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Saturday 04 Sep 2010
In Depth: Is internet piracy killing the magician’s trade?
Magic is experiencing something of a renaissance. Its online communities are thriving as wannabe Derren Browns rub shoulders with professionals. Once-struggling magic shops are thriving in new online incarnations as amateurs flock in to impress their friends or branch out into a lucrative new career.
Magicians themselves have even begun producing their own material for sale. On the surface, then, everything seems rosy in the world of the mystery arts. But magic relies on secrets, and one thing the internet can't keep is a secret.
For some professionals, the internet has given rise to a new fear – that of coming across a heckler who has seen how the trick is done on YouTube and is determined to ruin it for everyone.
The secret's out
Hang out with magicians for long enough and eventually the twin problems of internet exposure and piracy come up: "It is not a victimless crime," says magician Stephan Ward, speaking about magic piracy.
"Many of the creators rely on sales of their products to earn a living. There are a couple of examples where the creator cannot perform shows any more due to health reasons, so he's decided to make his secrets available to other performers. This makes the theft even more wrong."
The internet has transformed the magic scene into a multimillion pound industry, but life online has been both a blessing and curse for its practitioners. "I tend to work more on the corporate circuit now," says Ward, "but when I do perform at a bar or restaurant I've had the problem of people either looking things up on their phone while you do the trick, or telling you they saw it on YouTube."
YOUTUBE MAGIC: YouTube videos might show you how tricks are done, but not how to perform them well
Rich Newman is a semi-professional magician who appears regularly at Bristol's Illusions Magic Bar. "I've never had someone actually find what I'm doing on YouTube while I'm at the table," he says, "but certainly afterwards I've had people come up to me and say 'Is this right? Is this what you did?' You have to use the old magician's trick and say, 'Can you keep a secret? Well, so can I!' You have to keep schtum."
"I have a number of friends who are table workers," adds Paul Brook, a mindreader from Birmingham. "One of them went around the tables performing at a wedding recently and did a certain trick which is an astonishingly visual thing to see, but when he moved onto the next trick, someone at the same table had typed something into their iPhone and on YouTube there was the explanation. So he showed it to everyone while the guy was still working."
Brook has spent time investigating the quality of YouTube exposure videos and isn't impressed: "With YouTube, you won't be getting the whole trick. You get the bare bones and you won't look good performing something you learn on there."
PAUL BROOK: Paul Brook marks each copy of his work to help trace illegal copies
Instant piracy
Falling prices also mean that very small magic companies and even individuals can now produce professional DVDs for other magicians at a reasonable cost. But just like other forms of digital media, these discs are also difficult to protect from copying, as one prominent figure in the UK mentalism scene has discovered.
"My own DVD had been pirated within a week of its release and after only nine sales, all of which were to people I knew," says Dr Todd Landman, cofounder of Psycrets: The British Society of Mystery Entertainers, and organiser of the society's bi-annual Tabula Mentis conference. "As a result my new book project is printed and secretly marked, and available in hard copy only to avoid ebook file sharing," he says.
MAGIC PIRACY: Dr Todd Landman had his own magic DVD pirated after just nine sales
Piracy and exposure can even bar well known performers from entry into magic societies: "Our rules forbid members from engaging in exposure," says Dr Landman. "In fact we denied entry to a top mentalist from Canada who has openly exposed crucial secrets of our craft online."
Pirates should perhaps be wary of downloading stolen material for another reason. Some creators of new magic tricks deliberately seed file-sharing networks with corrupted versions of their material. The person downloading and learning it might think he's about to stun his friends, but the creator is actually playing an elaborate trick on him that will make him look stupid.
This is an approach that's catching on, but others simply mark each copy of their work so that they can tell who the upload has come from. "Part of the approach I take to piracy of the material I sell commercially is to mark each copy so that I can at least backtrack," says Brook.
"One of my books is over 600 pages long, and you'd think it was safe from piracy, but it wasn't. Doing a search on various filesharing sites, I came across it. I thought it was one of the ones that I'd put there to fool people, but no, someone had scanned all those pages. You have to wonder at someone who spends all that money on a 600-page book and then thinks: 'I'm going to scan that bad boy in'".
The dealer's view
Costas Damianou runs the Magic Tau online store. Willful sharing of secrets that may have cost the person sharing them a considerable amount of money to buy makes him genuinely angry.
"A while back I heard that a friend's books were being pirated, so I decided to conduct an experiment," he says. Within just 20 minutes he had found online copies of DVDs, books and lecture notes with a commercial value of thousands of pounds. "A few of these had only been released a few hours before," says Damianou.
"This means that someone went to the expense of buying them and then giving them all away for free." But such people seem to think they are some kind of hero or modern day Robin Hood.
What's Damianou's message to them? "Let me tell you something for nothing," he says. "You are not taking from the rich and giving to the poor, you are a thief giving to other thieves and freeloaders. Anyone who uses these sites is not only breaking the law; they also have no right to call themselves a magician. We have ethics in magic and we do not steal from our peers."
TALK MAGIC: Some members of the TalkMagic forum have gone on to find commercial success
Some pirates see so little wrong with what they're doing that they'll even brag to the people it hurts: "I have heard customers say that they will never buy a magic DVD as they can get it for free either by downloading it or getting a copy from a friend," says Damianou.
"This being said directly to the retailer shows how much people don't see that what they're doing is harming the industry."
Sharing success
Piracy apart, a mark of just how popular magic has become is that online magic forums are thriving. They're community sites where magicians, the creators of the tricks they perform and even magic dealers can be found debating the latest techniques and swapping ideas.
Paul Stevens is the chief moderator at Talk Magic, one of the UK's largest online magic forums. "The development of Talk Magic, along with other discussion boards, has certainly affected the art of magic," he says.
"Many newcomers display great enthusiasm but are quickly disappointed to find that the real secret to magic is practice, presentation, hard work and commitment. Anything less results in very poor magic and annoyed spectators."
This is something that resonates with Rich Newman. "Magic is very expensive," he says. "It's one of the most expensive and disappointing hobbies there is. You see something and go 'WOW!' but then you get the trick and go 'Oh', because there's a lot of work to fit it into your routine and your personality."
COSTLY BUSINESS: As a semi-professional, Rich Newman struggles with magic's expense
For those willing to put the hours in, however, fame and fortune could beckon, as Stephens confirms: "Many of our members have gone on to commercial success either in terms of performing or releasing their own work to great acclaim."
"I really like the fact that some of the forums have well-known magicians that will interact with other members," adds Ward. "And the dealers too – it is possible to ask any questions about their products and voice any concerns. It's also nice to talk to other professionals, exchange ideas and give a few tips to non-pros and people who are new to magic."
