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- Review: HTC Salsa
- Google snaps up SageTV to improve Google TV
- Updated: iPad 3 rumours: what you need to know
- Skype for Windows gets more Facebook integration
- Calling all BlackBerry fans!
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- Review: Wikitude
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- British Library agrees digital deal with Google
- UK public 'failing to engage' with 3D TV
- Lighter, leaner, low-powered PS3 coming soon
- Details of Facebook's music dashboard are revealed
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- ICANN votes for major domain name overhaul
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- Sega hack sees 1.29m users' data stolen
| Posted: 20 Jun 2011 10:40 AM PDT There's a slight lack of high-quality action in the mid-sized Android phone section. The big manufacturers are focusing their attentions on creating monstrous, high-end "super-phones" with entire LCD monitors stuffed in their cases, while the smaller phone makers concentrate on offering budget handsets with smaller screens and lower specs. Thankfully the HTC Salsa has appeared to fill that touchscreen gap, and comes as a throwback to 2010's lovely little 3.2-inch HTC Legend, trying to be the perfect compromise between performance, price and screen size - with added Facebook integration and a larger 3,4-inch HVGA screen. With pricing expected to be around the £20 - £25 month on monthly contracts, could this be an affordable mass-market winner for HTC?
Physically, you get a tough, matte, metallic body, with HTC for once opting to use a colour other than black - the Salsa comes in a shimmering lilac. Although, if you're a male user, you could get away with calling it a more macho "bluey-grey". It's certainly a relief to have something from HTC that isn't a dull, black, plastic rectangle.
The form factor is similar to that of the HTC Legend, with a similar flared "chin" that used to be HTC's hallmark design feature plus the same four capacitive touch buttons. The optical trackpad has, once again, been binned, as with HTC's Desire S and Wildfire S 2011 updates, making the phone a few millimetres shorter than the Legend despite the screen size boost.
One of the finest physical touches is the Salsa's camera button. It's a proper, soft-touch button of the sort you'd find on a standalone digital camera, with a distinct two-stage press that makes focusing and shooting much, much easier than usual on cheap phone buttons, helping keep shots free of motion blur.
The Salsa is just as sweet looking around the back, with the bluey-grey metal nicely topped & tailed by grippy rubberised chunks. The bottom rubber section is removable, after a bit of a struggle and worry, to reveal the phone's insides, with...
...the battery, SIM and SD card held in place by a locking plastic bar.
The Salsa feels very nice in the hand, well-balanced and pleasingly heavy, with HTC's metallic side buttons and logos giving it a touch of class. The capacitive buttons and the physical Facebook one are all backlit, so there's no struggle when using it in the dark. Plus they make it look nice.
Everything else is as we've come to expect from one of HTC's 2011 Android range - a 3.5mm headphone jack and the power button along the top, silvery volume rocker and USB connector to the left. And it's every bit as robust as most HTC phones these days. The Salsa runs on Android 2.3.3 albeit heavily customised with the familiar HTC Sense skin. The Android phone features the same 2.1 version of Sense as seen on the Wildfire S and HTC's Desire S, but with two main new additions.
You get the HTC Sense 3.0 interactive lock screen as used to such great effect on the HTC Sensation, which brings a customisable selection of quick-launch icons to the phone's standby screen. Drag one of these into the circle for instant access to a feature, or pull the circle up to unlock the phone. Having quick access to the camera through this is an excellent addition to HTC's winning software set-up.
The lock screen adapts itself to show missed calls, lets you skip tracks when the music player is running, reject calls and all sorts, and is one of the best additions HTC has made to its Sense interface for a long time. You're able to customise the four app slots, so you can have easy access to whatever you use most on your phone.
The other new addition to HTC Sense is the Salsa's headline feature - Facebook integration. The most obvious way this shows itself is via a constant ticker of Facebook and Twitter status updates beneath the classic HTC flip clock, which is by far the most useful part of the Salsa's Facebook additions and brings new life to the Home screen.
Pressing the status message opens HTC's new Sense Facebook interface, where Facebook updates can be sorted via picture and video updates, updates that contain web links or those that contain check-in location data.
It's all quite useful, but looks pretty grim. While the standard Android Facebook app features a clean blue and white look, HTC has stuck with its black & white style with rounded corners and stacks of wasted space everywhere. Still, if you don't mind the look, HTC has brought in a lot of functionality to the OS, plus you can also pull Flickr updates into this app as well, for an all-in-one social experience.
Pressing the physical Facebook button brings up a messaging window, which lets you ping your latest interesting thought out to the masses on your Facebook Wall or on the Wall of a friend. You can attach photos to messages, but not videos. A long-press on the button lets you "check in" to a place, via the Facebook Places tool. It might seem all a bit pointless, really, as the existing Facebook app is already very tightly integrated into Android. All HTC has really done here is add a couple of shortcuts to a button and confused users by offering two very different looking ways to share things to the social network. However, the little FB button will glow gently when something can be shared, so something like a music track or picture you've just taken will see you prompted to tell your friends about it. This really encourages use of Facebook, especially if you're a 'lapsed user', so we can see qhy Zuckerberg is so keen to see the range extended.
Away from the social business, the Salsa features the same enhanced Notifications menu as found on its other 2011 Android phones, like the HTC Desire S. You get two tabs in the drop-down menu, plus a scrolling top bar that lists your most recently accessed applications.
The second tab has toggles for common features, letting you deactivate all the power-eating connectivity stuff when not in use. It's a fairly pointless duplication of the Android power bar, but useful to have and easy to get at from anywhere in the phone, so is worthwhile in its own little way.
Apps install quickly through the Android Market, with HTC adding its own "HTC Recommends" tab to the Market app. This offers an odd selection of paid apps you might want to download. Could marketing money be involved in there somewhere? Surely not.
And everything else is familiar HTC Android. Seven Home screens, support for masses of visual customisation through widgets, skins and wallpapers, multitouch zooming into an overview of all pages, plus it all runs extremely well on the Salsa's 800MHz processor. HTC's People app is its take on the Android contacts system, where you manage a combined list of existing SIM contacts and any HTC imports from elsewhere. Your friends can be grouped together for easy access, with users able to create their own custom groups and add anyone into the list. Social network support is of course included, with the Salsa able to pull in and display details from Twitter, Facebook, your SIM card and any previous details you've added via your Google account. Thankfully you can choose which ones to display via the Menu, making things easy to manage if you've somehow become popular on the internet.
HTC's Home screen People widget is an excellent way to fill up one of your screens, offering quick access to your favourite contacts via a scrollable, visual list that populates itself with any photos you've linked with accounts. You can set a default action for each of these, too, automatically opening up a SMS message for one person or calling another.
Contacts can be linked if you have duplicate entries both on your phone and imported from social networks, plus HTC lets you set a different ringtone for each contact or simply block all calls from that person if they're going over the top with the personal contact.
Call quality is excellent, with voices coming through nice and clear. The speaker volume isn't particularly loud, though. We had to keep it at maximum to make things properly audible, so if you work somewhere noisy or have broken your ears through years of listening to drum & bass too loudly, you may find the Salsa's not quite loud enough. HTC has also put a proximity sensor in the Salsa's case, allowing the screen to automatically turn itself off when you put it to your ear. Which seems like magic - and to 15th Century peasants, it is.
Signal reception was good. We were worried that the metal case might interfere with mobile reception, but didn't have any issues at all. In fact, we had the full four-bar signal more often than not, which is better than most phones manage - and seemed to translate into actually decent call quality, rather than just pretending to have signal when there really was none. HTC has given its SMS messaging system a much-needed visual overhaul, with its threaded messages presented on little bits of paper with shadows beneath. There's only so much you can to to "sex up" text messaging.
Beside the SMS text entry window is an attachment button, which lets you add photos, videos, contacts in vCard format and vCalendar entries to messages. You can also add audio files, but there's a strict file size limit. So no pinging MP3s to your friends.
The keyboard is HTC's tweaked take on the standard Android QWERTY. It's more usable than the stock option thanks to a selection of numbers and alternate characters above each key, accessed by long-pressing on a character. Which is more convenient than having to flip to a separate screen when keying in alpha-numeric stuff like passwords and email addresses.
By default, the keyboard will attempt to predict your word, with its best-guess highlighted in green. If that's the one you want, pressing space puts it into the text field. It works well and the 3.4-inch screen is sensitive enough to register the lightest of fingertip typing. It's very nice to use.
You also have a choice of keyboards, with Phone and Compact options on offer. Phone is a standard numeric keypad complete with the same predictive text system, if you like keeping your text entry old school...
...while Compact is this odd dual-character take on the QWERTY layout. It gives you bigger keys that are easier to hit, but in return you have to rely heavily on the predictive text doing its job. Which, to be fair, it does.
Email is handled by a simple client that supports both MS Exchange ActiveSync accounts and anything else that uses POP3/IMAP authentication. Presentation of text screens is one area that HTC Sense doesn't do a particularly great job, with its black & white screens not really setting the pulse racing here.
Still, the email client works and gets the job done, supports multiple POP3/IMAP and Exchange accounts, lets you configure email groups with multiple recipients and configure options for maximum mail size download and update frequency, if you need to stay in control of mobile data use. The Salsa's 800MHz processor is excellent when it comes to browsing and shifting web pages. Text isn't quite as sharp on-screen as found in the bigger, high-res 4" superphones, but despite the phone's modest 320x480 resolution everything's nicely readable.
The Salsa supports full multitouch zooming, with users able to pinch the screen with two fingers for a closer look at pages - which it does quickly and without any obvious glitches, even on the busy Techradar home page. Double-tapping a text area quickly zooms in and reflows the copy, making it a great device to use as a general web browser.
The HTC Sense user interface also includes the same tabbed browsing system as seen in the Wildfire S and HTC Sensation, with a pinch of the screen zooming your display out and popping up a scrolling icon list of all your current open web pages. This is very slow to respond while pages are loading, but once they've popped up it's a great way of managing browsing sessions.
Bookmarks are handled via the menu button, with HTC letting users sort their collections via tags, view a generated list of most popular pages and browse their entire history. Plus Android lets you save bookmarks as quick-launch icons on your Home screen for quick access - or you can dump them all in a folder.
