South Park takes on Apple and the iPad
Apple and Steve Jobs are the latest victims of South Park's vicious satire after a new episode took the company to task over recent privacy and location tracking fears.
The new Human CentiPad episode, which premiered in the US on Wednesday night, lands young Kyle in trouble when he agrees to an iTunes update without reading the terms and conditions.
Kyle is kidnapped by Apple and made part of a three-way human daisy chain (pictured) with his lips sewed to another man's rear end, in order to power a new version of the iPad.
"They don't track anyone"
Steve Jobs is the star of the episode, with his minions constantly able to track down Kyle and the rest of the crew through their iPads even though the devices are switched-off.
"Apple stuff is pretty neat, I just don't like the idea of a big company tracking me everywhere I go," says a cafe waiter as Kyle proudly shows off his new tablet.
"That's just a rumour, they don't really track anyone," retorts Kyle before a team of Apple spies charge in and take him away to Cupertino, citing that he legally agreed to everything.
The episode also pokes fun of the Genius Bar at Apple Stores and also the whooping and hollering at Steve Jobs' keynotes.
Meanwhile Cartman is aggrieved when his mother will only buy him a "Toshiba Handybook" when all the other kids have iPads.
The episode will be aired in the UK on Comedy Central on May 6th.
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Samsung Galaxy S2 earns best mobile phone title
The Samsung Galaxy S2 has been dubbed the ultimate handset after it nabbed the top spot in TechRadar's 20 best mobile phones in the world today.
We were won over by the combination of 1.2GHz dual core processors, 1GB of RAM and stunning screen - but more importantly how all of these worked together flawlessly and delivered a cracking package.
The Samsung Galaxy S2 is the first phone since the HTC Desire to earn full marks in our in-depth reviews, and our reviewer was impressed by its ability to cram it all into such a slim chassis.
Desire to Arc to Galaxy
The HTC Desire held on to the top spot since its launch last year, but spare a thought for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc: it held the throne for only a week before the Galaxy S2 seized it in a mobile phone coup.
It's going to take something pretty special to knock the Galaxy S2 from the top spot - but that doesn't mean the competition won't be trying. Our HTC Sensation review is imminent, and the fight between the two phones could go right down to the wire.
And while we don't know when it's going to launch, we'd guess that the iPhone 5, free from Antennagate-style problems, will be vying for the title too.
So get ready for a battle royale in the mobile phone world - do you think the Samsung Galaxy S2 can stay at the summit?
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HTC Rider and HTC Kingdom: Fairytale HTC handset pics leak
Two new HTC handsets have snuck out of fairytale myth and into reality, codenamed HTC Rider and HTC Kingdom.
With apt names, given the rather major national event occurring on Friday, the two handsets have been snapped in a covert yet blurry fashion.
The HTC Rider is shown running Android in a red chassis with four navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen – these look to be physical buttons rather than touch sensitive ones, which is a little strange.
One site is suggesting this could be a prototype of the GSM version of the HTC Evo 3D, HTC's US 3D phone.
My kingdom for a horse
Meanwhile, the HTC Kingdom looks very similar, although this time in a silver suit, like a knight.
Unfortunately the picture is of equally low quality so there's not much detail to be gleaned here either – although the hawk-eyed will notice the Android OS and what could be a front-facing camera. Either that or it's a screw.
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Panasonic announces 17,000 jobs to be cut in restructure
Panasonic has announced it is to dramatically streamline its business, revealing that 17,000 jobs are to go in the restructuring process.
Panasonic currently has 367,000 people on its books but over the next two years this number is to be trimmed to 350,000.
This isn't the first time Panasonic has offloaded thousands of jobs. In 2010 the number of employees dropped from 385,000 to 367,000.
In all, the reorganisation of the company will cost Panasonic around $2 billion.
Uncompromising efforts
Some of the changes Panasonic is looking to implement are increasing the purchasing of LCD panels from third party vendors and taking more of its TV production overseas. It is also looking to make major changes to its semi-conductor business.
While Panasonic will take a hit from the restructuring, its sales have increased by 17 per cent year-on-year and it is making an operating profit from its solar cells, lithium-ion batteries, LED lighting and air-conditioning sectors.
Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo said about the cuts: "This comes as a result of uncompromising efforts to turn every business unit into a shape that is globally competitive."
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4oD comes to iPad, Xbox Live to follow?
Another on-demand service has come to the iPad this week, with Channel 4 launching 4oD for Jobs and co's tablet device.
Following in the rather large footsteps of BBC iPlayer, the ad-funded app is initially being sponsored by Heineken and has a selection of content from the website, which excludes archive content and shows from the US.
Speaking about the launch, C4 head of VoD Sarah Milton said: "Collectively, connected TV is an interesting opportunity and in aggregation is a significant market, but at the moment it's all pretty fragmented.
"There's little in the way of consistent formats and we need some degree of scalability and longevity. The manufacturers are also continually developing new versions of their products."
On demand in demand
It seems that 4oD is also all set to launch on Xbox Live, with Microsoft seemingly changing tack and allowing more broadcast partners on to the service.
