TechRadar: All News Feeds

Otto Traveler cans cancel noise with built-in MP3

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:19:00 GMT

Otto has been making communication gear for racing car teams, law enforcement and fire fighters for years, but here's one of its first consumer products - noise-cancelling headphones with a built-in MP3 player.

The Traveler n/c cans are pretty standard, offering 85% noise reduction (20dB active, 7dB passive) and 20Hz to 20KHz response through an on-ear design.

The ear cups are padded leather and fold flat to fit into the supplied hard shell case.

The 1GB MP3 player is pretty ho-hum as well, with a USB cable for uploading a couple of hundred tunes. While there's no memory card slot, you do get adaptors for 1/4-inch stereo jacks and airline systems.

Battery swap

The Traveller headphones take two AAA batteries. One is for the noise reduction circuitry and should last 40 hours, the other is for the MP3 player, fading out after just 6 hours.

Otto is pretty excited about its launch, if the gushiness of sales director John Rehayem is anything to go by: "This headset is perfect for travelers. In fact it's perfect anywhere." Really, John? Underwater? Deep space? Your grandmother's funeral? A courtroom appearance when you're seeking custody of your beloved racing Chihuahuas?

What I wouldn't give for a pair of headphones that cancelled 85% of marketing hyperbole.

TomTom rolls out Map Update for sat navs

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:20:00 GMT

How seriously do you take your driving? If the thought of rolling down your window and asking for directions brings you out in a cold sweat, consider joining TomTom's new Map Update Service.

For a quarterly fee starting from £7.95, you'll get the latest road maps available to download to your TomTom sat nav as soon as they become available.

The maps are downloaded via the TomTome Home desktop software as soon any changes are approved by cartographers Tele Atlas.

Roads to somewhere

"The world's road infrastructure changes up to 15% each year," says TomTom MD Corinne Vigreux, although frankly that sounds like nonsense, given the sluggish nature of road repair and development here in the UK.

Still, if you can't bear your GPS unit being ignorant of a new slip-road to a housing estate in Fife or an exciting new one-way system in Norfolk, I suppose it's worth a look.

However, bear in mind that the Map Update Service for sat navs with full European mapping may cost more than £7.95 a quarter.

Exclusive: Future wireless nets to use visible light

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:54:00 GMT

Wireless networks that use visible light instead of radio frequencies could soon become a reality, thanks to a new $18.5 million (£10.5 million) project at Boston University.

Researchers expect to piggyback data communications on low-power LEDs at between 1 and 10Mbps, to create a hyper-connected 'Smart Lighting' network that's more secure than current RF technology.

"Imagine if your computer, iPhone, TV, radio and thermostat could all communicate when you walked in a room just by flipping the wall light switch," said Boston University Professor Thomas Little.

"An LED-based communications network could also provides light – all over existing power lines with low power consumption, high reliability and no electromagnetic interference. Ultimately, the system is expected to be applicable from existing illumination devices, like swapping light bulbs for LEDs."

Many hands make light work

The new Smart Lighting Engineering Research Centre will have 30 researchers developing the new technology.

Each LED lightbulb would serve as an access point to a broadband internet connection, flickering imperceptibly to transmit data using much less energy than radio frequency systems.

Because light can't shine through walls, Smart Lighting should be much more secure than Wi-fi, although of course it also means that you'll have to fish phones, cameras and computers from your bag for them to make a connection.

But don't go binning your draft-N router just yet - the Smart Light Research Centre is working to a 10 year timeline.

eBay cuts 1000 jobs from workforce

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:04:00 GMT

It's been a sad day for technology today, with the announcement of job losses in all corners of the industry.

The biggest job cuts were made by eBay, where the company announced it is to shed 1,000 staff to help "improve operations".

Speaking about the job cuts, John Donahoe, Chief Executive of eBay, said: "While never an easy decision to make, these reductions will help improve our operations and strengthen our ability to continue investing in growth."

Not that this has put the company off expanding, with news that it has bought online credit firm Bill Me Later for $820m and two Danish classified firms dba.dk and bilbasen.dk for a cool $390million.

More company job cuts

In blogging circles, it was a shock to hear that Gawker Media is also saying bye to 19 people. This may not sound like a lot, but analysts are predicting this is the calm before the storm, with ad revenues tightening next year because of the credit crisis. Yikes.

It's all a bit doom and gloom in the world of Sony Ericsson as well, with the phone company announcing last week it is to down-size its research and development plant in North Carolina – from 750 jobs to 300. SE employers will find out this week who is to face redundancy.

All this pales into comparison, however, with Hewlett Packard's announcement last month that it is to cut nearly 25,000 jobs in the next three years as it integrates technology firm EDS.

Today it was revealed that 1,400 of these positions will be going in Germany. That sound you can hear is of belts being tightened everywhere.

Sony Ericsson to release football-shaped mobile?

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:22:00 GMT

Sony Ericsson, not content with its sponsorship of the WTA Tour, has decided to go one better and become the official mobile phone sponsor for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

This means the SE-lovers of the world will soon be able to buy branded phones (probably) and a load of other football-related madness (we expect the World Cup song to be pre-loaded on every handset between now and then).

What might be of more interest is the company's pledge to bring football-related content to its customers, which will probably be delivered by some decent streaming options or in the form of highlights packages to download.

Which in turn would hint at some larger screened media powerhouses from the Japanese-Swedish company.

Marketing fun

Or, you can read the same thing we just wrote, but in fun marketing-speak from Lennard Hoornik, Sony Ericsson's vice president and head of global marketing:

"The 2010 FIFA World Cup is one of the world's leading sporting events and is watched across the world by millions of fans. It will be these fans that we focus our engagement in football on; using our relationship with FIFA and our handsets to enable them to get closer to the game in new ways and enjoy the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

"We are looking forward to using our handsets to capture and share their football experiences."

Bated breath anyone?

HANNspree launches 28in Full HD TV

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

HANNspree has pipped many a major television manufacturer to the post by announcing a 28in TV with Full HD capabilities, the HT09.

The screen packs in 1,920 x 1,200 pixels on to a 16:10 screen ratio – so not quite perfect for widescreen viewing, but impressive nonetheless.

Connectivity is well-cared for, with 2x HDMI ports and 2x Scart inputs, as well as component, composite and VGA, while a 3ms response rate should counteract jitter from fast-moving imagery.

Audio bully

While this TV is a sound choice because of its Full HD visuals, it is let down on the audio side. With just two five-watt speakers, you will want to invest in extra audio enhancement before trying out the latest HD movies.

But don't let this put you off as the price is more-than reasonable, with the HT09 available now for just £279.99.

In Depth: The future of motoring

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:10:00 GMT

What does the future of motoring really look like? Will we be flying everywhere in our aerocars, just as they did in The Jetsons? And is the idea of Marty McFly and his time-travelling DeLorean not as far-fetched as you might think?

The future is now

Already, you can buy a Lexus that will park itself, there is a Mercedes with a night vision display, and BMW has built a car that runs on hydrogen. That's not to mention the wacky concept cars manufacturers constantly wheel out at the world's motor shows; at Paris last week Chevrolet unveiled the appropriately named Volt, an electric car with a 40-mile range and a back-up petrol generator if you do run out of juice.

What's coming next?

So if cars are this clever now, what are they going to be like 10, 20 or even 30 years' time?

Let's assume a typical journey in the future. Forget flying to work for a start; the infrastructure and technology is still a long way off; where would you park for instance and would you require a pilot's licence to take to the skies? And don't even get me started on the aerial traffic wardens!

Instead, you'll walk out of your hi-tech house and into your smart garage where your car has been charging all night – if you bought an electric version that is. Alternatively, you might want to replenish your biofuel or hydrogen car from the tank you had installed to brew your own fuel at home.

