Texas Instruments debuts 3D without glasses that doesn't suck
Texas Instruments has teamed up with 3M to offer a 3D experience without glasses and also without the use of a lenticular screen.
A tablet device was shown off at Mobile World Congress piping 3D images to your eyes, without the need for glasses but still using the stereoscopic – separate images to each eye – method of displaying 3D.
To create the effect, 3M has come up with a screen overlay for a 120-Hz LCD that directs images towards either your left eye and right eye.
The images are shown at 60fps and it creates a simulated 3D image.
HD in 3D
The display is currently powered by the Texas Instruments OMAP3 chipset but TI is promising to bring HD movies to life when it implements its OMAP4 chip.
Although the technology is in its nascent stages, it's refreshing to a company trying a new way to bring autostereoscopic 3D to consumers, instead of the frankly awful lenticular displays that are favoured by the advertising display market.
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Your view: Your view: Is HTC's Desire more wanted than the IPhone
HTC's Desire was announced at Mobile World Congress and immediately got the TechRadar office buzzing.
'Was this,' we asked, 'the phone that has finally made us want to leave our iPhones behind and move onto the wildly promising Android platform?'
"We're mightily impressed with the HTC Desire, and can see that this is going to be a real iPhone contender in 2010, no matter what Steve Jobs brings out later this year," said Phone Editor Gareth Beavis in his Hands on: HTC Desire review.
But what do you think? Has HTC finally cracked it with a phone that takes much of the best bits of the (HTC-made) Google Nexus One but adds in the widely admired Sense UI?
Or will Apple's likely summer arrival immediately wrest back the impetus when its announced?
Over to you…
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In Depth: 5 reasons why 3D gaming will totally suck...
The PC's been quietly at it for years, but it wasn't until Sony's recent reveal that it'll be building stereoscopic 3D support into the PlayStation 3 with an upcoming firmware update that the world really started squealing "ooh! Ooh! We want that!"
It's a delightful idea – but given how divisive 3D cinema has proven to be, is all this techno-kerfuffle really worth it? Here's the case for the defence, and for the prosecution….
Five reasons you'll love 3D gaming...
1. 3D is easy and free to implement
For the Playstation 3, it's all happening via free firmware updates. For the PC, it's a patch or a driver profile. For the Xbox… well, Microsoft don't seem terribly interested as yet, but given its ongoing Wi-Fi dongle, hard drive and Xbox Live price gouging, expecting something sickeningly unreasonable if it does have a crack.
In general, though, 3D is something that, aside from the initial hardware investment, is going to quietly build itself into gaming anyway. Less so for developers – even 3D propagandist Blitz Games reckons supporting stereoscopy adds 10-15% to game budgets. Hopefully the returns will make that worthwhile.
2. The Avatar method
At the moment (ie with the primarily Nvidia-endorsed 3D on PC games) we're stuck in a bit of a halfway house of token depth effects and the occasional gimmicky pop-ups. This is the same mistake 3D films were largely making until Avatar, thinking theme park rather than immersion.
Once this really gets going – most likely once the PS3 firmware updates and Sony tellys arrive – we'll see games that do what Avatar did. So, incidental effects like weather, dense vegetation and scale rather than visual stunts. The result – game worlds that feel more alive.
3D IN MIND: James Cameron's Avatar: The Game is one of very few games to be designed with 3D in mind, rather than being loosely supported after the event. Unfortunately, it was rubbish
3. 3D encourages motion
Let's face it, we gamers aren't the most mobile bunch. And why should we be? Games only require interaction from our hands. 3D, though, is an encouragement to move our heads a little, to appreciate the new sense of the depth and admire how that severed arm really juts out of the screen.
When the vista in front of us seems more there, we're going to behave accordingly. Which means no more fat necks. Possibly.
4. Glasses-free 3D is coming
Autostereoscopic 3D is on the (hopefully) not too distant horizon, promising 3D games and video without the need for bulky glasses. There are multiple approaches to this in the works, but the core idea is similar to glasses-based stereoscopy - different images are fired at each of your eyes.
The difference is that the display, not the glasses, separates the picture. The likely key to this is a degree of face-tracking so that the image can adjust itself to your position, as in general autostereoscopy has a limited field of view, the effect breaking down if you don't look at it from just the right angle.
3D TV: One of Sony's admittedly very attractive 3D Bravia TVs. The range isn't exactly famed for its affordability, alas
5. 3D is really going to come into its own with motion control
3D + motion control (ie Project Natal et al) = Augmented Reality. Potentially. Once we have a world that looks more like our world, and that is interacted with in ways similar to how we interact with our world, the false belief by so many people that games are like films with button-pushing may fall away.
Games are about creating an alternative to reality, a landscape of imagination to let our brains run riot in. If the ancient stumbling blocks of flat, two-dimensional pictures and all-too-physical controls can truly be removed, virtual reality might finally become a, well, reality instead of a dead, embarrassing buzzword.
Five reasons you'll hate 3D gaming...
1. You'll need new hardware
A new TV for your PlayStation, a new 120Mhz monitor for your PC and, depending on what 3D tech you go for, a set of active, rechargeable 3D glasses. Going 3D isn't going to be cheap – why not spend all that cash on an impossibly large TV, a clutch of ace games, a nice new hat and some gourmet sausages instead?
At present, the incoming PS3 3D means this is all a bit of a Sony thing too – they're bullying us into 3D by saturating the tech industry with their expensive new tellies and Blu-Ray players.
2. Loss of colour
Pass a game or movie through a pair of polarised stereoscopic glasses, separated into left and right images, and you lose light. In turn, you can lose colour and vibrancy (depending on the effectiveness of any colour correction tech employed).
Given most big-budget videogames already seem to think brown and grey are the only colours worth bothering with, where's the fun in 3D if these muddy worlds end up looking even more dreary?
3. Yeah, the glasses thing
You look like an extra from Back to the Future 2, the fleshy bit where your ear attaches to your skull will ache after a while, and whenever you look around and see anyone else wearing 'em the fantasy of the game world falls apart. And don't get us started on how preposterous it feels to wear 3D glasses over existing glasses – you look like a mad professor.
UNCOOL: It's OK, you definitely won't look like a total idiot whilst wearing 3D glasses, because it says Sony on the side! Problem solved
4. You stop noticing
Can you honestly say you were still cooing at all the visual frippery in Avatar in the last hour or so? Course you weren't. You were just hoping that the blue hippies would beat up the nasty racists, and that they'd stop saying 'I see you' over and over again.
And were you still noticing that the balloons in Up looked a bit poppy-out after the first couple of shots? Nope, you were just laughing at the funny dog.
We acclimatise to visual phenomena quickly; in fact, you'd adapt just as easily to playing games on a 14" black and white telly. When you adapt to what's there, what's the point in going to all this effort for 3D?
5. Patchy support and backwards compatibility
For all Nvidia's ballyhooing, try 3D gaming on PC now and it's a muddled mess of pleasing depth effects and crosshairs and HUDs that look like someone tattooed a hologram directly onto your retina. The stuff that works is undone by the stuff that doesn't.
Unless game developers are consciously thinking about how their interfaces, menu screens and cutscenes are going to look in glasses-o-vision, you're going to have a headache-inducing barrage of screen elements that don't know how to behave.
You can fix some of it with driver profiles on PC, but you'll have more fun just instantly playing the game with none of that 3D fuss. Once Sony's 3D-specific games such as Gran Turismo 5 arrive we'll have a neater experience, but running older games, on PC or PS3, in 3D just means a whole lot of bloody-minded compromise.
IN THE GAME: Nvidia's 3DVision dongle/active glasses, which go for around آ£100. You'll need to pickup a 120Mhz monitor as well, or they're absolutely no bloody use whatsoever
Also, if you're a crazy person:
It will make violent games too lifelike, worry 51% of general consumers. It's true – being able to see a little more depth is the tipping point that will cause millions of gamers to instantly turn into murderers.