So far Sky has been the lone company to offer TV and movie content through Xbox Live, but both 4oD and ITV Player are likely to be made available through the Xbox 360 soon.
"It is taking a progressive view and opening up the platform to a number of people," said an unnamed insider to Broadcast.
"Broadcasters are interested in securing a presence on Xbox because they have all seen how well Sky has done from the distribution deal. And there has been an internal shift to making it easier for them to get onto the platform."
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Elop: Nokia tablet will have a 'uniquely Nokia perspective'
Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, has waxed lyrical on the subject of a Nokia tablet, saying that it is taking the soflty-softly-catchee monkey approach to building a slate.
While the company focuses on getting its first Windows Phone 7 handsets out the door and getting back into the smartphone race, it isn't taking its eye off the tablet prize:
"We could take advantage of Microsoft technology and software, and build a Windows-oriented tablet, or we could do things with some of the other software assets that we have.
"Our team right now is assessing what's the right tablet strategy for Nokia," said Elop, speaking to a Finnish television show.
Spoilt for choice
So Nokia is considering a number of tablet OSes; Windows (whether the Windows Phone OS or the long-time-coming tablet-optimised OS), Symbian or MeeGo; but it certainly doesn't sound as though we'll be seeing a Nokia iPad competitor any time soon.
Elop continued, "There are now over 200 different tablets on the marketplace, only one of them is doing really well.
"And, my challenge to the team is I don't want to be the 201st tablet on the market that you can't tell from all of the others.
"We have to take a uniquely Nokia perspective and so the teams are working very hard on something that would be differentiating relative to everything else that's going on in the market."
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Sony Blu-ray production kickstarts in May
Sony has announced that it is to re-open its Blu-ray manufacturing plant in Japan in late May; two months after operations were suspended at the facility due to the tsunami.
In a statement released this week, Sony noted that nine out of its 10 sites are now operational and, as of May, core production at these plants will resume.
"Optical disk manufacturing operations, including Blu-ray, are expected to resume around the end of May 2011, and magnetic tape manufacturing operations are expected to resume around the end of July 2011," said the release.
"Manufacturing of other products and components previously carried out at the Tagajyo Plant will be transferred to Sony's core manufacturing facilities for these products and components located in Miyagi, Fukushima and other prefectures, in order to quickly restore full production capacity."
Share slump
Sony's share price slumped this week to a low comparable to when the tsunami hit back in mid-March, this was due to the PSN debacle.
It seems that share prices could be affected further in the long term, however, with the statement noting: "The Company is continuing to evaluate the full impact of the Earthquake, tsunami and related power outages, including the impact of these production level adjustments, on Sony's businesses and consolidated financial results."
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Hands on: White iPhone 4
Apple is the magic brand that can do something nobody else can - create a media frenzy over a colour variant for a phone that's been out for nearly a year.
The Apple Store saw actual queues for the white iPhone 4 this morning, but we popped down to the Vodafone shop to spend some time with the new colour variant.
We're not going to give it a full review, as let's be honest: it's exactly the same as the black version, but with white bits instead.
We did check out the home button that apparently caused the delay (thanks to being a slightly different colour of white) - we can confirm it's the same hue as the rest of the phone. The world can now continue turning.
Take a gander at our little gallery of white iPhone 4 pictures to see if it's the new handset for you - although we would warn you that you'll probably be pretty annoyed that you could have spent all that money on a white iPhone 5 when it inevitably launches later this year.
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Gary Marshall: How the iPhone further threatens sat-nav apps
As Harry Hill didn't quite put it: I love sat navs, and I love smartphones. But which is better? Apple and Google, it seems, reckon that the answer is "smartphone".
I think they're right.
My quest for the perfect sat nav has cost me a fortune over the years, but the quest ended when I stuck the TomTom app on my iPhone.
TomTom's app does everything I need it to do: it knows which routes to avoid at particular times of the day, it can tell me if there's roadworks, an accident or another problem up ahead, it auto-corrects its own maps via 3G downloads, it can look up addresses from my contacts and it can Google for places when I'm not entirely sure what they're called.
It sucks battery power like a Dyson sucks up dirt and TomTom's own cradle is crazily expensive, but a cheap charger and a bit of gaffer tape solves those problems easily enough.
It's genuinely brilliant, and I'm sure rival firms' apps are just as good.
Ultimately, though, they're all doomed.
Apple, it seems, isn't spying on iPhone owners so that divorce lawyers can go "aha! You were here, then, with her, and you probably DID THINGS!". It's doing it to offer "an improved traffic service".
If they mean traffic in a "vroom vroom" sense, which I think they do, it may be new pants time for sat nav firms.
First, the phones came for their hardware. Now, they're coming for the software.
Where do you want to go today?
Steve Jobs doesn't like it when other people control key bits of technology, so it wouldn't be surprising if he wanted an alternative to Google Maps on iOS devices. Apple's 2009 purchase of mapping firm PlaceBase and the current drama over location recording suggests that Apple's plans for an alternative are well under way.
And of course, Google continues to improve its own mapping app on Android.
