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Techradar |
- Nintendo offers free 3DS-version of Excitebike
- Facebook error sees 1,600 teens storm private party
- Microsoft at E3: new Fable and new Kinect titles outed?
- Motorola Droid 3 leak: 1080p, 8MP, HDMI
- Kinect hacked into robotic shopping trolley
- E3 boss: '35,000 screens for 45,000 attendees'
- Nintendo is latest victim of hacking attack
- Tutorial: How to use your iPad as a secondary screen for your Mac
- Explained: Gnome 3.0: the complete guide
| Nintendo offers free 3DS-version of Excitebike Posted: 05 Jun 2011 03:43 PM PDT Nintendo has finally announced that the new 3DS download store,the cunningly-named 3DS eShop, launches this month, on June 6th. That's not all. The Japanese gaming company is also offering a free copy of NES classic Excitebike on offer for those early birds that download the new handheld app store on day one. So just in time for E3 2011 then! 3D web browser in your palm Nintendo made a big noise about the potential of the 3DS eShop in the run-up to the new handheld's launch back in March 2011, which saw many gamers and customers disappointed when it was then announced that the download store would not be made available until a few months after the 3DS was on stores' shelves. Still, minor gripes about delays aside, the new Nintendo eShop will deliver updated versions of games from the Gameboy, Gameboy Colour and the DS, in addition to movie trailers and details on new and forthcoming 3DS releases. 3DS gamers will also be offered new games and content on a weekly basis, every Thursday, according to the latest Nintendo press release. The offer of a free 3D version of NES classic Excitebike (providing you update before June 7 this week) and the chance to purchase the GameBoy version of Super Mario Land is sure to please the hardcore Nintendo fans. The update will also deliver a new purpose-built 3DS web browser (with the potential of showing 3D web imagery and video content) and Pokedex 3D, so Pokemon players can view their imaginary pets in 3D and project representations of them into the 3DS's camera's vision of the world in front of the console using the Nintendo console's augmented reality tech. "This new application lets users view each Pokémon in 3D with animated motion and sound. The Pokémon image can be rotated 360 degrees, allowing users to zoom in and view it from any angle," explains Nintendo's release. Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aime added that:"The Nintendo 3DS system is constantly evolving and growing. The Nintendo eShop is a one-stop resource for a broad range of Nintendo information and downloadable games and applications. It expands the Nintendo 3DS experience with new and entertaining content." 
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| Facebook error sees 1,600 teens storm private party Posted: 05 Jun 2011 03:17 PM PDT When a German teen inadvertently invited thousands of strangers to her sixteenth-birthday party via Facebook this month, a predictable amount of chaos and confused policing ensued. The German teenager, named Thessa, forgot to ensure that her invite for the Facebook event set for her party was set to private. This soon spiralled into 15,000 people confirming their attendance at her birthday party, with around 1,600 turning up at her parent's house on the night of the shindig. Chaos, violence, fires Having understood the potential chaos that could (and did) ensue, the girl alerted Hamburg police and had fled the scene to spend the day and night "at an undisclosed location" with her grandparents. Hamburg police said Sunday that 11 people were detained, one police officer was injured, lots of youngsters were cutting their feet on broken glass and firemen had to extinguish two small fires at the scene. Around 100 police were at the scene to attempt to try to maintain order throughout the night. "It was by and large a peaceful party," said a Hamburg police spokesperson. "There were some fires set alight, some acts of violence and with considerable alcohol consumption there was some property damage. There have been larger organized birthday parties in Hamburg but this may be the largest unorganized birthday party ever." 