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Sex.com for sale again
Sex.com – one of the world's most desired web addresses – is once more up for sale, with owners Escom LLC in foreclosure.
The sex.com address has managed to create huge amounts of controversy over the years, and was bought last time out for a whopping $14 million (آ£9.1m).
It was Gary Kremen, best known as the founder of match.com, that got that particular fee, but only after years of wrangles involving fraudster Stephen Cohen – who made millions during the dotcom boom.
Fraud
Cohen had wrested control by persuading an employee of Network Solutions to change over ownership of the site with a fraudulent fax.
In November 2000, a court decided that Kremen was the legal owner and awarded him what amounted to $65 million, which prompted Cohen to flea the US before being returned and eventually jailed.
Escom LLC bought the name in 2006 – but despite having one of the most valuable online domains – the company is now bust and flogging its asset.
It's unlikely that it will retrieve the money that it paid for the domain, and you do have to wonder if the world is still typing sex.com into a url bar any more anyway.
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Jobs: Flash on iPad would give it 1.5 hour battery life
Steve Jobs has been speaking behind closed doors to select journalists and explaining some of his reasoning behind exactly why Apple has not added Flash compatibility to the iPad.
While on a trip round the Wall Street Journal offices he offered sound bite after sound bite regarding Flash, noting that the battery performance would be significantly reduced to just 1.5 hours if Flash was on-board – down from the 10 hours he promised in his iPad keynote in January.
Flash backward
According to the WSJ, he also likened Flash to other old-school tech which Apple has ditched, including floppy drives, CDs (because of iTunes) and FireWire cables.
If Jobs did put Flash into the category of floppy drives, then the likelihood of either the iPad, iPod or iPhone getting Flash upgrades is very slight.
Recently Jobs had another pop at Flash, calling the format "buggy".
Adobe is willing to communicate with Jobs over Flash with the iPad but according to Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch, "We have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen."
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In Depth: How to get started with Linux
Sometimes it's easy to forget that we all had to start somewhere with Linux. When you're not used to the way it works, or the kind of concepts involved, Linux can seem like a foreign language.
If you're struggling with free software, or if you know someone who needs help making the switch to Linux, we hope this feature will help.
Fedora is a great choice of distribution to start with. It's easy to install and just as easy to use. It's one of the most well-respected distributions available, and has a very tight relationship with its parent and chief sponsor, Red Hat.
With Fedora, you have access to one of the largest communities in the world of Linux, and one of the the biggest selections of software to play with.
So download Fedora and burn it to a disc. Put it in the drive. After inserting and booting the machine, the first screen you'll see is the Fedora boot menu. You need to choose the first option, "Install or upgrade an existing system". In some rare cases, you may find that your computer is unable to progress any further.
Before trying our online forums, try the second option in the boot menu. This will use a failsafe graphics card driver and this should enable most people to get problematic machines up and running.
Installation
After you've selected your language and keyboard you'll be asked whether you want to test the install media. There's no reason to go through this lengthy process, and you should select 'Skip' to jump to the install stage directly.
But if you do experience problems with the installation, especially later when the packages are being installed onto your machine, then it's worth coming back to this option. If there are problems with the disc scan, see here.
The next screen asks you to name the computer. This can be a little confusing for most people, as they're not going to have any idea what the hostname should be. On an office network it's the only way to tell one machine from another, so the system administrator would need to ensure that each hostname is unique. On a home network, this isn't quite so important, and you can call your computer anything.
After this, you need to create a root password for your distribution. Unlike many modern distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora still has an all-powerful administrator's account that's used for system administration. This is the password you'll need to access it.
Partition your drive
It's now time to choose how your hard drives are going to be used. If you're happy to lose all data on a single-drive system, just click on Next. If you have more than one drive, but you're still dedicating a whole device to Fedora, make sure it's selected in the drive list and click Next.
If you want keep partitions on the same drive you want to install Fedora on to, you'll need to click on the drop-down menu at the top of the window and choose between one of the following options:
Shrink current system
This will attempt to repurpose any free space assigned to an active partition, leaving enough room for Fedora to install itself alongside. If you choose this option, make sure you've got a copy of all the data on the drive you want to resize.
Use free space
Even if you already have partitions on the drive, this option will install a working Fedora installation into any free and un-partitioned space that's still available.
Create custom layout
Selecting this option will take you to the manual partition editing tool without any predefined setup. From here you can edit the partition table, editing, creating and deleting partitions on the selected drive. When creating your partitions, make sure you have at least a root partition with a mount point of / and a partition formatted as 'swap'.
Click on Next and Write Changes To Disk to apply your choices to the drive. If you didn't make a backup of any data on the drive, it's now too late. The next page introduces the bootloader.
This is the menu you see when you first turn on your machine, and most of the time you can completely forget about it. If you've got more than one OS installed, you should be able to see them listed in the main area of this page. You can change the order in which they'll appear, and also change which boots by default if you don't make a manual selection at boot time. We're almost there.
Click on Next and Fedora will grab a package list of all the applications that are currently available. On the screen that follows you can install additional packages by selecting the Software Development and Web Server options at the top of the screen, and enable additional repositories in the lower panel. If you have a fast internet connection, we'd recommend enabling both the Fedora 12 and Fedora 12 Updates repositories.
The first option in the list is the DVD in the drive, and if you disable this Fedora will grab packages from the internet rather than asking you to insert the disc into the drive.
Boot menu and packages
Click Next and go and make a cup of tea while your distribution is installed and configured. After the installer has grabbed and configured all the packages it needs, it will eject the disc from your optical drive and reboot the machine, after which you'll need to create your user account for the machine. This is the account you're going to be using on a daily basis for normal operation.
The username you enter will be used to log in, while your full name will be used for things like the the From address in emails. If you need more than one account for other people who are going to use the machine, you'll have to wait until you get to the desktop to add their information.
Finally, you just need to set the date and time for your system. You can do this either manually, using the calendar and the time selection widgets, or automatically across the internet by clicking on the Synchronise button. We'd recommend the latter if your machine is connected to the internet. Just click on Forward and Finish on the file page. That's it!
The Fedora login screen will now appear, and you can enter the username and password you just created to gain access to the Fedora desktop. You've now got Fedora up and running, and it's time to learn more about how to use it.
With everything installed, it's time to explore your new system
People who haven't used Linux before usually have a common misconception about its operating environment – that you need to use the command-line to achieve anything meaningful. This might have been true ten years ago, but the days when command line skills were a prerequisite for Linux usage are long gone.
These days, you don't have to type a single command unless you actually want to. This is thanks to the rapid evolution of the Linux desktop, which has become the most powerful, configurable and usable way of interacting with your applications, files and the network.
Linux is different to both OS X and Windows in that it offers a choice of desktop environment. This means that if you don't like the way system menus are handled, or the way windows are managed, you can install and try an alternative.
The two main desktops are called Gnome and KDE, and they try to cater for different types of user. Gnome, the default desktop for Fedora, takes a minimalist approach to configuration and visual complexity. The idea is that you spend less time messing around with settings and more time being productive.
It's also the best choice if you're just getting started with the Linux desktop, as you're less likely to be overwhelmed by icons, menus and options. Try Gnome first and see how it fits your working and usage requirements.
If you find yourself wanting more control over specific elements of the interface, such as how window borders are drawn, how icons are placed on the desktop you might want to try KDE, which you'll need to install manually.
KDE makes fewer assumptions than Gnome about what the user may or may not want to do, or what their level of expertise may be. You can change almost anything about its default appearance and how the desktop behaves.
But this approach has the disadvantage of being less clear to new users, and less easy to use if you just want to get on and browse the internet or edit a few documents. It's also not as stable as Gnome in its current version, which might be an issue if you're installing Fedora in an office environment.
But before you can decide whether KDE is worth a go, give Gnome a try first.
Gnome home
You should find Fedora's Gnome desktop very easy to use. Despite a few graphical quirks, it works just like any other desktop environment. You can manage files, launch applications, switch between windows and edit documents in much the same way as you're used to.