Between them, Apple and Google dominate the smartphone market - and before long, pretty much every phone will be a smartphone. If the two biggest players both provide decent mapping apps on every handset, with live traffic information, local search and perhaps social networking to boot, and if they provide that for free, then novelty voices may be all that's left.
For example, as Christopher Phin, editor of Tap!, points out: "We know that TomTom uses information from mobile phone providers to enhance the accuracy of its live traffic service, HD Traffic." Apple and Google don't need that. They've got the phones.
It's the good-enough problem all over again. Apple and Google don't need to offer best-in-class mapping; they just need to offer good-enough. When you've got good-enough sat nav for free, persuading you to upgrade isn't going to be easy - especially at the prices some firms are currently charging.
The road ahead for sat nav firms is looking awfully bumpy.
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Apple may have purchased iCloud.com domain
Rumours that Apple is about to launch a cloud-based iTunes service are hotting up with the news that Apple may have purchased a new domain: icloud.com.
A source has claimed that Xcerion, the Swedish company which owned iCloud.com, has sold the domain to the fruity tech company for $4.5 million.
Xcerion has recently rebranded its own iCloud service as CloudMe, which seems to support the idea that the iCloud.com domain was set to change hands.
Cloud iTunes
Recent reports have suggested that Apple has finished work on the much-lauded music storage service.
iCloud, as it may well be called, is said to allow subscribers to upload and store music on Apple's servers in order to play on any connected device – although presumably these devices will have to be Apple-made.
Google is also scrabbling to launch Google Music, a similar service to iTunes with the added benefit of cloud storage – sources say that Google Music is technologically good to go; it seems that it's having a spot of trouble licensing any actual music, however.
Still, iCloud? Not very imaginative, is it?
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Review: Atacama Duo 6
A brand new design from Atacama, the Duo 6 is so-called because of its support pillars. The front one, 50mm in diameter, does most of the mechanical work, while the 25mm rear is principally there as a cable conduit.
To that end, large holes have been made in its rear so that even quite large speaker cables can be easily threaded inside and fished out again at the other end, making a substantial contribution to the listening-room tidiness.
50mm may not sound very large for a main support, but the assembly is quite rigid overall, aided by the braced base (quite large at some 300 x 250mm) and the rather small top-plate, at 170 x 130mm, evidently targeted at some of the smaller loudspeakers around. It also works well enough with large models, as long as one is careful with positioning.
Filling up the main pillar with damping material is both possible and recommended, but filling the rear one with anything that could spill out is impossible because of the holes.
We enjoyed using this stand, although, if we’re brutally honest it’s probably not the least resonant we’ve ever encountered, but its character is slight and by no means destructive.
It adds a hint of vibrancy to the sound of all the speakers we tried on it and although there is a very minor reduction in the precision of inner detail and image depth, it’s easy to overlook these.
What might bother some listeners a little is a small degree of inconsistency in the bass, which can sound full but occasionally a little indistinct.
Still, the life and energy in the midrange and treble will provide ample compensation for most listeners and we were particularly struck by the neutrality and homogeneity of the tonal balance, from upper bass upwards.
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Review: Triode Corporation TRV-88SE
Triode Corporation makes a range of amps, which presumably all use triode connection of the output devices – the TRV-88SE certainly does.
In many ways it's a fairly conventional push-pull design, though the external finish is certainly among the best, with and wooden side cheeks. The removable valve cover is exceptionally resonant, but the cover over the transformers appears to be filled with resin and is completely dead, acoustically.
Internal construction uses a mix of circuit boards. The parts themselves been generally of good quality, with key capacitors being paper-in-oil types.
A couple of features stand out as adding modern appeal to the traditional valve amp idea – the headphone output and a front-mounted pair of phono sockets. One of the amp's inputs is a fixed-gain one, that allows the TRV-88SE to be used as a power amp. It's selected just like the other inputs and could give an unwary user a nasty surprise if employed by accident, but it's a useful feature.
Bias is adjustable but you need to get inside the amp to do it and it's a job for a qualified service bod.
Sound quality
This was considered the most 'solid-state' of the group of valve amplifiers we have tested recently. That has various connotations, not all of them necessarily complimentary, but it seems here to have been intended mostly in a good way.
At least, this amp has less of an obvious character to it than many of the others, which can lead to its sound seeming, as one listener put it, a little 'colder' than some.
At the same time, the sound has plenty of snap and verve to it and without noticeably accentuating the treble, the TRV-88SE keeps things light and agile. Bass is reasonably extended, if perhaps a little dry on occasions and there's actually quite a decent kick in reserve for when things get really exciting.
There's also some very good detail on offer, giving real insight into recordings. The trouble is, though, that's all a little superficial and our 'blind' listening panel certainly didn't find themselves involved with the music emotionally – neither were we when listening later, sighted.
Something about the sound just doesn't quite click and we can't think of a better way of explaining this, than by saying that there seems to be a lack of integration between the various objective qualities that go to make up good sound. Yes, there's detail and tonality is pretty good, but it just doesn't quite come together to make up a convincing musical whole.
This is exemplified by the way the amp deals with multi-layered music. It seems everything is there, but the various melodic and harmonic strands don't seem to relate to each other.
