IT News Head Lines (Techradar) 4/16/2012

Tutorial: Beginner's guide to media streaming

Beginner's guide to media streaming

Downloading media files such as albums and movies is very useful, but it's not always the best thing to do. There are lots of services that enable you to stream content for free instead of paying for a download, such as Spotify or LoveFilm.
Also, downloading can use more of your broadband allowance than streaming. This can leave you with very little of your monthly allowance if your ISP has a limit on your consumption.
Streaming isn't always about the internet though - you can also use it to get your media from one machine to another without physically transferring the files.

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For example, you might have a lot of movies on your desktop that you want to watch on a netbook. There's little point in copying them onto the limited space on the netbook if you're only going to watch them once - you're much better off streaming them from your desktop.
So if you're new to streaming, read on for the answers to the most common streaming questions.

Q. What equipment do I need?

It depends on what you're streaming from and to. For example, you might only need two PCs - say a desktop and laptop. You can then use your internet connection to stream from one PC to the other.
More commonly though, you'll want to stream to a television for watching movies, or to an internet-connected stereo for listening to music. You can also stream films to a media centre, which is sometimes built into an HDTV or games console.

Q. What do I have to configure in Windows?

It depends on your version of Windows, but you'll need to make sure that your network is discoverable by a Windows PC that wants to access it, say a Windows laptop trying to stream from a Windows desktop.

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Make sure 'Network discovery' is enabled in 'Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Centre'. Also make sure media streaming is turned on. You can then select 'Choose media streaming options…' to manage devices individually.

Q. What other devices is it possible to stream to?

In the mobile age you can stream to your smartphone or tablet too. You can stream from a media center or PC, or from the internet via apps. Android, Windows Phone 7 and iOS all have apps that enable you to stream from popular sites like BBC iPlayer, 4oD, LoveFilm and Netflix.

Q. What about codecs or other compatibility issues?

On the hardware side, all media streaming devices these days use something called UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), which is a protocol for internet-connected devices that helps them to find each other on a network. UPnP has revolutionised media streaming because it takes hardly any effort for devices to access your router and be given a network address, which is required for accessing content over that network.
Codecs relate to media players such as Windows Media Player. If you're streaming from an external hard drive to a desktop computer for example, and you experience problems with sound or video, those issues might relate to missing codecs. To find out whether you have the correct codec or download it, follow the instructions included with the Windows Media Player Troubleshooter (accessed through the Help menu).

Q. What about my broadband allowance?

If you're streaming from one computer to another (or tablet or smartphone over Wi-Fi) then you are not using any of your download allowance.
However, if you're accessing online services like TV catchup or a movie streaming service, you are consuming a lot of bandwidth. An hour's iPlayer could well use up 1GB of data. Check with your ISP how much you can use. Some ISPs also have online broadband monitors to check how much you're using.

Q. What happens if one of my devices still isn't recognised?

If the device has UPnP and Windows has been configured to allow it, the problem could lie in the adaptor settings. From Control Panel select 'Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Centre > Change adaptor settings', then press the [Alt] key to bring up the menus. Select 'Advanced Menu > Advanced Settings', and change Connection Settings to the required order.
You won't know what the correct order should be, but you can experiment with moving LAN and wireless items up and down in the list to see if your network then recognises your streaming device.

Q. What do I need for watching iPlayer in HD?

Even if you can watch iPlayer in standard definition without problems, streaming in HD mode requires a constant connection of around 4-5MB, otherwise you'll find you get regular buffering issues. It's best to stream over a wired connection if possible.

Q. What about network security issues?

There's little to worry about here. Make sure your Wi-Fi network is secured, and for an extra layer of security add the MAC addresses for each streaming device to your router's MAC address filtering list so that only the devices you specify can join your network.

Q. Is there anything to configure in my router?

Possibly, although your router should be set to allow DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) so that newly attached internet devices are automatically assigned an IP address that the router will accept, allowing them to join the network. This is always enabled by default. Some routers also allow you to manage the UPnP settings so that certain ports are always assigned to certain devices or applications. It's best to leave UPnP enabled to ensure streaming will work on a number of devices.

Q. What can I do if I still get buffering problems?

If it's buffering from streaming internet services, there are a number of places to look. You'll need a download speed of at least 2MB to stream video effectively - less for audio. Also consider how your devices are connected. If you're using Wi-Fi, are you able to upgrade to 802.11n to give you the best throughput? If not, are you able to use a wired connection for your devices - perhaps through powerline networking?

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Tutorial: How to optimise your PC's cooling

How to optimise your PC's cooling

Building a PC may be as easy as putting a child's playset together, but optimisation is a dark art. One scientist recently estimated that there are as many variations of different settings in your computer as there are neurons in the human brain.
OK, we just made that up for the purposes of this article, but the point stands. Optimising your PC takes much time and patience, as well as a solid understanding of how it's put together and how it works. And a screwdriver.
'Optimisation' itself is a bit of a blurry term, but we're going to assume that you want to do one of two things to your PC: make it faster, or make it quieter. There is some middle ground between these two paradigms - a fast PC doesn't have to be loud and, likewise, a quiet PC doesn't have to be slow.
Optimising a gaming PC means that it should run faster and have more room for ludicrous overclocks. System stability is key here, and the focus of a gaming PC is on vast amounts of airflow at the cost of quietness. Of course, quieter fans will make a big difference, but gaming cases' large fans tend to generate quite a lot of sound.
On the other hand, a quiet PC will tend to run warmer, but its silence makes it ideal for installation in a living room. Here underclocking, rather than overclocking, can prove useful as it means that the internal fans can be tuned lower, and make a little less noise as a result.

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Bear in mind, too, that modern PCs are difficult to break, and most settings and components can be readily returned to their original state. With that in mind, prepare to unleash a faster and/or quieter PC.
Let's get down to brass tacks here. Before you start fiddling with fan speeds and CPU voltages, you'll need a computer. Otherwise you'll be fiddling with fan speeds in mid-air.
Whether you're buying an off-the-shelf PC or assembling your own, the most important thing to consider first is the case, or chassis. Cases generally come in two species: the quiet but warm and the ugly but cool. Quiet cases generally look sleeker, with no visible air intakes or giant glowing fans, but their silence comes at a cost: you'll often find that due to lower airflow the temperatures within these particular beasties are higher than their more gamey counterparts.
The ugly but cool cases often consist of little more than a vaguely cubic steel mesh into which you hang your motherboard and components. These cases are designed with performance in mind, and the huge air intake and output they're capable of means that all the innards stay nice and chilly.
There are some cases that straddle both the quiet and the cool. Thermaltake's BMW-designed Level 10 cases separate each component into its own section in order to provide better cooling and less noise - but the less said about this £200 poorly-performing behemoth, the better.
Cooler Master's more sensible Cosmos series includes both decent airflow and noise-dampening side panels, but the latest - the Cosmos II - will set you back a whopping £350.

Cheap chills

On the budget side, there are bargains to be had for around the £100 mark. Cooler Master's HAF series includes an incredible amount of cooling, and we've been impressed with what we've seen so far.
The HAF 932 - which has been around since 2008 - is still an amazing piece of kit, and it's £109. Antec's Performance One cases use as much noise dampening technology as possible, and you can pick them up for around £90.
There are other considerations when buying a case. Ever wondered what those strategically-positioned giant holes on the motherboard tray are for? They're not to save manufacturers splashing out on precious metal, Polo-style - they're for cable management.
Before you start putting components in your PC, it's a good idea to thread your SATA and power cables through these holes and zip-tie them in place. This ensures your airflow isn't akin to drying your hair through a pile of wet spaghetti.

Fans are - obviously - the things that deliver the airflow into and around your case. Quieter cases tend to have fewer, whereas gaming-oriented cases feature enough to drive a field of wind turbines. The majority of cases have extra spaces for fans, too, but it's important that they're facing in the right direction.
Prevailing wisdom is to (somewhat euphemistically) suck little and blow lots, so larger fans should be directed out of the case. It's also a good idea to make the front fans suck and the top and rear fans blow - that way you've got a constant airflow in one direction.
This may be an obvious point, but if you're installing case fans it's important to know which way they're going to blow. Generally speaking, air blows out of the side of the fan with the support arms and label, and air flows away from the curve of each blade.

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If you really want to see what's happening to the air in your PC, it's a good idea to invest in a packet of smoke matches (£1.22 for 25 from www.toolstation.com). These produce more smoke than a beer garden - light one and hold it in front of a powered-up case to see where the cooler air is going, and if there are any vortexes where cold air is getting trapped. Just make sure you turn off your smoke detectors first.
The majority of cases also come with hard drive fans seated at the front, but their effectiveness is debatable. Hard drives have been designed from the ground up to operate without cooling fans, and the majority of failures are likely to be due to floundering mechanics rather than overheating.
If you've got three or more hard drives, heat accumulation could be a problem, but moving a single hard drive to a non-cooled location could result in better airflow to the rest of your PC, with the added bonus that it's not flowing over a lukewarm drive.
Aside from fans, hard drives are likely to be the loudest things in your PC. Many cases come with noise dampening mounts for your hard drives, which stop their annoying rattle reverberating around the whole PC. If your case lacks the requisite dampening, you can pick up a case of rubber grommets (£2.25 from www.toolstation.com) and wrap them around the hard drive mounts within your case.

Making your PC even quieter

For even more silence, acoustic dampening panels can stop your PC sounding like a tone deaf teen metal band practising in a steel shed. These increase the sound absorption surface area within your PC, so sticking them to your case's side panels can make a huge difference. You can get these from www.quietpc.com (whodathunk?), along with foam blocks that can be inserted into drive bays to absorb even more unwanted noise.

At the core of your PC lie the graphics card and CPU, and these can generate enough heat to turn your PC into a rodent sauna. Stock cooling generally does the job, and often higher end graphics cards - such as Sapphire's Vapor-X AMD series - include better coolers to handle the higher temperatures generated by overclocking.
However, sometimes stock cooling simply isn't enough, and upgrading heatsinks can make a big difference to your machine's operating temperatures and your system's noise emissions - even if you haven't overclocked the graphics or processor chips.
CPU coolers are generally compatible with all CPUs, and Enermax's ETS-T40-TA did a brilliant job of reducing the heat, while looking fairly bling at the same time.
GPU coolers are a different kettle of floating points, though. Installation isn't as easy as merely installing a CPU cooler, because graphics cards consist of numerous parts and screws. Each cooler has to be bespoke to the card itself, too.
If you're experiencing overheating problems with your graphics card that haven't been solved by simply optimising your case's cooling, your first port of call should be to try to return it under warranty. If that fails, invest in a new cooling system for the card - but be warned that they can cost rather a lot of money, and may void your warranty.
Not to be overlooked, the PSU is an important part of your PC. Apologies if we overlooked you, PSU. You want one that's going to give you a bit of leeway when it comes to upgrading, without delivering more power than you're ever likely to need.
The incredibly handy PSU calculator analyses the power needs of all your components and suggests a suitable PSU wattage. PSUs are, in fact, fairly crude bits of kit, so go for one with 80+ certification to ensure it's running with reasonable efficiency.
PSUs also tend to generate rather a lot of heat and noise, and their installation is something of an art form in itself. Some cases position the PSUs at the top, where heat can escape easily, but we're not too keen on the idea of the heaviest computer component being perched above some of the weakest.
The bottom is a better option, and some cases give you the choice of placing it with the fan facing downwards. Just make sure you hoover your PC's parking space thoroughly before you put it down, unless you fancy a PSU full of dead woodlice and stale Twiglets.

