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• Oracle lays into Autonomy with 'whopper lie' claim
• Blu-ray player sales to overtake DVD players by 2015
• Nikon apologises for Facebook camera gaffe
• Exclusive: UK cinemas clear up 3D glasses cost confusion
• In Depth: How Kaspersky Lab disabled a botnet
• Spotify brings 'private listening' to Facebook
• Gary Marshall: Amazon wants to watch your web browsing
• LateRooms.com announces 'best hotel for gadgets' winner
• Review: Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D
• YouGov survey shows UK not warming to 3D
• Early View: Kindle Fire vs iPad 2 vs Galaxy Tab 7.7 vs HTC Flyer
• Amazon's Silk browser en route to other devices?
• Opera congratulates Amazon for 'catching up' with Silk
• Google Nexus Prime launch event dated?
• LoveFilm arrives on the Apple iPad
• In Depth: How the Tap! app was made
• Samsung shows off odd Galaxy Tab bike with tablet holder
• Budget HTC Explorer announced with Sense 3.5
• Tap! gets a dedicated iPad app edition
• Google Motorola deal gets antitrust probe
• Review: Wacom Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch
• BBC's global iPlayer app launches in Australia
• Three could run out of network space in cities next year
• Gary Marshall: Kindles and iPads are the Tescos of tech
• Android Ice Cream Sandwich detailed on video

Oracle lays into Autonomy with 'whopper lie' claim Posted: 29 Sep 2011 08:30 AM PDT A very public spat has erupted between two of the world's biggest software companies - Oracle and Autonomy. Oracle is claiming that Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch is lying to cover up the fact he tried to sell the company to Oracle before the HP acquisition. In a cutting statement, which has been hilariously titled "Another Whopper from Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch", Oracle explained that Lynch had tried to sell Autonomy to the company, and to prove it has also published PowerPoint slides that made up part of the presentation. Home truths Oracle's statement reads: "Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch continues to insist that Autonomy was never 'shopped' to Oracle. But now at least he remembers and admits to meeting with Oracle President Mark Hurd and Doug Kehring, Oracle's head of M&A, this past April. "But CEO Lynch insists that it was a purely technical meeting, limited to a 'lively discussion of database technologies.' Interesting, but not true." The statement then links to the presentation, which has all sorts of stats about Autonomy's financials. In an earlier statement, Oracle referred to Lynch publicly denying that he tried to shop Autonomy to the company, explaining: "Either Mr Lynch has a very poor memory or he's lying." HP agreed to acquire Autonomy for over $11.7 billion back in September, a price that many believe is over-inflated – including Oracle, which is claiming that it felt the company was over priced at $6 billion, the price Lynch was quoting after the sales pitch he claims never happened. That sound you can hear is the bell for Round 3.

Blu-ray player sales to overtake DVD players by 2015 Posted: 29 Sep 2011 07:54 AM PDT Global sales of Blu-ray players are expected to eclipse that of DVD players within four years, according to a report from research company In-Stat. Its figures predict 105 million hi-def disc-spinners will be sold in 2015 – although that is still some way off the 141 million DVD players that shipped in 2006 in the format's heyday. In-Stat has also hammered the last nail into the coffin of DVD recorders, claiming that the technology would effectively die out completely in the next three years. "Blu-ray recorders will replace DVD recorders," said Norm Bogen, VP digital entertainment with In-Stat. "Many consumers of recorders will even drop the physical disk media option altogether and instead opt for a player with a large hard drive, or digital media storage." Hand of VOD Of course, this is something that manufacturers have already picked up on – disc-based recorder stalwart Panasonic recently announced a range of HDD recorders that also offer VOD services. DVD recorders would only really continue to sell in Japan, reckons In-Stat – the same place where Blu-ray recorders are most likely to be bought. So it seems the watch-n-wipe culture promoted by TiVo and Sky+ is yet to catch on in the Far East. While the predicted shipment figures are good news for the Blu-ray Disc Association, it may be concerned by In-Stat's findings that Blu-ray is on the wane in China, where the more affordable China Blue High-Definition (CBHD) format is taking hold.

Nikon apologises for Facebook camera gaffe Posted: 29 Sep 2011 07:29 AM PDT It can be a tricky balance, keeping your Facebook community on side, but Nikon USA appears to have fallen foul of several users after a particular post has causen uproar. Normally, any brand would be delighted to see such engagement from a single post, at last count it had been shared 1,072 times, commented on 2,703 times and "liked" 1,618 times by a community of over 840,000 likers. But it would appear that the majority of those commenting and sharing were not happy with what the post said. It read: "A photographer is only as good as the equipment he uses, and a good lens is essential to taking good pictures!" before asking users to share their favourite Nikkor lenses. Apology given This caused a sensation as Nikon was lambasted for suggesting that it was equipment which produced good photographs, and not the skill of the photographer involved. Since then, users were met with stony silence after the news began to spread about the post across the internet. This afternoon, a fresh post apologising for the previous status was posted. "We know some of you took offence to the last post, and we apologise, as it was not our aim to insult any of our friends. Our statement was meant to be interpreted that the right equiupment can help you capture amazing images," the post read. The incident serves as a warning to other manufacturers about getting it right when it comes to social media. Nikon's major rival Canon has a Facebook page with over 500,000 fans but leaves it up to the community to make posts, failing to make a single post on the page since it has launched.

