Jimmy Wales reckons editing Wikipedia is too complicated
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales reckons that too many users are scared to edit the site incase they break something.He says the world's largest encyclopedia, which turns 10 years old today, needs to attract a brand new generation of contributors and editors, but to do so needs to change its interface.
Wales says a lot of users are turned-off the idea of adding new information to a page due to the sometimes complicated Wiki mark-up tools. The company is currently working on new ways to change pages.
He told the BBC: "We have to support our old power users because they build the site, but we also need to have a ramp for new users.
"If you click edit and you see some Wiki syntax and some bizarre table structure - a lot of people are literally afraid. They're good people and they don't want to break something."
Donations still key
The founder said that by 2015, the site is looking to grow its users from 400m to one billion, as well as attract more female editors to the site.
One thing that won't be changing, says Wales, is how Wikipedia is funded.
Wikipedia remains a non-profit organisation which rests on donations from its users. During the recent fundraiser for the year it raised £10m towards running the site and reckons the donation model is stable.
He added: "We don't have a lot of money - we are running a website with 408m visitors on just over $20m," he said. "I think we're the most efficient charity there is by a long shot in terms of the number of people we impact for a small amount of money."
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BlackBerry Storm 3 breaks cover
We hope you aren't bored of BlackBerry leaks yet, because here's another in the form of the BlackBerry Storm 3. BGR's source has certainly been earning his keep over the past two days, having unofficially unveiled the BlackBerry Torch 2, the BlackBerry Curve Apollo and BlackBerry Dakota over the past 24 hours.
The latest leak, the BlackBerry Storm 3, arrives despite rumours of its demise and has the highest resolution display ever on a BlackBerry smartphone (800 x 480 pixels) in a 3.7-inch form.
What's in a name?
Equalling the BlackBerry Torch 2 in processing power, the Storm 3 has a 1.2GHz CUP and will also be running BlackBerry OS 6.1.
Apparently codenamed the Monaca and Monza, there's no guarantee that RIM will keep its Storm branding on so a name change is a definite possibility.
BGR's source has revealed that there could be two or three global versions of the handset, which looks set for a UK release in September.
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Facebook, Google and Yahoo to test new IP in June
Google, Facebook and Yahoo have announced that they will be participating in a 24-hour test of IPv6 on 8 June. By the end of 2011, it has been forecast that the internet will run out of space using its current 32-bit IPv4 address format.
The IPv4 format has been in place for over thirty years, since the very dawn of the web, but the new IPv6 solution will support more web addresses than its predecessor; a total of 3.4 followed by 38 zeros, to be precise.
Hardly room to swing a cat
Although some sites, including the Google-owned YouTube, currently use the new standard, IPv6 has never been used on such a wide scale before.
Google doesn't anticipate many issues though. The illustrious search giant said in a blog post, "The good news is that Internet users don't need to do anything special to prepare for World IPv6 Day. Our current measurements suggest that the vast majority (99.95%) of users will be unaffected.
"However, in rare cases, users may experience connectivity problems, often due to misconfigured or misbehaving home network devices. Over the coming months we will be working with application developers, operating system vendors and network device manufacturers to further minimize the impact and provide testing tools and advice for users."
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Microsoft confirms Windows 7 SP1 RTM arriving imminently
Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 7 SP1 for manufacturers has gone golden, with the operating system's first service pack set to arrive imminently. WinRumours spotted a post by the Russian Windows Virtualization team that states version 7601.17514.win7sp1_rtm.101119-1850 is the final build and that the pack will be available very soon for OEMs.
The speculation was mounting that Microsoft would produce Windows 7 SP1 RTM in January, and the arrival of a software update last week that is necessary for service pack arrival prompted further speculation.
Available
In our best (read: poor) translated Russian, the blog post says: "In addition to the announced two innovations in Service Pack 1 includes all updates previously unreleased for Hyper-V R2."
"Support for new Nehalem processors and Westmere, correction of the VSS, and so on.Combo will be available tomorrow by Microsoft."
So, for those awaiting the service pack – which should be a dwindling number in these auto-update times – your patience is about to be rewarded.
Via WinRumours
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RIM to ship 1m BlackBerry Playbooks in Q1
BlackBerry-maker RIM is betting big on its first tablet effort, the BlackBerry Playbook, apparently expecting more than one million shipments of the device by the end of March. The one million figure laughs in the face of Motorola's projected 800,000 target for its Android-running Xoom tablet.
The BlackBerry Playbook is not set to launch until March 2011, starting with a Wi-Fi only model before a 3G version hits the market.
We liked it
TechRadar was very impressed when we did our Hands on: BlackBerry PlayBook review describing it as "the first tablet that genuinely has a shot at knocking the iPad off its best-in-class pedestal."
RIM is working had to keep the buzz around the PlayBook going, having announced it in October 2010.
With prices potentially undercutting the iPad by around £100, the one million shipments bet could well pay off.
Via SlashGear
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The Social Network script goes online for free
The entire script for The Social Network has been put online entirely legally by Hollywood website Deadline. The Aaron Sorkin screenplay is available as a PDF, as the critically acclaimed movie continues its quest for Oscar recognition.
Sorkin is, of course, the man behind legendary TV series West Wing and film A Few Good Men, and his script for the David Fincher-directed movie is now available online.
Rise and rise
The Social Network is a film about the rise and rise of Facebook – dramatising the squabbles and wranglings of Mark Zuckerberg as he created the world's most popular social network.
In an accompanying interview, Sorkin suggests that Zuckerberg has been 'a good sport' about the film, although he refused to collaborate on the project.
"I don't think that there's anybody who would want a movie made about the things they did when they were 19 years old," said Sorkin.
"And if you were going to have that movie made, you would want it told only from your point of view, and not from the points of view from the people suing you. And that is what happened.
"And Mark also saw the movie on October 1st. He shut down the Facebook offices, bought out an entire movie theatre, took the entire Facebook staff to the movie, and then took them out for Appletinis which was declared to be the official drink of Facebook."
It's well worth a watch, and well worth a read – just don't poke anyone while you are doing either.
