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Techradar |
- BBC: Global iPlayer coming to iPhone and Apple TV next
- BBC iPlayer iPad app hits Europe today
- Microsoft releases 'complete' Mango SDK to app developers
- LulzSec 'spokesperson' arrested by Scotland Yard
- Qualcomm launches iOS Augmented Reality SDK
- Samsung Galaxy S2 to relaunch in white
- New electric car charging network launches in UK
- Scientists create first transparent phone battery
- 'Accelerating' Kindle sales boost Amazon's financial results
- Opinion: Why is Windows Phone still not ready for the big time?
- Oracle quietly deletes blog praising Android
- Review: Panasonic Toughbook CF-53
- Review: Lenovo IdeaPad K1
- Video: Laptop buyer's guide
- Sony patents interactive PlayStation doll
- In Depth: How to view and edit RAW natively in Windows
- In Depth: How to view and edit RAW natively in Windows
- US Navy invests in laser machine guns
- UK to get Discovery Channel 3D TV shows
- Buying Guide: The best PC upgrades for gamers
- Facebook simplifies face recognition opt-out process
- 3D discomfort explained by academic study
- Exclusive: Vodafone planning wider range of Facebook phones
- Sony unveils new look wireless Walkman A-Series
- EA boss shifts strategy to embrace mobile and social
| BBC: Global iPlayer coming to iPhone and Apple TV next Posted: 27 Jul 2011 08:45 PM PDT The BBC has revealed that the next stage of its global iPlayer roll-out will see the service launch on the Apple iPhone and Apple TV set-top box. The Corporation revealed late on Wednesday that the iPlayer's long-awaited international expansion will arrive exclusively via the iPad in 11 European countries on Thursday. Following the one year iPad trial, Auntie will set its sights on other Apple devices and appears to be focused on partnering only with the Cupertino-based giant for the time being. "This is a pilot – we want to learn more about on-demand behaviour ... We think the next phase will be on iPhones and Apple TV," said the BBC's president of worldwide networks Jana Bennett. The admission also offers a hint for the UK-based iPlayer's future. Apple TV compatibility isn't something us Brits have at our disposal, nor is it something that has yet been heavily mooted. Exclusively iPad The BBC also explained the decision to go exclusively with the iPad for the initial European launch of the iPlayer, which means only the 7.5m Europeans who own Apple tablet can access the service. "We hope that this service becomes multi-device, multi-platform and multi-territory over time, but as a premium-but-niche service, we did not want to go in with both feet from day one," said Luke Bradley-Jones, who heads up BBC.com "We're spending the next year in a pilot-type phase focusing on one device, to make a clean and very compelling experience. We have a great relationship with Apple in terms of the promotional commitments they'll give us too." Hibernation override The BBC also revealed that it was able to override a key piece of iPad functionality in order for users to download iPlayer content to view offline. When we were doing our user testing, the use case was picking six shows before going on a long journey, and leaving them to download to the iPad overnight," said Mark Smith, director of the global iPlayer project "The way the device works, though, is it hibernates and stops you from doing that: you wake up the next morning and only half a show has downloaded. We have managed to override that functionality, and Apple are comfortable with us doing that." So for now, the moral of the story seems to be this. if you're an ex-pat who wants to watch BBC content on-demand, better get yourself an Apple gadget pronto. 
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| BBC iPlayer iPad app hits Europe today Posted: 27 Jul 2011 08:21 PM PDT The BBC iPlayer will begin its global roll-out on Thursday when the Apple iPad application becomes available in 11 Western European countries. The service will hit the App Store with the Corporation promising that the International iPlayer will be more of an on-demand platform rather than the catch-up TV service we're accustomed to. The iPad app will be the exclusive way for Europeans to access the global iPlayer service during the one-year trial period. As well as showing new episodes of EastEnders, Top Gear and Doctor Who, the service will also offer cherished archive content like Only Fools and Horses on-demand. 100 hours a month The catalogue will contain 1,500 hours of programming at first with the Beeb promising to add 100 hours a month from a 50-60 year history of programming. Mark Smith, global iPlayer launch director says: "Most audiences know the big shows like Top Gear or Doctor Who, but maybe not so much about other shows, so we have been working hard on how we surface that content." BBC.com managing director Mark Bradley-Jones added: "We think we have a load of unmet demand for BBC and British content internationally," "This is not a catch-up service: this is a video-on-demand service. We will have content from the last month, but also the best from the catalogue stretching back 50 to 60 years." ITV and Channel 4 too As an unexpected bonus the international iPlayer 10 per cent of the content will be comprised from ITV and Channel 4 shows thanks to deals Auntie made with independent television companies. The app will offer some free content supported by pre-roll ads and sponsorship, but for full access Europeans will have to pay €6.99 a month or €49.99 a year. Users can stream over Wi-Fi and 3G and also download a programme for viewing offline, which overrides Apple's hibernation functionality. Not even us Brits can stream the iPlayer app over 3G yet, so hopefully that's coming to the UK build soon. Launch countries The 11 launch countries are Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland. UK users will not be able to access the service, which means no on-demand classics for us. Another disappointed group will be ex-pats living across the pond in America who still can't access the Beeb's library (A handy little VPN server can assist with that though). The US, Canada and Australia will follow later this year as the one year trial extends to more territories. "The rights picture for the US is a little bit more complicated," said Luke Bradley-Jones. "The nature of the agreements with our rights partners are different, and the windows across our existing business are older than they are in Europe. "Form our side, we have to jump through a few more of those commercial and legal hoops. We could have launched in the US with a product this week, but there would have been a few too many missing parts." via Guardian 
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| Microsoft releases 'complete' Mango SDK to app developers Posted: 27 Jul 2011 03:28 PM PDT Microsoft has made its third big Windows Phone Mango announcement of the last 24 hours with the latest being a "more complete" release of the app SDK to developers. Earlier on Wednesday we learned that the Fujitsu Toshiba IS12T will be the first handset to boast Mango, featuring a 13.2mp camera, 32GB internal storage and an 800x480p, 3.7-inch display. Yesterday Microsoft revealed it had finished work on the long-awaited OS upgrade and had handed the completed build over to manufacturers. Now app developers have got their chance to get cracking on creating new and exciting applications for Mango before its launch this autumn. More complete build Senior Product Manager for Windows Phone Cliff Simpkins said on the company blog: "We've received positive feedback on the Mango tools and bits we've shared, but appreciate that many devs are still interested in working with a more complete build. "Today's refresh of the tools represent a month of great progress by the engineering team, further refining and improving the Mango developer experience. "What we are providing is a genuine release candidate build, with enough code checked in and APIs locked down that this OS is close enough to RTM that, as a developer, it's more than capable to see you through the upcoming RC drop of the tools and app submission." Although much of the smoke has cleared, and the Mango picture is now much clearer than it was just yesterday, we still don't know when the first handset will arrive in the UK. Come on Microsoft, throw us a freakin' bone here. via CNET 
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| LulzSec 'spokesperson' arrested by Scotland Yard Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:07 PM PDT Police have arrested a 19-year-old man they believe is the 'spokesperson' for the hacking groups LulzSec and Anonymous. The teenager, who uses the online monicker of 'Topiary', was picked up following a raid by the Metropolitan Police in the remote Shetland Islands on Wednesday morning. The arrest is the continuation of a police offensive against the hacktivist movement, which last week saw the arrest of two dozen suspects in the UK, the US and the Netherlands. Topiary is seen as one of the most prominent names on the scene, which has sparked attacks on law enforcement websites and technology companies like Sony. Hactivitst In a Statement, Scotland Yard said: "The man arrested is believed to be linked to an ongoing international investigation in to the criminal activity of the so-called "hacktivist" groups Anonymous and LulzSec, and uses the online nickname "Topiary" which is presented as the spokesperson for the groups. "Today's operation is linked to PCeU's [Police Central e-Crime Unit] ongoing investigation into network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against a number of international business and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group." Prankster Topiary's Twitter profile says he is a "simple prankster turned swank garden hedge. Worked with Anonymous, LulzSec, and other such paragons of intense cyber victory. You are free." His last Tweet, dated July 21st, came following the arrest of around two dozen suspected members of the hacking groups and simply said: "You can't arrest an idea." What's most surprising about this is that all the way up in the Shetland Islands he was able to obtain a fast enough internet connection to download a .jpg, let alone take a high profile position as a "hacktivist." via Guardian 
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| Qualcomm launches iOS Augmented Reality SDK Posted: 27 Jul 2011 12:21 PM PDT Chip manufacturer Qualcomm has released an SDK for iOS devices which will allow developers to create a host of new Augmented Reality applications for the platform. Following on from the successful launch of the Android SDK last year, iPhone app makers will now have access to the tool, which will provide the framework for a new breed of AR apps on Apple devices The idea behind the helpful tool is to allow app developers to build AR apps without the hassle of creating the mechanism from scratch. Heavy lifting Qualcomm has already done all of the coding heavy lifting by handling how the device pulls in images through the camera lens. Thanks to the Beta launch of the SDK, developers can create new vision-based apps, games and tools more easily. A launch for iOS devices comes as somewhat of a surprise as Qualcomm had previously intimated that it was concentrating on developing this platform for Android phones running its Snapdragon processors. Expect an influx of augmented reality apps to appear on the App Store as developers get to grips with the Qualcomm SDK. via TechCrunch 
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| Samsung Galaxy S2 to relaunch in white Posted: 27 Jul 2011 09:41 AM PDT The Samsung Galaxy S2 is set to get another flavour on the market - it's going to be available in white. This frankly earth-shattering news comes via online retailer Clove, which has put up a placeholder describing the new device as the 'The popular Samsung Galaxy S2 in white'. There are several key differences to between the white Galaxy S2 and the original black version - it's likely the front plate will be white, along with the home button as well. On top of this the rest of the chassis and feasibly the rear of the phone will also be in white too, although this is, as yet, unconfirmed. It's white, OK? WHITE. Nothing else is different The white Samsung Galaxy S2 will be available with the same 16GB storage option as before, and will cost a similar £492 according to Clove (or £410 if you can find a way around the pesky VAT). We'll level with you - there's not a lot more that you can say about a phone that's exactly the same but a different colour... but hey, we managed it with the iPhone 4. Speaking of which, Samsung surely deserves some sort of award for managing to launch a new phone and announcing a white variant in under 10 months - Apple should be ashamed of itself. 