A vital aspect to magic forums is the review section. Reviews are posted by members, and can make or break a new trick. "Using a method or trick in the real world is a lot different to using it in your bedroom, so I always like it when you hear of workers giving their views of how it all pans out in the field," says Ward.
"One aspect [of Talk Magic] I'm particularly pleased to see," says Stephens, "is the rise and development of regional meetings. Not content with just sitting in front of a keyboard and chatting online, several groups of members have arranged to meet – usually in a pub somewhere – and share their art with each other as well as the public."
This is a great idea, but if you're meeting in a pub for an afternoon of vanishing coins, finding cards, reading thoughts or hypnosis, it's a good idea for someone to ask the landlord or manager if it's OK before you begin. Having attended several such meetings, I've witnessed first hand staff ejecting magicians after becoming worried that their activities might constitute a performance, which under some bylaws can require a licence.
Despite all the potential pitfalls, though, there's no doubt that the internet has altered the practice of magic for good, and no amount of trickery will change that.
comments off Jon Thompson | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Saturday 04 Sep 2010
Catch up: this week’s most popular posts
It's been a busy week at TechRadar with new tablets, TVs and other bits of kit being shown off at the IFA technology show in Berlin.
Add to that a press event where Apple announced, among other things, that its new iPods would feature FaceTime for video calling and if you're into tech, you might want to start saving up (or get your Christmas wishlist on the go early).
Read on for this week's most popular stories on TechRadar…
Top five news stories
Microsoft confirms new Xbox 360 pad
Microsoft has confirmed that a new Xbox 360 controller will be released this coming November.
The new pad will be out on November 9 in the US, where it will cost $64.99 (£42.25).
However, European gamers will have to wait all the way through until February 2011 to get their mitts on Microsoft's latest Xbox pad.
Apple announces new iPod shuffle and multitouch nano
Apple has revealed its latest generation of its iPod shuffle music player, featuring playlists, voice-control and buttons and a new smaller, multi-touch controlled iPod nano.
The new iPod shuffle will let you listen to your music for up to 15 hours, according to Apple.
In addition to featuring iPhone and iPod touch-style multitouch control, the tiny new iPod nano is almost half and small and half as light as its predecessor.
Orange delays HTC Desire Android 2.2 update
Orange users wishing and praying to see their HTC Desire upgraded to the latest in Android 2.2 goodness will have to wait a little longer.
Orange has confirmed via Twitter that it will be taking a little longer to get the upgrade out to users, thanks to HTC taking its sweet time to send over the Froyo package.
"Android fans: there has been a delay in receiving the 2.2 Froyo update from HTC, and we now expect it to be available mid-September. Apologies."
Steve Jobs launches iOS 4.1, new iPhone game from Epic
Steve Jobs has launched iOS 4.1 at a press event in California earlier today, while revealing that 6.5 billion apps have been sold to date, with an amazing 200 apps sold every second.
Jobs demonstrated how the HD photo capability of iPhone 4 has been considerably improved with the latest upgrade to iOS.
Firefox for Android ready for download
Firefox for Android has moved up a gear, with the news that Fennec Alpha has been released for the platform by Mozilla.
Also available for the N900, the new release adds in a number of new extras to the pre-Alpha build that appeared in April.
The main focus of the new release is to improve the performance of the build, with responsiveness to user actions the key area upgraded.
Top five in-depth articles
HTC Desire Z: what you need to know
Capitalising on the success of the HTC Desire, HTC is bringing out two new Desire-branded Android phones - the HTC Desire HD and HTC Desire Z.
The phone that would become the HTC Desire Z was first unearthed back in May, when an HTC model described as the HTC Vision was mentioned in an HTC device profile - a codename that didn't make much sense, given that the leaked phone was said to be an HTC Desire with a QWERTY keyboard attached. What's "Vision" about a keyboard?
Proper confirmation of the HTC Vision was then gained on July 5, with a handful of spy photos of a test handset appearing online. And yes, it is indeed the long-awaited HTC QWERTY Android phone.
20 handy Android 2.2 tips and tricks
Now Android 2.2 is out and spreading, it's time to delve a little deeper under the bonnet and put together a few tips for getting the most out of your newly refreshed and invigorated phone.
What else can you do with it apart from send text messages and look at women applying their make-up on YouTube? This little lot, for a start. Read on for your top 20 Android 2.2 tips.
Upgrade Windows 7: the unofficial Service Pack
Windows 7 is a great operating system, but it's not yet fantastic. Like us, you'll probably have come up against some of its most irritating shortcomings in the time since you installed it on your PC.
Icons are missing, utilities have been dropped and functionality has been reduced in some areas. Certain tools are still as hopeless as they were in Vista, and other long-term Windows issues also remain, including inadequate security features and application-related slowdown.
If you were hoping that Windows 7 Service Pack 1 would solve all these problems, you should prepare to be disappointed.
Samsung has now officially outed the Galaxy Tab, its eagerly awaited 7-inch Android tablet.
But how does it match up to the Apple iPad, which has set the standard for slate computing? Sure, the iPad has a bigger screen. But there are several areas where the Galaxy Tab is superior...
30 best Mac apps for just about everything
The selection of great free or inexpensive Mac programs on offer has never been better. You can now get amazing software designed by small or independent developers to cover practically anything you could ever want to do on your Mac.
Here's our list of 30 Mac apps you shouldn't be without - ever.
Popular reviews
Hands on: Samsung Galaxy Tab review
Samsung's Galaxy Tab device might not have been the best kept secret in the world, but its arrival at IFA still saw a lot of excitement and clamour to try out the new tablet. With a 7-inch screen and weighing only 380g, it's meant to be the portable and pocketable answer to the heft of the iPad.
Hands on: Apple iPod touch 4G review
Apple's jewel in its iPod crown is, without a shadow of a doubt, the new fourth-generation iPod touch, revealed earlier today by the company's charismatic CEO, Steve Jobs. It is essentially an iPhone 4, minus the phone and SMS functions. Jobs himself stated this in no uncertain words in his presentation.
Hands on: Multitouch Apple iPod nano review
The new multitouch, miniaturised iPod nano caused most disagreement between Apple fans at today's London showcase, with some music fans claiming that it was the highlight announcement of the night, while others were moaning about the loss of video-recording on the nano.
Also reviewed this week
Compact cameras
Desktops
CyberPower Liquid i7 Charybdis review
Digital TV recorders
Manhattan Plaza HDT-700 review
Graphics cards
Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 SLI review
Sapphire HD 5670 Ultimate review
Sapphire HD 5550 OverClock review
Laptops
Acer Aspire Ethos 8943G review
ToshIba Qosmio X500-128 review
Toshiba Satellite L670-12J review
Media streaming devices
Mice
MadCatz Cyborg R.A.T. 7 review
Mobile phones
Network adaptors
D-Link DHP-307AV Powerline Kit review
Software
comments off Jamie Middleton | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Friday 03 Sep 2010
Weird Tech: Cyberwar declared on the Duke of Rutland
We had an extremely rare case of Algerian hackers causing hilarity this week when they inadvertently hacked into and uploaded hate messages to the website of English stately home Belvoir Castle - the historic home of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland.