Double-click on your home folder, for example, and a file manager window will appear showing you the contents of the directory. By default, this includes directories for music, pictures and videos, just like any other operating system, and most applications place content into these respective folders. If you're used to Microsoft Windows, Fedora's default configuration may appear upside down.
The panel on the top of the screen is a close match for the panel at the bottom of a Windows display, for example, and this is where you access the launch menu in the top-left, and where you log out from and shut down your machine by clicking on your username.
It's also used to hold the quick launch icons for your favourite applications, as well as several panel applications such as the time and date, system resource monitors and the two additional desktop menus – Places and System.
Places, as with Windows and OS X, is a list of the destinations you're most likely to need. At the top of the list, you'll find links to the folders within your home directory, and beneath these are links to the Computer and any external drives you might have connected.
Computer, like My Computer in Windows, is just a top-level view of the devices connected to your machine, including the hard drive and any optical drives. Beneath this are two entries for accessing servers on the network, and beneath these you can search for files on your system or open files you've recently accessed with other Gnome-compatible applications.
The System menu is where you change your desktop's configuration and that of the system as a whole. Personal settings and appearance profiles – such as the background image and fonts – can be changed in the Preferences menu, while more important options are hidden in Administration.
The Administration menu is used for adding new applications and changing the way your system behaves. You can add new users, for instance, by selecting Users And Groups from the Administration menu, and clicking Add User from the window that appears.
Nearly every task you perform in the Administration menu will ask you for your root account's password. This is the standard level of security on Fedora, and it means that only privileged users are able to make potentially system-breaking changes and updates.
Installing software
The most commonly selected option from the Administration menu is Add/Remove Software. This is your portal to the world of free software, and you can augment your installation with thousands of other applications, tools and utilities. This is also where you install an alternative desktop environment, such as KDE, if you need to.
Most Linux distributions, including Fedora, use something called a package manager to get new applications from the internet. This is the app that's launched when you select Add/Remove Software from the Administration menu, and it grabs applications that have been specifically packaged for Fedora from either an official or third-party software repository.
The advantage of this method is that you can be certain that official packages will work, and that they will be appropriately configured for your system. The disadvantage is that the very latest releases of software may not be in the repository.
To install an application, just click on the Add/Remove icon in the Administration menu to launch the package manager, and use the find field to search for the application you're interested in.
You might want to install Stellarium, for instance, a fantastic desktop planetarium application for viewing a virtual representation of the night sky. Just type 'stellarium' into the find field, click on the Find button, and you'll see the package listed in the area on the right – it's the first on the list.
The other two packages bundle the documentation and a utility that can be used to automatically align your telescope to the view provided by Stellarium.
You can install thousands of applications in this way, but things are slightly different if you want to install a complicated package, such as the KDE desktop or the Eclipse development environment. This is because there's no single package for either of these; instead, the whole installation is usually made up from dozens of separate packages.
Fedora solves this problem by bundling some of the more important groups of packages together, and you can find these listed in the package manager under the Package Collections category listed on the left.
To install the KDE desktop, for instance, skip through this list until you find KDE (K Desktop Environment). Select the package and click on Apply to install. You'll then be able to choose KDE from the drop-down menu in the login screen when you next log in.
Accomplish all the most common functions quickly and easily
Office work
Microsoft's Office suite of applications is universal. Almost everybody transfers documents across the internet formatted to load into Word or Excel, for example, and the lack of native versions of these applications on the Linux desktop is a common excuse for not using Linux in the first place.
But you'll find that you can load and save 99.9% of documents in Microsoft-compatible formats on Linux without any problem, for free. The magic responsible for this is a free suite of office applications called OpenOffice.org.
It's a silly name for a powerful product that can genuinely compete with Microsoft's offering for all but the most complex of documents, and the suite can be found in under the Office submenu of the main Applications menu.
The most useful application is Writer, the word processor, and you can load Microsoft Word files directly from the File > Open menu. When you've made your changes, just save the file to the same format. OpenOffice.org will warn you that some information may be lost, but unless you've done some heavy formatting or used a load of macros, there shouldn't be any problem with the file's recipient being able to read your version of the file.
When you're investing time creating and working on documents, you also need to make sure you back up and copy your files. The easiest way to do this is to burn them on to a disc.
The Gnome desktop has a very simple front-end to disc burning, and this can be found by clicking on the CD/DVD Creator entry in the System Tools menu. This will open a special kind of file manager, and any files copied into this window can be burned on to a disc by clicking on Write To Disc.
You can also generate an ISO image of your files, and you can burn this to a disc later or on a different machine.
Burn with Brasero
If you need greater control over disc creation, you're better off using an application called Brasero, which dwells in the Sound & Video menu. Brasero uses a wizard-based GUI that asks you which kind of disc you're going to create first.
You can build audio, video and data discs, and Brasero will attempt to convert files automatically as you add them to your project. With an audio CD, for example, music will be converted into the raw audio necessary for playback on a normal CD player.
Photo management
For a number of years, the unbeatable photo application on Linux has been Gimp – an application that's often likened to earlier versions of Adobe's Photoshop. But it's not the best option for simple photo editing, and it can't manage a collection.
The best tool for this is called F-Spot, and you can launch it from the drop-down list that appears when you connect a digital camera to your system. Alternatively, launch it manually from the Graphics menu.
When F-Spot's running, you can import your current photo collection from either a camera or a folder. Photos are then listed across a timeline, with thumbnail previews in the main window. Double clicking on any of these images will open the Edit window, and you can quickly perform simple tasks from here, such as crop, redeye removal and contrast/brightness/exposure balance.
Most of the time these adjustments are all that you need to get the best from your photos, and these changes are non-destructive. If you ever want to revert to the original photo, just select Original from the Version menu that appears in the Histogram section of Edit mode. You can also tag your photos for easy retrieval, and add comments and descriptions.
If you want to share your photos, use the File > Export menu option. You can choose between many of the most popular online services, including Flickr, Picasa and SmugMug, and F-Spot will handle the conversion and the upload automatically. You can also generate a complete website in a folder that can then be transferred to your online hosting account or even emailed to people, or create a CD where the photos will automatically be burned on to the disc.
Online communication
For the traditionalists, email is still a fundamental part of the operating system, and while many of us tend to use webmail for casual use, there's nothing quite like using a full-featured application. The Gnome desktop includes an excellent email client called Evolution, and this can be found in the Office menu.
When it's first launched, you'll need to add the details for an email service. You should already have these details handy, but you can also access many online email services using their IMAP or POP servers. With Google Mail, for example, if you enable IMAP in your online setttings, you can configure Evolution to access your Gmail by using IMAP.
Just enter a receiving server address of imap.gmail.com, enable SSL encryption and password authentication, and use your Google Mail address for your username, and your online password. For sending email, use smtp.gmail.com as the server, using login authentication and the same account credentials as before. You will then be able to use Evolution as a drop-in replacement for Google Mail.
Instant messaging
Many of us now use instant messaging to keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues. The typical IM application will show you who's online and let you type messages that are sent to your contact immediately.
On Microsoft Windows, instant messaging usually means using Microsoft's own messenger software, complete with its invasive advertising and restrictive GUI. But you may also have come across Yahoo Instant Messenger and Google Talk, two more applications that do exactly the same thing.
Normally you need to use a different client application for each network of contacts you want to keep in touch with, but on Linux the best instant messaging clients will access more than one network simultaneously.
With the latest release of Fedora, the instant messenger client of choice is called Empathy. This can be found by clicking through the Internet menu. But before you can waste your time chatting to people, you need to spend a few minutes setting up each network you want to communicate across.
From the Account window, click on the Add button, and from the window that appears, choose the network you'd like to configure from the dropdown list. If you don't already have an account, you can create one, or enter the details if you're already using one.
We had a few problems configuring Google Talk with the default values, and we found we had to open the advanced options for the account, enable Encryption Required and define the server as talk.google.com.
