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Techradar |
- Promoted Tweets coming to your timeline
- Apple to test full HD 1080p iTunes movies?
- Tutorial: How to fix white balance in your photos
- Review: Audiolab 8200A
- In Depth: The United Kingdom's secret firewall
- Review: Monitor Audio Gold GX200
- Review: Excited Pixel BreakTime 2.0
| Promoted Tweets coming to your timeline Posted: 10 Jul 2011 09:09 PM PDT Twitter will add Promoted Tweets adverts into your timeline within the next month. The addition, which has been planned for over a year, will see adverts and messages from companies and brands you already follow appear at the top of your timeline. The "Promoted Tweets to Followers" initiative will ensure that ads are the first things users see when they log-in to Twitter. So, for instance, if you follow Coca-Cola, communications from that company will feature at the top of your feed. Limited interruption United now, Twitter users have have not been forced to put up with too much commercial interruption from the social networking site. The current ad strategy only features the occasional promoted user/account and promoted topic on the right hand side of the page. The Promoted Tweets to Followers ads will be much more of an intrusion, but at least the ads will be from companies and brands you already care about. Source: AllThingsD 
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| Apple to test full HD 1080p iTunes movies? Posted: 10 Jul 2011 02:49 PM PDT Apple will begin offering full HD 1080p movie downloads from iTunes later this year, according to reports. AppleInsider sources say that the current offering of 480p (SD) and 720p (HD) will be bolstered by a 1920x1080p (full HD) version on some movies from this autumn. People 'familiar with the matter' reckon that documentation for a handful of releases slated for September and October has been submitted with an "optional 1920x1080 resolution". Only 720p Apple has long been criticised for offering "only 720p" HD movies, with many movie fans disappointed not to be receiving the full HD experience, so this potential development is a welcome one. The AppleInsider report also claims that Apple may be working on a new version of its Apple TV set-top box, with a faster processor to enable 1080p HD playback. The current model can receive a 1080p signal, but spits it out on your TV at 720p because the A4 chip inside lacks the necessary power for full HD. The 1080p rumblings are supported by the discovery that the developer build of iOS 5 contains a new video player which would allow the playback and syncing of full HD video to the iPad 2. 
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| Tutorial: How to fix white balance in your photos Posted: 10 Jul 2011 05:00 AM PDT For all the things your camera can manage effectively without any human input - focusing and metering, for instance - there's still a lot it can't do. This is never clearer than when a set of pictures you felt great about at the time turn up on your computer looking indisputably wrong. White balance is one such area - it's something photographers have grappled with since the days of film. At its most basic, white balance is when your camera decides what light temperature it's working with (which varies depending on your light source) and attempts to compensate for it. Even apparently consistent environments, like outdoor locations, can vary depending on factors like cloud cover and whether you're using a flash. If your camera gets white balance right, you won't notice it at all. If it goes wrong, you could get anything from a very slightly wrong photo to an image that bears no resemblance whatsoever to what you saw when you pressed the shutter button. Incorrect colours, strange looking skin tones - even if the rest of your photograph is technically perfect, with the wrong white balance it will never look quite right. Luckily, although the concept of white balance may be difficult to grasp, the ability to spot when it's wrong is a knack you'll pick up quickly, and you can correct it in seconds. Keep reading to find out how. Choosing your shot
Unlike some editing techniques, changing incorrect white balance isn't something you can choose to opt out of. If it's wrong and you leave it that way, people looking at your images will notice that something's off, even if they lack the technical knowledge to describe it. In the case of the shot above, the camera has chosen a white balance that is well wide of the mark, with the result that snow - which should, of course, be a neutral white colour - has turned light purple instead. How much you notice incorrect white balance depends on your level of experience - you need to pay particular attention to images that contain people, because we're particularly sensitive to incorrect skin tones. Skin is something we see every day, so we notice very quickly when it's not quite right in onscreen photographs or prints. That means looking for and correcting white balance should become part of your photographic workflow, in the same way as correcting colour curves or checking for sharpness. If an image turns up with incorrect white balance, there are no two ways about it - you have to fix it, or people will notice. What you'll need Fixing white balance in your shots requires the use of a photo editor. The good news is that because cameras tend to get it wrong so often, virtually every photo editor can make the necessary corrections - often in just a few clicks. In this instance we'll use Photoshop Elements, but the terminology and tools are standard: the colour picker tool also exists in Google Picasa, which is free and straightforward, as well as in GIMP, which is free, feature-packed and powerful. Even online editors offer similar tools - Picnik.com, offered as part of Flickr accounts, has a white balance correction tool that takes seconds to apply. As