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| Microsoft at E3: new Fable and new Kinect titles outed? Posted: 05 Jun 2011 02:54 PM PDT The official E3 2011 announcements about Microsoft's plans for the future of Xbox 360, Kinect and PC gaming are almost here, yet this doesn't stop those persistent pre-E3 rumours from appearing – with the latest news that Microsoft looks set to announce Fable: The Journey, Kinect Sports: Season 2 and a number of other new Kinect titles in LA tomorrow. The news comes directly from just-registered internet domain names that go by those very same (potential) game titles, as spotted by eagle-eyed trademark site Superannuation. Lots of new Kinect games Other potential new Kinect titles we may very well hear a lot more about later tomorrow night when Microsoft's E3 presser finally gets under way are Dance Central 2, Kinect Fun Labs and some other title called Xcommerce. CVG also notes that some retailers have started listing GTA V and Resident Evil 6 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Again, expect to hear more on those (and other) uber-gaming sequels from Microsoft and Sony's press conferences in Los Angeles tomorrow. Microsoft's E3 presser kicks off at 5pm BST tomorrow, followed by Sony's later in the day at 5pm LA time (that's 1am in the morning, for those that plan to stay awake to catch the PlayStation conference live and direct!). So, whether or not a demo of Fable: The Journey will see Peter Molyneux exclaiming that this new title is the most amazing use of motion control anybody has ever seen to date (likely) or whether or not we will see Molyneux resurrecting the young boy Milo from that original 'Project Natal' demo of E3 2009 (unlikely), this year's E3 is already set to be the talking point of the gaming and tech industries for the forthcoming few weeks. Stay tuned right here to TechRadar throughout E3 week for the full run-down of every single major news announcement you need to know about as and when it happens. 
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| Motorola Droid 3 leak: 1080p, 8MP, HDMI Posted: 05 Jun 2011 02:01 PM PDT A series oif three new leaked tutorial videos display some of the latest features that are soon on the way with the forthcoming Motorola Droid 3, including 1080p video recording, an 8 megapixel camera and HDMI-output. The tutorial videos detailing Motorola's latest QWERTY-slider phone were released online by gadget blog PhonePads. 8MP, 1080p, HDMI The tutorial videos (which you can see below). reveal that the Droid 3 will be packing an 8 megapixel camera that will be capable of 1080p HD video recordings. It is so far unclear whether or not Motorola's latest will ship with Android 2.3 or not, although we expect to hear confirmation of this in the very near future. For now, what we do know is that the Droid 3 will feature a TI OMAP 4430 chip and not an Nvidia Tegra 2, as with the Droid 2, though the new Motorola will still feature a 540x960 screen. Another new addition is HDMI output, which should allow you to output HD video from your mobile to your HD TV. No official word, as yet, on pricing, release dates or so forth. Motorola Droid 3: tutorial 1 Motorola Droid 3: tutorial 2 Motorola Droid 3: tutorial 3 For now, check out the leaked tutorial videos right here. 
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| Kinect hacked into robotic shopping trolley Posted: 05 Jun 2011 01:20 PM PDT As we await the official news on Microsoft's own plans for the future of its motion control tech for Xbox 360, the latest Kinect hack shows how the tech could be used to assist disabled, wheelchair-bound users accomplish basic daily tasks. Luis de Matos's wi-Go project is a great indication of the practical potential of this type of motion control technology, enabling a shopping trolley to automatically follow a disabled wheelchair user around a supermarket. Kinect in the community The wi-Go could allow anyone that is independently unable to push or control a shopping trolley to still easily accomplish a basic supermarket shop. Using a laptop and a hacked Kinect system, the shopping trolley will follow the user at a safe distance, tracking their progress around the store. You can see how technology such as the wi-GO Kinect hack could be employed to help disabled, elderly and other people with restricted movement in the video demo above. 