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TalkTalk offering faster broadband 'boost'
TalkTalk has announced that it is now offering a 'Fibre Optic Boost' to its broadband packages which will provide speeds of up to 40 Mbps. The 'Fibre Optic Boost' (their capitals), is apparently designed to appeal to those who want faster broadband – obviously.
"The Boost will also help users share videos and photos with friends more quickly, and will allow the whole family to be online at the same time on different devices, without slowing the connection down," adds TalkTalk.
It's a product of the company's fibre optic roll-out, as TalkTalk looks to improve its infrastructure.
"Customers wishing to see when Fibre Optic broadband will be available in their area should visit www.talktalk.co.uk/fibre and enter their postcode and phone number," adds TalkTalk.
An Engineer calls
People who want 'THE BOOST' (our capitals) can contact TalkTalk and get an engineer sent round to install a new modem and router and makes sure everything is working.
Tristia Clarke, commercial director at TalkTalk, said: "We are seeing increasing demand for superfast broadband and our Fibre Optic Boost is a great way to ensure seamless connectivity and high upload and download speeds.
"This boost is ideal for a wide range of customers, such as families who all want to be online at the same time, people wanting to stream HD content, or gamers needing lightning quick response times.
"The installation process is straight forward as an engineer will make a home visit to get the connection up and running.
"We expect this boost to be very popular and will be aiming to make it available to as many people as possible."
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Like Angry Birds? Then you'll love these games
If you're one of the many thousands of iOS device owners who's become thoroughly addicted to bombarding kleptomaniac pigs with psychotic birds, it means two things. First, you're a person of good taste; Angry Birds is one of the finest iOS games around. Secondly, it suggests you're a fan of artillery games and physics-based puzzlers, given that Angry Birds is a hybrid of the two. (Either that or you just have a thing against cartoon pigs, or can't stand to see any kind of injustice when it comes to our avian chums, in which case you should probably lay off the games for a bit and go and have a lie down.)
Luckily, when you've exhausted Angry Birds by three-starring every level, there are similar games on the App Store, along with titles more squarely positioned as artillery shooters or precision physics puzzlers with a decidedly destructive bent.
Crazy Penguin Catapult 2 (59p) transfers simplified Angry Birds-style proceedings to snowier climes. For reasons best known to them, a group of evil polar bears (who never reveal their dastardly plan's purpose – they've watched far too many James Bond movies to fall for that trick) have travelled south to the Antarctic and locked the resident penguins in cages.
Your task is to catapult a crack squad of valiant, heroic penguins at the polar bears to oust them from Antarctica forever. If we're honest, the game's a bit short and lacks the polish of Angry Birds, but the main Campaign mode nonetheless boasts 50 fun levels. There's also a small selection of power-ups, and a similar sense of oddball humour to Rovio's game. (Whatever you do, though, avoid the dreadful Strategy-lite Strategy mode.)
Another game in the Angry Birds mould is Fragger (59p), although instead of attacking pigs you appear to be lobbing grenades at cartoon insurgents. Despite the slightly questionable theme (they might as well have gone the whole hog and branded the game 'Angry Anti-Terrorist Squad') and the fact it sometimes requires an annoying level of precision, there's plenty of content in Fragger.
If you prefer more cerebral games, you'll find the puzzle element in Fragger is often stronger than that of Angry Birds, with later levels requiring a great deal of planning to solve. Oddly, when you get some way into the game, the hero leaves our world behind to blow up the residents of an alien planet, although what Mr Psycho With Grenades has against a bunch of one-eyed green extraterrestrials isn't entirely clear.
Back down to Earth, and Castle Smasher (59p) from the ever-reliable Donut Games provides a suitably medieval take on the Angry Birds formula. Your task is to hurl boulders at enemy castles, cunningly aiming to conquer kingdoms with your trusty catapult. You must also protect your gallant guards, who fend off enemy knights that manage to survive your onslaught and come looking for revenge.
For 59p you get three different game modes: a 50-level challenge, where, like Angry Birds, you get up to three stars when a level is completed based on your score; a quickfire arcade mode; and an endless Target Practice mode with randomly generated levels. While the mechanics of the game are simpler than Angry Birds', Castle Smasher offers a similar level of polish and is both addictive and fun.
If you were to hold a medieval boulder to our heads and demand to know which single game we'd follow up Angry Birds with, it'd be this one. (Although, in reality, we'd probably pause to think for a bit, in the hope you'd get tired holding the boulder.)
If you revel more in the 'blowing stuff up' side of Angry Birds than the 'flinging things at other things' component, investigate Implode XL (£1.79, universal). Iugo's game does away with projectile weaponry, instead providing you with a small pile of explosives with which to blow up a building. The aim in each case is to end up with the lowest possible pile of rubble – lower piles get you higher scores and better grades.
The graphics are presented in a rather fetching blueprint style, and while Implode XL's a bit on the easy side and lacks replay value, it's still a decent purchase. There's also a level editor to create your own structures to demolish.
Should you prefer something with a bit more character, Worms 2: Armageddon (£2.99) is a good bet. If you've been around the videogaming block a few times, so to speak, you'll be familiar with Team 17's turn-based artillery shooter.
Rather than attacking structures, the game has you aiming for opponents using the kind of deadly weaponry not usually afforded to wriggly garden creatures. On iOS, the flavour of the long-running series is largely retained, with plenty of great looking destructible terrain, bantering worms and high-end, sometimes surreal, ordnance (Banana Bomb! Holy Hand Grenade!).
The controls are sometimes a bit fiddly, but the ability to battle friends over Bluetooth or to play online over Wi-Fi makes it near-irresistible.
Similarly cute and enjoyable, if rather more sedate, iBlast Moki (£1.79, or £2.39 for the iPad specific 'HD' version) might lack the notoriety and pedigree of Worms, but it more than matches the veteran in terms of playability.
On first playing iBlast Moki, you might wonder why we're recommending it to fans of Angry Birds, but the fundamentals of the game are actually quite similar. However, rather than flinging living weapons around via the Catapult Express, iBlast Moki instead tasks you with carefully laying bombs to blast your Mokis (small, grinning, blob-like creatures that seemingly aren't too fussed about their mode of transportation) towards a target in order to complete each level.
iBlast Moki is a gorgeous game. The organic graphics are reminiscent of Rolando, the physics model is robust enough that minor changes in bomb positioning make a difference and there are 85 levels over seven different worlds to keep you engrossed.