ever, you'll get the greatest degree of flexibility from a tool like Photoshop or GIMP, but for simply correcting colour casts - where the whole image takes on an incorrect colour due to poor white balance - virtually any photo editor will do. The only thing to remember is that the single-click approaches taken by free software need to be carefully monitored if you're intending to make expensive prints. In truth, once you've got the hang of spotting incorrect white balance, fi xing it should take a few seconds per photo - it's important to trust your eyes when you're working on your images. You certainly don't need to carefully adjust your image to a precise colour temperature value. Your eyes are only half of the equation, of course - you'll be looking at your shots on your monitor before you print them. If your display is badly calibrated, or you've never taken the time to find out whether it's set up correctly, you could accidentally make incorrect white balance corrections - or, worse, make changes to images that didn't need it in the first palace. Before you start, it's worth comparing an image you've already printed with its onscreen version. If they're radically different it'll be worth checking your monitor before you embark on processing. Otherwise, working in RAW has its advantages, although you'll generally be fine even if your camera only shoots JPEGs. You should consider saving a copy of every image you work on in a lossless format like TIF to preserve image quality. This doesn't apply in non-destructive editors such as Picasa or Adobe Lightroom, which don't change your original image. How it works
Whenever you take a picture, your camera assigns it a colour temperature, which is measured in Kelvin. A candle, whose light glows orange, has a temperature of around 1,800 Kelvin. Daylight, which is generally more blue tinted, has a temperature of around 5,000 Kelvin. Other light sources - an overcast sky, an electronic flash, or fluorescent or tungsten lighting - have different colour temperatures again. The temperature your camera assigns to an image is where the white point lies. This is the point at which something that should be white appears that way in the final shot. If the camera gets it wrong, something that's a neutral shade of white in real life will appear to be the wrong colour, looking either too blue or too orange in the shot. Everything else in the image will be too warm or too cold as well. If you're fixing an image that contains people, the best approach is to look for skin tones and change the white balance settings until they look right - it should usually be easy to tell when you've got it right. If you don't have people to use as reference points, you can either rely on your memory of the scene, or you can identify an object or surface in your scene and tell your photo editing software to use that as the white point for the rest of the image. When you do this, your software will change the colour temperature of the photograph so that the object you've chosen is rendered a neutral white or grey. The colour temperature of the rest of the image is changed by the same amount, which should bring everything into line and present you with an accurate, fully colour-corrected image. How to fix white balance in JPEG images with Photoshop Elelements 1. Choose a shot
This snowy scene in north London has been captured well, at considerable risk to the photographer's frostbitten fingertips. However, the huge expanse of snow and overcast sky have conspired to produce an image that's far too cool. The white point has been set too low, and so the snow has turned blue. Help is at hand though, and Photoshop Elements offers several ways to correct white balance. 2. Try the Colour Picker
The simplest approach is to use Photoshop Elements' Colour Picker, which lets you tell the software which point to use as a neutral reference. Click 'Enhance' in the menu bar, then click 'Adjust colour' and select 'Remove colour cast'. The cursor changes to a pipette. As long as you leave the preview checkbox ticked, your image will change when you click, letting you make sure you've got things right. 3. Save your changes
This image is easy to correct. The snow should be white, so when we click on it, the rest of the image jumps into line. You can click several times if you're not happy with the result. Once you're done, click 'OK' and your changes will be applied. If you're still not happy, click 'Quick' in the list of edit modes on the right hand side, then click 'Balance'. The temperature and tint sliders let you make further changes. How to fix white balance with Adobe Camera RAW Correct colours in uncompressed images 1. Download ACR
Go to www.adobe.com and choose the 'Downloads' link. On the right you'll find a link to Adobe Camera RAW. Choose the version for Photoshop Elements, then follow the instructions to download and install it. Once it's done, open any RAW file from Photoshop Elements and you'll see a dialog box that lets you make non-destructive changes to your file before opening it in Elements. 2. Learn the ropes
You can do a huge amount of editing with ACR, and it's worth spending some time with the software to get used to it. For now, we'll restrict ourselves to adjusting white balance. Since it's commonly used, the white balance tool is the first option in the right hand menu bar. The options available depend on your camera, but in this case there's the option to choose the lighting in which the shot was taken. 3. Adjust white balance
In this case we'll select 'Daylight', which gives us much more realistic colours without the unwanted blue tint. As with Photoshop Elements, you have the option of using the various sliders to create your own custom white balance and tint. The software isn't going to get the setting right 100 per cent of the time, so be prepared to get stuck in yourself to ensure it looks right. 