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| E3 boss: '35,000 screens for 45,000 attendees' Posted: 05 Jun 2011 12:53 PM PDT The chief executive of the trade association which hosts the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo has boasted that this year's event will have around 45,000 attendees and an incredible 35,000 video monitors. That is nearly one screen per person attending E3 2011. A pretty impressive figure, and a good indication of the importance of the event to the games industry and of the spectacle that it has become to represent and publicise gaming across the specialist technology/gaming media and the wider mainstream media. The most visual show in the world As we ramp up to bring you all of the major tech, gaming peripheral and triple-A games news announcements from LA over the coming week, Mike Gallagher, president and chief exec of the Entertainment Software Association, the trade association responsible for holding E3, has been revealing a few interesting and topical facts, figures and opinions to Venturebeat about this year's gaming show-and-tell. "I think as always, E3 is a gathering place for the video game industry where we send messages worldwide to the consuming public, to retailers, to investors, everyone who has an interest in media or entertainment," says Gallagher. "It's about what's coming next. E3 defines what's coming next…the slogan for the show says "Exceeding Your Imagination." The meaning really captures what E3 is all about." The E3 boss stresses that his organisation is strictly focused on "the quality of the experience… as opposed to the quantity of the experience." This means that, in addition to the fact that the ESA expects to around 45,000 people to attend E3 2011, there are also "over 200 companies that are going to be present and exhibiting at the show… a continued escalation in terms of the number of exhibitors." The E3 boss is clearly most proud of the fact that his show is one of the most visual and spectacular trade events on earth, adding: "This makes me smile and helps me appreciate the electric effect of our show. There are more than 35,000 video monitors that are going to be used at the show. That's like one display for everybody that comes through the turnstiles." Steel yourself for a barrage of hardware, peripherals and games news from Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and hundreds of other companies exhibiting at E3 2011 over the coming days. 
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| Nintendo is latest victim of hacking attack Posted: 05 Jun 2011 12:12 PM PDT Nintendo has become the latest target of online attacks by hackers, following the recent high-profile attacks on Sony. In news that could not have come at a worse time for Nintendo and the wider games industry, with E3 2011 kicking off this week, Nintendo execs have been quick to reassure customers that no personal or company information has been lost or stolen by hackers. Protection of customers Nintendo spokesman Ken Toyoda said of the latest attacks: "There were no third-party victims….But it is a fact there was some kind of possible hacking attack." A Nintendo statement added: "The server [under attack] contained no consumer information. The protection of our customer information is our utmost priority. "We constantly monitor our security," Nintendo's statement added. Hacker group Lulzsec is claiming responsibility for the latest attack on Nintendo, according to its Twitter feed. Lulzsec also recently claimed to have broken into Sony Pictures Entertainment website. "We meant no harm!" "We recently broke into SonyPictures.com and compromised over 1 million users' personal information, including passwords, email addresses, home addresses, dates of birth and all Sony opt-in data associated with their accounts," LulzSec said in a statement. As for the Nintendo hack, Lulzsec's Twitter feed read: "Re: Nintendo, we just got a config file and made it clear that we didn't mean any harm. Nintendo had already fixed it anyway. <3 them!" the group wrote. Whether they meant any hard or not, it's still a PR nightmare, particularly due to the fact that Nintendo is finally set to unveil the details of the successor to the Wii – codenamed 'Project Café' – at its E3 press conference on Tuesday 7 June. 
