through the red light and absorb the cyan.

Each eye would therefore only see the scene in the colour meant for it, so the left eye would see the left film and the right eye the right film. This system is known as the anaglyph technique, and is a passive system.

It works well for black-and-white movies, since there's no colour in the scene to be incorrectly absorbed and confuse the viewer. You soon forget about the colour cast.

Anaglyph 3d

For an example of an anaglyph image, have a look at the image above while wearing a pair of red/cyan glasses (available cheaply on eBay). Because the light reaching the eyes obeys the 'distant objects send light in parallel, near objects at an angle' rule, the brain can perceive an illusion of depth though convergence.

However, the eye is only able to focus on the screen - there is nothing else there to focus on. A 3D movie will show things 'closer' and 'further away', but we can't focus on whatever we want to - we can only see in focus what the director wants us to concentrate on.

For shock value, this generally means objects that seem to come close to the viewer's face. This difference between the convergence and focus points in 3D movies means that you're likely to experience eye strain and headaches if you watch something in 3D for too long, because your eyes are trying to do a lot of work that isn't necessary.

Polarised light

Moving back to 3D movies, the next big invention was the use of polarised light. Polarised light vibrates in a single plane, whereas the light waves in normal sunlight, for example, oscillate about many planes - some horizontally, some vertically, most in between.

The lenses in polarised glasses only let through light in a single plane, which is a handy way of reducing the amount of light that reaches your eyes in bright sunlight.

This time, the projectors display the left and right image streams using polarised light (the projectors essentially have big polarised screens in front of them), with the left images shown with horizontally polarised light, and the right with vertically polarised light. The viewer wears glasses with the left lens geared to horizontally polarised light and the right to vertically polarised light. Each lens only lets through the light with the correct polarisation for that eye.

Providing the viewers keep their heads vertical, they'll see a 3D effect because each of their eyes sees a different set of images. Again, it's all about convergence rather than focus, so the same drawbacks (eye strain and headaches) can appear. However, this time there's no colour cast to the movie.

This polarised light system first appeared in the early to mid 1950s, and quickly supplanted the old-fashioned anaglyph (two-colour) system, which has since been relegated to static images rather than films.

On the small screen

Although this system promises a great deal, it's extraordinarily difficult to convert for use with TVs in the home. Since there's no projector (which can easily be modified to produce polarised light), you would have to coat the screen with some kind of polarising film first, which would cut down the light output.

So what can we do instead? Cut to a couple of years ago, when plasma and LCD screens finally became fast enough to work with a new method of creating a 3D effect. With this new method, you're still going to be wearing a special type of 3D glasses to watch something on the screen, but this time the glasses are active - not passive like in the anaglyph and polarised systems.

What this means is that the glasses work in concert with the TV in order to control what each eye sees. The lenses in the glasses use LCDs (liquid crystal displays) to block and then allow light though to the eye. The glasses alternate quickly between the left lens being opaque (right lens clear) and the right lens being opaque (left lens clear), back and forth.

The glasses communicate with the TV using infrared, so that this on/off cycle is synchronised with the TV image. The TV alternates between a left-eye frame and a right-eye frame very quickly at the same rate as the glasses are shuttering opaque/clear.

This TV/glasses synchronisation means that your left eye only sees the left-side frames and your right eye the right-side frames. If you weren't wearing the glasses, you'd see a slightly blurry video.

Just like with movies on film, this image switching and TV/glasses handshaking happens quickly enough that each eye sees continuous motion and the view just for that particular eye.

For many years, plasma and LCD screens couldn't refresh fast enough for this trick. It's only recently, with the advent of 3D-ready TVs and monitors, that screens have become able to refresh quickly enough for the process to work effectively. In essence, the panel TV must refresh at 120Hz - double the refresh rate of a standard LCD panel.

This means that in order to watch a 3D movie on a TV, you must have a 3D-ready TV, an IR transmitter (although some now use radio or Bluetooth instead) and a pair of shutter glasses (as they're called).

Although there's movement towards standardisation of the synchronisation chain, it's still advisable to buy all the parts from the same manufacturer.

Glasses-free HD

Despite the impressive progress made with passive and active glasses, there's still the nirvana of watching 3D without the need for any glasses at all.

The best solution so far is lenticular displays. These displays have myriad tiny lenses (called lenticules) on a corrugated film on the screen. The screen uses these to display two images simultaneously in such a way that the lenticules aim the left frame in a different direction from the right frame.

If your head is in the so-called sweet spot, your left eye will only be able to see the left frame and your right eye the right frame. Unfortunately, there are numerous problems with this system that make it difficult to implement.

First of all, the left and right frames must be interlaced into a single image in such a way that the lenticules direct the light in the correct course. The screen must have the lenticular film correctly and precisely aligned. The viewing angle is somewhat small - you must be perpendicular to the screen and the sweet spot is fairly small (at least when compared to a 3D-ready TV, for example).

Nevertheless, lenticular displays are looking promising, although there's quite a long way to go before they're a practical alternative.

A more popular auto-stereoscopic system is called parallax barrier. This is the system that's used on the new Nintendo 3DS gaming console. The effect is produced by two screens, one on top of the other (the 3D screen is produced by Sharp).

The top LCD screen produces a set of very fine slits, each a pixel wide, through which the bottom screen can be viewed. Since the device is close enough to your face, your eyes will see different views of the display on the second bottom screen. This is all that's needed for the brain to convert the two different images into a single 3D rendition.

Parallax barrier

Figure 3 shows a stylised example with three slits, where the left frame is coloured red and the right frame cyan.

The parallax barrier suffers from the same problem the lenticular screen does, in that there's only a small zone that produces the 3D effect, but for a small device like the Nintendo 3DS, that sweet spot is where you'd normally view the screen anyway - about two feet away.

Again, just as with the lenticular screen, the left and right frames have to be precisely interlaced so that the 3D effect is produced.

For games, this is relatively simple: instead of producing a single frame for the game's 'video', you have to produce two, each from a slightly different viewpoint (requiring twice the processing). 3D movies have to be converted from their default form to an interlaced form.

So there you have it. We've gone from the very earliest to the most up-to-date methods of showing 3D content. Given the state of flux, when are you going to put your money?

Personally I think the Nintendo 3DS shows the way, but it'll be a while before large screens will be able to do the same.

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Review: QuarkXPress 9

Posted: 24 Apr 2011 03:00 AM PDT

QuarkXPress had its time at the very top of the publishing tree. It led the DTP revolution in the late 80s and continued to dominate the professional publishing space until – most would say – Adobe released Creative Suite in 2002.

Then the creative world suddenly got a tool called InDesign bundled with their copies of Photoshop and Illustrator.