One listener commented that the accompaniment seemed unusually loud in relation to the vocals, another that the vocals lacked conviction. Overall, we respected this amp more than we loved it.
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White iPhone 4 finally arrives, world much the same as before
Apple's long-awaited white iPhone 4 hits the shops today, after a massive 11-month wait.
Is anyone going to buy one? We sent an intrepid reporter down to the Apple shop to find out.
There was no queue snaking down Regent Street under the Royal Wedding bunting, no eager paps and news crews hanging out waiting for that first white iPhone 4 customer. But there were some eager beavers queueing 'almost out the door' at the Regent Street Apple Store
The people seem to have voted with their feet: a white colour variant of a nigh-on year-old phone just isn't that exciting.
Sales tally: one
One person was spotted buying the ethereal handset from Vodafone - but we weren't allowed to speak to them so we don't know how long he'd been waiting for it, or how excited he was to finally have that pearly white, non-peeling paint in his hands.
At the time of writing, the online Apple Store is also down, presumably updating with the white iPhone 4, although we'll keep you posted on any other developments.
Why have we been so excited about this mythical handset? Why all the rumours? Did anyone ever actually care?
Here at TechRadar, we've posted over 10 news pieces about the absent handset, even non-tech news sources like Reuters and Bloomberg have been spinning stories out of it left right and centre.
Now it is here, the world seems, well, underwhelmed. Ah well, back to the iPhone 5 rumours.
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Delicious snapped up by YouTube founders
YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have been revealed as the new owners of bookmarking site Delicious, after Yahoo sold it to the web billionaires for an undisclosed sum.
Back in December it was reported that Delicious would be killed off by Yahoo, with the company streamlining its online services.
But it seems that it has been saved from the scrapheap and will get something of a refresh from its new owners.
"We're excited to work with this fantastic community and take Delicious to the next level," said Chad Hurley, who is now CEO of AVOS.
"We see a tremendous opportunity to simplify the way users save and share content they discover anywhere on the web."
Tastes Delicious
Yahoo seemed to be pretty choosy about who it sold Delicious to as there were a number of people interested in purchasing the bookmarking site.
John Matheny, SVP of Communications and Communities at Yahoo, said of the news: "We spoke with numerous parties interested in acquiring the site, and chose Chad and Steve based on their passion and unique vision for Delicious."
Yahoo acquired Delicious in 2005, but the site has been around since 2003. Hurley and Chen sold YouTube for $1.65 billion back in 2006 and have been swimming in a pool of their own money ever since. Probably.
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Google Docs app brings optical character recognition
Google has introduced a new Google Docs for Android app - which will allow you to use the camera on your handset to turn photos into editable text.
Google is keen to show that its Docs offering can be used on any suitable device, and the latest Android offering brings a host of new features.
They include better filtration, easier sharing and some nifty new tricks that take advantage of the handset's camera.
Editable text
"Using the app and your phone's camera, you can turn photos with text into editable Google documents with the power of optical character recognition (OCR)," blogged Google Docs software engineer Reuben Kan.
"Just create a new 'Document from Photo' or select the camera icon from the widget, and your converted document will appear in your documents list shortly after you snap the picture.
"You can also convert photos already stored on your phone by sharing them with the Google Docs app.
"OCR does a pretty good job capturing unformatted text in English but won't recognise handwriting or some fonts - stay tuned, it will get better over time!"
The Google Docs for Android app is available free now from the Android store.
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Updated: 40 best free Android games
As Android phones have increased in popularity the number of apps available for the platform has rocketed.
And that means more free Android games. There's a lot of junk out there, but fortunately, there are gems within the junk.
We've worked our way through a whole load of Android games to reveal the ones you should download to your phone.
If we've missed your favourite free Android game, let us know in the comments.
1. Angry Birds
The amazingly popular iOS game moved to Android recently, earning over two million downloads during its first weekend of availability.
The Android version is free, unlike the Apple release, with maker Rovio opting to stick a few adverts on it rather than charge an upfront fee. The result is a massive and very challenging physics puzzler that's incredibly polished and professional. For free. It defies all the laws of modern retail.
Angry Birds for Android was first available to download from app store GetJar but is now available through Android Market.
2. Bebbled
Your standard gem-shuffling thing, only presented in a professional style you wouldn't be surprised to see running on something featuring a Nintendo badge with an asking price of £19.99.
You only drop gems on other gems to nuke larger groups of the same colour, but with ever-tightening demands for score combos and scenes that require you to rotate your phone to flip the play field on its head, Bebbled soon morphs into an incredibly complex challenge.
3. The Red Stone
There's an awful lot of square-shuffling games on Android and Red Stone is one of the best. And one of the hardest. You start off with a big fat 'King' square that's four times of the normal 'pawn' squares, then set about shuffling things so the fat King can get through to an exit at the top of the screen.
It's hard to accurately describe a puzzle game in the written word, but seriously, it's a good game.
4. Newton
Released a few months back in beta form, Newton is a maths/physics challenge that has you lining up shots at a target - but having to contend with the laws of nature, in the form of pushers, pullers, benders (no laughing), mirrors and traps, all deflecting your shot from its target.