If a page has an obvious RSS feed an icon will appear beside the URL bar. Tapping this prompts you to add the feed to HTC's own news reader app, which also automatically pulls in any RSS feeds you may have added to Google's own web-based Reader.
Sadly, there's no official support for Adobe's Flash Player, thanks to the Salsa's processor apparently not having enough power to run it. However, HTC has supplied its own "Flash Lite" plug-in, which does allow the phone to play some forms of embedded video...
...although YouTube embeds refused to play, which is a pretty big hole in its functionality. But on the whole, the Salsa works well as a mobile browser. As long as you're not hoping to watch iPlayer in bed.
The HTC Salsa features a pretty standard 5MP sensor with LED flash, which outputs photos at a maximum resolution of 2952x1728. The camera app has a limited collection of filters, just your usual pointless Negative, Sepia and the other usual photo-ruining suspects no one ever, ever uses, like this one:
...although there are more tinkering options available in HTC's standalone image editing tool. You also get a self-timer, geo-tagging on/off toggle, face detection, shutter sound toggle and the standard white balance and exposure level gauges. Open up a shot in the Gallery and you're able to apply a greater number of filters, with the Auto Enhance option doing a very nice job of lowering the brightness and boosting contrast levels, giving shots a much more impressive, less washed out look.
You can also have the Auto Enhance feature automatically applied to all images via a toggle in the camera app, if you like its effect on the output.
Also of use to the socially networked is the Auto Upload toggle, which lets you sync all of your photos to Facebook or Flickr.
Rather cleverly there's an option to do this either immediately or once a day, plus you can make it only happen via Wi-Fi - and specify privacy setting for the ones that go to Facebook. A very nice feature for social nuts.
Facebook integration has also crept into the Salsa's photo gallery, with separate tabs featuring images collated from the social network.
Click here to see the full-res shot The Salsa's camera includes a digital zoom. Here's a photo...
Click here to see the full-res shot And here's the same scene snapped at maximum digital zoom. It all goes a bit blocky when viewed at actual size, but when shrunk down to social network proportions is something you could live with.
Click here to see the full-res shot The Salsa's flash does a good job of illuminating dark scenes, although output does tend to suffer in quality. There's a lot of visible over-emphasised coloured pixels when viewed at full size.
Click here to see the full-res shot There's no specific macro option, but the Salsa manages to sort out close shots itself. As ever, close-up shots produce the most impressive results.
Click here to see the full-res shot Unfortunately, the camera's menu screens can get bogged down and laggy while you're fiddling with settings, which ruins the experience. It's not always jerky, but every once in a while the camera will come grinding to a halt for a few seconds. On the plus side, the two-stage physical button makes taking shots easy, although there's a slight pause between press and image capture - so you have to hold still for a little longer than you think. Also handy is the way that holding down the shutter button launches the camera no matter what you're doing on the phone, which is another second-saving interface change for the better.
Click here to see the full-res shot One thing the Salsa's sensor is noticeably good at is capturing scenes that include bright and dark areas. Rather than being either too bright or too dark, it's usually... just right.
Click here to see the full-res shot It also does a pretty good job of maintaining the detail on shots with hair and grass, which a lot of poorer smartphone cameras turn into blotchy messes. Overall, it's a pretty standard HTC mobile camera that produces good enough results to use and print, with that essential flash for when you stay out past dinner time. There's no HD/720/1080 claims on the box here, with the HTC Salsa managing to record its video clips at a maximum resolution of 720x480. Results are good and a clear step-up from the chunky output of HTC's entry level Wildfire S. The camcorder section of the camera app is the same as that found on the Wildfire S and HTC Desire S, offering a few novelty filters, white balance settings, a selection of lower video resolutions for creating smaller, more manageable clips, plus an audio on/off toggle. Clips at full resolution emerge colourful and without much in the way of blockiness or distortion. Everything's sharp and bright, and while the video camera's interface can get a little laggy and glitchy, the sensor itself is always smooth, switching between light and dark areas with ease while recording. The digital zoom works while filming clips, although it can become laughably jerky and bogged down. You zoom in and out with the volume rocker, and occasionally it gets so behind itself it starts buffering your presses and zooming in and out at about one frame a second. There's no autofocus while recording clips, with the Salsa using the same tap-to-focus system as seen in the company's HTC Sensation. It works quickly and well, reducing the amount of needless autofocus that can ruin some mobile phone video output. It struggles to focus on close-up shots, but in general the Salsa produces video clips you won't be ashamed of or feel overly disappointed by when sticking them on your computer. There's also a second front-facing VGA resolution camera on here, just in case Android or HTC ever conjures up a reason to actually use one that isn't a play on Apple's 'enchanting' ideology for video chatting. According to HTC's Salsa tech spec sheet, the phone's capable of playing most of today's popular video formats, including files encoded as MP4, WMV, certain AVI files and even some Xvid creations.
In reality is has pretty specific file format requirements, so we couldn't get it to play our standard review collection of Xvid files. It happily worked with a couple of WMV files and some MP4 clips, so is capable of playing back clips to a good standard as long as you ensure they're in the right format. The video player is rather light on features. It lets you play things, pause things, toggle between full-screen and cropped resolutions and skip through the scenes. Needs a bit of work, to say the least.
Music is handled by the standard HTC skinned Android player. As such you get a workmanlike experience, with support for large and small Home screen widgets that handle play, pause and track skipping. There's also a pause option in the drop-down Notifications menu, but oddly there's no option to resume the track once paused. You have to go back to the app or widget to start music playing again.
Within the player itself, your collection can be sorted by Artist, Album or just a big list of everything, with the ability to add songs to playlists - and create new playlists on the fly - by long-pressing on a particular song. There's no shopping option, with the only other interesting feature being a Menu option to search YouTube for clips the artist you're currently listening to. The onboard speaker is pretty loud, although things do get a bit tinny if you stick it up to maximum volume. Not bad for a phone, though, and perfectly usable if you like using your mobile as a desktop music player. The HTC Salsa battery life is excellent. Even under review conditions when we're taking photos of nothing every ten minutes and constantly opening Twitter, Facebook all day, the Salsa managed to last very nearly a full two days on one charge - and with a 1520mAh battery for a mid-range phone, we can see why.
Treat it carefully and you'll be able to relax a little and stop panicking about where the nearest working charging point is.
HTC has supplied a collection of power saver settings as well, which can be set to kick in and restrict certain services and adjust options when your battery falls to a certain level. It's a useful way of stopping your phone secretly draining its last bit of power trying to connect to Wi-Fi. Connectivity Aside from the 3G and Bluetooth, we have Wi-Fi and GPS, which are now pretty much standard and essential for a phone of this kind.
HTC always make it easy to connect your device to your computer, with a really helpful pop-up menu that offers you various connection options. It's here on the Salsa too, and although the actual options haven't changed (Charge only, disk drive, HTC sync, USB tethering and internet pass through), we were pleased to see that the menu has been given a little bit of a makeover compared to previous HTC devices. Not having to use proprietary software such as Samsung's Kies makes the whole thing a lot easier and whether you're rocking Windows. Mac or Linux, you don't have to start worrying about compatibility issues which is helpful. As for getting your stuff on the phone? The Salsa uses HTC's standard USB connection menu. Plug it in and the phone prompts you to select an action. Mounting it as a USB drive means you can't use any functions on the phone that use the SD card, but it'll pop up as an external drive on your PC so you can drag across your Kasabian back catalogue with ease. Also, we weren't able to find any DLNA client onboard. It wasn't too much of a surprise, as that tends to be a feature reserved for higher-end phones, and we can't see it a feature being missed too much by the target market. There's also another option that's not in the menu, and that is to use your phone as a wireless hotspot. It's been part of Android for a little while now and you'll find this option tucked away in the app drawer. Technically, the HTC Salsa is a quad-band unit that supports GSM/GPRS/EDGE, plus HSPA/WCDMA. It's also capable of functioning as a tethered USB modem, and we had no problems at all or any dropped signals when connecting to various wi-fi hotspots. It also supports the latest 802.11n connectivity, which is handy if you've updated your router in the last few years. As well as the proximity sensor in the front face of the Salsa there's also an ambient light sensor. Which isn't a huge amount of use, but does mean you're able to select the automatic brightness setting and have the phone adjust its own screen depending on how near you are to a window. Aside from the Facebook tweaks and the interactive lock screen nicked from the HTC Sensation, what you get on the Salsa is the same impressive selection of Google and HTC apps as found on the likes of the Wildfire S and HTC Desire S and the rest of HTC's Android range. Obviously you get the cornerstones of the Android OS, with Google's Gmail, YouTube and Maps all pre-loaded, with the latter now broken down into separate tools for location service Latitude and Google's very powerful Navigate satnav tool.
Google Maps works flawlessly on the Salsa, with its GPS system managing to get a location lock pretty quickly. You'll be prompted to download a voice pack via the Android Market if you want amusingly robotic spoken directions, so make sure you're connected, preferably via Wi-Fi, when setting up your first route.
The Maps app itself supports Google's latest multitouch improvements, so you're able to rotate the view, scale it up and down and even look at the 3D vector buildings at street level - if you're looking at one of the city centres that Google has mapped in 3D.
Back on the Facebook side of things, HTC has busted out the Facebook Chat tool into its own standalone app, which features a simple front-end of online users, plus an archive of recent chats. This uses the SMS messaging app design, so once again HTC has managed to give us yet another contrasting way of accessing the same features. There's also a full-screen Facebook chat widget for your Home page, which features yet another different visual style. It's a very simple list of online friends. Click on them to open up the chat window. This is probably the best thing about the Salsa's Facebook features if you love your Facebook chatting.
As with the Wildfire S, you get two HTC app and widget discovery tools, in the form of HTC Hub and HTC Likes. HTC Hub offers a pretty sparse collection of bland widgets and novelties, while HTC Likes is much more interesting, offering an alternate user review system to the Android Market and letting app downloaders rate their choices.
One nice thing about HTC Hub is its collection of alternate wallpapers and ringtones, so once you've signed in with an HTC Sense account you can access free groups of sounds, more wallpaper images and HTC's "scenes" - complete reskins for the phone's background and icons.
Sadly there's one massive problem with the Salsa - a criminal lack of onboard memory. The phone tells us it has 150MB available for installing apps, a pretty mediocre amount of storage space that we managed to nearly fill on day one by simply installing the basic app we always stick on a phone to make it feel like home.