Finally there's Twitter, the micro-blogging craze. The best Gnome client we've found is called Twitux, and you'll need to install this through Add/Remove Software in the Administration menu. You can then launch the app from the Internet menu and it will ask you for your account name and password, after which it will load your latest list of tweets.
If you open the preferences panel, you can enable on-screen notifications, which most of the time means you don't even need to open Twitux to see any new messages. They're briefly displayed on your desktop as each is received.
Playing music
While it's true that there isn't a native version of iTunes for Linux, there are a couple of perfect replacements. The default option is called RhythmBox, and this can be found in the Sound & Video menu.
RhythmBox can be used to play your music, build a collection, subscribe to podcasts, listen to internet radio and online shopping. Just drag and drop files or locations into the Library list on the left of the main window. You won't be able to listen to MP3 files, or synchronise these with music players, but you will be able to listen to music in open formats.
You can also download music from within the application using either the Jamendo service or Magnatune, both of which can be found in the Stores section of the content list on the left. Music on Jamendo is licensed under the creative commons, and you can download and listen to it freely.
If you like what you hear, then it's worth rewarding the artist by right-clicking on the music and making some sort of donation.
Magnatune is slightly different in that you can purchase and download whole albums, but you can still listen to its complete catalogue of music through RhythmBox, and the company has a very progressive and open attitude to downloadable music. Magnatune even encourages you to give copies of the music you buy to three friends, and there's no digital rights management (DRM) whatsoever in any of the downloads.
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Sky HD+ 1TB box actually has 1.5TB drive
Sky's brand new one terabyte HD set top box has a secret hidden under the hood, with the company confirming that the Sky+HD 1TB box actually has a whopping 1.5TB of memory, with 400GB of that given over to Sky Anytime.
When the box was released assumptions were made over Sky's revelation that it would be upping the amount of Anytime – the programs chosen by Sky that are stored on the machine for people to watch on demand.
Anytime not taking up your recording space
However, Sky has told TechRadar that the user does not lose any of their precious recording space – with the increased Anytime capacity actually occupying the extra 500GB that has not been publicised.
So, with the leftover 100GB presumably being used for the box's other functionality that leave a whole terabyte to stick your Lost HD series in.
And who would turn their nose up at that?
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In Depth: 6 of the best web-based Twitter clients
You can tweet from almost anything these days: there are desktop apps and smartphone apps, and even a tweeting toaster.
But what if you want to access Twitter without downloading to the desktop, picking up a phone or turning on the toaster? Twitter.com? Pffft. Here are six better suggestions.
1. Seesmic
Seesmic has been getting lots of attention for its desktop and smartphone apps, but its web-based service is pretty nifty too. You can choose between single- and multi-column mode, preview bit.ly links inline and stay on top of lists, searches and trending topics.
It's rather like Tweetdeck on the desktop, and the resemblance is even stronger if you switch from the default white theme to a black background - although to our eyes white works better in the browser. It's functional rather than flashy, which is no bad thing: if you want eye candy, Seesmic will happily point you in the direction of its impressive desktop clients.
Pros: Simple and straightforward without missing anything important; nice user interface
Cons: Doesn't have the full set of power user features
2. Brizzly
Brizzly isn't the most powerful Twitter client out there, but it doesn't want to be: its emphasis is firmly on making Twitter (and Facebook, which it also supports) a pleasure to use. Images, maps and video appear inline, you can use up to five different accounts, you can mute a user to get shot of their updates without unfollowing them, and there's automatic bit.ly URL shortening.
It's nice to look at, runs nice and quickly and doesn't try to cram the entire Internet into a single screen. It's not one for power users but it's a vast improvement over the Twitter.com home page.
Pros: Mute users without unfollowing; inline image, video and map display
Cons: Too simple for social media junkies
3. TwitHive
TwitHive reminds us a lot of Seesmic Web, albeit Seesmic with a less talented designer. It gives you a customisable, multi-column layout, although the design is a bit Windows 3.1 to Seesmic's Windows 7.
Nevertheless you can track multiple Twitter accounts simultaneously, display messages as word clouds, and create custom search channels that search for particular keyword combinations, users, hashtags or mentions.
It's a great service for power users, but like all such multi-pane services it can get awfully cluttered. If you'd like something simpler, the same developer's TwitIQ is an uncluttered Twitter.com alternative.
Pros: Easy to customise; tracks multiple accounts; very powerful
Cons: Can get cluttered; design is a bit Windows 3.1
4. Twitterfall
There's something wonderfully hypnotic about Twitterfall: click on a trending topic or carry out a search and watch the tweets fall down your screen.
Depending on the topic or search criteria the result is a waterfall of wit or an avalanche of idiocy, and while Twitterfall isn't read-only - you can retweet, follow, favourite and reply by clicking on a particular tweet, and there's a New Tweet link at the top of the screen - it's best suited to sitting back and watching the world go by, especially if you click on Presentation Mode to remove everything but people's Twitter posts.
Pros: A brilliant timewaster; a great way to keep on top of specific trends and topics
Cons: Posting features feel like an afterthought
5. HootSuite
If you only use Twitter to make funny comments about TV programmes then Hootsuite isn't for you. If you're a power user, a marketer or somebody who needs to monitor lots of social networks simultaneously, you'll love it.
Hootsuite enables you to use multiple Twitter accounts, integrates with Ping.fm so you can update all your networks at once, can track not just Twitter but Facebook and LinkedIn, too, and enables you to see who's sneakily unfollowed you. It even turns your Tweets into pretty graphs (provided you post links via the Ow.ly service). It's the Swiss Army Knife of Twitter.
Pros: Connects to everything; completely customisable; great for companies
Cons: Far too complex for everyday tweeting; can feel awfully cluttered; we don't like the interface
6. Br.st
Rather than replace Twitter.com, Br.st expands it. Based around your existing Twitter page - it even includes your background image - Br.st keeps the basic interface and then adds a range of useful features including inline viewing of images and videos, expansion of shortened URLs so you know what you're clicking on, and file sharing (via uploads to Br.st).
Factor in automatic shortening of links and the ability to receive email notifications when someone accesses or comments on your files and you've got a pretty clever service, but it comes at a price: it's pretty horrible to look at, and it's often glacially slow.
Pros: Like Twitter.com with extra bits; inline images
Cons: Can be very slow; not the prettiest
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Microsoft unveils final browser ballot page
Microsoft has shown off the process in which users of Windows will be offered a choice of default browsers through its EU sanctioned ballot screen.
Microsoft has adopted the browser ballot screen after an Opera-led complaint led to the European Commission investigating the way in which Internet Explorer was tied into the Windows operating system.
The change will begin to roll-out in the 'next few week', with external testing beginning next week in UK, along with Belgium and France.
Testers needed
"Anyone in those countries who wishes to test it can download the browser choice screen software update from Windows Update. We plan to begin a phased roll-out of the update across Europe the week of 1 March," said Dave Heiner, Microsoft's Vice President and Deputy General Counsel.
The ballot page will be an automatic update to all Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP users.
"The software update will be installed automatically, or will prompt you to download or install it, depending on which operating system you are running and your settings for Windows Update," explains Microsoft.
"If you do not have automatic updating enabled, you can get the choice screen by going to Windows Update and clicking on "Check for Updates," it continues.
"If you are running Internet Explorer as your default browser… an introductory screen appears first. The introductory screen provides context for the next screen, which shows browser options.
Leading browsers, randomly assigned
"The browser choice screen will present you with a list of leading browsers," adds Heiner.
"In keeping with our agreement with the European Commission, this list is presented in random order. You can also scroll to the right to see additional browsers, which are also presented in random order.
"The browsers that are listed and the content relating to them will be updated from time to time. The screen provides three options: Click on 'Install' to install one of the listed browsers. Click on 'Tell me more' to get more information about any of the browsers.
These links (and the browser logos and associated text) are provided by each browser vendor.
"Click on 'Select Later' to review the choice screen the next time you log onto your computer. This software update will also add a shortcut to your desktop, from which you can launch the choice screen at any time."