Tidy profits

While we're on the subject, keeping your PC free of dust is pretty crucial. Gamier cases tend to suck up dirt like a Sunday tabloid, and it's worth opening your case every now and then to see what's going on inside.
A can of compressed air can work wonders on a dust-infested case, but failing this stick a sock over the end of a vacuum cleaner and suck away at its lowest setting - this will provide enough suction to remove fan-clogging, heat-inducing dirt without loose components ending up in your cyclone cylinder.

Now that we've sorted out the more practical elements of your PC, it's time to get under the hood and see just how well your techbox is working. CPUID's incredibly handy HWMonitor is completely free to download from www.cpuid.com. It's a Format fave, and it shows temperatures and voltages for just about every element of your computer.

While your computer's idle it'll show low temperatures, so boot up a graphics-intensive game (that is, something other than Q*bert) with it running and see how high those temperatures get. You can expect your machine's idle temperatures to hover around the 30-40°C mark, maxing out at 50°C under load.
Whether or not temperatures higher than this actually shorten the lifespan of components is contestable - anecdotal evidence suggests that it takes a monstrous amount of overclocking to blow a processor.

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The next step is to download SpeedFan from www.almico.com. This isn't quite as user-friendly as HWMonitor, but it lets you adjust fan speeds from within Windows. The 'Speed01' to 'Speed04' settings correspond to the fans within your system, with 'Speed04' usually controlling the GPU fan. You can set percentages here - lower each one and observe the temperatures until you find the sweet spot between coolness and quietness.
Both AMD's Catalyst and Nvidia's System Tools let you control your machine's fan speeds too, along with more advanced features like overclocking and underclocking. We won't go into the specifics of over and underclocking here, but both techniques can make a significant difference to a PC's performance.
Underclocking can be particularly useful on loud PCs, because lower temperatures mean you can tune your fans to lower speeds. Even the most ancient of computers can be given a new lease of life with the optimisation tips described here, and they apply to pretty much everything from a 386 right through to a Core i7. A properly optimised PC that runs smoothly is a heavenly thing, and you'll feel an immense amount of satisfaction if you know your PC is running at its best.

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Tutorial: Simple tips and tweaks to make your laptop more productive

Laptop tips and tweaks

One of the drawbacks of Windows' most compelling feature - its versatility - is that it's set up to cater for as wide an audience as possible. You can start using it straight away, but as you become more familiar with how your laptop works, you might start to experience frustration at the way things are done.
Here's the good news: that compelling, versatile feature also allows you to use Windows in a variety of different ways. Instead of adapting the way you work, you can actually customise and tweak your laptop's settings to suit you. And in this feature we'll show you exactly how to do that.
You'll discover how to set up Windows to work the way you want it to, from configuring the desktop so your favourite programs and frequently accessed files are just a click or two away to creating your own customised shortcuts. You'll even be able to remap certain keys so they perform the functions you want them to rather than what your laptop manufacturer envisaged.

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We'll also reveal a selection of free programs that are designed to be simpler to use, plus look at what hardware add-ons can help make your laptop both more productive and comfortable to use.
Whether you're a first-time laptop user or an old hand, you'll find something in this feature to help you get more from your computer. And you don't necessarily have to be a laptop owner to benefit either - many of the tweaks and tips offered here will work perfectly with desktop PCs too.
Let's start making your laptop more productive by taking advantage of its touchpad. It's tempting to see the touchpad as little more than a basic substitute for your mouse, but you're missing a trick if you do.
Most touchpads are touch sensitive, meaning you can do more than simply move the cursor around your screen and click to select. To see if your laptop has a touchpad that supports gestures, click 'Start', type mouse into the Search box and click 'Mouse' when prompted to open the Mouse Control Panel.
Look for a 'Device Settings' tab - select this and you should see a reference to your touchpad. Click the 'Settings' button beneath it and expand the Application Gestures section to see what gestures are available for your laptop model.
If your touchpad doesn't support gestures - or supported gestures are thin on the ground - you can purchase a standalone touchpad, such as Logitech's Wireless Touchpad (around £45, www.logitech.com). The box overleaf reveals some of the more common gestures available to you.
Alternatively, why buy new equipment when you can add simple gesture support for free? StrokeIt Home, which is free for personal use, adds support for gestures using your mouse or touchpad in conjunction with the right mouse button.
What's more, you'll soon be spending less time pointing and clicking - and more time doing the things you love.

Set up your desktop

The Windows desktop is a user-friendly, approachable way to use your computer, but as always there are tips and tweaks to make it even more useful, efficient and better optimised for your way of working.
First, make better use of the Taskbar. It's always visible at the bottom of the screen, so you never need to clear away other windows to get to it, and if you're using Windows 7 you can take advantage of another time-saving feature in the form of Jump Lists as well.
Adding programs to the Taskbar is simple. Windows Vista and Windows XP users can simply drag program shortcuts on to the Taskbar. People with Windows 7 can right-click an existing shortcut on the desktop or Start menu and then choose 'Pin to Taskbar'.

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When you right-click on certain Taskbar shortcuts in Windows 7 you'll see a jump list of recently accessed documents in that program appear, allowing you to open them and the program with a single click (click the pin icon next to an entry to place it permanently at the top of the jump list).
Windows 7 users can also customise the Taskbar's Notification area to choose exactly which icons are always visible. Click the arrow to its left to reveal all Notification area icons - drag one on to the Notification area to permanently pin it in place for easy access (icons can also be dragged the other way to hide them from view).
Windows 7 users can maximise windows by dragging them to the top of the screen, or place two windows side-by-side by dragging each to opposite sides of the screen. You can also select a window and quickly resize it by holding down the [Windows] key as you press an arrow key.
When browsing your computer's hard drive for files, Windows 7 and Vista users should make use of the Favourites section in the left-hand pane - drag a folder into this list to place a shortcut there for easy access.
Windows 7 users can also use the Library feature to group related folders into one easily accessible location - click 'Libraries' to get started.

Use gestures with your mouse

1. Basic orientation

Download and install StrokeIt Home. Once installed, launch the program, which will appear in the Taskbar Notification area as a small white cursor, indicating it's active and ready to use (right-clicking this disables StrokeIt - the cursor will turn red). Gestures are performed by holding the right mouse button as you perform the gesture, which appears on-screen.
2. Practice existing gestures

Try the following basic gestures by moving the mouse to create the desired gesture or letter: C closes the current window, while O opens the File Open dialog box. Select some text and then gesture the mouse upwards to copy it to the clipboard. To paste it elsewhere in your document, position the cursor where the text is to go and gesture downwards.
3. Learn new gestures

A number of gestures are already set up - to see these, click the StrokeIt Taskbar Notification area icon. Expand the [Global Actions] section to view what gestures are available for all applications and Windows itself. You'll also see sections relating to specific programs - the gestures contained here will only work in the application in question. Visit the StrokeIt Site for additional help with gestures.
4. Create your own

If you don't like the gesture assigned to a particular action, you can change it. Select the offending gesture, then click the drop-down arrow above the Remove Gesture button to choose another to replace it. Alternatively, create your own gesture from scratch - when the Unrecognized Gesture window appears, click 'New Gesture', give it a name and click 'OK'.

Make Windows more accessible

You might be forgiven for thinking the Ease of Access Centre (Accessibility Options in Windows XP) is solely for those with sight, sound or motor-related disabilities, but in actual fact you'll find lots of useful tweaks here that can make things easier for all users.
Access these options via the 'Start > All Programs > Accessories' menu. The simplest thing to do here is work your way through the options on offer - use the wizard to answer a few questions that will help Windows determine what settings to offer you, or manually go through all the available tweaks.
It's always worth looking at mouse and keyboard-related options to see if any of the tweaks offered sit more comfortably with the way you like to work. You can, for example, change the focus of a window simply by moving the mouse over it instead of pointing and clicking (select 'Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse').
If you don't like the way that Windows automatically rearranges your program windows when they're dragged to the sides of the screen, then you'll find an option to switch that off here too.
If you have a headset or microphone, you might also like to experiment with using speech recognition to control certain aspects of your computer. Both Windows 7 and Vista have speech recognition built in and you can switch it on and set it up following the simple wizard that's accessible from the section about using your computer without a mouse or keyboard.

Touchpad gestures, keyboard tweaks and more

Common gestures for your touchpad

1. One-finger control
Using your touchpad with just one finger allows you to operate it exactly the same way you would your mouse. Two-finger rotate Some Synaptics devices allow you to both twist and pivot objects by using two fi ngers together in a twisting movement to rotate things left and right.
2. Three-finger swipe
Use this horizontally to move back and forth between pictures in a slideshow or picture viewer, or to move backwards and forwards through your web browsing history. Synaptic touchpads can also use it vertically to enter or exit slideshow mode.
3. Four-finger swipe (horizontal)
This gesture is used by Logitech wireless touchpads to move between open applications. Just swipe your fingers to switch from one program to the next.

Create your own shortcuts

You can create convenient desktop shortcuts to any part of your system. To create a shortcut to a program, file, folder or even web address, right-click on the desktop and choose 'New > Shortcut', then follow the prompts to either select the folder or file (click 'Browse') or type the web address.
You can also create shortcuts to frequently accessed Control Panels: click 'Start > Control Panel' and opt to view by large or small icons. Then simply right-click the Control Panel in question and choose 'Create Shortcut' to place a shortcut on the desktop.
You can also assign keyboard shortcuts to new and existing shortcuts. Just right-click the shortcut in question and choose 'Properties' (if the shortcut is on the Windows 7 Taskbar, right-click it, then right-click the program name that pops up and choose 'Properties' to access it). Place the cursor in the Shortcut key box and press your desired key - note it'll be assigned [Ctrl] + [Alt], but you can also hold down other keys such as [Windows], [Ctrl] + [Shift] or [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Shift] too.
It's also worth exploring keyboard shortcuts within programs - these are displayed next to menu entries, or check the Help file for more details. Some applications, including Microsoft Office, also allow you to specify your own custom keyboard shortcuts - again, consult the Help file for details.
People running Office 2010 should open the Options dialog box, select 'Customize Ribbon' and click 'Customize' next to Keyboard shortcuts to get started, for example. It's also possible to remap certain keyboard functions, so pressing [Caps Lock] does something different, for example. The step-by-step guide below reveals how to do this using a free program called SharpKeys.

Change how your keyboard functions

1. Install SharpKeys

Before installing SharpKeys, open the 'Programs and Features Control Panel' ('Add or Remove Programs' in Windows XP) and check if the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile is installed. If not, open Windows Update and look for it under Important Updates (Custom in Windows XP).
2. Pick key to change

Launch 'SharpKeys' from the Start menu or desktop, clicking 'Yes' or 'Continue' if prompted, then read the warning message and click 'OK'. When the main screen appears, click the 'Add' button. You'll be prompted to select the key you wish to change from the left-hand menu - click the 'Type Key' button and press the key you wish to change.
3. Choose new function

Verify the key is the correct one and click 'OK'. Now click the right-hand 'Type Key' button. Press the key you wish to remap your old key to. Click 'OK' when done.
4. Apply changes

Now click 'Add' to remap another key or key combination. When done, click 'Write to Registry' and restart your computer to remap your keys.