Lotus already has a prototype that runs on alcohol and produces no harmful emissions – but it won't see production because there isn't enough support for this technology in the UK. And US company Tesla has an electric sports car on the market that can hit 60mph in four seconds which you plug in at home. So the future is definitely green.

No more lost car keys

In this futuristic motoring utopia, keys will not be needed. To get into your car you will pass your index finger over a scanner on the door handle (you can currently buy an aftermarket fingerprint kit for your car that allows you to power it up), the door will open and you will slide into the driver's seat which, because it's the middle of winter, has been heating up for the past 20 minutes, as set by you via the on-board computer. In summer, fans will cool the cabin down before you get in.

Before you can start the engine, you will blow into an on-board breathalyser which, if it detects you are over the drink drive limit, will shut down your car until you are capable of driving again. Volvo's new XC60, out later this year, will be the first car to get an 'Alcolock' system (a £500 optional extra) which will transmit the results of your test by radio signal and prevent the car being started if you fail. Expect this to be a common safety feature in many cars in the future.

Take it with you

The brain of your onboard computer is in your pocket. Your smartphone, which will have all your favourite settings and media on its hard drive, will automatically connect with your car when you get in. It will analyse your mood and play appropriate music; soothing classics if you're stressed, lively upbeat jazz if you're feeling down.

The clever GPS sat nav will plot the least congested route to work, and it will take pictures along the way on a built-in camera as reference points to share with your friends and family. Satellite navigation will also be more accurate and less likely to direct you into a river or the wrong way down a motorway as the number of satellites in the sky grows.

Pay as you go

Pay-as-you-drive will replace road and fuel tax. One method of charging could be through the use of black boxes, which will record every journey you make and charge you per mile, the rate will depend on the time of day and the type of road travelled on. At the end of every month you will be sent a bill.

Norwich Union has already got a trial version of this in operation, and it is believed that this will be one of the key measures to reducing road deaths among younger drivers by charging them £1 a mile to drive after 11pm.

There will be a downside to this technology, though. Satellites will be able to record how fast you have been travelling, with the potential for the government to monitor speeders and send them automatic fines as well as add virtual points to their electronic driving licences.

And the investment required to build the infrastructure and call centres will be enormous; a feasibility study carried out by the Department for Transport suggests a national scheme could cost £62 billion.

So the future of motoring isn't quite as far-fetched as we would like. We won't all be in flying cars or being chauffeur driven in automated motors. But we will see an end to the conventional combustion engine in favour of greener technologies, the road network will change to a pay-per-mile type scheme, and new safety techs will make it even harder to crash and more unlikely that you will die in a car accident.

And if you don't like the sound of this, there's always the bus.

Read TechRadar's 10 life-saving car technologies

Manhunt 2 gets Halloween release date

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:02:00 GMT

Manhunt 2, Rockstar's controversial sequel to 2003's Manhunt, has finally been given a UK release date, more than a year after it was released in the US.

The game was suspended from launch in the UK and Ireland by its publisher TakeTwo after it failed to get a rating.

This rejection by the BBFC – and the subsequent court cases to reject the, er, rejection – meant that the game was indefinitely delayed, despite being available to buy in the US since 31 October 2008.

The game will now be released in the UK exactly a year after its US release, hitting British shelves this Halloween.

Decision overturned

The game was finally given a BBFC 18 rating back in March, after the Video Appeals Committee (VAC) overturned the decision to not give the game a rating – this was after some hefty modifications by Rockstar.

Quite why it has taken half a year to get the game into the UK is unknown, but it does mean that Wii, PS2 and PSP owners can finally satisfy their virtual blood-lust on the scariest day of the calendar.

Free satellite takes off in the UK

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:33:00 GMT

Free satellite services - such as the FreeSat service offered by the BBC and ITV, or BSkyB's option - have almost hit a million users according to the latest statistics.

Ofcom has announced a rise of 120,000 users compared to the same time last quarter, as regions of the UK gear up for the full digital switchover.

Life after Sky

The majority of these numbers are coming from BSkyB or other retailers, showing that a large amount of digital users are continuing to use their Sky dish after they decide to stop paying a subscription for the service.

In the last quarter, around 60,000 FreeSat units were sold in the UK alone, with this number set to rise as consumer education grows and HD options begin to be rolled out.

The report also mentioned that nearly nine out of 10 households have digital TV on their main set, news which will please those trying to help make the country aware that a full digital switchover is imminent.

Airport 'face scanners' pose security threat

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:18:00 GMT

It was meant to be the next step in airport security, but the trial of face scanning technology at Manchester Airport has run into a whole host of problems.

The main worry is that the scanning machines allow two people in on just one passport with the system.

This flaw was found out when a security guard followed one passenger through and no alarm was sounded.

The security breaches were found by the Daily Telegraph newspaper, which has been speaking to a source in the UK Border Agency (UKBA).

Serious security problem

"This is a massive loophole and a serious problem for security," said the source.

"It should certainly sound an alarm if there are two people trying to come through at the same time. It could lead to widespread immigration abuse and compromise the efficiency of immigration control.

"One particular concern is that it could be exploited by child traffickers, because it won't pick up if you have a child on your back."

Another worry is how regularly the machines break down. The five scanners in Manchester are all linked up, so when one breaks down, it seems that they all do.

Live trial

The UK Border Agency source continued his rant to the Telegraph, saying: "This is a live trial, and that is dangerous because a six-month trial is long enough for plenty of problems to happen. Only one in 20 of the admissions to the UK through the new machine will be examined by an immigration officer.

"If someone manages to get through without being seen and they are someone an immigration officer has suspicions about, it will be too late. They'll be in Britain."

The face scanners were set up almost two months ago in Manchester. The technology has got the backing from Home Secretary Jacqui Smith who has called for the scanners to be a "ring of security" for the UK and its borders.

Firefox Mobile coming 'in a few weeks'

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:14:00 GMT

Firefox Mobile, the handset-friendly version of the open-source internet browser, could be coming within the next few weeks, according to Mozilla's CEO John Lilly.

He spoke to the San Jose Mercury News recently, in an interview published by Linux Insider, and he said tests of the software would be debuting shortly:

"We want to make sure that the web on mobile is more like the web than what the mobile industry offers today, which is closed, separate networks and not a very good information-getting experience for the user.

"The first thing is to bring Firefox to mobile devices. We're working on that, and we'll see some alphas in a few weeks."

Chrome

He also spoke of the effect Google's new browser, Chrome, might have on Firefox's effectiveness, as the two programs are now effectively competing.

"I would say we have very good relationship with Google. Google has done a lot to make the web better and to make information more accessible. Some of the components of Firefox are shared with some of the components of Chrome.

"I'm not sure 'competing' is the right word. It's not the way I think about it. We're trying to make something that provides a good experience for people, and they are too."

97% of UK scared about their personal data

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:04:00 GMT

A staggering 97 per cent of British consumers are not sure that companies take enough care with their personal data - leaving them open to identity theft and fraud.

Research released to coincide with the start of the horribly named but very important National Identity Fraud Prevention Week (NIFPW) suggests that nearly everybody is worried about how their personal data is handled.

But perhaps even more worrying is the fact that 92 per cent of people feel that their own employer may not be able to keep customers' personal data safe.

Awareness

Identity fraud is a massive and growing danger in the online world – and NIFPW is aiming to raise awareness of the problems that losing your personal data can cause.

With the right information, people could find that fraudsters set up credit cards, buy goods and even send out spam emails in their name – leaving an enormous mess behind and potential financial hardship for the innocent victim.