It's a system that has been hammered out over months in Brussels, which you would hope will mean that it will put an end to complaints from all the browser makers…possibly.
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Google Shopper launches with picture and voice recognition
Google has announced Google Shopper – a new mobile app which allows shoppers to look for bargains in a number of different ways.
The app gives you the option to search through voice, text, barcode or even images. So, you can take an image of a Blu-ray, ask the app to search for deals on a book or just 'scan' a barcode and see what prices the cloud comes up with.
App-reciation
The app is currently in the Lab stages, so it's not a fully fledged product but it could well be a killer application for Android and its app store, which is still lagging quite a bit behind Apple's.
Then again, there's no word that Google Shopper is to stay exclusively to the Android platform.
Once you have searched for your item, the app will give you product photos, descriptions of the product, reviews and specs.
There's also an offline mode which will let you view products that you have already had a look at.
The application seems to have implemented some of the visual tech Google last used in its Goggles application.
If you want to try out the app, point your browser to GoogleLabs.com now.
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Review: Mesh Edge DX
Established over twenty years ago, UK based Mesh offers a range of laptops, from affordable entry-level systems to high-powered gaming machines. Its Edge DX is a quad-core powerhouse and the first laptop to offer full support for DirectX 11 graphics.
While DirectX 11 has been available for some time and is built into Windows 7, there has been no hardware support for laptops until now. By using ATi's Mobility Radeon 5650 graphics card, the Edge DX is able to take full advantage of the APIs for improved graphics performance.
When compared to ATi's previous 4650 GPU, our graphics tests revealed around 15 per cent more power on offer. Games run smoother and faster than before and HD video-editing tasks are equally enhanced, making this a highly capable gaming and multimedia machine.
As well as such powerful graphics, Mesh has fitted Intel's latest Core i7 quad-core processor alongside 4096MB of DDR3 memory. The result is stunning levels of power for frequent and demanding multi-tasking, making this is one of the most powerful laptops you can currently buy.
This is all the more impressive when you consider the comparatively portable 2.8kg chassis. While the 148-minute battery life falls far below the three-hour minimum we expect, this machine is more than portable enough to comfortably carry between gaming LAN parties.
The impressive build quality on offer adds to this, with strong plastics and firm panels in evidence throughout. Despite housing such powerful components, a highly effective cooling system is in place, allowing the chassis to remain at a consistently comfortable temperature.
The glossy silver and black colour scheme provides a subtle yet effective style, somewhat resembling HP's consumer Pavilion range.
Bright screen
Where this machine further excels is its impressively bright and sharp 15.6-inch screen. Offering a Full HD resolution and vibrant colour reproduction, movies and games look fantastic. Even the glossy Super-TFT coating impresses, with reflections kept to a minimum.
Usability is also excellent, with the keyboard proving accurate and responsive. The keys move quietly and firmly, and the wide touchpad and mouse buttons allow easy control of onscreen actions. A fingerprint scanner is also in place for safeguarding your valuable data.
Although this isn't the most powerful gaming laptop we've seen, it is certainly very capable, and the inclusion of full DirectX11 GPU support makes it all the more appealing for gamers and ardent multimedia fans.
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Weird Tech: Dog tweets are the 'Next Big Thing'
It was only last week we were shaking our heads over news of a Twitter app for dogs - now we have another one.
At least maker Mattel isn't bothering to pretend its "Puppy Tweets" device is a proper dog interpretation solution. Instead it's admitting that the toy, which tracks your dog's motion and any sounds it makes, simply serves up one of 500 pre-programmed Tweets whenever your pet moves, barks or licks... something.
According to the LA Times, one such pre-prepared dog tweet is "I bark because I miss you. There, I said it. Now hurry home" which would be triggered and posted to Twitter after a frenzied session of woofing.
TWOOFER: "Cat proceeding northbound on Sycamore Avenue, all units intercept"
Puppy Tweets only connects via Wi-Fi, though, so only the dog's in-house pretend thoughts will be uploaded. The US Amazon listing suggests Puppy Tweets will cost around آ£25. So just burn آ£25 now and forget about it.
Smoke signals
CannabisApps is a seemingly innocent and medically focused iPhone app designed to help people find suppliers of "Medical" cannabis in parts of the US where medicinal cannabis use is allowed if you've struck it lucky and got a very forward-thinking doctor.
Or, if it has all gone wrong and you're in a cell at 2.30am after trying to buy half an Oxo cube from an undercover policeman, the app will point you to the nearest attorney who specialises in cannabis-related crimes.
MEDICAL EMERGENCY:"I've got a student here in dire need of something to help him sleep"
And don't worry if you're not in the US, either - CannabisApps will direct you to the nearest legal seller in Amsterdam, Canada, Australia and Spain, with the app caringly pointing you toward your local self-help support group if you're stuck in a place where it's 100 per cent illegal to get high no matter how much your knee is aching today.
Originally launching for $2.99, CannabisApps is now up on iTunes for free. They've presumably changed to a revenue model based around selling grams on the street.
*Takes off glasses, shakes out hair*
New IT Support Barbie was unveiled at the recent New York Toy Fair, and looks set to bring women's toys bang up to the... 1970s. Boasting a predictably pink mini laptop (looks like something from Asus), glasses (nice bit of geek stereotyping) and a bluetooth headset, Barbie is now all set to... work in a low-level call centre role. It's what all modern girls should aspire to.
According to the BBC, new Hot Geek Barbie came into being thanks to an online internet poll to decide which career path the nipple-free bimbo should take next, with the position of "Computer Engineer" eventually winning out. She's even got a watch. It's digital, because she finds ones with hands a bit hard.
Jem Vacuum-Hands
BBC presenter Jem Stansfield has become a bit of an internet hero of late, thanks to a bizarre contraption he's made (or had the BBC props department make for him) out of vacuum cleaner parts.
No, it's nothing rude. This is the BBC. He's been using suction power to climb buildings, with his invention attaching two vacuum cleaner motors to a couple of suction pads, then using the resulting "Vacuum Gloves" to climb walls.
For the benefit of those of you reading this on a proper computer, here's a video of Jem climbing a wall using vacuum power, taken from Bang Goes the Theory - a BBC science show he co-hosts.
HUMAN FLY: Next week - a hovercraft powered by a Dyson Airblade
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Review: Dell Studio 1747
Building on the strong foundation of its excellent Studio 15 range, Dell's Studio 1747 packs the same stunning quad-core power and usability, while adding a larger screen and improved graphics and sound, making it a fantastic multimedia machine.
Performance is truly stunning. Built around the same Intel Core i7 processor as the Studio 15, the same level of quad-core power is on offer, making light work of even the most demanding tasks.
While this isn't the most graphically advanced laptop on the market, 3D performance vastly exceeds the smaller Studio 15, almost doubling its power. Whether for basic gaming or high-definition (HD) movie and photo editing, this is a laptop you can rely on to satisfy all your entertainment needs.
Stunning screen
The stunning 17.3-inch screen adds to its graphical ability. Its sharp resolution and well-balanced colour and contrast deliver a fantastic picture for gaming, viewing photos and watching movies. While the screen is also extremely bright, images never appear washed out.
HDMI, VGA and DisplayPort connections are provided, allowing you to connect to external HDTVs, projectors and monitors. DisplayPort is still quite rare on laptops, but is seen by some as superior to HDMI when connecting PCs to external screens, so it is nice to see both included here.
Of particular note is the inclusion of an integrated speaker and subwoofer setup from audio specialist JBL. While most laptops deliver incredibly weak audio performance, this setup produces an impressively warm and powerful sound.
As with the Studio 15, the excellent keyboard and large keys ensure comfortable usability. Despite the board flexing very slightly when typing, all keys are accurate and responsive. A full pad of number keys on the board's right-hand side allows quick and easy data input. The large touchpad and mouse buttons are as accessible and responsive as the keyboard and add to the overall usability.
While our review sample did not feature a touchscreen panel, the 17.3-inch screen can be customised with multi-touch interactivity for an extra آ£180.
