Interview: Facebook: the big questions
Facebook recently announced a Translations tool which allows web developers port their site to different languages in a quick and effective way, using technology made by the biggest social-networking site in the world.
This is just one of the myriad ways Facebook is turning itself not just into a place to meet with friends and share content, but a technology company to rival the likes of Google when it comes to innovation.
Cat Lee, Facebook Platform Manager, a key figure for bringing about new and exciting innovations, sat down with TechRadar to discuss just what we can expect from the site now and in the future.
TechRadar: Tell us a little bit about Translations?
Cat Lee: It's basically a technology that allows website developers, who are building applications, to translate their site in a way that Facebook translated its site for its users.
We have 55 languages available for Facebook users at the moment, and we think this tool will be really helpful for developers because translating websites is a really hard problem. We know this because we have done it.
When we tried to give the same amount of functionality on Facebook to non-English speaking users, we looked at a whole range of options for translation.
TR: What were the options?
CL: It really boiled down to two. One was libraries – you could get everything from a dictionary or a glossary but what we found was that many of the words we use, you really need the right context. Things like 'poke' are idioms that are so specific to each language.
The second thing is hiring professional translators. Most sites probably do this when you get large enough. But what we found was that for every language it would cost $20,000 and would take the translator four to six months.
With over 300,000 words of dynamic text on Facebook and the site constantly changing, it is not a scaleable solution for us.
TR: How does Facebook Translations differ from the rest?
CL: As a technology company, we constantly innovate and our engineers built an application that allows you to go in and translate the words submitted to Facebook. It also allows the translations for the word strings submitted to be pushed up or down depending on how relevant they are.
What it looks like on a website is you would see that the strings that are submitted for translation are underlined, a dialog would then pop up and you can see the translations that have already been submitted.
They can also submit new translations, and the app will also recommend phrases that are similar.
TR: So it is organic then?
CL: Absolutely. Once there are enough votes for the phrases, or if these translations are approved, then the translated website will show up based on the user's locale. So if they are in France, then the website will be translated into French.
When we did this in Facebook, we saw amazing results. The whole site was translated into French in 24 hours and to Spanish and German soon after.
We think that the developers have an engaging user base, then this piece of crowd-sourcing connected technology can really help them reach people throughout the world.
This is something that we aspire to do with this technology. But as we also offer leaderboards for who has translated the most it might also mean that site's will hire translators on the back of the technology.
TR: How long did it take to come up with the app?
CL: It took several months and then we released it to application partners on Facebook to translate their applications. To expand this application on the web took two months.
What is interesting about the technology is that It was actually built by an intern working at Facebook.
TR: Who has started using it?
CL: Playfish is one app which has translated all its games using this framework. There are football applications that were English which are now in Spanish because of this app. What this means is they did have an app for the Premiership but now they can add things like La Liga.
Tourism is also a massive factor for this app as well. For example the Rio tourism board is using it to translate its website for overseas visitors to many different languages.
What's useful to know is that when the site is translated, developers own the intellectual property.
We are just a mediator. We provide them with the technology and it is free. We hope that it is going to help with sharing and connecting people, which is what we want to do with the technology. Saying that, developers can do what they want with it.
TR: So, if I went on to a translated website, would it have any Facebook branding?
CL: If your locale on Facebook is, say, Spain, then you go on to the website which has been translated will prompt you to log onto Facebook Connect, you will see the website in Spanish.
The website would be completely normal, there's no Facebook branding.
It's all based round FBML – a super-set of HTML. It is basically run through the browser, so your browser will tell where your locale is and render the text.
TR: What's the feedback been with Facebook Connect?
CL: Since we made Facebook Connect readily available in December [2008] we have seen over 15,000 websites and applications.
This is not only on the web; we have seen many examples on mobile devices, on the mobile web and the iPhone. We have also seen it on games consoles – on the Xbox and the Nintendo DSi.
We are quite busy with all the partners coming to us with questions, so we are thrilled to see it expand and grow.
This is primarily because the benefits to many of these businesses are traffic, engagement, and registrations. They can have this on-going relationship with users.
This is because we make it very easy for users of Facebook Connect to publish back into Facebook and for many of these websites, they see a big success with the click-backs of stories.
