Review: Sony VAIO VGN-NW11Z/S
The VAIO NW11Z/S is a substantial, if overpriced, laptop. The most noticeable feature is the screen, which is a 15.5in ultra-wide 16:9 affair that's perfect for watching films on. It's a crisp, clear screen, and one of the best that we've seen on a laptop for a while.
Inside, Sony has packed a 300GB hard disk drive and 4GB of RAM, but has only included a 32-bit version of Windows Vista.
The ATI HD 4570 graphics chip will handle most modern games, but you'll have to scale back the settings to make high-end games such as Crysis playable.
Battery life suffers as a result of the hefty specifications: we managed to get two and a half hours out of it in normal conditions. Stylistically it's a treat, but it's a shame that the casing is plastic rather than the aluminium it might appear to be.
But it does stand out, especially next to the acres of other laptops that pass through our offices. We feel that a few more new features would have gone a long way, though.
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Review: Cabasse MC40 Java
Cabasse returned to the UK a year ago, after an absence of several years. The complete range of available models is huge, partly because it mixes stereo pairs with multichannel extras and is arranged in a three tier hierarchy, dubbed Oceo, Idea and Artis. The MC40 Java we are reviewing here is part of the Oceo range.
The Oceos begin with the conventional MC20s, but this MC40 Java is one step up the Oceo ladder and the MC40s use Cabasse's own distinctive variation on the co-axial drive unit theme.
Its ultimate expression (La Sphأ¨re) has no fewer than four different independent driver sections mounted co-axially on the same chassis, but here the technique is just applied to the midrand and treble drivers, operating above 900Hz in this three-way design, while frequencies below that crossover point are handled by two 170mm bass drivers and a downward-firing port.
The co-axial unit is particularly unusual in having an annular ('ring doughnut') shaped diaphragm, surrounding a tiny (15mm) horn-loaded dome tweeter. The annulus has an outside diameter of 82mm, while the twin drivers operating through the bass and lower midband both have 120mm diameter diaphragms.
There's a proper plinth, but the spikes – cones are a more appropriate description – are more decorative than functional. They're quite big, but hardly sharp enough to guarantee penetrating a carpet and are only locked by a serrated edge wheel the same size as the cone base, which is, therefore, hard to tighten.
The woodprint finish, in either cherry or purple cherry, looks better than most, while both sides have a mild convex curve.
As one might anticipate from its very distinctive driver technology, the Cabasse model sounds rather different from its French rivals. The generous port-loaded bass driver line-up clearly indicates the speaker should be sited well clear of walls and this is confirmed by the in-room measurements.
Sound quality
The Java's most salient sonic feature is its smooth neutrality, right across the board. The sound quality is, above all, very easy on the ears and will be very easy to live with too, though some might find it a little too restrained for personal taste.
While the bass and midband are beautifully integrated, the top end does err on the cautious side and the shallow depression around the high mid-to-treble crossover region may well account for a mild lack of bite and brio.
The bass drives things along purposefully, with plenty of weight and scale, while the stereo images further up the band are well formed with good spaciousness. Dynamic range is very good, though dynamics themselves seem a little understated.
Coloration is pretty well controlled, though not without a little midband boxiness, and there's room for a little more tension and transparency here, but its essentially vice-free behaviour singles it out from the pack.
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In Depth: How to secure your TCP/IP ports
The TCP/IP protocol, which underlies everything that we do on the internet, was designed when robustness rather than security was the priority.
But while it means that traffic always arrives at the right destination, assumptions and bugs in the way TCP/IP has been implemented and in the application software to which it delivers data mean that we all have to be prepared for attack when going online.
Hackers are constantly trying to discover new ways to connect to machines so that they can install backdoors for later re-entry, trojans to collect financial details and the inevitable botnet clients. Whatever their goal, the starting point is the same: the port.
This guide will help you to understand how they work, how they can be used maliciously and how to close unwanted ports to keep you safer.
In the beginning
What we now think of as the internet began in the late 1960s with the US Defense Advanced Research Agency's ARPANET. Central to its design was the idea of 'packets' of data that could be sent at will between networked computers.
These packets were sent by being passed (or 'switched') from machine to machine along a network of connections, gradually getting nearer their destination. Computers known as Interface Message Processors (IMPs) decided how to switch the packets at each network junction. Today, we call these devices routers.