Six free tools to make your PC faster and easier to use

1. LastPass

www.lastpass.com
Once installed, all you need to remember is a single username and master password, and this tool will automatically fill in details and forms securely for you in your web browser. Now you can have separate passwords for all your accounts without having to remember or type anything!

2. Soluto

www.soluto.com
Speed up your laptop by slashing the startup times for both Windows and your web browser. The program reveals which items are starting with your laptop or browser, and lets you safely disable non-essential items to free up resources.

3. BatteryCare

http://batterycare.net
Windows 7 does a perfectly adequate job of providing you with information about how much juice is left in your battery, but if you want to go one step further and monitor its health, plus tweak settings, install this.

4. Virtual CloneDrive

www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html
Use ISO Recorder to convert your physical CDs and DVDs into virtual ISO files, and you can access them directly from your hard drive using Virtual CloneDrive, which basically emulates a DVD drive. It saves on battery life and makes the perfect travelling companion.

5. Finestra Virtual Desktops

www.z-sys.org
Too many windows open at the same time for comfort? Windows 7 does an excellent job of managing multiple windows via the Taskbar and Aero Peek, but if your desktop's still too crowded, run this and you can have four virtual desktops working side-by-side.

6. Pop Peeper

www.poppeeper.com
Keep an eye on your email direct from the Notification area of the Taskbar. POP Peeper imports your email accounts, then gives you early warning as to what's waiting. It's a good way to filter out spam and other unwanted email without downloading it too.

More Windows tweaks

Press [Windows] + [R] and the Run dialog box will appear. This powerful tool lets you quickly access programs, system tools and more. Click 'Browse' to select a file on your hard drive, or type the name of the program (such as services.msc to open the Services console).
For a comprehensive list of shortcuts you can type into the Run dialog box, visit this page.
Finally, you may find that double-clicking a file opens it in the wrong program. To change which program automatically opens a file when it's double-clicked, right-click the offending file and choose 'Open with > Choose Default Program'. Pick your desired program from the list, or click 'Browse' if it's not present, make sure 'Always use the selected program to open this type of file' is ticked and click 'OK'. Job done.

Hardware improvements

You can also make your laptop easier and more comfortable to use with the help of some hardware add-ons.
If you find your laptop's trackpad too awkward to use, just plug in any USB mouse and use that instead. Similarly, if you like listening to music, but your laptop's speakers aren't up to the task, plug in another set via the headphones socket.
If you frequently work with your laptop on your lap, you'll know how hot it can get. Purchase a laptop cooling stand to act as a barrier between you and your notebook - a beneficial side-effect of the cooler is that it'll extend the life of your laptop's components by cooling them down.
If you frequently use your laptop away from home, you may rely heavily on its battery. If this fails to give you enough juice between charges, consider purchasing an add-on battery such as the PowerGorilla (£150, www.powertraveller.com), which can double or even triple the amount of time you stay away from the mains socket.
Finally, if your notebook has an ExpressCard slot, you can expand its functionality by adding extra ports such as Firewire or eSATA, which aren't commonly included on laptops. Perfect if you want to transfer footage from a non-USB camcorder to your laptop…

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In Depth: The past, present and future of multi-GPU technology

Multi-GPU technology explained

Multi-GPU technology has come a long way in the last few years, to the point where it's now a legitimate use of a second GPU, instead of being a horrible waste of silicon and shaders.
In the before time though, the long, long ago - well the early Noughties - multi-GPU technology was almost forgotten. If you recall, 3dfx had introduced the original SLI (scan-line interleave) technology in 1998 with its Voodoo 2 cards, which was left on the shelf as Nvidia picked up the pieces of the graphics company.
The green goblins did reintroduce it in 2004, though, renamed as the scalable link interface. ATI followed suit the following year and introduced its own multi-GPU tech, CrossFire.

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Neither of these technologies were really worth the cost, the effort or the power. Completely aside from the fact that twin-GPU setups were a pain in the derriere to set up, requiring certain motherboard chipsets and sometimes specific master cards (in the case of ATI), they rarely delivered worthwhile performance boosts.
Sometimes - and in a few rare cases this is still true - adding in an extra GPU confused software and drivers so much that the performance figures slipped into reverse and you ended up with slower frame rates.

Double dose

Kudos then to the two big GPU manufacturers for persisting in developing the technology, despite almost global derision. Now we've finally hit a time where throwing a second GPU into the equation will pretty much give you the desired doubled performance we've always wanted from such a setup.
There are still limitations, though, including Nvidia charging a premium for licensing SLI compatibility on motherboards (now that it no longer makes chipsets itself). The key limitations though are on what graphics cards can be used together in a multi-GPU array. ATI's master/slave beginnings aside, it was vital to have the exact same graphics card in a setup to have any chance of it working.
On the Nvidia side, things have changed a little to the point where now it just has to be the same GPU, and actual manufacturer's badges, such as Asus or MSI no longer have any bearing on SLI's functionality. This means you can now pair up a couple of GTX 460s but not a GTX 460 and GTX 465, as they're different parts completely.

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The situation is different on the AMD side, though. Instead of just linking up identical cards, you can CrossFire any card within the same GPU family. So all the Cayman-powered HD 69xx cards, for example, can be used in the same system.
An interesting side effect of this is that sometimes older GPUs get resurrected in subsequent generations. For example, the HD 5770 and HD 5750's Juniper GPU was reintroduced in the HD 6770 and HD 6750, so you can mix and match these cards with impunity.
This has happened on the Nvidia side before, with the 9800GTX+ and the rebranded GTS 250 actually being essentially the same card, and so were able to be used in SLI together.

Islands apart?

It's unlikely that we're going to see the same thing happening with the next generation of graphics.
AMD has said that it is going to continue the lower-end Northern Island cards alongside the new Southern Island generation, instead of rebranding the HD 66xx series and below as HD 76xx (See opposite page, top). But if you do see a HD 76xx card in the wild you can bet it will CrossFire happily with a corresponding HD 66xx card.
The new HD 7000 series cards will follow the same CrossFire compatibility curve, with the HD 7950 and HD 7970 working happily together in the same system. AMD does say though that for optimum scaling identical cards is always the best way to go.
The same goes for the lower-end HD 7770 cards; though their little brother, the HD 7750, actually lacks a CrossFire connector in the reference design. We don't yet know whether add-in board (AIB) manufacturers will develop their own PCB designs with that connector included, but if there's a demand you can bet the likes of Sapphire and HIS will take a long hard look at it.

Open approach

At this low-end though it's unlikely people are going to want to CrossFire cards below the HD 7770; there simply isn't the performance return. For the money you'd spend on two HD 7750s you could buy a superior single card. But AMD's more open approach to multi-GPU technology is great for the consumer.
If you'd picked up a HD 6870 a while back and wanted a performance boost, being able to drop in a £99 HD 6850 makes good financial sense. And this open approach isn't just limited to the cards themselves. AMD has ensured that the option is there for everyone, so long as they have a second x16 PCIe slot on their motherboard.

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While Nvidia only allows certain licensed boards to have its SLI tech, AMD has spread its technology around liberally. When you're setting up a new machine, or looking to replace the graphics array in an existing rig, we would generally say that no matter the performance benefits, you would be better off picking the best single graphics card you can afford rather than choosing two cheaper cards from the off.
There are still driver issues between certain games and multi-GPU setups, so a single card rig is generally going to be more stable. But with the best single GPU you can afford you can always add in a second card at a later date. And if you're on the AMD side you may even be able to pair it with a faster card as prices drop over time, without the mobo compatibility worries that surround SLI.

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Rumor: Windows Phone 8 interface may use Kinect

Rumors have sprung up claiming that Windows Phone 8, also known as Apollo, could use Kinect's technology to grant users new interface options.
Kinect is Microsoft's hands-free interface solution, which was introduced as a gaming peripheral for the Xbox 360. Microsoft has also implemented the device into Windows 7.
January rumors claimed that Asus is producing prototype Windows 8 laptops with Kinect's Natural Use Interface (NUI) built-in, and Kinect functionality would be integrated into more portable hardware in the near future.

There's not enough space

Just how exactly the stationary Kinect could fit (or even work) in the phone is of interest, and Microsoft's R&D department is reportedly having trouble squeezing all the components of Kinect into a phone. Kinect uses three cameras, one of which is infrared, to detect the body's movements for gesture-based control interfaces.
The infrared camera is essential for use in dark environments, and without it, the NUI features would only be usable in daylight-like conditions.
Microsoft supposedly outed several new Windows Phone 8 designs in February, including small tablet-sized devices that would much better fit Kinect's various elements. But gesture controls aren't the only feature Kinect would bring to Windows Phone 8.

Sticking it to Siri

Kinect's also a boon with voice control capability, something a Windows Phone could take advantage of to compete with Apple's Siri. Response to Siri has been positive, though Microsoft's own TellMe voice recognition service is said to be even better at interpreting your commands.
The Kinect NUI will be tied closely to the TellMe service, the rumors say.
Other sources claim Sony will release their own gesture- and voice-enabled phone, running on Google's Android OS, within a year and a half at the latest.

Windows Phone camera to detect motion

Similar controls were originally meant to be implemented in previous versions of the Windows Phone OS, but were scrapped for unknown reasons.
"It will use the camera on the phone to detect motions and create appropriate actions," Microsoft said previously.
"You will be able to shake, twist and otherwise manipulate the phone and get things done. The phone will be able to perform actions when placed face down on a surface, and it will know when it is in your pocket or bag."
Those plans were scrapped some time ago, but Kinect could pick up the torch exactly where it lies.

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Spotify plans special announcement next week

Spotify looks set to bombard us with another launch next week, following the announcement of a special event in New York.
The Swedish streaming giant has sent out press invites for the Ad Age Digital event on Wednesday, where CEO Daniel Ek will take the stage for a keynote address.
The press briefing notice also offers little clues as to what could be announced, but the company usually doesn't disappoint when it makes a song-and-dance about something 'special.'

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Recent rumours have suggested that the company may be ready to introduce family plans, which will offer Premium subscriptions at a discounted rate if more than one household member signs up.

Busy bodies

The company has offered a suite of new apps for us to play with, welcomed The Red Hot Chili Peppers into the fold as well as introducing a Play Button widget, all in the last couple of weeks.
The Play Button released music from the shackles of its desktop and mobile app, allowing anyone to legally embed entire albums and playlists within a webpage or blog.
What could be next? We'll could follow that and still be considered 'special'? We'll find out on Wednesday.
UPDATE: TheVerge reports that the announcement relates to the launch of Brand Apps, which will allow official partners to set up playlists, which will earn the company a lot of money in ad revenue.
McDonalds, Reebok and Intel are already on board and will launch apps in the next few months according to the report.