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| Posted: 10 Jul 2011 03:30 AM PDT Audiolab: the brand that launched a thousand hi-fi's. Many thousand, indeed. For many years towards the end of the 20th century, the Audiolab 8000A was the integrated amp to own as part of a decent-to-aspirational system and indeed plenty are still doing sterling service. After the success of the 8200CD, we were even more keen to meet the successor to the 8000A; the 8200A. This char-ming amp In many ways it is strongly reminiscent of the hallowed original. The front panel is similar, the proportions are not far off and one strongly distinguishing feature remains in the central internal heatsink, cleverly arranged to vent through top and bottom of the case without allowing too much dust into the amp's innards. Internal heatsinks like this are common now, but in the 1980s this was just about the first to dispense with finger-ripping external heatsinks. Features differ significantly from the 8000A. There's no phono stage, for a start, which is a shame as that in the 8000A was always one of its big attractions. Audiolab doesn't currently have a single phono-capable product, but there are plenty of decent standalone phono stages around so it's hardly the end of the world. The switch routine On the other hand, there is an unusually sophisticated set of mode-switching options. The separate listen and record selectors are always welcome, but the 'Mode' switch provides options which other amps either don't offer, or at best offer with some rewiring and/or reaching round the back. Some of these modes aren't entirely obvious but with thought it's clear they all have their use. 'Mute' is simple enough and 'Pre-Power AV' separates the pre and power sections, giving the option of connecting a processor between them. But why do we need separate modes for 'Pre', 'Integrated' and 'Pre-power'?
In the last, pre and power sections are connected internally anyway, while instead of having a 'Pre' mode one could simply ignore the power stage. The clever part is that in Integrated mode the preamp outputs are disabled, while Pre-power activates them. Pre disconnects signals to the power amp section. This means that one can have a remote power amp connected which is only active when one wants it to be, while the 8200A's power section can be disabled when one doesn't want to use local loudspeakers. Yes, some of this could have been done with speaker output switches, but the main thing is that it gives exceptionally flexible control over the amp's constituent parts. Three line inputs at the rear are joined by three input/output pairs, rather quaintly marked 'Tape 1', 'Tape 2' and 'Video'. Well, recording outputs and associated monitoring inputs, anyway and, of course, you can use any of them for perfectly ordinary line inputs. The preamp output appears on two pairs of phono plugs and speaker terminals are likewise dualled, for bi-wiring and so on. A full-size headphone socket sits at the front. The same, but different
In terms of amplifying circuits, the 8200A clearly bears some resemblance to the 8000A though there are changes – among specific points mentioned to us by the designers, the input transistors have been changed to a completely different type, while input switching is managed by relays. Despite that, the main input selector is a motorised mechanical switch, which may seem bizarre but means that the positive and direct manual input of a front-panel switch is retained while adding the benefit of switching right beside the input sockets, plus remote control. The volume control is also motorised, naturally. Rated output matches the original exactly at 60 watts. The circuit of the power amplifier section is unusual in the way it applies feedback. So the 8000A was well liked in its day. But that was then... and it's very much our experience that the baseline of audio electronics performance has risen markedly over the last 20 years. We never expected to find the 8200A a poor amplifier, but we were a little nervous as to how it would fare against modern competition. In the event, we had plenty of opportunity to try it out alongside amps of all sorts at similar prices and indeed a good deal more, covering various approaches to the sound/features/power balance. As assured as ever The short-form result is that the 8200A holds its own. It offers good, solid bass, well extended treble, lively dynamics, detail and all that sort of stuff and while it may not offer them in the sort of style you'd expect of £10,000-worth of pre/power separates, it follows the general 21st-century trend of coming uncomfortably close. Uncomfortably, that is, for anyone who's just parted with £10,000! Where we really have to hand it to Audiolab's designers past and present, though, is to do with the way that this amp manages all that and still contrives to retain some genuine character of its own. Yes, 'character' can mean inaccuracy, but like many potentially risky things, in very small doses it's a very useful thing. Basically, this is a very neutral amp. Listen to it for a while, though, and you start to realise that the sound has just a trace of charm that's all Audiolab's own. We first realised this with a familiar orchestral recording, in which we suddenly found our attention drawn in a slightly different direction from usual, more towards the middle-register instruments rather than the melodic violins and flutes or the low strings and heavy brass. Having noticed that, we then found ourselves appreciating a similar phenomenon in other styles of music. Male vocals certainly benefit, but since in most music the middle registers are very much home to the 'backing', the commonest effect is to make that backing clearer and very slightly more present than before. That wouldn't be so good if it meant the melody and rhythm sections were being sacrificed, but we never felt that to be the case. What does sometimes happen is that the melody becomes just a shade mellower, less bright and strident and, perhaps, that won't always be to everyone's liking. Bass, by contrast, is consistently rich and full-featured through this amp, well extended and with good rhythmic drive and an almost palpable texture. But that lower midrange thing is intriguing and was what really had us coming back for more after a few evenings with the 8200A. It brought home to us just how much information, in how many recordings, exists in that register and gave us renewed pleasure in several familiar discs. Superficially it seems like a tonal aberration, but (apart from the fact that there's no kink in the frequency response to support that) it's more to do with retrieval of detail. Imaging, too, is particularly fine around that part of the frequency range and that's not to say it's noticeably lacking elsewhere as it's good to very good across the board. High-resolution digital sources seemed to benefit even more than CD, if our rather small sample of them is anything to go by, while LPs (via an external phono stage, of course) were less affected. Rather usefully, MP3 downloads are typically a touch sweetened up by it, though we wouldn't go quite so far as to call them redeemed. What's clear, though, is that this amp is just as capable of giving musical pleasure and excitement as its esteemed predecessor was back in the 1980s. Standards in general may have risen, but Audiolab got it basically right in the first place and the new revision merely tweaks performance in line with current products. 