While this isn't the place for an XPress/InDesign debate, Adobe's tool has been widely adopted by mainstream publishers, leaving XPress in a somewhat tricky situation.

But recent releases of XPress have redressed the balance in terms of features, even if it is perhaps a little too late to win back the CS-converted. So, what can XPress 9 do for publishers?

The biggest addition is certainly App Studio for QuarkXPress, enabling you to create iPad e-zines and other apps. It also has a Mobile App Interactivity palette enabling you to add slideshows, buttons, sound and HTML to your XPress docs.

It uses the online App Studio portal to publish and manage your app (though you'll require the Apple dev account and Quark's issue management service, which will cost extra). But unfortunately, the App Studio doesn't arrive until 90 days after XPress 9 ships, so as yet we haven't been able to test it at all.

Still, this is obviously a huge step forward for Quark, and its digital intent is further solidified by support for Blio eBooks. Essentially, you can export your QXPress project directly to an XPS file. The tool is simple to use, with the Blio Interactivity dialog being accessed through the Digital Publishing Command-click menu.

But does anyone actually use Blio? Certainly not on the Mac, as it's currently only available for Windows; we await a Mac release.

You can also export to ePUB, using the Reflow view to assemble and preview a reflowable version of your layout. And of course there's all the web stuff from version 8. These tools certainly aren't second-nature to traditional print designers, but are easy to get to grips with.

QuarkXPress 9

Conditional Styles enable you to intelligently combine several rules in one style (such as making the first word in a paragraph italic and the next three words bold and a different font, for instance). It's essentially Nested Styles, as seen in InDesign. It's a more than welcome catch-up and the palette is nice and simple to use.

Bullet and numbering styles go a long way to speeding up layout jobs. Callouts are also new, enabling you to anchor boxes and groups to a particular point in your text.

And now for a feature we really love – ShapeMaker. So simple yet so intuitive, with real pulling power for those without Illustrator, ShapeMaker lives up to its name, enabling you to create complex shapes with a unique slider-based interface. Wavy shapes, polygons, spirals and rounded rectangles can be created with ease, but the fun part is experimenting with the tools.

Similarly, Cloner (enabling you to copy selected items to the same place on different pages or projects) and Linkster (to quickly link and unlink text boxes without overmatter) are very smart additions.

XPress 9 retains its easy-to-use interface and project-based workflow. It's intelligent, fast on low-spec Macs, and a powerful publishing tool for all mediums. But it's still suffering the effects of Adobe's market dominance, so it's going to take a lot more than a great release to pull things back.

But for XPress fans, this is a remarkably good version – and if the App Studio impresses, it's verging on superb.

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Review: FileMaker Bento 4

Posted: 24 Apr 2011 02:30 AM PDT

Databases can quickly get technical. You end up juggling lists, queries, forms and tables, and before you know it you've turned into a part-time software developer, when all you wanted was to store information.

Bento turns all this on its head. It comes from FileMaker, which also makes the fearsomely powerful FileMaker Pro database tool, but whereas FileMaker Pro can do anything at all, provided you can figure out how to do it, Bento is stripped-down simplicity, a database tool aimed at the app generation.

All the regular database fixtures are there, but working subtly in the background. You can create lots of different databases for different jobs, such as to-do lists, personal inventories or exercise plans. And if you can't find a ready-made template from those supplied, you can go on FileMaker's Template Exchange and download hundreds more.

Libraries

And instead of storing your databases as separate files within the Finder, Bento calls them 'Libraries' and displays them all in its source bar.

Each Library is built like a conventional database, out of records and fields. You can view your records as a table, using a form view or as a grid, which displays thumbnail images of each record.

You can create different form views, depending on how you want to display or print your data, and this is one of the big improvements in Bento 4 – there's more flexibility in the printing options, so you can print neat-looking label runs for mail-outs, say, or much more professional-looking invoice forms without messy-looking field labels.

List view is where you sort, search and analyse your data. You can save your searches as Smart Collections in the source bar, or create regular Collections and add records manually.

You get all the field types you'd expect from a regular database too, including dates, numbers, text and calculations, and one you might not, called 'Simple List'. This displays a spreadsheet-style grid within the field, and is ideal for lists of items that don't deserve whole fields to themselves. In Bento 4, this has been enhanced so that you can add a total row to the bottom, too.

Poor relation

Bento also does relational links, after a fashion, but this is where the heavyweight hands-on approach of bigger brother FileMaker Pro could prove a better long-term solution.

Although many of Bento's templates are designed for business use, they're very much at the lightweight end of the market – ideal for individuals and small workgroups, but a long way from the bespoke applications that bigger companies are likely to need.

And although Bento has Address Book, iCal Tasks and Events Libraries and can even display your iPhoto library contents, there's an uneasy crossover in that it's a slightly messier way of managing data that the standard Mac OS X apps manage perfectly well – though it does enable you to combine this data with your own fields and Libraries.

In the end, Bento is still a database tool. It's fine for data that conforms to a specific format each time, and which you need to search, categorise, summarise and analyse, but for more freeform data storage of random text, web pages or images, the tag-based structure of a data manager like Yojimbo is going to work better.

Bento can feel like an old concept trying too hard to be new, but what it does, it does brilliantly. It's the database tool for people who don't like databases, making them as simple to use as they are ever likely to get.

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Tutorial: How to build an iPhone app

Posted: 24 Apr 2011 01:00 AM PDT

Developing for the iOS App Store is a no-brainer. If I said that a measly investment of £250 was enough to open up a market of 150 million consumers, the ears of any smart developer should prick up.

If I were to add that many of those consumers are Apple fans eager to part with their cash in an attempt to purchase software justifying the cost of their hardware, then you might well start to see why there are now 300,000 iPhone apps and 60,000 iPad apps two and a half years after the App Store launched.

The sheer size of the App Store is staggering, with more than twice as many apps available as all the competing stores combined.

In this article I want to help kick start your own development on the App Store, and I hope it's encouraging for you that I myself went from having zero apps to having 20 approved and on sale in the space of just over a year and a half. I haven't made enough money from them to retire, but they do provide a regular income - and it's an income that's only going to grow as Apple sells more hardware.

All you need to join in is an idea, a Mac (for coding), and this tutorial. Let's go!

Requirements

To make software for iOS devices - that's iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches - you need just one software package: the iOS SDK from Apple.

This comprises four major components: The Xcode development environment, in which you'll be writing all your code; Interface Builder, which is a drag-and-drop user interface design system; libraries and header files for writing your code in Objective C (the iPhone's native language); and the iOS Simulator, which lets you run a virtual iPhone or iPad on your Mac.