A 500GB hard drive and an 8-in-1 media card reader provide comprehensive fixed storage and support for external flash based multimedia cards, ideal for sharing data with devices such as digital cameras.
By offering improved graphics and audio performance, Dell's Studio 17 is a great alternative to its Studio 15 for those that require extra multimedia power and don't mind the larger chassis size. Unless you require cutting-edge gaming power, this is a fantastic home laptop.
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Avatar gets November 3D Blu-ray release
James Cameron has revealed that Avatar won't be getting a 3D Blu-ray release until November, confirming that the film will not be among the first movies released on the 3D home format.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Cameron announced that Avatar will get a special edition DVD and Blu-ray 3D release in the winter, but a standard non-3D version will hit shops – in the US at least – 22 April.
Fox-trot
It's a touch annoying that Fox has decided to do the dreadful double-dip on the film. This used to happen to DVDs every few years – special edition, extended edition, definitive edition, milking-the-cash-cow edition – but now it seems that distributors are happy to bring out various versions of a movie in the same year.
The last major release to get this sort of treatment was Watchmen.
A November release for the 3D version means that a number of 3D Blu-rays will be on the shelves first – including Monsters Vs Aliens and Cloudy, With A Chance Of Meatballs.
Panasonic, who helped Cameron with the equipment to film Avatar, recently showed off its Panasonic Viera TX-P50VT20 3D TV, which will be one of the first to hit the UK.
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Review: Acer Aspire Timeline 4810TZ Olympic Edition
In celebration of its partnership with the 2010 Olympic Games this winter, Acer has released the Aspire 4810TZ, an ultraportable laptop that boasts superb power, usability and battery life.
The 14-inch screen seems larger than other panels of this size and features a 1366 x 768-pixel resolution. Images are suitably sharp and colours look great, making the laptop as suited to watching films as it is reading spreadsheets. Working with multiple windows open is also simple.
The laptop's lid and chassis have been tastefully branded with the Olympic logo in a subtle fashion, and thankfully Acer has resisted the temptation to splash the Vancouver mascot all over the place – after all, nobody really wants a yeti plastered all over their machine.
The keyboard is excellent and provides a very intuitive typing experience. The keys are spread out enough to stop you getting lost on the slightly flat surface and the travel is succinct and snappy.
The touchpad is also responsive and Acer has included a convenient button to deactivate it in case you find yourself brushing it while typing, which we did.
As you would expect from a laptop powered by a Consumer Ultra Low Voltage (CULV) processor, performance is sufficient for basic office work, and this machine is designed primarily for creating word documents, checking your email and browsing the internet.
More multimedia-orientated applications will certainly run, but the laptop will show signs of lag quickly, so if you're after anything more than the most basic of photo editing, for example, you would be better off looking elsewhere, as the integrated graphics card ensures this laptop is no multimedia machine.
All-day power
However, the CULV processor does mean that you get a phenomenal battery life, and we managed to squeeze 517 minutes - well over eight hours - from our review unit. This means that if you're out of the office all day you can forget the AC adapter and keep working without worrying about where you're going to top up on power.
On top of this, the laptop only weighs 2kg, making it very convenient to carry around in a laptop sleeve or case.
Specifications elsewhere also impress. You get a capacious 500GB hard drive to store your data on, and 802.11n Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet are also included, providing you with the very latest in highspeed networking technology.
We're big fans of the Acer Aspire 4810TZ. It ticks all the boxes for a good CULV laptop, with the battery life especially impressing, making it a great way to celebrate the Winter Olympics.
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Gary Marshall: Happy 20th birthday, Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop has come a long way. 20 years ago today it debuted as a basic - but still pretty amazing - image editor.
It's now pretty much impossible to find an image that hasn't benefited from its magic touch.
From whitening teeth in billboard ads to foisting yet more lolcats on the world, its influence is enormous.
Inevitably that influence has been bad as well as good. In the right hands, image manipulation can be undetectable, but all too often Photoshop falls into the hands of the overworked, the shoddy and the idiotic.
That's why you end up looking at impossible furniture, terrifying teeth, really unfortunate hand placements, Viagra-powered aeroplanes and movie posters whose stars appear to have been replaced by mannequins.
It's fun to laugh at Photoshop disasters, but of course the technology can be used for evil, too. Ralph Lauren isn't the only fashion brand distorting women's bodies to sell products; it's just one of the ones whose Photoshoppers took things too far.
Magazines routinely airbrush women into impossible shapes or weird-faced freaks, while marketers get rid of black people or make them look white.
It's been used to fake images in order to damage political careers and to make political rallies appear busier.
Ruining photojournalism?
When you take all these things together, it's pretty clear that Photoshop hasn't just revolutionised photography and illustration: it's ruined photojournalism and killed our belief that the camera never lies.
Hasn't it? Perhaps not. As Hany Farid of Dartmouth College points out [PDF], "photography lost its innocence many years ago. The nearly iconic portrait of the US President Abraham Lincoln (circa 1860), for example, was a fake, and only the beginning of a long history of photographic trickery... history is riddled with photographic tampering."
As soon as images became digital, they became easier to manipulate - just as text, and music, and video have all become easier to manipulate. That's progress, not Photoshop.
In fact, there's a strong argument that Photoshop has made the world a better place. In the hands of satirists it quickly punctures politicians at their most pompous, while in the hands of the manipulators at Fark.com and B3ta.com it cracks us up laughing.
And for all we moan about unrealistic body images, surely it's better for Sarah Jessica Parker to be Photoshopped silly than to stick her unedited, Zelda-from-Terrahawks features on giant posters?
Ultimately Photoshop is just a tool - an incredibly powerful, world-changing tool, sure, but Adobe is no more responsible for the idiots who abuse it than Laslo Biro can be blamed for bad teenage poetry.
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Review: Asus Eee PC 1201N
Since Asus kickstarted the modern netbook market, it is only apt that it has now released one of the world's first dual-core mini-laptops. The Eee PC 1201N is the most powerful netbook we have seen so far and further blurs the line between laptop and netbook.
The use of a 12.1-inch screen – rather than the 10-inch screen usually seen on netbooks – means the machine straddles a fine line between netbook and ultraportable laptop. This is becoming more common as netbooks move away from their initial small and cheap remit.
Powered by a dual-core Intel Atom processor previously only seen in compact desktop PCs, performance doubles that seen from previous netbooks. While it still can't match the power of a full-sized laptop, software is able to start faster and run smoother than on any other netbook.
The use of Nvidia's ION technology allows a dedicated graphics card to be fitted, rather than the low-powered integrated graphics common in netbooks. Regular and demanding gaming and media editing is still out of reach, but video and online Flash content streams smoothly.
Although some models in the Eee PC range have greatly impressed us with their all-day mobility, the raw power on offer here impacts somewhat on battery life. With that said, we were able to keep working for nearly five hours, which will prove ample for most users.
Seashell style
The chassis retains the sleek look of previous Asus Seashell-branded machines. Slim dimensions and curved edges make this one of the most stylish netbooks around, although the glossy plastics aren't quite as resilient as we would have liked.
The wide keyboard uses the now ubiquitous isolated-style layout, with each key cut through an individual hole in the chassis. Usability is excellent, with all keys moving with a firm and short motion.
The 12.1-inch screen proves average, with poor brightness making the panel quite dull. It is sufficiently sharp, however, with decent colour and contrast, so will suit most basic use. The glossy Super-TFT coating is not too reflective, so decent visibility is provided at all times.
Continuing its run of providing nonstandard netbook components, the 250GB hard drive betters the usual 160GB disks seen in older netbooks. An HDMI port is also in place for connecting the 1201N to an HDTV when you're back at home.
While the 1201N fails to redefine the netbook market as dramatically as we would have hoped, it is the most powerful mini-laptop we've seen to date. With its large screen and dual-core power, however, we question whether it really qualifies as a netbook in the first place.