Exclusive: UK cinemas clear up 3D glasses cost confusion Posted: 29 Sep 2011 07:12 AM PDT Sony Pictures is to stop paying for cinemas to provide 3D glasses starting in May 2012. When this news broke yesterday, courtesy of the Hollywood Reporter, cinemas panicked, cinema-goers grumbled and post after post was penned expressing outrage that Sony would pass the $5 - $10 million it currently costs to provide glasses per 3D film to movie watchers. As the original story explained, Sony Pictures and most other studios agreed to foot the optical bill to sweeten the deal for cinemas which were investing in pricey 3D projection equipment, but never intended it to be a permanent situation. Big deal And here in the UK, we didn't really see what all the fuss was about. "The situation in the US differs to the practice in place here in the UK," Apollo Cinemas' marketing manager Nicole Oakley explained to TechRadar. "The US system sees film distributors pay for the 3D glasses, providing them to the customer. "However Sony seems to be following the UK/European model where exhibitors buy the glasses and provide them to their customers for a small fee, in our case for £1. "We encourage our customers to reuse these glasses, from an environmental and economic point of view; it makes sense to all concerned." Cineworld, which provides passive glasses made by RealD, encourages you to recycle your cheapo 3D eyeglasses too. A spokesperson for the chain told us, "Since November 2009, Cineworld Cinemas have implemented a scheme for the purchase of 3D glasses at all Cineworld sites. "This is due to the success of 3D and the volume of glasses that require disposal becoming an increasing concern. In an effort to encourage our customers to recycle their existing pairs of glasses Cineworld has separated out the cost of the glasses and reduced the uplift to compensate." Keep calm and carry 3D glasses So there you have it - situation totally normal for UK cinema goers and no need for our American cousins to panic (although panic they have, with RealD's stock plummeting 15 per cent as a result). Some will argue that another £1 on top of the already inflated ticket price for 3D films is an outrage and others will complain that having to remember to take your silly toy glasses with you whenever you want to catch a 3D flick is a chore - and these arguments will scare an already jittery 3D cinema industry that fears the bloom is off the three dimensional rose. But we can't help but feel that Sony Pictures is making the right move here; after all, when you see something as disposable, you're more likely to dispose of it. But if you know you could save yourself a few quid by reusing these eminently reusable glasses, then you will - and the studios, cinemas, your bank balance and the environment will thank you for it.

In Depth: How Kaspersky Lab disabled a botnet Posted: 29 Sep 2011 06:49 AM PDT How Kaspersky Lab disabled a botnet This is a post written by Kaspersky Lab Expert Tillmann Werner, which first appeared on Kaspersky's Securelist blog. Earlier this week, Microsoft released an announcement about the disruption of a dangerous botnet that was responsible for spam messages, theft of sensitive financial information, pump-and-dump stock scams and distributed denial-of-service attacks. Kaspersky Lab played a critical role in this botnet takedown initiative, leading the way to reverse-engineer the bot malware, crack the communication protocol and develop tools to attack the peer-to-peer infrastructure. We worked closely with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), sharing the relevant information and providing them with access to our live botnet tracking system. A key part of this effort is the sinkholing of the botnet. It's important to understand that the botnet still exists - but it's being controlled by Kaspersky Lab. In tandem with Microsoft's move to the U.S. court system to disable the domains, we started to sinkhole the botnet. Right now we have 3,000 hosts connecting to our sinkhole every minute. This post describes the inner workings of the botnet and the work we did to prevent it from further operation. Let's start with some technical background: Kelihos is Microsoft's name for what Kaspersky calls Hlux. Hlux is a peer-to-peer botnet with an architecture similar to the one used for the Waledac botnet. It consists of layers of different kinds of nodes: controllers, routers and workers. Controllers are machines presumably operated by the gang behind the botnet. They distribute commands to the bots and supervise the peer-to-peer network's dynamic structure. Routers are infected machines with public IP addresses. They run the bot in router mode, host proxy services, participate in a fast-flux collective, and so on. Finally, workers are infected machines that do not run in router mode, simply put. They are used for sending out spam, collecting email addresses, sniffing user credentials from the network stream, etc. A sketch of the layered architecture is shown below with a top tier of four controllers and worker nodes displayed in green. ABOVE: Architecture of the Hlux botnet Worker nodes Many computers that can be infected with malware do not have a direct connection to the internet. They are hidden behind gateways, proxies or devices that perform network address translation. Consequently, these machines cannot be accessed from the outside unless special technical measures are taken. This is a problem for bots that organise infected machines in peer-to-peer networks as that requires hosting services that other computers can connect to. On the other hand, these machines provide a lot of computing power and network bandwidth. A machine that runs the Hlux bot would check if it can be reached from the outside and if not, put itself in the worker mode of operation. Workers maintain a list of peers (other infected machines with public IP addresses) and request jobs from them. A job contains things like instructions to send out spam or to participate in denial-of-service attacks. It may also tell the bot to download an update and replace itself with the new version. Router nodes Routers form some kind of backbone layer in the Hlux botnet. Each router maintains a peer list that contains information about other peers, just like worker nodes. At the same time, each router acts as an HTTP proxy that tunnels incoming connections to one of the Controllers. Routers may also execute jobs, but their main purpose is to provide the proxy layer in front of the controllers. Controllers The controller nodes are the top visible layer of the botnet. Controllers host a nginx HTTP server and serve job messages. They do not take part in the peer-to-peer network and thus never show up in the peer lists. There are usually six of them, spread pairwise over different IP ranges in different countries. Each two IP addresses of a pair share an SSH RSA key, so it is likely that there is really only one box behind each address pair. From time to time some of the controllers are replaced with new ones. Right before the botnet was taken out, the list contained the following entries: 193.105.134.189 193.105.134.190 195.88.191.55 195.88.191.57 89.46.251.158 89.46.251.160 The peer-to-peer network Every bot keeps up to 500 peer records in a local peer list. This list is stored in the Windows registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google together with other configuration details. When a bot starts on a freshly infected machine for the first time, it initializes its peer list with some hard-coded addresses contained in the executable. The latest bot version came with a total of 176 entries. The local peer list is updated with peer information received from other hosts. Whenever a bot connects to a router node, it sends up to 250 entries from its current peer list, and the remote peer send 250 of his entries back. By exchanging peer lists, the addresses of currently active router nodes are propagated throughout the botnet. A peer record stores the information shown in the following example: m_ip: 41.212.81.2 m_live_time: 22639 seconds m_last_active_time: 2011-09-08 11:24:26 GMT m_listening_port: 80 m_client_id: cbd47c00-f240-4c2b-9131-ceea5f4b7f67 The peer-to-peer architecture implemented by Hlux has the advantage of being very resilient against takedown attempts. The dynamic structure allows for fast reactions if irregularities are observed. When a bot wants to request jobs, it never connects directly to a controller, no matter if it is running in worker or router mode. A job request is always sent through another router node. So, even if all controller nodes go off-line, the peer-to-peer layer remains alive and provides a means to announce and propagate a new set of controllers. The fast-flux service network The Hlux botnet also serves several fast-flux domains that are announced in the domain name system with a TTL value of 0 in order to prevent caching. A query for one of the domains returns a single IP address that belongs to an infected machine. The fast-flux domains provide a fall-back channel that can be used by bots to regain access to the botnet if all peers in their local list are unreachable. Each bot version contains an individual hard-coded fall-back domain. Microsoft unregistered these domains and effectively decommissioned the fall-back channel. Here is the set of DNS names that were active before the takedown - in case you want to keep an eye on your DNS resolver. If you see machines asking for one of them, they are likely infected with Hlux and should be taken care of. hellohello123.com magdali.com restonal.com editial.com gratima.com partric.com wargalo.com wormetal.com bevvyky.com earplat.com metapli.com The botnet further used hundreds of sub-domains of ce.ms and cz.cc that can be registered without a fee. But these were only used to distribute updates and not as a backup link to the botnet. Counteractions A bot that can join the peer-to-peer network won't ever resolve any of the fall-back domains - it does not have to. In fact, our botnet monitor has not logged a single attempt to access the backup channel during the seven months it was operated as at least one other peer has always been reachable. The communication for bootstrapping and receiving commands uses a special custom protocol that implements a structured message format, encryption, compression and serialization. The bot code includes a protocol dispatcher to route incoming messages (bootstrap messages, jobs, SOCKS communication) to the appropriate functions while serving everything on a single port. We reverse engineered this protocol and created some tools for decoding botnet traffic. Being able to track bootstrapping and job messages for a intentionally infected machine provided a view of what was happening with the botnet, when updates were distributed, what architectural changes were undertaken and also to some extend how many infected machines participate in the botnet. ABOVE: Hits on the sinkhole per minute This Monday, we started to propagate a special peer address. Very soon, this address became the most prevalent one in the botnet, resulting in the bots talking to our machine, and to our machine only. Experts call such an action sinkholing - bots communicate with a sinkhole instead of its real controllers. At the same time, we distributed a specially crafted list of job servers to replace the original one with the addresses mentioned before and prevent the bots from requesting commands. From this point on, the botnet could not be commanded anymore. And since we have the bots communicating with our machine now, we can do some data mining and track infections per country, for example. So far, we have counted 49,007 different IP addresses. Kaspersky works with Internet service providers to inform the network owners about the infections. ABOVE: Sinkholed IP addresses per country What now? The main question now is: what is next? We obviously cannot sinkhole Hlux forever. The current measures are a temporary solution, but they do not ultimately solve the problem, because the only real solution would be a cleanup of the infected machines. We expect that the number of machines hitting our sinkhole will slowly lower over time as computers get cleaned and reinstalled. Microsoft said their Malware Protection Center has added the bot to their Malicious Software Removal Tool. Given the spread of their tool this should have an immediate impact on infection numbers. However, in the last 16 hours we have still observed 22,693 unique IP addresses. We hope that this number is going to be much lower soon. Interestingly, there is one other theoretical option to ultimately get rid of Hlux: we know how the bot's update process works. We could use this knowledge and issue our own update that removes the infections and terminates itself. However, this would be illegal in most countries and will thus remain theory.