I should stress that this can only be done your Mac, because the iOS SDK isn't available for any other platform. In fact, you're pretty much limited to using Apple's hardware, software and development tools. This is why many people refer to iOS development as being as a 'walled garden' - Apple is very protective about who makes apps and what goes into the store.

The Mac requirement is a hurdle you can't really vault over, but I will say this: even if you're dedicated to Windows or Linux, a Mac is an excellent purchase. We rarely see more solid or reliable PCs.

Simulator

SIMULATOR: You can test out your app on your desktop with the use of a simulator - should save you some money on an iOS device for testing

Anyway, if you plan to work only inside the simulator, you don't need to pay Apple any money for a test device or a developer account - you can go straight to http://developer.apple.com/ios and get access to the free tools.

If you later decide you've built an app you want to sell, you should pick up an iPod Touch for testing purposes (£180), then sign up for a commercial iOS account (£60). If your 59p app sells just 500 copies - if just 0.00033 per cent of iOS owners buy it - you've made your money back and everything else is profit.

Once you've created your account, you need to download the latest SDK. At the time of writing, that's Xcode 3.2.5 with iOS SDK 4.2. This package includes everything you need to make iPhone and iPad apps.

The installer is very simple: just click 'Next' until the copying process starts, then give it about 30 minutes to perform its magic and you're ready to get going.

Building your project

I'm not interested in teaching you theory here - I want to show you how to make a real project so that, if you want, you can extend it with your own customisations and make your own valuable addition to the App Store.

We're going to make a simple to-do list manager, building on some of the basic user interface elements that are common to iOS apps.

First, fire up Xcode - you should find it in the 'Developer | Applications' folder on your hard drive. A welcome screen should appear, but you can close that and choose 'New | New project' from the menu.

Apple includes seven application templates out of the box, but the one that's most useful to begin with (primarily because it comes with a fair amount of code written for you) is the navigation-based application. Choose that, then name it 'TaDaList' and save it to your desktop.

A navigation-based app gives you a UI similar to the Settings app - you get a title bar at the top and a table of options to choose from. Choosing any option will cause a new screen to pan in from the right. You can then go back to the previous screen by tapping a 'Back' button - it's all very intuitive and easy to learn.

You can see the basic application template that Apple has created for you by pressing [Command]+[Y] to build and run your app in the simulator. You can see the Apple blue bar at the top (it's blank because we haven't typed anything in there yet), plus the table of information (again empty because we haven't told the app what should go there).

Define items

Xcode

X-CODE: Xcode is your primary development environment for iPhone. Some people like it, most don't

Before we type any to-do list items into the table, we need to define what those items are and where they're stored.

First, think about what we need each to-do list item to be stored as, and how they might helpfully be stored as a group. You should come up with these two key points: Firstly, a to-do list item, like 'Feed the cat' or 'Take over the world', is just a string.

In Objective C, there are two types of string: 'NSString' and 'NSMutableString'. The only difference between the two is that the latter can be changed after it has been created.

Secondly, the collection of items is very simple: as they are added, we need to put them either at the beginning or end of our existing list. Users need to be able to read them in any order they please. This calls for a pretty standard array, although again there are two on offer - 'NSArray' and 'NSMutableArray'. Hopefully you can figure out the difference.

In this project, we'll be using the mutable versions of both of those classes. We need mutable strings because users need to be able to edit to-do entries, and the easiest way to do that is to let them edit the entries in place. We also need a mutable array, otherwise users wouldn't be able to add and remove items.

So, let's start with the array: we're going to use a very basic programming technique in Objective C called 'properties'. The syntax for these is a little verbose, so I recommend that you commit it all to muscle memory as quickly as possible.

Properties

Our to-do list items need to be stored in an NSMutableArray, and the correct way to create that NSMutableArray is with a property. This is a little bit of Objective C syntactic sugar that means 'When I try to get the value, run this method, but when I try to set the value, run this method instead.' It's all about the methods, as opposed to setting values directly.

Having to write two methods to get and set each value is clearly an annoyance, so Objective C has special syntax that can generate those methods for us when the code is compiled. If you ever choose to write your own, just tell it to stop auto-generating the methods that you want to replace - easy.

First things first, we need to tell Objective C that we want an NSMutableArray for our items. In 'RootViewController.h' - the definition file for our main table view - modify the definition of the class to be as follows:

@interface RootViewController :
UITableViewController {
NSMutableArray *items;
}
@property (nonatomic, retain)
NSMutableArray *items;
@end

At first, that probably looks like we're declaring the 'items' array twice, but there's a difference: the first declaration makes the variable so that it can be used anywhere inside the class, but the second declaration turns it into a property so that it can be used anywhere in our code.

What's more, the keyword 'retain' tells Objective C that if it generates the code for us, it should make sure and keep the object alive until we say otherwise.

I say "if it generates the code", because that's still to come - change to the 'RootViewController.m' file and put this line of code immediately beneath '@implementation RootViewController':

@synthesize items;

That's the bit that makes the code generation happen - with that single line, Objective C will turn our '@property' into two methods, both doing memory management for us automatically.

There's one last piece, though: using 'retain' keeps the 'items' object alive until we say otherwise. If you never say otherwise, that memory is never freed up - even if you can't access it any more. As a result, you should always free memory that you've retained, so scroll to the bottom of the 'RootViewController.m' file and look for the 'dealloc' method. Change it to read as follows:

- (void)dealloc {
[items release];
[super dealloc]; }

Sending the 'release' message to an object - which is what this code does - has the effect in this example of freeing the memory. It's actually a little more complicated than that, but it works well enough for now.

Filling the table

Now that we have an items array declared, we can create some items and show them in the table. But first, we need to create the items array. And now, thanks to the amazing power of magazine telepathy, I can read your very thoughts: "Wait a minute… didn't we just write some code to do all that?"

Well, not quite. We wrote code to declare the variable so that it's available to use - now we need to use the thing.

Near the top of 'RootView Controller.m' the 'viewDidLoad' message has been commented out. Remove the '/*' and '*/' to uncomment it, then add this to it:

self.items = [NSMutableArray
arrayWithCapacity:10];

With that in place, our array is ready to be used. Scan down the file a little and look for the 'numberOfRowsInSection' method - that determines how many rows appear in the table in our UI.

How many? Easy - as many as we have items in the 'items' array. Right now, the default method implementation has 'return 0', meaning '0 rows'; change that to return the number of items in 'items':

return [items count];

Next, we need to change the way table rows are created so that they show the text of the correct to-do list item. As with the other methods, Apple's template already includes code to do most of this work - in fact, you just need to add one line that says 'set this row's text label to have whatever is in our items array at that position'.