Unlike telephone systems, which at the time used a single physical line to host a single conversation at a time, packet switching networks sent multiple packets of information destined for different destinations down the same line, one after the other, making them vastly more efficient.
If one part of the network was unreachable, the IMPs could decide to route a packet around the damage so that it could still reach its proper destination.
As the benefits of networking computers became apparent in the early 1970s, the number of different networking protocols in use started to become a serious bottleneck.
The big breakthrough for the internet as we now know it came in 1973, when researchers Vint Cerf and Robert E Kahn realised that by having each host computer use a common protocol, any machine could send and receive packets of data to and from any other, regardless of the physical network used.
Suddenly, any network using Cerf and Kahn's TCP/IP (which stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet working Protocol) system could talk to any other network easily and reliably. All each manufacturer needed to do was program the protocol into its operating system.
How TCP/IP works
Depending on the data being carried, packets are sent not only to a destination computer, but also to a specific software 'port'. Each port handles different application traffic.
Port 80, for example, handles normal HTTP web traffic, while port 443 handles HTTPS encrypted web traffic. Sending email is always done over port 25, while receiving it is completed over port 110.
CLOSE THEM OFF: Closing the ports you don't need is a good place to start on the road to a secure PC
The TCP/IP system running on the internet today uses a series of handshakes to ensure that data always gets through to the correct machine, and that when it doesn't, the loss can be easily rectified. When your computer sends a packet, the following happens.
First, your computer sends the destination computer a packet containing its address, the address of the machine that it's connecting to and the number of the port to which it wants to connect. This is called a SYN packet, which is short for synchronisation. The packet also contains a random number that's known as the sequence number.
If the software on the receiving port accepts the connection, it sends back a packet called a SYN-ACK packet, short for synchronisation acknowledgement. This packet also contains a random sequence number. Your PC then sends an ACK (which is short for acknowledgement) packet back to the server. This technique is called the 'handshake'.
Once a connection is established, data transmission can begin. The packets sent by your computer are tagged with the sequence number it used when it began contacting the destination machine. Your computer includes and increments this number in each packet sent.
The combination of the source and destination IP address, the port number and the incrementing sequence ensures that all packets are uniquely identifiable.
For each packet you send, the destination computer returns a receipt packet to say that it got there safely. If a receipt doesn't arrive after a timeout, that's the cue to resend.
Unfortunately, TCP/IP was conceived to send and receive data reliably, not to secure it. That's the job of the applications listening and sending on specific ports.
If they don't make an effort to negotiate some form of data encryption, anyone can intercept the 'clear text' data as it flows past, which can include usernames and passwords. This is the basis for a 'man-in-the-middle' attack.
In this form of attack, data is routed through an attacker's computer, which retransmits it as if nothing had happened.
Meanwhile, the attacker copies every packet for later analysis. It's also possible to sniff this clear text traffic as it goes past on the network using a utility such as WireShark.
LISTEN IN: Be careful when using WireShark. If you accidentally listen in to someone else's PC, it could land you in a lot of bother with the law
In web jargon, HTTP is a plain text protocol. When you log into a site, the username and password you use are sent in plain text. This is why you should always ensure that the site is using an encrypted HTTPS connection before entering your credentials.
This goes for your ISP, too. It may be convenient to read your email on the web when you're on the move, but unless your ISP redirects to an HTTPS connection before asking for your username and password, your details could be vulnerable.
It's better to have your ISP forward your mail to a more secure online account, such as Gmail, which logs you in using an HTTPS web page.
Classic hacks
From the earliest days of the internet, hackers quickly realised that bugs in different TCP/IP implementations meant that they could knock a computer offline by sending carefully crafted packets. They could, in other words, deny people its services.
There are two basic types of denial of service (DoS) attacks. Bandwidth consumption attacks are far more popular these days thanks to the rise of the botnet. In this type of attack, infected 'zombie' computers are directed to flood a target with data.
This usually takes the form of massive numbers of SYN packets. The target believes that someone is trying to connect, so it blindly makes a note of each request and sends a SYN-ACK packet back. Because it has to use a small amount of memory to remember all the connection requests, the target quickly gets overwhelmed and is knocked off the internet until the botnet ceases its attack.
The second type of DoS attack is designed to crash the TCP/IP software itself. Attackers send a data packet that's either far too big or is broken into overlapping fragments. These packets confuse the target and lock it up.