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| New electric car charging network launches in UK Posted: 27 Jul 2011 09:12 AM PDT A major new electric car charging initiative launches in the UK this week, with the arrival of a new network of charging machines in motorway service stations across the land set to boost drivers' interest in electric cars. At least, that's what the electric car lobby hope to see happen, with the expectation that a UK-wide network of low-cost and quick, easy-to-use charging machine will help to overcome many potential electric car drivers' "range anxiety" – ie their fear that they might run out of power miles away from home (or from their nearest charging machine). Overcoming range anxiety "Today we launched the world's first national charging network for electric cars," writes Dale Vince, the founder of green energy company Ecotricity, in The Guardian. "That may sound a bit grand, for something quite wonderfully simple - a series of charging posts installed at motorway services up and down the country…. For electric cars, that are easy to access and free to use. "Enabling Britain's electric car drivers to drive the length and breadth of the country, with all the convenience of simply pulling into a motorway service station to top up." Even though the UK has a mere 2,000 cars on the roads right now, the Ecotricity founder hopes that the new charging network should boost demand for electric vehicles amongst Brits. "It's often said that one of the reasons more people don't buy electric cars is because of a lack of charging facilities – while the reason more charging facilities aren't built is said to be because not enough people are buying electric cars. We're hoping to break that impasse." Vince hopes that his new charging network will help to "kickstart Britain's electric car revolution" as the focus to date has been on installing charging centres in the UK's major cities, and not across the motorway network. "The average car in Britain travels around 20 miles a day, a distance that most modern electric cars can sustain for almost a week without needing to charge. And most car owners have access to off-street parking (70% apparently) – and therefore are able to charge at home, at night. Most cars won't need to charge, most days. It's the longer journeys where charging is needed most." Ecotricity's charging points are also based on fully renewable wind-powered energy, offering drivers the chance of a "full zero-emission driving potential".
With 28 million cars on the roads of Britain, burning up around 20 million tonnes of oil each year, it's clear why electric car evangelists such as Vince are keen to drive home their message. "We could power all of that with just 10,000 of today's wind turbines and 5,000 of tomorrow's (they double in size every few years)," claims the Ecotricity founder, adding, "the grid can easily cope, in fact if Britain switched to electric vehicles the grid would operate more efficiently." Revenge of the Electric Car Elsewhere, the new electric car industry documentary from director Chris Paine's Revenge of the Electric Car is set to get a widespread cinema release later this year - the follow-up to his hit, Who Killed the Electric Car? "I'm very pleased with the reaction so far," Paine told Mother Nature Network. "You always get worried that your movie might be coming out too late, but 'Who Killed' didn't find its true audience for a year. I hope the timing is right." Some of the characters in Paine's film include the infamous Elon Musk of Tesla Motors, Bob Lutz (previously the vice chairman of General Motors and responsible for The Chevy Volt) and Carlos Ghosn (the Nissan CEO responsible for the Nissan Leaf). 
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| Scientists create first transparent phone battery Posted: 27 Jul 2011 09:00 AM PDT Researchers at Stanford University have created what is thought to be the world's first transparent battery, indicating that invisible devices may be an imminent possibility. Inside the lithium-ion battery is a tight mesh of electrodes that are so tightly packed that they appear invisible to the naked eye and the outside is made of a fully transparent polymer called Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The result is a thin, flexible, barely visible battery. With transparent displays already in development for televisions and phones, making the inner workings equally as see-through was the next logical step. Now you see me, now you don't At the moment these batteries only have about half of the energy of a regular battery, but further development could improve on that. Yi Cui, a developer from the project, said: "Its cost could be similar to those of regular batteries, especially if we use low cost metals" There are a number of applications that this new transparent battery could have, particularly being able to study what is happening inside batteries while they are at work. The designers have filed for a patent but Mr Cui has set his sights on big things: "I want to talk to Steve Jobs about this. I want a transparent iPhone!" But sure, fully transparent phones sound good in theory - as long as you remember where you put them. 
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| 'Accelerating' Kindle sales boost Amazon's financial results Posted: 27 Jul 2011 08:40 AM PDT Amazon's latest financial results have underlined the rude health of the internet giant, with sales of the Kindle ereader 'accelerating'. Although net income fell to 41 cents a share year on year, Amazon's quarterly results were better than analysts had predicted and sales have soared by 51 per cent compared to 2010. Amazon stated that the Kindle ebook reader has been a key seller, although it did not drill down into figures besides saying that the sales accelerated compared to the first quarter of this year. Innovation driving "Low prices, expanding selection, fast delivery and innovation are driving the fastest growth we've seen in over a decade," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "Kindle 3G with Special Offers has quickly become our bestselling Kindle… Customers love the convenience of a 3G reader - no hunting for or paying for Wi-Fi hotspots. Amazon picks up the tab for the 3G wireless, so you have no monthly payments or annual contracts." Amazon also pointed to the launch of Kindle Textbook rental and the 950,000 books now available on the Kindle store as boosting the ereader's success. 