Finally, you could try the wonderful Orbital (£1.79). Although far more visually abstract than Angry Birds, there's a link in the sense that Orbital is a precision shooter that uses a tight physics model to encourage knock-on effects that induce explosive destruction.
The game is much simpler than Angry Birds, though: you shoot orbs into a grid, which then expand until they touch a wall or another orb. Each one that's stopped contains a number, and your job is to decrease to zero by hitting it with more orbs. The catch is you must never let the built-up orbs cross your 'death line' or it's game over.
Orbital boasts three modes that have unique rules – Supernova is best, providing precise control over the cannon and exciting chain-reaction explosions. The game also provides alltime and 24-hour leaderboards, along with Facebook connectivity, so you can see how you fare against your friends.
Mind you, the ultimate alternative could be Cut the Rope (59p).
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KFA2 shows off world's first wireless graphics cards
KFA2 has announced a custom edition of its GTX 460 that makes it the world's first wireless graphics card. The KFA2 GTX 460 WHDI uses AMIMON's WHDI tech to allow you to wirelessly connect their PC to their television.
AMIMON's wireless technology is the basis of the WHDI (Wireless Home Digital Interface) standard," explains KFA2's release.
Uncompressed
"The WHDI standard delivers uncompressed wireless 1080p 60Hz video (in a 40MHz channel in the 5GHz unlicensed band) providing consumers with the most robust and highest quality HD wireless connection for in-room and multi-room applications," it adds.
The wireless card has a range of 30 metres apparently – and sports a bewildering array of five aerials to send its signal.
"Additionally, the WHDI technology implements HDCP revision 2.0 enabling wireless viewing on the TV of all PC content including Blu-Ray movies and DRM protected content," added KFA2.
It's an interesting concept – although we're not sure we want what looks a bit like a skeletal hand creeping out of the back of our tower PC.
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HTC HD2 can now run Windows Phone 7
A Chinese forum has finally figured out how to get a fully functioning version of Windows Phone 7 working on the HTC HD2. The HD2 was the last HTC handset to run the old Windows Mobile OS which, even with HTC's excellent Sense UI on top of it, had a number of niggling problems that left our reviewer cold.
Many HD2 users on the XDA Developer forum have reported successfully installing the snazzy new OS with no major issues.
All the bells and whistles
This includes functioning services like the Zune media app, Zune PC and Mac clients, Xbox Live and the app marketplace.
It's not a simple plug and play solution though, some users have had problems getting microSD cards recognised with the correct storage and data connections up and running.
It's not entirely legal, however, and it does require a Microsoft activation code to get going; do with this information what you will.
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Gary Marshall: Will Apple's Find My Friends fly?
Apple's on a roll: as if destroying Facebook with Ping and wiping out Skype with FaceTime wasn't enough, it's going after Loopt, Foursquare, Gowalla and the rest of the location-aware social networking crowd with a brand new feature: Find My Friends.Okay, I'm being a bit sarky. But I'm a bit baffled too.
There's no doubt that Apple's up to something. The enterprising folks at MacRumors have discovered a new field in the iOS Settings app with the label "FIND_MY_FRIENDS".
The settings refer to MobileMe, Apple's subscription-based synchronisation service, so you don't need to possess genius of Alex Reid proportions to work out that Apple's adding something called Find My Friends to MobileMe.
But what?
The consensus is location-based social networking. Find My Friends, the entire internet says, will enable you to - yes! - find your friends. Will it use GPS? Undoubtedly. Will it display people's location on a map? Almost certainly. Will it be elegant, and intuitive? Inevitably. Will it reduce your iPhone's battery life to approximately ten seconds? Quite possibly.
I'm sure Find My Friends will be beautifully designed, but if it turns out to be the kind of service the pundits are already predicting - and to be fair, all the speculation so far is based on a single data field, so everybody may well be talking out of their backsides - then there could be a few problems with it.
Giant hamster cheeks
The first issue is that putting something into iOS doesn't mean everybody's going to use it. I thought Facetime would be massive, but the only thing about it that's massive so far is my own face when I forget to suck in my giant hamster cheeks.
The second issue is that location awareness is only useful if your friends are on it - so if they aren't, you need to connect to whatever they're using. That's something the existing location awareness crowd are beginning to realise, so for example Gowalla doesn't just use its own service: its iPhone app connects to Foursquare and Facebook, too.
And while we're on the subject of apps, the existing location-based services provide apps for all the major platforms, not just iOS.
Even if all your friends are using iOS devices, they still might not appear on your radar: remember that this appears to be a MobileMe service. How many of your friends use that? There are eleventy billion iOS users out there, but relatively few of them subscribe to MobileMe; Apple doesn't publish subscriber numbers but educated guesses suggest a couple of million tops.
On that basis, any social network that's only available to MobileMe subscribers isn't going to be a very big social network unless MobileMe goes free.
My big concern about all of this, though, is that I suspect Apple doesn't really do social any more than Google does. I hope I'm wrong, but I can't help thinking Find My Friends could turn out to be the answer to a question that only I'm asking: what would you get if you crossed Google Latitude with iTunes Ping?
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Mayor denied 3D rental due to health and safety
Poor Keith Sharp, Mayor of Peterborough, who simply wanted to rent Piranha 3D from his local Blockbuster and was told he couldn't on health and safety grounds.No three-dimensional Kelly Brook for him, nor the gore of the various people being eaten alive by vicious marine life with a taste for human flesh.
"It's absolutely stupid,' said 55-year-old Mr Sharp. 'It's one of those over-the-top health and safety issues I'm sick and tired of. Things like renting a DVD should be common sense. I've come across idiotic health and safety people in my time and this is up there with the worst of them.'
Whatever you do, do not go into the water
It seems it was all a bit of a mix-up though, as is wont to happen with new technologies.
Blockbuster won't rent you a pair of 3D glasses for reasons of hygiene. Hapless staff at the Peterborough store misinterpreted this and thought it was 3D movies themselves that posed a health risk.