HTC attempts to help you out of the hole it's dug for you by offering a memory management tool that launches when the phone starts running out of space, but it's a token effort offering basic advice like moving apps over to your SD card. If you're in any way serious about using apps or into mobile gaming, the Salsa, as lovely as it is, is not the phone for you thanks to this weird limitation.
At least Angry Birds runs perfectly.
There's an FM radio onboard with customisable preset stations, which needs headphones to be plugged in to work. We didn't get any headphones in the box with our Salsa, although that might be because it's a review unit. If getting some cheap free headphones is a deal-breaker, you might want to check that out before ordering one.
The HTC Salsa is yet another impressive Android phone from HTC, with its polished Sense interface as smooth, reliable and feature-packed as ever. The only flaws here are the phone's puzzling lack of internal memory and a camera that occasionally gets itself awfully bogged down. If you can live with the above foibles, the Salsa's an excellent choice for those who find today's four-inch "superphones" too big to handle. We liked The Salsa's battery life is superb, one of the big advantages of opting for a mid-sized screen with an average processor. If you've found the limited uptime of the bigger smartphones frustrating to live with, the Salsa will be a god-send. HTC's hardware is once again excellent all round. The metallic case is sturdy, the screen responsive, the capacitive buttons reliable and trustworthy. Having a proper, soft-touch camera button makes it an excellent replacement digital camera, too. The output of the camera is pretty nice for a 5MP sensor, producing colourful shots relatively free from digital mess. Video is also much better than produced by the Wildfire S, with the wide 720x480 output sharp and smooth. We disliked The camera app struggles, with quite a bit of lag slowing down the menus. It's not always laggy and is never totally unusable, but sometimes the icons take a second or two to scroll and the digital zoom can get itself horrendously bogged down. The Facebook integration could seem a bit useless to some if they're more enamoured by the price point and looks of the Salsa rather than the FB button. While it's nice to have one-button access to post status updates if you're a serious social networking people-botherer, HTC's own Facebook pages look awful and don't update as reliably as the official app. You'd be better off just using the Facebook app and its widget - although generally we found an increase in our Facebookery using the phone. The lack of Flash Player support is offset by HTC's own Flash Lite app that manages to play many embedded videos, but without full Flash Player support the Salsa loses one of Android's key differentiating features. No iPlayer here. But then that's also the BBC's fault. Once again, HTC has skimped on onboard storage. Simply installing our essential "day one" Android apps caused the Salsa to complain about low space. Giving users a shameful 150MB of storage space for downloaded apps and games just isn't good enough in 2011. Verdict We love the hardware and HTC's Sense interface runs exceptionally smoothly on top of Android 2.3, plus the Salsa works very well indeed as a mobile web browser and can handle the demands of Angry Birds' physics code with ease. If the camera worked a little more smoothly and if there was a touch (well, a lot) more app storage space, it would be the perfect mid-sized Android phone. It's a well-made phone that's enjoyable to use and a breath of fresh air in the world of bland black slabs - but today's app-hungry smartphone users will find its lack of onboard memory a daily frustration. 
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| Google snaps up SageTV to improve Google TV Posted: 20 Jun 2011 10:40 AM PDT Google has acquired SageTV, a software provider which allows you to control media centres in your home from a variety of devices, prompting speculation that the software is to be integrated into Google TV. SageTV isn't giving much away on its website, other than it is "thrilled" to be bought by Google. We bet it is. "We've seen how Google's developer efforts are designed to stimulate innovation across the web, and as developers have played a core role in the success of SageTV, we think our shared vision for open technology will help us advance the online entertainment experience," said SageTV on its website. Sprinkle of sage Google TV needs something of a kick-start, given that the service has yet to launch in the UK and has had something of a lukewarm response, with some criticising it for being overly complicated and feeling like a beta product. Well that's what the TechRadar's Google TV review said anyway and we are sticking with it. The folks behind SageTV think they are on to a winner, though, explaining: "By teaming up with Google, we believe our ideas will reach an even larger audience of users worldwide on many different products, platforms and services." 
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| Updated: iPad 3 rumours: what you need to know Posted: 20 Jun 2011 09:00 AM PDT The iPad 2 is out, and the rumour factory's already moved on: it's predicting iPad 3 specifications including chips, cameras and retina displays - with a little bit of help from mysterious, unnamed people who can't possibly be identified. How very convenient. So what's the word on the street about the next iPad? Read on to find out. But first, our colleagues at T3.com have rounded up the latest rumours in the iPad 3 video below: iPad 3 release date This is the biggest rumour of all: an iPad 3 mere months after the iPad 2. An unnamed Apple employee says that the iPad 2 was a bit of a rush job, and "the third generation iPad is the one to make a song and dance about." Respected Apple watcher John Gruber added fuel to that particular fire by strongly hinting that the iPad 3 release date will be in September 2011. Gruber, who was musing about the HP TouchPad's potential summer release said: "Summer feels like a long time away. "If my theory is right, they're not only going to be months behind the iPad 2, but if they slip until late summer, they might bump up against the release of the iPad 3." If Gruber is right about this and the iPad 3 features in an Apple autumn line-up, then it looks like Apple is going to start offering a new iPad every six months. Reuters reports that the new iPad 3 is due in the fourth quarter of the year. The iPad 3 UK release date is a mystery With Apple apparently unable to meet demand for iPad 2, we'd expect a staggered release date for the iPad 3 too: if the US gets the iPad 3 in September, we'd expect the UK iPad 3 release date to be in October, or possibly even November. However, Apple could always follow the pattern it has with the previous two iPad launches and do it in the new year. The iPad 3 specs include a dual-core processor... It's possible that the iPad 3 will have a brand spanking new processor, Apple's A6, but if the rumoured release date is correct then time is awfully tight: we'd certainly expect to see an A5, not an A6, in the iPhone 5 when it turns up this summer. Apple may well surprise us, of course, but we'd expect to see the same processor and graphics as the iPad 2 in the iPad 3: an A5 processor with PowerVR SGX543MP2 graphics. This one comes down to the iPad 3 release date: if it's 2011, expect an A5. If it's 2012, see below. ...unless iPad 3 has a quad-core processor If the A6 is the next stage in the line - and we don't see a new iPad until 2012 - we could also be looking at a quad-core chip from Apple. Quad-core designs will be coming from all ARM partners late this year. iPad 3 display A retina display was widely predicted for the iPad 2, but of course the current iPad doesn't have a double-resolution display: for now, that's something you'll only get in the iPhone 4. Could a Retina Display be one of the features Apple didn't quite get into the iPad 2? Could be! It's the very first thing on our iPad 3 wish list. Rumours of an HD screen on the iPad 3 gathered pace on 12 April 2011 when Digitimes reported that Apple is asking panel makers to provide screens that are capable of displaying higher image quality than the iPad 2. On 26 May 2011, we reported that the iPad 3 could launch with a Samsung-made AMOLED screen, following rumours that Apple has been in talks on the matter with Samsung execs. On 15 June we reported that the iOS 5 code hinted at a Retina Display for iPad 3. The iPad 3 hardware could include an NFC chip Apple's very interested in Near Field Communications, and one particularly tasty rumour at Cult of Mac suggests that the iPhone 5 will use NFC to take over nearby Macs, enabling you to use your data and settings with a flick of the wrist. Since the iPad 3 will follow the iPhone 5, if NFC's in one it'll probably be in the other too. The iPad 3 specifications will include more storage The iPad 2 has the familiar 16/32/64GB storage options, but as flash storage comes down in price a 128GB option for the iPad 3 isn't impossible - although that might depend on the current horrible situation in Asia, where the tsunami has caused chaos in parts of the electronics industry. The iPad 3 features could include a Thunderbolt port Two generations of USB-free iPads suggest that Apple just isn't interested in adding one, but the new Thunderbolt port found in the 2011 MacBook Pro could be another story: it's a combined accessory/display connector with astonishingly fast performance. There could be more than one iPad 3 TUAW says the iOS 5 code features new code files for USB devices in the iOS 5 firmware, Through this, TUAW found references to an iPad3,1 and an iPad3,2. The iPad 3 may live in the cloud This has been talked about and leaked about for so long that, on the same principle that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, it's bound to come true eventually: a cloud-based MobileMe for storing your stuff on Apple's servers. A new iPad with iOS 5 and a new MobileMe would be lots of fun. The iPad 3 specs might include an SD card slot This was widely predicted for iPad 2 and, like the retina display, didn't materialise. One for version 3, perhaps? Using a separate adapter to read camera cards is rather inelegant and clunky. The iPad 3 specification should include a better camera The rear-facing camera on the iPad 2 isn't brilliant: an iPhone 4 camera and flash would do nicely. The iPad 3 could feature a carbon fibre case Apple has hired a carbon fibre expert, senior composites engineer Kevin Kenney, fuelling speculation that the next iPad could be encased in the lightweight material. The iPad 3 price might be higher than the iPad 2 The iPad 2 didn't herald a price hike, but if the iPad 3's coming in September we don't think a massive iPad 2 price cut is very likely - which suggests that if the iPad 3 does appear then, it might be more of an iPad Pro - with a price to match. 
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| Skype for Windows gets more Facebook integration Posted: 20 Jun 2011 08:36 AM PDT Skype has just released a new beta version for Windows which includes a host of Facebook features, including Facebook chat integration. The Skype 5.5 Beta doesn't allow you to call your Facebook friends, but does allow you to chat with them from within Skype, rather than having to log in to your Facebook profile. There's also a new Facebook Contacts tab in the software, which is populated with all your Facebook friends, obviously, and lets you comment and 'Like' statuses on the social network. Video poke Rumours that Skype has been working with Facebook to integrate video calling into the social network's services have been milled for months, but we're yet to see that functionality. In October last year, Skype introduced the Facebook news feed and the ability to call friends' mobiles and landlines from within Skype, but it's online video calling between Facebookers that will be the killer feature. However, now that Microsoft has bought Skype, it's likely that the company will be keen to utilise (and monetise) Skype's video calling prowess elsewhere in its business. 