More information about the week can be found at http://www.stop-idfraud.co.uk/

Giving us the Chiles

NIFPW have picked out the BBC's Adrian Chiles as their figurehead for this year (we don't know what the selection criteria was either - perhaps Christine Bleakley was too busy with Strictly Come Dancing) - and he outlined the dangers in a chilling Black Country accent.

"Britain's businesses have come a long way in protecting employees and customers from identity fraud," commented Adrian Chiles.

"Yet, while many have introduced stringent identity fraud prevention policies, more than a fifth of businesses in the UK still don't have comprehensive strategies in place."

DSi won't be a replacement for DS Lite

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:07:00 GMT

Nintendo of America's Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Cammie Dunaway, has said that the new DSi will sit on the shelves next to the current DS Lite as she thinks "there's an opportunity for both of them to coexist for some period of time."

In an interview with Wired.com, she thinks the DS Lite still has a lot of untapped potential, so the two devices, with the new DSi packing a lot more media features, will not compete directly with each other.

Potential

She pointed out that the US was still a big potential market for the DS Lite, as unlike the Japanese, who have one handset for every two households, US consumers are only currently averaging one in five.

She also pointed out that the new DSi devices were likely to continue with the same price premium in Japan compared to the US, though no mention of how the prices will compare in Europe.

"I don't know what the pricing is going to be here [in the US], but certainly it is going to be a premium over what our current DS is priced at," said Dunaway.

In Depth: 12 groups that hate the internet

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:03:00 GMT

We love the internet, but not everyone seems to share our enthusiasm. Some people hate it because it has destroyed their business models. Some hate it because people slag them off online. And some hate it because they're crazed totalitarian nutcases. Let's find out who they are.

Actors

Harrison Ford isn't keen on the web: "I hate the internet," he said, adding "any kind of rubbish goes on the internet and it can have a fucking life of its own." He's not the only one: while promoting Leatherheads, George Clooney mocked "a thousand people sitting in dark rooms trashing you… you're like, 'wow, dude!'" Then he tried to smash the internet with a hammer. We made that last bit up.

High street shops

In 2005, the boss of HMV dismissed the internet as an irrelevance. In 2006, he resigned after competition from cheap online shops and download services wiped out HMV's profits. Now, the world's biggest music retailer isn't HMV, or any high street chain, it's Apple.

The internet hasn't just ruined music retailing. Online shopping and price checking services have forced all kinds of retailers to slash their profit margins just to stay in business – and many of them still didn't make it. Things will only get worse for the high street as the internet moves to our mobiles and tells us when there's a better deal next door.

Hollywood studios

Before the internet, studios could release any old bobbins and make a fortune. Now, spies in focus groups and leaks from insiders can kill the buzz on a movie before it's even finished, and file sharers are trading blockbusters on the day of release. The studios' attitude to the internet is like Robert De Niro's attitude to Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents: gritted-teeth acceptance rather than joyous love.

The Church of Scientology

The famously litigious not-a-cult-honest-guv spends a lot of time chasing internet leaks and online criticism. We'd say more, but as we discovered a few months back, they know where we live. Eek!

Pop stars

Prince sues fans for uploading their own images, Elton John wants the internet shut down for a few years because it's destroying good music and Roger Daltrey feels "about as useful as a pork chop in a synagogue with all this internet bollocks… go out. Get a life". We'll just gently point out that all three internet-hating gentlemen are, ahem, somewhat past their sell-by dates.

The RIAA

To paraphrase The Sixth Sense: "I sue dead people!" And grannies!"

Tabloid newspapers

Maybe it's because the internet is killing the classified ads that keep their local papers in business, or maybe it's just that their readers fear anything that's happened since 1956. Either way, the result is that a number of newspapers go out of their way to find negative things to say about the internet and never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Metallica

Although technically pop stars, the ageing metal millionaires deserve a category to themselves: as if attempting to nobble Napster and inadvertently making file sharing even more popular wasn't enough, they're still whingeing about the internet – this time, because it lets fans listen to their new album and tell one another that it sounds rotten.

ISPs

Internet service providers and phone companies have a love-hate relationship with the internet: on the one hand they'd like us to use the internet, but on the other they'd prefer us not to use it too much – because if we do, they'll have to spend a fortune on upgrading their networks and bandwidth capacity. Hence bandwidth caps, insane mobile access charges, 'fair use' policies and the whole net neutrality debate.

The Iranian government

According to Reporters Without Borders, the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "is so little able to bear criticism that even an ironic article about his bodyguards' dogs earned one blogger, Reza Validazeh, two weeks in jail in December 2007". High-speed connections have been banned since 2006, most external content is censored and websites have to be registered with the government.

The Chinese government

When it comes to hating the internet, the Chinese government are the experts: not only do they crack down on free speech and prevent people from seeing anything they don't approve of, but they've persuaded Western giants such as Google and Yahoo! to go along with them. Reporters Without Borders routinely highlights China in its annual Internet Enemies list, and notes that "The country is already the world's largest prison for cyber-dissidents."

The UK government

We're not as bad as China or Iran, but our government is still rather keen on using the internet to keep tabs on the entire population. In Privacy International's list of surveillance societies, the UK is in the same 'black' category as those bastions of freedom, Russia and Singapore.

RealDVD copy service suspended

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:27:00 GMT

RealNetworks has been told by a judge to stop selling its software RealDVD. The program allows users to rip movies from DVDs and store them on hard drives.

Even though the company is claiming to be the owners of the world's-first legal application to do this job, RealNetworks has been under pressure by movie studios to stop producing the software.

So much so, a lawsuit was filed by the Motion Picture Association of America late last week against the company, citing violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Currently unavailable

The shutdown of RealDVD is a temporary one. A judge asked for RealNetworks to suspend distribution of the software until Tuesday, to allow for the time needed to review all the paperwork related to the case.

At this moment, if you log on to the RealDVD website, you get a 'RealDVD is currently unavailable' notice.

Sega reveals new gaming handset

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:00:00 GMT

Sega has decided that enough is enough and has delved back into the hardware market. Though those expecting the next MegaDrive will be disappointed, as it's nothing more than a bog-standard PMP, the Sega Vision.

Most of you will remember the days when Sega was the great lord of gaming, with the DreamCast set to herald in a new era of gaming fun.

But the new Vision seems to be a Chinese electronics manufacturer taking the Sega name and popping it on a device that can play MP4, some form of games, and TV via the built-in tuner.

E-book

In fairness, it can also take photos and video, record your voice and let you read e-books, but not a lot of people do that on dedicated e-book readers yet, so it's unlikely they'll bother on a PMP.

The Register Hardware is reporting Sega as saying the device will be coming to the UK early next year, so start getting excited now. The same site also shows a pic of the device in a London gaming centre... so start scouring the arcades now if you can't wait until 2009.

MySpace Music passes the billion song mark

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:45:00 GMT

MySpace Music was launched Stateside just over a week ago (25 September), yet the service has already announced that over a billion songs have been streamed on the site.

This impressive number systematically proves that the company's paid-by advertising module is working.

Music streaming

"We're extremely pleased with the launch of MySpace Music," said the company in a statement. "We've hit some incredible milestones in only a few days – some of the numbers you're reading about are already out of date.

"We can confirm that we hit a milestone of one billion music streams in only a few days after launching the new product.

"However, because this number may be inflated by the high profile launch and accompanying promotional push, we will be looking to our metrics on engagement and unique users, which will tell a much richer story on how positively the community is responding to the new music experience."

MySpace Music is a joint music venture that is yet to be launched in the UK. The major labels have an equity state in the business, which means that music can be streamed on demand.

Advertising pays for the streaming, and any revenue is split among MySpace and its partners.

Projection and HD in a mobile phone!

