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Sonus Faber expands its loudspeaker range

Marc Chacksfield — 1210608300

Luxury hi-fi specialist Sonus Faber has announced an addition to its Cremona speaker range, the Cremona Auditor Elipsa.

The wall-mounted speaker system is in keeping with the Elipsa brand of Cremona speakers launched last year.

Aesthetically, the Elipsa looks the business. The curved cabinet stands at 341mm tall and is made of solid maple wood. But this is no style-over-substance, as the cabinet houses some pretty outstanding features.

Sounding out

Underneath the plush wood is a two-way speaker, a 25mm ultra-dynamic ring-radiator tweeter system and 150mm Symmetric Drive Motor System mid/base driver. The sensitivity of the speaker is 89dB.

Size-wise, the speaker, along with an included wall mount, is a modest 341 x 335 x 224mm, while a pair of them weigh in at 15.2kg.

As with all Sonus Faber’s luxurious kit, you do pay a premium for the quality, and the Cremona Auditor Elipsa is no exception. They are available to buy now for £2,690 a pair. Or if you want just one, expect to pay, not surprisingly, £1,345.

When MacFormat met Walt Mossberg

TechRadar staff — 1210607880

The new MacFormat magazine podcast is out today featuring an exclusive interview with veteran Wall Street Journal hack Walt Mossberg.

Mossberg writes two columns for the WSJ, edits a third, and runs the technology website (and associated technology conference) D | All Things Digital.

In the first part of this interview, Mossberg shares his views on the state of the computing industry and how it has changed and evolved over the years. The MacFormat podcast is available to download via iTunes or as a standalone MP3 file.

The second part of the Walt Mossberg interview will be available on 26th May.

Firefox 3.0 edges closer

Patrick Goss — 1210607580

Mozilla’s popular browser Firefox version 3 release candidate 1 will be available to the general public by the end of May, if no bugs are found in the final phase of testing.

Firefox 3.0 has been in beta for some time, but RC1 has now been released to QA and the end of May has been slated in for public release.

A post on the Mozilla blog said: “Thanks to all the hard work of the Mozilla community as of 9:15 AM PDT today we are code complete for Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 (RC1)…”

Late May

“QA will start their extensive RC1 test pass on Monday [May 12]. If all goes well we should have the Release Candidate publicly available in late May.

“RC1 is intended for wider scale public testing. Our 1.2M+ active beta users will automatically get updated to RC1 when it is released. If no new showstopper issues are found in RC1 it will become Firefox 3 final.

“ If we find any critical issues we will continue to release new Release Candidates until we are ready for final ship.

How I dumped Windows for Linux - Day 1

Simon Pickstock — 1210605714

Linux has been getting a lot of press over the past six months, particularly populist distributions such as Ubuntu. Dell has installed Ubuntu onto its Linux PCs and laptops, and let’s not forget the phenomenally successful Eee PC from Asus, which runs the Xandros distro.

The open source OS is also starting to make some headway on mobile phones in the form of the Google-backed Android and rival LiMo. It all shows how accessible Linux has become.

A Windows guy meets Linux

I’ve been using the Windows OS ever since version 3.0. So I’ve got some intimate knowledge of the problems and foibles you run into when trying to install hardware and software. I also own a MacBook running OS X, so I know how intuitive Apple's OS is in comparison.

I'm intrigued to see if 2008 is really the year when Linux is ready for prime-time.

Over the last few years I’ve dabbled with Linux now and then, but I’ve always found that there were too many problems for me to cope with, particularly when it came to hardware drivers. However, Linux has made great strides on this front, so I was interested to see whether a distro like Ubuntu can let me do everything that I do in Windows and OS X.

Installing Ubuntu is actually pretty easy, although if you want to preserve your Windows partition and dual-boot, you need to take a few precautions. First you need to download the CD image then burn that image to disc, using something like Nero.

Change your PC’s BIOS to boot from CD, pop the disc in the drive and boot from the newly-created Ubuntu CD. This will load up a live session. In other words, everything is running from the CD, and memory, nothing has yet been installed.