Spotify brings 'private listening' to Facebook Posted: 29 Sep 2011 06:17 AM PDT Spotify has responded to widespread complaints from its user base that they did not want everything they listened to published to Facebook by bringing in a 'private listening' option. Spotify has often reacted quickly to user feedback, and after many disconnected their accounts soon after adding them into Facebook because they did not want their every musical whim broadcast to their friends and family, the music streaming company has made changes. "Now you can temporarily hide your guilty pleasures," read the tweet. "We call it "Private listening" and you can find it in the Spotify/File menu." The news was announced on Spotify's Twitter account, and was greeted with immediate pleasure by followers. Guilty pleasures Spotify's partnership with Facebook was announced at the F8 conference, which focused heavily on the integration of music and playlists into the social network. Founder Daniel Ek was invited to the stage to showcase Spotify on Facebook, illustrating the growing sway of the music streaming service which was founded in Sweden and launched in 2008.

Gary Marshall: Amazon wants to watch your web browsing Posted: 29 Sep 2011 06:00 AM PDT Amazon's very proud of its new Silk web browser, which brings Amazon's mighty backend to the job of speeding up web browsing - so proud, in fact, that it seems the firm plans to bring it to other people's devices too. Is it a Trojan horse? I don't mean that it's going to give your bank details to Jeff Bezos, because let's face it, he's already got those. I mean a Trojan horse in that it's going to have access to every Kindle Fire's entire web usage, enabling it to build the kind of data picture that makes Phorm, Google search history or Facebook's Beacon look like very small potatoes indeed. Here's how it works: part of the browser lives in the cloud, and when you click a link or enter a URL Amazon will "take into account things like network conditions, page complexity and the location of any cached content." That's good for you, because it could speed up your browsing, and it's good for Amazon, because Amazon gets to store details of every single thing you do online. Maybe Jeff Bezos forgot to mention that bit. Why worry? As Apple employee number 8, Chris Espinosa has forgotten more about tech than most of us will ever know - so if he's worried about Silk, we should be too. As he writes on his Posterous blog, "people who cringe at the data-mining implications of the Facebook timeline ought to be just floored by the magnitude of Amazon's opportunity here." According to Espinosa, "Amazon now has what every storefront lusts for: the knowledge of what other stores your customers are shopping and what prices they're being offered there... in essence the Fire user base is Amazon's Mechanical Turk, scraping the web for free and providing Amazon with the most valuable cache of user behaviour in existence." The security bods at Sophos aren't impressed either: they've been poring through the Silk privacy policy and they don't like what they see. The T&Cs note that "URLs, IP addresses and MAC addresses will be logged and can be retained for 30 days", and the FAQ appears to suggest that your secure HTTP traffic will be intercepted too. There is an off-cloud mode, but you can bet that won't be particularly prominent. Never mind "people who bought this book also bought": what Amazon's working on here is a "people with your symptoms also bought", "people with your perilous financial history also bought", "people with your balloon fetish also bought" engine. It's not storing your individual data, but as Don Park comments on Espinosa's post, "they don't have to know who you are, just what you are". If the data wasn't valuable, Amazon wouldn't be trying to get it. I can't help thinking that Amazon, and Facebook, and Google, and all the other big players are giving us the privacy equivalent of boiling a frog, the (mythical, apparently) technique of slowly increasing the heat so that the frog doesn't realise it's being cooked until it's far too late. Last week Facebook had its hand on the gas; this week, it's Amazon. Who's next? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LateRooms.com announces 'best hotel for gadgets' winner Posted: 29 Sep 2011 05:40 AM PDT The winner of the UK's best hotel for gadgets has been announced, with Eccleston Square Hotel in London picking up the top award. The hotel has been given the award by LateRooms.com, with a number of judges – including TechRadar – choosing the hotel for its lavish array of technology. The hotel comprises 39 rooms and within each of these there are iPad 2s, HD 3D TVs, Blu-ray player, as well as some innovative features built into structure of the room. Hotel tech These include smart glass walls in the bathroom that can go opaque with the click of a button, mist-free mirrors and a £12,000 bed which offer up massages. Speaking about the hotel, the judges said: "Ecclestone Square is a true haven of technology – cutting edge and up to the minute, a clear winner for the Best Gadget in a hotel." Head over to Laterooms.com now to see the full list of winners.