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| In Depth: The United Kingdom's secret firewall Posted: 10 Jul 2011 03:00 AM PDT The UK has very strict laws about what you can and can't do with other people's data. If you intercept it so that you can see what it is, deliberately delay its transmission or prevent it from reaching its destination altogether, you can be fined or thrown in prison. Unfortunately, that only applies if the data is written down and sent through the post. If it's electronic and you're an ISP, you can filter, delay and even block data all day long. Our connections are already monitored and filtered to prevent us from stumbling across horrific and illegal images, but there's growing pressure for ISPs to do more. As we'll discover, ISPs could soon be stopping us viewing perfectly legitimate content, with secret blacklists making some sites disappear. The way we consume content is changing. Increasingly, news comes not in newsprint, but via RSS feeds, video services and smartphone apps. Radio has turned into something we stream or download, we're more likely to watch TV via iPlayer or 4oD than tune in at a particular time to watch a specific programme, and most of us would rather download a film than visit one of the few remaining video shops. That means most of the information you access comes down a single pipe: your home broadband connection. We assume that ISPs don't meddle with our connections, but is that true? Could ISPs filter what we see and do online, censor websites and prioritise some kinds of content over others? They already do. Many ISPs throttle traffic like the BBC's iPlayer at peak periods, and BitTorrent users will be well aware that ISPs don't treat all kinds of data equally. As Trefor Davies, Chief Technical Officer of Timico and council member of the UK Internet Service Providers Association, explains: "traffic management varies from ISP to ISP, with some not doing it and others managing the heck out of users' traffic. It's a commercial issue. If someone wants to pay a rock-bottom price for a broadband service then their ISP is probably not going to want to spend lots of money providing lots of bandwidth capacity." Traffic management In practice, this sort of traffic management usually means that bandwidth hogs like BitTorrent are restricted to prevent other services like Skype from becoming unusable. "Most - if not all - ISPs try to give priority to time-critical applications such as voice, gaming and so on," Davies explains. "You usually hear complaints about traffic management when people are hitting torrents hard and the torrent, which is a very inefficient use of a network, slows to a dribble," he adds. Could the same technology be used for ill - for example, by crippling competitors to give ISPs' own services a helping hand?
In March, Culture Minister Ed Vaizey told reporters the three principles he believes should guide the way ISPs act. "The first is that users should be able to access all legal content," he said. "Second, there should be no discrimination against content providers on the basis of commercial rivalry. And finally, traffic management policies should be clear and transparent." Vaizey was commenting on the launch of the Broadband Stakeholders Group's new code, to which BSkyB, BT, O2, TalkTalk, Three, Virgin Media and Vodafone are signatories. However, the code isn't really about traffic management - it's about how ISPs communicate details of their traffic management to consumers. The BSG isn't promising that ISPs won't penalise specific services; it's just promising that if they do, they'll tell you about it "in a common format". The principle that ISPs shouldn't discriminate on the basis of commercial rivalry is open to interpretation. The big ISPs aren't just carriers - they're service and content providers too. For example, TalkTalk sells domestic telephone services. Would managing Skype or other voice over IP applications be seen as commercial rivalry? BT and Virgin Media are planning to launch new music services. Would throttling Spotify, Amazon's Cloud Player or the forthcoming cloud-based iTunes be commercial rivalry? Many ISPs offer video on demand. Would it be deemed discrimination on the basis of commercial rivalry if they managed H.264 video streams, or iTunes downloads, or BitTorrent? We regulate old media - for example, we regulate broadcasting so that one company can't own too many TV stations, radio stations and newspapers simultaneously - and today, much of the media we consume is delivered via our broadband connections. It's conceivable that traffic management could be used by ISPs to abuse their power, so should we regulate new media to prevent that? Does the concept of net neutrality - where data is treated identically no matter where it comes from - need to be enshrined in law? The government's answer is no. Neutral on neutrality Speaking at the FT World Telecoms Conference in November, Ed Vaizey said that: "a lightly regulated internet is good for business, good for the economy and good for people [...] The government is no fan of regulation and we should only intervene when it is clearly necessary to deliver important benefits for consumers." Peter Bradwell is a campaigner with the Open Rights Group. "Net neutrality does encompass some familiar questions of media plurality," he says, "and this is of vital importance to the future of the internet. The question is, how do you ensure that it remains a fair marketplace in which incumbents are consistently challenged by new entrants, and that regardless of stature or wealth, people can distribute their ideas, information and services to the world? Our belief is that allowing ISPs to make deals with content providers - deals that privilege incumbents' data - could put that at risk."