And companies like greeting card website JibJab.com have seen 20 click-backs per story. That's in comparison to them marketing to users through emails, where they received around three click-backs so they are seeing a seven-times increase.
The other thing is that we give access to the core elements of Facebook. So when you have Facebook Connect and you sign into their site they already know things about that customer's identity: who they are, their hobbies, their birthday. You can make and personalise the site for them and create a more engaging experience for them.
We also give them access to their connections. Most users believe that things are better experienced with friends. A lot of businesses try and build there own sociagraph. It is very hard to establish that, and we want to make sure that entrepreneurs who are just getting started can access our sociograph, which doesn't just include friends but the brands they are associated with and all of that.
TR: Can you give some examples?
CL: If you take for instance, the Huffington Post, they have the ability to track a user's activity on their own site and publish a news feed which is very similar to Facebook.
With this newsfeed, the user can see what their friends are reading, what they are commenting on and sharing. This gives you a very unique experience of the Huffington Post.
What's interesting about it is it is transforming the way people read news. So my experience of the Huffington Post is different to your experience because we have different tastes and interests. That's where we will see the future of Facebook Connect.
TR: Are there any websites out there that aren't using Facebook Connect that you would like?
CL: Yes. We are excited to see the world become more social. Everything from cars, TVs to movies. Stuff like videogames are becoming more social. Integrating Facebook Connect with videogames is becoming very interesting. You just have to look like at the Prototype Experience, which took the trailer for Prototype and made it unique to you.
If you went on Facebook Connect before the trailer then it would add pictures from your Facebook page and some more personal information into the trailer to make it yours.
TR: Have you had any privacy issues with this?
CL: It's completely controlled by the user. The user chooses to add whatever information they want to the trailer.
And websites will now have to let you know what parts of your Facebook will be accessed, making sure that you are really informed with what's going on giving control to the user.
TR: What's been the most exciting thing with Connect?
CL: Prototype is a good example, and Discovery Channel did a shark week where they put you in a shark attack, showing you obituary and other details.
It's those types of personalised experience that make you pay attention, and it makes you want to share that with your friends. Those are the type of things which are really fun.
Plus, integration into other devices. Things like Facebook on the Xbox – you can connect with your friend's real identities, which means you are not playing with random strangers any more.
You can actually browse your own photos on the Xbox as well and share that with people, which is actually a really interesting and cool experience for our users.
TR: How long does it take for somebody to take Facebook Connect and create something with it?
CL: What we try to give brands is two types of Connect invitations: simple and advanced. Simple is literally one line of Javascript and you have Facebook users and comments within your widgets.
Advanced is personalisation, registration and social filtering. That takes a lot more integration. It is still specific to the site, so we've seen this developed over a weekend and for some it will take several months.
TR: What's Facebook's take on Twitter at the moment?
CL: When it comes to Twitter, there is space in the marketplace for two. What it does mean is people are becoming more socially aware on the web. But what it comes down to is innovation and the site's that innovate are the ones that are most likely to survive.
TR: There's always a lot of reactions to changes to the homepage, is this a positive or negative thing?
CL: The philosophy of Facebook is to continue to give users the best experience. Users in general are reluctant to change.
But we strive to innovate and to be relevant to users and that's what you saw in the redesign. We are simplifying the experience and making sure that it's easier for users to use. It's all about the core elements of Facebook, identity and connections.
We are not doing it to spite our users, we have their best intentions in mind.
TR: Do you see mobile phones as being the device on which Facebook will be most viewed?
CL: There is a trend towards mobile devices, with things becoming more portal. The trend is not just towards mobile phones but people are willing to take their Facebook identity and bring that wherever they are. Whether this is watching TV, on the computer, you want your friends there and you want to represent yourself in a way that's meaningful and whether that's through mobile phones or whatever that's what Facebook is striving to do.
TR: Will there ever be a button on Facebook that changes the homepage to Facebook Lite?
CL: We are treating those as separate things, as Facebook Lite is for users in developing countries without access to quick network speeds. So we have no plans for this.
You can go to Facebook Lite if you want to, but it was only every intended to help people in, say India, to have access to Facebook.