Review: Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D Posted: 29 Sep 2011 05:38 AM PDT Overview A dedicated sound card in the current PC hardware landscape needs to be capable of all kinds of stunts to justify its existence. Does Creative's Sound Blaster Recon3D, its new £90 external sound card, have a deep enough bag of tricks to succeed? It's the world's first quad-core sound processor, which gives it the power to pull off impressive feats such as separate mic audio and in-game sound steams, and apply separate effects – including compression, surround and noise cancelling – to each stream. It's best friends with THX TruStudio, works with PC, Mac, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and sports a 'Scout Mode' button, which amplifies sound cues in-game to highlight nearby enemies. There was a time when Creative and other PC audio peripheral specialists made most of their dough from internal sound card sales, but advances in onboard sound chips quickly pushed aside internal PCI cards such as Creative's classic Audigy 2 ZS (a veritable metropolis of capacitors) to the realms of fringe peripherals. Built-in motherboard HD audio chips such as those from VIA and Realtek, plus Creative's X-Fi range, have swallowed the gap in audio fidelity and processing performance that used to exist between PCI sound cards and onboard sound to the point that few would consider shelling out extra cash on sound hardware over other performance-enhancing components. As the Southbridge chips on both Intel and AMD chipsets and CPUs themselves become more powerful, we get much less of a performance hit, since the silicon is crunching the numbers faster and more efficiently to decode digital audio to analogue so that your speakers can made sense of it. This decoding used to eat up frames per second, but modern CPUs and Southbridge chips aren't troubled by integrated X-Fi 7.1 audio. So the gap between integrated audio and kit such as Creative's Recon3D needs to be noticeable, useful and sizeable for the latter to appeal. Let's see how it performs. The real breakthrough tech here is SoundCore 3D, the world's first quad-core dedicated sound processor. You can expect to see this chip feature on high-end motherboards as an integrated sound solution as well as powering the Recon3D. Four cores are advantageous because they can handle simultaneous digital signals and crunch away at them with HD audio codecs much more quickly and efficiently than a single processor – just like AMD and Intel's multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs with video encoding. Long story short, you don't need to fret about losing frames per second to voice and sound processing. The Recon3D's got that covered. It probably has that covered without breaking a sweat in fact, which is why Creative has thrown a generous heap of functionality at it. As we mentioned, the Recon3D is full to the slick black brim with Dolby THX TruStudio Pro features. The most useful for gamers will be Pro Surround and Pro Dialog Plus. The former creates a 360-degree soundscape, with sounds panning horizontally and vertically around you. Rather than cram its headsets full of drivers, Creative has opted for the digital approach, interpolating sounds as they travel from one point to another. In practice, this is one of the Recon3D's most effective and enjoyable features. It genuinely tricks your ears into hearing sounds way behind or above you and from some distance away. The intensity of this effect can be tweaked in the software layer. Pro Dialog Plus is all about clearing up noisy voice communication and compressing incoming voice comm streams, so that you don't jump out of your skin when a French teenager starts babbling at you in Team Fortress 2. Equally, the Recon3D lets you clean up your own outgoing mic signal by compressing it, applying noise cancellation or even using the effects software to make you sound like a little girl. Nothing creepy about that, right? Then there's Scout Mode. Hit this button and the Recon3D creates a bubble of amplified sound around you in-game, the theory being you're less likely to get backstabbed if your enemies' sound cues are deafening. We had mixed results with this, with some games faring better than others. Console owners can save profiles they've created on PC and apply them to their little gaming boxes too, and the optical cable setup means it's a stress-free experience hooking it up to any device. Verdict The Recon3D offers great gaming sound and voice comm tweaking on PC and consoles, with some nice THX effects to play with. It is expensive for what it offers, though. We liked It's a feature-filled, high quality product, and versatile too. However, the best thing about it is that Creative is bundling the Recon3D with its wireless Tactic3D Omega headset. That's a quality set of cans, with great sound reproduction and beefy but not overcooked bass levels. The headset's worth £180 on its own, but paired with the Recon3D, the price tag's £209. That's still well in the realms of enthusiast ware, but a much more enticing prospect than buying the Recon3D alone. If you're going to buy a headset that costs more than the console you'll be using it with, an extra £20 for a powerful sound card with some nice gaming features ain't too shabby. The excellent surround effect also makes the Recon3D (with the headset, of course) a good choice for movies. We disliked Our biggest concern is that as a standalone £90 purchase, we're not sure gamers will be that enamoured with it. It's one for enthusiasts certainly (though not audiophiles), and however carefully you tweak your settings in the software suite, there's still one important variable: your speakers. It's your headset or desktop speakers that have the final say over sound quality. On these grounds, we find it hard to recommend the Recon3D alone, because it doesn't magically turn bad speakers good, and if you have a basic set of speakers or cheap headset, this isn't the gear for you. Also, despite the Recon3D's versatility and functionality, don't think this is your one-stop audio solution. Sure, it's great across different platforms, but geared very much toward gaming. Verdict If you obsess over sound quality and 'variable bit rate' is a profanity to your eyes, look elsewhere. There's too much bass in the headset and little consideration for music in the Recon3D and software suite.