One frightening element to this second form of attack is that with a single, carefully crafted packet you could take out a whole server until it is rebooted, possibly causing massive data loss for the affected website.
However, this type of attack is losing popularity with hackers because operating system producers have spent a lot of time and effort hardening their TCP/IP code to make it more reliable and less vulnerable.
Hackers exploit bugs in networking software for far more than simply disrupting services, however. It's possible in some instances to inject code into the running system. This can open a backdoor, allowing a trojan to be uploaded and installed to your machine, ready to steal your credentials, make your PC part of a botnet or even force your system to serve illegal images. Such attacks are automated and can infect thousands of computers a day.
The bug that let malicious code install the Conficker botnet's client software in just this way caused a global panic in late 2008.
While it's necessary for some ports to be open to internet traffic, it's also necessary to ensure that only the bare minimum are exposed and that the software connected to them is as up to date as possible.
This is why it's essential to turn on automatic updates, both for Windows and Linux, but also for your antivirus software.
If a computer starts acting up and its patches aren't up to date, security professionals will treat it as infected. As the saying goes, 'the unprotected become infected'.
Beyond staying up to date, the key to keeping your PC secure is to ensure that your firewall is closed to all traffic other than to the ports you know should be open. Because some malicious software can silently open ports, it pays to check them yourself and close any that you don't need open.
In Windows XP, the firewall settings can be found by opening the Control Panel and double clicking Windows Firewall. If you're in an insecure place such as a public Wi-Fi hotspot, make sure that the checkbox to prevent exceptions on the first tab of the resulting window is ticked.
The second tab lists all the programs allowed through your firewall. Uncheck all those you don't actively use and press 'OK'. Also ensure that the checkbox making sure that Windows pops up a message to say that it's blocked a program is ticked. By default, Windows also creates a log of firewall activity, storing it in 'C:\WINDOWS\pfirewall.log'.
The procedure is similar in Vista. On the Control Panel, select 'Allow a program through Windows Firewall' under the Security section. This brings up the same window as in XP. Inspect all the open ports and close those you don't need.
If your broadband router contains a firewall, it's a good idea to update your firmware regularly and to block traffic on all ports other than email in and out (ports 25 and 110), DNS (port 53), HTTP (port 80) and HTTPS (port 443).
On no account should you allow Microsoft's NetBIOS services through (ports 137 to 139), as these are vulnerable to attack. Finally, see the 'Test your exposure' section below for details of an online service that will show you which of your PC's ports can be seen from the internet.
Test your exposure
When trying to assess the state of your online security, it pays to be able to see how others see your network. There are various online services that can help you. One is by T1shopper, at www.t1shopper. com/tools/port-scanner.
On this page, you'll see your IP address displayed. You can enter a single port to see if it's reachable, as well as a range of port numbers to scan.
You can also tick any of the more commonly used ports from the two-column list. Each port that's closed (meaning that it has no software attached and listening to it and is therefore not vulnerable to attack) will return a line telling you that it isn't responding.
GET TESTED: Using free online tools such as Nmap and T1Shopper will show you which ports are open on your network
If your firewall is working and configured correctly, all of these tests should fail. For a more comprehensive test – one that will find out whether there's a botnet or other piece of malware listening on a specific port on your computer – enter a start and end port number and the service will scan these individually looking for open ones.
Don't abuse this service by entering '1' and '65,535' (the highest port number). Instead, play nicely, and enter only blocks of a maximum of 500.
Scanning will take some time, so be patient. At the end you should have a comprehensive view of how exposed your system is.
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Review: Asus P7P55D Deluxe
The Deluxe nature of the Asus P7P55D Deluxe motherboard is obvious from the shiny plug-in TurboV remote control that comes bundled with it. Designed to offload the overclocking demands from the BIOS, it enables both on-the-fly and profile-based overclocks at the press of a few buttons.
All the motherboard manufacturers are trying to make overclocking a key part of the P55 experience. You'll still have better results getting down and dirty with the BIOS settings, but it's a great start for the novice or the mainstream user.
Asus' Deluxe P55 board is itself a demon overclocker, enabling us to push our 2.93GHz Core i7 870 up by just over 1GHz. And that's an astounding result. Its memory bandwidth isn't the best in high-end terms, but as we've seen, bandwidth doesn't maketh the benchmark.