About halfway down the 'RootViewController.m' file is the 'cellForRowAtIndexPath' method, and you should be able to see that it receives a parameter called 'indexPath' - that tells us which row we need to load. So, directly beneath the comment that reads 'configure the cell', add this:

cell.textLabel.text = [self.items
objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];

That uses the row's position as passed in 'indexPath' to look inside the 'items' array and assign the correct text to the table row. However, if you run the app it still doesn't do anything, even after all this code.

Fortunately, that's just a matter of us not having any items in the array, so we need to add a button to the navigation bar at the top that lets users add new items.

Adding new items

This is actually two tasks: adding a button, and writing the code to respond to the button being tapped. The first task is very simple - in the 'viewDidLoad' method, put this line of code:

self.navigationItem.
leftBarButtonItem =
[[[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithBa
rButtonSystemItem:UIBarButtonSystemItemAdd
target:self action:@ selector(addTapped)] autorelease];

That does several things at once, so let me break it down:

'self. navigationItem.leftBarButton' means that we're setting the left button (each navigation bar can have one button on the left and one on the right).

'UIBarButton Item alloc' creates the new button, and 'initWithBarButtonSystem Item' creates the button using the 'UIBarButtonSystemItemAdd' style. This means it will be displayed with a '+' symbol.

'Target:self' means that when the button is tapped, the message saying so will be passed to 'RootViewController.m'.

'@ selector(addTapped)' is how 'RootViewController.m' will be told the button was tapped - the 'addTapped' method will be run.

'autorelease' decrements the use count of the button. It won't be freed, though, because the 'leftBarButton' will retain it. That single line of code creates a new button with a '+' symbol and sets it up to call 'addTapped' in 'RootViewController.m' when it's tapped, then add its to the navigation bar.

We don't actually have the 'addTapped' method yet, but it's not complicated - all it needs to do is create a new 'NSMutableString' with some default text in, then reload the table so that it appears.

Put this new method somewhere in your 'RootViewController.m' file:

- (void)addTapped {
[self.items
addObject:[NSMutableString
stringWithString:@"New Item"]];
[self.tableView reloadData];
}

As you can see, to add an object to an NSMutableArray you just need to use the 'addObject' method, although what follows might confuse you a bit - it creates a new NSMutableString out of a plain text string.

Note that all NSStrings in Objective C must start with '@' to distinguish them from plain C character constants.

If you run the app now, you can add new rows by tapping the [+] button. It's still not useful though, because you can't actually edit anything - let's do that next.

Off into IB

Interface builder

INTERFACE BUILDER: The UI is split across four windows, so if you were planning to use a 13in MacBook for your coding, you might want to reconsider

We're on the last leg of our project now. Only one thing remains: we need to be able to edit to-do list items. When a new item is added, we create it as a mutable string and add it to our collection, so all we need now is a simple user interface to allow editing of items.

Right-click 'Classes' and choose 'Add | New file'. Select 'UIViewController subclass' and leave the checkboxes below deselected, except for the one marked 'With XIB for user interface' - that's the bit that lets us drag and drop user interface elements as we need them.

When you're asked for a name, call it 'EditController' - this is what we'll be using to edit to-do list items, and Xcode will create 'Edit Controller.h', 'EditController.m' and 'EditController.xib' for us.

It's the last one we're interested in - it's an XML file that can be edited by Interface Builder, so double-click it to open it in IB.

Interface Builder

Interface Builder is made up of four main windows: the Library, which showcases all the UI components you can use; the Workspace, which is the graphical layout view where you can create your user interface masterpieces; the Document Window, which shows you a tree-based version of your layout; and the Inspector, which is where you can set various properties of your interface.

Right now we want the workspace, so look in the Document Window for 'View' (it'll be under 'File's owner and first responder') and double-click it to bring up the Workspace. This will be a big, empty white space, with a small grey iPhone status bar visible at the top.

You need to go to the Library window and drag a Text View into that white space. When you hover over the space, you'll see the Text View stretch to take up all the available space; let go, and you'll drop it in there.

Using the Inspector, delete all the default text that's in the Text View. In order to use the Text View in our app, we need to add it as a property (which follows the same four steps as before), then hook it up in IB. Let's tackle the property part first.

In Xcode, modify 'EditController.h' to this:

#import

@interface EditController :
UIViewController {
UITextView *textView;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain)
IBOutlet UITextView *textView;

@end

In the '.m' file, you need to add @ synthesize textView; beneath '@ implementation EditController', and add [textView release] into the 'dealloc' method - just as we did for the 'items' property in 'RootViewController.m'.

There's one small difference here, and that's 'IBOutlet'. When IB is looking for things to connect to, it scans your source code for IBOutlet, so adding that to our property basically means 'This is something we want to use in IB.'

Save all the files in Xcode, then switch back to IB. Because we've told IB that 'textView' is of interest to it, we now just need to connect the 'textView' variable inside the 'EditController' class to the Text View we drew in the workspace window.

To do that, look for 'File's owner' in the Document window, hold down [Ctrl], then click and drag a line from there to the text view, and let go. A menu will appear showing the list of possible connections, and you should see 'textView' in there. Click it and you're done - save the file and close the file.

We've already launched IB, so there's one more thing we need to do: give our navigation bar a title. To do that, go into Xcode and double-click 'MainWindow.xib' from under the 'Resources' folder. When it loads into IB, doubleclick the navigation bar at the top and give it the text Ta Da - this will be used to generate the back button too, so it's quite important.

Editing items

With our simple user interface done, the next step is to make it appear when one of our to-do list items is tapped. That's controlled in 'RootViewController.m', in the 'didSelectRowAtIndexPath' method.

Apple has put some code in there that we can make use of - uncomment it, then change the two instances of 'DetailViewController' (with a capital D!) and the single instance of 'Nib name' to 'EditController'.

Before that compiles, you need to tell Xcode you want to draw upon the 'EditController.h' file you made earlier, so switch to the 'RootViewController.h' file, and add this just beneath the existing #import line:

#import "EditController.h"

That handles creating and showing the editing window, but it doesn't actually show the to-do list text in the view - we need to do that ourselves by passing in the selected string in for editing.

The first part of that is to create an 'NSMutableString' property inside 'EditController' called 'todoItem' I've already shown you how to complete all four steps in the process of creating properties, so just repeat them here.

The interesting bits are how to show the text of the to-do item in the view, and that's done back in 'RootViewController.m' - before the call to 'pushViewController' is made in 'didSelectRowAtIndex Path', you just need to set the 'todoItem' variable like this:

detailViewController.todoItem =
[self.items objectAtIndex:indexPath. row];

That uses 'indexPath.row', which, if you remember, tells us which table row we're dealing with - to pull out the correct 'NSMutable String' from the 'items' array, and stores it in the 'EditController'.