YouGov survey shows UK not warming to 3D Posted: 29 Sep 2011 05:15 AM PDT Despite the best efforts of James Cameron and co, 3D movies are sill seen as gimmicky in the UK. This is according to a new YouGov study that's taken a look at the habits of UK cinemagoers, when it comes to 3D, and found that the technology still isn't enticing them to don glasses. While 47 per cent of the 2,796 surveyed said that they would watch a 3D movie over a 2D movie, a further 48 per cent explained they would not spend any more money on seeing a 3D movie over a 2D one. Third dimension tension When pushed as to whether 3D was the future of cinema, just 27 per cent strongly agreed it was, compared to 33 per cent who totally disagreed. And just 19 per cent said that 3D improves the quality if a movie, compared to 36 per cent who thought it didn't. As for believing that 3D is still a gimmick, 41 per cent totally agree, while 22 per cent do not. A big assumption in the TV world is that getting rid of the glasses barrier will see more people flock to 3D movies but, according to YouGov, a whopping 40 per cent said it would not affect their decision on 3D. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Early View: Kindle Fire vs iPad 2 vs Galaxy Tab 7.7 vs HTC Flyer Posted: 29 Sep 2011 04:45 AM PDT Fire vs iPad 2 vs Galaxy Tab vs Flyer Now that the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire has been announced, we thought it would be a good craic to slam its specs up against those of its key rivals. Of course, this has to include Apple's peerless iPad 2, but instead of plumping for the gorgeous Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, we've chosen to compare it with its new sibling the Galaxy Tab 7.7 because of its size. And to complete our line-up, we've plumped for the HTC Flyer – another 7-inch tablet that, like the Kindle Fire, is based on a heavily customised version of Android 2.x. Operating system The Kindle Fire runs its own special OS. But it's not been developed from the ground up by Amazon – it's based on Android 2.x, rumoured to be Android 2.2 FroYo. The HTC Flyer also has a heavily customised version of Android – it's based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The iPad 2 runs iOS 4 (soon to be iOS 5) and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 runs the tablet-specific Android 3.0 Honeycomb as you can see here: Pricing The Kindle Fire is slated at $199 in the US, which would probably translate to a £199 price point in the UK – although there has been no confirmation of a UK release as yet. As we know, iPad 2 retails from £399 for 16GB, while the HTC Flyer has finally come down to a decent price point for the 16GB version - £329 and up. We don't know a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 UK price as yet. Thickness and weight The 7-inch Kindle Fire is 11.4mm thick, substantially more than the 8.8mm-thick 9.7-inch iPad 2. The 7-inch HTC Flyer is even thicker at 13.2mm. The thinnest accolade goes to the Galaxy Tab 7.7 at just 7.9mm thick. As for weight, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 is the lightest at 335g, the Kindle Fire is 414g, the HTC Flyer is 421g, while the iPad 2 clocks in at 601g for the Wi-Fi version. Here's the Galaxy Tab 7.7: Screen resolution The Kindle Fire has a resolution of 1,024 x 600 as does the HTC Flyer. The iPad 2 is next in line at 1,024 x 768 (remember that's a 9.7-inch display too) but top of the pile is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 with a 1,280 x 800 pixel resolution 7.7-inch display. Screen type The Kindle Fire and iPad 2 have IPS LCD multi-touch panels, while the HTC Flyer has a capacitive LCD screen. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is the first tablet to feature a Super AMOLED Plus display. It's hugely bright and super clear. Processor All the tablets are dual-core aside from the HTC Flyer which uses a still-speedy 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. The iPad 2 uses the Apple A5 (below), while the Galaxy Tab 7.7 uses a (probably Samsung) 1.4GHz model. The Kindle Fire has a 1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP chip. Memory and storage The Kindle Fire has 512MB of memory, like the iPad 2. However, it only has 8GB of internal memory which by anybody's reckoning is quite poor for a device based around content. The iPad 2 comes in 16, 32 and 64GB variants as does the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7. The Flyer comes in 16 and 32GB memory versions. The Samsung and HTC devices also have 1GB of internal memory. Camera and video The Kindle Fire doesn't have a mic or camera – something which a lot of commentators believe is a sizeable hole in the Fire's armoury. All the other tablets are capable of 720p HD video and have front and back cameras. The HTC Flyer wins the day here, with a 5MP rear snapper as shown here: Connectivity The Kindle Fire only connects to the web via Wi-Fi, there is no cellular 3G data. All the other tablets are available in Wi-Fi only plus Wi-Fi + 3G versions should you wish. The Kindle Fire is also the only tablet not to support Bluetooth or GPS too. Surely Amazon will need to launch a 3G model at some point. Battery life While the iPad 2 and Samung Galaxy Tab 7.7 cite a battery life of 10 hours, the Kindle Fire says its battery life is 8 hours. The HTC Flyer battery life is "from 8 hours". The Kindle Fire in use: Summary Obviously the Kindle Fire isn't out in the UK yet, but if it does come here for £199 or so then it will still be a steal. Amazon's problem is if people buy the Kindle Fire expecting the full iPad-a-like tablet experience - they won't get that. The Kindle Fire is a worthy content device, but surely Amazon will need to top-out its range with a full 3G tablet to truly compete with high-end tablets like the iPad 2 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7.