Michael Jarvis, head of retail media relations at BT, argues that ISPs would quickly be punished by customers for any such deals. "No ISP has any market power in the UK, and therefore none have the power to shape or view what we see and do online. If any ISP tried to do so and their customers didn't like it, they could easily move to a competing ISP," he says. "BT cannot answer for other ISPs, but we have four key public commitments: BT broadband customers will be able to access any internet-based service or application; no legal service or application will be blocked on these products; content and application providers will not be charged for basic internet conveyance; and we will provide wholly transparent information to customers on our traffi c management practices in line with industry best practice." Our ISPs aren't in the censorship business, but if the government gets its way, that may soon change. ISPs don't censor the internet, with a few notable exceptions: since the Demon vs Godfrey case in 2001, ISPs have been legally obliged to remove allegedly defamatory material from their servers or face prosecution, and many mobile phone connections have adult content filters switched on by default to stop children accessing content they shouldn't. The main exception is child pornography, which ISPs block by default. Websites are usually blocked in one of two ways: DNS filtering or blacklists. DNS filtering is the simplest method, but it can be a very blunt instrument.
When you block a specific site by its IP address, you also block any of its subdomains. This is how US authorities wrongly blocked some 84,000 subdomains last year, replacing their websites with notices claiming that they were involved in illegal pornography. The other common approach, content filtering, is less likely to block legitimate websites. Instead of simply blocking IP addresses, content filtering checks requested URLs against a database of known sites. If the URL isn't on the list, the page appears normally. If the URL is on the list, the traffic is routed to proxy servers that perform a more detailed check. If the URL passes this test, the requested page or file is shown. If it doesn't, the browser is redirected to a warning page or 'Page not found' message instead of the requested content. That's how Cleanfeed, BT's illegal content filter, works. The blocklist comes courtesy of the Internet Watch Foundation, and it only checks for content that's been identified as child pornography. The IWF also monitors the internet for other material, including incitement to violence, hate speech and other obscene content, but that content isn't included on its URL blocklist. All ISPs - including mobile phone data networks - have been required by law to use this kind of filtering since 2008. The big advantage of the Cleanfeed system is its precision. For example, it can block a single page or file and leave the rest of a website untouched. Like any system, though, it isn't perfect: in 2008 it emerged that the IWF blocklist included a Wikipedia page about The Scorpions' album Virgin Killer, whose controversial artwork was deemed illegal under UK law. The blocklist censored the page describing the artwork, but not the artwork itself, and it temporarily prevented users of Cleanfeed-subscribing ISPs from updating any entries on Wikipedia whatsoever. Mission creep
Despite the odd problem, few people would argue that filtering child pornography is a bad thing. However, any kind of site-blocking suffers from mission creep: if we can filter one type of content, politicians and pressure groups ask, why can't we filter another? The most extreme example of such mission creep is in Australia. Its Labor Party wants ISPs to block any content that isn't suitable for under-15s, and which isn't protected by effective age verification systems, and its politicians have proposed that ISPs should also block euthanasia and anorexia websites, sites about illegal drugs, sites about abortion, overseas online gambling and so on. Such mandatory filtering would be based on the ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) blacklist, which, if the leaked version posted on Wikileaks is genuine, includes a dental surgery, a dog kennel and a travel agency. Could similar filtering happen here? In 2006, Home Office minister Vernon Croaker admitted that the government had considered legislation forcing ISPs to block sites "glorifying terrorism" under the Terrorism Act 2006, while in December Ed Vaizey told the Sunday Times that ISPs should block all legal pornography by default "to protect children". "I am hoping they will get their acts together so we don't have to legislate," Vaizey said. If you've ever run up against your phone provider's adult content filter while trying to access a perfectly reputable and non-pornographic website, you'll know that such filtering already happens and often tends to be overzealous. In addition to filtering adult content, the government would like ISPs to filter another kind of content. In April, the culture minister met with ISPs to discuss the creation of an IWF-style blacklist - this time to filter sites accused of copyright infringement. Secret blocks "Website blocking is not straightforward," Trefor Davies says. "Consumer