Still, it's an expensive first outing for the P55 and we can't wait to see how the more affordable boards in the range perform when they tip up.
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Google micropayments to save newspapers?
Newspapers struggling for income in the era of free online content could have found themselves an unlikely saviour in the shape of a new payment system from Google.
The proposed micropayment service as an extension of Google Checkout emerged in a proposal document sent by the company to the Newspaper Association of America.
Mo' money
It's the most prominent of several such proposals submitted after the NAA asked technology companies for advice on how to make more money from their digital content.
In the document, Google describes an online system for collecting small payments starting at just pennies for access to individual articles or for newspaper subscriptions.
Decision time
Currently, the overheads associated with online billing systems like PayPal make them practical only for larger amounts, thereby discouraging content owners from using them for so-called micropayments.
While the NAA initiated the process, it's now up to individual newspapers to decide how to proceed.
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Review: Acoustic Energy Radiance 1
We wanted to include a standmount in this month's reviews, to contrast with the floorstanders and having reviewed AE's larger three-way Radiance 3, we elected to include the much smaller two-way Radiance 1.
At آ£600 per pair, this costs rather less than the others, but that takes account of the need to finance a pair of stands. The key feature of the Radiance range is an acoustic lens or waveguide surrounding the tweeter.
Licensed from Danish company DXT, its purpose is to mitigate the inevitable discontinuity in dispersion around the crossover zone, between the relatively small tweeter diaphragm and the much larger midrange diaphragm driver.
The DXT lens uses carefully calculated concentric rings in order to maintain a consistent dispersion and hence a consistent power response right through its operating band. Finished in a choice of attractive real-wood veneers, the enclosure is braced internally and built from 15mm MDF.
The curved sides are both fashionable and functional, helping disperse internal reflections and avoid focused standing waves. The narrow enclosure back has two pairs of socket/binders plus a port, and the optional grille is held by hidden magnets.
The bass/mid driver has a 130mm frame and 95mm cone, together with that pointy central dust cover. The tweeter has a 38mm 'ring radiator' soft fabric diaphragm loaded at the front by the lens. Fed from twin terminal pairs, the crossover network is deliberately kept as simple as possible.
Sound quality
Positioning this speaker proved very tricky in our listening room, as the port output is quite strong and, by unfortunate chance, is tuned to coincide with a major room mode. Experiment suggested that the flattest and most even overall in-room frequency balance was achieved with the ports blocked and the speakers quite close to the wall.
However, listening tests revealed that, even though the bass was less even, the overall sound was significantly better with the port open and the speaker moved a little way out and away from the wall. Care should be taken to move the speakers to and fro in order to achieve the best subjective balance.
If the bass fell somewhat short of the ideal under our conditions, in every other respects the Radiance 1 is a splendid little performer. The mid-to-treble voicing is beautifully handled and superbly natural and any mild lack of dynamic enthusiasm is countered by the wide dynamic range, largely thanks to the minimal enclosure contribution.
While it's inevitable that such a small speaker will have limitations in bass weight and power (this is not as obvious as one might expect) its sins of omission here are quite easy to forgive, especially once you tune in to the lovely smoothness further up the band.
The overall sound is crisp, clean and free from any chestiness or boxiness. Stereo imaging is well focused and spacious with good rendition of depth and perspective, and the lack of any unwanted enclosure effects brings a fine impression of airiness to the proceedings.
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Twitter gears up for adverts in your tweets
In a move that was widely predicted, Twitter has opened the door to making money by placing advertising on users' tweets.
The microblogging site's co-founder Biz Stone wrote of the move on the company's official blog earlier this week when he described the reason for changes to Twitter's terms of service.
Providers and partners
The new terms, which all users have to agree to if they use the site, contain the possible key to Twitter's financial future:
"In consideration for Twitter granting you access to and use of the services, you agree that Twitter and its third-party providers and partners may place such advertising on the services."
Options open
Without specifying the placement of any future ads, Stone said: "We leave the door open for advertising. We'd like to keep our options open, as we've said before."
If advertisers are happy to risk placing their products alongside the unpredictable user-generated content that forms the core of Twitter, then opening up access to the site's 40 million-plus monthly visitors could prove very lucrative indeed.
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Interview: How PHP became such a huge success
Rasmus Lerdorf is undoubtedly the most famous Greenlandic geek alive. Having created PHP as a bunch of hackish scripts to support his website in 1995, he turned it into a powerful, fully fledged language that's now used by millions around the world.