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:36:00 GMT

As if actually calling people while not being tethered to the wall (the phone, not you) wasn't enough for some people, the mystical phone manufacturers of this world have only gone and stuffed a projector and HD images in a mobile handset.

Well, it's only concept models at the moment, but KDDI and NTT DoCoMo have finally shrunk mobile projection technology down to the size of a huge battery, and Samsung has gone all OLED crazy again and put HD images on a mobile phone screen.

The projection unit, shown at CEATEC 2008, is able to throw an image from the handset onto a wall at up to 50in screen size.

It seems the contrast ratio is so poor that the handset only shows images well in the dark, so if you're a nocturnal businessman with a penchant for devices bigger than they were in the 80s, then start getting excited.

HD in a mobile?

Samsung's offering was a little bit more aesthetically pleasing, though not really any more useful.

A mobile screen sized 240 x 800 with 16.7 million colours and a contrast ratio of 100,000:1 is certainly approaching HD quality in a mobile, and apparently it's going to get even higher in the near future, up to 1,000,000:1.

Combined with amazing picture performance and quality, this certainly is a beautiful looking display... but surely more than would ever be needed in a mobile phone?

Anyway, the prototypes emerging from this year's CEATEC are at least encouraging and interesting, if not ideal solutions in the short term.

Google Yahoo tie-up put on hold

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:11:00 GMT

Google and Yahoo's controversial decision to form a search advertising partnership has been put on hold by the two companies.

With the US Department of Justice keen to hold talks with both Google and Yahoo over a deal which has been slated by rivals as anti-competitive, the partnership will remain in limbo for the time being.

"The companies have agreed to a brief delay in implementing this agreement to continue our ongoing discussions with the (U.S.) Department of Justice," Yahoo said in a statement.

"We have had discussions with regulators and look forward to responding to their questions about this agreement."

Google

Google added: "When we announced our advertising agreement with Yahoo in June we agreed to delay its implementation until October to give regulators time to look at the details.

"As we are still in conversation with the Department of Justice (DoJ) we have agreed to a brief delay in implementing the agreement while those discussions continue."

The use of the word brief in both statements is indicative of the companies' expectations of launching the service within October – although neither will want to draw the wrath of the DoJ.

In the United States, Google and Yahoo hold 88.6 per cent of the search market – 63 per cent and 19.6 per cent respectively – with Microsoft a distant third on 8.3 per cent

This has inevitably raised major concerns over the lack of competition in search advertising should Google team up with Yahoo.

Search specialist Ask given a facelift

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:45:00 GMT

Search specialist Ask has unveiled the newest version of its homepage insisting that it offers faster, more relevant searches – with a UK version arriving on 20 October.

Ask, formerly Ask Jeeves before it killed off its butler logo, has put its new site live in the US as it looks to wrest back some of the search market from industry giant Google.

Cesar Mascaraque, European Managing Director of Ask.com said: "It's our business to give answers. But this time we were asking the question: How did our users want us to improve? And they were very clear.

Faster, more productive

"They told us they wanted faster, more relevant answers in an enjoyable and simple user interface. We listened, and now we've delivered the best possible search experience on the web."

"This relaunch of Ask.com is the spearhead of a series of plans for growth and brand enhancements that we look forward to announcing over the coming months."

A forcible redirect to a UK version means that it is difficult to see the new tech in action until 20 October, but a quick browse to http://us.ask.com may give an earlier glimpse.

In truth, it's going to be an uphill battle for Ask in the UK, where the dominance of Google as the primary search engine pushed out many competitors – especially with both MSN and Yahoo sweeping up much of the remainder.

However, according to Neilsen, Ask had 6.9 million unique users between in July – which apparently makes it the 13th largest internet brand in the UK with a reach of 25.6 per cent of the internet population.

In Depth: How one man created his own universe

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:00:00 GMT

Computer applications shouldn't make you feel godly; that's a domain usually reserved for gaming.

Universe Sandbox isn't a game, yet we feel a million feet tall and can shoot moons out of our fingertips. As experiences go, that's unique. The fact that we recently smashed two distinct galaxies together to see what happened (a boiling mess of stars and obliterated matter, if you're wondering) is neither here nor there.

The simulation

The word 'sandbox' is frequently bandied around, often without the required clarity. We're sick of seeing 'physics sandboxes' that consist of nothing more than a basic physics engine and some cubes. The next time someone describes a generic open-world game as a 'sandbox', we shall scream.

Construction-heavy Second Life, perhaps; Built-for-you GTA, no. Which is why we're a little conflicted when it comes to Universe Sandbox.

It's not a big scientific application, you see. You won't find every strand of complicated physics replicated in this copy of the universe. There's no General Theory of Relativity, which essentially ensures that none of us will be relying on it's asteroid impact predictions to save us from exploding sky death.

It seems more like a toy designed so that easily stimulated minds like ours could bash a couple of universes together and giggle with childish glee. The author, Dan Dixon, admits on his website that the code isn't entirely stellar – while it makes use of Newtonian physics, it's a "brute force n-body algorithm" which does most of the work – but there are so many variables in the universe that true simulation would be impossible. That such a high-level sim can occur on such little processor overhead is, therefore, remarkable.

Made to measure

Development has progressed steadily over a number of years. "Fifteen years ago in high school I came across a very simple gravity simulator and decided to write my own," Dixon told PC Plus magazine. "With some help from my Dad, who also inspired my love of astronomy, I wrote a very simple simulator back in 1993. I revised this idea in 1997 and created the first 3D version in 2000. Older and wiser, I began working with the idea again in 2007 but this time I kept going."

Universe Sandbox seems to have benefited from this loose development structure – unconstrained by a concrete plan, Dan Dixon just let his enthusiasm drive the project along. "I would add a feature, get it working, and then move to something else. There was never a specific plan: I was just making something that I wanted to play with. And I discovered that others wanted to play with it too."

And why does Dixon feel the project is so appealing? "I've always been interested in the fascinating motion [generated] from such simple maths," he says. "Yet unlike fractals, which are less tangible, the maths behind gravity is so clearly epic and beautiful."

Tweaking reality

As a teaching aid, we can't think of much better. Showing your audience the movement and relative size of the solar system will certainly be an eye-opener under the auspices of Universe Sandbox's crisp, anaglyphic 3Dcapable graphics engine, as will lining up the bodies in the solar system in size order then having them career into the sun.

Universe Sandbox is full of entertaining demos and effects that put you in the middle of some fairly improbable situations. "Most of the 'Fun things to Do' activities are simulations that I created to entertain myself and my brother," says Dixon. "I really like playing with particles while wearing 3D anaglyphic glasses. I'll often find myself adding rings around bodies and then introducing massive planets to twist and distort the rings into strange, organic shapes."

Replacing the sun with a supermassive black hole only to see everything from Mercury to random Kuiper Belt objects get sucked into its gargantuan mass is indeed rather satisfying, although it does remind us of Universe Sandbox's sometimes cunning methodology.

A Black Hole in this case is a huge star with enormous gravity rather than a new object with different properties. Rings around planets are simulated by weightless, collision-free particles rather than fully simulated microscopic chunks of ice.

A star is a star is a star – while you can change specific gravities and densities, there's no physical distinction between a sun-like star and a brown dwarf. But it could easily be argued that adding such things would be detrimental to the overall effect; if one can simulate a black hole by building an enormous, physics-defying star, why go through the extra computational effort required to build an accurate simulation?

"There's still lots of room for improving the algorithms, which would improve the efficiency and speed of the program," says Dixon, "but the end result isn't going to be very obvious to the end users, so it's a lower priority than other features."