Once that's step is complete, we can make the text appear in our UI by uncommenting the default 'viewDidLoad' method in 'EditController.m' and added this single line of code:

textView.text = todoItem;

So, when the view loads - which happens immediately after the call to 'pushViewController' - we set the text view's text according to the item we passed in. Perfect!

Final tweaks

At this point we can list items, add items and bring up the editing window, but any changes that are made aren't saved. This is really easy to change though, because it's just a matter of waiting for the user to go back to the previous view, and then grabbing 'textView.text' and saving it.

The 'go back to the previous view' event is sent to us in the form of 'viewWill Disappear', which 'EditController' receives whenever it's going to be replaced by any other view.

In 'EditController.m', you need to create a 'viewWillDisappear' method - make sure you follow Apple's example and call the same method on the super class before doing your own thing. Here's what it should look like:

/- (void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL) animated {
[super viewWillDisappear:animated];
[todoItem setString:textView. text];
}

The interesting bit there is the call to 'setString', which changes the contents of an 'NSMutableString' to some new text. This 'NSMutableString' is shared between the 'EditController' and the 'RootViewController', which means we're changing our master copy of our to-do list item.

There's just one last thing to do before we can call this project finished, which is to update our 'RootViewController' table when a to-do list item has been edited.

We've just 'viewWillDisappear' in 'EditController', so now we need to work with its counterpart, 'viewWillAppear', in 'RootView Controller'. Again, you'll find a commented-out version already in there, towards the top, so all you need to do is remove the comment marks, then add this single line of code to the method:

[self.tableView reloadData];

We have that 'tableView' because we inherited from 'UITable ViewController', and when you call 'reloadData' it then restarts the entire process of asking how many rows there are and what those rows contain.

App viz

APP VIZ: Once the money starts rolling in, you'll find that Apple's sales tracker is rather inadequate for monitoring your app's performance

That's the end of the project - we're not doing a whole lot here, but if you've absorbed everything in these pages you'll have a great grounding in the core concepts of iOS app development, including memory, view controllers, Interface Builder, strings and arrays, and of course iTunes Connect - the bit where you can actually make money!

But there's no point in learning all this if you don't use it, so if you want all this abstract knowledge to bed down properly in your brain and become genuinely useful, it's time to put what you've learned to work and get started on making your first app.

It doesn't need to be some incredible, fortune-making idea, but if you do come up with something great and happen to make a mint from your efforts, don't forget who taught you!

Best online office suite: 5 reviewed and rated

Posted: 23 Apr 2011 05:00 AM PDT

Working online is the future. Soon enough, the cloud will provide all our software, cook our dinner, and even convince our bosses and loved ones that we're still necessary.

Unfortunately we're still in the early stages of that dream, as technologies like HTML and Flash fight for supremacy, and traditional client-based software still sits pretty in the overwhelming majority of industries and on most of our computers. For online office suites, the fight is just beginning.

Three features in particular give the cloud an edge: the ability to access files from any internet-connected system, ease of file-sharing, and automated backing up and versioning. The apps may not be as comfortable to use as Office, nor as feature-packed, but as long as the basics are in place, most users are unlikely to complain - especially if they're getting them for free, as is usually the case for personal use.

The catch is that what you consider an essential feature may not be what Google, Microsoft and the smaller companies prioritise. Many of these tools have been in development for years, but Office in particular has had decades to get to its current state.

It's still relatively early days for the cloud. Still, with online technology racing forward, it won't be long before one of the alternatives pulls ahead. It may have happened already. Let's find out…

Online office tools on test

Google Docs
docs.google.com

Microsoft Office Web Apps
office.microsoft.com

Zoho
www.zoho.com

ThinkFree Online Office
www.thinkfree.com

Acrobat.com
www.acrobat.com

Live Documents
www.live-documents.com

Google Docs

Google Docs was the first online office suite to hit it big, and is still one of the most popular. When it first launched, it was incredibly primitive. Now it looks and feels far more like Microsoft Office, from the virtual sheet-of-paper view used by its word processor to the availability of many more fonts, including Office's current default, Calibre.

Docs doesn't offer anything close to Office's power, but focuses on the basics that everyone needs for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and simple vector-based drawing, along with online storage space for additional files and decent file conversion from Office's formats.

Google docs

Its simplicity can be a downside, but for the most part it's a blessing, stripping out all the features you never use.

There are a few omissions, the biggest being offline editing. Google originally offered this via a plugin, but changed its mind and pulled it in May 2010 on the grounds that HTML5 would be able to do it better. Since then, silence. If you want to edit with Google Docs, you have to do so online and hope your connection doesn't drop.

Similarly, while the word processing component is great for typing, its inability to do simple things like show you how much of a page you're using without doing a print preview, customise headers or change the language in a specific document make it clear that there's a long way to go.

Google adds features on a regular basis, but don't hold your breath for specific improvements. Development on Docs feels slow - too slow, given the amount still to do.

Verdict: 4/5

Microsoft Office Web Apps

For Microsoft, offering a free version of Office to anyone with a Live ID account is more than a bit of a gamble, so it's not too surprising that the Office Web Apps built into Skydrive aren't exactly direct competitors to their offline counterparts.

Excel WebApp, for instance, lets you put together basic spreadsheets and graphs just like the regular version, but a quick glance at the toolbar compared to the full applications' Ribbon makes it clear just how little you can do in comparison, and how few time-saving features are on offer to help you do it.

Microsoft office web apps

For simple spreadsheets though, it's fine, which is more than can be said for the online version of Word. This gives you a genuinely horrible editor to work with, forcing you to type into a full-width text box. You can switch to a more traditional view for reading files and see how your document will look when printed out, but only via a read-only preview called 'Reading Mode'. This is truly dire.

Proper margins and maximum line lengths make writing far more comfortable, to say nothing of giving you a much better idea of how much you've written and how many pages you're using.

The online version of Word looks especially bad when you fire up OneNote WebApp - Office Web Apps' diamond in the rough. Here, the simplicity works in its favour, making it easy to create an online notebook and fill it with text, images and more, from a very comfortable editing window that Word should be using.

We like OneNote a lot, and this version - while cut down - is good enough to save most people the cost of the full product.

Verdict: 2/5

Zoho

For sheer features, Zoho is the king of online office suites. With text documents, accounting, spreadsheets, presentations, mail, calendars, notebooks, wikis, discussion groups, invoicing and more, Zoho offers a jaw-dropping number of features.

Better yet, all of them are available free for personal use. They're geared towards business use though, with the idea being that you pay for additional users and features in specific apps. The website doesn't do a great job of explaining this up front, but at least you can try everything without having to pay first.

Zoho office

All the apps run from the Mail screen, whether you use it or not. You can sign in with a Google or Facebook account, or create a new one.