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Apple denies conspiring to fix e-book prices

Apple responded to The Department of Justice's allegations that the company conspired with book publishers to set e-book prices lower in the iTunes iBookstore, claiming it's "simply not true."
The DOJ brought an antitrust suit against Apple and five major publishers, whom they say conspired before the iPad's launch in 2010 to set prices lower in Apple's digital storefront, thereby harming competition from other digital book sellers.
The accusations stem from a shift around that time to an "agency model," where the publishers set books, taking control away from retailers.

Apple's denial of the charges

Apple responded in a statement: "The DOJ's accusation of collusion against Apple is simply not true. The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon's monopolistic grip on the publishing industry."
"Since then customers have benefited from eBooks that are more interactive and engaging. Just as we've allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore."

The book publishers respond

Of the five publishers, Penguin was the last to respond. "We have had the opportunity to study the complaint released by the DOJ today and nothing in this lengthy document causes us to veer from that position," they told the Inquirer.
"The document contains a number of material misstatements and omissions, which we look forward to having the opportunity to correct in court."
As of Wednesday, publishers Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster agreed to settle with the DOJ. If the court agrees as well, the three will grant retailers the freedom to set their own prices.
In addition, they'll be prohibited from sharing "competitively sensitive" information with one another for five years and be required to implement antitrust compliance programs, said the DOJ.
Besides Penguin, one other publisher is also standing their ground. The CEO of Macmillan said Wednesday that he reached the decision to adopt the new pricing model independently of any outside influence.

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Demand for Kindle Fire and e-readers waning

Amazon may have started the (Kindle) Fire, but it seems to have a tough time stoking the flames as time goes with one analyst predicting demand for Kindle e-readers is on the decline.
In addition to waning interest in e-readers, overall demand for the the Kindle Fire tablet - which launched toward the end of last year - has dipped as well. However, it's projected that the touchscreen color model will still be more popular than Amazon's traditional e-ink models.

Kindling for the Fire

A recent intent-to-purchase survey from Pacific Crest analyst Chad Bartley gives a bit more insight into the fate of Amazon's Kindle line. According to the findings, fewer people were planning to buy a Kindle Fire -- and even fewer had interest in the company's black-and-white e-ink models.
What's more, a Q1 survey from the brokerage firm predicted 4.9 percent of respondents were planning to buy a Kindle Fire.
But during the second quarter of this year, that number mysteriously dropped to only 4.5 percent -10 percent month-over-month decline. These figures also line up with the analyst's supply checks, which declined even further to 15 percent in March.

Amazon at risk

While e-tailer Amazon may have less to fear from waning interest in the more popular Kindle Fire - which at $199 is a cheaper alternative to Apple's more expensive iPad - the company's more traditional e-readers Kindle and Kindle Touch are taking the brunt of the bad news.
This year's sales forecasts of 24 million units have been slashed to a mere 12.3 million.
"We attribute weakening demand to the large install base of Kindle e-readers -- over 28 million -- and maturing of the category after initial adoption by avid readers. We also believe ebooks are being read on a broader array of devices," Bartley explains.
That's likely to add some risk for Amazon, although the company's stock price was up $2.90 (1.54 percent) to $190.87 in the wake of Friday's bleak news.

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Demand for Kindle Fire, e-readers waning

Amazon may have started the (Kindle) Fire, but it seems to have a tough time stoking the flames as time goes on. In fact, one analyst predicts demand for Kindle e-readers is on the decline.
In addition to waning interest in e-readers, overall demand for the the Kindle Fire tablet - which launched toward the end of last year - has dipped as well. However, it's projected that the touchscreen color model will still be more popular than Amazon's traditional e-ink models.

Kindling for the Fire

A recent intent-to-purchase survey from Pacific Crest analyst Chad Bartley gives a bit more insight into the fate of Amazon's Kindle line. According to the findings, fewer people were planning to buy a Kindle Fire -- and even fewer had interest in the company's black-and-white e-ink models.
What's more, a Q1 survey from the brokerage firm predicted 4.9 percent of respondents were planning to buy a Kindle Fire.
But during the second quarter of this year, that number mysteriously dropped to only 4.5 percent -10 percent month-over-month decline. These figures also line up with the analyst's supply checks, which declined even further to 15 percent in March.

Amazon at risk

While e-tailer Amazon may have less to fear from waning interest in the more popular Kindle Fire - which at $199 is a cheaper alternative to Apple's more expensive iPad - the company's more traditional e-readers Kindle and Kindle Touch are taking the brunt of the bad news.
This year's sales forecasts of 24 million units have been slashed to a mere 12.3 million.
"We attribute weakening demand to the large install base of Kindle e-readers -- over 28 million -- and maturing of the category after initial adoption by avid readers. We also believe ebooks are being read on a broader array of devices," Bartley explains.
That's likely to add some risk for Amazon, although the company's stock price was up $2.90 (1.54 percent) to $190.87 in the wake of Friday's bleak news.

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Olympus OM-D labs data impresses

We have conducted our labs test for the Olympus OM-D, which show that it is capable of beating its biggest rivals including the Sony NEX-7 and Fujifilm X-Pro 1 in certain situations.
Our analysis has found that the OM-D's raw files (after conversion to TIFF) produce impressive results, comparing well against larger sensors.
The raw files (after conversion to TIFF) have the highest dynamic range results so far gained by any compact system camera.

Signal to noise ratio

We shoot a specially designed chart in controlled conditions, with the resulting images analysed using DXO Analyzer software to generate our data graphs.
At low sensitivity settings, the OM-D JPEGs produced comparably low signal to noise ratio results, which are beaten by those from the Fujifilm X Pro1, Panasonic GX1, Sony NEX-7 and Olympus PEN E-P3. However, at higher sensitivity settings (ISO 1600 and above), it produces better results than all but the X Pro1.
When we look at the raw files (after conversion to TIFF) signal to noise ratio results however, it is a different story, with the OM-D producing clearly better results, at all sensitivities, than every rival.
This tells us that a fair amount of processing is applied to the OM-D's JPEG images and gives an indication of what is possible when working with raw files.

Dynamic range

We also measure the dynamic range and have found that the OM-D's JPEG files have a consistently high dynamic range across the sensitivity range, even those taken at the high sensitivities indicating that gradations a captured in the shadows and highlights.

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Again the performance is better when looking at the raw file conversions, producing the highest result we've seen for any compact system camera. Our results show that when compared against the PEN E-P3, the E-M5 has at least 3 EV greater dynamic range across all sensitivities.
To see the full results of the labs data, as well as in-depth analysis and sample images, see our Olympus OM-D E-M5 review.

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Review: Olympus OM-D

Overview and features

Three years after making its first entrance into the compact system camera arena with the PEN E-P1, Olympus has gone back to its roots again to produce the OM-D, with its retro styling owed to its analogue predecessor.
Inside the camera are an all new 16 million pixel Live MOS Four Thirds sensor and TruePic VI image processor, which Olympus says is designed to give better low light performance and higher dynamic range than previous Micro Four Thirds cameras in its line-up.
As a step-up from the PEN range, this camera is designed to appeal to advanced enthusiasts, however Olympus is keen to point out that the camera isn't necessarily intended for use by pros, which it still believes will be drawn in by the company's range of DSLRs.

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That said, there are a large number of impressive specs crammed into the OM-D's diminutive body. A new image stabilisation system uses a 5 axis system which combats bodyshake for vertical, horizontal, pitch, rolling and yaw.

Along with its Micro Four Thirds cohort, Panasonic, Olympus is keen to emphasis the benefits of using the smaller sensor, including edge to edge sharpness.
That retro body has been designed with serious photographers in mind, with the magnesium alloy being dust and splash proof, featuring the same all weather proofing as its top of the range DSLR, the E-5.
This dust and splash proofing has also been carried over to a number of accessories compatible with the OM-D, including the detachable flash which is bundled with the camera, as well as the new 12-50mm zoom lenses and the new battery grip.
As the camera is pitched at higher end users, a new higher price tag has also been attached. At £1000 for the body only, the camera certainly isn't cheap, but it's likely to be pitched against other high-end cameras such as the Fujifilm X Pro1 and Sony NEX-7, which fall into similar, if not more expensive, price brackets.

Build quality and handling

If your only exposure to the OM-D so far has been through print advertising, you might be forgiven for thinking it's larger than it actually is.
It's actually not quite as wide as its smaller brother, the PEN E-P3, and about the same height. Despite its small size, it still feels like a solidly built camera, with extra confidence coming from the weatherproofing.
The angular body of the OMD also makes it easy to hold and quickly access the various buttons, which have been fairly sensibly laid out in the most part.

As this camera is intended for a more advanced audience, there are a greater number of control dials and direct access buttons, many of which are customisable depending on how you prefer to use the camera. It's a shame that there isn't a direct ISO button, however one of the Function buttons can be customised to control this.
On the top plate of the camera, two dials provide the mechanism for altering shutter speed/aperture and exposure compensation. These can be very easily accessed when using the LCD screen to compose an image, however anybody with larger hands may struggle to make alterations when using the electronic viewfinder.

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There are two Function buttons which can be customised to perform different operations - by default, the 'Fn2' button at the top of the camera gives you direct access to the Highlights and Shadows control.
The buttons themselves are one of the only disappointing features of the OM-D, feeling a little cheap for a camera of this price. We'd really like to see more solid, metal buttons being used on the body, with some of the smaller buttons feeling a little too delicate.
We also found that the buttons could sometimes be a little less than responsive, occasionally requiring a double press to get the desired result. Similarly, when using the scroll dials to make adjustments via the Quick Menu, these could be a little laggy.
For controls not accessed via a direct dial button, a Quick Menu is provided and can be accessed by hitting the OK button on the back of the camera. Here you'll find the most commonly changed parameters, such as White Balance, ISO, Autofocus, Aspect Ratio and so on. For the first time on an Olympus camera, these can be selected via the touchscreen, though you will still need to use the scroll dials at the top of the camera to make changes.

Touchscreen

The touchscreen, as with the E-P3, can also be used to alter the focus point, simply by tapping various locations around the frame. It can also be used to activate the shutter release, first focusing on the point you touch, before taking the image. We found the touchscreen to be very responsive and quick to use, certainly a step up from some of the compact cameras currently available.

With the ability to tilt the screen, Olympus has combined the best features of the PEN E-P3 (touchscreen) and E-PL3 (tilting screen) for the OM-D monitor. While it's a shame that the screen doesn't articulate fully, having the ability to tilt it is useful for certain awkward angles, and for shooting "from the hip". It doesn't help much when shooting in upright format though.
A tiny, almost hidden button near the viewfinder can be used to switch the LCD screen from Live View to Menu mode, while a sensor fitted within the eyecup has the ability to detect when the camera has been lifted to the eye - which is a useful addition that saves having to mess around with extra buttons.

Grip

An optional vertical battery grip can be purchased to attach to the bottom of the camera, providing considerably extra bulk, but fortunately not much extra weight. It comes with an extra set of scroll dials and buttons, as well as shutter release to make shooting in portrait orientation easier, and of course the extra battery effectively doubles the operation life of the camera.

Art filters can be scrolled through via the Quick Menu, which although quicker to use than on the E-P3, an extra button to quickly turn off (or on) an art filter without having to laboriously scroll through the options again would be a very welcome addition.