Sure, 3D is good, but it's not quite at the stage where piranhas could literally jump out of the TV and start chomping on your leg.
In any case, old Mayor Sharp already has his 3D glasses, which set him back around £100 a pop, as well as his £2,000 3D TV.
Seems a shame to waste all that on Piranha 3D though, maybe Blockbuster did him a favour after all.
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BlackBerry Torch 2 pics and specs leaked
Yet another RIM leak has unearthed the BlackBerry Torch 2, successor to the original QWERTY-slider-wielding touchscreen Torch. After the BlackBerry Dakota and BlackBerry Curve Apollo leaked onto the internet yesterday, we're beginning to suspect that RIM may have a mole.
It's looking very familiar to its predecessor on the surface, but that slider form-factor is hiding a 1.2GHz processor – that's double the power of the original BlackBerry Torch.
All the –ometers are present and correct
It's still single-core, of course. RIM is in no hurry to shove dual-core processors into its BlackBerry smartphones just yet.
Along with the new CPU, there's 512MB of RAM, Bluetooth 2.1 and BlackBerry OS6.1.
Gamers will be glad to hear of the inclusion of an accelerometer, while orienteering types will appreciate the magnetometer for its compass-like abilities.
Don't hold your breath though; BGR, which obtained the leak, says the BlackBerry Torch 2 is looking at a late Q3 release for the US. The UK release date is likely to be around the same time if not later in the year.
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In Depth: Will polarised 3D TVs replace active shutter?
After following the slow burning birth of active shutter 3D TVs over the past two years, we could be about to witness its protracted death.More brands than we had expected appeared to embrace the far cheaper passive 3D technology at last week's CES in Las Vegas.
In perhaps the biggest story at CES for the AV world, LG announced that it intends to capture 70 percent share of the global 3D TV LCD market in 2011 (that's at least 15 million) with its new Cinema 3D (so called because it's a similar tech to that used in your local 3D cinema or Sky 3D pub) collection of 'passive' or polarised 3D TVs.
It has not quite abandoned active shutter as a technology, but the big push is certainly going to be on passive.
It's basically down to the development of a new film - LG calls it film patterned retarder (FPR) - which makes passive 3D TVs cheaper to produce.
"This is important because while the cost of an active solution is mainly in the glasses, it doesn't scale with screen size and can be made an option," Bob Raikes, managing eEditor of Display Monitor and managing director at analyst firm Meko, told Techradar.
"The cost of a polarising solution has to be applied to every set with the film - it can't be an option - and the cost increases as the screen size gets bigger." That's crucial since early adopters that buy 3D TVs tend to buy bigger-than-average sets.
Passive vs active shutter
LG cited expensive, uncomfortable glasses, visible flicker and possible health issues as reasons why passive is better than active shutter, but it's not the only company making the switch.
US mega brand Vizio claims that its Theater 3D 65-inch (already on sale at US retail giant CostCo for US$3,499) and Cinemawide 71-inch 21:9 aspect passive 3D TVs generate clearer, flicker-free pictures that offer visibly higher brightness than 'conventional' 3D TVs.
A spokesperson for Vizio told us: "The glasses are much cheaper so ideal if you want to get glasses for all of the family, they're lighter and there are no reflections. We actually have both types of 3D TV available and on sale now, though we're concentrating on our Theater 3D screens."
VIZIO: US brand is also jumping on the polarised 3D TV bandwagon
The inference is that active shutter glasses are bad for the eyes. "The issues are mainly of comfort rather than safety," says Raikes. "With shutter glasses, especially with a small screen, the user may be aware of flickering, not on the screen itself, but on the area around the screen."
Raikes tells us that polarising 3D TVs have been popular in professional applications where people may be using them for many hours, though that's largely down to the weight of active shutter glasses, and the fact that they need recharging.
Philips and Toshiba
Although LG Displays hinted that Philips would follow suit in Europe, the Dutch brand told TechRadar that it would "develop all possible ways of presenting 3D to the consumer, whether that is active, passive or glasses-free."
Meanwhile, Toshiba is definitely making the change - in the US, at least. There was no word on price, but consider the facts: Toshiba's TL515 Series uses a pared-down direct LED lighting system and a 100Hz panel, while its ULC10 Cinema Series of active shutter 3D TVs have vastly more LED arrays behind a 400Hz panel and, of course, send a Full HD image to each eye.
Eschewing the industry terminology, Toshiba prefers to use the language 'natural' versus 'dynamic' 3D; its press materials indicate that 'natural' 3D is 'affordable', 'ideal for longer viewing periods' and '3D gaming', while 'dynamic' is for 'the videophile that cannot compromise on picture quality in 2D or 3D'.
TOSHIBA: Toshiba's TL515 line-up of LED-backlit TVs will use polarised 3D tech, though the brand will also sell active shutter 3D TVs
Reviving passive - or natural - 3D technology is clearly an attempt to make 3D TVs much cheaper, but it comes at the cost of Full HD resolution. A problem?
"The perceived resolution is often similar because your brain adds it up," says Bill Foster at analysts Futuresource Consulting. "Maybe we'll see a move towards polarised sets and dual-function 3D glasses that could be used as sunglasses, at home and at a drive-in movie."
Indeed, LG Display's presentation to journalists at CES involved many designs of 'fashion' 3D glasses, with a spokesperson pointing out that they could screen out UV light so could also be used as sunglasses.
"I have long believed that the whole question of TV and display quality is about 'artistic intent' - in an ideal world, the consumer would see exactly what the creator thought they would," says Raikes. "Any change in resolution/colour/3D effect etc. is bad news, in my opinion."
That problem can go away with the introduction of high resolution 4k2k displays, says Raikes, who tells us that different forms of the polarising concept are being worked on elsewhere.
Other manufacturers
Not willing to dilute the 3D message, neither Sony, Samsung, Sharp nor Panasonic showed any passive 3D TVs at the CES, though Samsung's newly designed, lightweight active shutter 3D glasses constitute a tacit admission of one of the technology's major flaws.
Its prescription-ready SSG-3700CR glasses put all of the electronics in the tips of the wings and put the lenses sit closer to eyes, meaning fewer reflections from behind, and a more convincing wraparound 3D effect.