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| Posted: 20 Jun 2011 08:27 AM PDT We are hosting an exclusive BlackBerry PlayBook review session this Friday 24 June, between 1 and 5pm, in a central London location and we're giving you the chance to be part of it. To be able to attend this fantastic event and get your hands on this piece of tech that is shaping-up to be one of this summer's hottest tablets, just write us a short review (maximum of 80 words, please) on your favourite bit of BlackBerry kit and why it is an essential part of your life. Email this along with your name and DOB to BBplaycomp@futurenet.com to enter now. The BlackBerry PlayBook Review Session Having received your response we'll invite you to a central London location where you'll spend the afternoon getting under the skin of the BlackBerry PlayBook, we have put together a number of exciting tasks to help you fully experience this tablet's wealth of capabilities. We'll be filming during the day and looking for your incisive and expert feedback on BlackBerry's new tablet. Those interviewed during the day can expect to be seen across TechRadar and T3. One of you will win a BlackBerry PlayBook too! We'll ask each of you who attends to write-up a full review of the BlackBerry PlayBook. We will judge your reviews and the best will be rewarded with a brand new BlackBerry Playbook 16GB. All that we ask is that you are passionate about technology, be available between 1pm and 5pm on Friday 24 June and be able to make your own way to central London. We look forward to hearing from you. 
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| Opinion: Why we should be excited about Kinect SDK Posted: 20 Jun 2011 07:50 AM PDT I'm currently cleaning sticky fingerprints off my plasma screen television, and it's all Kinect's fault. You see, I recently looked after my two-year-old niece and three-year-old nephew and decided that it would be the perfect time to break the plastic seal on a dusty old copy of Kinectimals that had been sat waiting for some attention. I'll level with you, it's not a great game, and it's rendered even worse by the fact that the Kinect sensor *really* doesn't like two kids with very little spacial awareness running willy-nilly in front of it waving and trying to stroke Boo the snow leopard pup. And yet, despite them quickly growing bored of the games – pitched at children a few years older – both of them loved being able to (somewhat haphazardly) manipulate what was happening on screen.
Even to a very small child, moving to cause an action elsewhere makes sense very quickly, talking to get a reaction makes sense. And it is difficult to watch this in action and not begin to get a sense of the kind of computer control these kids will be showing to their offspring in years to come. Kinect has been a phenomenal success for Microsoft; and although many are prepared to write off the innovation in the complex motion and voice sensor ("we tried it and rejected it," sniffed rivals) what it represents is truly exciting. The early Kinect games are, frankly, pretty mundane, taking the most basic precepts of the sensor tech and applying lessons learned by devs on the Wii. But, the imperfections appear to be largely in the implementation of the technology rather than the technology in itself, and the arrival of an SDK for Kinect for Windows promises to bring some exciting times.
Mouse alive Over the last 10 years I've written several pieces in defence of the mouse, pointing out that, should a Minority Report style UI be generally adopted, doctors across the planet would be treating us for UIShoulder and the law courts dealing with lawsuits for accidental head damage to all of those walking past the computer users. Voice too has massive limitations, not least that none of us would really like to be working in an open plan office listening to Deidre from marketing trying to vocally fill in an excel spreadsheet. However, it's too easy to be sniffy about the new control mechanisms by looking at them all individually rather than in harness with each other. As much as gamers aren't ready to give up their joysticks, workers are a long way from being ready to relinquish their mouse. But there are times, and these times are expanding with new technology, when integrating different control mechanisms is useful and, honestly, a little bit exciting to consider. Years of so-called voice control of mobile phones (CALL!!!! JOHN!!!! 'calling Don') has left us all rightfully cynical about voice control, and motion control games have left us much more aware of how lag between movement and action can frustrate. Yet, these technologies are improving rapidly; the likes of Google are talking up voice control as the future, as are luminaries like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Life integration And motion control, as in a computer constantly monitoring your movement for clues as to what we actually want to do as well as interpreting commands, will be a massive step towards integrating technology more usefully into our lives. The Kinect is just one example of an early foray into these areas; it does not represent the true face of natural control any more than the room-sized, punch-card controlled computers of old represent an iPad. It is merely an early and exciting step towards a bright new world; a world where the way in which we interact with machines is more intuitive, more natural and less of a barrier to making a computer understand exactly what we want. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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| Blu-ray celebrates its fifth birthday Posted: 20 Jun 2011 07:42 AM PDT Blu-ray is celebrating its fifth birthday today, marking five years since the first Blu-ray discs went on sale to consumers. The technology may be more than a decade old but it took a cool six years for Blu-ray discs to hit the shops and a few more years for consumers to warm to the technology. Now Blu-ray is a firm part of the £2.6 billion UK home video industry. This is not to say that Blu-ray is not finding it tough in what are 'interesting' economic times; the NPD group in the US found that both DVD and Blu-ray sales were down in 2011, blaming the dip on pretty shoddy titles being released in the market. But despite the growing dependence on digital formats and video on demand, the impact of the physical disc on the market is still a huge one and very much part of the movie and television eco-system. Disc revenue Speaking at the Insight 360 BVA event in London earlier in the month, with TechRadar in attendance, Andrew Tessler, senior economist at Oxford Economics, said that DVD and Blu-ray sales were paramount to the future of TV and film, with 47 per cent of all feature film revenue coming from video sales. When it comes to the lifeblood of key UK shows, like Doctor Who and Downton Abbey, Tessler said that DVD and Blu-ray sales accounted for 50 per cent and 47 per cent of revenue respectively for these shows. Films also rely heavily on video, with movies such as Kidulthood only making their money back once they hit disc. With the advent of Blu-ray came 1080p viewing in the home, which is still the best quality available from any format. This and extras like BD-Java and BD-Live have made Blu-ray something that is genuinely offering more in the home entertainment space – even if most of us tend to ignore BD-Live as we do that distant relative that only seems to turn up at Christmas. For Blu-ray to survive alongside digital downloads and streaming in the home it will need a helping hand; something that UltraViolet may be able to deliver. Set to launch this year, UltraViolet is being backed by 70 companies – including Sky, Netflix, LoveFilm, Samsung, HP and Dell. The idea is that you buy something on Blu-ray – or whichever format – and you will be able to access that content from a multitude of devices in digital form. Tim Wright, VP, worldwide new media and tech at Sony Pictures, told TechRadar: "It is a rights locker, where you can access films and TV programmes whenever and wherever you want. We will allow up to six members of a household and three simultaneous streaming feeds. "The idea is that UltraViolet rights could be on a Blu-ray disc, so it's a great way to own films and TV shows in the multiple device, connected world you live in." Don't be starry eyed Blu-ray may not have filled the boots of DVD yet but there's still some way before digital usurps disc. This is a view backed by Lavina Carey, director general of the British Video Association, who said to TechRadar about video in the home: "Technological innovation is asking questions about the future of disc, yet the demand of video content is as strong as ever. "Entrepreneurial digital services in the UK are being snapped up by global companies – Amazon with LoveFilm; Tesco with Blink Box. "It is extremely important to embrace all these, but we can't be too starry eyed over new tech services. All-you-can-eat services offer fantastic value but we need to figure out the economic potential and revenue is right for content creators, as well as making a return for the tech companies offering the service." To celebrate Blu-ray's five year anniversary the AV experts at Home Cinema Choice have compiled what they think is the best disc of each year, which you can find at http://hcc.techradar.com. 
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| Huawei unveils 7-inch tablet running Android 3.2 Posted: 20 Jun 2011 07:40 AM PDT Huawei has sashayed once again into the tablet market, unveiling a 7-inch Android 3.2 slate named the Huawei MediaPad. Wait a minute, Android 3.2? According to Huawei, Google has a new iteration of its Honeycomb operating system set to launch later this year, the only difference being that 3.2 is designed to work on smaller screen devices – an update that Asus and HTC will no doubt welcome. But back to the MediaPad – we're looking at a 1.2Ghz Qualcomm processor, WSVGA display with a pixel density of 217ppi (impressive for a tablet), 1080p video out, a 5MP rear-mounted camera and a 1.3MP camera on the front. 3Geez Louise Unusually, Huawei is not planning to launch a Wi-Fi only version of the tablet, instead it will come in 3G form only. With a 10-inch tablet also in the works, the Huawei MediaPad UK release date should fall some time in Q3 (July to September). However, the company is yet to reveal UK pricing – or, indeed, any pricing for the Huawei MediaPad at all. 
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| Posted: 20 Jun 2011 07:15 AM PDT Universal disc players have always been a distraction from CD-only machines. They offer incredible value and with CD now in decline, the case for buying is growing. Oppo has launched a rather special unit with audiophiles firmly in mind. Its new BDP-95EU plays the usual SACD, DVD-A and legacy CDs, but it also offers cutting-edge 3D Blu-ray playback and will play content held on external drives or network storage. It's connectivity compliment is something else. As an added bonus, HDCD-encoded CDs can also be enjoyed in all their 20-bit glory, as Oppo has paid a considerable amount of detail to optimising the sound quality of analogue audio. The 7.1 outputs take advantage of an ESS 9018S multichannel Sabre32 Reference DAC; a separate DAC drives the dedicated stereo outputs. Unusually, these are available in both phono (unbalanced) and XLR (balanced) form. The jury's still out on the benefits of XLR, however, as far as home audio is concerned. Balanced is fine for studio applications, where interconnects may run to tens of metres. But for a metre (or less) between player and amplifier? Fortunately, the BDP-95EU's XLRs have some domestic potential, especially if you have a separate AV system and hi-fi rig located some distance apart. So if you want to locate the unit with your AV gear, then that's fine because the player's stereo output can be routed to a suitable amp via XLRs of appropriate length.