One man army

Perhaps the most impressive feature of Universe Sandbox has nothing to do with the software itself; it's that such a professional chunk of code could come from just one person. It can't be an easy task, surely? Dan Dixon explains,

"I left my job as an Associate Producer in the video game industry because of my dissatisfaction with the game I was working on. Even though Universe Sandbox isn't earning enough to justify the amount of time that I dedicate to the project, it's pretty easy to work on something I love." Love is one thing; making an independent distribution model work is quite another.

"My 'pay what you think it's worth' payment model has been an interesting experiment," says Dixon. "It's worked better than I expected. I'm realising this could become my full time gig." Dixon reckons he spends anywhere from 20 to 80 hours a week on Universe Sandbox-related activities, which includes everything from coding to answering emails.

Even if it wasn't presented so professionally or it hadn't turned out to be such brilliant fun, we'd still be applauding Universe Sandbox. It's a perfect example of programming ingenuity taking precedence over painstaking high-end simulation.

One of the built-in examples shows you the devastating effect the explosion of the Death Star had on planet Endor; if that doesn't encapsulate Universe Sandbox's underground ethos, we really don't know what does.

First published in PC Plus Issue 274

In Depth: Working in a virtual world

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:00:00 GMT

The use of virtual worlds and genuine 3D interfaces for anything other than fun and frolics has been a long time coming.

Granted, virtual worlds such as Second Life get an awful lot of media coverage, but until recently they remained a niche activity, even among the gaming community.

However, thanks to years of research by Intel and a collaborative effort with a specialist company known as Qwaq, 3D visual metaphors in general and virtual worlds in particular are becoming the latest business productivity tools, used for all kinds of collaborative work, from conferences and training sessions to work groups and project management.

The story of Intel's involvement in 3D interface and collaboration technology is actually rather convoluted. To make sense of it all, PC Plus met up with Intel's Cindy Pickering at the recent IDF conference in San Francisco. According to Pickering, it all started in the late 1990s with a project known as Miramar in which Intel Architecture Labs was investigating the use of 3D metaphors as alternatives to conventional, fl at 2D workspaces.

3D multitasking

The research began by observing how client PC users coped with complex multitasking and then studying the effects of adding a third dimension to the user interface. "Going back and forth between lots of windows introduces a lot of task overhead. Having that third dimension allows you to put things aside in a different way that means they're still visually available, but without dominating the virtual workspace," Pickering explains.

In simple terms, Miramar represents documents as thumbnail previews floating in space. Through the use of 3D space, complex relationships between files and documents – as well as concepts such as context and recency – can be maintained and grasped rapidly by users. The screenshot below is an example of a typical Miramar setup.

Despite the project providing some fascinating insight and feedback – and partly because typical Client PCs in the late 1990s and early 2000s simply didn't have enough performance to render detailed 3D scenes in real time – Miramar was effectively shelved after several years of ongoing development.

Until, that is, Intel Research Group began looking at software tools for collaborative business environments. Enter Cindy Pickering and a group of researchers known as the Virtual Collaboration Team. Pickering and her colleagues were researching the issues surrounding collaboration software for globally distributed organisations such as Intel.

While the early days of the Miramar project were largely focused on individual productivity, this new effort was investigating ways that the PC could be used to make team and project work more efficient within an organisation as large as Intel.

Sheer geographical distance and varying time zones can obviously present barriers to effective collaboration, but even when all members of a given work group are based in the same location, getting together can be tricky. Meeting rooms must often be booked in advance and the shared nature of resources means that a work group must completely pack up and remove its kit at the end of meetings.

"The early prototype we came up with was a little like an interactive business card," Pickering says. The idea was to allow team members to interact expressively. Each member's 'card' contained an image or video, contact information, current location, personal biography and project status.

In fact, it was a bit like a business-oriented version of Facebook. But that was just the beginning. "We were also exploring the notion of a virtual meeting space," explains Pickering. The space wouldn't just enable individuals to meet in real time; it would also allow members to use the space asynchronously, share pieces of work in progress, and provide a persistent space for a given project or work group.

It was at this point that Miramar was dusted off and put back to work. The Intel team also wanted to explore ways of bringing their work to market.

This led them to a company called Qwaq, which specialises in virtual worlds for enterprise collaboration. An agreement was signed in 2007 and what was once Miramar now appears as an optional extension for the Qwaq platform, though currently only in beta and alpha form.

Virtual workspace

To demonstrate exactly how Miramar and Qwaq fit together, Pickering gave PC Plus magazine a live demo of the combined platform.

Superficially, the Qwaq collaboration application looks like a rather dated 3D game interface. Imagine something slightly below the graphical fidelity of a game such as Counter- Strike circa 2001, and you'll get the idea. Each user is represented by a configurable 3D avatar and can navigate the environment much as you would in a first-person action game courtesy of mouse and keyboard commands.

Users define the layout of any given virtual workspace, so there are no hard and fast rules. However, there's typically a central room with a spawn point, in front of which is usually a virtual shelf that houses various introductory worksheets informing new arrivals of the purpose and content of the workspace. The rooms are often decorated and populated much as a real workspace might be, with furniture, plants and various paraphernalia relating to life at work and home.

Additional topic or theme-specific 'break-out' rooms – as well as areas for more casual communication – are also common. The real interactivity begins with all-encompassing spatial audio. Using headsets or built-in laptop microphones, users can approach each other and communicate much as they would in the physical world. Webcams are also supported if video communication is desired.

Information transfer

All of which is hardly rocket science, but here's where the clever stuff starts. Around the circumference of the room are interactive whiteboards. These whiteboards support a wide range of applications that can be dragged and dropped directly from users' desktops. Everyone in the virtual space can then view, manipulate and edit them.

Office documents, PDFs, web pages and videos can all be dropped into the environment for everybody to see and share. The whiteboards also support freehand scribbling or drawing. Below each one is a tray that serves as a document store.

For relatively simple groups of documents, the whiteboard and tray mechanism works fine. However, for more complicated projects involving many documents with complex relationships and hierarchies, something a little more sophisticated is required. That something is Miramar.

It's represented in the environment by an object known as a pedestal. This is essentially a recognisable projection of the 3D Miramar 'space' on a smaller scale that serves as a portal or doorway to the full Miramar interface. Users simply walk through the pedestal to Miramar.

"Overall, it's a persistent, dedicated space that maintains context and allows users to come and go as they please, pick things up where they left off and work both together and as individuals," explains Pickering. All of which sounds extremely useful. But is the virtual world metaphor actually anything more than a fancy gimmick? Can real-time rendered pot plants and bitmapped wallpaper really help teams of skilled professionals increase their productivity?

Actually, yes. One way to understand the benefits of a detailed environment is to imagine a virtual world composed of largely uniform or featureless spaces. In that scenario, remembering the location of projects or individual documents becomes extremely difficult when the complexity increases.

However, in a more detailed virtual environment, objects can be located metaphorically. "I left the latest edit of the research budget on the whiteboard near the research break-out room," a user might think. This method is analogous to memory association techniques, which can be extremely effective for learning everything from arbitrary lists to people's names.

What's more, the Qwaq platform is being used today by some of the largest and best-known companies in the world, including BP and Intel itself. Of course, this kind of virtual space isn't limited to work groups. A wide variety of activities take place in the virtual environment, including seminars, training and even presentations to clients.

First published in PC Plus Issue 274

Sony says PS3 sales way ahead of target

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 07:33:00 GMT

The business of selling games consoles is so much about projecting confidence and inspiring gamers to invest in a particular platform it's no surprise to see Sony continuing to talk up its hardware.

In spite of the recent news that Microsoft's Xbox 360 has overtaken the PS3 in the key battleground of Japan, Sony's Jack Tretton says it and the PSP are selling far better than planned.

Ahead of the game

In fact, the CEO of SCEA says sales of the PlayStation models are 30 per cent ahead of what Sony had anticipated.