Kit lens

The new 12-50mm kit lens can be bought as standard with the OM-D, and is a great pairing with the camera. With three different shooting options allowing you to change between a standard zooming mechanism, a power zoom and a new "macro" mode, it is also weather and dustproof.
The only slight complaint we have about this lens is that switching to macro mode is a two handed operation, and it would be better if the button was on the other side of the lens.

Viewfinder

Electronic viewfinders tend to suffer from a bad reputation, but the device found on the OM-D is certainly one of the best we've used, if not quite matching up to the clarity of that found on the Sony NEX-7. Offering an impressive and highly useful 100% field of view, the viewfinder refreshes very quickly and feels very natural to use.

It is certainly useful to have the image you've just shot appear in the viewfinder, so you don't need to constantly remove the camera from the eye to check the shot. However, we found on a couple of occasions, the image appeared to be in focus through the viewfinder, but only on closer inspection either on the LCD or at a computer did we see that focus was soft.

Performance

Image quality from the Olympus OM-D is very good, producing a noticeable improvement over the 12 million pixel sensors found on its PEN series and making a fantastic argument for compact system cameras (CSCs) in general.
The level of detail captured is particularly impressive, especially when shooting in natural light and using low sensitivity settings, while JPEGs straight from the camera are very sharp indeed.
In most situations, the OM-D's automatic white balance setting does a good job of producing accurate colours, although it does struggle a little indoors under artificial or mixed light - tending to favour warm tones. Switching to incandescent white balance mode is easy though, and it performs well.

As we have found before with Olympus cameras, the multi-purpose 324-zone ESP metering on the E-M5 is pretty consistent, and the system accurately judges the exposure in most situations. There is also the option to switch to spot and centre-weighted metering, which we used in a couple of tricky lighting situations and found worked well.

Low-light

At the launch of the OM-D, Olympus was keen to emphasise improvements it had made to high sensitivity (ISO) performance, which again is something that is noticeably better than on its PEN series of cameras.
We've found that although image quality does start to drop off from about ISO 1600, some of the images captured all the way up to ISO 10,000 are perfectly usable, especially when publishing online or printing at relatively small sizes.
For most every day situations, the noise control means that images taken at up to ISO 1600 are more than acceptable.

Another key new feature is the reworked image stabilisation system. This is designed to help keep the image sharp across the frame, and we've found that it consistently performs well, although it struggled when shooting a low-light macro image at high ISO.
There seems to be an on-going argument between Panasonic and Olympus about which exactly has the fastest autofocus, but at the time of the OM-D launch, Olympus claimed that this camera, with its FAST (Frequency Acceleration Sensor Technology) was the fastest in the world.

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We were impressed by the speed of the autofocus, but can't honestly say that we noticed a marked improvement from the PEN E-P3 (which was also claimed to be the fastest at its launch). However, given that we are talking about microseconds of difference, it's probably not worth quibbling about, needless to say it is very fast, locking on to the target nigh-on instantly in almost every situation.
Colours are generally represented well, producing bright images which don't suffer from being overly vibrant, however we did on occasion find some benefit to boosting the saturation in post processing.

Art filters

Olympus is well known for its wide array of art filters, and has added some new functionality to the OM-D. One completely new filter - Key Line - is joined by two new variations to those brought over from the PEN E-P3, a black and white "Dramatic Tone" mode and a another version of Cross Process.
As with the PEN series, art filters can be deployed when shooting in P, A, S, M modes, allowing creative control over parameters such as aperture to be retained. Not only this, but images can be captured in both raw and JPEG, allowing the filter to be removed (or even swapped for another one) in the post-capture editing stage. This offers a clear advantage over its biggest competitor, Panasonic, as cameras in the G series are not capable of this.
In terms of how the art filters perform, some will not be to everyone's tastes, for example, we can't see the new Key Line feature, which is supposed to replicate the look and feel of Manga-style Japanese cartoons being especially popular outside of Asian countries.
However, the new variations on Cross Process and Dramatic Tone are a welcome addition, especially the latter which produces an impressive HDR style monochrome image.

Live Time

Live Time is a new feature for the E-M5, which helps with the composition of long exposures. In Live Time mode (which can be accessed by scrolling to the end of the shutter speeds) the developing long exposure is is displayed on screen as soon as the shutter is released so it's possible to stop it when you believe the exposure is correct.
This is a very exciting piece of technology, and it will surely be appreciated by landscape and low-light photographers who will be able to gauge how successful an image is at the capture stage. However, for such a revolutionary function, we're surprised this is not more prominent being relatively hidden away in the shutter speeds. If this was a menu function, we think it would be found and used by more people.

Processing speed and battery life

Although overall the camera's processing is very fast, it's worth bearing in mind that it can be a little tardy at times, such as when shooting with Art Filter bracketing, using the Live Time mode and shooting several continuous sequences.

The Olympus OM-D E-M5 promises 330 shots from its battery, which we found to be about accurate, and it's worth remembering that this can be boosted by the addition of the battery grip. After a day of heavy shooting with the camera, it was starting to wane, but for the average user we can't see battery life being too much of an issue.
A number of basic edits can also be made in-camera with the OM-D. This is a feature which is growing in prevalence on the digital camera market. On this model these include processing raw files to JPEG, converting to sepia and adjusting the saturation.
Olympus Viewer 2 software is supplied in the box and this can be used to make edits and convert raw files. Although it doesn't offer the same level of fine tuning of some aspects as rivals from Canon (Digital Photo Professional) and Nikon (View NX2), it is more than adequate, providing a good level of control.
It also offers advantages over processing raw files in Photoshop (or similar). For instance, if you decide to shoot at 3:2, 1:1 or 16:9 ratios, the camera will still capture a 4:3 ratio frame, meaning you can alter the composition later if necessary. You can also remove and swap art filters using this software.

Resolution

Overall picture

As part of our image quality testing for the Olympus OM-D E-M5 , we've shot our resolution chart with a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM lens mounted. If you view our crops of the resolution chart's central section at 100% (or Actual Pixels) you will see that, for example, at ISO 200 the Olympus OM-D E-M5 is capable of resolving up to around 24 (line widths per picture height x100) in its highest quality JPEG files.
For a full explanation of what our resolution charts mean, and how to read them please click here to read the full article.
Examining images of the chart taken at each sensitivity setting reveals the following resolution scores in line widths per picture height x100:

JPEG files

ISO 200, score: 24 (see full image)

ISO 400, score: 24 (see full image)

ISO 800, score: 24 (see full image)

ISO 1600, score: 22 (see full image)

ISO 3200, score: 20 (see full image)

ISO 6400, score: 16 (see full image)

ISO 12800, score: 12 (see full image)

ISO 25600 , score: 10 (see full image)

Raw Images

ISO 200 , score: 26 (see full image)

ISO 400 , score: 24 (see full image)

ISO 800 , score: 24 (see full image)

ISO 1600 , score: 22 (see full image)

ISO 3200 , score: 22 (see full image)

ISO 6400 , score: 16 (see full image)

ISO 12800 , score: 14 (see full image)

ISO 25600 , score: 10 (see full image)

Noise and dynamic range

We shoot a specially designed chart in carefully controlled conditions and the resulting images are analysed using DXO Analyzer software to generate the data to produce the graphs below.
A high signal to noise ratio (SNR) indicates a cleaner and better quality image.For more more details on how to interpret our test data, check out our full explanation of our noise and dynamic range tests.
Our results from the lab have been compared against the Fujifilm X Pro 1, Sony NEX-7, Panasonic GX1 and Olympus E-P3
Our analysis shows that the Olympus OM-D's raw files (after conversion to TIFF) produce impressive results that beat all the comparison cameras and compare well against models with larger APS-C and full frame sensors. When it comes to dynamic range, the raw file (after conversion to TIFF) results show it produces the highest result so far gained by any compact system camera.

JPEG signal to noise ratio

JPEG images from the Olympus OM-D E-M5 have a lower signal to noise ratio than the Fujifilm X Pro 1, Panasonic GX1, Sony NEX-7 and Olympus E-P3 up to a sensitivity of ISO ISO 1600. However above this sensitivity value the OM-D produces better results than all but the Fujifilm X Pro 1.

TIFF signal to noise ratio

TIFF images (after conversion from raw) from the OMD have a better signal to noise ratio than those from the Fujifilm X Pro 1, Panasonic GX1, Sony NEX-7 and Olympus E-P3, showing that the camera copes well with noise.

Dynamic range

This chart indicates that the Olympus OM-D's JPEGs have a consistently high dynamic range across the sensitivity range, showing that tonal gradations are captured well in the highlights and shadows even at the top end of the sensitivity range.

TIFF images (after conversion from raw) have a high dynamic range across the sensitivity range, with the OM-D achieving the highest result we've seen for any compact system camera. The chart shows that compared against the E-P3 the E-M5 is achieving at least 3EV greater dynamic range across all sensitivities.

Sample images

In bright, natural light, the OM-D is capable of producing shots which more than compete with its DLSR rivals.

A wide variety of Micro Four Thirds lenses are now available, including Sigma third party lenses, which we used to shoot this image (30mm f/2.8). It is when using the different lenses that are available for the system that the true versatility of the camera becomes apparent.

The macro mode on the supplied 12-50mm kit lens is an impressive addition, allowing fine detail to be captured and a very shallow depth of field effect to be achieved.

A number of different art filters are available, including the Pinhole effect, which can be customised to emphasise one of three different colours - here yellow tones have been chosen.

Shot at f/9 to get a feel for the level of detail that can be captured, the OM-D has performed reasonably well, although the reds do appear slightly over vibrant, and there is some examples of over sharpening along the high contrast edges.

Shot with the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens. Here we increased the exposure compensation by +1EV to bring out the colours in the sky and flowers.

Here's another shot taken with an art filter - this time the Gentle Sepia. Art filters can be activated when using PASM modes, giving the user creative control over parameters such as aperture. Shooting in raw format means that the filter can be removed (or swapped) in post-production.

We shot this image with the 12-50mm lens with macro mode engaged - the tip of the lens was just a couple of centimetres away from the bud of the flower, showing how impressively close the lens is able to focus to produce great detail.

Shot into the sun, flare and ghosting is apparent on this image, which also suffers from a small degree of chromatic aberration. Overall though, this is kept to a minimum.

You can shoot in different ratios, not just the native 4:3 which is native to the camera. This includes 3:2, which is likely to be popular with those used to shooting with DSLRs, and 1:1, which produces a square crop as seen above.

Colours are generally captured well, with the whites here appearing particularly bright without losing highlight detail.

The OM-D has been able to capture an impressive amount of detail, while also producing great out of focus background effects when coupled with the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens.

In this low and mixed lighting, the OM-D has captured the mood well, and the Auto White Balance has done a pretty good job. Again, this shot shows how the background can be defocused for pleasing effects.

Colours have been captured well, being bright without being overly vibrant.

The dramatic tone black and white filter is a new filter for the OM-D, which creates a HDR style image. You can choose from either b&w or the original colour filter.

The OM-D boasts ISO sensitivity shooting at up to 25, 600. Here, in this image shot at ISO 1600, noise has been relatively well controlled, while the highlights have been mostly kept intact.