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| Tutorial: How to use your iPad as a secondary screen for your Mac Posted: 05 Jun 2011 05:00 AM PDT Did you know that your iOS device can become the perfect complement for your Mac desktop or notebook? Here we'll show you how. For starters, your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, can be used as an additional screen. You won't get the same performance as you would with a physically connected monitor, but why not park your iTunes window on the iPad screen so that you've always got it accessible? Or if you're researching online and making notes, use your main display for Safari and pop your word processor on the iPad to jot things down. You can also use the iPad or iPhone as a controller for your Mac. First though, why not take advantage of all that storage? Out of the box, you can't use your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch as plug-andplay external storage in the way you could with older iPods. But with a Mac app called Phone Disk, your iOS device will mount on your desktop when you connect it with a USB lead. Go to the Phone Disk website and click the Download link to try it out. Note that the full, single-user version costs £13. Work through the installer and restart when it's done, and double-click the Phone Disk app in your Applications folder (for ease of use, go to System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items and add it to the list so that it loads automatically). Now, every time you connect your iOS device to your Mac, it'll appear on your desktop, where you can drag files to it, like you would with a USB flash drive. A word of warning: keep off the stuff that's already there, and drag your device to the Trash before unplugging it. How to use your iPhone or iPad as a second screen 01. Get the Air Display app There are various iPad apps for using the device as a second screen, but our favourite is Air Display (£5.99). Buy yourself a copy. While it's downloading, move back to your Mac and open up a web browser window - you'll need an accompanying bit of software on your Mac. 02. Download Mac software Visit Avatron. Choose the edition of the software for your version of OS X and click it. Once it's downloaded, the installer file should appear on your screen. Double-click it and work through the steps to load the drivers. You'll need to restart when it's finished. 03. Connect the two With your Mac restarted, make sure it's on the same Wi-Fi network as your iPad. On the iPad, open Air Display. Back on the Mac, you'll see a new icon in the menu bar. Click it and select Open Air Display Preferences… Check it's set to On and click the Device drop-down. 04. Et voila Click your iPad in the menu and you'll see both screens briefly go blue, before your desktop background appears on your iPad screen. Now think about where you're going to put your iPad in relation to your Mac. Put it in position and click Show All on your Mac screen. 05. Arrange the screens In the System Preferences window that appears, click Displays. You'll see a window open on each screen - note that you can colour-calibrate your iPad's screen here, should you wish. On the Mac, click Arrangement. The iPad is the one without a white bar - drag to position. 06. Enjoy the space Now drag your windows onto the iPad to use it as a second screen. Why not pop your iTunes or Mail windows there? Using Air Display, you can play Flash video on your iPad! Tap to move the mouse, or use two fingers to scroll. Note: sound will play through your Mac. How to control your Mac from your device As well as providing you with extra Mac storage and an additional display, your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch can be used as a controller for your Mac. On the iOS App Store, grab yourself a copy of Mobile Mouse Pro. There are separate versions for iPhone (£1.19) and iPad (£1.79). You'll need the server software on your Mac too. Install it and make sure all your kit is connected to the same wireless network. Ensure the Mac app is running by looking for its icon in the menu bar - it should load automatically when you start up. The Mobile Mouse system should work without you needing to go near any settings, but if you do need to fiddle with any, or want to password-protect your setup to stop pranksters messing with your Mac, select Server Settings in the Mobile Mouse menu. On your portable device, open the app, tap the Settings cogs in the top corner and it'll look for nearby Macs - you should see yours listed (you can also alter the way the controller behaves in the Options tab). Once connected, your device becomes a multi-touch trackpad and keyboard with which you can control your Mac. The iPad version even incorporates your Mac's Dock. 