The right connections In connectivity terms, the BDP-95EU truly excels. Its two HDMI ports are useful if you have an older (pre HDMI 1.4) AV receiver, but want to enjoy 3D TV. Just connect one port to your amplification and the other to your display. A handful of mass-market players (notably Panasonic models) are similarly endowed and some of these also give you the Oppo's composite and component analogue video outputs. And while it's true to say that the majority of Blu-ray players boast a USB port, or two, for playback of multimedia files stored on USB ports, it's very rare to see an eSATA port – to which can be connected an external hard drive (the BDP-95EU also understands FAT/FAT32 and NTFS disk formats). There's also an Ethernet port, for online content and networked multimedia – a Wi-Fi 'dongle' is also supplied. Both RS232 and infra-red ports are provided, should you envisage controlling the player from a touch-pad. Both optical and coaxial versions of digital audio output will drive external DACs; for multi-channel hi-res audio, though, HDMI is essential. On which subject, SACD's DSD streams can be passed to compatible AV receivers across this connector – LPCM conversion can be engaged via an on screen menu if yours is DSD-ignorant. Our only slight disappointment is that Oppo hasn't fitted some kind of digital audio input. A pity, considering all of the audiophile work that has been put into this player. Built for sound And there's plenty of such effort evident. Inside the player is a big toroidal transformer marked 'Custom designed and manufactured by Rotel'. Oppo informed us that the Japanese hi-fi manufacturer's role in the BDP-95EU's genesis extends to nothing more than the supply of this key component. The transformer in question is associated with a linear power supply that caters exclusively to the analogue audio sections – everything else is energised by a switch-mode power supply that lives under a metal shield. All analogue audio circuits, plus the DACs, are built onto a dedicated circuit board. We also noted the use of high-quality components here, such as audiophile-grade capacitors and LM4562 op-amps. Internal construction is indeed of an excellent standard – it's definitely on a par with all, but the most esoteric of Far-Eastern kit. A key component of the main board is an Oppo-designed multifunction chip that looks after much of the player's activity. The other key element of the player is the Blu-ray/DVD/CD drive, which is also compatible with most rewritable/recordable CD and DVD formats. This component has a dedicated interface, rather than SATA.
Setting up the player is straightforward enough, courtesy of an initial 'wizard' and some nicely designed on screen menus. From here, various functions ranging from output resolution to subwoofer crossover frequency can be configured. Regrettably, the noise sequencer, which is used as a level-adjustment aid, failed to work with either analogue or digital outputs. This isn't going to please anyone planning to drive power amps or active speakers directly from the multichannel outputs (the BDP- 95EU's analogue outputs benefit from a volume control). One hopes that Oppo will address this with a firmware update – which can be delivered to the player via the network connection. Heart of the matter Many dedicated Blu-ray players are restricted sonically. From their analogue outputs, you usually get a rather uninvolving and insipid performance. Little attention is usually paid here, as you're expected to rely on HDMI-interfaced amplification. The Oppo universal, mercifully, is a very different animal. Simply put, those analogue inputs sing with anything you care to play on it – our modest expectations were surpassed. A spin of the Kraftwerk Tour de France CD proves that not only can this unit deal with copy-protected CDs, but the timing and pace of its musical delivery is impeccable. Germanic electronic rhythms are conveyed with foot-tapping involvement and the album's strong use of stereo demonstrates that there are no vices in the soundstaging department. Another joyful listening experience was The XX's debut album, again on CD. The guitarwork, male/female vocal partnership and low-frequency percussive samples of the track, Islands, hold your attention and won't let go. The track's sub-bass is articulately handled and free of the sagginess that can mar cheap players; findings that were reinforced with various examples of electronic music we threw at the player. We tried playing MP3 and FLAC content via network and USB, but could not get the player to even display the MP3 files. In fairness, supplier AV Aficionado confirmed that MP3 is indeed a no-go area for now. We could load a FLAC file via USB, but such content was unavailable via the network. Sonically, FLAC files retain much of the original CD's character. Next, we move to hi-res audio – and one of our favourite SACDs, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. This one-time demo staple has an awful lot going on – and with the BDP-95EU we were able to pick out individual contributions, and marvel at how they were seamlessly assembled into something so complex, long before computerised editing became the norm. The multichannel mix makes great use of surround, especially on tracks like On the Run and this enveloping soundstage was done justice by the player (after we had taken steps to circumvent the aforementioned channel-balancing problem). Switching to one of those rarest of things, a Blu-ray audio disc (Trondheim Solistene's recording of Britten's Simple Symphony), rewarded us with depth and clarity. Incidentally, there's a 'pure audio' mode that shuts off the front panel display and video circuitry. Surprisingly, engaging it made little impact on the sound quality. Minor flaws Oppo must be congratulated for bringing us the BDP-95EU – the latest in a strong line of innovative disc-spinners. With CDs it doesn't quite match the involvement of a top-flight dedicated player, but it sure comes close – at a fraction of the price. Switch to well-recorded high-res material, though and the Oppo leaps ahead. It's also an exceptional video player. There are one or two minor issues, notably relating to set up and multimedia playback – which, to be fair, is 'not unofficially supported' – and we hope that Oppo resolves them. But as it stands, the BDP-95 is one of the best universal players we've seen and represents excellent value for money. 
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| Updated: 14 best Android tablets in the world Posted: 20 Jun 2011 07:00 AM PDT Our list of the best Android tablets in the world - regularly updated If you're looking for a tablet and don't fancy an iPad, then Android is the way to go. There are other options out there; Windows 7 tablets are available, the BlackBerry PlayBook is on sale now and the HP TouchPad is coming soon. But Android 3.0 is currently the main OS rival to the iPad, and the products are creeping onto the shelves one by one. We've gone from zero Android tablets to stacks of the things in a very short space of time, and inevitably some are better than others. Some have ten-inch screens, others seven, and there are big differences in battery life, processing power and on-board RAM. So which tablets are the most tempting? Let's find out.
1. Asus Eee Pad TransformerBest Android tablet for: replacing your netbook We love the Asus Eee Pad Transformer. In our opinion, it's the most compelling Android tablet we've yet seen. Not only is it powerful and well featured, it's designed to work with a keyboard dock which turns it into a fully-fledged Android-powered netbook. What's more, it costs just £429 on launch, with the keyboard - £379 without. This is the way it's supposed to be. This is the tablet that changes the game. Look out also for the Asus Eee Pad Slider which comes packing a slide-out keyboard - it's coming soon and promises great things! Read: Asus Eee Pad Transformer review
2. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1Best Android tablet for: the out-and-out tablet experience While the Transformer offers something a little different at an unbeatable price, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (not to be confused with the Galaxy Tab 10.1V - see below) offers a direct alternative to Apple's iPad 2. Sporting the Tegra 2 dual-core platform, it's both thinner and lighter than the iPad 2. This is some achievement, especially when you consider the fuss Apple made about how thin and light the iPad 2 was on launch. If you want an iPad-like tablet that's not an iPad, this is the one. The only caveat at the moment is that we don't know how much it's going to cost when it goes on sale in the UK... if Samsung can match the prices of its closest rivals, this will be the tablet to beat. Read: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 review
3. Motorola XoomBest Android tablet for: sleek good looks and solid performance The Motorola Xoom was the first Honeycomb tablet to hit the shelves, and while it's a lovely piece of kit, there's a snag. It's just a little too expensive. Current prices are floating around the £459 which is simply too high when you've got the Transformer available keyboard-free for £379. In all other respects, this is a tablet that's worthy of your attention. Solid build quality, decent battery life, good performance. If the price drops by another £50, this could become the iPad rival Motorola wants it to be. Read: Motorola Xoom review
4. LG Optimus PadBest Android tablet for: Playing around with 3D The consumer electronics giants are throwing everything at 3D, and LG has decided that its first Android tablet should play a role in its '3D is the best' hearts and minds mission. The tablet has dual-5MP cameras which work together to shoot 3D images and record 3D footage. Cool, huh? The problem is that there's no 3D screen, so if you want to watch your 3D movies you'll need to either plug the tablet into a 3D TV or watch in anaglyph 3D on the tablet's screen. If you're crazy about 3D, this is your next Android tablet.
5. Acer Iconia Tab A500Best Android tablet for: fans of brushed aluminium bodywork Acer's Android tablet is good looking and offers similar performance to the other Android 3.0 tablets on show here. We like it, but it's missing a bit of sparkle and there's not much on show here that we can cling on to. It's not as stylish as the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and doesn't offer anything different like the Transformer does with its keyboard. Read: Acer Iconia Tab A500 review
6. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1VBest Android tablet for: taking 8MP photographs The Galaxy Tab 10.1V's key selling point is its 8MP rear-facing camera. It's the best cameratablet (did we just make up a word?) yet and frankly makes a mockery of the 0.7MP camera that the iPad 2's of this world are rocking. It's a snazzy tablet then, lightweight, powerful and a joy to use. It's due to come out very soon, but at the moment we're not 100% sure when or how much it's going to cost. If the price is under £450, this could be a winner. UPDATE: Samsung and Vodafone have both decided they will not be selling this device in the UK. It is to be replaced by the newer Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Read: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1V review
7. HTC FlyerBest Android tablet for: Portability and fans of Sense UI HTC has decided to release the tablet running on Android Gingerbread, which will upset some purists that believe these tablets should run on Honeycomb. However, the HTC Sense overlay deals with that, offering a new range of widgets and content to mask the fact it's running older versions of the OS (although a Honeycomb update is imminent). The new tablet has a 7-inch LCD screen, and comes with an aluminium unibody shell that feels very nice in the hand. However, with a price of nearly £600, can this tablet compete? Read: HTC Flyer review
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Posted: 20 Jun 2011 06:00 AM PDT
Compared to a lot of other free augmented reality apps, Layar is competently and attractively designed.
The way it augments data into the camera's view of the world is similar to Wikitude. You select a 'layer' to add to your camera and this will display the points of interest. The layers include accommodation, entertainment and lots more.
Some layers are paid-for, but most are free. In a similar vein to Wikitude, the layers are created by third parties and other uses, so this is a service that is heavily dependent on outside contributions.
On the whole, these layers seem better designed and more reliable than the 'worlds' of Wikitude. When browsing the 'layers' we found that most appeared to be only relevant to the US, where most of the Layar community is from. However when searching you can click the 'Nearby' tab to get results that apply to the area you're in.
Even in the relatively small city of Bath we found plenty of information, from local restaurants and pubs to events at the Bath Fringe Festival that was happening at the time. Points of interest are marked over the display.
Depending on the layer that you're using, the points can be accompanied by photographs, logos and links to extra information like websites and phone numbers. Some also include an option that uses Google Maps to give directions.
Layar isn't perfect, but the detail offered, coupled with a confident and well-designed interface, gives it a professional feel. Layar demonstrates how augmented reality can help us every day, and feels like the future of local information.