The developer is still adding levels to it at the moment, so one day Newton might be finished and might cost money. But for now it's free and a great indie creation.
5. Sketch Online
Surprisingly free of crude representations of the male genitalia, Sketch Online is a sociable guessing game where users do little drawings then battle to correctly guess what's being drawn first. It's like Mavis Beacon for the Bebo generation. The version labelled "Beta" is free, and if you like it there's the option to pay for an ad-free copy. But Google can't make you. Yet.
6. Drop
Some might call Drop a game, others might classify it as a tech demo that illustrates the accuracy of the Android platform's accelerometer, thanks to how playing it simply involves tilting your phone while making a little bouncy ball falls between gaps in the platforms. Either way it'll amuse you for a while and inform you of the accuracy of your accelerometer - a win-win situation.
7. Frozen Bubble
Another key theme of the independent Android gaming scene is (ports of) clones of popular titles. Like Frozen Bubble, which is based around the ancient and many-times-copied concept of firing gems up a screen to make little groups of similarly coloured clusters. That's what you do. You've probably done it a million times before, so if it's your thing get this downloaded.
8. Replica Island
An extremely polished platform game that pulls off the shock result of being very playable on an Android trackball. The heavy momentum of the character means you're only switching direction with the ball or d-pad, letting you whizz about the levels with ease. Then there's jumping, bottom-bouncing, collecting and all the other usual platform formalities.
9. Gem Miner
You are a sort of mole character that likes to dig things out of the ground. But that's not important. The game itself has you micro-managing the raw materials you find, upgrading your digging powers and buying bigger and better tools and maps. Looks great, plays well on Android's limited button array. Go on, suck the very life out of the planet.
10. ConnecToo
Another coloured-square-based puzzle game, only this has you joining them up. Link red to red, then blue to blue - then see if you've left a pathway through to link yellow to yellow. You probably haven't, so delete it all and try again.
A brilliantly simple concept. ConnecToo used to be a paid-for game, but was recently switched to an ad-supported model - meaning it now costs you £0.00.
11. Titres
Once you're successfully rewired your brain's 25 years of playing Tetris in a certain way with certain buttons and got used to tapping the screen to rotate your blocks, it's... Tetris.
It hinges on how much you enjoy placing things with your phone's trackball or pad. If you're good at it, it's a superb Tetris clone. Let's hope it doesn't get sued out of existence.
12. Trap!
Not the best-looking game you'll ever play, with its shabby brown backgrounds and rudimentary text making it look like something you'd find running on a PC in the year 1985. But it's good.
You draw lines to box in moving spheres, gaining points for cordoning off chunks of the screen. That sounds rubbish, so please invest two minutes of your time having a go on it so you don't think we're talking nonsense.
13. Jewels
Coloured gems again, and this time your job is to switch pairs to make larger groups which then disappear. That might also sound quite familiar. The good thing about Jewels is its size and presentation, managing to look professional while packing in more levels than should really be given away for free.
14. OpenSudoku
We had to put one Sudoku game in here, so we'll go with OpenSudoku - which lives up to its open tag thanks to letting users install packs of new puzzles generated by Sudoku makers. It's entirely possible you could use this to play new Sudoku puzzles for the rest of your life, if that's not too terrifying a thought.
15. Abduction!
A sweet little platform jumping game, presented in a similarly quirky and hand-drawn style as the super-fashionable Doodle Jump. You can't argue with cute cows and penguins with parachutes, or a game that's easy to play with one hand thanks to its super accessible accelerometer controls.
16. The Great Land Grab
A cross between a map tool and Foursquare, The Great Land Grab sorts your local area into small rectangular packets of land - which you take ownership of by travelling through them in real-time and buying them up.
Then someone else nicks them off you the next day, a bit like real-world Risk. A great idea, as long as you don't mind nuking your battery by leaving your phone sitting there on the train with its GPS radio on.
17. Brain Genius Deluxe
Our basic legal training tells us it's better to use the word "homage" than to label something a "rip-off", so we'll recommend this as a simple "homage" to the famed Nintendo Brain Training franchise.
Clearly it's not going to be as slick, but there's enough content in here to keep you "brain training" (yes, it even uses that phrase) until your battery dies. The presentation's painfully slow, but then again that might be the game teaching you patience.
18. Coloroid
Very, very simple and has the look of the aftermath of an explosion in a Tetris factory, but it works. All you do is expand coloured areas, trying to fill them in with colours in as few moves as possible - like using Photoshop's fill tool at a competitive level.
19. Cestos
Sort of a futuristic recreation of curling, where players chuck marbles at each other to try and smash everyone else's balls/gems down the drain and out of the zone. The best part is this all happens online against real humans, so as long as there's a few other bored people out there at the same time you'll have a real, devious, cheating, quitting person to play against. Great.
20. Air Control
One of the other common themes on the Android gaming scene is clones of games based around pretending to be an air traffic controller, where you guide planes to landing strips with a swish of your finger. There are loads of them, all pretty much the same thing - we've chosen Air Control as it's an ad-supported release, so is technically free.