It gives you a good opportunity to have a play around and get used to how Ubuntu Linux works. To install to your hard drive, simply double-click on the install icon on the desktop and follow the wizard.

First steps with Ubuntu

One of the main problems with Microsoft's Windows OS is that virtually everything on your motherboard, and anything you want to install, requires an appropriate driver. This used to be the case with Linux, but like Apple’s OS X, a large number of drivers are now built into the Linux kernel.

For instance, once you install Windows, you normally need to install all the motherboard drivers. When I installed Ubuntu, this wasn’t necessary.

Even more impressively, Ubuntu detected my wireless USB stick. All it required was the WPA password and it connected straight to the Internet. In Windows, a specific driver is needed.

The next device I tried was my Canon Pixma IP4300 Printer, which again needs drivers in Windows. In Ubuntu, however, it was immediately detected and ready to use. To be fair, the output was pretty basic, and a dedicated driver can be installed.

External USB hard drives formatted to FAT32, were detected and mounted straightaway. But to read and write to NTFS drives, I had to install the Fuse plugin. My digital camera, once the ID was set as a 'mass storage device' in its menus, was also detected and accessible. A Bluetooth dongle was also recognised and worked without any fiddling, enabling me to transfer photos from my phone across to the Ubuntu environment in a matter of minutes.

So far I’m impressed. Setting up Ubuntu has been easier than Windows XP or Vista, and I’ve had to install far fewer drivers. Over the next four days, I’ll find out how Ubuntu copes with a range of everyday tasks, from Internet shopping to productivity and playing games.

Hotmail on your Blackberry

Gareth Beavis — 1210605600

Collaboration between Microsoft and Research in Motion (RIM) will see Windows Live services available on Blackberry phones.

The link-up means push email from Windows Live Hotmail will finally become a reality, having been so difficult to set up on normal mobiles, unlike its Gmail and Yahoo! Mail counterparts.

The Hotmail messages can be assigned their own inbox, thus allowing segregation between business and personal emails (though how many people struggle to separate the two is unknown).

Users will also be able to use Windows Live Messenger to allow real-time chatting; while it’s hard to see how many business users will choose to use this feature, it will help the device to become more ubiquitous throughout the user’s day.

Youthful outlook

The deal will help RIM tap into Microsoft’s 430 million worldwide Windows Live users, and will help to bring interoperability across the platform.

This move follows RIM’s decision to broaden its client base from the business user, with applications such as mobile MySpace recently added to the Blackberry.

There’s no definite date when the service will be available, but it is hoped the applications will be available this summer.

Microsoft's PC crime cracker not yet available

Patrick Goss — 1210603440

Microsoft has told TechRadar that the COFEE tool it has built to help the Police look into PCs believed to have been used for criminal activity is still in Beta and has not yet been made available to forces in the UK.

Microsoft had announced that its suite of programs – named the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor or COFEE or short – was already being circulated, but there remains widespread confusion as to whether this is the case.

Beta

Microsoft’s security advisor in the UK, Ed Gibson, speaking to TechRadar, insists that the software – which could be used on a thumb USB drive to quickly take an image of a suspects computer – is not readily available, yet.

“The latest information is that COFEE is still in beta and that it is not yet available through the law enforcement portal,” said Gibson – who has also worked for the FBI in the fight against cybercrime.

“The law enforcement portal is a password protected site that is only be available to police forces, and COFEE will be available through that.”

There remains some fairly obvious doubts over whether the process would remain private to police forces should it be used to push for criminal convictions – with the likelihood that any defence would require access to the way in which the program takes the information.

Myvu tries to give video glasses style

Marc Chacksfield — 1210601640

The idea of wearing video glasses is definitely an intriguing one. In theory, they’re great: don them and you turn wherever you are into a cinema. In practice, though, while you wonder at your new portable cinema, everyone is staring at you, wondering who the berk is with the space-age face furniture.

Enter a new piece of video eyewear, the Myvu Crystal. According to the bods who created the glasses, you can “Watch what you love, when you want and look great doing it.” And while we’re not that convinced that you will look great, the glasses do boast some nifty features that may well keep the hecklers at bay.