Linux Format magazine caught up with him to find out more about his position in the PHP camp today and the decisions he made early on that made the project a whopping success.
Linux Format: How much involvement do you have with PHP development today?
Rasmus Lerdorf: A lot less now than 10 or 15 years ago, that's for sure. But I still read the mailing lists every day, discuss features and fix bugs occasionally. Personally, I tend to be more interested in security and performance-related issues than other things. I'm as involved as I have been in years.
LXF: What's the structure of the PHP team? It doesn't seem clear...
RL: There is no structure!
LXF: Who makes the final decisions?
RL: We do. We have a mailing list called Internals that's completely open – anyone can subscribe to it, read it, post to it and I've always been insistent on keeping the process transparent. Anybody can go back and read the mailing list archives to figure out how we got to any one position.
It tends to be that code wins. If two groups are arguing, but one group has an implementation and the other doesn't, well, the implementation wins. It almost doesn't matter how braindead it is; if we should have the feature, but we can't agree on the implementation, we'll go with whoever builds it.
LXF: Is there pressure to be the final arbiter of decisions?
RL: Sure, there is. I've always tried to downplay that role, because I don't want to have the final say in a lot of these things. I want the project to be self-sufficient and I want it to be self-propelling. If I'm in the loop as the decision-maker, I make every decision – that doesn't scale at all.
Honestly, there's a bunch of things I don't know enough about. I mean, take Sybase. I've never used Sybase in my life. How would I make an intelligent decision about this versus that with a Sybase extension? For a lot of PHP, that's the way it is. There are groups of people that are much better off making these decisions.
LXF: Has that slowed down development of PHP 6? It's been in progress for two and a half years...
RL: What's slowing down development on 6 isn't decision making: it's finding people interested in and capable of doing unicode-oriented programming. It's difficult – unicode isn't easy. There's a lot of complexity, and there's also plenty of people who don't care that much.
From a big-business point of view, everyone wants unicode in there, but from a day-today perspective, a lot of people don't need unicode because they're building things for one locale. Theoretically, everyone wants to go to UTF-8 eventually. But it's one of those 'I'll get to it later' things. It doesn't have the same sense of urgency as many of the other features in PHP.
When someone says: "I need this now," that's when things start moving. Developers are responsible for this in their own use, their jobs, their companies, whatever. That's not quite there in PHP 6. It's being pushed mostly by the larger companies, because they're the ones that tend to need internationalisation.
LXF: Which languages particularly inspired you early on in the development of PHP?
RL: C and Perl. Those were the two languages I was using back then. Because originally I wasn't trying to build a new language, I simply needed a way of using what I already knew within the confines of the web server and to solve a problem. I didn't need a lot of the stuff that was in Perl and I didn't want all the memory management hassle of C, so I needed a stripped-down version of C, that wasn't quite Perl, that I could easily embed and was targeted at the problem.
Later on, C++ and Java were languages we looked at to figure out what we needed to do in our object orientation code. But that was other people. I've never been a huge fan of OO – I use it when I think it's appropriate. When I have an object that carries data and some methods to manipulate the data, that's OK. But I've never been a fan of everything OO.
I'm OK with procedural code and the web is a top-down type of problem. It makes sense to me that you have HTML, you spit out a bunch of HTML, then you call a function to do something and then call another function. Yes, you might have a database object behind the scenes, but I hate things like an HTML object with a BR method on it. Brandnew field and anybody who did anything interesting stood out. Now there are so many people and those people are all getting new things out; it's impressive to me that they're able to get above the noise and all the other really cool things that are out there.
I guess the main thing I can say is: you need to give up control. If you want to build an open source project, you can't let your ego stand in the way. You can't rewrite everybody's patches, you can't second-guess everybody and you have to give people equal control.
LXF: Was there a moment like that for you?
RL: Definitely – in 1997, it basically came to the point where I was going to kill the project, because it was growing so fast and my mailbox was filling up with suggestions, complaints, patches, all these things. Up until then, I had been doing everything myself. Someone would make a suggestion, send me a patch and I'd rewrite the patch the way I thought it should be done.
I would disagree with people, I'd argue back and forth, and I just couldn't keep up any more. I was getting frustrated and sick of it all, [thinking]: "Why are all these people expecting me to fix their code? They're not paying me. What the hell am I doing working my ass off for these folks? I don't even know them – what the hell is going on here?"