Actually it wasn't that inadvertent, they just got the wrong web address, posting an "anti-Zionist rant" and images of the Algerian flag over the castle's usual adverts for weddings, corporate events and thoroughly nice family days out.
The hackers actual target was supposed to be the Belvoir Fortress, which has a long-standing religious significance we'll not attempt to go into here lest we offend people and bring in the Algerian hackers. According to The Register, the staff of the rather less incendiary Belvoir Castle assured the Telegraph that it has "nothing to do with the Middle-East".
Shutdown credit: £0.00
Microsoft has found another amazing way to make money - it's somehow managed to patent the very idea of turning something off. The specific patent that's been granted to Microsoft was discovered by Conceivably Tech, and is simply referred to in official documentation as "Operating system shut down" and appears to show that Microsoft has gained an exclusive on letting graphical user interfaces turn things off automatically.
SHUT OFF: It's also an extra 5p per hour if you want to leave it in hibernate
We'll report the facts now, for a change - the system is simply a method to override unresponsive applications and force them to shut down. It might stop you having to sit there, tutting away for two minutes, while Windows bravely tries to switch itself off. You won't have to pay 10p every time you reboot.
Very brief history of religion: It's all lies
Stephen Hawking has laboriously typed out another book, this time courting a bit of controversy by daring to suggest that God doesn't exist. His words, taken from his forthcoming co-written book The Grand Design, basically say that because of physics and gravity and all that, the Big Bang was an inevitability - and that there's no need for anyone to go mentioning God.
HISTORY OF SPACE: "...then Noah activated the Hadron Collider and turned the sinners to salt" (Image from here)
According to the Daily Mail, the fact that we're starting to find many other planets orbiting stars means Hawking thinks we're not as special as we once thought we were and that there's definitely no God. Which also means no Jesus and therefore no Christmas presents for Mr Hawking this year.
Pirates of the Scandanavian Region
Filmmaker Simon Klose is planning a documentary about long-running internet piracy hive The Pirate Bay - and apparently has over 200 hours of footage ready to go. We're not entirely sure there's a market for a documentary about men sitting around staring at computers laughing about email threats from major corporations, though.
THREE MEN AND A SERVER: The love interest will be provided by a scene in which they download photos of Megan Fox
According to Wired, the film's distribution method negates the option of making jokes about it being pirated - the plan is to release it for free via Bittorrent. Although there will be a DVD version, hopefully, for those who want to donate a bit of money to the Bay's dubious cause.
comments off Gary Cutlack | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Thursday 02 Sep 2010
Updated: IFA 2010: all the latest announcements
3D TVs, connected TVs and tablet PCs are dominating IFA 2010 – the biggest consumer technology show in Europe. The first press conferences at the show are already underway.
Panasonic kicked off this year's show promising to 'change the world' with a new range of 3D and web-connected HDTVs.
These include the Viera VT20 and TX-P42GT20 3D-ready sets, plus 3D IPTV content in 2011 piped to consumers via Panasonic's own Viera Cast service.
Read: Panasonic to 'change the world' with 3D IPTV and cheaper 3D TVs
Sony is also being bullish about the future of 3D. During its press conference CEO Howard Stringer claimed that the company is the "strongest engine in this 3D express." While aBlu-ray 3D update for the PS3 is being promised by "the end of the year."
Stringer also unveiled some other goodies during his speech, which included:
Sony announces Full HD Bloggie Touch
Sony bringing Qriocity VOD and cloud music to UK
Sony unveils DCR-SX15E and DCR-SR15E Handycam camcorders
Sony reveals first 3D Vaio laptop
Other highlights will likely emanate from the showcase stands from the likes of Sony, Panasonic, LG, Toshiba, Philips and Samsung. Each typically has a whole hall to themselves.
The show takes place at the huge Messe Berlin complex. There are a staggering 26 halls, plus other facilities, and it's all taken over by IFA for the first week of September.
IFA always attracts strong attendee numbers and an increase in international visitors – despite the global recession. Tradeshow exhibit space for 2010 was sold out and the IFA organisers constructed temporary exhibit halls to accommodate the unprecedented number of exhibitors and new products on show.
While the show is traditionally AV-centric, recent years have seen more computing wares debut at the show. Last year Samsung took the opportunity to drop several new laptop ranges, while Toshiba showed off new laptops and its Journe Touch tablet.
Before the show, LG announced that it will show off the new LG LEX8 television at IFA, with what it terms 'NANO Lighting Technology', while the Korean giant has also confirmed it will be showing a 31-inch OLED TV at IFA 2010, the largest from the company so far.
Archos has already announcedfive new Android tablets that it will be displaying at IFA this year.
Viewsonic, meanwhile, has also announced the ViewPad 7, its first Android tablet. While Samsung has also announced the Galaxy Tab will appear at the show. The latter is a 7-inch tablet while the Viewsonic is a 10-inch model.
Google' CEO Eric Schmidt will also provide the closing keynote for the show.
As usual, IFA 2010 will attempt to cover the whole gamut of consumer electronics across its 121,000 square metres of showspace – mobile, home entertainment, computing, videogames, digital imaging, car audio and sat nav – as well as domestic appliances like high-tech cookers and fridges.
ZONE OF REFLECTION: Samsung's hall at IFA 2009
Nestled among the 1,164 exhibitor stands at IFA 2010 is a brand new 'iZone', which focuses on the growing popularity of the Mac, iPhone, iPod and iPad with apps showcases and the latest iPhone 4 accessories – including Cinemizer glasses that will enable you to watch 3D movies anywhere.
Also new to IFA 2010 is the eLibrary – an area of the show dedicated to eBooks and tablet PCs, with content providers displaying their wares.
Last year there were also some new phone handsets, such as the Samsung Galaxy running Android. It's wholly possible we might see some Windows Phone 7 handsets at the show – perhaps even the Samsung Cetus running Microsoft's new mobile OS.
Like Las Vegas' CES, IFA has an enviable record when it comes to breaking new technologies with past highlights including colour television (1967), MP3 (1991) and 3D TV (1998). We expect this year – the exhibition's 50th – to be no different.
TOP LAP: We don't know the reason for this picture either
To make sure you stay up to date with all the brand new products, technologies and innovations being shown off at IFA 2010, make sure you follow TechRadar's in-depth coverage of events – we're there in force to bring you the very latest updates.