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Office 2010 'ballot' screen unveiled
Microsoft's Office 2010 choice screen which offers users the option of using either the open ODF format or Microsoft's OOXML has been published, but has already drawn criticism.
The ever-excellent NeoWin has pushed out a picture of Office 2010's very own version of a ballot screen, with users prompted to decide if they want to use Office Open XML (OOXML) or OpenDocument (ODF) document formats, when they use the forthcoming software suite.
Microsoft announced it would be allowing users the choice in their document formats last year, stating "Beginning with the release of Office 14 (Office 2010), end users that purchase Microsoft's Primary PC Productivity Applications in the EEA in both the OEM and retail channel will be prompted in an unbiased way to select default file format (from options that include ODF) for those applications upon the first boot of any one of them."
Open formats
The likes of Open Office and Google Docs are beginning to apply pressure – although not enough to really inflict any damage of Microsoft's favourite cash cow – and the need for open file formats that are readable by programs other than Microsoft's Office is clear if rivals are to begin to get market share.
But the wording on the ballot screen has not, it seems, appeased all the critics, with suggestions that ODF is made to sound like the poor relation of Microsoft's OOXML.
Currently the wording for ODL is 'Choose this option to set your defaults to use the ODF file formats designed to support the features of third-party productivity applications that also implement ODF. Many features of Microsoft Office are supported by ODF but some content or editability may be lost upon save'.
In contrast the Office Open XML Formats tick box says: 'Choose this option to set your defaults to use the format designed to support all the features of Microsoft Office.'
It's a thorny issue, and not one that is likely to be resolved any time soon – but it's clear the current wording is not enough to appease critics of Microsoft.
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Yahoo and Microsoft 'search alliance' given green light
Yahoo and Microsoft's long-awaited tie-up in search and advertising has now been given the green light by both the US Department of Justice and the European Commission, with the first signs of implementation beginning in the 'coming days.'
The 'search alliance', announced back in July, had raised questions about competition, but with Google so heavily dominant in the search world, the major bodies have okayed the tie-up.
Bing will now serve as the engine for Yahoo's search, with the latter becoming the 'exclusive relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers globally'.
Breakthrough search alliance
"This breakthrough search alliance means Yahoo can focus even more on our own innovative search experience," said Yahoo! Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz.
"Yahoo gets to do what we do best: combine our science and technology with compelling content to build personally relevant online experiences for our users and customers."
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer added. "Although we are just at the beginning of this process, we have reached an exciting milestone.
"I believe that together, Microsoft and Yahoo! will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation to our customers as well as to advertisers and publishers."
Rallying point
Bing is being seen as a major product within Microsoft, with the company rallying behind what UK MD Ashley Highfield told TechRadar was an 'easier to use, prettier, much more of its age search engine than Google'.
That said, the company acknowledges that convincing the consumers to change is going to be a difficult task, although the tie-up with Yahoo will certainly help bring the product to a much larger slice of the audience.
'Under terms of the agreement, which was announced in late July 2009, Microsoft will provide Yahoo with the same search result listings available through Bing, and Yahoo will innovate around those listings by integrating rich Yahoo content, enhanced listings with conveniently organised information about key topics, and tools to tailor the experience for Yahoo users,' explains the press release.
'Yahoo will focus on providing a compelling and innovative search experience that allows people to find and explore the things, people and sites that matter most to them. While Microsoft will provide the underlying platform, both companies will continue to create different, compelling and evolving experiences, competing for audience, engagement and clicks.'
When YaBing? When?
So when will the collaboration be entirely operational? The statement insists that the US market with have 'YaBing' (our word) by the end of 2010, with the US advertising 'transitioned' (their word) by 2011.
'All global customers and partners are expected to be transitioned by early 2012,' the statement asserts.
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MWC 2010: Hands on: HTC Smart review
HTC has been grabbing headlines with its new range of Android devices this year at Mobile World Congress, but that hasn't stopped it also playing in other areas too.
The HTC Smart was announced for the UK at the event too (coming with O2 in the near future) and it was dubbed a 'different direction for smartphones'.
The phone is certainly on the dinky side - it's got a 2.8-inch screen (only QVGA resolution, but that's less of an issue for a phone of this size).
The specs are pretty low as well - the phone only has a 300MHz processor and 256MB of RAM - hardly the top end stuff the HTC Desire is made of.
But for all that, it's a fairly well put-together phone. We're not saying that it will make iPhone or Palm Pre owners think twice or anything, but O2 has stated that it will be aiming this handset at the 16-22 year old market.
The cool thing about the HTC Smart is that it's nabbed some nifty Sense features from the Android and Windows Mobile range - meaning it's got a pretty fully featured platform to work from.
The BREW platform is made by Qualcomm - it's basically meant to facilitate low cost phones like this one and the INQ Chat 3G and Mini 3G.
The UI means that you can drag your finger up from the bottom of the home screen (of which there are seven, accessed by swiping right or left) and access your pre-defined programs.
You can also pull down from the top of the screen to access your 'Scenes' menu - basically a collection of different home screen and widget layouts so you can use your phone in different ways at different times of the day.
So this means that if you want email during the day, but Friend Stream in the evening, you can set them to just switch when you feel like changing.
The texting keyboard on the screen thankfully follows the Android rather than the Windows Mobile path - the former is awesome, the latter terrible on the HTC range.
Messaging is threaded and easy to read - all your contacts' conversations with you are either in the messaging application or readable through their profile in your address book.
You can set your favourite contacts too in a easy to use grid - again, a good idea nabbed from its smarter brothers.
The internet on the phone sadly wasn't working in the demo model we saw, but we're happy to report that there's the usual text reflow we've come to love from HTC.
There's no pinch and zoom functionality here, but rather a slider bar at the bottom that pops up when you tap the screen twice - making zooming in and out a little harder in our eyes.
In fact, HTC's got a weird button configuration for the Smart. We're on board with the call/terminate buttons (although the latter does lock the device, which it takes a while to get used to).
But there's a big 'Back' button as well, which doubles as a menu key on the home screen as well.
And to add to that, there's a very-easy-to-miss little button in there, which calls up the mini on-screen menus for any given application.
It's certainly a different layout, and we'll be interested to see how it plays out.
There's a 3.5mm headphone jack on the HTC Smart, as well as a microSD slot, so you can add a fair whack of multimedia to the phone as well.
There wasn't any video loaded onto the Smart we were playing with, but we'd imagine it would be no great shakes with a QVGA screen and a 300MHz processor.
Music was OK though, and the dedicated player felt pretty high end for this budget handset. That can also be added to the home screen as well, for easy access to your tunes.
The camera was also in the OK category - it took the pictures we asked it to take fairly well, but a 3MP camera is always going to be limited in this area.
You can see you snaps in a little pile on the home screen to look through later, but either it was a software glitch or an oversight, you couldn't flick through them from this view, as you can with Android and Windows Mobile.
The HTC Smart is a hard phone to define. Generally budget phones aren't much good for constant use - people buy them because they're cheap and have got a touchscreen or a half decent camera.
But the Smart has a lot of... well, smarts about it. It can multi-task better than other handsets that cost three times the (expected) price, and it's got a lovely form factor.
It's not going to stop the hard core tech lovers from desiring a Desire or salivating over the next iPhone, but it might play well in that youthful category O2 is apparently after.
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MWC 2010: In pictures: Android and an ebook in a laptop
ARM was demonstrating some of the tech goodies it's enabled recently, and one of the stars was the dual-screened Entourage Edge device.
Packing Android on one side and an ebook reader on the other, this is a laptop-style device designed to make paper textbooks a thing of the past.
You can look books or web pages or applications up on the Android screen, and with the touch of a button port that over the ebook reader to check it out without draining the battery.
The Android section holds a wealth of ebooks, a shopping portal to buy more, and all the applications you're used to from the Android Market.
The ebook side allows you to make annotations on the text using the bundled stylus, and export it to a PDF when you're finished.
There's an SD card slot for adding in your own content, and a SIM card slot so you don't always need to be near a Wi-Fi hotspot to get your latest reading fix.