So that was the time when I said: "This has to change. Give the guys who have been complaining over the last few years access to the code. The guy who has been complaining about the Oracle extension, he's been a pain in my ass for years, so it's yours now buddy. Any further issues or complaints about Oracle go directly to you." And that really empowered people.
When they felt that they now owned a slice of PHP, they started getting defensive. Instead of complaining to me about things – once they got ownership, and power, the whole atmosphere changed. And it got a lot more fun as well, because I didn't feel like it was just me against the world any more; now it was a real team effort.
LXF: Do you keep tabs on other languages such as Ruby?
RL: I think [Ruby on] Rails has tapered out a little bit lately. Maybe the new version that they're coming out with – the one that's actually fast (laughs) – maybe that will be interesting. But there are performance issues with the scaffolding and stuff, and they recognise that, which is why the new build will be better. But I've never been a huge fan of code generation, to be honest – it's building apps that have already been built.
The scaffolding, well, it looks good in a screencast, but for real-world use the scaffolding just wasn't interesting to me. And I think many other people have come to that same conclusion: 'OK, the scaffolding is cute, but we need something real.' Ruby as a language is great, I think it's a really clean and nice language. There just aren't that many people who know it well.
A lot of people went to Ruby on Rails because they got sucked in by the screencast and the 'hey, you can build an app in 10 seconds' factor. But when they needed to do something real, they thought, 'Oh crap, I don't know Ruby very well!'
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100GB Blu-ray disks on the drawing board
Quad-layer Blu-ray disks that can store 100GB of data could be just around the corner after Sharp revealed it has perfected the laser needed to write to such disks.
In a presentation to the Japan Society of Applied Physics, Sharp showed off a 500mW blue-violet semiconductor laser that can write four-layer Blu-ray disks at 8x speed.
Ready to go
The company says it is ready for the mass production that will put the laser in new BD recorders for home video use and in computers.
However, it looks like we'll have to wait a little longer, as the Blu-ray Disk Association has yet to draw up specifications for anything above a dual-layer disk. Until then, we'll just have to make do with a mere 50GB.
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Samsung LCDs found to infringe Sharp patents
The world's biggest maker of LCD TVs and monitors could be banned from selling its wares in the US after it emerged that Samsung has been violating a rival's patents.
According to a ruling by the US International Trade Commission, Samsung's LCDs contain technology under patent to Sharp, prompting the body to consider whether or not to ban the Korean firm's products entirely.
Confusing picture
As Samsung holds second place in the US LCD TV market with almost 20 per cent share, the commission has to consider if an import ban would negatively affect the American marketplace.
Previously, the commission had placed a bar on Sharp imports because of a patent dispute brought to its attention by Samsung. That case is currently under appeal, further muddying the LCD waters in the US.
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Robot phone has an ear for his master's voice
Straight out of the box marked 'Bizarre' we have a cross between a robot and a mobile phone that one Japanese company seems to think will become an indispensable part of all our lives.
Flower Robotics' Polaris is basically a phone strapped onto a set of wheels with a Roomba-like ability to tootle around the house. In doing so, it supposedly gathers information about its 'master' for later analysis.
Devil in the details
The data it crunches can be anything from emails sent using the phone to how far the owner has walked that day. Quite why anyone would want this analysed and sent to the nearest TV screen is beyond us, but that's what Polaris likes to do.
Although the device is still just a prototype, Flower Robotics says it will put the Polaris on sale some time next year at an as-yet-undetermined price. We'll wait.
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Nokia 7705 Twist breaks cover
Nokia has just released information about its Nokia 7705 Twist – a phone that looks like no other, based on a concept we mentioned back in April.
The main feature of the handset, which will be released in the US this month, is its chassis which seems to twist and turn in a whole manner of ways, eventually ending up as a neat little square to pop in your pocket.
The phone packs in a full QWERTY keyboard, 2.4-inch QVGA screen and also has a 3.0MP camera, complete with autofocus, flash and a self-timer.
Targeted at those who like to blog, the Nokia 7705 actually has a neat little 'post to blogs' feature and supports email, IM, MMS and SMS.
The phone also allows for video streaming and audio streaming, using two US-based products – Rhapsody and V CAST.