We don't believe that all users will be on Facebook.com. So we want to keep the key things the same; whether it's on a mobile phone or anywhere else, we have to take the core elements and take them to all strands of Facebook.
We also don't see ourselves as just a social-networking site, we are a technology company and we are going to consistently expose many of our core technologies to developers to enable them to do things.
TR: What's Facebook's policy of checking Facebook at work?
CL: It's integral to our work. If we don't use the platform then how can we develop it?
TR: So, you don't see it as slacking off?
CL: Definitely not slacking, it adds to the value of our work!
If you want to learn more about Translations, then point your browser to Facebook's Translation page.
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Review: Acoustic Energy Radiance 5.1 system
With the Radiance lineup, Acoustic Energy is using its 25 years' of knowledge of traditional wooden cabinets and alloy drive units, and transplanting it into some attractively tapered boxes.
It's not just the curved enclosure that's new; AE has spent three years developing the Radiance series and says that it's the company's most radical rethink so far. So what, exactly, has the Cirencester-based design team come up with?
Top of the range
The Radiance range includes some middle-of-the-road two-way floorstanders called Radiance Two, but our 5.1 configuration is comprised of the flagship three-way Radiance Three towers, a very substantial centre channel and a pair of fairly chunky bookshelf speakers for the rears. A front-firing active subwoofer takes care of the very low end.
All the cabinets are made from 15mm MDF panels with a carefully applied and not unattractive real wood veneer. As usual, you can choose your finish to suit your furniture. That's assuming you still have room for any – these cabinets are pretty large.
The massive front speakers (almost a metre high) come with wide outrigger platform bases that stand on spiked feet. They look a bit like corrective shoes, but the combined weight of the cabinet and base acts as an effective anchor. The size advantage also means there's ample room within the enclosure to generate a hearty low-end.
You can further tune the cabinets by blocking, or obscuring, the rear ports. There are three of these on each of the Radiance Threes – one for each internal compartment. Push them back against the wall to load the bass, or pull them forwards if it's already booming.
Meanwhile, the curved shape of the enclosure avoids the build up of interior standing waves, so between them, you already get a powerful and throaty sound from the front. Add in the big, rounded centre channel and you have quite an intimidating front soundstage, with an arsenal of metal dome tweeters pointing at you.
ALUMINIUM HEAVEN: The rigid aluminium dome drivers help deliver a clean, revealing sound
To get the best performance from it, you'll need a rigid speaker stand to keep the centre speaker in line with the front pair. The rears can be wall mounted if you can find a sturdy enough bracket, while the squat sub can lurk anywhere in the room.
Big boxes like the Radiance series usually require big amplification, but these are actually quite sensitive at 88dB and 90dB, and a moderately powerful Marantz SR-6003 proved enough to drive them pretty hard.
I got the best results by using the spare pair of amplifiers in the Marantz to bi-amp the two Radiance Threes and give them an additional energy boost. In fact, tri-wiring is an option if you care to add another stereo amplifier.
With the extra power and a feisty surround soundtrack (in this case the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix on the Valkyrie Blu-ray disc) these speakers can really come to life.
High-frequency stunner
You might expect the bass to be a little overwhelming in a modestly sized room (especially with the subwoofer set to stun), but it's the biting treble that actually makes the bigger impact.
This clarity in the high frequencies is a real advantage with dialogue, and the Radiance Centre delivers astonishingly crisp vocals through the confusion of the noisy but brief battle scene in Chapter Two of the Valkyrie disc.
The accurate top-end also nicely punctuates the artillery fire as it zips across the soundstage. In fact, this scene has some of the best surround steering I've come across, and if the Radiance rears didn't tonally match the front three speakers, the handover of effects wouldn't work nearly as well as it does here.
The mid-band sounds spacious, too; you'll notice this with the crisp echo of Tom Cruise's jack boots marching along corridors. The AEs convey a good sense of the interior ambiences.
Bass matters
The five Radiance speakers work well as a team to provide a surprisingly punchy and dynamic sound on all sides, while the subwoofer does a reasonable job with the bass channel. If there is a weak link though, it's the sub, which leaves the bottom-end sounding slightly underwhelming given the amount of sound system in the room.