"There is a double-digit increase this year in the amount of exhibit space sold and we anticipate a record number of product introductions," said Dr. Christian Göke, chief operating officer of Messe Berlin, which organizes IFA. "Manufacturers meet more retailers at IFA than anywhere else in the world."
The main IFA 2010 show runs from Friday 3 to Wednesday 8 September, though most of the major press conferences happen today and tomorrow, so expect plenty of news right from the get-go.
You can find out more about the event and what's being shown there by visiting the official IFA 2010 website.
comments off Rob Mead and Dan Grabham | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Wednesday 01 Sep 2010
Vue cinemas to get Sony 4K technology
Sony has sealed a deal with Vue cinemas in the UK for the use of its excellent 4K cinema projection technology.
Vue Entertainment is one of the biggest cinema operators in Britain with 68 sites and 657 screens and it has announced its plans to roll out the Sony 4k digital technology.
Apparently this marks the start of Vue's transition to digital projection, and the tech should be rolled out across the chain's circuit.
Memorandum of understanding
Tim Richards, CEO, Vue Entertainment, said: "We are very excited to have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Sony Europe for the deployment of their incredible digital 4K projectors across our circuit."
"This represents a fantastic long term investment for the company offering numerous benefits to the business including a new world of programming flexibility and greater choice for our customers."
Significant agreement
David McIntosh, Sony's head of digital cinema in Europe, commented: "We are delighted to have reached such a significant agreement with Vue Entertainment.
"This agreement means that Sony 4K projectors will be powering a significant proportion of the total screens in the UK, which validates our belief in our superior 4K technology.
"This also is set to be a landmark agreement paving the way for further Sony 4K deals throughout Europe."
comments off Patrick Goss | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Monday 30 Aug 2010
In Depth: 10 cool firms Google Ventures has backed
Venture capitalists provide cash, guidance and resources to help new businesses thrive - businesses like Google, which might still be stuck in a garage if it weren't for VCs' early investments.
Now the search giant wants to return the favour, and its Google Ventures arm aims to find the most exciting new businesses and help them to thrive - not just by throwing money at them, but by sharing resources too. Here are ten firms that Google's backing to make them bigger.
1. Adimab
"The first fully integrated, yeast-based antibody discovery platform" might not sound too exciting, but Adimab is doing something extraordinary: it's built a kind of synthetic immune system that can help pharmaceutical companies develop the antibody drugs of the future.
2. Corduro
Don't bother checking out the Corduro website: it's essentially a placeholder, with precious little information. You might be better off checking out the iPhone/iPad payment application Square, because we suspect Google's investment in Corduro is for something similar: the firm offers a mobile payment platform for small businesses, and of course Google has a mobile platform in Android.
3. English Central
Bringing English Central into the YouTube family makes a lot of sense. The site offers an unusual take on language learning, enabling students to choose popular English language video clips rather than traditional, deathly dull educational footage. English Central then uses speech recognition to analyse the students' speech and provide feedback.
4. iPierian
Another medical investment, iPierian focuses on fighting diseases for which there are poor medical models and limited available treatments such as Parkinson's disease, spinal muscular atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Its technology effectively reprogrammes human adult cells to behave like stem cells, deftly side-stepping the controversy over the use of human embryos' cells in medical research.
5. Miso
The Miso service is a kind of Foursquare for TV, enabling you to share what you're watching with others, discover new things to watch and earn points to unlock "fun, virtual badges like Princess, Food Mobster and Moustache Patrol." Miso was already available in Web-based, iPhone and iPad flavours, an Android version has just launched and we'd expect to see it on Google TV when that ships.
6. Pixazza
Pixazza turns pictures into sales opportunities and has been dubbed "AdSense for images", so it's not surprising that Google's taken an interest. Celeb snaps become "get the look!" sales opportunities; photos of beautiful beaches sprout adverts for boat trips; and time-lapse photos become equipment lists with shopping links.
PIXAZZA: If you've ever wished web pages had more things popping up in front of them, has Pixazza got the product for you!
7. Recorded Future
Remember the pre-cogs in Minority Report? Recorded Future is a bit like that, but without floating any bald people in tanks. The world's first "temporal analytics engine" analyses the past to predict the future, and immediate applications include financial trading, competitor analysis and national security. When Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal that "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next" we suspect that Recorded Future was part of what he had in mind.
8. SCVNGR
Life, the saying goes, is a game. SCVNGR took that literally and created a gaming platform where the real world is the game world. More than 550 organisations in 20 different countries have built applications using SCVNGR, encouraging users to carry out specific tasks - strike a pose, scan a code or just check in, Foursquare style - in order to earn points. Think of it as a high-tech treasure hunt and you've got the basic idea, but this is a system that scales: games can be as small as you like or encompass entire cities with thousands of simultaneous players.
SCVNGR: This app turns the real world into a gaming platform, with locations setting challenges that you can take to earn points
9. Silver Spring Networks
Silver Spring creates hardware, software and services for Smart Grid systems, a more efficient way to deliver electricity. As the US department of energy notes, "if the grid were just 5 per cent more efficient, the energy savings would equate to permanently eliminating the fuel and greenhouse gas emissions from 53 million cars". Smart Grid technology also encompasses home automation, with appliances monitoring energy use and adjusting their behaviour to keep your utility bills low.
10. V-Vehicle
This is perhaps the most intriguing investment of all: V-Vehicle is a new car company that promises to "make green affordable for the masses". What kind of cars will it make? Nobody knows for sure, although reports suggest they'll have plastic, customisable bodies rather than traditional steel skins. What technologies will its vehicles adopt? Nobody's saying. The presence of former Mazda designer Tom Motano - the man behind the RX-7 and the MX-5 - bodes well, as does the presence of other heavyweight investors including famous VC firm Kleiner Perkins and former Texas oil boss T. Boone Pickens.
V-VEHICLE: So far the only pictures of the V-Vehicle car are teaser shots in video clips. The firm promises affordable green motoring for the masses
comments off Gary Marshall | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Saturday 28 Aug 2010
Catch up: this week’s most popular posts
There have been more potential technology upheavals this week - there was further controversy regarding Project Canvas as Five reverses its decision to leave the scheme and Google placed another nail in the coffin of traditional telephone calls by announcing plans which will let Gmail users make free calls.
Meanwhile Apple's mysterious event scheduled for next week has already started tongues wagging.
Read on for this week's most popular stories on TechRadar…
Top five news stories
Virgin Media: Five's return makes Canvas a greater concern
Virgin Media believes that the return of Five to the Project Canvas fold represents an even greater threat to the television status quo, and has renewed calls for an independent investigation into the IPTV collaboration.
Virgin Media has already made it clear that is opposed to the IPTV scheme that involves BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Arqiva, Talk Talk, BT and now Five again.