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| Opinion: Why is Windows Phone still not ready for the big time? Posted: 27 Jul 2011 08:35 AM PDT Windows Phone still feels like a pretty nascent operating system - after all, it was less than 18 months ago we got the first official look at the new Metro design. However, fast forward to where we are today and you have to question whether Microsoft is doing enough to really become a front running mobile OS provider. I was lucky enough to check out the Microsoft campus in Redmond last year to see how the platform was being built - and I was left hugely impressed with the ethos of all the engineers working on it. Huge swathes of people all working on creating an OS that was both intuitive and simple first and foremost: an excellent idea. Pretty much the antithesis of the Symbian mentality, and we can all see where that project is heading. But come October this year, we're only going to have seen one major upgrade to the OS in the shape of Mango, and quite feasibly no new phones from the major manufacturers either. The leap forward made by Mango is terrifically important to Microsoft - (pseudo) multitasking, better app integration and opening up more code for developers to tinker with are all exactly the right moves to bring Windows Phone to the masses. We wanted it yesterday The only problem is this update really needed to have launched already and the tech press should be talking about the new Tango update if Microsoft is really going to keep the OS front and centre when users are thinking of a new phone to upgrade to. And it's perplexing to see no new handsets from the big manufacturers already - I was really hoping to have a good 10-15 phones to choose from on the market to show people Microsoft was serious about the project. In February 2010, when Windows Phone was announced, Google was chatting to all and sundry about the second iteration of its Éclair (2.1) Android version. In the same 18 months and with arguably the same amount of resource, Google has added nearly double the major updates to its phone platform and managed to bang out a tablet-friendly offering too. However, that's not to say I'm unimpressed with the way Microsoft is crafting Windows Phone - I think the approach is spot on, as by focusing on the UI and intuition of the phone, rather than the raw functionality, you're giving the handsets the best chance of attracting the new smartphone user that has a play with a phone in the shop, and that's a very important demographic indeed. So while the speed at which Microsoft is trying to catch up with the likes of Google and Apple worries me, if it can do enough to keep increasing the number of users at an adequate level then there's no reason why it can't be a front-running OS in a couple of years. So come on HTC, Samsung et al: let's see some cool Windows Phone models in the near future - and hopefully we'll be taste testing Tango sooner rather than later. 
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| Oracle quietly deletes blog praising Android Posted: 27 Jul 2011 08:05 AM PDT A 2007 blog post from Sun Microsystems' then-CEO Jonathan Schwartz congratulating Google on the launch of Android and its use of Java has been deleted. Way back in 2007, when Google first announced its new mobile OS, Sun Microsystems was still a company in its own right and held the patents relating to Java. In it, Schwartz, and, by extension Sun Microsystems, seems to give Android his blessing: "I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of others from Sun in offering my heartfelt congratulations to Google on the announcement of their new Java/Linux phone platform, Android. Congratulations! "Today is an incredible day for the open source community, and a massive endorsement of two of the industry's most prolific free software communities, Java and Linux." Sunshine, lollipops and Google Fast forward four years, and Sun, along with its patents, has been bought by Oracle which is currently embroiled in a dispute with Google over those very Java patents. Some now suspect that Oracle deleted the blog post in the hopes that it would not come up in the legal proceedings. Unluckily for Oracle, the fact that the post has disappeared was spotted by Cnet, which then promptly revived the missing missive using the ever-handy Way Back machine. It's not clear if this posting can or will have any real bearing on the court case; the last update saw Judge Alsup suggesting that Oracle rethink its claim for damages - but it certainly doesn't help a company trying to claim patent violation when it technically publicly gave its blessing less than five years ago. 
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| Review: Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 Posted: 27 Jul 2011 07:46 AM PDT Panasonic has three classes in its Toughbook range: Fully ruggedised, semi ruggedised and business ruggedised. The CF-53 is part of the semi-ruggedised range and is therefore balanced between durability and performance. It's not meant for exploring the Masai Mara, but it's a perfect machine for the bumps and knocks of a travelling business professional or anyone who often works outside. The build quality is better than anything we've seen recently and Panasonic has taken care to make the design as appealing as it is usable. The silver lid has slight structured ridges in place, and lifts on solid hinges after being unhooked from the chassis. The keyboard is compact and located in the centre of the chassis with space either side for the speakers. Unsurprisingly, there was no flex around any part of the keyboard or touchpad. The solid design means that you can drop the Toughbook from up to 76cm without affecting performance. So there's no need to worry if it takes a tumble from either your desk or your lap. Panasonic has added a handle to the base of the CF-53 so you can carry it around like a briefcase. Just beware that at 2.7kg, it's not that light. The compact keyboard limits the amount of dust and grime that can get between the keys. Any liquid spilled over keyboard will filter into grooves laid underneath the keys and run out the side of the chassis. The 14-inch display is capable of Full HD detail, but lacks a Super-TFT coating. That means you won't get distracted by reflections when using the laptop outside or in brightly lit areas. Obviously, movies and pictures won't look as good as on a Super-TFT screen, but the CF-53 sticks resolutely to the 'form follows function' rule of design. Panasonic has built the Toughbook around an Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5-2510M processor, which coped very well with our tests. The added 4GB of RAM is the minimum you would expect on a business machine at this price. There's no dedicated graphics card, as this machine isn't designed for playing games. However, the integrated Intel HD 3000 GPU will be able to easily handle less complex tasks such as browsing detailed websites. Tech Labs
Battery Eater 2005: 273 minutes The CF-53 has a 320GB hard drive, which again is pretty standard nowadays, but a very impressive battery life of 273 minutes. As this is a device made for travelling, there are plenty of ports for peripherals, including three USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0 socket. There are both HDMI and VGA Out connections for using the Toughbook with an external monitor. All the connection ports (except the headphone and microphone sockets) are protected by plastic shields. Buying a Panasonic Toughbook is never going to be cheap, but in terms of business or outdoor computing, the CF-53 is one of the most durable laptops we've ever seen. The Sandy Bridge technology and decent battery life mean it's no slouch when it comes to performance either. 
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| Posted: 27 Jul 2011 06:45 AM PDT Lenovo is going on an all-out assault on the world of tablets, creating a new division specifically for them and announcing a new range. The Lenovo lineup includes the Windows 7-running IdeaPad Tablet P1 and two Android 3.1-powered tablets, including the business-focussed ThinkPad Tablet, and the consumer-focussed IdeaPad K1 which we have here. As Android tablets go, it's fairly typical when it comes to specs. The screen is 10.1 inches, with a resolution of 1280 x 800, while the processing and graphics power is provided by a Nvidia Tegra 2 chip, running at the usual 1GHz. There's also a nice 1GB of RAM to provide plenty of memory for multitasking. There's 32GB of built-in storage, with a microSD card reader for adding more, and a micro-HDMI port for playing video on your HDTV. There's also a five-megapixel rear camera, complete with LED flash, and a two-megapixel front camera.
As we mentioned, Android 3.1 is the OS of choice here, and Lenovo has jam-packed the IdeaPad K1 with additional software, which we'll cover on the next page. Unusually for Android 3.0 tablets, there's actually a physical Home button, which even has gesture recognition in order to act as a Back button, too.
The front of the IdeaPad K1 is nothing special - shiny and black. There's a massively chunky bezel around the 10.1-inch, 16:10 touchscreen, which house the Home button and the front-facing camera. The camera is designed to be used in landscape orientation, while the Home button seems meant to be used in portrait. Around the edge of the K1 is a silver rim, which is where you'll find the Lock/On/Off button, the volume control and an orientation lock.
On another side, you'll find the microSD card slot, the HDMI port, a headphone jack and a docking connector, which you also use for charging and connecting to a USB port.
The back of the IdeaPad K1 is mostly plastic, with a honeycomb effect that makes it nice and grippy. The plastic isn't very sturdy, flexing easily under even a light grip. It sounds hollow and loose when tapped, but we doubt it would actually be much of a liability in use – it just feels cheap. There are stereo speakers on the back, too, and that rear-facing camera with flash. At 13.3mm thick and 750g, it certainly feels chunkier and heavier in the hand than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 or the iPad 2.
It's actually a good deal larger than the iPad 2 – it's slightly wider, and a few centimetres longer. This is pretty much totally attributable to the size of the bezel. The IdeaPad K1 comes in black and silver, white and silver, or a funky red and silver. You can expect to pay £369 for it. |
Electric sports cars: but will true petrolheads ever really adopt electric vehicles?
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Posted: 27 Jul 2011 06:13 AM PDT
Buying a laptop is a complicated process, with a web of decisions to be made before you even start looking.
Are you a gamer? How much are you willing to spend? Do you want a Mac or Windows PC? Are you looking for a desktop replacement or something a little more portable?
Fortunately, TechRadar has asked What Laptop editor James Stables to lay out his advice for those people looking to purchase a notebook, and our special video report should help you pick the one that's right for you.
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Sony patents interactive PlayStation doll
Posted: 27 Jul 2011 05:58 AM PDT
Forget about motion-control, PlayStation-compatible dolls would seem to be the new future of videogaming, if the latest patent news from Sony is anything to go by.
This week, the US Patent Office has revealed that Sony is looking to develop a PlayStation-compatible interactive doll.