Swapping movies for music for a moment reveals that the Radiance Threes already generate a very wide dynamic range, reaching right down to 27Hz in stereo mode without the need for a sub.
The front pair on their own put in a rousing musical two-channel performance; given Neil Young's live Road Rock DVD-Audio disc, which has both stereo and 5.1 mixes, it's the stereo track that impresses the most. It sounds just as open and creates a perfect stereo image in front. Neil's nasal tones are clear and you can hear every scratch of his fingers on the guitar strings.
What's more, the rear speakers, which are often sold as a stereo pair in a hi-fi setup, sound equally musical when I experimented with wiring these up at the front. So in a surround setup you'll really benefit from their sensitivity to fine detail and excellent handling of musical scores.
It seems, then, that what the Radiance collective does best is put forward a clean and revealing sound that's actually much leaner than their stable mates at Acoustic Energy, the Aelites.
While the more affordable Aelite speakers produced a lush warm sound from their equally large wooden cabinets, their soft dome tweeters are no match for the crunchingly accurate alloy tweeters of the Radiance crew.
My advice would be to audition the Radiance range if you prefer a more revealing sound as opposed to a warmer, more bass-driven tone and make sure you have plenty of room to move these speakers around as their placement is critical.
Partnered with a decent and fairly powerful amp, these hefty pieces of wood will drive a big cinema room effortless, and without missing the fine detail.
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Guide: How to to run a remote desktop from Linux
Not only do remote desktops enable you to access your old familiar machine from anywhere on the internet, they also enable you to build a multi-desktop, multi-user environment out of a single machine that doesn't necessary even need a screen.
This is a great solution on netbooks, for example, where you may occasionally need the extra horsepower of a full-blown PC. Just connect to the server from your netbook desktop and you've got a full desktop on top of a small one.
1. VNC
There are several ways to run a remote desktop from Linux. The X server itself was designed to run remotely, and you can still forward windows from a local server to a remote one with relative ease, especially if you use SSH.
But the X protocol is inefficient, and only fast enough for general use if you're connected to the same network as the server.
A far better alternative is FreeNX. This breaks window and cursor movement up into a series of commands that can be transferred much more efficiently than X, and the remote desktop is much more responsive as a result.
But there's a problem with FreeNX: It can be a complete pain to install, and there seems to be a different method for every distribution we look at. The day FreeNX becomes easy to install is the day we'll write instructions on how to get it to work. This leaves us with VNC.
VNC sends chunks of compressed image data rather than interpreting any drawing routings, and as a result sits half-way between the X server and FreeNX for efficiency. But it does have one big advantage, and this is that you can find VNC clients everywhere.
Many mobile phones, PDAs and netbooks will have a VNC client available, and both Windows and OS X have free and paid-for client applications that can connect to VNC running on your Linux box. From a Linux perspective, KDE and Gnome both have built-in support for connecting to VNC servers.
2. Running the server
There are several variations of VNC, but our favourite is called TightVNC, which includes a few performance improvements over the original VNC protocol.
On your server, you should be able to install the tightvncserver package from the package manager.
To start a VNC session, you need to open a command line and type vncserver :1. This will launch a new server which will be attached to the second (:1) graphics console on the machine.
The first would be :0, but this will be the current display on that machine, unless it's running in pure console mode. Any other machine running on the LAN will now be able to connect to the VNC server by using the IP address of the server followed by :5901.
As VNC uses just one port (5901) you can easily tunnel this port to a remote connection through SSH.
This is a great solution if you want to access your Linux box from the wilds of the internet, as it means you only need to leave the relatively secure SSH port open (port 22), with just the SSH server facing the internet. The VNC server is safely tucked away behind the firewall.
An SSH tunnel is a little like a wormhole. It takes the data from port 5901 on the server, for instance, tunnels this through the standard SSH data connection on port 22, and reconstitutes the data on the client at the local port 5901.
All you then have to do is use a VNC client to connect to localhost:5901 rather than the remote IP address.
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Review: Roxio Creator 2010
Working with Roxio Creator could easily become an expensive business.