Although Entourage won't be releasing this Edge device directly (as it's an ODM) it seems like it will be coming to market in Q2, which makes a nice change when we're looking at this kind of tech.
No word on whether this will be coming to the UK as yet, but we hope it does - we might even go back to university just to show it off to all our... well, we wouldn't have any friends, but we could sit at the front and be smug.
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MWC 2010: In pictures: Motorola Motoroi
Motorola's Android release-a-thon is showing no signs of slowing at the moment, with one of the latest devices packing some pretty serious multimedia tech.
The Motorola Motoroi has only been released in Korea, but word is it's making its way to other shores, with Europe hotly tipped to be one of them.
The Motoroi is running Android 2.0 at the moment, meaning its pushing the boundaries of the Android tech out there at the moment.
The 3.7-inch screen is pretty sensitive, picking up the lightest of touches.
Sadly we couldn't get the internet to work properly on this phone, but it doesn't seem to want to resize text for you when we tried zooming in on the error page.
The Motorola Motoroi has a huge range of multi-media features - such as an 8MP camera with Xenon flash and an aerial out socket for digital TV (that we can't get in the UK... boo!)
As you can imagine, there's a headphone socket for your own cans - but there's also an HDMI-out port so you can show your friends what you've been recording on the big screen in HD.
In fact we don't think we've seen a phone with as many ports as this - it's a good thing they've all got covers, though you might want to grow your nails a bit if you want this phone.
The camera is pretty nifty on the Motoroi, although we weren't able to take any HD footage for some reason. However, it was quick and responsive and focused well on the items in shot.
Video also looked stunning on the WVGA hi res screen - but we've seen so many mobiles like that at MWC it's getting a little bit boring now.
There's sadly no UK release date for the multimedia behemoth yet, but we'll keep our ears to the ground and let you know if we hear anything.
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Updated: Hands on: Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 review
Sony Ericsson's first attempt at an Android phone feels like it's been a long time coming - but the Xperia X10 is nearly here, so TechRadar went back to see if the problems we saw a few months ago have been fixed.
The main selling points of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 are the Android overlay (Timescape and Mediascape) and the usual range of multimedia-friendly hardware packed into the chassis.
And there's good news - the Xperia X10 is looking a lot slicker than the last time we saw it (which, in fairness, was very much a prototype).
The main thing when picking up the X10 is the sheer size of the thing - a four-inch screen (sadly not OLED, but looking pretty vivid nonetheless) makes up the majority of the phone, with a few buttons on the front and sides for company.
The 13mm depth actually feels quite nice in the hand - but like the HTC HD2, you know when you see the Xperia X10 whether or not you'll be able to put up with the size.
Speaking of HTC, the company has a real reason to quake in its elegant Android boots at the X10 - the Timescape overlay is a real competitor to Sense UI.
While it's not all about the homescreens and widgets like HTC's range is, the Timescape overlay combines all your notifications and missed calls and social network updates into one 'spine.'
We were worried about how juddery this was in our first hands on, but Sony Ericsson appears to have got that Qualcomm Snapdragon chip working well under the hood now.
We could scroll through the list very quickly, and swipe left and right with ease to see specific updates, such as those from Twitter and Facebook.
The large size screen makes texting a bit of an interesting task - while the estate on the display is good for accuracy when typing, the Xperia X10 is pretty darn unwieldy when holding it in landscape mode between two hands.
But we're well into the Timescape overlay - the fact you can open up a contact and see not only their contact details and Twitter/Facebook updates, you can see photos you've tagged, message conversations - and if you press the 'Infinity' button, you can even pull down more info from social networks or the like.
The media side of things on the Xperia X10 is a real winner as well - the fact that we've been given a WVGA (800x480) four-inch screen bodes very well.
And video looks amazing on the X10 as well - although we were sadly treated to Adam Sandler as a demo, even he looked acceptable on it, so it must be a half decent device.
The Mediascape (yes, like Timescape but for MEDIA) overlay is also pretty awesome - you can either see all your files grouped together in one scrollable list, or you can flick left and right to see the information separately.
The Infinity button is back once more with the music player - simply press it when rocking out to your favourite tune and it will search for the same artist on the phone, which is neat enough.
But the X10 will go and have a look through YouTube for you as well to see what's cooking - meaning a plethora of music videos for you to watch as well (as long as you have an understanding network provider or Wi-Fi).
Music and video playback were a doddle, with a nice widget to let you change tracks from the home screen. Photo sorting also used the same list technique to let you see your snaps, and it made things look very nice indeed.
The camera is also among the best Android has to offer at the moment, as it's an 8MP effort with face recognition.
The photos taken are very cool, with Sony Ericsson having developed an algorithm that allows you to tag a face, and automated software can then search all your pics and find the rest with that person in.
We didn't get to test this feature (due to the lack of photos on the device) but should it work well, it would be thoroughly awesome.
However, despite Sony Ericsson's mobile photography (mo-pho) pedigree, we're not holding out hope that this is going to be the best quality of picture after Samsung's Galaxy wasn't up to much, and the Koreans also know how to make a decent camera phone.
The top of the phone houses the necessary media connections - ie a 3.5mm headphone jack and microUSB slot to let you connect up your personal headphone and not have to mess around with the likes of a third party adaptor (a la the Satio - which we're still not impressed with).
We're a lot, lot more excited about the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 having seen it again than we were last November - we think that if this is marketed right, the X10 coulld be one of the real winners of this year.
The only worry is the sheer amount of stuff the phone is doing at once - it might have a 1GHz processor, but we've seen plenty of phones stutter to a halt when performing tasks like Facebook info-grabbing.
Still, we'll be getting a device in for a full review soon, so we'll bring you all the information about this dark horse in the 2010 race.
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MWC 2010: In pictures: How to control a mobile phone with your eyes
You know the problem - you're walking down the street, carrying shopping and someone rings. What do you do? Well, in the future: wiggle your eyes.
NTT DoCoMo - the Japanese network that's also got a thoroughly great line in working out the next generation of technology - has managed to make a pair of earphones that can sense eye movement and control your mobile phone.
The concept works through small electrodes that can sense when your eyes are looking in a certain direction, leading to impulses the headphones can read.
The idea is that when you look up, your eyes emit a small amount of positive electrical potential, and when you look down, a negative amount.
The headphones have small electrodes that can read these impulses and turn them into commands for a mobile phone.
This means that when you move your eyes in a certain way, you can tell your phone to call someone, pick up or even change the music playing.
Guess what? There's no UK release date for this crazy tech. In fact, we'd bet we'll never hear about it again - which is a sad thing, as we love the idea of looking both ways to cross the street and accidentally
calling our mum.
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MWC 2010: ARM: 2010 to be big for 'smartbooks'
ARM has spoken about the forthcoming wave of new 'smartbook' devices, and believes they will get a big push in 2010.
Speaking to Bob Morris, director of mobile computing for ARM, he told TechRadar that he was excited about the forthcoming devices and predicted big things for Google's Chrome OS.
"[In smartbooks] we're going to be seeing devices that are constantly updating, so you'll be able to open them up and get your Twitter or Facebook updates instantly.
"There are multiple top tier OEMs, most of the big manufacturers in fact, that are moving into this space and are actively innovating."
Highlighting the future
ARM was showing off a number of smartbook-style devices at Mobile World Congress this year, such as the Entourage Edge dual e-book and Android device and a slimline unit from Lenovo too.
"In 2010, we're likely to see more converged devices - such as e-readers and tablets," added Morris. "Chrome OS is also supposed to be due by the end of the year, so we'll be seeing that come to the market too."
When asked about his early impressions of Chrome OS from Google, Morris said that he thought it had potential in this new device category:
"Chrome OS is interesting - I've already started getting used to Google Docs in preparation.
"There's a lot of buzz about it online, and I'm hearing some very good things about it - a crisp platform that loads very quickly and is very nimble too.
"It remains to be seen how it will appear in practice, but it's very interesting."
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