Sony's new PlayStation peripheral takes the idea that Microsoft had way back in 1997 with its soon-to-be-forgetten ActiMate tech toy and runs with it, with Sony mentioning Microsoft's earlier project a number of times in its new patent application.
Title range
Sony's new patent reads as follows: "The success of such interactive toys depends on there being a good range of titles for the toy to interact with both at launch and into the future.
"It is also dependent on whether parents will buy a comparatively expensive toy whilst believing it will require further purchases of videos to maintain their child's interest. The present invention aims to mitigate or alleviate the above problem."
Expect further news from Sony on its new PlayStation doll at some point soon, which looks like it will feature wireless internet, USB and Ethernet ports to let the thing connect up to "other peripheral devices in addition to game controllers", such as Sony's PlayStation Portable and the EyeToy.
Wireless
"The interactive toy may be readily arranged to communicate with a PS3 via either a WiFi or Bluetooth wireless link," adds Sony's patent.
"Where a toy is not licensed to interact fully with a media disk, the PS3 can issue generic interaction instructions that follow the spirit of the interactive content on the disk, allowing the toy for example to give generic positive and negative comments as appropriate," the patent adds (slightly more frighteningly).
"This avoids frustration by the user, who as a child is likely to be unaware of and unconcerned by licensing issues. Thus alternatively or in addition, rather than sending a specific instruction to perform a specific action, the PS3 could send a more abstract instruction such as 'act surprised' that is interpreted by the toy according to the resources it has available – for example, the ability to throw up its arms, or to select an appropriate phrase from a built in vocabulary.
"More generally, such a layer of abstraction can simplify and reduce the amount of supplementary data needed, as it allows each type of toy to react in character without the need for different supplementary data tracks. A number of such basic responses could be codified and pre-programmed within suitably enabled toys.
Much like the millions of PlayStation fanboys when they read the above news story, Sony also wants its new PlayStation doll to be able to cry be using "a refillable liquid reservoir and a liquid release means (for example to generate tears)."
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In Depth: How to view and edit RAW natively in Windows
Posted: 27 Jul 2011 05:55 AM PDT
If you take digital photos in one of the dozens of different RAW formats (the uncompressed, unprocessed data from the camera sensor), you'll get more control over the way the picture looks.
But you also have to install software from your camera manufacturer or a program like Aperture or Lightroom to view and edit RAW images in Windows.
The new Windows Camera Codec pack changes that; install it and you can view RAW images in Windows Explorer and the latest version of Windows Live Photo Gallery.
You can also import RAW images with the Photo Gallery tool and edit the images in Photo Gallery, including the Photo Fuse and panoramic stitch tools.
Although what Photo Gallery does is tell you to make a JPEG copy to edit so it preserves your original (which is what you want it to do), but it doesn't actually make the copy for you when you click an editing tool (which we might prefer). If you add tag, geotags or captions to the RAW file you'll get those in any JPEG copies as well.
"We're not creating a new enhancement to replace Lightroom or Photoshop," Aquino-Jose told us, "and we respect the editing software you install from the manufacturer, but we're enhancing on top of that."
SEE RAW: With the Camera Codec Pack, RAW files like .NEFs get previews in Explorer
One thing you can't do is print a RAW image directly from Explorer (which you can with JPEGs), but if you open the file in Photo Gallery or the photo viewer you can print it like any other image.
Working with multiple RAW formats
Back in 2005 Microsoft tried to build RAW support into Vista by supporting Windows Imaging Component codecs for RAW format files from camera manufacturers; Canon and Nikon and a few others supplied WIC codecs for a handful of versions of RAW formats but it didn't cover enough file formats to be comprehensive and the codecs are often only available for 32-bit Windows.
"Even with the manufacturer's codec pack and software, the experience on Windows has not always been smooth," Aquino-Jose admitted.
OPEN RAW: Windows Live Photo Gallery can work with RAW files now too
The Camera Codec Pack works with multiple RAW formats (including DNG) from 120 different cameras from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Pentax, Leica, Minolta, Epson and Panasonic, in 32 and 64-vit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, and more models will be supported as they come out. "We consider this version one," Aquino-Jose told us,"120 formats, with more to come.
Camera manufacturers update their codecs; we want to enhance experience for consumers so we will be regularly updating the codec pack with RAW file formats."
EDIT – ALMOST: Editing RAW files means making a copy (good) yourself (bad)
You can download the RAW for Windows codec pack directly; if you have the recent QFE2 update for Photo Gallery (and no WIC RAW codecs installed already), trying to open a RAW format file in Photo Gallery will also trigger a dialog suggesting you download the codecs.
If you don't have the update, you'll be able to view images in Photo Gallery if you install the codec pack but you won't be able to edit them.
We tried the codec pack out with a range of DNG and .NEF RAW files.
It took Explorer a little longer to display thumbnails for a folder of RAW files than for JPEG images, but that's because the files are larger and they don't have a thumbnail stored in the RAW file the way a JPEG does, so the first time you look at them Windows has to calculate a thumbnail preview to use. Once that's done, viewing RAW images is as fast – and as simple – as viewing JPEGs. Finally.
GET RAW: If you have the right version of Photo Gallery, you'll see this prompt
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In Depth: How to view and edit RAW natively in Windows
Posted: 27 Jul 2011 05:55 AM PDT
If you take digital photos in one of the dozens of different RAW formats (the uncompressed, unprocessed data from the camera sensor), you'll get more control over the way the picture looks.
But you also have to install software from your camera manufacturer or a program like Aperture or Lightroom to view and edit RAW images in Windows.
The new Windows Camera Codec pack changes that; install it and you can view RAW images in Windows Explorer and the latest version of Windows Live Photo Gallery.
You can also import RAW images with the Photo Gallery tool and edit the images in Photo Gallery, including the Photo Fuse and panoramic stitch tools.
Although what Photo Gallery does is tell you to make a JPEG copy to edit so it preserves your original (which is what you want it to do), but it doesn't actually make the copy for you when you click an editing tool (which we might prefer). If you add tag, geotags or captions to the RAW file you'll get those in any JPEG copies as well.
"We're not creating a new enhancement to replace Lightroom or Photoshop," Aquino-Jose told us, "and we respect the editing software you install from the manufacturer, but we're enhancing on top of that."
SEE RAW: With the Camera Codec Pack, RAW files like .NEFs get previews in Explorer
One thing you can't do is print a RAW image directly from Explorer (which you can with JPEGs), but if you open the file in Photo Gallery or the photo viewer you can print it like any other image.
Working with multiple RAW formats
Back in 2005 Microsoft tried to build RAW support into Vista by supporting Windows Imaging Component codecs for RAW format files from camera manufacturers; Canon and Nikon and a few others supplied WIC codecs for a handful of versions of RAW formats but it didn't cover enough file formats to be comprehensive and the codecs are often only available for 32-bit Windows.
"Even with the manufacturer's codec pack and software, the experience on Windows has not always been smooth," Aquino-Jose admitted.
OPEN RAW: Windows Live Photo Gallery can work with RAW files now too
The Camera Codec Pack works with multiple RAW formats (including DNG) from 120 different cameras from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Pentax, Leica, Minolta, Epson and Panasonic, in 32 and 64-vit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, and more models will be supported as they come out. "We consider this version one," Aquino-Jose told us,"120 formats, with more to come.
Camera manufacturers update their codecs; we want to enhance experience for consumers so we will be regularly updating the codec pack with RAW file formats."
EDIT – ALMOST: Editing RAW files means making a copy (good) yourself (bad)
You can download the RAW for Windows codec pack directly; if you have the recent QFE2 update for Photo Gallery (and no WIC RAW codecs installed already), trying to open a RAW format file in Photo Gallery will also trigger a dialog suggesting you download the codecs.
If you don't have the update, you'll be able to view images in Photo Gallery if you install the codec pack but you won't be able to edit them.
We tried the codec pack out with a range of DNG and .NEF RAW files.
It took Explorer a little longer to display thumbnails for a folder of RAW files than for JPEG images, but that's because the files are larger and they don't have a thumbnail stored in the RAW file the way a JPEG does, so the first time you look at them Windows has to calculate a thumbnail preview to use. Once that's done, viewing RAW images is as fast – and as simple – as viewing JPEGs. Finally.