Points of view

The Myvu Crystal is the lightest and thinnest videowear available, and boasts 33 per cent wider field of view than the company’s Shades 301 range.

Video output is Full VGA quality (640 x 480) and is designed to be worn with the latest iPods. You also get four hours’ battery life, connected earbuds and a remote control unit.

The glasses are available in two colours, amber or black, and are out in the US now for $299 (around £150).

If you check out the website, there’s a 30-day trial, which you may want to use. If after 30 days, the sartorial bullies haven’t mocked you for wearing them, then the Myvu Crytal glasses may be well worth a purchase.

3G iPhone update - what is actually happening?

Gareth Beavis — 1210597200

The rumours over the 3G iPhone are coming so thick and fast it’s like living in a milkshake blender (we’ve all got one. Either that or a George Foreman grill).

A keyboard, GPS, 5-megapixel camera, bigger storage space and smaller phones…depending on which paper you read in which country, the 3G iPhone is going to be a dramatically different piece of kit.

Firmware updates have also hinted at big changes to the capability to the iPhone’s next generation, so obviously the theorists have been hard at work (or avoiding actual work, you could say).

However, it could just as easily be nothing more than UMTS / HSDPA 3G connectivity, and the ability to switch it on and off as desired.

The chat is that on 9 June, at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2008, there will be some announcement regarding the iPhone from Mr Jobs. The anniversary of the iPhone, on the 29 June, is the date tipped for the 3G iPhone release, but we all know Apple’s penchant for springing a surprise or two.

Web watchers

The main difference between the 2.5G and 3G phones is…well…3G. And that’s something everyone agrees on.

However, despite being desirable for web browsing, the addition of unlimited Wi-Fi to most data tariffs has helped take the edge off that need, though the frustration of a hedgehog-slow EDGE connection is annoying, especially in the low-coverage areas.

If only 3G appears, it might not be enough to push some maybe-buyers over the edge into Apple-y goodness, as mobile web-browsing is surprisingly low on many users’ consumption habits.

Picture…perfect?

The obvious difference between the iPhone and other top-end smartphones is the 2-megapixel camera. Although the business user might not be interested in high-quality snaps from the phone, the iPhone is being pushed to all and sundry, so a better camera would make sense to turn up. The chip rumoured to be used in the new phone can handle up to a 5-megapixel sensor, but one that advanced is unlikely.

The addition of GPS makes perfect sense too, as a geotagging feature would really propel the iPhone into the social networking stratosphere. Plus, Google maps just isn’t the same without a GPS backbone, right?

Where can I get it?

Well, here’s where the rumour mill kicks into overdrive. Taking the UK as a case-in-point, O2 has an exclusive agreement to sell the iPhone. However, UK-based Vodafone has signed a deal to sell the iPhone in 10 other countries.

The rumour, according to Italian paper La Repubblica, is Apple could abandon its revenue sharing deal with carriers, instead moving to the standard ‘we sell you the phone, you subsidise it’ model. It makes sense not to lock it to one operator, as now the phone is now known and desired, so proper competition with the relevant price wars can only be a good thing.

Chris Phin, deputy editor of MacFormat magazine, says: "The latest beta firmware for the iPhone does seem to suggest that there will be the option to turn 3G on and off.

“That makes sense when you think how power-hungry 3G can be, though as some have already suggested, it would be nicer if this was handled automatically, with background mail checking happening over EDGE, only switching to 3G when actively using the web connection such as when surfing in Safari.

"Though a June launch at WWDC would make sense, we're starting to hear murmurings that it could be earlier. It's not unknown for Apple to launch products before big events such as WWDC to keep the focus on the show's big news.

“With supplies with O2 and even Apple surprisingly patchy even now, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that the channel is being cleared out in preparation for a new model."

So we might see a iPhone Nano, a larger capacity memory, or even the much-fabled Mac Tablet - essentially a bigger version of the iPhone with more processing power.