ISPs blocking the IWF list are only having to deal with around 600 URLs, updated twice daily. Having to gear up to cope with what are potentially hundreds of thousands of sites is another cost dimension again. The other issue is who takes responsibility for which sites to block. I wouldn't be happy as an ISP to take ownership, because I might be sued for wrongful blocking. I wouldn't be happy for rights holders to decide which sites are blocked. So it has to be a competent person like a judge, which introduces a whole new set of costs and issues." The government is considering creating a third party to decide on such blocking. In March, it met ISPs and other interested parties to discuss creating an IWF-style organisation as a middleman between ISPs and rights holders, creating and curating a blocklist that ISPs would use to block copyright infringing websites. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has also asked OFCOM to review whether the site blocking measures outlined in the Digital Economy Act are realistic and practical. "I have no problem with the principle of blocking access to websites used exclusively for facilitating illegal download of content," Hunt said. Not everybody is convinced that blocking copyright infringers is a good idea. Claims of copyright infringement have been used by the Church of Scientology to silence criticism, and by Amazon to justify booting WikiLeaks from its cloud computing servers, while the Recording Industry Association of America famously sued dead people and pensioners who didn't own computers in its crackdown on music file sharing. Who decides whether claims of infringement have merit? As Peter Bradwell puts it: "We are concerned about extra-judicial censorship. On what grounds will these decisions be made? With what oversight? It's difficult to see how a working group featuring ISPs and rights holders can answer these questions." Rather than secret lists, Bradwell predicts that: "Legitimate sites will inevitably be either placed on the list or caught accidentally." The ORG believes that the only effective and transparent way to deal with allegedly infringing content is to take the material off the web altogether. So is the ORG telling Ed Vaizey that? "[In April], the working group met again without any civil society groups involved," Bradwell says. "We have requested that as well as the 'consumer representative' groups [Vaizey] mentions, he meets with rights groups concerned about these proposals. As well as the Open Rights Group, we suggested Index on Censorship, Global Partners, Consumer Focus and Article 19." So far those suggestions haven't been embraced. "It's frustrating to continually have to make the case that these are broad public interest issues that can't be answered by a narrow group of stakeholders," Bradwell says. "Designing policy for such a group has only brought us bad policy, whether it's the cripplingly poor Digital Economy Act or the secretly negotiated international trade agreement ACTA." Slippery slopes The key argument against ISPs shaping what we see is that it's a slippery slope that leads inevitably to oppressive censorship - but the introduction of Cleanfeed hasn't infringed everyday users' activities, mobile phone networks' smut filters have no obvious downside apart from the odd wrongly flagged site, and the Digital Economy Act seems fairly toothless so far. Are we worrying about nothing? "The slippery slope argument is one of the arguments," Bradwell says. "The force of that argument comes from a lack of clarity around a question that sits at the heart of this debate: who should decide what you are allowed to look at? We don't believe it's acceptable for private arrangements that bypass proper accountability and oversight, to have jurisdiction over your attention." BT agrees. "Other than for the very particular and most heinous issue of child abuse images - on which BT, like most other ISPs, works with the IWF to prevent inadvertent access by its users - it isn't for ISPs to determine the rights or wrongs of sites related to other issues," Jarvis explains. "It's for the government and parliament to decide policy on site blocking, and in doing so they must consider the practicalities of implementation and the impact on the internet and its users." We don't hold BT responsible for the things people say using its phone lines, we don't hold Royal Mail responsible for the contents of the letters it carries and, with a few exceptions, we don't hold ISPs responsible for the data they transmit. If that changes, are we losing something important? "There is an argument that the previous decade will be remembered as a time of wild internet freedom, and that the future of the internet will be more restricted and more closely monitored," Bradwell says. "The platforms and services [we use] are private organisations, whether they are ISPs or platforms like Twitter or Facebook." The internet is often compared to the Old 'Wild' West, but of course even the Old West was tamed - and the internet will be too. The concern is that in their efforts to tame the net, politicians and private organisations could damage it. Calls to regulate our 21st century technology raise a first-century question: who watches the watchmen? 