And it is the decision of Five, now it has new owners, to reverse its decision to leave the project that has prompted another reaction from Virgin Media.
Confirmed: Google to allow phone calls from Gmail
Google launching free phone calling service from Gmail in US and Canada this month
Google has confirmed that it plans to allow American and Canadian users to make free phone calls directly from their Gmail accounts this year, going directly into competition with Skype and other more traditional phone operators.
The Calls from Gmail service rolls out this week in the US and Canada, with no word as yet from Google on plans to bring such a service to the UK and Europe.
Google will allow users free calls to U.S. and Canadian phones from Gmail, at least until the end of 2010, with very low rates for those users making international calls.
Apple confirms 1 September event
Apple has confirmed it will be holding an event on 1 September and has sent out an invite to the press.
The company was earlier today rumoured to be holding an event on 7 September to launch a new Apple TV, but the 1 September event is clearly music related...
There is no teasing tagline alongside the image this time but we'll surely see the new 4th generation iPod touch- probably with a camera and FaceTime.
HTC Merge - the new Android superphone?
HTC might be working on bringing the Desire HD and Desire Z into the world next month, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have more tasty treats coming up too.
The HTC Merge has been spotted in Global Certification Forum filings and on the US network Verizon's database, and is rumoured to be a much more powerful handset.
The key word here is rumour, as specs of a 10MP camera and faster-than-1GHz processor seem thoroughly unsubstantiated.
Defence Secretary calls for Medal of Honor boycott
British Defence Secretary calls for UK retailers to boycott the new Medal of Honor
Britain's Defence Secretary has called for UK retailers to boycott the forthcoming version of EA's Medal of Honour game in order to "show their support for the armed forces."
Gamers will be given the option of playing as the Taliban in the latest version of Medal of Honor, which is what seems to have caused such upset over in Westminster.
Top five in-depth articles
10 web hoaxes you wish you hadn't forwarded
The global scandal caused by sexy pretend resignation girl a couple of weeks ago is nothing new.
Bored people on the internet have been trying it on for years, leaving a trail of embarrassed hoax victims behind them. Have you just emailed a very old advert around the entire office? Is that amazing leaked US military footage from Roswell actually a clip from last night's Shooting Stars, in which Bob pulled entrails out of Vic's fake alien torso?
Probably and probably. We'd like to reassure you and say there's nothing to be ashamed of in falling for obvious online hoaxes and misunderstood videos, but actually there is. No one likes getting the same thing emailed to them 20 times a day, and if you're consistently pinging through tired old tat to people, you're in danger of hitting their mental spam filters.
Top 30 best iPad apps - paid apps
Although it's only been out for a matter of months, the iPad already has dozens of great apps available for it.
Some are universal, optimising themselves accordingly for your iPad or iPhone. Some are 'upgrades' of iPhone apps, reworked for iPad. And some are entirely new apps, designed specifically for Apple's table.
We worked our way through the App Store and furiously tested a huge (digital) pile of apps, before coming up with our 30 best paid-for iPad apps.
Android 2.2 release date: when will you get it?
If you're waiting impatiently for the Android 2.2 update to arrive on your mobile, then bookmark this page, because we'll be keeping it up to date with all the latest Android 2.2 release dates.
First off, the Nexus One Android 2.2 update has finally landed. "This update will be rolled out gradually to phones – and most users will receive the notification by the end of the week," Google said on 29 June.
However, Vodafone UK Nexus One users were upset they weren't able to get the update at the same time – but that's now been rectified according to the network, with the new update coming over the next week or so for all those on contract.
How to build the ultimate media centre
If you want to take full control of your TV and movie collections, the media centre PC is the only way to go
There are a scary number of ways of playing back your library of movies and music through a TV screen. You can stream them over the LAN via a games console, play them directly from the cloud on an Internet ready TV or simply hook up your laptop via an HDMI cable. You can even play directly off of your iPod.
Many go down the route of least resistance and opt for a do-it-all entertainment on demand set-top box, such as Sky+ or BT Vision, paying a monthly subscription so they never have to get their hands the slightest bit dirty with an extra cable or two.
25 essential BlackBerry tips and tricks
You probably bought a BlackBerry for the keyboard and fantastic battery life but there's more to it than that.
You can just pick a BlackBerry up and start using it, because all you need to do is press the Menu key to get the main options on every screen - but the BlackBerry OS hides a huge number of clever tricks and shortcuts that make it faster and simpler to get things done.
There are some tips you won't need often - like pressing Alt, Del and the right-hand Caps key at the same time to reboot instead of just restarting; others you'll use all the time, like pressing the red 'hang up' key to get back to the home screen and clicking the spanner icon on the home screen to open Options.
Top five reviews
Creative X-Fi Titanium HD
The X-Fi Titanium HD has some impressive specs that appeal to audio purists. A fair shot at the high end, but other hi-fi cards are cheaper and better.
BlackBerry Torch 9800
This slider phone uses an improved touchscreen, but is a faint reminder of the Palm Pre and, in many ways, the Storm 2 which shares the same bulky heft and 3.2-inch screen size.
Sony Bravia KDL-60LX903
Sony may have followed behind Panasonic and Samsung in releasing its 3D TVs, but it's now wasting no time making its presence felt with an extensive range of LED-lit screens.
Can the Optimus GT540 do enough to show Android off to the best of its powers, do the platform proud and please its intended market at such a low price?
ZTE Racer
This sub-£100 Android 2.1-packing smartphone is the cheapest device to offer the Google operating system yet, and ZTE's first.
Also reviewed this week
TVs
Laptops
Acer Aspire 5745PG-354G32Mn review
Packard Bell EasyNote TX86-JO-045UK review
Sony VAIO VPC-Y21S1E/SI review
Sound cards
Creative X-Fi Titanium HD review
Speakers
comments off Jamie Middleton | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Friday 27 Aug 2010
Weird Tech: Ordinary man plays videogames for many hours
No idea why this is news. The Sun is reporting on the shock case of an unemployed 17-year-old youth called Zach, who spends 15 hours a day playing Call of Duty and FIFA on his Xbox (presumably 360, otherwise social services would have been called in).
The Sun seems to think this is out of the ordinary. As do the doctors, who have suggested that Zach's "marathon" sessions could cause health risks.
What they should be going is encouraging Zach to push on through the 18-hour-a-day level, else he'll never be able to compete with the real GamerScore professionals. Come on, Zach. There are actually 24 hours in a day, you slacker. What are you wasting a whole nine of them on?
iWatermelon
We're not entirely convinced of the reality of the iWatermelon iPhone app or indeed of the underlying technology that's behind it, but it fits the Weird Tech remit 100 per cent so we'll tell you what little we know about it regardless.