GET RAW: If you have the right version of Photo Gallery, you'll see this prompt
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US Navy invests in laser machine guns
Posted: 27 Jul 2011 05:52 AM PDT
The US Navy is counting down the days until it receives a new integrated weapons system that combines the traditional rat-tat-tat of the machine gun with the pew-pew-pew of the laser.
As part of a $2.8 million contract from the US Navy, BAE systems is working with Boeing to develop the new firearm, combining a solid state laser with the Mk 38 Mod 2 machine gun.
This will produce a multi-functional killing machine, which should be able to use the laser alone as well as providing a guide for aiming the machine gun function.
A deadly game of Laser Quest
However, there may be trouble ahead – and not just for the US Navy's enemies; the prototype that's currently in development features a top-end laser blast of 10 kilowatts which is substantially below what is "considered militarily effective".
There are question marks over whether the ships can carry generators that will provide enough power for a "militarily effective" laser gun.
It's also not clear how much the salty sea air could mess with the super-focused laser's effectiveness – suffice it to say the US Navy is still a way off installing these death rays on their ships.
Still, might be worth stepping up work on those anti-lasers, eh?
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UK to get Discovery Channel 3D TV shows
Posted: 27 Jul 2011 05:15 AM PDT
US broadcaster Discovery Networks has struck deals with Virgin Media and Sky in the UK to produce new 3D TV content.
Discovery will make 3D extreme sports and natural history shows for Sky and Virgin Media for genres including natural history, engineering, crime and extreme sports.
Providing you are not in that unfortunate minority of viewers who cannot enjoy 3D entertainment due to those annoyingly persistent headaches, you will no doubt be glad to hear that both Sky and Virgin Media have signed content deals to broadcast shows such as Renegade Pictures' 3D Safari and Tigress Productions' Beautiful Freaks.
Le freak est chic
3D Safari is set to be a 10-part series of 60-minute shows filmed at Woburn Abbey's safari park in the UK.
Beautiful Freaks is set to be a 60-minute special to be shot in Namibia and hosted by Discovery Networks regular Nick Baker.
Susanna Dinnage, general manager of Discovery UK and Ireland, says of the latest 3D TV deals: "These are substantial and ambitious deals that will enrich the 3D experience of anyone who has Sky and Virgin Media's 3D services."
The news follows earlier news about a new academic study claiming to understand the reasons for 3D discomfort amongst some 3D TV and movie viewers.
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Buying Guide: The best PC upgrades for gamers
Posted: 27 Jul 2011 04:51 AM PDT
There are certain phrases that are irrelevant if not completely meaningless to a PC gamer. Phrases like 'press start to continue' and 'I don't care about frame rates' are just two.
The most meaningless to us, though, is the oft-heard phrase 'if it ain't broke don't fix it.' Frankly, we can't help ourselves, but thanks to the unique way in which the PC has evolved we can get elbow-deep in printed circuit boards and really make a difference to our favourite games.
The age-old bastion of PC gaming has been the ability to replace key components of your machine as and when required to gain extra frame rates in the latest games. For a long time it was all about the CPU itself, and to a lesser extent the amount of RAM available, but with the advent of 3D gaming and the graphics accelerator card, the GPU has become just as vital to a smooth-running gaming rig.
Beating the bottleneck
But all along it's been about identifying bottlenecks in your system in order to pursue that Holy Grail of PC-dom: the balanced PC. Only a well-balanced machine will give you the full use of every component in your rig, and when you've spent £300 on a new graphics card you don't want to find out your CPU is making it work at only 50 per cent of its potential.
And that's why we're here, to stop you making impulsive purchases without thinking through the consequences.
We've picked two machines, representing rigs from both Intel and AMD camps that would've been fairly decent gaming PCs a couple of years ago, and we've tested a whole host of new components in each to discover the best PC upgrades.
But first...
There's a couple of caveats, though - aren't there always? The cheapest upgrade for any PC right now is to throw more RAM at it. After all, for £50 you can pick up 4GB of fast DDR3. But if you're after gaming performance enhancements anything above 2GB really isn't going to deliver anything in terms of frame rates.
General Windows performance will feel better, however, but only then if you're running a 64-bit operating system. And speaking of 64-bit operating systems, a rig from a couple of years ago wouldn't have come with Windows 7, oh no, you'd have been stuck with the mark of Vista, and probably the 32-bit version too.
Now most of us have made the move over to Windows 7 64-bit, according to the latest Steam Hardware Survey 41 per cent of us are running Win7 64-bit, with 22 per cent still operating in the dark ages of XP. Only 13 per cent are stuck in the Vista doldrums, so we're going to assume the OS upgrade has been made already.
So with that boring software shizzle out of the way, what do we do about getting some new hardware jammed into the confines of our beautiful gaming PCs?
AMD base rig
Motherboard: Asus M4A78T-E
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 550 Black Edition
RAM: 2GB DDR3
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS
Processor upgrade
We've got three upgrade options on offer for this here AMD rig. Thanks to its AM3 pedigree the upgrade path is laid out before us like the yellow-brick road, meaning we can just drop in any modern AMD processor we happen to fancy.
Chip choice
The starting point is the dual-core Phenom II X2 550 BE, then we can see what another couple of CPU cores gives us with the Athlon II X4 645 quad. Moving ever upwards there's the similarly quad-core, but faster and L3 cache-heavy Phenom II X4 965 BE, followed closely by the hex-core Phenom II X6 1090T BE.
So we've got a wide range of processors on offer, but you can see that by purely upgrading the CPU itself you are seriously limited by the power on offer with the Nvidia 8800GTS. In its day it was an effective mid-range DirectX 10 card, now it's stopping any upgrade in its tracks.
Only the processor-intensive World in Conflict shows any improvement going all the way up to top chips, and only then by a max 3fps. Weak, huh? But that's just gaming. If you load up any processor specific benchmarks, such as the 3D rendering Cinebench or video encoding x264, you can see how much the raw computational performance of the upgraded CPUs increases.
As you'd expect the Phenom II X6 is around three times faster than the lowly dualie in the base AMD system with the 8800GTS. This highlights just how hobbled the CPU is in terms of gaming performance by a weak graphics card. You can see how wasted that makes the cash you'll spend on a CPU upgrade alone.
Benchmarks
DX10 gaming: Just Cause 2
Graphics upgrade
The news is a little better when it comes to a simple graphics card update, and that's thanks to the fairly decent gaming prowess of the wee Phenom II X2 550 BE. It's by no means an excellent gamer's CPU, but it's still got enough about it in terms of keeping the speedier graphics cards filled with a fair few frames.
We've chosen four graphics card upgrades: the sub-£100 budget choice in the HD 5770, the sub-£150 GTX 460, the £220 mid-range hero HD 6950 and the wallet-paining £300 GTX 570.
The biggest jump in performance comes in the form of the initial budget-conscious upgrade. The XFX HD 5770 pairs up brilliantly with the Phenom II X2 - both AMD parts incidentally - instantly giving playable frame rates at the 22-inch native resolution of 1,680 x 1,050. It's a huge jump in performance, and for less than £100 you've instantly got a far more relevant games machine.
You get a similar jump in performance swapping in the other AMD card, the Sapphire Radeon HD 6950.
The performance of the two Nvidia cards shows how reliant those cards are on powerful CPUs to keep them fed. Generally, the Zotac GTX 460 gives a few extra frames over the HD 5770 but not enough to justify the extra £60 for the pleasure, and when it comes to the hugely expensive Zotac GTX 570 you can see just how limited you are by the weaker CPU. So, time to balance the graphics card and your processor then, huh?
Benchmarks
DX10 gaming: World in Conflict
The AMD upgrade
You've got to love AMD. It's the little guy compared with Intel's monster corporation. Don't get us wrong: it's no bedroom-office outfit, but it operates on a shoestring compared to Intel's huge R&D budget.
It's this reason we've still seeing essentially the same CPU cores that were introduced with the Hammer architecture in 2003, which is why the sockets have hardly changed. A couple of years ago AMD introduced the AM3 socket with DDR3 support and since then we've seen slightly new iterations of motherboards, with new Southbridge architecture, but still most AM3 motherboards will accept AMD's entire range of AM3 CPUs.