Sensitivity

A single scene photographed at every sensitivity setting. The first image shows the full scene, and the ones below show cropped versions at Actual Pixels, or 100%. Follow the links to download the full images.


ISO 200
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ISO 400
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ISO 800
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ISO 1600
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ISO 3200
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ISO 6400
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ISO 12800
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ISO 25600
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Verdict

Our initial impressions of this camera were very promising, and after having spent a lot more time with it now, we're happy to report that its charms still manage to hold our attention for the most part, especially now we have had a chance to fully examine image quality.
While its retro looks may not appeal to everyone, for original OM users, it will certainly be a treat. Weatherproofing and ruggedness of the camera mean it feels as if it is built to last after taking some serious abuse, so we can also see street photographers falling in love with this camera.

Introducing an in-built EVF to this camera elevates it status above the PEN, taking it (despite Olympus's own protestations) almost into semi-pro territory.
The wide range of compatible Micro Four Thirds lenses now available on the market - not forgetting those made by Panasonic and third party manufacturers such as Sigma, make purchasing a Micro Four Thirds camera a very interesting proposition. It's when using different optics that the versatility of the OM-D is truly revealed.
It is of course an expensive proposition at £1, 149 for the single lens kit or £999 body-only, but when you consider all of the improvements that have been made, we think the extra expense when compared with an E-P3 is just about worth it.
It's also worth pointing out that one of its biggest rivals, the Fuji X Pro1, is currently retailing for around £1,500 body only, making the E-M5 suddenly seem more attractive.

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However, having said all of that, we can't help but feel that the E-M5 is a little bit 'unfinished'. As this is the first camera in the new OM-D line-up, it seems as if there is some work to do to make this camera live up to its full potential. For example, the plastic buttons feel like an afterthought.
Olympus has been guilty of this before, with the original PEN (E-P1) being superseded by the E-P2 only a few months after, packed with better features. So, for that reason, we'll be very excited to see how Olympus develops this line going forward, and will be watching with anticipation.

We liked

The excellent viewfinder shows a marked improvements on those we've used before, while new art filters and variations on existing ones show how creative you can be with this camera. Image quality, in certain situations, is excellent and comparable to DSLR quality, while being confined within a much more portable device.

We disliked

There are still a few little bugbears that could do with being ironed out. For such an expensive camera, the buttons could have been metal to add a better finish, while some of them were also a little slow and unresponsive.

Verdict

Olympus has delivered a fantastic camera, which, along with its premium CSC cohorts, has the potential to be a game-changer, stealing focus from certain areas of the DSLR market. There's a lot to love about the OM-D, especially the great image quality and its retro appeal - it will be interesting to see how sales perform.

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Nokia: 'Multi-core phones are just a waste of battery'

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has claimed that dual-core and quad-core phones are not helping consumers.

In Depth

Nokia Lumia 900 review

Speaking in an interview with a Chinese newspaper, Elop highlighted that many multi-core handsets suffer from battery issues.
Elop said: "The so-called dual-core, quad-core mobile phones can only waste batteries, but not be useful for consumers all the time."

Battery waste

Nokia are yet to release a dual or quad core phone, and Elop is quick to point out that the Nokia Lumia 900 is beating all iPhone and Android handsets which cross its path in its "Smoked by Windows Phone" marketing campaign.
It's worth noting that the Windows Phone 7 operating system does not support mulit-core processors, something Windows Phone 8 Apollo is expected to address and which may be the real reason Nokia has stayed on the single-core path.
Nokia may have competition straight out of the Windows Phone 8 starting blocks though, as Samsung's Taiwanese arm has claimed the company will be launching a handset running the new operating system when it launches in October.

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Exclusive: 500px: not in 'direct competition' with Flickr and Facebook

The photography social networking site, 500px, has said that it doesn't believe that it is in direct competition with Flickr or larger, more general social networking sites such as Facebook.
Speaking to TechRadar, Oleg Gutsol, CEO of 500px said, "There is a clear distinction between what we do and what Facebook does. We are building a community of people interested in photography, interested in learning and getting better at it, whereas Facebook, for example, focuses on connecting people."
"I think Facebook has a different purpose. I welcome the changes they recently made to their product, I think the photos really look better when they are presented bigger."

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500px is often seen as the "photographer's social network", due to the high prevalence of enthusiast and professionals using the service.

Established

Flickr, the world's biggest photo-sharing site, could be easily compared against 500px, but Gutsol doesn't see it that way. "I don't think we are in direct competition with it. Yes, Flickr is a large and a well established photo community, but our focus and our goals are not identical to theirs."
Recently, 500px went through a redesign ahead of Flickr's own revamp. Increasingly photo-only social networking sites are being usurped by the likes of Facebook and Twitter, with people looking to use one site for multiple purposes.
Facebook itself has redesigned the way it displays photos several times, with the most recent upgrade allowing images to be uploading in high resolution and displayed full screen.

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News In Brief: One More Thing: Boobs - the ultimate downfall for hackers and China

It's Friday – but you don't need us or indeed Rebecca Black to tell you that. All you have to do is look around you and see the smile on everyone's faces and that glassy 'the weekend is here' look in their eyes.
But before you log off this wonderful thing called the web, we have a few tech missives for you. Two of which are about bosoms and, well, unfortunately it's all downhill for there on in…
Tit-anic – There was a huge rumour going round the internet that China decided that the sight of Kate Winslet's breasts in Titanic 3D were so offensive that they had gone and digitally altered the movie so they would no longer, well, pop out. It turns out the whole thing was a hoax though. No not the sinking of the Titanic but the bit about Winslet's boobs – to be fair China has history of digitally altering the world around them, so no wonder everyone thought it was real. [The Guardian]
Hacker makes a boob – A hacker in Australia, thought to be part of the Anonymous collective, has been arrested after a picture of his supposed girlfriend's cleavage was found on the web alongside his hacking credentials. Police apparently tracked him by checking the coordinates of the saucy image. Now that's what we call trying to get abreast of the hacking situation in Oz. Ahem. [IBTimes]
Rocket ruckus – North Korea's highly controversial rocket launch ended in embarrassment this week, after the proposed spectacle to show the West who is boss ended with the rocket malfunctioning. *Enter a joke about N Korea not being able to get it up here*. [BBC]
Wright stuff – Director Edgar Wright has shown the world he is a genius once again with the launch of his online comic Brandon Generator. The production is in conjunction with Internet Explorer and stars Julian Barratt as narrator and music by David Holmes. The whole thing has been made to show off the possibilities of HTML5 – and you can check it out by going to www.brandongenerator.com. Great stuff.

Mars Attacks – When David Bowie sang about 'Life On Mars' in 1971, many thought we would never see the existence of Martians in our lifetime. Turns out though, the Viking probe which touched down on the Red Planet in 1976 did actually find microbes but it's only taken till now for scientists to discover this. Let the conspiracy theories begin. [Register]
Dragster's suck – What does a designer from Dyson do in his spare time? Well the answer is obvious: he builds a mini dragster out of vacuum parts. The result is an eye opener. [Engadget]
YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO0WJnyhEqw
Eye spy – The Pentagon has decided that real eyes are a thing of the past and has put in an order for contact lenses with a heads up display built in them. These Terminator style HUDs will be created by Innovega and are to be funded by the US government. So, the US gets awesome contacts and all we have are MPs who make a spectacle of themselves. Sigh. [BBC Click]
Burn baby burn – Apple has paid out a few thousand Yen to a couple in Japan whose iPod nano overheated to such an extent the woman received burns. In all they get around £4,000 for the battery mishap. [Digital Trends]
Google can see clearly now – Google is so invested in Google Glass that it is set to offer prescription versions of the technology to people who actually need glasses to see – unlike those crazy hipsters you see in east London. "We ideally want Project Glass to work for everyone, and we're experimenting with designs that are meant to be extendable to different types of frames," said Google.
So, expect NHS specs that tell you where to go soon. [Electronista]
Like the internet, only smaller – The quantum internet was born recently, with Nature magazine reckoning this moment will have just as much importance as when the real internet began. Consisting of two atoms, some optical fibre and mirrors, the quantum internet will eventually hold infinite amounts of data and will be free from hackers. It's small steps at the moment but this could well be the future of how information will be stored. Mind-blowing stuff. [Discovery]
Payne relief – Want to see how much time and effort is going into making the new Max Payne game? Well, check out our video which shows the designers doing their thing.
FutTv : sv2J9v4745cwU

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New Samsung Galaxy S3 photo leak is highly dubious

We're still waiting for the Samsung Galaxy S3 to grace us with our presence, but here's another photo to whet your appetite for the time being.

Forward thinking...Samsung Galaxy S3 release date, news and rumours

Courtesy of Polish site OPDA the latest Galaxy S3 image like does raise suspicions, but at the same time the handset does sport some significant features.
We recently reported that Samsung officials had spent some considerable time deciding whether the Galaxy S3 should have a physical button, with them finally deciding it should - the handset in the image follows this decision.
There's also the suggestion that the Galaxy S3 will display apps in a five column layout and we're pretty sure it will run Ice Cream Sandwich – both of which are confirmed in the photo.

Hold your horses

Even though there are some consistencies between the rumours and the photo, we feel confident when we say this photo is a fake. Why? Well let us divulge.
As you may have noticed the screen doesn't line up with the handset. Unless Samsung's engineers were drunk while designing the Galaxy S3, it's highly unlikely that this would be the design.
The phone itself looks suspiciously like the original Samsung Galaxy S, with the speaker above and button below the screen elongated.
After the fuss Apple kicked up about the Galaxy S looking just like the iPhone 3GS we don't think Samsung will play that game again.
It's also strange that the apps have been pixelated, suggesting they may have been taken from a screenshot of another device (Samsung Galaxy Note anyone?) – which would have made this image an even more obvious fake.
There's still no official confirmation on the Samsung Galaxy S3 release date or specifications, but the hope is that we will see in at the end of May.

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Beginners guide to marketing to a mobile audience

Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is set to eclipse even the Internet over the next 12 months. A recent survey suggested that the UK now has over 20 million m-commerce users with 47 per cent predicted to spend up to £10 on m-commerce purchases, while more than one in three are expected to spend up to £100 with 7 per cent spending up to £1,000 and 11 per cent will go above £1,000.

Mobile law

Using smart phones and other mobile handsets for marketing requires a different set of skills. The marketing your business does on its website, social media and perhaps via email can all be complemented via a mobile phone campaign.
Before you move forward with your plans you should be sure you understand the regulations that relate to marketing via the mobile phone channel. The key piece of legislation to be aware of is the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. Your business must ensure it fully compiles with this regulation. Your responsibilities include:

• Getting permission to use SMS, email or other communications if your business does not already have a relationship with the person you want to contact
• The permission must be active in that the person must for instance tick a box on your website to opt-in to the mobile marketing you want to send them
• A valid reply address must always be given on any mobile marketing materials
• It must be easy for recipients of your businesses messages to unsubscribe or opt-out at any time

Your business will probably already have registered with the Information Commissioner's Office and provided information as required by the Data Protection Act. If not, if you will be collecting, storing and using information about your mobile customers, you will have to register to comply with the Data Protection Act.