DANGER! OVER RIPE! Try kicking it around the shop
iWatermelon was featured on Taiwanese news channel TVBS, and is an app that informs the would-be watermelon purchaser if the watermelon being offered by the vendor is ripe enough or not by analysing the sounds made as you tap on the melon. Could be real, or we could've just been "pwned" by a Taiwanese comedy show. See for yourself.
Mario Kerb
Some joker with (a) too much spare time and (b) access to a collection of durable professional-quality paints, has carried out a superb bit of tech vandalism in the town of Portland, Oregon.
The unknown artist covered the road surfaces with icons from legendary videogame Mario Kart, adding speed boost symbols to cycling lanes, star icons to the middle of the road - and banana skins to utterly confuse gaming commuters. The news report of the gonzo art stunt is online.
TYPICAL MARIO KART: Someone always gets crushed by a bus on the last corner
If Banksy had spent the early 1990s playing a SNES we could've got this instead of all his angsty gun/war stuff.
"...also transforms into a picnic table"
The nation of Iran inadvertently made itself look a bit silly this week, while in the process of unveiling its latest national defence weapon. Presumably designed to instil FEAR into the Western world and force the compliance of its troublesome neighbouring states,
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually looked a bit silly unveiling something that looks like Gerry Anderson knocked it up in his shed in 1965.
IRANIANBIRDS ARE GO: Mustn't laugh, it's pointing towards us
The unmanned aerial weapon is supposedly capable of carrying out long-range bombing missions, but we think it's going to be more at home ferrying Lady Penelope between her town and country residences. That pod on the bottom is for her make-up and clothes. It's the cardboard clouds that appear to be leftover props from a school play that really ruin the sense of aerial menace.
comments off Gary Cutlack | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Monday 23 Aug 2010
New expedition to ‘virtually raise’ the Titanic
A new scientific expedition to the wreck of the Titanic is aiming to create the "most detailed portrait of Titanic's wreck site to date."
The team set out from Canada over the weekend armed with the latest sonar and high-resolution optical video technologies.
It is now nearly a hundred years since the Titanic crashed in the Atlantic, killing 1,500 passengers and crew. The ship went down after hitting an iceberg on April 14, 1912.
The wreck of the Titanic was discovered in 1985 around two and a half miles down from the surface of the ocean.
Virtually raising the Titanic
The new sonar and optical video imaging tech will allow the team to paint an incredibly accurate picture of the site of the wreck.
Christopher Davino, president of RMS Titanic, said that the scientific expedition to the bottom of the ocean:
"Will be using some of the most advanced technology available to create a portrait of the ship unlike any that has been created before -- virtually raising Titanic and sealing her current state forever in the minds and hearts of humanity."
The mission will be updating its findings on its website at www.expeditiontitanic.com and providing real-time video and photo updates via Facebook and Twitter.
comments off Adam Hartley | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Saturday 21 Aug 2010
Catch up: this week’s most popular posts
This week we got our hands on an HTC Desire running Android 2.2 and gave it a go. Yet while we were playing with the Desire, news of its successor, the HTC Desire HD, leaked. We've rounded up what we know about it so far in one handy read.
And in a TechRadar exclusive, we revealed that the next version of Android will be called Android Honeycomb.
Read on for this week's most popular stories on TechRadar…
Top five news stories
Apple planning cool new tech for iPhone 5?
Apple has hired a new chap to deal with Mobile Commerce, and it just so happens that he has years of near field communications experience.
For the uninitiated, NFC is used in swipe cards and can be used for anything from paying for goods (like the Barclaycard PayWave) to tickets (Oyster cards) and even to open your car.
The fact Apple has employed Benjamin Vigier as Product Manager of Mobile Commerce doesn't necessarily mean the iPhone 5 will have the technology in, but he's well placed to implement it should that come about.
HTC Desire HD unmasked in mysterious invite
The mysterious HTC invite for 15 September has lost some of its enigma after an eagle-eyed reader noticed a phone was hidden beneath the smoke.
Turning up the contrast on the invite brings up the phone behind, and as you can see from the PhotoBucket image, the faint handset matches the leaked images of the Desire HD perfectly.
We were speculating that it could be the HTC Mozart, the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 device, but this has the camera placed to the left of the flash, where the phone depicted in the invite clearly has it in a more central position.
BBC: HTML5 is starting to sail off course
Erik Huggers, the director of future media & technology at the BBC, has written a candid blog about the situation with HTML 5, explaining that the standard will be accepted by the broadcaster but changes have to be made.
He explains that the reason Flash is used for the iPlayer and BBC online is not because of favouritism but because it is the "most efficient way to deliver a high quality experience to the broadest possible audience."
This doesn't mean that HTML5 will never be used by the BBC but it seems that the technology needs to step up a gear before the broadcaster takes it seriously.
As Huggers states in the blog, he feels HTML5 "is starting to sail off course".
Sony announces 320GB PS3 Move, GT5 date, Virtua Tennis Move
Sony has announced a 320GB PS3 Move bundle at GamesCom this week for €347 (£265) and a 160GB PS3 that is set to replace the current 120Gb model.
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has also finally put a date on one of the most highly anticipated games of this generation, with Gran Turismo 5 set to arrive in UK stores on 3 November later this year.
Sony has also announced plans to release a Move-compatible version of Sega's Virtua Tennis 4, an announcement which is sure to get Sega fanboys everywhere hot under the collar.
Revealed: Android Honeycomb next up from Google
Google is set to call the next iteration of its mobile OS Android Honeycomb, following on from the tablet-friendly Gingerbread platform.
Multiple sources have confirmed to TechRadar that the next version will be called Honeycomb, although details of what this upgrade will bring are still sketchy.
It's likely that it will be more of an incremental upgrade, in the same manner as Android 2.2 (Froyo) was to Android 2.1 (Éclair) as Google seeks to perfect the new platform on tablets and high-end smartphones.
That means Android Honeycomb will probably be Android 3.1 or Android 3.2, rather than a leap to the unimaginable magic of Android 4.0.
Top five in-depth articles
Hands on: HTC Desire Android 2.2 review
We've managed to snag an unlocked HTC Desire, and popped a bit of Android 2.2 action on there to see if it really is that much better.
We'll get to the good news early: it is much better indeed. From an improved battery to considerably less choppy video recording, any slight foibles the HTC Desire had in our review have now been rectified.
HTC Desire HD: what you need to know
On 16 July, unsubstantiated rumours surfaced that the HTC Evo will now be called the HTC Desire HD when it finally lands in the UK.
This model has also running under the code name 'HTC Ace' although the likelihood is that when it's finally announced, it could have a completely different name altogether.