In terms of features, the apps easily go head-to-head with anything else out there, although the look and feel didn't click with us as well as many others. Every app you run has its own distinct feel and style, which can be jarring, whether it's something as simple as a different style of tab, or being kicked out of the mail interface because a different app demands the whole screen to itself.

The tools are powerful, but could do with more consistency and a good pumice stone to scrape away some of the rough edges. For these reasons more than any inherent weaknesses in Zoho's range, we found we didn't want to spend too much time in the suite, which is a key factor when choosing which software you're going to be staring at all day.

You can't argue with its power though, and if you want all of your business and editing tools in one place, this is where you'll find them waiting for you.

Verdict: 4/5

ThinkFree Online Office

ThinkFree is a Java-based office suite, which makes it the only one in this test that has to be installed - albeit in a web browser. It's amazing how irritating those few minutes can be when you're dealing with a website and are used to everything simply appearing ready to go.

There are advantages, though. When it finally appears, ThinkFree does by far the best job of looking like a 'real' application, because that's exactly what it is.

Thinkfree online office

The document editor is a dead ringer for Word 2003, right down to the blue gradient background, and it's amazing how impressive something as simple as being able to modify a style feels next to many other suites that simply decide that for your main header you're going to get this font at this size in this colour and like it.

Being a Java app, it's not the speediest - and you don't get to use it offline just because you've installed it. If you want to do that, you have to buy the slightly misnamed ThinkFree Office, which costs £35. Not a huge amount compared to a copy of Microsoft Office, but still...

There is, however, a dedicated syncing tool that you can download, so that you can at least fire up another tool and continue working until your internet connection resumes, and there are mobile apps available to access and share files.

Against Office proper, ThinkFree Office loses out, but online it's a very different battlefield. If you don't mind using a Java app instead of pure HTML, ThinkFree is as close as you can get to replicating the offline experience in your browser, and is an excellent contender for your online office suite.

Verdict: 4/5

Acrobat.com

Unsurprisingly, Adobe's take on the online office suite is very attractive and Flash-based. The former helps to hide the fact that it doesn't do a vast amount compared to the others, while the latter means that it's much slower than the competition.

But while it's flawed, and expensive if you upgrade, it's not without its charms. Built primarily as a collaboration tool rather than a replacement for Office, Acrobat.com offers three key features: a document-editing tool called Buzzwords, which works rather well, and a presentation maker and spreadsheet tool flagged up as 'Labs' and 'Beta' respectively.

Acrobat.com

These two are so simple it's almost surprising that Beta can handle formulae, and they're only available in US English. They're barely worth mentioning, never mind using.

Buzzword, on the other hand, is surprisingly good - to a point. It offers by far the best paper-view of your documents and includes all the standard features, even if it is let down in the strangest ways.

Fonts, for instance. Buzzword gives you just seven, and none are the standards like Ariel and Times New Roman. Buzzword's offerings include Myriad, Minion Pro and Garamond Pro.

Getting your documents out of the service is a pain, because you have to convert them to PDF format, which you can only do five times before you have to upgrade your account to Premium. This costs at least $14.99 a month. Were it free, Acrobat.com would win a few points for style and some of its PDF features, like combining multiple documents. As it is, it's hard to recommend to anyone.

Verdict: 2/5

Live Documents

Live Documents is another Flash-based office suite, but one with rather more pizzazz than Adobe's attempt.

Instead of the classic menu screens, it gives you a full-on virtual desktop complete with folders, Google Docs imports and an OS X style dock. It also includes alerts, a list of tasks and three editors - word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Live documents

Oddly though, whichever of the icons you click, it immediately asks you what type of document you want to make anyway. Entering the document editor, the first things that jump out are the huge editing window - which includes margins and pagination, unlike many others - and the unusual range of style tools.

You can alter the kerning of the text, but not create a headline style. You can add a footnote or a comment, but there's no apparent way to set a standard header or footer. It's a strange editor, advanced in some ways but primitive in others, using the Flash gloss to make it look much sleeker and more powerful than it actually is.

The Spreadsheet tool fares better, partly by having a much more comprehensive view of what the user will need, and partly by presenting it in a far better way. A simple strip along the top of the screen activates all its features instead of bits popping in and out as you move the mouse cursor around the screen.

As with the other online spreadsheets, data junkies aren't going to move from tools like Excel unless you prise them away with a crowbar, but it's fine for the basics. Live Documents is flashy, in more ways than one.

Verdict: 3/5

The best online office suite is...

The simple truth is that right now, cloud-based office suites aren't at the level where they can seriously challenge a good offline client like Microsoft Word or even OpenOffice.org. They can handle the basics, and for many, the basics are all that matter, but if you spend great chunks of your life in front of an editing screen, you'll soon realise how far these suites still have to go.

For the time being, at least until internet connections become guaranteed or we start seeing better offline modes available, they're really best used as a complement to your existing tools rather than an outright replacement - although with the increasing power of technologies like HTML5, that probably won't be the case for much longer.

Editor's choice - Google Docs

Google docs 2

Even with its weaknesses and lack of offline editing, Google Docs would be our desert island office suite. Assuming the island had a reliable internet connection.

It's one of the easiest to use, the fastest and the sleekest, and the weaknesses of the early versions have mostly been eliminated. It has a long way to go before it can compete with Office though, no matter how many people sign up.

Performance award - Zoho office

Zoho office 2

Want the office suite that does everything? Zoho is the obvious choice. It doesn't always do things as sleekly or consistently as you might like, but you can't complain that it doesn't do enough.

It's the online office that lets you do anything from write a note to run a small business. For business use, you'll have to pay up - and finding out exactly how much can be a little confusing.

Review: SyncMate 3.0 Expert Edition

Posted: 23 Apr 2011 04:00 AM PDT

With many people now having multiple Macs and phones, keeping them in sync can be a bit of a pain. You could use MobileMe to keep some things the same across machines, but there are more flexible options available.

SyncMate 3.0 doesn't just sync phones or Macs – it can keep a whole host of devices and services singing from the same hymn sheet.

As well as syncing things like Contacts, Safari Bookmarks and Mail Notes, it can manage iPhoto and iTunes accounts between not only Macs, but also PCs.

It's not just devices either, as you can sync services such as Google calendars and contacts too.

But the big addition to SyncMate 3.0 is Android support. Not every Mac owner has an iPhone and the Android system is a perfectly good platform. However, for obvious reasons Apple doesn't make it simple to keep your Android phone in sync with your Mac.

This app is the answer: just plug your device in, wait for SyncMate to recognise it and choose what to sync between the two.

If you're an Android user looking for a simple method of letting your phone and Mac play nice together, SyncMate really helps. You can sync over plain old USB or use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connections.