ACTIVE SHUTTER: Samsung is committed to Active Shutter tech, and showed-off these lightweight, prescription-ready 3D glasses at the CES
As always, the market will decide, but expect to see some brands dump active shutter tech as soon as they can as they seek economies of scale. In our opinion, this is a good development; the extra dollop of confusion for us all to wade through is hardly welcome, but ultimately it should mean that 3D TVs will become cheaper in the form of polarised TVs.
For those who'd much rather Sky 3D in standard definition than spend liberally to watch flickery cartoons on 3D Blu-ray through uncomfortable specs, the birth of affordable polarised 3D TVS is welcome.
Much will depend on the price of the 'new' passive 3D TVs - destined to hit these shores in March or April - but active shutter 3D plasma TVs, we suspect, will remain a high-end option that will creep into home cinema set-ups as genuinely engaging 3D content becomes available.
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Review: OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB SSD
It's fashionable among the technologistas to grumble about the quality and performance of solid-state drive controller chipsets. But controllers aren't the only problem with SSD performance; increasingly, storage interfaces are creating a bottleneck. Enter the OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB, an ultra-high performance SSD designed to sidestep performance issues related to the SATA I/O interface.
The OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB does this courtesy of its own unique storage connection. Out goes SATA, in comes OCZ's proprietary High-Speed Data Link or HSDL for short. In simple terms, HSDL is a four-lane PCI Express link. PCI Express 2.0, of course, supports 500MB/s per lane.
Potentially, therefore, HSDL can manage a massive 2GB/s of raw storage bandwidth. This first incantation of HSDL is PCIE 1.1 and thus half that speed, but on paper it's still a fair bit quicker than SATA.
As for the SSD part of the package, the IBIS packs 240GB of flash memory and no less than four SandForce SF-1200 controllers. There's also a Silicon Image RAID controller. The whole ensemble acts like four high end SSDs in a fast RAID 0 array. It's a bit like a quartet of OCZ's SandForce-powered Vertex 2 drives squeezed into a single 3.5-inch box.
Unsurprisingly, the headline performance claims are utterly spectacular. OCZ claims maximum read and write performance of 740MB/s and 720MB/s respectively. Then again, at over £500 for a 240GB drive, serious fireworks are expected
The OCZ IBIS is quite unlike other SSDs, so it's worth examining what comes with the package in detail. First up, there's an add-in, four-lane, PCI Express card. The OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB model is bundled with a single-port HSDL card enabling the connection of just one drive.
However, there's also an optional four-port card enabling four-way IBIS action and quite ludicrous theoretical storage performance.
The HSDL card is essentially a dumb connector allowing the drive to interface with the PCI Express bus via a mini-SAS cable – the same cable type used by high performance SAS RAID cards. However, while the physical connectors are the same, HSDL is not electrically compatible with SAS RAID.
The drive itself conforms to the standard 3.5-inch hard disk form factor via a nicely screwed-together brushed alloy case. Along with the mini-SAS data socket, the case has a standard SATA power port. With the PCIE card, the mini-SAS cable, the drive itself and some drivers for the 'have disk' Windows installation procedure, you've got everything required for some serious storage speed.
In terms of detailed specifications, the single-port HDSL card only supports PCI Express 1.1 and is therefore rated at 10Gbps or 1.25GB/s. To put that into context, the SATA 3Gbps is currently the most common storage interface in PCs, while SATA 6Gbps is a relatively recent addition to the latest motherboards and PCs. Only a small handful of 2.5-inch SSDs support SATA 6Gbps.
Crack open the 3.5-inch IBIS enclosure (not something we'd recommend), and you'll find a pair of circuit boards, each with two SandForce SF-1200 controllers and 120GB of flash memory.
Our review drive is the 240GB model, but OCZ offers configurations ranging from 100GB all the way to 960GB. Despite hefty pricing in excess of £500, the 240GB model arguably offers the best combination of value and capacity in the IBIS range.
Testing SSDs is tricky at the best of times, what with the delta between box-fresh and well-used performance. But the OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB presents some unique problems.
It's an unknown and unproven storage interface, but like any drive, the best way to test it is to simulate real-world usage as closely as possible. We therefore install a full operating system and fill the drive to the brim with data and delete it a few times before testing.
We also gave the IBIS a second run through our suite following two hours of idle operation to allow the drive to self-heal. However, the results on the second run were little changed.
Size
Formatted capacity – Bytes, bigger is better
OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB: 223GB
Samsung SSD 470 Series 256GB: 238GB
Kingston SSDNow V+100 256GB: 238GB
Synthetic drive performance
ATTO Sequential read – MBs/second, bigger is better
OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB: 834MB/s
Samsung SSD 470 Series 256GB: 267MB/s
Kingston SSDNow V+100 256GB: 207MB/s
ATTO Sequential write – MBs/second, bigger is better
OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB: 700MB/s
Samsung SSD 470 Series 256GB: 261MB/s
Kingston SSDNow V+100 256GB: 189MB/s
HDTach Burst rate – MBs/second, bigger is better
OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB: 184MB/s
Samsung SSD 470 Series 256GB: 216MB/s
Kingston SSDNow V+100 256GB: 193MB/s
AS SSD 4k random reads – MBs/second, bigger is better
OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB: 24.75MB/s
Samsung SSD 470 Series 256GB: 11.89MB/s
Kingston SSDNow V+100 256GB: 12.76MB/s
AS SSD 4k random writes – MBs/second, bigger is better
OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB: 53.05MB/s
Samsung SSD 470 Series 256GB: 34.14MB/s
Kingston SSDNow V+100 256GB: 34.82MB/s
AS SSD 4k 64-thread random reads – MBs/second, bigger is better
OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB: 417.94MB/s
Samsung SSD 470 Series 256GB: 117.56MB/s
Kingston SSDNow V+100 256GB: 16.30MB/s
AS SSD 4k 64-thread random writes – MBs/second, bigger is better
OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB: 289.38MB/s
Samsung SSD 470 Series 256GB: 42.35MB/s
Kingston SSDNow V+100 256GB: 35.39MB/s
Application performance
File decompression – Time taken, lower is better
OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB: 29 seconds
Samsung SSD 470 Series 256GB: 32 seconds
Kingston SSDNow V+100 256GB: 32 seconds
File transfer performance
Copy 4.5GB file – Time taken, lower is better
OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB: 25 seconds
Samsung SSD 470 Series 256GB: 43 seconds
Kingston SSDNow V+100 256GB: 1 minute 2 seconds
Forgive us a Rumsfeldism, but with any new technology there are both known unknowns and unknown unknowns. The OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB is no different. Broadly speaking, there are three angles you can attack it from. Firstly, you can analyse the official specifications. Then you can peruse our benchmark results. Finally, there's the matter of long-term performance.