Importantly, that runs right up to the finest on offer: the Phenom II X6 hex-core range, with it's latest Thuban cores.
More frames please
Now we've seen just how little it can mean in gaming performance terms if you just upgrade the CPU on its own. If you're into your 3D rendering or video encode all hours of every day then upgrading the CPU on its own will certainly make a hell of a difference, but we're gamers and we want extra frame rates for the upgrade cash we're spending.
On the graphics side once more it's all about AMD. Drop an £82 HD 5770 into the mix and all of a sudden you've got a rig that's once more capable of giving you a decent gaming experience. Even a significantly more expensive HD 6950 plays nice with the dual-core Phenom II.
The Nvidia cards on the other hand prove just how desperate they are for a serious CPU partner. The Athlon II X4 645 does a good job of trying to give them the power they crave. Thanks to the four cores on offer the GTX 460 suddenly looks like the card we know and love, though again the CPU starts to limit the graphics cards further up the food chain.
Indeed, with World in Conflict there's little performance difference between the GTX 460, HD 6950 or the GTX 570.
Level up
In terms of a good budget pairing then, the GTX 460 and Athlon II X4 645 make for a winning combination. For a combined cost of £195 you've got a rig capable of topping 30fps across the board with 4x anti-aliasing thrown in for good measure in most modern games.
The Phenom X4 and X6 CPUs, however, represent the pinnacle of the AMD upgrade mountain and are processors with serious gaming grunt, putting clear water between themselves and the cheaper processing competition. In terms of raw computational grunt the Phenom II X6 is almost on par with the superlative Core i5 2500K, though in the gaming world those extra two cores make little difference compared with the quad-core Phenom II X4.
It's interesting, though, just how poorly the GTX 570 fares with AMD processors. It's only the notoriously Nvidia-centric DiRT2 benchmark that gives the most expensive card in our test the lead, though admittedly by a clear margin.
In the other tests the £320-odd Phenom II X4 965 and HD 6950 pairing is tops. Though for another £40 extra on top of the price of the quad-core Phenom II X4, there are six cores on offer for those who like to dabble in a little productivity too.
Benchmarks
DX11 gaming DiRT 2
Final analysis: Finding the balance
Intel base rig
Motherboard: MSI P45 Platinum
CPU: Core 2 Quad Q6600
RAM: 2GB DDR2
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS
Platform upgrade
With the lack of any modern CPU upgrade path for the LGA 775 socket motherboards it's going to have to be a full platform upgrade to bring your old rig into the modern PC era. Of course, there is always eBay, with its lure of cheaper, second-hand components, but you're still going to be spending nearly £100 on an improved LGA 775 Core 2 Quad.
Even if you ignore the possibility of failing silicon in older, maybe worn-out CPUs, there's also the fact you're not getting a whole lot extra performance out of that older architecture anyways. A 3GHz+ Core 2 Quad is still not going to get the most out of either a HD 6950 or GTX 570.
So we opted to bring the Intel system bang up to date with a Sandy Bridge refit; pairing the superlative Core i5 2500K CPU with Asus's simple, but oh-so-effective P8P67 Pro. At just over £300 for the pair, and the unfortunate necessity of 4GB of DDR3 RAM; it's a pricey upgrade.
In terms of raw processing power, though, the i5 is twice as powerful as the ageing Q6600. It is only a quad-core design, with no HyperThreading, but the new architecture does run ring-buses around the older Kentsfield layout.
Despite the power of the 2500K, that 8800GTS is keeping it bottlenecked in gaming terms. Just as with the AMD rig then we have hit an impasse. You can't just upgrade one side of the PC, even if that side does incorporate a full platform upgrade, and expect to be hitting the frames per second we all deserve.
Benchmarks
DX10 gaming: Just Cause 2
Graphics upgrade
Like the AMD machine, in terms of a straight gaming frame rate upgrade, dropping in a brand new graphics card will instantly net you a fairly significant boost in performance. It's clear that on both the Intel and AMD side of things the 8800GTS is simply not powerful enough.
And again with the base machine staying unchanged apart from the graphics refit, it's the lowly, £82 XFX HD 5770 really takes the lead in instant gratification terms.
World in Conflict gives the most serious change with framerates going up by nigh-on 200%. That Core 2 Quad Q6600 was being massively bottlenecked by the 8800GTS.
But there the good news ends for this old system, and especially that classic ol' quad-core CPU. The processor simply doesn't have enough left in the tank to provide enough performance to keep any speedier GPUs fed properly. Only in the rather GPU-centric DiRT 2 does the framerate really go up any further, with the other three GPUs held back by the Intel processor.
The Nvidia cards here demonstrate just what a good pairing they make with the Intel platform. The GTX 460 especially looks like a bargain, performing almost as well as the HD 6950 in Just Cause 2 and DiRT 2. If you wanted a stop gap card, the GTX 460 would make the platform upgrade a little cheaper, and ready for a second in SLI.
Benchmarks
DX10 gaming: World in Conflict
The Intel upgrade
As the performance leader in processor terms Intel hasn't needed to provide as much of a consistent upgrade path as its rival AMD. After all, when your new architecture is so much better than the previous generation, as with the LGA 775 and LGA 1156/1155, the argument for a full platform upgrade holds more weight.
But it does make things more expensive for the loyal Intel upgrader, generally doubling, at least, the price of a similar upgrade on an AMD platform. As we've explained there's really nowhere for you to go in terms of CPU upgrade on the LGA 775 socket, and that Q6600 isn't going to hold any sway if you want to drop in either a HD 6950 or GTX 570 for some serious gaming grunt.
Whither Lynnfield?
So where next? You might think that avoiding the latest generation of Sandy Bridge chips for the LGA 1156 Lynnfield processors might give you similar performance for a fraction of the upgrade cost, but you're still going to be looking at a whole new motherboard and CPU combo.
The only place you're saving money down that route is on the motherboard. P55 boards are reasonably inexpensive now, around the £100 mark, but the gamer's CPU of last year, the Core i5 760 is the same price as the far superior Sandy Bridge stunner. OK, you may be saving an extra £20 on a board but that's not a huge saving and the performance upgrade is significant.
So with the money spent and the Sandy Bridge platform all set up and raring to game, what do we do about graphics cards?
Well, now we've gotten that GPU-hobbling Q6600 out of the way we can now look at the Nvidia side of the graphics divide. When you put the top AMD CPU in the test up against the 2500K across the four GPU upgrades, it's immediately evident how weak the Nvidia cards are on the AMD side compared with the full potential unlocked by the Intel CPU. Even the GTX 460 performs far better on the i5.
There is now clear water between the HD 6950 and the more expensive GTX 570. The raw power of the 2500K means that there is absolutely no CPU bottleneck anywhere along the line, meaning that for every penny spent on a graphics card you know you are getting the absolute maximum performance you can out of it.
That said, as a full upgrade package, the platform purchase combined with a GTX 570 would make for around £600 of upgrade cash. Providing you've already got a decent PSU, chassis and are already running Win7 64, then that's not a bad price for essentially a brand new, super-fast, gaming PC.
If you're looking for a cheap option this isn't it. We'd generally say that £500 is a good limit to put on the cost of an upgrade before you start looking around at pre-built rigs. With that in mind purchasing a HD 6950 instead of the Nvidia card is a sensible way to go. They're almost £100 cheaper than the GTX 570, and can come with some serious untapped potential in terms of both overclocking and BIOS flashing.
The Intel side of the upgrade world is definitely the expensive side then, but it does have the edge in serious performance terms, if not quite in affordability.
Benchmarks
DX11 gaming: DiRT 2
Final analysis: perfect partners
Asus M4A89GTD Pro USB3 - £103
AM3 Motherboard
AMD has to be the current darling of the modern day upgrader. If you're sitting on any AMD socket AM3 motherboard, with all the DDR3 goodness that entails, then you've got an upgrade path in front of you that stretches almost all the way up to the fastest CPUs AMD has on the market.
Of course, that's all likely to change with the eventual release of the oft-mentioned but rarely-seen Bulldozer CPUs. Like the upcoming desktop-based Llano chips (seriously, we challenge you to say that codename without sounding like Lloyd Grossman) both these chips will require new motherboards and new sockets.