As well as the paid-for version there's a free edition that allows you to get an idea of what it can do. If you have an Android device or lots of different Macs and PCs that you'd like to keep in sync then this is an excellent tool to help you.

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Review: Thinkflood RedEye Mini

Posted: 23 Apr 2011 03:30 AM PDT

The universal remote control market seems to be undergoing a period of transformation with purpose-built and often pricey multi-function handsets under threat from a new wave of control solutions that use Apple and Android devices instead.

The RedEye Mini from Thinkflood works with Apple's iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad and has a big brother, the RedEye, which allows for control of multiple devices in the home using Wi-Fi by slotting said kit into a cradle.

The Mini package has two parts – a 290mm-long infrared adapter (for which a keyring-attachable case is provided) with a 30ft range, which attaches to your device's headphone output and the RedEye Mini control app, which is a free download from the iTunes app store.

Net access needed

Setting it up requires internet access and isn't too complex. You pick your equipment from a list of manufacturers (Sky+ appears as an option) and then the type (e.g. satellite receiver). You're then presented with a choice of IR code sets and proceed to test them out before downloading one that works.

The remote control interface isn't especially pretty but for generic remotes (e.g. Sky) each button is labelled corresponding with their match on the target. You can use the touchscreen to slide from one emulated remote to another, move buttons around, rename them and change the icon used.

An additional learning function involves placing the remote you want to mimic in front of the adapter and pressing the buttons you wish to ape.

Macro commands ('activities') can be set up and mapped to buttons you create. We could control our Sky+ and Virgin box in seconds, but the RedEye wouldn't turn on our Panasonic plasma TV.

A recent addition is a downloadable EPG which covers Sky, Freeview, Freesat and Virgin. A conventional grid-style EPG shows data up to seven days in advance including channel logos. This can be used to change channel but not schedule timed recordings.

Easy to use and potentially future-proof, thanks to the apps' internet updatability and learning function, this nifty Apple add-on isn't cheap but remains an elegant way to control multiple devices with minimal fuss.

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Review: CrossOver Impersonator

Posted: 23 Apr 2011 03:30 AM PDT

CrossOver has come in for a fair amount of stick over the years, and for good reason: it's basically a paid-for version of the free Wine – a popular Windows emulator with its roots in the Linux OS, albeit one with a clumsy interface pasted on top and a price tag which isn't reflected by the improvements it offers.

In that respect nothing has really changed with this new version 10. Sadly, CrossOver still isn't suitable for modern gaming, struggling with almost everything we tested.

A companion product, CrossOver Games, claims better frame rates, which is certainly true but only because Crossover gives such very awful results.

To its credit, CrossOver does a decent job of running basic office apps, but anything even slightly system-intensive falls flat. There are just over 1,000 apps marked as 'Gold' in Codeweavers' medal-based ranking scheme for compatibility; those that aren't are almost assured to be the ones you want to use.

Of course, the biggest flaw is still apparent: it's not impossible to find an old copy of Windows XP for the same price as a copy of CrossOver. While the logic of buying a Mac then installing Windows is flawed, the only advantage that Crossover offers is integration with OS X, which Wine does reasonably.

We admire Codeweavers' philosophy, and its customer support is nothing short of brilliant, but CrossOver still can't quite justify its existence.

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Tutorial: 15 time-saving Windows shortcuts

Posted: 23 Apr 2011 03:00 AM PDT

Time is often of the essence when dealing with PCs, especially when a lot of IT-based work seems to involve watching progress indicators crawl across the screen.

It's vital to recoup what snippets of time you can, and so a set of useful Windows shortcuts that help you perform common tasks is very welcome.

For those tasks you carry out particularly often, consider setting a hotkey so you can launch them directly from the keyboard.

Here are 15 time-saving Windows shortcuts you should try.

1. Safely remove hardware

remove hardware

A great place to start saving a few seconds is the 'Safely remove hardware' dialog, which helps you disconnect USB devices without data loss. The default method to launch this is via a small icon in the system tray, which can be fiddly and awkward to use, especially if you're in a hurry.

Here's how to make a standard shortcut that does the same job. Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose 'New | Shortcut'. In the 'Location' box, type the following: RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll.

Provide a suitable name for the shortcut and then complete the wizard. Double-click the newly created shortcut, then select the specific device that you want to remove.

2. Install USB Ejector

If you want a bit more control, or you'd like to produce a shortcut that ejects a specific device, you can do so with the help of some additional software.

USB Ejector is free to use, and is available from. Download and install it.

When the software is launched, you can select the device to eject. By calling it from the command line, you can specify the drive letter you want to eject and then convert the command into a shortcut. Connect your USB drive to see what letter Windows assigns to it.

Now create a new shortcut with the following in the 'Location' box: C:\path-to\USB_Disk_Eject.exe / REMOVELETTER X, where 'path-to' is the full location of the program and 'X' is the letter of the USB drive. Complete the shortcut and you'll be able to use it to eject your drive.

3. Launch a screensaver

If you want to launch a screensaver to obscure your screen, or just for fun, you can do so from the command line. If you convert this command to a shortcut, you can start a screensaver with a double-click.

To find the commands for the available screensavers, browse to the System32 folder, which is usually located at 'C:\Windows\ System32'. Run a search for '*. scr' and make a note of the screensaver file names.

Now return to the desktop and create a new shortcut with the full path to the screensaver of your choice, followed by the '/s' switch. For example, to launch the Mystify screensaver, enter: C:\Windows\System32\Mystify.scr /s.

4. Enable and disable transparency at will

Transparency

Some operations work best when Aero transparency is turned off, but doing so manually takes time. You can make shortcuts to disable and re-enable transparency quickly.

To disable it, enter the following into the 'Location' field: rundll32.exe dwmApi #104. To enable it again, create a shortcut with the following in 'Location': rundll32.exe dwmApi #102.

5. Mute hotkey

Many laptops include a mute key that lets you switch off Windows sounds easily when you're working in a public place. However, if your laptop is missing such a luxury, you can always make your own.

Start by downloading and installing the free utility NirCmd.

Right-click on the desktop and choose 'New | Shortcut'. In the location bar enter "C:\path-to\nircmd.exe" mutesysvolume 2, where 'path-to' is the full location of the 'nircmd.exe' program.

Complete the shortcut and launch it to check that it mutes the sound. Launch it again to restore sound.

Now right-click the shortcut and choose 'Properties'. On the 'Shortcut' tab, set the hotkey you want to use to launch it. You can now mute Windows at will.

6. Copy file list to clipboard

copy file list

If you need to produce a list of file names, typing them all out individually or even copying and pasting each name can be a tedious process. With a simple registry hack, you can produce a right-click menu item that copies all the file names in a folder automatically.