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| Review: Monitor Audio Gold GX200 Posted: 10 Jul 2011 03:00 AM PDT Monitor Audio began operations nearly forty years ago, but is probably best known for introducing and proselytising metal diaphragm drive units, initially for its tweeter domes and soon afterwards for the cones used in its bass and midrange drivers. Add in some very classily veneered enclosures that were manufactured in its own cabinet shop and the company established a template that still holds good today. Twenty years down the line, plenty has changed of course, but the same core values remain at the heart of Monitor Audio's more upmarket ranges. The first Platinum series models appeared some four years ago and have been covered extensively in Hi-Fi Choice in recent times: PL100; PL200 and PL300. A number of the advanced design techniques that were first introduced in those models have now 'trickled down' into the new and rather less costly Gold GX series tested here and it's these design 'luxuries' that we're most interested in with the GX200, the model that Monitor Audio's representative thought showcased the strengths of the new range best. New Gold Not that these £2,300 GX200s can be considered inexpensive by most standards, but they're certainly aimed at a competitive sector of the serious loudspeaker sector. The complete Gold GX range is very extensive, consisting of four stereo pairs plus several models specifically intended for multichannel home cinema. This GX200 is the smaller of two floorstanders, and is a genuine three-way design, using twin bass drivers to keep the front view fashionably slim. Narrow floorstanders like this are potentially physically unstable, all too easily knocked over by unwary passing children, for example. Supplying a proper plinth arrangement to counter this possibility shouldn't be the tricky task that some brands seem to encounter, though fortunately Monitor Audio has thought this through carefully and clearly and come up with a rather clever arrangement, which is not only highly effective but also quite attractive style-wise. Two substantial cast alloy pieces are bolted to each speaker, each accommodating two feet located well outside the footprint of the loudspeaker itself. Though the arrangement is mostly positive, the actual spike-locking arrangements are not ideal. The requirements for an ideal cone diaphragm are very complex, inasmuch as they have to achieve a compromise between several conflicting variables. Low mass is one vital ingredient, in order to maximise sensitivity and ensure rapid responsiveness. However, rigidity is important to maintain pistonic behaviour across as wide a bandwidth as possible and it's also important that potential resonances within the cone are well damped. Monitor Audio has long opted for a deep-anodised aluminium/magnesium alloy as a cone material; the deep-anodising process converting the surface to an oxide that considerably improves the stiffness. Whereas the Platinum series also added 'dimples' to the surface further to increase the stiffness, alongside a costly honeycomb sandwich construction to provide damping, the simpler cones used in the Gold GX series stick to a metal/oxide diaphragm but have replaced the dimples withmore pronounced ridges – a ring around the location where the voice-coil former terminates, plus a series of radial arms reaching out towards the cone edge. By adding a degree of depth dimension, extra stiffness is achieved, while finite element analysis (FEA) has also been used to create an optimum parabolic profile. The twin 140mm bass drivers each have 100mm diameter cones and operate up to a nominal 400Hz, crossing over to the 100mm anodised alloy midrange unit that has a 95mm cone. That in turn operates up to the 2.6kHz crossover point to the tweeter, which is a vertically oriented ribbon-type device, similar but not identical to that used throughout the Platinum range. The ultra-light (18mg) diaphragm is roughly 55x8.5mm and is energised by neodymium magnets and loaded by a modest horn. The delicate diaphragm is protected under a wide-spaced metal mesh. All four drive units are secured by substantial through-bolts that clamp their motors to the back of the enclosure, adding to the overall bracing but also enabling a measure of gasket-decoupling between the driver frames and the front panel. Bending the Box
In another nod towards the Platinum models, the enclosure is created by building up and bonding together multiple layers of thin MDF. The end result is 20mm thick, but this technique allows the sides to form a gentle curve and avoid the focused-frequency standing waves that are generated by parallel faces. Tighter radii are then used to soften the appearance of the front and rear edges and the whole has additional internal bracing. Five alternative fi nishes are listed in the brochure – three real wood veneers alongside black or white piano gloss. Our examples came in a dark brown 'dark walnut' veneer, which is probably the most understated amongst the light 'natural oak' and reddish 'bubinga' alternatives available. The slim rear panel accommodates a modest diameter port and foam bungs are supplied as an option – probably worth trying if the speakers have to be mounted close to a wall. Twin terminal pairs are solidly attached to a vertically oriented cast-alloy panel; bi-wiring or bi-amping is therefore available (the terminal pairs separating the bass units from the mid and treble), though as supplied the speakers are fitted with proper wire 'jumper' links. MA's own silver-plated cabling called Pureflow Silver is used internally, along with high-quality crossover components that include air-core and laminated-core inductors and polypropylene capacitors. Metal mesh grilles are supplied for those who prefer to keep their drivers hidden and attach via hidden sub-veneer magnets, so