Small screen marketing

Optimisation of your business' mobile marketing message is critical to ensure that they have the maximum impact. Also, your business should appreciate that marketing via SMS and email is rapidly evolving.
Your business should be aware that most of your customers would use your SMS or email message as a call to action, but complete their transaction on a desktop computer, as this is perceived as more secure.
Few consumers are comfortable putting credit card numbers into their mobile phones to make a purchase. Instead, their phone becomes a mobile link to their existing online accounts with the retailers they regularly buy from.
Your mobile marketing should appreciate that at the moment, consumers use their handsets to receive information that they later act upon using more traditional platforms most notably their home PC.

How to optimise an email message

To ensure the email messages your business sends have the maximum chance of reaching their audience; you should optimise them by following some simple rules:

• Create separate email messages for all the major phone platforms including iOS, Android and Blackberry to ensure they appear correctly
• Avoid the use of images where possible, as in most cases, these will not be automatically displayed
• Use fonts no smaller than 14 pixels as the iPhone automatically displays text at 13 pixels regardless of the size sent to the handset
• Create separate emails for your mobile phone and desktop PC campaigns. If you send the email designed for the desktop PC to a mobile phone it won't display properly frustrating your potential customers
• Make your emails single column and don't load the design with buttons and other graphics. Touch screens need large easy to reach buttons

Each email should have one call to action that is easy for the reader to understand and interact with. Most mobile activity is immediate, so make your message timely and your mobile campaign engaging.

Websites for mobile phones

It can be tempting to simply use your existing website for your mobile marketing, but this should be avoided. You should create a separate site for mobile marketing. Due to the smaller screen size bear these points in mind:

• Reduce the amount of information on each page to the minimum you need to communicate your marketing messages
• A single column layout works best on mobile phones
• Use clear navigation. If you use buttons place these on the top and bottom of each page
• Minimise the amount of text your customers have to enter to perform a task or place an order
• The screen resolution of mobile phones can range from 128 x 160 pixels to 480 x 800 on smart phones. Think about the audience for your mobile site. Will their phone be able to show your website at its best?
• Most phones now have a touch screen so design your site to take advantage of this, and where you can, use the in-built functions of the phone for added user interaction

Remember that mobile phone marketing is about immediate action. Customers want to see a message and act on it straight away. Make this easy for them with clear and concise text and the use of bold graphics. And think carefully about who your audience is, when they would be most open to your businesses messages and how your mobile campaign complements your company's other marketing activity.

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Buying Guide: 6 of the best video converters for Mac

6 of the best video converters for Mac

Digital video file conversion is a crucial component of many a filmmaker's workflow these days.
Since footage can be taken from so many different cameras, using specific formats, they often have to be altered into something that their editing package will accept.
But they're not the only ones who need to transform files to make their content compatible with a different system than the one they were originally meant for.
Take Flash video for instance: it's well known that this format won't work on an iOS device because it's deemed to be too much of a drain on battery life. Most websites now offer alternatives, so it's not a major problem. But what do you do if someone sends you a Flash video that you'd like to enjoy on your iPad, for instance?
This is where video converters come in. Transforming a video file is a complex process, which often leads to a degradation of the image - the trick is to limit this loss of quality by as much as possible.
Technology's moved on in leaps and bounds since the early days and this is epitomised by the proliferation of such conversion programs online. Do a quick search for them on the Mac App Store and you'll be faced with too many to make a reliable decision on, which is why we've decided to test six of the most high-profile apps (be they available on the Mac App Store or elsewhere) and see which one is the best when it comes to ease of use, available options, speed of encoding and output quality.

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Those six apps are Apple's own Compressor, the venerable Squared5's MPEG Streamclip, HandBrake, Systemic's Smart Converter, Elgato's Turbo.264 HD and Wondershare's Video Converter.

Test one: Ease of use

Having many options is not always a good thing

The programs we've tested that are available through the Mac App Store have the easiest interfaces. Surely a testament to Apple's design leadership?
Although, interestingly enough, Apple's own Compressor is actually the most complex one - but that's because it also offers the most options.
The two packages available as web downloads - MPEG Streamclip and HandBrake - are also feature-rich and, as a consequence, end up looking a little complicated to the uninitiated. But they both try hard to simplify the available options by offering presets (for HandBrake) and extensive menus (for MPEG Streamclip). Try as they might, they can't beat the simplicity of just dragging a file and clicking on 'Start'.
There's actually more than one app designed with simplicity as its motto: Turbo.264 HD and Smart Converter take the crown here for a clean interface and easy options to choose from to select the right file format for your needs.

Test two: Available options

How easy is it for the user to tweak their app?

Not surprisingly, the simplest programs are the ones who offer the fewest options. Take Smart- Converter for instance: aside from the row of icons at the bottom, you have no customisation features available to you.
Video Converter looks simple, but you can modify each preset. You can also crop your footage, trim it and apply simple effects to your clip - although this may be that program's least-used feature as you'd most likely be applying effects with your video-editing package.

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Turbo.264 HD's option may appear limited, but select the Edit command and you'll be graced with numerous options, even embedding subtitles to your converted file (as long as they were present in the original).
HandBrake is incredibly flexible: you have access to either basic parameters to improve the quality or speed up the conversion, preserve chapter markers or subtitles, but if this isn't enough, there's also an Advanced tab.

Test three: Encoding speed

If you've got a lot of work on, speed is of the essence

For our tests, we've used a 34-minute Flash video and transformed it into a file that can be played back on an iPad. We've chosen the standard settings when available, then used each converter in turn on the same hardware (a 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 4GB or RAM) to see which one came out on top.
Some apps have a system so when a file is finished, it'll start another. Turbo.264 HD and Video Converter allow you to do this prior to the start of a conversion, but HandBrake and Compressor let you add, reorder and remove files as they're encoding.
The fastest was Smart Converter at just over a minute, but that's because it was clever enough to recognise that the embedded content within the Flash file was already formatted as H.264, which is compatible with the iPad, so it simply updated the audio and it was good to go. None of the others figured this out.

Test four: Output quality

After the conversions, how good did the results look?

Speed may be an important factor when judging a video converter, but if the resulting file looks awful, then you've just wasted your time and your Mac's processing power.
In order to test this fairly, we've had SmartConverter process a different type of file since it cleverly avoided altering the video in the previous test. In this test, we did our best to compare the original with its copy and see if we could discern any imperfection.
The conversions made with MPEG Streamclip and Video Converter were quite blocky when having to render large sections of the same or similar colour. Smart Converter's results were disappointingly poor, which means that app may be best suited to turn H.264-based Flash videos into proper H.264 ones.
HandBrake's encoding was outstanding and even bested others whose converted files were twice as large, which means that the program's compression algorithms are truly excellent.

The winner: HandBrake is king

Despite its odd choice of name and the mysteries around the pineapple and cocktail as its choice of icon, HandBrake is the best video converter on the market. It's one of the fastest available, and its quality, even when using presets, is remarkable.
But what makes this program stand out from the crowd is the sheer number of options at your disposal, which helps you create even smaller-sized files while preserving the quality as much as possible (even at half the standard quality, the results were still impressive).
It has a powerful queuing system so you can set up a series of files and let HandBrake work through the night for you, it can convert non-copy protected DVDs, and, best of all, it's free.

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Intel reveals its Windows 8 tablets will be feature packed

Intel has revealed details on its upcoming Windows 8 tablets, which will target several areas of the market.

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Unveiled at a conference in Beijing, Intel say its Windows 8 tablets will pack a dual-core Atom Z2760 "Clover Trail" chip, which features a "burst-mode", providing an extra boost of power when required.
The Clover Trail processor also boasts hyperthreading technology, allowing it to act like a quad-core chip as certain times.

Intel looking to take on Apple, Samsung and Asus

Intel is planning on releasing a 10-inch Windows 8 tablet, which we expect to rival the new iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, but it will also launch an 11-inch hybrid sporting a physical keyboard to challenge the likes of the Asus Transformer Prime.
The famous chip maker is claiming its Windows 8 tablets will deliver over nine hours of battery, 4G connectivity, NFC technology, weigh less than 680g (1.5 pounds) and sport a slender, sub-9mm body.
We could well see these tablets arrive before the end of the year, if Microsoft makes Windows 8 commercially available in the second half of 2012 - and if these specs are anything to go by, we're looking forward to getting our hands on them.

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Xbox 720 to be a 16-core powerhouse?

In what could well be the 720th rumour about the Xbox 720, it is thought the upcoming next-gen games console is set to utilise a 16-core CPU.
This is according to Xbox World, which has it on good authority that the Durango dev kits sent out last month – Durango being the Xbox 720's potential codename – are nowhere near as powerful as the finished product.
The final console is said to contain a 16-core IBM Power PC CPU with a graphics processor on par with AMD's Radeon HD 7000-series graphics cards.
It has been previously reported that AMD's kit will be inside both the Xbox 720 and the PS4.

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Xbox 720 release date, news and rumours

Power hungry

Now, if this is indeed the case – there is some serious power packed into the next-gen Xbox. Possibly too much power just to play games.
Xbox World reckons that the extra power boost could be to do with Kinect 2 – which apparently will suck the life out of four of the cores, due to the pinpoint accuracy that the new motion controller will bring.
Interestingly, although it has been strenuously denied that a next-gen console will be announced by either Sony or Microsoft at this year's E3, XBW believes that many developers are working towards E3, which takes place in June, as a deadline for game demos.

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How to set up a business on eBay

What began as little more than an online second hand good store has grown to become a force within the global business community with small and large businesses alike now having a presence on eBay.
Often overlooked is that eBay isn't just about auctions. The ability to place fixed priced items on the site has been highly attractive for business owners for several years. Why open a store on eBay?

• 17 million unique visitors come to eBay each month to buy a vast range of goods
• Stores on eBay can be set-up in a matter of hours
• Start up costs are low and eBay won't charge you until your first month of trading is complete
• Payments are received quickly and securely via PayPal so there's no need to apply to Visa etc to take credit cards
• The sales and performance of your store can be easily tracked
• Promotions can be set up and used easily from your eBay account

"There are 10,000 businesses in the UK selling on eBay," explains an eBay spokesperson. "They are attracted to it because eBay is a ready-made e-commerce solution – everything is taken care of, all you need is a computer and a digital camera."

Setting up

To open a new store on eBay you must have one of the following:

• A minimum feedback score of 10 on your personal eBay account to open a basic store and also be PayPal verified
• Registered as a business seller to open a Featured Store and also have a Detailed Seller Rating of at least 4.4 or above in each of the four areas
• If you want to open an Anchor Shop your Detailed Seller Rating score must be 4.6 or better

You also have to consider the costs associated with the type of store you want to open. Currently costs are:

• Basic Shop - £14.99 each month
• Featured Shop - £49.99 each month
• Anchored Shop - £349.99 each month

If you're not sure what type of store would suit your business best, eBay has a handy feature comparison chart you can use to help you decide. Also, new businesses that set up on eBay may have listing and selling allowances applied to their store. Ensure you fully understand the possible implication these could have on your new store before you move forward and create your shop.
Also note that eBay doesn't allow certain items to be sold on their site. These include alcohol, firearms and drugs. A full list is available here and the other rules that could apply to your new store can be viewed here.
You also need to carefully consider the on-going running costs in addition to the basic shop cost that are associated with your new store. You have to pay your monthly subscription, but you also need to take into account:

• The listing fees you will pay on each item
• The final value fee that will be applied when a customer buys an item from your store
• The fees that PayPal will charge to process your customer's transaction

What to charge?