Opt for the Standard version of the program and you'll need to pay an extra آ£15 to create Blu-ray discs, while Standard and Pro users must also pay آ£25 for the plug-in to play back Blu-ray content.
There's also a video capture USB cable costing آ£35 for capturing footage from older hardware such as VHS. The costs soon mount up, though, and a more specialist video-editing tool may suit many better.
In other respects, though, this is a well-rounded package that will satisfy the needs of most users without breaking the bank. The Creator tag is indicative of the fact that its focus is creativity – be it with photos, video or music.
There are certainly cheaper options out there – not least in Windows 7 – as well as more advanced video editing options, but this suite provides a wide range of tools, making it a worthwhile purchase for anyone who wants more from their burner.
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Review: Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Windows and Linux
The biggest problem with Parallels Desktop 4 is its cost. VirtualBox is available for free and supports all the virtualisation features you'd need on the desktop.
The fact that PD4 doesn't do 3D and limits itself to processors that support hardware virtualisation doesn't help either.
And while users will appreciate the desktop centric (albeit Windows-guest only) features like the guest application coherence and virtual disk compressor, they would surely rather have their VMs work with FireWire devices than support eight virtual CPUs, 16 virtual NICs and 2TB virtual hard disk drives.
The UI doesn't offer anything of note, and there's no speed advantage either, though Windows guests do seem to run faster than Linux ones.
Overall, PD4 fails to live up to its price tag. Most of its touted features work only on Windows guests, and you can get the bulk of them with cheaper alternatives.
Parallels will have to work harder on this if it wants to recreate the popularity of its Mac app.
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Twitter deal with both Google and Microsoft?
It's Saturday already, so clearly we have to bring you the latest news on microblogging media starlet Twitter's dreams of making millions - and this one's a keeper.
According to Wall Street Journal, Twitter's management are exchanging ideas – presumably, of more than 140 characters each - about teaming up with not just Microsoft, but also Google as well.
Real-time search
The story goes that Twitter will licence its data feed of user-generated content to one or both of the internet behemoths for use in their search engines, thereby neatly improving traditional search results and opening the door to profit for Twitter.
That is most likely to come in the shape of a share of advertising revenue from placements on search-result pages, although so far no one involved with any of the three parties has had anything to say about the talks.
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Barnes & Noble e-book aiming for Kindle?
A couple of weeks from now we should know if there's any truth to the rumours that book retailer Barnes & Noble has a Kindle-killing e-book reader up its sleeve.
According to respectable sources in the mainstream media, B&N may announce the device on 20 October in New York with two features that will make it stand out from the pack.
Android powered?
Firstly, the supposed e-book reader will run the Linux-based Android OS, making it a far more open platform than Amazon's Kindle and, therefore, more attractive to homebrew fans.
Secondly, the unnamed device is supposed to have the Kindle-killing feature of being able to lend e-books to other owners of the same hardware.
Whither Plastic Logic?
Whether that's to be over a 3G phone network such as the Kindle uses for downloads or by local Wi-Fi remains to be seen, but the prospect of a little old-school sharing is sure to appeal to many e-book holdouts.
To date, B&N has said nothing about the device, although it seems believable, as the company already has 700,000 books online in digital form. However, the already-announced deal to market the Plastic Logic e-reader next year obfuscates matters somewhat.
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In Depth: What makes MobileMe worth آ£59 a year?
Apple's suite of online services made headlines last year when it changed its name from .Mac to MobileMe. Not because anyone cared what it was called, but because the revamp went so badly that the internet resounded for months with the caterwauls of dissatisfied users.
To cut a long story short, MobileMe is now fixed and does all the things it was supposed to – syncing your email, contacts and calendars between devices; hosting websites; storing and transferring files, and creating online photo galleries – without falling over. Which is nice.
But are those things enough to justify the asking price of آ£59 a year? Let's take a closer look at what you get for your cash.
Mail bonding
MobileMe's best trick is 'push'. When someone sends you an email, it pops up immediately on your iPhone or iPod touch, wherever you may be (that's if you've got a Wi-Fi connection or, with the iPhone, O2 reception) cutting out the need to waste time and battery checking every few minutes just in case.