That said at the moment you can still drop a six-core Phenom II X6 into most existing AM3 motherboards. And that's quite a healthy enough chunk of processing power for most users.
Read our full Asus M4A89GTD Pro USB3 review
AMD Athlon II X4 645 - £75
AM3 Processor
When you're talking about a CPU upgrade, going from two to four cores seems like the way to go, but on the AMD side do you have to go for the more expensive Phenom II X4 CPUs or can we, as gamers, make do with the far cheaper Athlon II X4 brand?
Well, for £75 it's tough to argue against any quad-core CPU running at 3.1GHz. There are cheaper sub-3GHz Athlon II X4 CPUs on offer, and proper, high-performance quads from AMD are running just over the £100 mark. There are though significant savings on offer for the prudent CPU upgrader with the Athlon II X4 645.
Read our full AMD Athlon II X4 645 review
AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE - £103
AM3 Processor
The Phenom II range is looking rather long in the tooth now, and we're really hanging out for some sort of architectural update to its product line to bring in some much needed competition with Intel. All we are seeing with AMD is constant respins of the same tired quad-core Phenom II X4 chips with slight incremental increases in clockspeeds.
It has just released a new Phenom II X4 980 (definitely not to be confused with Intel's own 980 CPU…) with no technical enhancements bar a higher clockspeed of 3.7GHz. Now admittedly that is rather high for an AMD chip, but there's no overclocking headroom left in there and it's coming out at the same price as a 3.2GHz Phenom II X6.
Two extra cores for the same price? Now I'm no 3D renderer, but even I would rather have the extra two computational cores. Especially with new games finally taking advantage of multicore technology, such as The Witcher 2 and Brink.
Read our full AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE review
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T BE - £139
AM3 Processor
The Thuban-powered hex-core Phenom II X6 processors currently represent the pinnacle of what AMD can produce in terms of CPU excellence. And they're definitely not bad chips. This Black Edition (read: unlocked multiplier) is yours for under £140, will chew through computational tasks and has more than enough grunt for gaming.
Despite the fact it is still rocking the same cores AMD has been putting out for years, Thuban still represents the finest CPU design AMD has created in a long time. They may well be superceded soon by the Bulldozer processors, but the fact that with a simple BIOS flash, you can drop these six-core CPUs into most AM3 boards of the last few years shows up one hell of an upgrade path.
As well as the fact it's got an extra couple of cores over the Phenom II X4 965, and runs the same 45nm design, AMD has still managed to put the chip together with the same 125W power draw needed to get the CPU going. Considering it's hitting 3.2GHz that's some impressive engineering.
Read our full AMD Phenom II X6 1090T BE review
Asus P8P67 Pro - £136
LGA 1155 Motherboard
As we've seen there's really nowhere to go for an LGA 775 platform in terms of CPU or motherboard upgrades; it's all about a whole platform refit.
Sticking with the Intel setup, there's only one place to go that makes any real financial sense and that's the awesome power of Intel's Sandy Bridge platform. This month may have seen the introduction of a new chipset in the form of the new Z68 motherboards, but in terms of price and performance the P67 will give you pretty much all you need for a straight gaming machine.
The extra niceties of the Z68, such as the Smart Response Technology and the Lucid Virtu software are all well and good for the top-end enthusiasts, or the ecologically minded folk wanting to calm their power-hungry GPUs, but for the gaming upgrader these extras are just pure luxuries.
All you really want is something that will make your new Sandy Bridge processor shine and that's something Asus's P8P67-Pro does with aplomb. It may not have the specific overclocking chops of something like its RoG brethren, but it's still got enough about it to make those K-series chips give a little more performance.
Read our full Asus P8P67 Pro review
Intel Core i5 2500K - £156
LGA 1155 Processor
The gaming processor du jour is quite simply this: the Intel Core i5 2500K. There is no other CPU that can come close to both its gaming prowess and raw number-crunching power for the money. AMD can squeeze six cores into this price point, but in pure gaming terms the 2500K's four cores knock Thuban out of the ballpark.
For all-round performance its big brother, the Core i7 2600K, is the top dog in Sandy Bridge land, but its eight threads of processing power are a little redundant when it comes to actual gaming. As advanced as modern titles are, there are still very few, The Witcher 2 and Football Manager 2011 aside, that actually take proper advantage of multithreaded processors.
Indeed, head crayon-wielder Paul has recently taken to disabling the HyperThreading of his Bloomfield Core i7 920 when it comes to gaming. He's noticed a not inconsiderable rise in frame rates from cutting out the extra threads. The Core i5 2500K's straight quad-core sensibilities then are all that's required for the average gamer.
Read our full Core i5 2500K review
XFX Radeon HD 5770 - £82
AMD budget graphics
The Radeon HD 5770 from AMD is getting a little elderly now. Released in late 2009 you'd be forgiven for thinking it a little irrelevant in these days of £600 multi-GPU graphics and HD 6xxx series GPUs flooding the market.
But there's still a place for this plucky ol' card - it's not quite soiling its plastic pants in a dusty corner of an old GPU's home just yet. Like the impressive HD 4850 before it, this always bargainous card has seemingly got better and better with age, like fine vinegar.
Now it's dropped well below the £100 mark it's a fantastic low-end upgrade that will make a significant difference to the gaming prowess of older rigs without making a huge impact on your bank balance.
The Juniper XT GPU beating inside the HD 5770 has got enough DirectX 11 goodness to cope with most of today's games at the modest end of the resolution spectrum. So running a 22-inch monitor with a native resolution of 1,680 x 1,050 will give you access to pretty much all the post-processing PC gaming can offer.
Read our full XFX Radeon HD 5770 review
EVGA GTX 460 1GB - £139
Nvidia budget graphics
Nvidia's GTX 460 is one card that I think I've written more about over the last 12 months than any other card in existence. Ever.
Nvidia's Fermi graphical architecture showed us how DirectX 11 cards could be done, and done properly. Unfortunately, both the GTX 480 and GTX 470 were incredibly expensive cards and the GTX 480 especially was one hot, loud beast of a GPU.
So that meant that despite its lead in graphical power the still impressive Radeon HD 5850 was looking like the DX11 card of the day. Nvidia did try and bring in lower-end cards, but the short-lived GTX 465 was too weak and too expensive to make any dent in AMD's mid-range graphical superiority.
That is until the superlative GTX 460 turned up. In 1GB frame buffer flavour the GTX 460 almost overnight made the GTX 465, and even the GTX 470, seem completely obsolete. The price/ performance ratio from this little card was nothing short of astounding, harking back to the good ol' days of the 8800GT.
Read our full EVGA GTX 460 1GB review
Sapphire HD 6950 2GB - £216
AMD upgrade graphics card
Right, we're getting into serious graphics card territory here, and inevitably that means serious money too. At over £200 that's a lot to spend on a single component if you're talking about an upgrade purchase. But it's AMD's latest, and arguably greatest, GPU technology inside that Cayman processor and it's got some heavy-weight DirectX 11 graphical architecture backing it up.
Taking the seriously GPU taxing DirectX 11 tessellation-heavy benchmark of Metro 2033 there is no NVIDIA card that can come close to managing doublefigure frame rates at the highest 2,560 x 1,600 resolution until you get up to the £400-odd GTX 580. And even that card can only manage an extra 2fps over this impressive GPU.
It was an odd one from AMD's perspective as it launched both the HD 6950 and the other Cayman-powered card, the HD 6970, at the same time. Despite the fact there was a gulf of around £80 in cost, there was very little between them in terms of raw performance.
In the overclocking stakes the HD 6970 had the edge, but that was only down to the fact AMD had artificially limited the clockspeeds on the HD 6950 so as not to allow people to push the cheaper card as far as it's slightly more powerful brethren.
Stranger still was the fact that barely a week after release there was a BIOS flash for the HD 6950 that enabled you to open the dormant parts of the Cayman GPU to essentially turn it into a HD 6970 for free.
Read our full Sapphire HD 6950 2GB review
Zotac GTX 570 - £277
Nvidia upgrade graphics card
When it comes to this upgrade group test, this is the daddy in graphics cards terms. At a chunk under £300 it's a card that will more than likely take up most of your upgrade budget, so is it worth that outlay on a single component?