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Posted: 20 Jun 2011 05:31 AM PDT
What do you do when you want to catch the eye of people torn between the growing domination of tablets such as the Apple iPad 2 or Motorola Xoom and a much more user-friendly, but far less trendy, netbook? You bring out a netbook that's so cheap you can't possibly pass it by – and that's exactly what Samsung has done with its NC110.
It's a real foot in the door of the market at £236 – cheaper than the likes of the Asus Eee PC 1018P, the Packard Bell Dot SE or even the Acer Aspire One 522. In fact, it's the cheapest netbook around.
But does that price mean it's a bag of bolts? Actually no, not in the slightest. One of the most surprising things about the Samsung NC110 is that it's been superbly put together and the materials are of a high grade.
You honestly wouldn't be able to tell the difference between this – a PC from the bottom of Samsung's range – and one of its premium laptops, such as the Samsung SF310. It's an amazing feat, then, that the NC110 is also ultra slim, light and nicely designed, with a thoughtful location of buttons and ports, as well as a choice of different colours for the base and lid.
The keyboard on the Samsung NC110 is also excellent quality, with nicely spaced keys that react to inputs with just the right amount of sensitivity, and the same goes for the touchpad – it feels absolutely spot on.
The 10.1-inch screen on the Samsung NC110 isn't a bad thing to look at. The 1024 x 600 resolution is pretty standard for a netbook nowadays. It's a little bit on the grainy side but is reasonably bright and, thanks to its matte finish, there's next to no reflection whatsoever.
The only real gripe that can be levelled at the Samsung NC110 is the lack of adjustability in the screen – it really doesn't go back far enough, so if you're sat on a train with very limited space, you're not going to be able to angle the screen right up to your face.
There's a webcam nestled in the top of the screen too, for capturing live video in chat. You wouldn't expect much from it but it's actually not too bad – the video is smooth and the picture quality, even in low lighting, is quite crisp.
Despite a most basic hardware setup, the Samsung NC110 features a pretty comprehensive range of extras, including three USB ports, a card reader and a VGA port for hooking up to an external monitor. Ok, so there's no HDMI, but it almost feels like there's not a lot of point. After all, the Samsung NC110 struggles with video, let alone anything high definition.
It does, however, come with a decent 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter, so you can be sure to make the most of your home's wireless network, providing you're running a compatible Wireless N router.
Annoyingly, the Samsung NC110 comes pre-loaded from the factory with a huge range of software that will really bother some people when it pops up from time to time.
However, separating the wheat from the chaff, some of it – on the Samsung side anyway – is quite handy to have, such as an app that helps you find and connect to Wi-Fi hotspots easily, or quickly turn it off to save battery.
There's also an app to optimise performance, including startup time, and it's all completely free.
You can't help feeling that some – especially newcomers – will feel slightly put off by this, rather than encouraged to use it.
Samsung boasts up to 10.7 hours of life from the standard six cell battery found in the NC110, and although it wasn't far off achieving that, all that could be squeezed out of it during mixed use (with the Wi-Fi on at all times) was about seven hours from a full charge.
Still, it's enough to keep you going all day without having to spoil your light luggage with a hefty charger, and let's be fair – it's one of the best we've seen in the netbook category from what is the cheapest example of its kind.
The Samsung NC110 sticks with a fairly conventional specification for notebooks – not a surprise really, given its price tag and the fact that the lowly Windows 7 Starter Edition doesn't need much to power it. It packs an Intel Atom processor, 1GB of memory and Intel GMA integrated graphics.
So the Samsung NC110's not particularly powerful in any way – it can just about cope with basic internet surfing, word processing and listening to music, but that's about it. Don't expect to be able to play even the most basic-looking games out there or even think about extensive multitasking.
The 250GB hard drive is decent, and will certainly suffice for most of the files you'll want to carry around with you during a day, but it isn't anything to shout about in this category.
The built-in speakers on the Samsung NC110 aren't anything to write home about either, but they're certainly not the worst of their kind and at least they can be turned up to a reasonable volume level, even if it does become a little shrill at that point.
Samsung has grabbed the rest of the netbook-producing market and turned it upside-down with the NC110, setting the bar high in a market that already seemed to be saturated to the maximum.
It's often hard to be hopeful about something that far down the price bracket, because it almost seems destined to fail. But we've genuinely been surprised by the Samsung NC110's abilities.
We liked
The Samsung NC110 costs very little to buy, but even so it seems as if Samsung has seen fit to put it together with the exact same thoughtfulness and attention to detail that it uses on much more expensive laptops. It even looks pretty fantastic too.
Then there's that battery life, which is really astounding – it's a lot better than many other netbooks out there, and they cost much more.
We disliked
There's not all that much that the Samsung NC110 didn't do right, really. OK, so the specification is as basic as it gets, but you wouldn't expect much more for the money.
The only real gripe about the Samsung NC110 is the amount of software that it came pre-installed with. Some was fairly useful, some was just plain annoying and unnecessary.
Verdict
The Apple iPad 2s and Motorola Xooms of this world will still reign supreme in the desirability stakes, but for the more level-headed types out there who want something really purposeful, the Samsung NC110's price tag will certainly turn a few more heads than any other netbook before it.
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Posted: 20 Jun 2011 05:30 AM PDT
One of the best uses of augmented reality is for navigation. The Heads Up Navigator combines GPS positioning with augmented reality to help you find your way around.
When you start the app, you're prompted to add a location by clicking the '+' icon. You're then taken to a Google Maps view of your location. Typing in an address into the 'Location search' text box should in theory bring up the location you want to go to.
Unfortunately the results are hit and miss. We tried typing 'Sainsburys' to see if it would find one of the many stores in Bath. Instead it returned a 'location not found' error. Typing an address also proved fruitless, but entering the postcode gave the results we wanted.
As with a car GPS device, as long as you know the postcode, you'll find your way. It's functional, but not that user friendly. For locations closer to your current position, you can drag the marker to where you want to go, but this seemed to crash the app. Not a great start, but once you've managed to add the location and save it, you click 'Start live view' and things begin to improve.
Your saved locations hover over the landscape and point towards where you want to go. It's clear – and most importantly of all, it's accurate. The distance between you and your desired location is clearly labelled and it really does help you get your bearings.
The basic Navigator is free and includes adverts, while the paid-for app is £0.59. The adverts aren't very intrusive and there are bugs that still need to be ironed out, so we recommend using the free version for the time being.
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Updated: Samsung Chromebook: 12 things you need to know
Posted: 20 Jun 2011 05:20 AM PDT
Samsung has announced the Series 5 Chromebook – a thin, 12.1 inch Chrome OS laptop.
Google's Chrome OS is the company's take on a cloud-centric operating system that will compete with Windows, primarily in the mobile computing market.
Samsung's Chromebook will be one of the first Chrome OS devices for the UK market, and TechRadar has gathered together the early facts about the Chromebook to give you a bit of an insight into the new Chrome OS netbook.
1. Samsung Chromebook operating system
The first and most notable thing about the Chromebook is that – rather unsurprisingly – it runs Chrome OS, an operating system made by Google that is completely based around its Chrome browser. There's no desktop as such, just a browser window.
Chrome OS is designed to be a cloud OS – meaning that it functions as a device to access the internet and use software and tools that exist on server farms rather than on your actual device.
2. Samsung Chromebook screen
The Chromebook comes with a 12.1-inch screen. "The 12.1-inch Super Bright display is both anti-reflective and anti-glare for a consistently vibrant visual experience across a variety of light conditions, from outdoors to dimly lit environments," said Samsung.
"The Series 5 display's 300nit brightness brings all forms of media alive in vibrant colour."
3. Samsung Chromebook processor
Intel's Atom N570 1.66Ghz Dual Core processor is under the hood of the Samsung Chromebook. This processor brings HyperThreading and, as an Atom chip, is designed to use as little power as possible – with a TDP of 8.5 Watts.
4. Samsung Chromebook memory
The Chromebook has 2GB of DDR3 memory – more than the vast majority of netbooks on the market, which typically have 1GB.
5. Samsung Chromebook battery life
Describing an 8.5 hour battery life as "all day" is a bit rich – but that's what's being cited here with Samsung stating: "The Series 5 has a battery life of up to 8.5 hours, including five hours of video play, for all day use without the need to recharge."
6. Samsung Chromebook weight
With mobility central to any small form factor laptop or netbook, Samsung has kept the weight of the Chromebook down to 3.2lbs – or 1.45kg for those who prefer things little more metric.
To put that in context, a (significantly more powerful) 13.3-inch MacBook weighs 2.1kg, an iPad 2 weighs 601g and an Acer Aspire One netbook weighs in at around 1.2kg.
7. Samsung Chromebook updates
Being a cloud computer brings several benefits – one of which is that software will always be updated automatically. So in theory, you won't need updates for the apps that you use – they will simply be updated when you access them.
In theory this means that you should have a more secure computer – because the anti-virus process goes on in the cloud and you have no or little data stored locally.
As Samsung puts it: "The Chrome OS has eliminated concerns about security and data loss by moving everything to the cloud.
"With nothing stored directly on the Series 5, malicious spyware, trojans and viruses are a thing of the past. If the notebook is ever broken or lost, all of your files are saved online."
8. Samsung Chromebook storage
The Samsung Chromebook has just 16GB of storage – with most of your data meant to be left in the cloud. That 16GB drive is an SSD – solid state drive – which benefits from much faster read/write times.
However, this is also feasibly one of the problems with the Chrome OS principle – in that the moment you're offline, your laptop has no or little access to your data.
Plus – as the Sony PSN debacle has shown – no network is infallible, and people still have trust issues with keeping all of their work and personal information online rather than locally.
9. Samsung Chromebook boot time
Faster read-write times means a much faster boot time. In fact, part of the theory around the Chromebook laptops is that, like your tablet or phone, they will spend more time in sleep mode than completely off.
Samsung suggests that the boot time for the Series 5 Chromebook is 10 seconds – our tests with the prototype CR-48 Chromebook suggest that this is perfectly reasonable.
"When waking from sleep mode, it's ready to go within one second," adds Samsung. "This means that wherever you are and whatever you're doing, your computer won't slow you down."
10. Samsung Chromebook style
With a small form factor and thickness of around 2cm, the Chromebook is aiming to be stylish as well as functional.