But the likelihood of its appearance seems more certain than ever, with it, along with the also rumoured HTC Vision, showing up in network inventory pages in Germany.
The Desire HD specifications are rumoured to be similar to the HTC Desire, but it will record HD video through a new 8MP camera, and feature a similar aluminium unibody design to the HTC Legend.
The Desire HD will also have a 4.3-inch display with WVGA resolution, and we assume it will be running Android 2.2 out of the box.
HTC's first Windows Phone 7 unveiled in pictures?
HTC's step into the wacky world of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS looks like it will begin with a familiar-looking phone.
The HTC Mozart has been shown off in new pictures by Twitter user @Xmoo, who claims knowledge of HTC.
The phone will actually come apart on the back with a metallic casing interspersed with removable plastic coverings - giving it an odd jigsaw-like look.
Why is my CPU running at 100%?
The average Windows PC is permanently busy, constantly juggling system resources between the 50 or more processes it's running at any one time.
Sometimes, for no apparent reason, a rogue application will demand all your processor's attention, and before you know it the process is running your processor at 100% all of the time.
This will feel like a major disaster, especially if you've unsaved work in other applications. They will be very unresponsive, it'll be difficult to switch to them, and even if you manage it then little will seem to happen. Just redrawing the screen may take an age. So your first step should be to try and regain control over your system, reducing the impact of the resource-hogging app and allowing access to other programs again.
Why you must keep track of your online profile
You might not realise it yet, but you're a brand. All this time you've been walking and talking and posting on the internet, thinking you were a person, when you've been a brand all along. Who'd have thought it?
All of your activities have been contributing to the brand, building a profile for it and even advertising it.
Why is it important to think of yourself as a brand? Because as information about individuals becomes increasingly available online, you want to make sure that information is not only accurate but also positive and succinct.
Top five reviews
Philips' high-end sets are reliably innovative and tend to produce class-leading pictures, ensuring that the first of Philips' 9000 range arrives with some high expectations to live up to. And guess what? This one's a belter
This is LG's latest shot at an Android smartphone, and the company's second to hit the UK. The last Android offering – the inTouch Max GW620 – came with a slide-out keyboard, but this time the keyboard has gone.
Sigma has a solid reputation for making quality lenses for all popular camera makes, but it's less well known as a camera maker per se. The DP1s is a decent enough camera, but outclassed by rival models at a similar price point
The Canon Ixus 1000 HS is a celebration of the past 10 years of the digital Ixus range and, from first impressions, a decent marker for how far camera technology has come.
The Canon S90 was one of the best compacts we tested at the back end of 2009. The one thing lacking though was video functionality. The S95 remedies this with the inclusion of 720p HD shooting.
Also reviewed this week
Amplifiers
Blu-ray player
Theta Digital Compli Blu review
Compact cameras
Desktops
Digital SLRs
Hard disk drives
Seagate Momentus XT 500GB review
Headphones
Audio-Technica ATH-ES10 review
Hi-Fi Accessories
Synthesis Matrix Valve DAC review
MFA Moving coil step-up transformer review
iPad apps
Square Enix Crystal Defenders review
Apple iMovie (iPhone app) review
Konami Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 review
Modems
Monitors
NAS drives
Vortexbox NAS Appliance review
Networking
HornetTek Janus WLAN USB adapter review
Radio tuners
Routers
Belkin Play Max ADSL router review
Software
SmithMicro Anime Studio Debut 7 review
Speakers
Storage
Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 128GB review
Turntables
Clearaudio Concept turntable review
TV tuner cards
TVs
comments off Jamie Middleton | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Friday 20 Aug 2010
In Depth: 10 web hoaxes you wish you hadn’t forwarded
The global scandal caused by sexy pretend resignation girl a couple of weeks ago is nothing new.
Bored people on the internet have been trying it on for years, leaving a trail of embarrassed hoax victims behind them. Have you just emailed a very old advert around the entire office? Is that amazing leaked US military footage from Roswell actually a clip from last night's Shooting Stars, in which Bob pulled entrails out of Vic's fake alien torso?
Probably and probably. We'd like to reassure you and say there's nothing to be ashamed of in falling for obvious online hoaxes and misunderstood videos, but actually there is. No one likes getting the same thing emailed to them 20 times a day, and if you're consistently pinging through tired old tat to people, you're in danger of hitting their mental spam filters.
So don't email any of the below links around, or believe their lies. We've seen them all before and obviously didn't fall for the them first time around. Oh no, we always knew there was something not quite right about this lot...
1. "I'm using the iPad"
Never mind April Fool's Day, the day before a high-profile Apple event is the easiest time of year to pull off a successful hoax. Any idiot who draws an Apple logo on the back of a fag packet and sticks it on Twitter has a chance of fooling the world.
The largest Apple hoax was perpetrated by web entrepreneur Jason Calacanis in the hours before Apple's iPad reveal. It seemed perfectly reasonable that a successful blogger might be granted pre-announcement access to Apple's new tablet under an NDA, so his string of Tweets about it - with facts like "has a solar panel" and "uses fingerprint recognition" seemed plausible. For literally about six hours.
2. Bike Hero
It's amazing! Some kids just took out a video camera and made something incredibly professional and way too good to be true. And yes, it was too good to be true - Bike Hero was basically an advert designed from the ground-up to go viral, created to build hype for the Guitar Hero brand. You emailed an advert around the office, is what happened.
3. "Guy goes crazy at the office"
Of course, no one believed this was real at the time. That's always the defence. The mad office destruction clip was later revealed to be a viral advert for Hollywood blockbuster Wanted, so you were right.
4. Bill Cosby died again last night
Twitter's a double-edged sword when it comes to hoaxes. On the one hand, it's easy to make a lie go viral - Tweeting that John Leslie died in a light aircraft accident on an internal flight between Southampton and Edinburgh is easy, and might just take off. On the other hand, it also makes shouting down hoaxes easy. Take poor Bill Cosby. The first thing he has to do most mornings upon waking up is Tweet that he's still alive, as the poor comedian's a regular on the death-hoax listings.
5. "Leeroy Jenkins"
To our educated, modern eyes, the 2006 Leeroy Jenkins YouTube clip simply has to be a fake. The suspiciously long intro sequence packed with extra-mundane calculations and tech speak - surely that would've been edited away by a man clever enough to record his own Warcraft battles? If Leeroy hit the web today he'd be decried as a fake by thousands within hours. Mind you, isn't everything?