You can also customise the handset via its glowing light ring. This essentially means that if you so wish, you can assign a colour to your favourite numbers so when it rings it will glow that colour.
There's no word on the Nokia 7705 Twist's UK release date, but it is out on 21 September in the US.
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BBC 'to open up' iPlayer to other broadcasters
Eric Huggers, Director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC, has announced that the iPlayer could be opened up to include third-party broadcasters.
Speaking at IBC (International Broadcasting Convention) in Amsterdam – a place where the BBC has already been very vocal about the future of 3D – Huggers revealed that the broadcaster is willing to accept outside content.
Redirection
"We've had a lot of requests from domestic and international broadcasters to open out iPlayer technology and we're responding to that," he explained.
We have a lot of people searching for Coronation Street on our sites and if ITV were to come on board we could redirect them."
This idea of an open iPlayer has been mooted for some time by the BBC, under the name Marquee. The idea came after Project Kangaroo was blocked by the Competition Commission.
Opening up
Huggers continued: "The concept of opening up our investment and technology infrastructure, user experience and design is central for us in helping other broadcasters achieve their goals of continuing to have a direct relationship with users rather than being disintermediated by third-party aggregators."
He concluded with: "The iPlayer isn't something you can stick on a DVD, install and run.
"We can offer other free-to-air broadcasters a chance to share in our investment and get into on-demand."
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Sony urges SingStar users to get a room
Sony has revealed a new place for all the cool people who play SingStar to hang out – and it can be found on its PlayStation Home online portal.
The SingStar rooms were first revealed at Gamescon in Germany last week, but now Sony has announced that the feature is being rolled out to the whole of Europe 24 September.
To quote Sony's European blog… actually, before we give you this quote, we have to say that it has not been embellished by TechRadar in any way, someone from Sony really did write the following:
"When you strut into The SingStar Rooms the dancefloor will react to the shapes you throw and the type of music will change based on what style the majority of avatars are dancing to.
"Therefore, if you all do the 'Rock' dance, the music will take a rockier edge."
Yes, your read it right, Sony used the words "strut", "throw shapes" and "rockier" to describe its SingStar rooms.
Despite coming across like an uncle trying to be a bit cool, the blog does have some nice pictures of how the rooms will look.
It also reveals that there's an interactive jukebox, where you can vote for your favourite song ('Total Eclipse Of The Heart', obviously) and win some Home-style awards.
Better get your dancing shoes ready for September, then.
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Pumped-up 250GB PS3 Slim a 'definite for October'
Like waiting for a fun-bus, no sooner than Sony releases one new PlayStation 3, another one follows just over a month later, with UK retailers confirming today that a 250GB PS3 is due to release in October.
Sony is clearly going all-guns to own the gaming market this coming Christmas holiday season, offering gamers the آ£250 120GB PS3 Slim and the as-yet-unpriced slightly more expensive ultimate 250GB PS3.
A definite
Eurogamer confirmed that the 250GB PlayStation 3 Slim bundle "is a definite for October" with one of their trusted retail sources.
Sony has, of course, declined to comment on rumour and speculation.
The Tokyo Game Show starts later this month, running from September 24 to 27. TechRadar will be there, to bring you all the official news and announcements from Sony and all the other major Japanese gaming giants as and when it happens.
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Streamlined Facebook Lite hits the UK
The stream-lined, fat-free version of Facebook, Facebook Lite, has launched in the UK.
There were reports today that the Lite version of the world's biggest social-networking site had arrived in the US and India, but now the URL http://lite.facebook.com seems to be working for the UK as well.
The main things you will notice with Facebook Lite is how clean it is. It's mainly a list of status updates, picture posts and the like.
It definitely looks like Facebook, but the feel of it is very much like Twitter.
In a statement about the new version of the site, Facebook said: "Similar to the Facebook experience you get on your mobile phones, Facebook 'Lite' is a fast-loading, simplified version of Facebook that enables people to make comments, accept Friend requests, write on people's Walls, and look at photos and status updates.
The statement continues: "We are currently testing Facebook Lite in countries where we are seeing lots of new users coming to Facebook for the first time and are looking to start off with a more simple experience."
The main things of note which have disappeared include the suggestions box on the right-hand side, alongside the suggestion box. And there is no option to chat with your mates.
There's also a complete lack of the more light-hearted aspects of Facebook – like the quizzes. But this can only be a good thing.
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