11. Other Samsung Chromebook specifications
The rest of the specs are fairly netbook/laptop standard – with the Chromebook bringing Wi-Fi, an optional VGA adaptor for a second monitor or TV, an audio input and an HD webcam, as well as a card reader.
Chromebooks also have a SIM card slot, so you can use mobile broadband directly on the device. And you'll need to, with your data stored in the cloud.
12. Samsung Chromebook UK release date and price
The Samsung Chromebook's prices are likely to raise a few eyebrows from those aware of how much they are paying stateside – with a direct currency conversion suggesting the UK is paying significantly more for both the 3G ($499 in the US, which is around £305 in today's currency market) and Wi-Fi ($429, or £262) versions.
The Samsung Chromebook 5 series has a UK release date of 1 July, but you can preorder it already - it's priced at £399 for the 3G version and £349 for the Wi-Fi only flavour.
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Carphone Warehouse reveals LG Optimus 3D UK release date
Posted: 20 Jun 2011 05:11 AM PDT
Carphone Warehouse has announced that it is the exclusive launch partner for the LG Optimus 3D, with pre-orders for the tri-dimensional handset now open.
There has been much speculation about the LG Optimus 3D UK release date; it is now set for 7 July, with Carphone Warehouse offering the handset for free on a £35 per month contract or for £499.95 SIM-free.
You'll only be able to buy the handset from Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy stores for a time, although it's not clear when this exclusivity will end.
Proud
The handset is the first 3D handset to hit the UK, with the ability to both record 3D films and play 3D content on the phone itself.
It's also rocking a dual-core processor, Android 2.2 and a 3D hot key to take you to a whole world of 3D content.
Graham Stapleton, chief commercial officer at Carphone Warehouse said, "We're proud to be able to offer the world's first 3D smartphone exclusively at The Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy.
"It is a remarkable piece of technology and I'm confident that our customers will be as impressed and excited as we are. "
We're hoping to bring you our LG Optimus 3D review as soon as possible - so keep your eyes peeled for something from the third dimension before June is finished.
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Posted: 20 Jun 2011 05:00 AM PDT
Wikitude is free and not tied down to one particular platform, but its user collaboration element means it can occasionally seem rather slapdash.
There are no standard icons, and the information it offers is sometimes incomplete. However, beneath its slightly ugly exterior lies an augmented reality app with great depth. Most importantly, it works well.
When you first start the app you're presented with a number of 'worlds', each containing a selection of geotagged content. For example, clicking 'YouTube' will activate your device's camera, through which you'll see the world around you, with any YouTube videos that have been linked to your area displayed via icons on the screen.
Some of these videos will be about the place you're looking at, some will have been recorded or updated there, and some – unfortunately – have absolutely nothing to do with the location with which they are tagged.
This is a problem with any completely open collaborative project – there will always be a few users who mess around. Like fake celebrity dates of death on Wikipedia, lies can pop up from time to time in the various Wikitude worlds, but are more of a minor nuisance than a deal-breaker.
There are loads of 'worlds', though their usefulness depends on where you are and what you want. We doubt that many of our fine readers will need to know where the nearest Hooters bar is, but you never know.
By far the best world is Wikipedia, which links places of interest to online articles. Just point your device at a landmark to learn about it.
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Tutorial: How to back up Gmail
Posted: 20 Jun 2011 04:56 AM PDT
Your state of the art RAID device is no good if you don't use it properly to back up your data. Even if you fire up your backup software routinely and make a copy of everything from the boot loader up to your music, you're leaving a huge gap in your backup policy.
You might not realise what you're missing yet, but the 150,000 people who temporarily lost the contents of their Gmail inboxes earlier this year will know exactly what we're taking about.
There's something about big-name web apps that make us trust their remote servers, which are just as fallible as our own kit and are located halfway across the world. Whether it's Gmail, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, your website or your blog, we've all got data out there.
If you don't want to wake up to an empty account or the realisation that a service you've come to rely on has been discontinued, it's time to get your act (and your data) together.
Back up Gmail
Gmail is the most popular free, web-based email service. It offers over 7GB of storage capacity, and people used it as an online storage repository to store their files long before purpose-built storage on the cloud became affordable.
The best way to create a local backup of your emails is to use an offline IMAP client like Mozilla Thunderbird. IMAP (internet message application protocol) is the most popular protocol for retrieving emails. Most popular email clients support the IMAP protocol, but the advantage of Thunderbird (besides being free) is that it offers a consistent environment across Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, so you should be able to reproduce these steps no matter which OS you use.
Log into your Gmail account to enable IMAP access. Click the 'Options' icon, followed by 'Mail settings', then head to the 'Forwarding and POP/IMAP' tab. Make sure POP is disabled and IMAP access is enabled.
Head to Thunderbird's website, where you can grab and install the latest version for your platform. When you launch it for the first time, Thunderbird will prompt you for your account information. Give it your name, your Gmail username (including '@gmail. com') and password. When you click 'Continue', Thunderbird will fetch settings to let you send and receive email via Gmail. Accept the settings by clicking the 'Create account' button.
If you already use Thunderbird to manage another account, you can add your Gmail to your setup. Launch the client, head over to 'Tools | Account Settings' and select 'Add mail account' from the dropdown list on the left.
Once set up, Thunderbird will authenticate your Gmail account and grab all your emails – received and sent. Depending on the size of your account (scroll down to the bottom of your Gmail account to find out how large it is), fetching all the emails might take some time, from a couple of hours to a couple of days.
You can fire up Thunderbird on a regular schedule and let it grab your new messages. To make sure the messages are available while you're offline, head to 'File | Offline | Download/sync now'. You can use Thunderbird as your regular email client, and switch between it and the web interface.
Once set up, Thunderbird will recreate all your labels on Gmail as folders, and messages with multiple labels will be displayed in both folders. Folders created in Thunderbird will be created as labels in the online version of Gmail.
In Thunderbird, use either 'Move to' or 'Copy to' to apply or change labels to messages. When you write and send a message from Thunderbird, it will show up in the 'Sent mail' folder in the web interface.
Restore deleted emails
For most situations, Thunderbird is an ideal backup strategy for Gmail. But there's safety in numbers, which is where Gmail-Backup comes into play. This program copies your emails, but unlike Thunderbird, it can also restore them back to your Gmail account.
If you accidentally delete a thread in Gmail, it will only exist in Thunderbird until you sync it up with your account. When it syncs, Thunderbird will also delete the copy of the thread from your hard disk. With Gmail-Backup, you can restore messages from a backed up copy.
First, grab Gmail-Backup from www.gmail-backup.com. Although the program hasn't been updated for some time, it still works well.
There isn't much setup involved. Fire it up and point it to your Gmail account by specifying the login name (with '@gmail. com') and password. You also need to point it to a folder where it can store the downloaded emails.
Your emails are stored in the standard EML format and can be viewed in any email client, including Thunderbird. As with Thunderbird, how long the initial download takes will depend on the size of your inbox.
With Gmail-Backup you also have the flexibility of downloading messages between specific dates by entering the date intervals. The program backs up the 'All mails' folder, which includes all received, sent and draft emails. It also keeps a record of all the labels (in a 'labels.txt' file), and lets you add labels manually before restoring the emails to Gmail.
To restore emails, either to the same email account or a different one, you need to specify its login details. If you want to restore all emails, select the 'Newest emails only' box; otherwise, specify a time period.
One inconvenience with Gmail-Backup is that when it restores messages, sent emails don't show up under 'Sent mail' in the web interface. You can see them in the 'All mail' view, though.
Back up address books
Almost all web mail services let you export your address book. In Gmail, head to the 'Contacts' tab, and select the 'Export' option from the 'More actions' dropdown list. You can now export your address book in Outlook CSV or vCard format to import into Thunderbird, or in Google's CSV format to import back into Gmail.
In Yahoo Mail, go to 'Contacts', click 'Tools' and select 'Export' from the dropdown menu. From the list, pick a format that's compatible with the into you want to import the addresses into. The Yahoo CSV format works best to import the contacts into Gmail.
You can also pull in contacts and emails from other web mail from within Gmail. Go to your Mail Settings page in Gmail, and click on the 'Accounts and import' tab. Now click the 'Import mail and contacts' button, and fill in details of the account you want to import the address book from. Once Gmail connects, you can select the type of data you want it to import.
Once all the addresses are in your Gmail address book, the Google-Contacts plugin can sync it with Thunderbird.
Store passwords
Juggling passwords for web services isn't much of an issue thanks to OpenID, but not all services use it. Then there are services you registered with before they supported OpenID.
That's where LastPass steps in. It's a password manager that works across browsers on all operating systems, and on several mobile devices. It encrypts all your passwords and keeps them on your machine. You can switch browsers or operating systems, and still have access to them.
LastPass is easy to download and install. It detects your system settings automatically and points you to the appropriate file. Once installed, it'll sit next to your browser's address bar. It's wise to back passwords up to your local disk periodically.
Click the LastPass icon next to the address bar, and head over to 'Tools | Export to'. From here you can download the passwords as a plain text LastPass CSV file, or an encrypted file.
Archive web services with Backupify
1. Register with Backupify
It might sound crazy to use a web-based service to back up data from another web-based service, but besides providing another copy of your data in case of an emergency, Backupify also rolls it into an easy to download form for some services.
2. Add online services
Once you've registered with the site, you're ready to log into your Backupify account and select the service you want to back up. Backupify currently supports Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn and Google Docs, among others.
3. Configure each service
Depending on the service you've selected, you might need to carry out some additional configuration before Backupify starts storing your data. Once you account has been configured successfully, Backupify will get to work.
4. Browse archives
All stored data is accessible via each service's 'Archives' section. If you use Backupify to back up your Twitter account, it will also generate a downloadable PDF of your tweets, which is easier to read than a document in XML format..
5. Restore email
In addition to backing up your Gmail mailbox, Backupify also lets you restore deleted messages. Some services offer more comprehensive support for backup restoration than others. The restored messages will appear under a 'Backupify restore' label.
6. Upgrade
The free Backupify account lets you store up to 2GB of data online. If you want the benefits of more storage space, nightly backups, technical support and other add-ons, there are upgrade options starting at $4.99 (about £3.10) a month.