Tretton explained: "We are tracking at 100 per cent up over last year ... about 30 per cent ahead of where we should be. So sales could slow down and we will still hit our number."

It's the economy, stupid

He believes the inclusion of a Blu-ray player in the PS3 has made it an attractive proposition and also that economic hard times have also made it a good prospect:

"I think people are going to question every dollar that they spend, but they are going to look for value in return. The entertainment value ... with PlayStation 3 compares very favourably to other entertainment choices."

In other words, it might be expensive, but the PS3 will keep you stuck in front of the telly and away from the hideously costly real world longer than any rivals can. We think we see what he means.

In Depth: Has Microsoft lost it?

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 07:30:00 GMT

On the face of it, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Gordon Brown don't have much in common.

One is a plain speaking, unpretentious, horny-handed son of toil who, after what seemed like an eternity, took over the top job from his best friend – only to find himself in charge of a crumbling empire with no clear direction, declining popularity and endless media coverage of his smoother, more stylish rival. The other is the Prime Minister.

The comparison isn't as bizarre as it might seem. With the departure of Bill Gates, Ballmer has inherited a Microsoft whose position looks much less secure than it did in the Gates era. Despite massive spending on search, Microsoft's market share is dwarfed by Google. It's outflanked in entertainment and mobile computing by Apple, it's losing browser market share to Firefox, and Silverlight is barely scratching Adobe's Flash.

The 'Wow' marketing campaign for Vista has been replaced with the more desperate 'if you try it, you might not hate it' Mojave campaign, and mini-PCs – one of the few PC sectors that hasn't stagnated – are sticking with Windows XP. Even Office, Microsoft's cash cow, is under attack from free and open source rivals.

So has Ballmer inherited a poisoned chalice? Has Microsoft lost it? And if it has, can it find it again?

Cracks appearing

Microsoft is still making enormous sums of money, but cracks are appearing in its $16billion Windows business. The death of XP has been postponed several times – the current rash of ultra-small, ultra-cheap laptops don't have the horsepower to run Vista – and while Microsoft claims to have sold 180 million Vista licences, many of those licences are for machines running XP.

As Jane Bradburn of HP Australia told reporters in July, "From 30 June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with an XP licence. However, what we have been able to do [is] to ship PCs with a Vista business licence but with XP pre- loaded. That is still the majority of business PCs we are selling today."

There's no compelling reason for users to upgrade: Vista requires more powerful hardware than XP, and it's been plagued by driver problems and incompatibilities. As a result, it's faced an avalanche of bad publicity – some of it deservedly so, as users found that their devices didn't work.

The bad publicity isn't helping enterprise adoption. According to Forrester analyst Ben Gray, "Desktop operations professionals tell Forrester that they see the value in standardising on Vista, but many are having a hard time convincing their CIOs that the move isn't a risky bet, given the mixed reaction it's received in the press and the speculation surrounding what to expect after Vista." Forrester reports that 8.8 per cent of enterprise customers have migrated to Vista; 87 per cent are still running XP.

The 'mixed reaction' has been a gift for Apple, whose 'Mac vs PC' campaign mocked Microsoft ruthlessly. The ads worked: according to BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman, "More than 50 per cent of customers buying Macs in Apple stores are first time buyers."

Fixing Vista

Microsoft doesn't normally acknowledge its competitors, but in July, Steve Ballmer used the A-word in a company-wide memo. "In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30 to one," he wrote. "But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving."

That's something of an understatement. Apple is now the third biggest computer manufacturer in the US and the sixth biggest worldwide, with a US market share of 8.5 per cent – compared to two per cent in 1996. While the PC market grew 4.2 per cent in the last year, Mac sales are up by 38 per cent. It has 17.2 per cent of the UK educational PC market and its iPhone came from nowhere to grab 27 per cent of the American smartphone market.

Ballmer thinks Microsoft can learn from Apple. "They are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience," he told staff. "We're changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises."

It's a rather cryptic comment, but it makes sense when you compare the out-of-the-box experience of an Apple computer with that of a Vista PC. Apple's control over hardware means that there are no device driver issues or incompatibilities – the famed 'it just works' approach – and the Mac desktop isn't stuffed with trial programs and ISP icons, often termed 'crapware'. Essentially, Microsoft wants PCs to be more Mac-like.

During Microsoft's Financial Analysts Meeting in July, Bill Veghte from the Windows group explained: "We worked with [OEMs] to do what we call the Windows Vista Velocity Program... a very extensive set of tests to measure everything from reliability to security to compatibility, boot time and so on. We ran over 280 systems through that process and you're starting to see the results of that in the market today."

Ballmer elaborated: "You can take the same laptop, oftentimes, and pre-configure it one way – and you get almost instantaneous boot and fantastic battery life. If you pre-configure it with software in another way you get long boots and much less battery life. That kind of education, discussion, dialogue, we find our OEMs appreciate. It doesn't mean they always follow our advice... but some of our OEMs, I know, are going to step up and do a lot more to complete the end-to-end experience of software, hardware and so on. And that will be a great thing."

Microsoft is planning the same approach with smartphones. While Windows Mobile fell short of its target of 20 million licenses sold in a year, it still increased its global market share from 11 per cent to 13 per cent – but the iPhone is clearly gunning for enterprise customers, with version 2.0 of the phone's software delivering Exchange support and group policies to make it a much more business-friendly device.

Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn is reportedly manufacturing 800,000 units per week, and analysts predict sales of around 15 million iPhones in 2008 and 40 million in 2009 – a drop in the ocean compared to Nokia's 400-plus million units per year, but double what Windows Mobile is currently doing.

To fight back, Microsoft has it's new operating system Windows Mobile 7 – but that won't ship until at least 2009. In the meantime, the firm is addressing one of the key things that iPhones do better than Windows Mobile devices: web browsing. The next version of Windows Mobile's Internet Explorer will deliver full-screen browsing, Flash, Silverlight support and H.264 video compatibility. It should appear on handsets by late 2008.

Out of Office

Office is famously Microsoft's cash cow, but that cow's being chased around the field by open-source Office-a-likes and fast, flexible and free online office services. Microsoft's solution isn't to make Office free, but to change the way that it's sold to price-conscious customers.

US consumers can now subscribe to Equipt, a £35 per year service that delivers the OneCare security package, Live Mail, Messenger and Writer, Office Live Workspace – a web-based service for online file storage and sharing – and the full Office Home & Student Edition. Long-time Microsoft watcher Rob Enderle calls it "a transitional product".

As he explains: "One of the problems of moving to a new concept like cloud computing is that you have to move your code base and the market has to be ready for the move at the same time. This means that an entrenched firm has to create a transitional product with elements in both the old and the new in order to create time for the translation of the code base and to allow the installed base – in this case consumers – to make the switch to a new product." Enderle believes that Equipt is that product.

So what's next? The answer may be Live Mesh. Currently in early beta, Live Mesh at first looks like yet another file sharing service. However, the vision is much bigger. Microsoft sees Mesh facilitating easy, instant data sharing across devices and platforms, with the ability to control devices from any other device. For example, you might control a program on your home PC with your mobile phone or use a web-based desktop when you're on the move. It's not a Windows-only plan either.

Microsoft plans to make Live Mesh cross-browser, cross-platform and available for everything from consoles to printers. Live Mesh is Microsoft's answer to the current buzz about Software as a Service (SaaS), where applications – from word processing to Photoshop – are hosted on central servers and delivered via web browsers. Microsoft is betting that the future isn't SaaS, but Software and Services. If it's right, we'll still use traditional software, but Live Mesh will connect it to the cloud.