Or Apple could announce it is scrapping the iPhone and moving instead to offering RFID-tagging of dogs. Only time will tell…

Facebook asks for $100 million

Marc Chacksfield — 1210594440

In the space of four years, Facebook has grown from being a Harvard University web project to one of the biggest social-networks in the world. An explosive growth such as this is enough to give any CEO a nosebleed, especially when the cash coming in doesn’t quite cover the amount of servers needed to accommodate so much information.

That’s why, according to Business Week, Facebook has gone cap in hand to venture lenders and asked to borrow a hefty $100 million. That’s not counting the $370 million that the company has already raised in the last year.

Server space

It seems that more servers are needed as more people are signing up to the site. Current Facebook users are also eating away at vital server space by clicking yes on the various apps that are available, like the ones turning their online friends into vampires.

The cash will allow the company to buy a further 50,000 servers which is reportedly five times the amount it is using at the moment. Which is nothing compared to Google who reportedly houses a whopping 200,000 servers and still finds room for a gourmet restaurant on its grounds.

The femtocell: a mobile phone mast in your lounge

Mary Branscombe — 1210593807

Your mobile keeps you in touch when you’re out and about, but does it give you a strong connection at home or in your office? If not, that’s where a 'femtocell' could come in.

Mobile phone coverage isn’t just a problem out in tiny country villages. Wooden floors, under floor heating pipes, metal structures in walls, even fragments of metal in bricks all interfere with mobile phone signals. Just walking upstairs attenuates the signal.

The prospect of having to make calls crouched by the kitchen window led ex-Lucent engineer Will Franks to develop the first working femtocell – a small base station that provides extended mobile phone coverage via your broadband connection.

Google has been interested enough in the concept to pump money into his company, Ubiquisys, and the first femtocell units are now coming off the production line.

Hands on with a femtocell

Dubbed the ZoneGate, the Ubiquisys femtocell looks like a typical wireless access point/router and it plugs into your home's broadband connection.

The femtocell contains cut down and optimised versions of the principal elements of a mobile network core and radio access network. So, instead of radiating Wi-Fi, the femtocell broadcasts a rock-solid mobile phone signal. Think of it as a very small mobile phone mast in your living room.

The setup is very simple because the mobile network does all the hard work, checking that the femtocell is where it’s supposed to be and that it’s using a unique SIM (so you can’t take yours with you to a friend’s house).

The signal from the femtocell is so much stronger than the main mobile telephone network that, as soon as you use your mobile for voice or data, it automatically uses the femtocell.

In a recent demo of the technology, we found that calls were crystal clear and 3G data becomes the speedy experience that it’s supposed to be rather than the crawl it so often is. Yes, you can get the same experience using Wi-Fi and VOIP phones. But a femtocell is much less effort to use – and it works with any 3G mobile phone.

If it’s that good, will everyone want one?

The femtocell does take a bite out of your broadband bandwidth – especially upload speed, which you have much less of with ADSL. The question comes down to how much you’ll be paying for a femtocell and who will get to use the bandwidth.

Pricing will be key. A femtocell will allow you to abandon your fixed line phone for your mobile – the convenience of one handset and one number. But just how much money will a femtocell save you? Pricing is still an unknown factor.

Selling femtocells by stealth

Anything that connects to a mobile network needs to be approved and managed by the mobile operators and so you won’t be able to go out and buy a femtocell directly.

Instead you’ll get one with your mobile phone contract. Motorola’s EMEA solutions marketing manager Malcolm Latham expects to see femtocells included with broadband, TV and mobile bundles.

He believes that only you and your family will get to connect to it - the system enables simultaneous voice and data calls for up to four users per femtocell. So someone standing at the bus stop outside your house won’t be able to use it, and nor will any friends who come to visit.

Will Franks, however, thinks that anyone in the area could get to share your bandwidth. And in exchange your phone bill will go down. “You’ll get either a very large bundle of home minutes for voice or an infinite number and data should be zero tariff,” he suggests. “Operators have to give users some incentive to use their power and broadband.”

The first femtocells will be on sale in June, but the big push will be for next Christmas. By then even the iPhone will have 3G and more people may be ready to pay for a fast connection at home – or to get it for nothing for sharing their broadband.