21. GalaxIR
A futuristic strategy game with an abstract look, where players micro-manage an attacking alien fleet. Pick a planet, pick an attack point, then hope your troops have the balls to carry it off. There's not much structure to the game as yet, but that's what you get when you're on the bleeding-edge of free, independent Android gaming development.
22. Graviturn
An accelerometer based maze game, where the aim is to roll a red ball out of a maze by tilting your phone around. Seems embarrassingly easy at first, until increasing numbers of green balls appear on screen. If any green balls roll off the screen you die and have to try again. It's abstract. It's good.
23. Alchemy Classic
There are a few variants on Alchemy out there, each offering a similarly weird experience. You match up elements to create their (vaguely) scientific offspring, so dumping water onto earth makes a swamp, and so on. It's a brain teaser thing and best played by those who enjoy spending many hours in the company of the process of elimination.
24. Action Potato
You control three pots. Pressing on the pots makes them jump up into the air, where they harvest potatoes. See how many you can get in a row. That's the gist of it. And don't collect the rotten potatoes, else you die. That really is it. The Android Market stats say this is on well over 250,000 downloads, so it's doing something right.
25. Scrambled Net
Based around the age-old concept of lining up pipes and tubes, but has been jazzed up with images of computer terminals, high score tracking and animations. Still looks like something you'd have played on a Nokia during the last decade, but it's free – and looking rubbish hardly stopped Snake from taking off, did it?
26. Word Drop
Laid out like your standard Android block-based puzzle game, the difference here is we're not dealing with gems - you make blocks disappear by spelling out words from the jumbled heap of letters. There's not an enormous amount of point to it, but you can at least submit your scores and best words to the server, where an AI version of Susie Dent will pass her approval.
27. Barrr
What you do here is man-manage a bar world, pointing men at the beers, games or tattoo parlour, then taking their money off them once they're drunk and happy like a good capitalist. And make sure they go to the toilet. Things, as things do in games, soon start speeding up and it gets rather insane and difficult.
28. Tetronimo
The name gives it away - this is a Tetris clone. Or rather it's a game that uses the same sort of block-shifting rules as Tetris, only with a very nice and user friendly touchscreen area beneath the block pit to make it easy to play. We're having trouble locating this on the Android Market at time of writing - either a glitch or the inevitable legal troubles.
UPDATE: Tetronimo seems to have been removed from the Market, but the same developer has released Block It Up Lite, which mixes elements of Tetris and Bejewelled. [Thanks to tmahoney in the comments for the tip.]
29. Word Feud
A superb little clone of Scrabble, with a big, clear screen and online play options that actually work. The game's been offered for free with some hefty advertising over it thanks to the developer being based in Norway - which only received paid-for app sales support recently. A paid version may arrive soon, but Word Feud remains free right now.
30. Friction Mobile
A very odd concept that makes no sense in still images. You fire a ball into the screen, then try to hit that ball with other balls until it explodes. The catch is you're not allowed to bounce balls backwards into your own face. Because then you die. Sounds rubbish, but works well. It's free, so give it a no-obligation, no-commitment whirl.
31. Geared
Geared is a weird little thing finally converted over to Android from iPhone. It's an embarrassingly simple concept - players slot different sized cogs into place on the screen, with the aim being to power one gear from another. Then, as is video game tradition, it gets harder and harder. Plus there are 150 levels of it all.
32. Meganoid
A stunning little retro game, Meganoid plays and looks like something that ought to be running on a Nintendo emulator. But it isn't. It's new and on Android. It's a speed-based challenge, using on-screen or accelerometer controls to jump and bounce through ever-hardening levels. Developer Orange Pixel is aggressively supporting it, too, with constant map packs, characters and more regularly appearing for download.
33. Cordy
A standard and traditional platform game. Cordy is a speed-based affair, with players running, jumping and collecting their way through its pretty green levels, using an electrical cable to jump, swing over obstacles and grab energy. Uses on-screen buttons so can be a bit tough to play, but comes with 12 free levels to get you going.
34. Angry Birds Rio
Yet more Angry Birds for fans of the simplistic trial and error physics game. Angry Birds Rio is another chapter-based effort as well, with developer Rovio leaving tempting empty slots on the menu screen for periodic updates of new levels. More of the same, but with a prettier, 3D look to it this time thanks to a vague association with animated movie Rio.
35. Grave Defense Holidays
As with Angry Birds, the maker of this superb tower defence game has spun out a separate version it fills with seasonal levels. Recently updated with an Easter map, this free version of the game also includes Valentine, Christmas and St Patrick's Day themed maps. Currently calls itself Grave Defense Easter. Easily one of the best examples of the tactical genre.
36. Words with Friends Free
The popular iPhone Scrabble-alike is now on Android, with an ad-supported version up on the Android Market for free. Words with Friends Free should actually be called Words for People Without Any Friends, as once installed it lets users play with complete strangers online - or pick specific people from your contacts list. It's turn-based, so several ongoing games can be strung out for days.
37. PewPew
Very similar in style and concept to Xbox and Xbox 360 retro classic Geometry Wars. In fact, one might legally be able to get away with calling it a right old rip-off. Android PewPew is a rock-hard 2D shooting game packed with alternate game modes. It's a bit rough around the edges and requires a powerful phone to run smoothly, but when it does it's a fantastic thing.