Any changes to Address Book or iCal are also transferred. It all works the other way round as well, so contacts and appointments you add on the move are immediately reflected on your Mac. Emails appear on the iPhone faster than texts, sometimes within one second of being sent.
In fact, syncing can be almost too fast: click the To Do icon in OS X Mail, and the new item appears on your iPhone before you've even typed what it is you have to do.
The only limitation is, as far as we can establish and despite claims to the contrary, that MobileMe doesn't push to your Mac – Mail still has to check the server at preset intervals, set in Mail > Preferences > General.
It's incredibly convenient to know you'll see the same messages, contacts and calendars on your main Mac and iPhone or iPod touch, any other Macs running Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later and PCs: MobileMe can also sync Microsoft Outlook and Windows Address Book, and a MobileMe Control Panel is installed in Windows as part of the iTunes download (the latest version is 1.4).
LOTS OF OPTIONS: With MobileMe you can see the same mail, contacts and calendars on your main Mac in OS X Leopard, an older Mac running Tiger, an iPhone or iPod touch, or on a PC via Safari for Windows
MobileMe isn't the only way to sync, though. Google Mail, for example, can also sync and push to Macs, PCs and iPhones, and Google Calendar and Contacts can join the fun too. However, while setting up MobileMe is as easy as entering your member name and password, Google's tools take a bit more effort if you want to get them to sync.
It's not impossible, but there's a fair bit of headscratching involved before it typically runs smoothly. If you get your work email from a Microsoft Exchange server, you can get email pushed to your iPhone or iPod touch by setting up an Exchange ActiveSync account, as explained here.
However, you can't have it both ways: mail can only be synced from MobileMe or Exchange, not both. (With contacts and calendars, both systems can coexist but won't merge with each other.) If you use, say, Exchange for work and MobileMe for personal email, a solution is to sync one and set the other to forward all mail to that account.
iDisk, therefore I am
A standard MobileMe account includes 20GB of server space, shared between emails, photo galleries, iWeb sites and your iDisk, which provides general purpose storage. For comparison, a free Google Mail account provides over 2.5GB.
Third-party storage and file transfer services offer more: Dropbox, for example, gives you 50GB with its Pro 50 option, but you have to pay about the same as MobileMe just for this one service.
iDisk is superbly easy to use. On your Mac it's constantly available in Finder, and you can drag files in and out, search it or do anything else you'd do with a hard disk, despite the fact that it's 'in the cloud', on Apple's servers.
Your iDisk's Public folder can be freely accessible or password protected, so you share files with other users or invite them to drop files in.
Like every other aspect of MobileMe, your iDisk is also accessible via www.me.com, where you can select any file and click Share File to email someone a link to it. The web interface lacks features such as search, which is annoying if you actually have to access your iDisk via a browser. But you don't.
Even on a PC (whether running Windows XP or Vista), you can go to Computer, click Map Network Drive in the toolbar, set Folder to http://idisk.me.com/membername, click Connect using a different user name, and enter your MobileMe name and password. Et voilأ , your iDisk is accessible like a hard drive.
Similarly, on a Mac without MobileMe set up, just go to Connect to Server (press Cmd+K in Finder) and enter http://public.me.com/membername.
Back to My Mac is another feature that ensures you can get to the data you need. It gives you full control of your own Mac (as long as it's switched on) from another over the internet. This works well, but both Macs have to be running Leopard and you may have problems with some firewalls or routers – our ageing but otherwise serviceable Belkin 802.11g couldn't handle it – so it may not be as useful as it looks. Alternatives such as LogMeIn are less seamless and/or cost money.
Lost and found
It is now possible to access your iDisk from your iPhone or iPod touch using an iDisk app. Meanwhile, the iPhone 3.0 OS has a few new exclusive tricks for MobileMe users via www.me.com.
Find My iPhone shows your iPhone's location on a GPS map and optionally transmits a message to it while playing a loud sound for two minutes. That will be a more reliable way of discovering where you put your phone than the traditional routine of dialling your own number, running around the house listening for the ring until it goes to voicemail, hanging up and redialling!