Silverlight, Microsoft's platform for web applications, has a crucial role to play here. Its 1.5 million daily downloads are impressive, albeit dwarfed by Flash's 98.8 per cent market share and installed base of 864 million machines, but its role in Live Mesh should dramatically boost adoption. It's likely to be the platform that brings Live Mesh not just to Windows and Internet Explorer, but also to Firefox, Macs and Nokias.

In another smart move, Microsoft has signed a deal with Google-owned DoubleClick to serve adverts on the Silverlight platform – something that will help persuade content publishers to take Silverlight seriously.

Silverlight's availability for Firefox is another sign that Microsoft recognises reality: while the resurrected IE team is making very good browsers that address IE's legacy of poor security and standards support, the firm knows that its days of near-100 per cent browser market share are long gone.

New seekers

Despite Microsoft's best efforts, its share of the search market is dismal. The latest figures from comScore show that Google has 61.5 per cent of the US search market and 75 per cent of the UK one, with Microsoft at 9.2 per cent in the US and 3.4 per cent in the UK. While those figures show a slight year-on-year improvement for Microsoft, it's clear from the figures that when people search, they generally Google.

Google's sheer dominance of the search market makes it a hard company to beat – a position that, rather ironically, Microsoft has been in once or twice over the years. As Microsoft's rivals know all too well, it's not enough to build a better mousetrap; you also need to persuade huge numbers of people to use it.

So is Google the Microsoft of search? Kevin Ryan is Vice President of Search Engine Strategies, the publisher of Search Engine Watch. "We have learned several things from the development of search over the last few years," he says. "Google definitely has the pole position in search in many areas of the world. Google's strategy of building small applications in an organic culture of development is working. A series of small acquisitions targeted and complementary has beaten the big 'buy and build' strategy. In other words, you don't build one mousetrap, you build a lot of little ones."

So what should Microsoft be concentrating on to become a market leader in search? "Gaining market share is difficult in this marketplace, but it always has been," Ryan says. "The strategy should not be 'become a leader in search'. The strategy should be 'build a culture of need fulfilment and become necessary'. Becoming necessary or irreplaceable will build the next need fulfilment category for gathering information and ipso facto the next leader in search."

In July, Steve Ballmer told analysts that search was a key part of Microsoft's future. "There's a $1trillion market being transformed. That is such a huge opportunity. We have to seize it." While Ballmer admitted that so far, Microsoft's spending in search hasn't resulted in huge returns, he noted that the spending was "tiny relative to our business" and offered a good ratio of risk versus return.

Search is taking money from its other businesses, but Ballmer is convinced that it's where Microsoft needs to be. "Search is ripe for innovation," Ballmer says, and his internal memo to Microsoft staff explains what he meant. "We'll introduce new approaches that move beyond a white page with 10 blue links to provide customers with a customised view of their world," he wrote. "This is a long-term battle for our company—and it's one we'll continue to fight with persistence and tenacity."

Microsoft search guru Satya Nadella told analysts that "we think we're as good as Google" when it comes to relevance, and that Microsoft intends to make search better still by understanding user intent, offering cashback via Live Search, putting Live Search on popular sites such as Facebook, increasing the size of Live Search's index and improving relevance still further.

Another key area is marketing. As Ballmer put it: "Google doesn't have to. We do." Veteran Microsoft observer Joe Wilcox of Microsoft Watch agrees. "Google's dominance isn't assured," he writes. "Microsoft needs to keep pushing the technological boundaries and more aggressively market, market, market Windows Live Search. Microsoft, don't just sell advertising – buy it."

Microsoft, says Ballmer, will "re-invent the user model and business model. It's harder for the market leader to do this." However, as Silicon Alley Insider notes, "The market leader can sit back, watch others innovate and steal the good ideas. Microsoft used to be great at this... what do you think Google will do if it sees something it likes? Copy it. Immediately. Before users change [their] habits."

That's entertainment

Microsoft's entertainment portfolio looks decidedly mixed. The Xbox 360 has done very well, but the Zune music player is an also-ran and Microsoft's attempts to rival iTunes have been less than impressive.

Windows Mediapowered download shops have barely dented iTunes, which is now the US's biggest music retailer. Realising that selling songs that don't work on iPods means missing out on most of the market, retailers are increasingly dumping Windows Media to sell unprotected MP3s instead. Windows Media still has a role to play in digital music, but only in music subscription services.

Nick Thomas is the European Media Analyst for Jupiter Research. "Apple's success with the iPod has been to build an ecosystem around software, content partnerships and hardware, making its profits from the hardware," he says. "Microsoft doesn't have the content experience to build a compelling aggregated rival to iTunes and doesn't have the experience of hardware manufacturing (Xbox aside) on a scale to compete with the iPod."

As Thomas notes, the Xbox 360 has done rather better – partly because it beat the PlayStation 3 to market and partly because Microsoft created a very credible console for serious gamers. However, PS3 sales are catching up fast and Nintendo's Wii already outsells both consoles. "Sony's PS3 and the Nintendo Wii are competing on different fronts.

The PS3's Blu-ray compatibility gives it additional appeal to potential buyers who enjoy both games and movies, and will benefi t from the marketing push for Blu-ray titles in the all-important Christmas season." Microsoft tried to do the same with the Xbox, but backed the wrong horse: the now-defunct HD-DVD.

"Nintendo has taken the console market into whole new areas beyond core users," Thomas says. "Families and female users who would not have considered either an Xbox or a PS3 have bought a Wii to play Wii Fit, among other titles. Microsoft has been publicly dismissive of the Wii, seeing it as just a stepping stone en route to a 'proper' console like the Xbox, but given the relative sales of the two machines, that comes across as arrogance or sour grapes – or both. They say the Xbox is being positioned as a more family-friendly console, but their major games titles are generally more hardcore shoot-em-ups than mainstream family-friendly titles."

There are some areas in which the Xbox excels, though. Xbox Live, its networked gaming and media service, has been a huge success – something that Sony has thus far failed to emulate. Come autumn, Live will play a key part in a major update to the Xbox, a new interface that essentially gives every Xbox owner a new console for free. The update will introduce Wii-style avatars and a new emphasis on video content in an attempt to reposition the console as a fully fl edged home entertainment system.

Nick Thomas suggests that Microsoft's move into Xbox video downloads has been a qualified success, particularly in the US – although the available catalogue is much smaller than Apple's iTunes. However, the lack of BBC's iPlayer, which is available on the Nintendo, is a big omission in the UK:

"Xbox's lack of a web browser – and according to some, a too-aggressive negotiating position regarding branding – means that the Xbox isn't able to offer its users access to the iPlayer." That said, "The partnership with Netflix in the US points to partnerships with retailers as a way to expand their offering... but again there are mixed messages coming from Xbox. Some execs seem unconvinced by the appeal of the console as a media device, preferring to focus only on games. Building on those content partnerships, whether it's games or videos, will be crucial to Microsoft moving forward – but for music, it's surely far too late for them to be a player."

Uh-oh or 2.0?

So has Microsoft lost it? A company with 93 per cent of the worldwide operating system market, rising revenues, a $60billion turnover and around $22.49billion in operating income is hardly struggling. However, the world in which Microsoft operates is changing dramatically, and Microsoft knows it.

In its latest report to investors, the "risk factors" section notes that "our competitors range in size from Fortune 100 companies to small, specialised single-product businesses and open-source community-based projects. Open-source software vendors are devoting considerable efforts to developing software that mimics the features and functionality of our products."

Microsoft is fighting back on multiple fronts. It's "developing versions of our products with basic functionality that are sold at lower prices than standard versions", but more importantly it's chucking enormous sums of money at things that may or may not work.

"We make significant investments in new products and services that may not be profitable. We may not achieve significant revenue from new product and service investments for a number of years, if at all. Moreover, new products and services may not be profitable, and even if they are profitable, [margins] may not be as high as the margins we have experienced historically."