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| Explained: Gnome 3.0: the complete guide Posted: 05 Jun 2011 03:00 AM PDT Gnome 3 is the first major release of the popular desktop environment in over eight years. Many identify Gnome as being the face of Linux, because most early distros (and many current ones, of course) adopted the desktop in order to put bells and whistles on the ever-maturing kernel at the back. Gnome 3 is radically different from previous releases. It's got a polished user interface that's been tuned for usability and a slicker code base to please application developers. Gnome Shell is a new interface that replaces several key components of the desktop, such as the panel and the menus, and influences how you switch tasks, move between windows and more. Along with GTK 3 and the Clutter-based Mutter compositing manager, which serves to replace Metacity, the desktop as a whole has come a long way since the components started popping up in the repositories of many distros. So without further ado, here's everything you need to know about the sparkling new desktop in town. Gnome 3.0 development The Gnome 3 desktop has been in the works for quite a while. The release team first announced to the world that they were working on Gnome 3 at the Gnome Users And Developers European Conference (GUADEC) in Istanbul back in 2008. After the conference, several developers started evaluating the areas in Gnome 2 that needed to be redesigned for a pleasurable user experience. The discussions led to the Boston User Experience hackfest in October that year. Vincent Untz, who was on the release team at the time, blogged that the designers and developers at the conference "tried to forget the current Gnome and see what we thought would make sense". They looked at several areas, such as window management, file management and desktop widgets, from a designer's point of view. In an interview on the Gnome Journal, William Jon McCann, who contributes to several key areas of Gnome, notes that, at the hackfest in Boston, even before any kind of process emerged there was an intentional design-first ethic to the project. That's where the first mock-up of the Gnome 3 desktop was worked on. It previewed a number of desktop refinements that are the highlights of Gnome 3, such as the integrated desktop search and a graphical interface for moving windows between workspaces. Stepping out of the shell At the hackfest, one of the key areas the team decided to re-think was window management. In the current Gnome release, tasks such as application launching, window management and task switching are handled by Metacity. This will now be delegated to Gnome Shell. Put simply, Gnome Shell refreshes the visual experience of the desktop. Six months after the project began under the leadership of Owen Taylor, William Jon McCann joined as design lead. "The first thing I did when I started working on the Gnome Shell project was read. I spent a month doing nothing but reviewing usability research into desktop computing," says McCann. Instead of just putting gloss over the existing desktop, the developers designed it after analysing fundamental usage patterns. Taylor outlines some of the questions they wanted to address with the new desktop: "How can we provide a workflow that assists the user in efficiently moving between different tasks, rather than making them do busy-work to manage their files and applications? How should the desktop be different if the user is spending most of their time in the web browser and chat program, rather than in word processor documents and spreadsheets?" Allan Day, a member of the design team, adds that, "the Gnome 3 desktop was designed so that it would be usable and recognisable across a whole range of computing devices", which is why Gnome 3 is designed to work on everything from the limited real estate of a netbook to a touchscreen laptop or multicore desktop. Gnome Shell uses compositing and is integrated with Mutter, which is an OpenGL-based window and compositing manager that leverages the Clutter toolkit. At the Boston summit, there were several presentations on using the Clutter toolkit in a range of Gnome applications. It was there that Frederico Mena-Quintero presented his journal-based file management tool, now called Zeitgeist, which is an integral part of Gnome 3's Activity Journal. Gnome 3 was set to be released in September 2010, but in July that year the team pushed back the release to March 2011. By the time Gnome 2.32 was released, version 3's release wasn't expected until April 2011. Whistlestop tour of the Gnome 3 desktop 1. Panel The main desktop is noticeably different and has made great strides towards being more newbie-proof. You don't have to be a veteran Gnome user to notice that instead of two panels, the Gnome 3 desktop now features just one at the top. The panel has rearranged the clock and notification icons, but the menus for applications, places and system have been replaced by the solitary Activities menu. Active applications are listed next to this menu, and offer app-specific tasks, as well as options to close the application and open a new window. 2. Activities This is where we can see most obviously the much-talked-about innovation of Gnome Shell. Activities offers you different ways to switch from one activity or task to another. You can enable the Activities view by clicking the Activities menu or just moving your mouse to the top-left corner of the screen. The Activities view makes the workspaces more intuitive. In it, you get a preview of all the open windows, as well as running applications, across workspaces. You can drag new applications, documents and windows between workspaces. It also lets you close multiple windows without having to switch to them. By default, you have two workspaces and can add more as required. The Activities view also integrates search and browse functionality, which behaves similarly to Gnome Do and is useful in case the application or file you're after isn't immediately visible. 