Amazon's Silk browser en route to other devices? Posted: 29 Sep 2011 04:26 AM PDT Amazon has been on a URL shopping spree, splashing out on over 500 new domain names to add to its arsenal - including among them amazonsilkforandroid.com, amazonsilkformac.com and amazonsilkforpc.com. Catchy dot coms they may not be, but the new URLs certainly suggest that Amazon's Kindle Fire browser, Silk, could be making its way on to other devices in the future. It's no guarantee - Amazon may just be babysitting the domains so no one else can nab them, particularly given that the purchases were made through MarkMonitor, a brand protection agency - but it's an interesting proposition, and one that makes a modicum of sense. Silky smooth Announced yesterday, Silk is currently only on the Kindle Fire tablet, and uses a nifty combo of caching and the cloud to make web browsing super speedy and less power intensive for the tablet itself. If these new URLs are to be believed, we could see this web capability come to other Android tablets and smartphones, as well as to the desktop PC and Mac computers. For the time being though, we'd settle for Amazon to bring Silk to the UK on the Kindle Fire - a UK release date and pricing is nowhere to be seen.

Opera congratulates Amazon for 'catching up' with Silk Posted: 29 Sep 2011 03:29 AM PDT Opera has responded to the arrival of the Amazon Silk browser – which has some remarkably similar technology to the Opera Turbo feature – by praising the internet giant for 'catching up'. Norwegian company Opera has established a reputation of providing some of the greatest browser innovations, including tabs and the speed dial – familiar sights on the likes of Chrome. At the launch of the Kindle Fire, Amazon showed off its first foray into the browser world with Amazon Silk, which will use Amazon's cloud computer system to make browsing faster and less needful of a powerful device. Although Silk takes the concept of a cloud browser much further than Turbo – the server taking some of the load is certainly an idea explored in the Opera feature – which compresses web pages to suit devices on more limited networks. Not stinging "You know, we're a huge player in this field," Opera's Phillip Grønvold told TechRadar. "With more than 128 million users each month using Opera Mini it is clear the market for cloud based computing is in rapid growth. "Each month we are adding millions of users who are participating in the Web and we feel good that other big time players like Amazon are catching on to the idea." It's not exactly a stinging rebuke – although we'd not expect such from the always-polite Opera. But it's clear that Opera's track record of influence in the browser sphere is continuing.

Google Nexus Prime launch event dated? Posted: 29 Sep 2011 03:27 AM PDT Samsung has been sending out invites to an event in San Diego where it promises to 'unpack' something Android-related on 11 October. The event is dubbed the 'Google Episode' and invites you to "get a look at what's new from Android". Putting two and two together, we've all come out with the Google Nexus Prime - it's the most exciting Android handset on the horizon and the rumours and leaks have been going through the motions that suggest its launch is imminent. Prime-ula cheese And why is the Nexus Prime such an exciting prospect? It's set to be the flagship Ice Cream Sandwich handset, which means it should launch under the Google brand despite being made by Samsung. This could be a fly in the ointment though - if the flagship Nexus product for Ice Cream Sandwich is about to launch, Google would want to own the event, right? Still, that won't stop us salivating at the prospect of the Nexus Prime and its mega spec-age - a 4.6-inch screen, a dualcore 1.5GHz processor and a 1280x720 resolution HD display. So will it be the Google Nexus Prime or just some other Samsung Android devices? Time will tell - we're staying on the fence with this one.

LoveFilm arrives on the Apple iPad Posted: 29 Sep 2011 03:20 AM PDT LoveFilm has announced that it is bring its service to the Apple iPad, offering up movie streaming on the go. In a week where Amazon has announced the Kindle Fire in the US, it's interesting that the Amazon-owned LoveFilm has found its way on to the tablet's biggest rival - the iPad. Exciting step Speaking about the link-up, Simon Calver, CEO of LoveFilm, said: "In the process of making our service more portable than ever before, LoveFilm on iPad is the latest exciting step in giving film fans total control over their viewing schedule and our commitment to expanding the ways in which members can stream movies on a range of devices." The app is available for free and if you are a subscriber of packages £5.99 or above then you can use the app for no extra cost. Earlier this week, LoveFilm announced it had added Studio Canal content to its streaming service. Head over to the App Store on iPad or at www.itunes.com/appstore now.

In Depth: How the Tap! app was made Posted: 29 Sep 2011 03:00 AM PDT How the Tap! app was made Tap! magazine always deserved something special. As the authority on what apps, games and kit you should buy for your iPad and iPhone, when Future Publishing (which also publishes TechRadar) launched the magazine itself as a Tap! app, it had to be awesome. Tap! knows lots of people love its Zinio edition, which exactly replicates the printed magazine for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, but when they sat down to create a proper, bespoke regular iPad app edition of Tap!, they realised they could do so much more. The team behind the mag and the app wanted to start with a blank canvas, freeing themselves from the constraints of a printed magazine, and creating something just for the iPad. So they rejected the off-the-shelf software that other magazines use; it wasn't good enough. Most create pages that are nothing more than flat images; text becomes just a grid of pixels, for example, and you can't select it or have your iPad read it to you if your sight is impaired. Ultimately, the packages that most digital magazines are put together in are just too… magaziney for creating apps. Too old-fashioned. Too concerned with allowing print designers to use their old skills. Instead, they built their own software. In a matter of weeks, Tap!'s developers had created their own iOS-specific equivalent of InDesign. And here's the really cool bit: it runs on an iPad. Let's say that again: the iPad edition of Tap!, the magazine all about the iPad and iPhone, is created in an app running on an iPad. Neat, huh? Well, actually we're being a bit sneaky in saying that; while it certainly does run on an iPad, much of the time it runs on a Mac inside the same iPad simulator that developers use to test the apps they build for iOS. The only reason to do this, though, is because it's a bit quicker to access files this way; there's nothing stopping them putting together an entire issue on iPads if they wanted to. (And in fact, because of how the systems are set up, the simulator runs inside a virtualised Mac that runs inside a real Core i5 iMac; it's all a bit Inception.) Building on the iPad was more than just a nice side effect; it means the team can take advantage of the iPad's native features in a way that's not just fast and efficient, but fun and exciting, too. After many meetings where ideas both big and small we thrown around, the Tap! team had a clear idea of how the new app edition of the magazine would work and behave, and then came some old fashioned pen-and-paper sketching. Working on full-size iPad frames, pages were designed for each of the sections. While some of the magazine will be built from scratch each issue, most of the Apps, Games, Kit and How To sections can be based on templates, so a big part of the early development was nailing these templates. Tap! wanted to have big, colourful images of each app and game, to really let them shine. In some cases, too, they've recorded video of them in use. This will only be done for a select few apps, but every game will have a short video just to give you a feel for what it's like to play. And, in some cases, there will be big video walkthroughs and strategy guides. All the videos are stored on Tap!'s servers rather than including them in the app itself; while this does mean you'll have to be online to watch them, it means that each issue is really quick to download, and won't gobble up all the precious space on your device. To let the app and print editions play to their strengths, the developers decided that they wouldn't have to mirror each other exactly. The main bits - all app, games and kit reviews, tutorials and features - will appear in both, but there will be a small number of things that appear only in one or other. There is more room in the app edition, for example, to show you some behind-the-scenes stuff about how Tap! is made. Sadly, there's no way to offer a combined print and app subscription right now, but Tap! is hopeful that'll change. Even though the team has lavished thousands of hours on this app, the version you buy today is not the end of the app's development; it's just the beginning. Check out our tour of the new Tap! app in our video below. brightcove : 1173092766001