The first two are easy to deal with. OCZ claims maximum sequential read and write performance of 740MB/s and 720MB/s along with up to 125,000 IOPS. Incredibly, in testing we found those figures to be at least in part conservative.
Atto Disk Benchmark returns read and write maximums of 834MB/s and 700MB/s. Admittedly, the more demanding AS SSD test suggests marginally more modest sustained throughput of 681MB/s and 342MB/s.
But either way, the raw speed of this drive is borderline bonkers.
Elsewhere, the synthetic results are a little less impressive. 4K random reads and writes measure 24.75MB/s and 53.05MB/s respectively. That's not as good as we've seen from some single SandForce-powered SSDs running on the SATA interface.
That said, the 4K 64-thread random performance is frankly immense, clocking in at 417.94MB/s and 289.38MB/s.
Put the synthetics together and you have a picture of a drive that looks world beating when it comes to shifting big files around, but might not always have a huge advantage with smaller, bittier work loads. That's more or less in line with the results from our application benchmarks.
The IBIS is incredibly quick at shunting big files. That includes pulling files off another SSD located on a SATA connection, a task we found it to be over twice as quick at compared to two SSDs sharing the same SATA controller.
The same goes for copying large files around the IBIS itself. It's much quicker than a standard SSD. Less impressive is its performance in our 1GB zip file extraction.
Our test file contains scores of little files and the IBIS struggles to put significant distance between itself and conventional SSDs in this kind of real world test. It completes the extract in 29 seconds compared with 32 seconds for Samsung's latest SSD, the 470 Series.
That just leaves the matter of long-term performance. Currently, the all-important TRIM storage command in Windows 7 is not supported by drives hidden by a RAID array. Unfortunately, that applies to the IBIS as much as it does home-made RAID configurations.
However, the IBIS does benefit from the SandForce SF-1200's garbage cleaning routine that's designed to do much the same job. However, in our testing, we could not detect any evidence of the cleaning algorithms in action.
We liked
If you're the sort of video editing junky who routinely shunts huge files around his rig, you'll love the OCZ IBIS HSDL 240GB. It's an absolute screamer and comes close to hitting the magical 1GB/s mark in some circumstances.
Given the unique technology, it's also reasonable value compared to conventional high-capacity, high-speed SSDs.
We disliked
For day-to-day computing this SSD-RAID-array-in-a-box solution is almost definitely overkill. While it delivers spectacular performance by most metrics, there's evidence in the 4K random results to suggest OCZ's IBIS isn't significantly quicker than cheaper SATA SSDs for routine storage work.
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Government confirms delay for PEGI game ratings
Culture minister Ed Vaizey has confessed that 'technical delays' have pushed back the arrival of the PEGI ratings for games. PEGI's game ratings were chosen over BBFC's, but the European gaming body's system is not yet ready to be fully implemented.
Speaking to Gamesindustry.biz, Vaizey explained that the system will not arrive until July at the earliest.
Iron out kinks
"There's been some technical delays to iron out a few kinks - nothing fundamental, nothing serious. And we'll crack on with it as fast as we can," he said.
The original hope when the ratings decision was published in the controversial Digital Economy Act was for a 2010 arrival, but that was soon pushed in to this year.
However, it could be closer to 2012 than 2010 by the time it finally arrives, and we're willing to bet that it won't even begin to stop radio phone-ins where angry parents rail against their precious kids seeing violence in the 18+ games that they buy for them.
Via GamesIndustry.biz
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Qualcomm shows-off dual-core Snapdragon processors
Sneaky Qualcomm held a blogger round-table during Verizon's all-encompassing press conference in order to show off some new tech, including its dual-core Snapdragon processors. The super-charged CPUs with 1.2GHz and Adreno 220 graphics will be found in a host of smartphones and tablets as the year progresses.
Our first glimpse of it may come in the Asus Eee Pad Memo (UK release date somewhere between May and September 2011).
Referential
Qualcomm had a piece of reference hardware that it used to show the chip's capabilities off.
These included physics-enabled games, HD stereoscopic 3D video (which was also streamed to a TV) and multi-participant video conferencing.
Battery-hungry handsets will also be able to conserve power by switching one of the cores off and running from a single one.
Pretty impressive stuff kept a little bit under wraps; let's hope that Qualcomm makes a bit more of a splash with this at MWC 2011.
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Review: Corsair SP2500
Corsair's first speakers have to be heard to be believed. They're that good.You have to hand it to Corsair, it doesn't do things by half. Recent years have seen it branching gradually from the flash-and-RAM business into new areas, and each new product line has been approached with an eye to quality.
Its PSUs, SSDs and gaming headsets may not be cheap, but by gum, they're good.
After the firm's first foray into gaming audio with the HS1 headset, Corsair now has its sights firmly set on the desktop speaker sector, and its first 2.1 speaker system, the SP2500, is nothing short of a revelation.
The set comprises a desktop control unit, two reassuringly heavy satellites, and a truly titanic sub-woofer, comprising six amplifiers, and capable of a room-filling 232W of output.
Setup is a breeze, and the colour-coded PSU-style plugs mean you simply cannot get your left and right satellites mixed up.
Each satellite features a midrange driver and silk-domed tweeter, each of which is independently amplified to avoid signal-bleed between the midrange and treble, and it's a noticeable difference to the majority of desktop audio setups; the sense of spatial separation between unique sounds is excellent.