3. Apps-dash Like all aspects of Gnome Shell, the Applications view is designed to work well with touchscreens. The applications icons can be used to launch programs, and currently running apps are indicated by the addition of a glow underneath the name. Clicking on its name will either switch to the last used window of a running app or launch a new instance. Another prominent feature is the dashboard on the left side of the screen, which lists currently running applications and also acts as a quick launch for favourite apps. 4. Notifications Besides these always-on display features, Gnome 3 has also had some more subtle user interface redesigns. One of them is the new notification system, which has been developed to communicate events without distracting you. The notifications appear at the bottom of the screen in order to avoid the usability issues encountered with the notifications system in earlier Gnome releases. The new Gnome desktop also integrates messaging into the desktop. You can now reply to IM messages, and get a threaded view of a conversation, without launching an app or switching away from your current window. It's not just the desktop that's had an overhaul for Gnome 3 It might look different, but at its heart Gnome 3 has the same set of useful applications that it's had for quite a few releases. The apps have been refined, polished and upgraded to the new GTK 3 toolkit. The Nautilus file manager has been redesigned and features a new dialog box for connecting to remote servers. There's also a new cleaner toolbar, a smarter status bar that appears only when called for, and a sidebar that eases navigation by organising your locations more intuitively. The zippy vanilla text editor in Gnome, Gedit, features a new search pop-up. It can now open and save compressed files, and boasts a smarter spell-checker, which will also point out spelling errors in comments when editing programming code. Besides these visual changes, there have been several behind-the-scenes alterations as well, such as to the Gedit documentation, which has been rewritten in the Mallard format. Mallard is a markup language that makes it easier for developers to write help documentation for their software. The Evince document viewer also uses Mallard for its documentation. Evince supports several document formats, including PDF, DJVU, TIFF, CBR, CBZ and so on, plus the XML Paper Specification (XPS) format. The File menu and the toolbar have a new Open Container Folder action button, which calls on Nautilus to launch the folder containing the document you're currently viewing. The user interface for Cheese, the app for taking pictures and videos from your webcam, has been rewritten from scratch in Vala. Cheese also features over 30 user-configurable effects, which can be previewed live. There have been several under-the-hood changes to the Epiphany web browser to make it zippier. It has a new non-intrusive download manager and a floating status bar to give pages more browser real estate. The feature of grouping tabs by site previously provided by the Tab Groups extension is now built into the browser itself. The Evolution personal information manager, which provides email, calendar, address book and task list functions, has a new Picture Gallery option in the View menu. Printing the Work View in Evolution's calendar is at last possible, an omission first reported in 2003. One app that's received a lot of enhancements is the Empathy instant messenger. It's tightly integrated and a core component of the new Gnome desktop. Most of the changes in Empathy are usability improvements. It prompts you for a password only when it's needed, rather than requiring you to save it when you create the account. New incoming calls are now automatically rejected when you're on another call. Gnome 2 and fallback mode Although the core Gnome applications are better integrated into the new Gnome 3 desktop, your favourite Gnome apps will work just fine. According to Sri Ramkrishna, an editor of the Gnome Journal, a Gnome 2 application can exist in a Gnome 3 environment. "We continue to maintain the same GTK API from GTK 2, although they're deprecated while providing newer API for application programmers to use. The advantage is that application developers can move to Gnome 3 at their discretion," he says. Since Gnome 3 is not only a visual refresh but also provides facilities such as more flexible size allocation, new widgets and so on, you can expect more apps to be ported to the new desktop. Gnome 3 requires hardware-accelerated graphics, which could be a problem for some people. If the Gnome session manager detects insufficient graphics capabilities, the desktop will automatically switch to a fallback mode, which uses Gnome Panel, Metacity and notification-daemon instead of Gnome Shell, but they'll be configured to behave like they do in Gnome Shell. Gnome 3 FAQ How do I test Gnome 3? The best way to try Gnome 3 is via the official live CD hosted at www.gnome3.org. There are both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the OpenSUSE-based live CD. You can burn the live CD ISO image onto a blank CD and boot from it. The other way is to transfer the image onto a USB stick using the dd command. Assuming your USB drive is /dev/sdc, make sure it isn't mounted, and use:
Currently, you won't be able to experience the full Gnome 3 desktop if you boot the CD image in VirtualBox, even if the 3D acceleration is enabled. Will my favourite Gnome 2 application work on Gnome 3? Gnome 3 already bundles a set of core applications. You can install any Gnome 2 app on Gnome 3 that won't look out of place on the desktop. Still, if you have a custom GTK-based app, it's best to try it out in the sandboxed live environment. Why are there no applets? When brainstorming Gnome 3, the developers and designers reviewed the core functionalities provided by the most useful applets, such as the clock, calendar, show desktop icon and so on. Since Gnome Shell doesn't omit any of these essential functionalities when in use, they decided to replace the applets with this. Where have the controls to minimise windows gone? The lack of minimise (and maximise) buttons in the window title bars in Gnome 3 initially strikes you as being a bug, but it's actually a feature! According to the design team, the buttons make little sense on the Gnome 3 desktop since there's nothing to minimise the windows to. There's no dock or window list. The team debated whether they should instead replace the minimise button with a button to hide the windows, but ruled against it because communicating the location of the hidden windows would just add complexity. Instead, in the new desktop, if you want to switch to a particular window, select it from the Activities overview. You can drag windows to resize them and double-click to maximise. Removing the two buttons also adds to the touch-friendly nature of the whole desktop, since now you won't accidentally maximise a window you want to close. Wait a minute, no dock? As we said above, the omission of a dock doesn't actually take away any functionality, and in fact is the basis for the distraction-free theme of Gnome 3. Now you can switch windows easily when you want to, and avoid them interfering with the task at hand. As a bonus, the removal of the window list and dock made the bottom panel unnecessary. Taking it out freed up more real estate on the desktop, which is a luxury on small-screen devices such as netbooks. I see the sense in that, but why are the customisation options so limited? One of the design goals of Gnome 3 is to minimise the number of settings and preferences. This has divided opinions in the open source community, since many power users don't like decisions to be made for them. The Control Center in Gnome 3 has been completely redesigned, including the contents of every settings panel. One of the settings that's been restricted is theming, although changing the desktop background is still possible using the Background panel, which can now pull in images from Flickr. Another default that's generated a lot of debate is the power setting, which suspends the laptop when the lid is closed, and doesn't provide an option to change that behaviour. You can read some more in-depth commentary about that here. But this is very much a work-in-progress. The Gnome 3 website mentions that "a powerful extensions system is also planned for a future release that will give users and developers exciting customisation possibilities". So where's GConf? The GConf system, used for storing configuration settings for the Gnome desktop and apps running on top of it, has been replaced by GSettings. If I migrate from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3, what happens to my settings? In the GSettings hackfest back in April 2010, the developers agreed upon a mechanism to migrate the settings from GConf to GSettings. GSettings hacker Matthias Clasen explains the workflow. First, the applications that are interested in migrating user settings from GConf to GSettings install a conversion file, which is a keyfile in the directory /usr/share/GConf/ gsettings. For example: [org.gnome.mousetweaks] This keyfile is picked by the gsettings-data-convert tool that's installed by GConf and started automatically at login. The tool reads the file and copies data from the user's GConf database to the GSettings. It then keeps track of what conversions it's already done in /.local/share/gsettings-data-convert. The limitation of this process is that it can only handle simple key types, such as strings, integers, floats, booleans and lists of strings or integers. Clasen explains that during development they discovered it wasn't a good idea to convert user settings for keys that aren't exposed in the user interface. If advanced users want to tweak these settings, they're still able to do so from the command line. For example, if you want to change the theme, you can do it with the gsettings command line tool: gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme 'Clearlooks' Um, so can I still use Gnome 2? Sure you can. Well, at least for the time being. According to the Gnome developers, some parts of Gnome 2 were difficult to maintain and they don't plan to do so for several parts of the Gnome 2 branch following the release of Gnome 3. Still, the Gnome 2 desktop is quite stable and won't disappear off your distro's mirrors any time soon. Alright then, so how do I install Gnome 3? Components of the Gnome 3 desktop have been in the testing repos of major distros for a while now. By the time you have this issue in your hands, Gnome 3 will have been released. For detailed installation instructions, take a look at the Gnome 3 website. Add the relevant repositories, fire up your distro's package manager, get yourself a mojito and enjoy the shiny new desktop! 
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