that unsightly mounting arrangements are avoided. Position with Care While the in-room measurements had suggested that output from the 43Hz-tuned port might interact with our 50Hz room mode and lead to significant mid-bass boom, this didn't really turn out to be a problem in practice. While inserting the port bungs did give a slightly more even bass alignment, it was also a little too dry and the overall sound balance, with the speakers sited well clear of walls, was definitely preferred with the ports actively contributing. Using the bungs makes sense if the speakers have to be close to a wall, but they certainly sounded rather bass-light when located a metre or so out into the room with the bungs inserted in the ports. This might well be because the fundamental character of the Gold GX200 tends to be a little on the bright and light side of neutral, probably because the output of the ribbon tweeter is quite strong at the bottom end of its operating range. This is not a bass-excavator of a speaker; while it sounds suitably agile and hangs on in pretty well, the bass end is not the part of the band that one particularly notices. Rather it leads with its upper midband, presence and lower treble, so that that voices are notably clear and open, ensuring fine intelligibility of lyrics and speech. However, it should also be pointed out that the overall sound balance is just a little lacking in warmth and bass weight. The Presence debate
If the top half of the audio band sounds a shade exposed, it's also quite clean and sweet with it and this does mean that plenty of fine detail is well projected, even when the system is playing at whisper-quiet levels. The down side, of course, is that the sound can become a little aggressive when playing some recordings at high volumes. However, it's nice not to disturb the rest of the household when listening late at night, while still getting to hear plenty of vocal expression. The efficacy of the enclosure shape and construction technique is evident enough in the way the sound is notably free from any boxy character. The stereo soundstage is always well detached from the speakers themselves, with precise central image focus, a well located lateral spread and a decent attempt at delivering appropriate depth perspectives, too even though the latter is mildly compromised by the slightly forward tonal balance. Intelligibility Although this speaker has a decidedly modern appearance, we did find that its tonal balance was very well suited to replaying old-fashioned vinyl discs, as this medium tends to have a sweeter and slightly more restrained presence than CD in general and the more compressed examples of modern recording practices in particular. We also found the GX200s very satisfactory on day-to-day TV and radio viewing and listening, as these sources in particular require the superior voice band intelligibility that goes part and parcel with the Monitor Audio. Many designs today tend to pull down the presence band deliberately, as this can be helpful in allowing the volume to be turned up high without the overall sound becoming unpleasantly aggressive. But with such loudspeakers one then often has to turn up the volume somewhat higher than desirable simply in order to understand what's going on. The much more costly speakers that we were using prior to installing these GX200s did indeed have significantly less relative output through the presence and top end. Although moving to the smaller and much less expensive GX200s did require some adjustment in terms of low end authority, clarity and overall warmth, their extra top end energy often proved welcome, especially when listening to dialogue on a movie soundtrack. Every loudspeaker design represents a collection of compromises, which is why the responsible review should always recommend personal audition prior to purchase. This, of course, is becoming harder as the number of hi-fi stores contract nationwide, but remains critical, especially for speakers. The GX200 does somewhat favour the upper half of the audio band, but it does this rather well, with a sweetness and detail projection that many rivals fail to match. 
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| Review: Excited Pixel BreakTime 2.0 Posted: 10 Jul 2011 02:30 AM PDT There aren't many science guys out there who'll argue that humans evolved to sit at desks, typing away at keyboards and bathing themselves in the glow of monitors. In fact, recent studies claim this lifestyle is extremely bad for you and you should at the very least take regular breaks from your hallowed sitting position. BreakTime is an app that can give you these reminders and, optionally, force you to step away from the keyboard. In use, BreakTime reminds us a lot of The Iconfactory's Take Five: after you define time settings (for gaps between breaks and length of breaks), the app gets out of your way. Then, 10 seconds before a break is due, a sleek countdown window appears under BreakTime's menu-bar item. You can use a slider to delay the break, if you wish; otherwise, the screen dims and the BreakTime countdown begins, signalling your window of opportunity to grab that cuppa. Using the app's preferences, you can optionally have it 'enforce' your break by disabling the Mac OS X app switcher and any early use of the countdown window's Done button. If you're insanely busy, there are escape paths - the window has delay timers of its own (for one, five and 15 minutes), and you can always quit the app using Command+Q. We really like BreakTime - rather like Take Five, BreakTime does a simple thing really elegantly, with very little intrusion. It's also light on the system and light on your wallet, and it's therefore pretty much perfect for anyone who rarely remembers to take regular breaks from office tasks. And we bet that's most of you. 
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