To many observers, the way in which Microsoft's online division is haemorrhaging cash is a sign that Microsoft has missed the boat – but the 'let's throw money at this until it works' approach has worked in the past for Windows, Office, Internet Explorer and Xbox, none of which were immediately successful. Microsoft may not be the leader in search, cloud computing or mobile phones, but the combination of determination and deep pockets is a powerful one.

As Steve Ballmer told Microsoft staff in July: "Nobody is better than we are. Nobody works harder than we do. Nobody is more tenacious than we are. We're investing more broadly and more seriously than anybody else. Our opportunities to change the world have never been greater."

First published in PC Plus Issue 274

Now get the lowdown on Windows 7

In Depth: 20 ways to speed up your Mac

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Computing power has increased massively over recent years, and for Mac users the switch to Intel processors brought new heights of speed and performance to even the most entry-level Macs.

Thanks to the longevity of the average Mac, there are many thousands of older PowerPC machines still in use, dutifully chugging away day after day. And even for newer Macs, applications like working with images, music and video always run more smoothly with more power under the hood.

Upgrading the processor, although technically possible on some newer models and with more difficulty on older Macs, tends to be expensive and complicated. The good news is that other parts of your Mac can be upgraded, and components tend to be cheap and user-accessible.

In addition, there are simple steps that you can take in order to optimise your system for better performance. Sometimes this involves a little spring cleaning, other times a combination of hardware and software upgrading. Whichever you choose, it's easier than you think to speed up your Mac. You could even feel like you've got a brand new machine.

1. Clear the clutter

OS X requires around 20% of the space on its boot drive, typically called Macintosh HD, to be empty so that it can write virtual memory and other temporary files to the space. If a boot drive is very full, your Mac will slow down badly, even if it is a high spec machine, as the system thrashes the drive, overwriting what little free space is available.

A good working practice is to keep very large media files like video, image libraries or iTunes libraries either on a secondary internal drive in the case of a tower, or on a laptop or iMac, on an external FireWire or USB 2.0 hard drive.

2. Use faster drives

Portable Macs come with 5,400rpm hard drives and towers with 7,200rpm drives as standard. Faster spin speeds generally mean faster operation since data can be retrieved from the drive in less time. On a tower like a G5 or Mac Pro, replacing the startup drive with a faster model like a 10,000 or even 15,000rpm drive will have a positive effect on overall performance and should make the system snappier.

Using faster secondary internal drives is good but more important for heavy applications like working with video. Fitting a 7,200rpm drive to a portable Mac will also yield better overall performance at relatively low cost.

3. Add more ports

If you find yourself running out of ports, invest in a USB 2.0 or FireWire hub to expand the number available. Make it a powered one and it will supply current to compatible devices as well. On all but tower Macs and MacBook Pros, there's no getting around the bandwidth problem – even with a hub, you're throttled by the bandwidth available on the internal bus.

On a Mac with PCI or PCMCIA capability, you can add a card internally with more ports, which provides a signal path directly to the motherboard and so gets around the bandwidth issue.

4. Upgrade your RAM

RAM is one of the most fundamental things affecting the performance of a computer. OS X really needs about 1GB of memory to itself to run smoothly, and the more RAM you have, the better. Use the About This Mac menu to see how much is installed, and the System Profiler to see exactly how many sticks are present.

About 2GB is healthy for a normal system, and for heavy work with Photoshop, Final Cut or GarageBand you'll need more than that. Different Mac models have differing RAM capacities, with older Macs able to hold less, especially laptops.

5. Manage startup items

Some applications, on being installed, place stub or helper programs in your startup items without making it clear that they are doing so. Sometimes this is desirable, say if you always want iChat to open when you log in. But others, typically scanner- or printer-related applications, aren't always needed and can slow down the login process and hog CPU cycles unnecessarily.

Go to System Preferences > Accounts > Login items. Delete any you don't need. This rarely causes problems – if it does, put it back on the list.

6. Run only what you need

Running applications uses resources including CPU cycles, RAM and disk activity. If you're not using an application, quit it while you run others. Leaving programs open when they're not needed is a resource hog and, especially on older Macs, will slow you down.

Some programs can have problems with "memory leakage", meaning when loaded but idle, over time they will consume more and more RAM, eventually slowing you down. Use Activity Monitor located in the Utilities folder to see what resources each program is using.

7. Stay lean and mean

Keep a handle on what you install. Installing tons of programs and forgetting about them results not only in clutter and wasted space, but can also slow you down. Many programs place library files and startup items into the system, some of which must be loaded on startup whether you use the program or not.

Many come with an uninstaller, or you can use AppZapper to completely remove them. Over time, systems invariably get cluttered so if you are confident in your skills, periodically backing up and reinstalling OS X from scratch will keep it lean and mean.

8. Stay up to date

Each new version of OS X is faster than the last, and each point update – say from 10.5.3 to 10.5.4 – tends to improve speed and stability. The same goes for applications, so your software and drivers up to date using Software Update and the websites for non- Apple programs. Many apps have a check for updates option. Look at the minimum specs for your version of OS X. If your Mac is barely qualified to run 10.5, you'll have a smoother experience sticking with 10.4.11.

9. Install more memory

Having bought more RAM for your Mac, checking first that it is the correct type for your model, power down and disconnect all cables, especially the mains power. Touch a metal part of the casing to earth yourself. Open the Mac's RAM slot, the location of which will differ depending on the model, and carefully but firmly press the modules into place.

On G5s and Intel Macs, RAM sticks must be installed in pairs. Close up, reconnect the power and check System Profiler to see if it's working. If your Mac won't start up, check the modules are properly fitted.

10. Know your limits

Computer technology advances quickly, but so do the minimum system requirements of software. A seven year-old G4 is unlikely to be an ideal Mac to edit HD video on, for example. But older Macs are far from worthless and can be used as servers, internet and email machines, or even for hosting wireless shared iTunes libraries.

Pick up a cheap older Mac, fill it with RAM and big internal or external drives and a wireless card and administer it using Apple's Remote Desktop (£349, http://store.apple.com/uk). All this can be done quite cheaply.

11. Processor performance

On some older G4 and G5 systems, you can set the processor performance to Highest in System Preferences > Energy Saver. Automatic switches between the Highest and Reduced settings to optimise energy use.

12. Stripped down

A Mac with fewer or even no peripherals connected over USB or FireWire will run a little quicker than the same Mac with loads of printers and webcams plugged in.

13. Out and about

When running a laptop off its battery, switching off AirPort and Bluetooth will save power if you're not using them.

14. Multiple accounts

Try having one user account for things like games and internet, and another that's more fine-tuned and tweaked for heavier work.

15. Graphics card

On a tower Mac, even though you can't always remove the standard graphics card, you can add a new, faster one in a PCI slot and use that instead.

16. Backup schedule

Set your backup schedule so it doesn't start to grind away in the middle of your work. A Mac is designed to stay on, so you can set it for the middle of thie night.

17. Disk doctor

Perform a disk repair and use something like OnyX to regularly clear out caches, log files and temporary items to keep the system lean.

18. Static wallpaper

Using animated desktop backgrounds look great but they use up a lot of system resources unnecessarily, so avoid it if possible. A simple, static photo of a landscape or your family is just as pleasurable.

19. FireWire is faster

Despite theory seeming to suggest otherwise, FireWire is actually faster in practice than USB 2.0 for intensive applications like audio or video capture. Give it a try for yourself.

20. Stay organised

Believe it or not, folders with thousands of items in them take a lot longer to work with, as the Mac tries to calculate the sizes of the whole folder. Practise good file management.

First published in MacFormat Issue 200

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