Samsung shows off odd Galaxy Tab bike with tablet holder Posted: 29 Sep 2011 02:52 AM PDT Samsung has shown off what it is calling 'the ultimate Galaxy Tab 10.1 accessory' which is a custom made road bike with a 'top of the range' tablet holder. If you've ever gone into a bike shop thinking 'I desperately need a branded bike that allows me to put a tablet sideways between my legs' then this will definitely be the ultimate accessory for you. Everybody else will probably look at the picture and say: "whaaaaa?", but maybe we're all missing something. Samsung explains: "The detachable Tab holder positioned in the triangular frame is made from quality Carbon fibre featuring the same Carbon specification used on F1 cars and has a fantastic strength to weight ratio." Better than a bag? "This means the holder is light yet robust – making it perfect for moving your Tab 10.1 with ease and in style," adds Samsung "Accessible from the side, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 holder allows for the device to be used easily whilst on the move. "Applications such as dashboards tracking mileage, route planners and repair instructions for punctures, can be downloaded from the Android Marketplace to enhance everyday cycling routes or more adventurous trips – a handy addition for any cyclist." We'll keep an eye out for reports of mysterious accidents from cyclists trying to peer between their own legs to see where they are going.

Budget HTC Explorer announced with Sense 3.5 Posted: 29 Sep 2011 02:27 AM PDT HTC has whipped a new budget phone out of the bag, with the HTC Explorer bringing a rubberised back and mid-range specs to the table. Toting a 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen and 600MHz processor, we'll forgive you for not cracking out the bunting and dancing excitedly in the streets over this one. But the HTC Explorer does come with cutting edge Android action; it's rocking Android 2.3.5 and Sense 3.5, although its meagre processing power means you'll have to make do without some bits and bobs. Downsides This means no HTC Watch movie rental service and no 3D scrolling effects on the homescreens - but we're sure you can live without those. You can console yourself with the 3MP rear-facing camera nestled comfortably on the rubberised back of the handset. The HTC Explorer UK release date is set for some time in Q4 quarter (so, by the end of the year) with the handset coming in black or navy colour options. Three has already announced its intentions towards the Explorer, with UK pricing yet to be revealed.

Tap! gets a dedicated iPad app edition Posted: 29 Sep 2011 01:45 AM PDT Tap! The iPhone and iPad magazine have launched a monthly iPad edition, with a bespoke interactive app going on sale today. Tap! from TechRadar publisher Future, will be offering up an app edition each month at the same time as its Zinio and print offerings. Tap! The iPhone and iPad magazine aims to help people find the best apps and games on the App Store, and the latest offering hopes to add a rich, intuitive and easy-to-navigate reading experience that makes the most of the iPad's revolutionary features. Tap! On! iPad! On top of this, game reviews feature videos of the action, while the Kit section boasts swipeable 360 degree photography. Christopher Phin, Editor of Tap! says: "We wanted to create a magazine that took advantage of all the iPad's amazing features and the new Tap! iPad edition does just that." brightcove : 1173092766001

Google Motorola deal gets antitrust probe Posted: 29 Sep 2011 01:38 AM PDT Google's $12.5 billion dollar purchase of Motorola has piqued the interest of the US Department of Justice, which has asked for more detail about the deal. Motorola revealed that the department's antitrust division has asked for "additional information and documentary material" relating to the acquisition. The phone maker also said that the department of justice has also been on the case with Google for similar information. Trying times Despite the feds sniffing around, the deal is still anticipated to close by the end of this year or in early 2012, according to Motorola at least. The antitrust division exists to regulate anti-competitive business dealings in order to maintain a fair marketplace. Just this week Google's Larry Page compared the Motorola deal to its acquistion of YouTube - and the $12.5 billion price tag is not to be sniffed at. Despite all and sundry in the mobile market rushing to 'welcome' the merging of the two companies, we can't help but suspect that there'll be a few boardrooms crossing their fingers for an antitrust ruling that stops it going ahead.

Review: Wacom Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch Posted: 29 Sep 2011 01:30 AM PDT Thanks to OS X Lion we're all getting used to the idea of using gestures to do things on the Mac, but you can quickly hit the limit of what multi-touch can do – especially when you want to paint, draw or customise your photos. And that's where Wacom's Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch comes in. Designed to match the MacBook's look and feel, the Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch is a family-friendly graphics tablet that combines the usability of multi-touch with the precision of pen. The small version of the tablet we tested includes Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Art Rage 3.0, which are available for download once you register the tablet with Wacom. Children will love the growing range of fun creative apps and games available too. Other goodies include a new wireless option (£35) so you can doodle USB cable-free. The supplied driver software also includes a good range of customisation options, including the ability to change the firmness of the pen's eraser and tip. In use, the Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch works very well and it can be easier to find your way around OS X than with a mouse or Magic Trackpad. But it's with creative apps that the Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch really comes into its own. The amount of control you can get with the pen is staggering – applying more downward force on the pen applies more ink or pencil to the 'paper' just like the real thing. Unfortunately the same can't be said of the multi-touch capabilities of the tablet, which can be slow to respond to gestures like pinch-to-zoom. But overall the Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch is a winner.