Likewise, the fourth-order bandpass construction of the sub, which is essentially an internal partitioning system within the box that filters out undesirable frequencies to minimise distortion, leads to rich, resonant and surprisingly detailed bass-tones.
All tidy innovations that look impressive on paper, and mean that the Corsair SP2500 doesn't come cheap – it'll set you back around £200.
So how does the system sound?
In a word: phenomenal.
We began testing with games, because that's really the sector the SP2500 is designed to compete in, and found a level of immersion you'd usually hear only with a dedicated hi-fi amp-and-speaker setup.
Mass Effect 2's superb ambient soundtrack, coupled with its sharp combat soundscape, is tremendously immersive through the SP2500; separate sounds are properly distinguishable, and the sense of spatial placement is excellent.
Likewise, World of Warcraft's super-detailed audio environments jump to life; just walking around the Alliance capital city of Stormwind is a pleasure, with the clank of blacksmithery and the clop of hoof on cobble nudging at you from the environment. It really adds to the atmosphere.
The SP2500 is great for music too. Most of us have our music libraries on our PCs these days, and the sense of crisp separation the setup offers applies equally to different genres of music.
Run a high-bitrate recording of 'Mars: Bringer of War' from Holst's The Planets suite, and you'll hear what we mean.
The heart-plucking horn sections rise with a breathtaking richness, and the crescendos are almost frightening in their intensity and richness.
Daft Punk's Tron Legacy soundtrack drives the setup's sub as hard as you like, and with the bass cranked right up, you feel cinematic, organ-wobbling levels of bass that simply do not distort no matter high you crank the volume.
The money-shot, for when friends come visiting, is '528491' from Hans Zimmer's Inception soundtrack, with its traffic-stopping WOM-WOMs.
The backlit desktop control unit offers a suite of equaliser options, and different audio sources do benefit from some tinkering to find the most suitable soundstage.
In fact, our only real niggle is with the controller: the viewing angle of the screen is pretty poor, and you're always going to be looking at it from an oblique angle.
It's certainly not a problem when you're simply adjusting bass and volume levels with the dial, though, which is all the interaction you really have with the unit when you're gaming.
The SP2500 will set you back £200, but we can say without reservation that, as soon as you get them up and running, you'll feel completely justified.
If you want high-end PC audio, here it is.
We liked
Detailed, resonant bass and great audio separation result in immersive and really professional-sounding audio. High-grade components and thoughtful design drive mean it's a premium product with premium performance.
We disliked
The limited viewing-angle on the control unit makes detailed menu-hopping harder on the fly, but the simplicity of the unit means you can adjust volume and bass control with your eyes closed.
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Weird Tech: The tweets are all reet
Fed up with endless news about tablets and big TVs from CES ? Then come with us as we discover how to ruin a pirate's day, why tweets tell people more than you might realise and why we should all be working on our alien-punching skills.Good news for anyone who's scared of the dentist: thanks to Brian Millar of King's Dental Institute in London, you won't have to hear the horrible sounds of drilling any more. That's the good news.
The bad news is that instead, you'll hear the sounds of souls enduring eternal torment in the fires of hell.
Only one of those sentences is true.
Professor Millar's idea is similar to noise-cancelling headphones and was inspired by road noise-removing technology used in Lotus cars that removed tyre and wind noise without muffling the sound of emergency sirens.
CRAZY CAT: Science can silence dental drills, but it can't do anything about wacky dentists [Image credit: Dan, Wikimedia commons]
A digital signal processor analyses the sounds, isolates the horrible drilly bit and creates a wave to cancel it out without affecting other sounds such as your dentist's voice. Professor Millar is now looking for an investor to help turn the idea into a real product.
The tweets are all reet
Twitter users are creating new kinds of accents, New Scientist reports. US users' location can be identified by the words they use - "y'all" indicates a Southerner, "cab" a New Yorker and so on - and, of course, northern Britons can be identified by their constant references to flat caps and whippets. Er, probably.
LOCATION, LOCATION: When you tweet, you may be giving away subtle clues about where you come from
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania analysed a week's worth of tweets and discovered that simple word choices located people to within 300 miles. That's not accurate to hit them with missiles, of course, but it shows that accents exist online as well as offline.
From yarrrr to arrrrgh
Buy shares in eye patches: ship captains will soon be sailing around the seas, blinding pirates. Modern pirates are considerably less funny than the ones we see in the cinema, and BAE Systems has been working on a non-lethal way to stop them attacking ships.
OUCH: BAE hopes it's developed a non-lethal way to repel violent pirate gangs in open water [Image credit: Oren neu dag, Wikimedia]
Its solution? A green laser that's powerful enough to tell faraway pirates that they've been spotted, and powerful enough to temporarily blind them if they ignore the warning and get too close. The challenge for BAE is to ensure the system can't do permanent damage: the system is intended to stop pirates from using their own weapons rather than to hurt anyone.
A load of balls?
Could the future of gaming be a small white ball? Apparently so, if the reaction to Sphero at this year's CES was any indication.
Sphero is a glowing robotic ball that can be controlled from a smartphone or tablet, and it works on both iOS and Android. If the thought of rolling a ball around doesn't fill you with excitement, imagine the same tech in more interesting robots for real-life multiplayer gaming.
Aliens are not our friends
The next time you watch the stars, remember this: there are space aliens up there, and they want to hurt us.
That's pretty much what the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society is saying, anyway: in one article, professor of evolutionary palaeobiology Simon Conway Morris reckons we should prepare for the worst.
"If intelligent aliens exist, they will look just like us, and given our far from glorious history, this should give us pause for thought," he says, adding: "So which is worse? Meeting ourselves or meeting nobody?"
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More Xbox 360s sold in 2010 than year before
Microsoft is celebrating a key year for the Xbox 360, with the console actually selling far more in the US in 2010 than it did the year before. Considering that the Xbox 360 is a now mature console, year on year growth is fairly remarkable, but the arrival of some key games in 2010 and, of course Kinect, has boosted the entire platform.
NPD's figures outlined a 42 per cent rise in US sales from 2009, and Microsoft clais that this makes it "the fastest-growing console in 2010".
December growth
Unsurprisingly, it was December that gave the Xbox a timely boost – with 1.9 million 360s sold in just that month as people raced to buy a console, and probably a Kinect as well, for Christmas.