38. Tap Fish
A nice looking little aquarium, that combines the timeless hobby of staring at goldfish with game elements based around breeding new varieties. There's a slight sting in the tail here in that Tap Fish is one of the initial wave of "freemium" Android games brought into life thanks to Google's launch of in-app billing. The really cool new stuff costs little bits of money.
39. Beats, Advanced Rhythm Game
A standard rhythm action, button pressing music game for Android. Beats manages to outdo the official music games by including a Download Song tab, where it's possible to install new song files created by users. It's very hard and very fast. Just like they should be. Runs perfectly on an HTC Desire, too, so there's no blaming glitches for not doing very well.
40. Pinball Deluxe
Pinball Deluxe is an actually decent pinball sim for Android, and it's free. At the moment it comes with four tables - Wild West, Carnival, Space Frontier and Diving for Treasure. Ball movement is convincing, and although a bit of the magic is lost thanks to having to use on-screen buttons, it's a smooth enough experience. It's ad-supported. Don't press those. You don't get a bonus.
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Review: Pure Sound A30
There are degrees of valve purism. Pure Sound, appropriately enough, takes things a step further than most by using valve rectifiers in the A30, as well as valve-amplifying components. Is there sense in this?
Valve rectifiers waste energy compared with solid-state diodes, they cost more and take up space and, like all valves, they have a finite useful life. Despite all that, they do have advantages in terms of turning AC into DC, with minimal high frequency noise generation.
Pure Sound has mounted practically all the components in this amp on a printed circuit board, making it, in that respect, one of the more modern designs. Passive components are an interesting mix of the latest parts and old-fashioned specialities like the carbon-film resistors used in many positions.
This is another switchable-mode amp, using a separate switch for each channel. There is no adjustment for bias: self-bias is used, which among other things guarantees Class A operation.
It's a little ironic that, for similar reasons to those that make valve rectifiers so good, valves are in some ways better suited to Class B than transistors!
Sound quality
Definitely something of a characterful performer, this amp will appeal most to listeners who like their music up close and direct. If you prefer something a little more laid-back, the A30's presentation may very well strike you short of aggression and, as such, left one of our listeners nonplussed to the point of active dislike.
The others, however, were more inclined to see the positive side of things. Comments were particularly favourable in the classical music excerpts, which are both relatively ambient recordings.
The A30 really dug deep into the detail in each and, although there was rather less sense of space around the performers than most of the amps brought out, there was also more insight into the small details.
This forward presentation is accompanied by a degree of tonal imbalance; a tilt in favour of the upper midrange and treble. Bass is fair, but not seismically extended, while the very highest treble is nicely open and quite sweet.
Dynamics can sometimes seem a little abrupt, with climaxes appearing almost out of nowhere. Again, this is something that will probably appeal to some listeners as strongly as it repels others.
Then there's the question of pace. In some ways, not surprisingly given the forward presentation, this is quite a pacey amp. That said, though, its timing is not always entirely convincing. It can sometimes sound a little rushed and the lack of very deep bass reduces the conviction of a driving bass/percussion riff.
Note that these comments all refer to triode mode: we tried ultralinear as well, but felt that it merely hardened the sound a little, without really adding anything constructive.
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Review: PrimaLuna Prologue Two
Designed in Holland and made in China, PrimaLuna's amps are essentially classic valve designs, but they bring distinctive aesthetics and a few modern design touches to the party.
One such notable feature in the PrimaLuna Prologue Two amp we are reviewing here is 'Adaptive auto bias'. Bias is a long-standing pain in the neck of valve amps: quite simply it's the DC ('standing') current in the valves under conditions of no audio signal and it's critical.
Usually amps either have manually adjusted bias, which may even require test equipment to set, or auto-bias (also called 'self-bias'), which does what it says but, in the traditional implementation, reduces maximum output power. It's really surprising how few firms have done what PrimaLuna does and made solid-state monitoring circuits which control bias. It makes the amp far more tolerant of imbalance between output valves.
Input switching and volume control use good-quality mechanical components and behind them a good deal of the amp's circuitry is based on solid wiring and tag strips, with large resistors in most positions.
Critical capacitors are brand-name plastic-film parts, while a couple of substantial electrolytic capacitors are joined by a smoothing choke in the power supply. The valve complement, apart from the output KT88s, runs to two each of the ECC83 and ECC82.
The cover over the transformers is so very resonant that we'd be tempted to remove it!
Sound quality
Definitely a qualified success, this amp made a very favourable impression on one of our listeners and a mostly favourable one on a second, but failed to inspire the third.
It turns out that the unimpressed listener missed detail and insight more than anything and found it a struggle to hear details even in familiar recordings. On the other hand, the best-pleased listener referred to 'sublime vocals' and clearly enormously enjoyed the overall musicality of the amp's presentation, which certainly has great charm across the midband.
Opinions were united on the subject of imaging, which is good laterally but tends to bring the performers a bit further forward than one is accustomed to hearing.