BBC's global iPlayer app launches in Australia Posted: 29 Sep 2011 01:25 AM PDT The BBC has stepped up its effort to make the iPlayer a worldwide hit, announcing the appointment of a new general manager and launching the global iPlayer app in Australia. Already a massive success with the licence fee players in the UK, the BBC is keen to make the iPlayer a major player on a global level, and is pushing on with its global iPlayer app. The app launched in Western Europe in July and is now moving into a key English language region in Australia. Classic and contemporary collide Jana Bennett, president, worldwide networks and global BBC iPlayer: "This unique Video On Demand product combines the classic with the contemporary and allows subscribers to mine seventy years of brilliant BBC programmes. "We launched the global BBC iPlayer because we think there's an untapped market for the 'best of British' shows, both for Brits living abroad and for all those people we know have a love of great British television, nowhere more so than Australia." Another key movement is the appointment of Matthew Littleford to the role of general manager for the global BBC iPlayer. Littleford joined BBC Worldwide in April 2011 and has now been moved up to the general manager post where he will be responsible for editorial and day-to-day operation, marketing, promotion, product and technology.

Three could run out of network space in cities next year Posted: 29 Sep 2011 01:13 AM PDT Mobile operator Three has warned that it may run out of network capacity by the end of 2012 if its planned spectrum auctions face further delays. A scary prospect for Three customers, if the network's prediction comes to pass then frustration awaits as data slows and network reliability falls. In addition to panicking that its existing spectrum will be used up, Three is concerned that its rivals, O2, Everything Everywhere and Vodafone, may try to delay the auction. David Dyson, the CEO of Three, explains, ""There is a huge financial incentive for rival operators to delay the auction. We are worried that the other three will attempt to squeeze us out of the market." Bullying tactics The upcoming sale of spectrum has already been pushed back because the auction terms have been challenged by the networks, and O2 for one hasn't ruled out further complaints. The spectrum sale, which was planned for the beginning of 2012 and has slipped to the middle of the year, will see the regulator dole out spectrum in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bandwidths. These new areas, partly freed up by the digital TV switchover, will provide enough bandwidth for 4G and LTE networks, as well as breathing room for traditional 2G and 3G networks. As well as doing the UK out of 4G for longer and longer, these set backs could leave Three in a sticky situation as its popular data-friendly deals are snapped up and its spectrum dwindles.

Gary Marshall: Kindles and iPads are the Tescos of tech Posted: 29 Sep 2011 01:12 AM PDT In the film Wall-E, humans get so lazy that all the shopping in the world comes from a single place: from ice cream to intergalactic space liners, if you want it, BnL - it's short for Buy'N'Large - is where you get it. The good news is that we're not quite there yet. The bad is that we're not far off, and yesterday's Kindle Fire announcement was yet another step in that direction. In Wall-E BNL has a monopoly, but we have duopolies: offline, retail is dominated by Tesco and ASDA; online, it's dominated by Apple and Amazon. Between the two of them the two firms have a lock on an awful lot of content: Amazon's the world's biggest ebook seller, and Apple's the world's biggest music retailer. As a gadget fan, I'm well aware that closed ecosystems such as iOS or the Kindle deliver the best possible end user experience. But I can't shift the nagging feeling that when we welcome our new retail overlords we're buying into something we might later regret. Pile 'em high As Columbia law professor Tim Wu points out, tech is creating information monopolies: where we once had stacks of search engines, today there's only really Google; "Apple dominates online content delivery; Amazon, retail, and so on." If anything, the Kindle Fire demonstrates that it's worse than Wu says: Amazon's well into the content delivery business, too, not to mention book publishing: in addition to making e-reader hardware and software, it's a distributor and publisher, too. The problem with letting a handful of firms dominate entire industries is that eventually, it becomes very hard to opt out. For example, I spend more time moaning about Facebook than I do actually using Facebook, but I can't kill my account because I'd lose track of too many people. It's not that you're forced to use something; it's that once you're in, it's really inconvenient to go anywhere else - and for that very reason I buy my music in iTunes and my ebooks on Amazon, because I bought devices that work better with iTunes and with Amazon. In fact, it's worse than that, because I also publish ebooks - and guess which two firms are the biggies there? The problem is that market power becomes self-perpetuating. You can see it in music, where most of the digital music bought for iOS devices comes from iTunes. And you can see it in books, where you're effectively invisible if you aren't published in iBooks and on the Kindle. In the town I live in, locals are up in arms about a proposed new Tesco. It's going to be too big, they argue. It's going to crush local shops, they say. Lack of competition is bad for suppliers, they'll add. And they're right, and my town will get a bigger Tesco, and we'll all shop there while occasionally recalling the days when we had independent, family-owned shops. I suspect we'll come to say the same about record shops, bookshops and newsagents' magazine racks: between them, AMZN and APPL are becoming BnL.

Android Ice Cream Sandwich detailed on video Posted: 28 Sep 2011 04:22 PM PDT The forthcoming Android update Ice Cream Sandwich has been detailed on video thanks to an eBay user who bought a Nexus S handset that mysteriously arrived loaded with the OS. The supposed lucky bidder took a two-minute video and screenshots of ICS running on the Samsung device and sent them to the Engadget blog. If the video walkthrough is legitimate, it shows more of Ice Cream Sandwich than we've ever seen before. Earlier this month, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt confirmed that ICS, which is set to unite the Gingerbread and Honeycomb ecosystems, will arrive in either October or November. Fresh features Among the fresh features seen in the shaky-cam video is a Google apps icon on the homescreen, which opens into a drawer that looks similar to folders in iOS. There's also a vertical multi-tasking menu that appears when the user holds down the home button. Also the main menu is now split into apps and widgets. We also get a look at the much-changed notifications bar, a different camera interface and a new Honeycomb-esque lock screen. Take a look for yourselves in the clip below. YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Pb6IyFvfg While we're not entirely convinced by the 'just bought it off eBay explanation' this is entirely different to anything we've seen on Android before and seems to fit in with previous Ice Cream Sandwich leaks.

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