For new business on eBay deciding on a pricing strategy can be highly complex. However, the price you charge should take into consideration all the usual fixed and variable costs you would associate with any store.
What you do need to think about is how the price you set impacts on the fees you pay. Don't forget, listing items on your store with a fixed price will attract a fixed listing fee, but also a final value fee that is a percentage of the price you charged with the percentage depending on the category your store's goods are in.
For instance, if you have a Basic Store, your listing fee is £0.10. The final value fee for goods such as computers and video games is 3 per cent. Media such as books and DVDs is 9 per cent, with clothing and accessories costing 12 per cent. These costs should be carefully considered when you are setting the prices for your new eBay store to ensure you get the return you need to ensure a good level of profit.

Design and layout

It is possible to make your eBay store as simple or complex as you want. Basic templates are available that allow you to choose a design that can then be customised. You can change the colour of your store and add logos and other design elements.
One of the most important aspects of any eBay store is the quality of the images. People that buy on eBay want to see what they are purchasing. The better your images the more sales you will make – it's as simple as that.
Try and make your images as appealing and attractive as possible, and don't forget to optimise them for the web to ensure they download quickly. Customers want pages that load fast, and won't wait for large images to appear. You can even buy third party store templates to use for your new eBay business. Leading services include: Auctiva and Vendio.
Before you decide how your store will look it's a good idea to take some time and research how other business on eBay that are selling similar items have organised and designed their stores. You need to think about how your store can be designed to standout from the crowd. There are many third-party additions you can make to your store, such as image and photo viewers, that give you more creativity over how your store behaves. By using the right tools you can build a highly attractive eBay store that visitors' will return to again and again.

Ads and promotions

Once your store is live on eBay you can start to promote it. You can use a couple of tools that eBay offers to help you shout about your new business. The first is called the Markdown Manager that allows you to set a discount of between five and 75 per cent that will automatically appear on all items you attach the discount to.
The second service that eBay offers is their email newsletter. Your store can have an option to 'sign up for store newsletter'. The tool allows you to create newsletters that can be used to promote your store to everyone that has expressed an interest in hearing more about your store and business.
Outside of the tools that eBay offers, you can use a wide range of promotional activity to drive customers to your eBay store. If you already have a website, linking to your eBay store for exclusive discounts can be highly effective.
You could also use ad services such as Google's Adwords, and you should also make your eBay store search engine friendly. This simply means making sure your store loads quickly into your visitor's browser and that you have used the appropriate keywords in the text your pages contain so that anyone using Google or any other search engine will see your store.

Your checklist

Follow this checklist to ensure you set up your eBay store properly and give it the best chance of success.

1. Do your research to see how other businesses in your sector are using eBay. Ask yourself what you can do better?
2. Ensure the design of your store is engaging and professional. Make sure your text is search engine friendly and that each image is attractive and optimised for the web
3. Look closely at all the costs associated with your business before deciding on the prices you will charge
4. A good reputation is vital on eBay – some people won't buy from stores with a low positive comments percentage. Deal with problems quickly and efficiently to protect your business' reputation
5. Track every aspect of your store to see what is working and what needs to be changed. Stores that are updated regularly make more sales
6. Use the social media networks including Facebook and Twitter to make personal connections with your existing and potential customers

Opening a store on eBay is now quick and easy. With a raft of promotional opportunities and a ready and waiting audience for your business' goods, what are you waiting for?

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Samsung ChatOn hits BlackBerry - takes BBM HeadOn

Samsung is looking to become the top dog in the world of multi-platform messaging as it rolls out its ChatOn service to BlackBerry devices.

Tutorial
The beginner's guide to iMessage in iOS 5

Launched back in August 2011, ChatOn is pre-loaded onto Samsung's own Android and Bada devices, and the ChatOn app is available to download from Google Play and the Apple App Store.
A quick look at the ChatOn app page in Google Play tells us it's been downloaded over 500,000 times – still some way to go then to match the daddy for the multi-platform chat Whatsapp then, which has clocked over 10 million Android downloads alone.

Letting you ChatOn and on and on

However with Samsung checking off a fourth operating system for ChatOn, there's just Windows Phone left for the full set and the realisation of its multi-platform claim.
In an already crowded market including big hitters WhatsApp, iMessage and BBM, Samsung certainly has its work cut out if it wants ChatOn to become the big success it's hoping it will.
YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMPEm147BPo

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Week in Tech: Android soars while Nokia struggles

This week, one was our magic number - because that's the name HTC has given to its latest, greatest Android smartphones, the HTC One X and the HTC One S. The One X is the flagship, and it's designed for that small but lucrative niche of people with absolutely enormous hands who need quad-core power to make phone calls.
We kid, but only a little bit: the One X really is enormous, and as Gareth Beavis reports it's perfect in almost every way - apart from the battery. Big screens and quad-core processors eat power, and our review unit wanted lots of it. Nevertheless, "beyond that the HTC One X is a beautiful piece of kit. It's stylishly designed, light, has a cracking screen and comes with enough future-proofing to make us believe our grandchildren may still have one."
HTC also has the One S, which is more of an HTC Sensation replacement: the emphasis is on taking pictures and playing music. Phil Lavelle liked it a lot: "if you're not bothered about a massive memory, you probably can't do much better now. The HTC One S is a beautiful handset blessed with beautiful capabilities and is already available at very palatable price points."

HTC design worries?

But wait! There's a cloud on the HTC horizon! The iPhone had antennagate, and it seems that the latest HTCs may have bendyscreengate, and possibly chippypaintgate too. As Chris Smith reports, "HTC has been rocked by a pair of reports alleging major design flaws with the new flagship HTC One X and One S Android handsets."

Buying guide20 best mobile phones in the world today

And we don't mean rocked in a good way, either. It seems that the HTC One X screen can be overly bendy, while some One S handsets have suffered from flaking paint, so naturally we asked HTC what was going on. "HTC takes quality very seriously and are providing all customers with an immediate fix and we are implementing some small changes to ensure customers do not experience this issue in the future", they told us.
Reviewing good hardware can be a pain, because it's hard to say nice things. Thank the heavens, then, for phones such as the Motorola MOTOLUXE. Unnecessary capitalisation isn't the worst of it, Laura Tosney reports: It has a "poor camera", "boring design" and is "resolutely mid-range and middling... despite the attempt to pass it off as a somewhat luxury item". It's not quite as useless as a cardboard box with a mobile phone drawn on it, but it "is only just functional enough".
Motorola isn't the only phone firm having trouble this week: Nokia's just unveiled rather disappointing financial results that suggest its Lumias aren't doing the business Nokia would like. Perhaps the Lumia 610 NFC, which uses Near Field Communications technology and which will come to Orange in July, will help. Or maybe the arrival of Microsoft Office apps on the fading Symbian platform will do the trick.

Facebook buys Instagram

If there's one thing smartphone users like it's photography, and that's helped the Instagram photo sharing app become an enormous hit - such a hit, in fact, that Facebook's ponied up a billion dollars for it. The privacy-loving corporation's acquisition hasn't delighted everyone, however, and it seems that many users are jumping ship. "You know what Instagram was missing?" one user posted. "Ads and privacy invasions."
Gary Marshall isn't particularly optimistic about Instagram's future. "Once upon a time, there was a really, really popular photo sharing service," he says. "Its popularity didn't go unnoticed, and one day a giant internet firm with an inferior photo system came along and gobbled it up... no, not Facebook buying Instagram, although the wording and the promises were spookily similar. I'm talking about Yahoo!'s acquisition of Flickr."
These days, Marshall says, Flickr is a shadow of its former self, starved of investment and forced to "beg for loose change to keep the central heating on". Could history repeat? "I can't help thinking that when you look at Flickr today, you're seeing Instagram's best possible future."

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Better glasses-free 3D for all screen sizes incoming

Dolby and Philips have joined forces to create a new 3D format that's set to bring quality glasses-free 3D to screens, no matter what their size.
Announced at DAB, the new format is focused on making glasses-free 3D as easy to watch as possible and it is hoped will act as a bridge for the entire 3D production process – from device manufacturers to broadcasters.
Speaking about the new format, which is simply called Dolby 3D, Ruud Peters, Chief Intellectual Property Officer at Philips, said: "By unveiling Dolby 3D, we introduce a 3D HD format capable of powering glasses-free 3D displays of any size, enabling broadcasters, operators, content aggregators, and device manufacturers to deliver HD-quality 3D on any device."

Interview

Fox: Glasses-free 3D 'could stunt' format's growth

Joint venture

Dolby and Philips will be hoping its joint venture is snapped up by OEMs working on glasses-free displays.
The whole point of the new codec is that broadcasters and the like can use it to pipe out 3D in both glasses and glasses-free form and be safe in the knowledge that the content looks great in both versions.
There's also a hint that it will help with 3D real-time conversion. According to Fox, though, this is what is harming 3D at the moment, so Dolby and Philips better come up with something good to change the industry's perception of on-the-go conversion.
As the new format is for every screen, Dolby and Philips are hoping that mobile manufacturers will use the tech in their next batch of glasses-free 3D phones – currently only HTC and LG have gone down this road.
When it comes to glasses-free TVs, Toshiba is the only one to bring a consumer device to market with the Toshiba ZL2 – which currently costs in the region of £6,999 (around $11,000).

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New format promises better glasses-free 3D for all screen sizes

Dolby and Philips have joined forces to create a new 3D format that's set to bring quality glasses-free 3D to screens, no matter what their size.
Announced at DAB, the new format is focused on making glasses-free 3D as easy to watch as possible and it is hoped will act as a bridge for the entire 3D production process – from device manufacturers to broadcasters.
Speaking about the new format, which is simply called Dolby 3D, Ruud Peters, Chief Intellectual Property Officer at Philips, said: "By unveiling Dolby 3D, we introduce a 3D HD format capable of powering glasses-free 3D displays of any size, enabling broadcasters, operators, content aggregators, and device manufacturers to deliver HD-quality 3D on any device."

Interview

Fox: Glasses-free 3D 'could stunt' format's growth

Joint venture

Dolby and Philips will be hoping its joint venture is snapped up by OEMs working on glasses-free displays.
The whole point of the new codec is that broadcasters and the like can use it to pipe out 3D in both glasses and glasses-free form and be safe in the knowledge that the content looks great in both versions.
There's also a hint that it will help with 3D real-time conversion. According to Fox, though, this is what is harming 3D at the moment, so Dolby and Philips better come up with something good to change the industry's perception of on-the-go conversion.
As the new format is for every screen, Dolby and Philips are hoping that mobile manufacturers will use the tech in their next batch of glasses-free 3D phones – currently only HTC and LG have gone down this road.
When it comes to glasses-free TVs, Toshiba is the only one to bring a consumer device to market with the Toshiba ZL2 – which currently costs in the region of £6,999.

Read More ...

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