Well, as we've shown the answer is not that easy. Dropping in the fastest, most expensive GPU is not always the magic pill to deliver instant frame rate bonuses for your favourite games. But this GF 110-powered graphics card is a quite excellent example of just why the Fermi architecture is so good, especially in this second generation of Nvidia's GPU.
Despite the naming conventions this is not really a direct replacement for the GTX 470 from the previous generation, it's actually got far more in common with the top-card of that line, the GTX 480.
Read our full Zotac GTX 570 review
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Facebook simplifies face recognition opt-out process
Posted: 27 Jul 2011 04:32 AM PDT
Facebook has made its 'tag suggestions' feature, which uses facial-recognition software, easier to disable after concerns were raised about its invasiveness.
Some users of the 750 million-member social network had complained that this feature was intrusive, including US Attorney General George Jepsen, who wrote a letter to Facebook complaining that storing data about users' faces was a threat to basic human rights.
Facebook responded with a blog post last month, explaining that it is now posting adverts on the website which allow users to easily opt out of using the technology completely.
The social network also promises to delete any facial recognition data stored on its system once users opt-out.
Your face or mine?
Facebook, which had hoped that users "would find the results to be helpful and useful", should not really be surprised that these complaints arose, having stealthily rolled the feature out to users around the world over the course of the year.
Google's Picasa and the Apple OS iPhoto programme also use forms of facial-detection but were more for personal use and you could choose whether to use them or not.
On Facebook though, 'tag suggestions' were made a default feature and constantly asked "who is this?" to its users when they uploaded images.
It remains to be seen how Google will make use of its recently acquired Pitt Patt facial-recognition software, with rumours that it could be integrated with the Google+ social network, Google Goggles or even YouTube, signalling that the privacy debate may be far from over.
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3D discomfort explained by academic study
Posted: 27 Jul 2011 04:27 AM PDT
An academic study into stereoscopic (bespectacled) 3D at the University of California, Berkeley, has pinpointed the cause of the headaches and eye fatigues often caused by three dimensional viewing.
The study found that the root of the problem is that our eyes are trying to focus on the screen as well as focusing on virtual images that appear to be in front of or behind the screen.
The researchers found that when their 24 participants viewed 3D displays at short distances (using monitors, TVs and smartphones), the images that float in front of the screen were causing the issues.
Opposites day
But the opposite was true when viewing at longer distances (like in the cinema) – in these cases, it was the content that was further away that caused the discomfort.
Martin S. Banks, professor of optometry and vision science, who lead the research, commented, "When watching stereo 3D displays, the eyes must focus - that is, accommodate - to the distance of the screen because that's where the light comes from.
"At the same time, the eyes must converge to the distance of the stereo content, which may be in front of or behind the screen."
It's the same issue that was already highlighted by Oscar-winning film editor Walter Murch, who pointed out that, "3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before."
While the study doesn't present a solution to 3D fatigue, it could prompt future studies and investment in this area of research as 3D becomes more widespread.
"Discomfort associated with viewing Stereo 3D is a major problem that may limit the use of technology," concluded Banks.
"This is an area of research where basic science meets application and we hope that the science can proceed quickly enough to keep up with the increasingly widespread use of the technology."
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Exclusive: Vodafone planning wider range of Facebook phones
Posted: 27 Jul 2011 04:10 AM PDT
Vodafone's group terminals director has told TechRadar that the new 555 Blue is the first in a line of non-smartphone Facebook devices.
Patrick Chomet confirmed that the network is looking to replicate the deep integration on the 555 Blue on other handsets:
"What we will do continue to use the experience as a category, the Facebook, as a vertical experience, and probably we will do a version two, version three etc.
"We are working already, could work on the same thing and extend it to a touchscreen.
"So we are working on and looking at various things [for future Facebook devices], such as touchscreens, 3G connectivity, nicer designs, better camera - now we have the core working, and hopefully it's a success, we will take it and develop it further."
Smarter features?
When quizzed about the decision to eschew Android, Chomet said it was a hard choice but one that offered the chance to make something that created a deeper Facebook experience than ever before, and offers easy replication:
"It's not easy to do [to create a feature phone based on Facebook], you could always just do the app but we wanted to do it this way and we've had our guys plugged in with Facebook engineers for one year.
"That's the price you have to pay to create a feature phone - if you have a smartphone you just do an app, but with a feature phone the phone is the app, so we only have to create the experience once."
It will be interesting to see how a dedicated Facebook device, which is likely to be a little higher on the pre-pay scale at around £70-£75, will fare compared to the do-it-all smartphones users are increasingly flocking to when choosing their next device.
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Sony unveils new look wireless Walkman A-Series
Posted: 27 Jul 2011 03:51 AM PDT
Sony hasn't been resting on its Walkman laurels, having been beavering away on a bunch of new MP3 players, including the Sony Walkman NWZ-A860 and NWZ-S760 which offer wireless Bluetooth streaming.
The NWZ-A860 (or, for ease, the A-Series) may look have a new smartphone-esque look with its 2.8-inch LCD touchscreen and boisterous home button, but it is just a humble MP3 player.
As well as offering high-class sound quality thanks to its S-Master MX digital amplifier, it comes with a video player and photo viewer on a "big, bright screen" and 16GB of storage space.
Dance the Bluetooth blues
Both the A-Series and the Walkman NWZ-S760 come with the Bluetooth streaming option, which means you can use wireless headphones, car audio units and Bluetooth-friendly docks for wireless music fun.
As well as the Bluetooth functionality, the NWZ-S760 (S-Series) boasts 50 hours of continuous music listening from one battery charge and "legendary sound" thanks to its Clear Audio tech.
The cheerfully bright Walkman NWZ-E560 (E-Series) "sounds as good as it looks", according to Sony, which obviously hopes that you'll appreciate its cheap and cheerful stylings, available in black, red, blue, green and pink.
You can pick it up in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB versions, with a 2-inch QVGA screen and FM tuner.
Appless
All the new Walkmans ship with SenseMe, software that categorises your music into different channels, karaoke mode and MediaGo for drag-and-drop music transfer.
Sadly there is no mention of connectivity or the A-word in Sony's release (that's apps, friends) so we're assuming that the new batch of MP3 players don't offer any additional software or web browsing.
The new range of Walkmen will be hitting the shops from the end of August 2011, with UK pricing to be announced.
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EA boss shifts strategy to embrace mobile and social
Posted: 27 Jul 2011 03:38 AM PDT
Following announcements of a narrower-than-expected loss for the last financial quarter, EA boss John Riccitiello said that mobile and social gaming, alongside new motion-control tech, is fundamentally changing the nature of games publishing and that EA is shifting its publishing strategy to reflect these changes.
Speaking on a conference call in which EA reported decent financial gains for its first fiscal quarter (the quarter ending June 30), with decent sales of both digital and packaged games resulting in slightly better-than-expected revenues, Riccitiello outlined his company's new focus on digital and social gaming.
iPad and Android gaming
"Most of us recognize that the industry has radically changed and the pace of change has altered dramatically," said Riccitiello. "Eighteen months ago there was no iPad. Google was just experimenting with Android. Most games were a single-revenue opportunity.
"We intend to finish this fiscal year a much different company than when we started," Riccitiello said.
The EA boss stressed that motion-sensing games and the boom in mobile apps were both changing the very fabric of videogame development and publishing, which means that EA now thinks of its game launches as "year round events" as opposed to those one-off bing-bang launches in the past.
The big news that wasn't forthcoming from this week's conference call was the fact that there are no new details to share on the forthcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, so we hope to hear a lot more about that particular title from Gamescom in Germany next month.
EA Sports head honcho Peter Moore noted that the forthcoming FIFA 12 will launch on a total of 12 different gaming platforms later this year. Moore also revealed that the average revenue to EA of a paying gamer on Facebook is $56 per annum.
With an impressive array of big hitters coming up later this year, including Star Wars: The Old Republic, Battlefield 3, FIFA 12, Madden NFL 12, as well as new versions of The Sims on social platforms and its new Origin digital game distribution store, EA looks like it is set for yet another lucrative year in gaming.
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