Treble wasn't explicitly mentioned by our 'blind' listeners, but our sighted experience suggests it is well-extended without sibilance or spit. That's probably a contribution to the amp's good handling of vocals and it scores highly for the ease with which lyrics can be understood.
There was also specific praise for the PrimaLuna's handling of dynamics, which are full but surprisingly subtle – you often don't notice the music is growing in volume until it's really loud.
With an unusual balance of strengths, this amplifier certainly merits an audition.
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UK-based company sells gambling.com for £1.5m
The domain gambling.com has been sold off for $2.5 million (£1.5m) by UK-based Media Corp, although the buyer has chosen to remain anonymous for now.
With sex and gambling two of the dominant markets on the internet, it comes as little surprise that gambling.com joins sex.com in a list of megabucks domains.
The sale was handled by specialist Sedo's UK team - and it is the company's third highest price after the infamous sex.com ($13m) and vodka.com ($3m).
Pleased
Justin Drummond, CEO, Media Corp, continues, "We are very pleased with the result of the sale of gambling.com.
"The team at Sedo has made the negotiation process as straightforward as possible and have helped us secure a great price for the domain."
Online gambling has long been a popular past time, although the era of people typing the most obvious name into a browser and sticking .com on the end have probably past.
However, the new buyer will no doubt be hoping to ensure that anyone searching for an opportunity to gamble away their pay packet will now be landing on their sparkly new domain.
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Sony: PSN back soon, regrets incident
Sony has given out another update on the ongoing PSN debacle, with a lengthy Q&A insisting that the company is still not sure that credit card numbers have indeed been taken, defending the lack of encryption on the personal data that certainly was and insisting that the service will be back soon.
Sony's PSN service has now been down for over a week – but gamers annoyance turned to horror when it turned out that personal details had been compromised by the people responsible, and that encrypted credit card data was among that data.
With experts suggesting that cancelling the card would be sensible, Sony is still suggesting that there is no evidence that the credit card details have been taken, and the company has pointed out that credit card security codes had never been included in the data set.
Patience
"First off, we want to again thank you for your patience," said Sony's latest blog – by Patrick Seybold.
" We know that the PlayStation Network and Qriocity outage has been frustrating for you. We know you are upset, and so we are taking steps to make our services safer and more secure than ever before.
"We sincerely regret any inconvenience or concern this outage has caused, and rest assured that we're going to get the services back online as quickly as we can."
What is clear is that this is a hugely embarrassing incident for a company pushing its reliability and cloud service capability.
So when will the service be back? "Our employees have been working day and night to restore operations as quickly as possible, and we expect to have some services up and running within a week from yesterday," said Sony
"However, we want to be very clear that we will only restore operations when we are confident that the network is secure."
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Steve Jobs speaks out on iPhone location tracking
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has brushed-off the notion that Apple is using the location-tracking 'bug' in iOS to keep tabs on its users.
The Cupertino-based company today admitted that the iPhone 4 does back up historical location data but doesn't need to collect quite as much and promises to resolve the issue with a software fix
Jobs, who remains on hiatus from full-time duty with the company due to illness, moved to dismiss the ever-present naysayers who suggest Apple might using the data for ill means.
"We haven't been tracking anybody," he says. "Never have. Never will."
Investigation
Jobs also chose the interview to defend Apple's delayed response to the controversy, saying that they wanted to identify the essence of the problem before rushing out a statement.
The stance has echoes of the antennagate fiasco that accompanied the launch of the iPhone 4, which also took Apple plenty of time to respond to.
"Rather than run to the P.R. department," Jobs says,"the first thing we always do when a problem is brought to us is we try to isolate it and find out if it is real,"
"It took us about a week to do an investigation and write a response, which is fairly quick for something this technically complicated."
"Scott (Forstall - Senior VP of iPhone software) and Phil (Schiller - Apple's marketing kingpin) and myself were all involved in writing the response because we think it is that important."
To find out more about Apple's response to the controversy, see our earlier news item on the matter.
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Dutch cops using TomTom data to position speed cams
TomTom has issued a statement after it was revealed that police in Holland are using historical speed data, captured by its savnav devices, as a guide for positioning speed traps.
Devices like the Go LIVE 1000 collect speed information automatically and backs it up to a TomTom database, which allows the company to improve the service the dashboard companion can offer.
TomTom also makes the database available to authorities for safety and logistic purposes, but says it was unaware that the police were using it in this way and promises to listen to customer concerns.
The statement reads: "We make this information available to local governments and authorities.
"It helps them to better understand where congestion takes place, where to build new roads and how to make roads safer."
Customers
TomTom continues: "We are now aware that the police have used traffic information that you have helped to create to place speed cameras at dangerous locations where the average speed is higher than the legally allowed speed limit.
"We are aware a lot of our customers do not like the idea and we will look at if we should allow this type of usage."
Satnavs like TomTom have traditionally informed drivers of where speed cameras are located, so news that speed information of drivers could be used in this way is a strange reversal of roles.
TomTom also assured customers that any information it gathers is anonymous and can never be traced back to drivers, so there's no need to worry about a speed ticket coming through your door.
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