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British Library agrees digital deal with Google
Posted: 20 Jun 2011 04:28 AM PDT
The British Library has struck a deal with Google to make a portion of its enviable collection of 17th and 18th century texts available to search and view online.
Despite its stuffy connotations, the British Library has not shied away from the brave new digital world, with smartphone apps, Kindle deals and newspaper digitisation among its digital arsenal.
250,000 texts written between 1700 and 1870 are included in the Google deal, with the out of copyright books and manuscripts available to be read, searched and copied for free either on the British Library's website or through Google Books.
The texts will be selected by the British Library, while Google will carry out and pay for all the digitising.
Education, education, education
Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, stressed the Library's focus on access to all:
"Through this partnership we believe that we are building on this proud tradition of giving access to anyone, anywhere and at any time. Our aim is to provide perpetual access to this historical material, and we hope that our collections coupled with Google's know-how will enable us to achieve this aim."
Meanwhile, Peter Barron at Google said that the project would bring old works to life in new ways:
"What's powerful about the technology available to us today isn't just its ability to preserve history and culture for posterity, but also its ability to bring it to life in new ways.
"This public domain material is an important part of the world's heritage and we're proud to be working with the British Library to open it up to millions of people in the UK and abroad."
The deal also gives Google Books a leg up in the ebook catalogue stakes, setting it apart from competitors like the Amazon Kindle library and Apple's iBooks.
It's only really a bonus if you're after 18th century texts, like an account of a stuffed Hippopotamus owned by the Prince of Orange, though. If 19th century philosophy, history, poetry and literature are more your thing, you'd better head to the Kindle.
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UK public 'failing to engage' with 3D TV
Posted: 20 Jun 2011 03:57 AM PDT
A new report on the state of the 3D TV market in the UK has outlined that 3D will eventually become a mass market product but it is currently failing to engage with audiences.
Informa Telecoms & Media has forecasted the state of 3D TV over the next five years and believes that the technology will eventually end up in 11 million homes but the amount of 'active' users of 3D TV will be less than half this amount.
While the use of 'active' as an adjective is a little confusing, considering we are currently in the midst of an 'active v passive' 3D technology debate, the report sees active users as those who actually actively use their 3D TV to watch 3D content and not just plain old 2D.
The current take-up of 3D TVs in UK is around 125,000, according to the Guardian, and out of these 90 per cent use their TVs for 3D use.
While this figure will increase 100 times by 2016, Informa Telecoms & Media believes this will be because the technology will be embedded in most TVs by this time and not because of consumers' appetite for 3D. In fact, it believes that just 42 per cent of those with a 3D TV will be using their set for 3D watching.
"Irrespective of existing public demand for 3D, major set manufacturers (Samsung, LG, Panasonic, et al) increasingly see 3D capability as a feature that they must include in their sets, or the perception will be that rival manufacturers are producing a technically-superior product (with 3D included)," said Adam Thomas of Informa Telecoms & Media.
"The result is that an increasing proportion of TV sets are having 3D capability built into them. But instead of a USP, 3D is now often marketed as just one of the set's benefits – along with features such as internet-connection capability and LED backlighting."
One of the reasons that 3D will be seen as just another feature and not the main feature is that it is not an evolution like HD.
"We do not share the view that 3D represents the obvious next evolutionary step for TV, in the same way that colour followed black and white, or HD is following SD," said Thomas.
"A case can be made that colour and HD offer noticeable enhancements to the technologies that preceded them. But 3DTV is less of an enhancement and rather more a new type of viewing experience – one that many people will enjoy, but some way from becoming ubiquitous."
This arrival of Wimbledon this week will be a decent litmus test for current 3D viewing, as the men's semi-final and women and men's final is to be shown in 3D on BBC HD.
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Lighter, leaner, low-powered PS3 coming soon
Posted: 20 Jun 2011 03:18 AM PDT
Sony is on the verge of releasing a new model of PlayStation 3, which offers lower power, less weight and a few minor external changes.
Although originally just a rumour from a retailer claiming to have been briefed on the new console, the CECH-3000B PS3 model has since surfaced on Sony's Japanese PlayStation site, with release date listed as from June 2011.
Power down
Power consumption on the new 320GB model has been chopped down to 200W from 230W on the previous iteration.
Weight Watchers has clearly been working out for the PS3 too; it has dropped 400g, with the CECH-3000B model weighing in at 2.6kg.
It's not clear exactly what's changed about the console's appearance, although the consensus seems to be that some kind of change has been made to the power and eject buttons, and that some LED lamps have been removed.
In terms of a UK release date for the updated PS3, there's not much to go on; with no guarantees that it will even make it to our fair shores, we can merely speculate that it will begin replacing the existing 320GB model as stock runs out.
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Details of Facebook's music dashboard are revealed
Posted: 20 Jun 2011 03:02 AM PDT
Facebook's upcoming music service looks likely to launch with the help of a number of big name streaming partners, it has been revealed.
This is according to GigaOm, which rounded up everything it knows about the music platform; including rumours that Spotify won't be the only partnership in Facebook's musical endeavour.
Although just what partnerships will be involved is not yet known, it is thought that a potential release date for the service will be at Facebook's f8 conference in August.
What is known is how the music service will work. Facebook is looking to integrate music into the site's normal homepage and use a tab for music, which will be situated under the other tabs currently on the left-hand side of the page, like Places, Pages and Games.
Click on this tab and a music dashboard will appear. To play the tracks you want to, you just use the playback button at the bottom of the Facebook page.
Get connected
It seems like the whole service relies on Facebook Connect – so you have to Connect with whichever music service you want for it to work through the Facebook page.
On the music dashboard, there will be recommended songs, other songs your friends are listening to. You will also be able to see what all your other friends are listening too at any particular time – and presumably mock them if a bit of Blue ends up on their digital stereo.
Facebook has remained tight-lipped over its music service, so expect more rumour and speculation to come in dribs and drabs.
The idea to mix music with social is an intriguing one – as we have seen with Ping, it doesn't always work. But unlike Apple who tried to bring the social to the music, Facebook is bringing music to the social, something which is a much easier prospect.
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Hypersonic jet powered by seaweed set to be the new Concorde
Posted: 20 Jun 2011 02:31 AM PDT
A new super speed aeroplane concept is to be unveiled today, which claims 'hypersonic' speeds that could get you from Paris to New York in three and a half hours running on a seaweed-based fuel.
Dubbed ZEHST (Zero Emission Hypersonic Transportation), the project aims to produce a jet, codenamed ZEHRA, that will reach speeds of 3,125mph and cruise just above the Earth's atmosphere, around 20 miles up.
All this, and it aims to be emission free by opting for biofuel, hydrogen and water rather than aerospace's current tipple of choice, kerosene.
Time and money
Don't get too excited though; EADS, the company behind the jet, doesn't anticipate commercial flights getting going until 2050, at which point they'll set you back a pretty packet.
EADS has had its hypersonic jet in the works for five years already, intending the ZEHST project to be a successor to the much-missed Concorde.
The plans echo those of Sir Richard Branson, who recently told TechRadar that his Virgin Galactic space programme could also have major implications for Earth-bound travel.
He reckoned that transcontinental travel times could be slashed using similar technology, suggesting that London to Australia could take as little as two-and-a-half hours.
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ICANN votes for major domain name overhaul
Posted: 20 Jun 2011 01:56 AM PDT
Internet domain names are set for a shake-up, as ICANN has voted to allow new suffixes to append web addresses from 2012.
.com, .org and .net have served the internet well but the new plans will allow for international domains written in different scripts, as well as serving to compartmentalise the web with subject specific suffixes.
The new domains should hit the web in late 2012, when we could see history sites popping up with a .hist address, for example, or web addresses written in Arabic, Japanese, Russian or other alphabets.
It's .complicated
They won't come cheap though; new domain name applications will set you back $185,000 (£114,600) and however long it takes you to trawl through the 360 page application form.
Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN's board of directors, said: "Today's decision will usher in a new internet age."
He concludes with an interesting turn of phrase that echoes Facebook-founder Mark Zuckerberg's comments on net neutrality and its importance for fostering innovation online.
"We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration. Unless there is a good reason to restrain it, innovation should be allowed to run free."
ICANN's timely decision comes just days after World IPv6 Day when major web companies tested the new protocol ahead of the official transition which seeks to free up billions of new web address possibilities.
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Mozilla Firefox 5 web browser arrives early
Posted: 19 Jun 2011 12:49 PM PDT
It's only three months since Mozilla outed the official Firefox 4 browser, but the fifth generation is already ready to roll.
The Firefox 5 release candidate emerged on Mozilla's ftp server over the weekend, and barring a few tweaks here and there, the complete version is now available to download.
The official release has been slated for Tuesday, if you want to hold-off until then.
The new version of the browser isn't as much of a departure from Firefox 4 as its predecessor was to Firefox 3, but offers easier access to the do-not-track setting which stops advertisers following you.
Turnover
The speedy arrival of the foxy new browser follows Mozilla's vow to increase the turnover of new versions.
You can download the release candidate of Firefox 5 for Windows, Mac and Linux from Mozilla's ftp server now.
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Sega hack sees 1.29m users' data stolen
Posted: 19 Jun 2011 11:10 AM PDT
Sega is the latest video games company to fall victim to the mass hacking spree, after confirming that the personal information of 1.29m users has been stolen.
The Japanese company has confirmed that the names, addresses, email addresses and passwords of users were stolen from the London-based Sega Pass website on Friday.
In a statement, the former console titan reassured users that their credit card details had not been accessed.
The Sega hack is the fourth high profile strike against the gaming industry in the last couple of months. The infamous Sony PlayStation Network hack was followed up by hits on Nintendo and Codemasters.
Apology
Sega was quick to apologise for the theft and says it is investigating the intrusion while the Sega Pass site is suspended.
"We sincerely apologise for troubles this incident has caused to our customers," said the statement, written in Japanese."An investigation has been launched to find the cause and channels used for the leakage."
In an email to customers, Sega explained that it had reset all passwords and encouraged users to do the same for other websites for which customers used the same log-on details.
The Sega Pass website is used to sell games, offer support and also keep fans updated with the latest releases. There's no word yet on when the service will be live again.
LulzSec, who admitted a hack on Sega's great rival Nintendo, has denied responsibility.
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