The Xbox 360 was launched in late 2005 – and the fast that it is still selling so well will be the source of enormous pride within Microsoft.
The arrival of Kinect for Xbox 360 was always designed to give the platform a new lease of life, as it continues its longstanding rivalry with Sony's PlayStation 3.
And it appears to have worked, with the console no longer the domain of just the hard-core gamer.
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Intel chief not worried by Microsoft's ARM decision
Intel CEP Paul Otellini has insisted that he is not worried about Microsoft's announcement that the next version of Windows will run on ARM chips. Currently Windows runs on x86 chipsets – based on an early Intel CPU – but new designs are beginning to proliferate on other devices, and UK company ARM in particular is having an impact.
Microsoft's announcement at CES 2011 that it would not be limiting its next Windows release to x86 systems, but that it would also run on ARM chips is set to shake up the world of chips.
And clearly that is not something that Intel can ignore as it looks to the future.
Speaking at the company's financial results, Otellini insisted that Microsoft's forthcoming changes to Windows will actually help the company in the touch-enabled (tablet, PC and mobile phone) arena.
And he expressed his doubt that ARM can make an impact on the business PC area that makes the money for Intel.
"The plus for Intel is that as they unify their operating systems we now have the ability for the first time, one, to have a designed-from-scratch, touch-enabled operating system for tablets that runs on Intel that we don't have today; and, secondly, we have the ability to put our lowest-power Intel processors, running Windows 8 or the next generation of Windows, into phones, because it's the same OS stack. And I look at that as an upside opportunity for us," said Otellini.
"On the downside, there's the potential, given that Office runs on these products, for some creep-up coming into the PC space.
"I am skeptical of that for two reasons: one, that space has a different set of power and performance requirements where Intel is exceptionally good; and secondly, users of those machines expect legacy support for software and peripherals that has to all be enabled from scratch for those devices."
Intel is certainly in rude health in the mean-time, with the company announcing record fourth quarter results (including a $3.39 billion profit – around £2.1 billion) and making confident prediction for the first quarter of 2011.
Via Engadget
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BlackBerry Curve Apollo leaked
In the second high-profile BlackBerry leak of the day, we've caught a glimpse of the next generation Curve handset codenamed Apollo.The mid-range, candy-bar handset, which will likely replace the Curve 8520, has arrived boasting a respectable spec-set including a 480x360 HGVA screen and a five megapixel camera with a flash.
In what is scheduled to be an aggressively priced device, there's also NFC communications technology, tri-band HSPA connectivity, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1.
Best of all perhaps, the handset unearthed over at BGR is just 11mm thick. There's no details yet on pricing or release schedules, but we'd expect to see it in the flesh at next month's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Earlier today we got our first glimpse at the BlackBerry 'Dakota' device, promising a touchscreen and a full keyboard on a candy-bar handset for the first time.
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Review: Pure i-20
The iPod transport, a dock that extracts a digital signal to output to an external DAC, has been with us for a few years now and the price of models has drifted progressively lower. From the £2,000 MSB iLink (which only worked with a specially modified iPod), we now have the Pure i-20 which will function with any iPod connected to it and will produce the all-important digital signal for a princely £80.
If this was the only feature the i-20 offered, we would be fairly impressed. Pure has other ideas, however. The i-20 will also take the digital signal it extracts from an iPod and run it through an internal Cirrus 4353 24-bit/192KHz-capable DAC to a pair of analogue outputs.
Pure claims a 105dB signal-to-noise ratio which is more than respectable under the circumstances. To add a final ribbon to an already appealing bow, the i-20 will output composite, S-video and component video (the latter two formats via special cable) to show video material from an iPod.
In short, this is an incredibly well-specified device for the asking price.
Plain Jane
This very comprehensive feature set is concealed within a relatively plain exterior. The i-20 feels solid and well thought out, but it would be stretching matters to call it attractive.
The supplied remote is easy to use and works well from reasonable range, but the small size and slim design will likely condemn it to a life down the side of a sofa cushion if you're not very careful about where you put it down.
On balance, these minor aesthetic grumbles are worth the trade-off for the remarkable feature set and the effort that has gone in to making the i-20 as slick to use as possible. We tried the i-20 with a variety of iPods and found connection was instant with all of them.
Connecting an iPhone with the phone network still active produced no cellular ticks and buzzes, even when the phone was called while playing back in the i-20.
One minor bugbear is that the output level of the iPod in part decides the analogue output of the i-20. Unless the iPod is set to full volume, the i-20 will not produce the posted output voltage.
This isn't a huge problem when the iPod is in the dock, but unless you remember to correct it before reverting to headphones, there is the potential for a brief but ear-frying burst at maximum volume level.
Assured
These operational gripes can be forgiven because where it matters, the i20 is an assured performer. Initially connected by the analogue outputs, the i-20 produces a clean and engaging sound. Lossless files ripped from CD via iTunes retain the same sonic character as the original and the internal digital to analogue conversion of the i-20 is the equal of a well-sorted, sub-£250 CD player.
Vocals are well presented and instruments sound believably real. Very complex pieces can find themselves becoming slightly muddled with less separation between instruments and musicians, but the i-20 is never unpleasant to listen to.
A no-brainer
Connected to an external DAC – in this case we tried a Cambridge Audio DacMagic and an Audio Note DAC1 – the Pure is essentially transparent and the overall sound quality will come down to the DAC used.
As might be expected, both DACs offered greater insight into the same lossless recordings over the analogue outputs but for those on a budget, the i-20 would be a respectable performer on its own before adding a DAC at a later date.
As a final additional talent, the i-20 displays a good-quality video image over component, even when blown up on to a 42-inch screen.
Bargain
In terms of the performance offered and the potential for upgrade, the i-20 has to be considered a bargain. Anybody building an entry-level system around an iPod will find the i-20's ability to perform more than credibly on its own, before offering a simple upgrade via any one of the many DACs now on sale, very appealing.
We would have been delighted to see a bare minimum iPod transport at this price, so what Pure has achieved with the i-20 is remarkable. iPod hi-fi has never been so obtainable.
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