If you really have lost your iPhone and there's stuff on it that you don't want others to see, you can also use Remote Wipe to delete everything on it – knowing that if you do get it back, most if not all of your data can be reinstated by re-syncing to MobileMe and iTunes. Not something everyone will use every day, but reassuring.
ALWAYS CONNECTED: You can forget juggling contacts when everything's synced between the Apple tools on your Mac(s) and iPhone or iPod touch
For non-iPhone users If you don't have an iPhone or touch, MobileMe is still useful for syncing email, contacts, calendars and other data between multiple Macs and any PCs. Among the extra bits and bobs you can choose to sync are bookmarks (in Safari on both Mac and PC or Internet Explorer in Windows), Dock items and various application and system preferences.
Using a conventional POP email account means either getting email only on one of your machines or struggling to avoid ending up with your messages divided among several. If that's the way you've been working, MobileMe's IMAP-based mail, where each machine accesses the same data from Apple's server, is a revelation.
You can still keep a copy of all your mail on your hard disk. In Apple's Mail app, this is set in Mail > Preferences > Accounts > MobileMe > Advanced > Keep copies of messages for offline viewing. You can get most of MobileMe's functionality with third-party tools, but not all come with a single solution or the same simplicity.
Google's mail and web services are comprehensive, and offer more functionality if you have to use a web browser for access, but feel a bit messy and fiddly. It's also worth bearing in mind that MobileMe comes with free 24-hour live chat support. We tried this on a weekday and a Sunday, and got quick, polite and correct answers.
For most people with a second Mac (or PC) and/or an iPhone or iPod touch, the combination of unique features, decent amounts of storage, effective sync and push, and consistent presentation between devices makes MobileMe worth the outlay. That doesn't mean, Apple, that we wouldn't like to see it get a bit cheaper.
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Facebook draws legal fire on patent claims
You know what they say about imitation, flattery and all that? Well, in the case of Facebook, the two seem not to be connected, after the social-networking giant was hit by two US lawsuits this week.
Most serious of the pair of allegations seems to be one from Phoenix Media/Communications, which says Facebook has used a technique for building and sharing personal pages on a website that it patented in 2001.
Human relationships
The other comes from Japanese company Mekiki and states that Facebook has trampled on its patent-related toes over its "human relationships registering system", which, presumably, means the uber-SNS's 'friending' technique.
Mekiki owns a small social-networking site called Samurai Time that features the unusual mission statement: "We would like you to join us in this endeavour of building the social infrastructure that allows people in the world to live in peace by connecting our individual spirits and souls".
Not much to say
So far, Facebook has spoken only about the Phoenix case that is currently before a court in Boston, saying it is "without merit and will be fought vigorously".
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PSP and Wii both ring up huge sales in Japan
Recent changes to both the hardware and marketing strategies of the leading games machines have seen some significant sales shifts as both the PSP and the Wii registered steep jumps.
According to the latest data from Japan – so often the bellwether for the West – both devices sold 200 per cent more units than the previous week.
Wii doing well
In absolute terms, the Nintendo DSi still came out on top at 53,293 sales, with Sony's PSP close behind on 51,215. The Wii managed 35,392 for fourth place, only marginally fewer than the 37,538 of the newly resurgent PS3.
Drivers for the changes were the release of the new PSP Go and a price cut for the older PSP-3000 model in Sony's case, while Nintendo Wii sales were driven by a hot-ticket new piece of software.
Desirable title
Wii Fit Plus hit the market last week in Japan – it's due in the UK at the end of the month – and sold a market-leading 340,000 units, with some of those clearly going to first-time Wii purchasers to boost the hardware numbers too.
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Group Test: Windows Mobile 6.5 review
Microsoft has recently released the new Windows Mobile 6.5, and T3 has exclusively tested all the leading launch phones.
You might have heard about the recent Samsung Omnia 2, but what about the forthcoming Xperia X2 from Sony Ericsson or the re-booted Toshiba TG01?
Microsoft is tipping Windows Mobile 6.5 to push it into the consumer mobile phone psyche, but will it have the hardware to compete?
T3 has given four phones the run down, with the HTC Touch Pro 2 thrown in for good measure, so if you want to see the winner, head on over to T3's dedicated page to find out.
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