To try this, choose 'Start' and enter regedit in the search bar. Press [Enter]. Browse to this key: 'HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ Folder\shell'.

Create a new key called 'copylist', and a subkey below this called 'command'. In the 'copylist' key, right-click the default value and choose 'Modify'. Enter Copy list to clipboard. Now right-click the default value in command and choose 'Modify'. Enter the following for the value: cmd /c dir "%1" /b /a:-d /o:n | clip.

Close regedit – you can now right-click any folder to see the new menu option.

7. Clear the clipboard

clear clipboard

If you've recently placed a lot of data on the clipboard and no longer need it, or want it cleared for security reasons, this handy shortcut can help. It uses the 'clip.exe' utility, which is present in both Windows 7 and Vista.

To begin, right-click on the desktop and create a new shortcut. Type the following into 'Location': cmd /c "echo off | clip". Call the shortcut 'Clear clipboard'.

Right-click the new shortcut and choose 'Properties'. On the 'Shortcut' tab, set 'Run' to 'Minimised'. To help you remember what this particular shortcut does, you can give it a custom icon. Click 'Change icon' and browse to '%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll'.

There are lots of different system icons available here, so select one that looks like a clipboard.

8. Copy text file contents

You can also make a registry edit to add a right-click menu option that copies the full contents of a text file to the clipboard without you having to open it.

Click 'Start', enter regedit into the search bar and press enter. Browse to this key: 'HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\txtfile\shell'. Create a new key here called 'copytoclip' and set its default value to Copy file contents.

Now you need to create a subkey within this key, called 'command'. Modify this subkey's default value to this: cmd /c clip < "%1_. Close regedit and right-click a text file to test the new menu item and copy the text to the clipboard automatically.

9. Create a new folder quickly

Press [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [N] in any Windows Explorer window using Windows 7 to create a new folder. To do the same thing in earlier versions of Windows, download and install bxNewFolder.

When you install the program, right-click and run the installer as administrator. This makes the [F12] key create a new folder.

10. Hibernate

If you leave your PC for more than a minute or so, you can save power by putting it into hibernation. Creating a shortcut that does this job means you can do this more easily, and even assign a hotkey to it.

Right-click the desktop and choose New, Shortcut. Enter the following as the location: C:\ Windows\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll, SetSuspendState 0,1,0.

Call the shortcut 'Hibernate'. Right-click the new shortcut and choose 'Properties'. On the 'Shortcut' tab, you can then assign a hotkey and browse for a suitable icon.

11. Eject CD/DVD

If you install the freeware NirCmd utility, you can create a shortcut that opens your CD/DVD drive tray. Set the following as the location of the shortcut: "C:\ path-to\nircmd.exe" cdrom open D:.

Replace 'path-to' with the location of the 'nircmd.exe' file. To make a shortcut to close the CD tray, use the same location but change 'open' to 'close'.

12. Switch power plans quickly

You can create a shortcut to switch to any Windows power plan if you find its GUID. The shortcut location is: powercfg -setactive . Replace ' ' with the string of characters that Windows applies to that scheme.

You can find this out by opening a command prompt and entering powercfg -list. Right-click the background of the command window and choose 'Mark'. Select the GUID that you want to use and copy it to the clipboard.

13. Shutdown shortcut

shutdown

Instead of going to the 'Start' menu to shut down your PC, why not create a shortcut that does the job in one operation? Set this as the location: Shutdown.exe -s -t 00.

14. Restart shortcut

You can do exactly the same thing to produce a shortcut that restarts your PC. Just change the shortcut location to: Shutdown.exe -r -t 00.

15. Lock workstation

Finally, if you want to lock your PC, there's a 'lock workstation' shortcut. Enter the following as the location to create it: Rundll32.exe User32. dll,LockWorkStation.

Review: Monsoon Multimedia Vulkano

Posted: 23 Apr 2011 03:00 AM PDT

While Sky enables you to watch some of its channels through Sky Player online TV service, it's not the norm to have that sort of flexibility from your home TV provider. In the connected world, this seems somewhat anachronistic, but then the SlingBox appeared to fix that problem.

You connect your set-top box to it, and it streams your home TV to you anywhere in the world. The Monsoon Multimedia Vulkano picks up that baton and runs with it, combining the ability to broadcast your TV service with digital recording capabilities, UPnP media streaming and a YouTube app.

There are free Mac and iOS apps for watching the streamed video. An IR blaster is included, so you can control your set-top box remotely.

In the US, Electronic Program Guide (EPG) functionality is included so you can see what's on every channel, but this feature doesn't work in the UK.

By adding storage using the USB, eSATA or SDHC card ports, video can be recorded, too. On paper, the Vulkano has an impressive feature list. In practice, it doesn't hold up quite so well.

The problem is UK support is sketchy. We've already touched on the lack of UK EPG (though we're told it's imminent), but when you go through the lists of compatible boxes to set up using the Vulkano's remote control with your box, you'll notice only one Sky box listed, and no Virgin.

In fact, the new V+ box is there, but under its official product number: the Samsung SMT-H3110. Several Humax boxes are supported, but BT Vision is absent.

The video-quality streaming out from the device isn't too good from a 720p source. On a Mac over a local wireless network, the quality is reduced and stutters often. Audio and video often fell out of sync, too.

Playback on iOS was good, however. The YouTube playback was a bit hit and miss. The UPnP playback worked well, but it's a hidden option that needs to be unlocked.

The Vulkano has the potential to be a contender, but it's not there yet. We'd stick with the Slingbox Pro HD.

Review: Henge Dock 13-inch

Posted: 23 Apr 2011 02:30 AM PDT

We've been dying to get our hands on a decent docking system for Mac notebooks, so we were like children at Christmas when we unboxed the Henge Dock.

Henge Docks turn your notebook into a desktop system without you having to faff around reconnecting your keyboard, mouse and screen when you bring it into your office. Instead, you lower it into the dock onto the row of connectors. And because the Mac stands vertically, the whole thing takes up very little space.

The docks are model-specific and come with a load of port extender leads, which you leave clamped into the dock. To ensure each is attached in the correct place, you're recommended to attach them one at a time, which can take a little while, but you only do this once.

Getting the Mac in and out of the 13-inch MacBook Pro dock we tested is easy enough, even with a full complement of connectors – though you need two hands, one to hold the base and the other to lift out the Mac.

It doesn't come with a Mini DisplayPort adapter or MagSafe power connector, and with the latter lies a problem. Because you have to clamp each connector in, you ideally need a second power adapter to take on your travels or you'll constantly be unclamping and reclamping it if you need longer use than the battery will give you.

We also worried about scratching the Mac's casing when sliding it in and out – a soft lining on the dock would have reassured us.
at 2:01 AM

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