< class="pageBreak">Web hoaxes 6-10> 6. Bigfoot in the freezer Sure, we've all got some weird, unidentifiable hairy things sitting at the bottom of the freezer that may have been living creatures at one point in time, but Bigfoot? Perpetrated by serial hoaxer Tom Biskardi, the photo of a dead Bigfoot in the fridge was soon revealed to be a fake - as was that packet of Loch Ness Monster fish fingers he claimed to have lined up for dinner. 7. "Lonelygirl15" Let's all just pretend this never happened. Although it was a clever use of YouTube in its early days, the pretend series of videos about a girl's boring life never delivered much after its initial burst of excitement. We were young, YouTube was still innovative, and she was cute in an American way. Wouldn't work now, we're all way too cynical. 8. Nintendo ON Again, this one was all about timing. In the days before E3 2005, everyone sort of knew Nintendo was gearing up to announce something completely bonkers, but didn't know exactly what. So the Nintendo ON video, with its impressively high production values and head-mounted interface, could indeed have been real. But it wasn't. It was a clever fake knocked up by Pablo Belmonte. Hope you didn't send it to too many people. 9. "UFO Haiti" Oh yes, turns out this wasn't surprisingly high quality amateur footage of UFOs mucking in the skies about above Haiti, it was a computer-generated graphics test made by a man who does computer graphics for his day job. If you haven't seen it on the news, it's probably fake. That's the general rule to follow about things with aliens. When real aliens happen, they'll interrupt EastEnders to let us all know - not put it on YouTube. 10. 6 Volt Battery Hack Does the rounds every few months, this one. No, those massive old 6volt battery packs we used to power the train sets and big torches of the world do not actually contain 32 AA batteries. It's a joke, or, as some less charitable people might say, a whopping great lie with serious environmental waste implications.
comments off Gary Cutlack | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Friday 20 Aug 2010
Weird Tech: Electric race decided by gentleman’s agreement
The Zero Race is about as far removed from traditional car racing as it's possible to get. Kicking off outside the United Nations HQ in Geneva this week, the Zero Race is only for electric cars - so is likely to be rather slower than the petrol-driven wars of every other Sunday.
And it's happening on proper roads, so there will be traffic and ice cream van hazards to contend with. Also, victory will not be determined by who crosses the finishing line first. Winners will be picked from the entire field, by committee, after spectators and a panel of judges decide which car scores best for reliability, practicality and efficiency.
Then everyone has a big, environmentally-friendly cuddle and a cup of green tea.
Also a bit different is the number of laps - one. Although the track is pretty big, seeing as Zero Race challenges the electric cars to drive all the way around the world, albeit with a couple of rather large pauses while the cars are shipped across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The event is scheduled to take 80 days, rather fortunately for reporters and headline writers.
Uhura vs Leia Cage Submission Match
Lego Star Wars has been hacked. Not the videogame, but the actual Lego pieces themselves. Jon Ippolito, who is a life-long fan of rival long-running sci-fi saga Star Trek, has dedicated a large amount of his spare time to recreating Star Trek ships and famous wobbly planet-side sets out of Star Wars pieces.
BATTLE-SCARRED KIRK FIGURINE: A pulled-off Chewbacca head makes a nice Tribble
According to Wired, Jon has set up a blog about it, illustrating a few homemade Trek scenes - and the Star Wars originals used to build them. We can't help but worry if George Lucas is planning to sue.
Be the Man
Electronic Arts has been listening to user feedback. This is always a bad idea, as it results in features like "Be a Goalkeeper" that people on internet forums think sound like a funny idea being incorporated into today's big-budget videogames.
FIFA 12: Be The Linesman?
If you fancy the idea of standing around in goal for 90 minutes - even throughout the game's 15-year career mode - you can in this year's FIFA 11 franchise update. And you can "be" the goalkeeper online as well, if you want to accurately simulate the pain of making everyone hate you over one minor error.
ET tweet home
If you don't die of neglect or self-abuse-based dehydration within the next 25 years, you could be in with a chance of seeing extra terrestrial life confirmed by the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence sky scanning project.
According to leading SETI astronomer Seth Shostak, there's a "really good chance" concrete evidence of the existence of people/things other than us in the universe will be found within the next quarter of a century. His theory is based on the Drake Equation, which calculates the minimum possible number of aliens with the ability to send us messages.
SPACED OUT: Church attendance figures will be hit hard. [Image credit: Daily Galaxy]
In 25 years time, SETI ought to have passed the percentage-scanned threshold at which detecting at least one alien world is expected.
comments off Gary Cutlack | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Saturday 14 Aug 2010
Catch up: this week’s most popular posts
This week, video of the new HTC Desire HD surfaced, Microsoft hit back at Apple with ads explaining why "Macs might spoil your fun" and Tesco announced what it is calling the UK's cheapest mobile phone contract, at £6 a month.
We also added new apps to our round-up of the best free iPhone apps and updated our look at how the PlayStation 4 article with new rumours.
Read on for this week's top stories…
Top five news stories
HTC Desire HD shown off in video
HTC has never been particularly good at keeping things under wraps, but photos and videos of the new 'HTC Desire HD' show another level of leaking ability.
The pictures, from Chinese site Uwants, of the new device were the first to drop, showing a handset that looks very much like a hybrid of the HTC HD2 and the HTC Evo (which was only released in the US).
Microsoft hits back at Apple with PC vs Mac page
Microsoft has put up a PC vs Mac page, with the software giant defending Windows PCs against Apple's increasingly popular computers.
With Apple's computer sales buoyant, Microsoft appears to have decided to throw down the gauntlet to its rival, despite the huge success of Windows 7.
Microsoft's Kinect gets dissected
With Microsoft's Kinect ready to make its appearance for Christmas, T3 has been flown out to the US to take a lengthy look at how the technology works.
Three in-depth features from the gadget maestros take in the sensor, the motor and the way the voice recognition works.
Was Papermaster binned by Apple way before Antennagate?
Mark Papermaster, the senior executive that Apple worked so hard to pry from the 25-year grip of former employer IBM, is leaving the company after only two years in charge of the iPod and iPhone engineering teams.
Inevitably, there's speculation that he's been fired because of the iPhone 4's much-publicised aerial problems. But it may not be that simple.
Tesco offering £6 a month mobile contract
Tesco has launched what it is calling the UK's cheapest mobile phone contract, offering unlimited texts and 100 minutes for £6 per month.
The supermarket giant is offering a one-month SIM, so no huge contract length and, as you might expect, you also get the added bonus of Clubcard points.
Top five in-depth articles
There are now well over 200,000 apps available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and, surprisingly, many of the best are free.
The following list showcases our pick of the 30 best free iPhone apps, and includes iPhone applications for social networking, travel, news, photography, productivity and more.
PlayStation 4 - everything you need to know about the PS4
If Microsoft is secretly readying its next Xbox to succeed the Xbox 360, then surely Sony must be working on a PlayStation 4?
Speculation has been rife that the next console battle will be fought around 2011-2012.
This is when Crytek's CEO Cevat Yerli and industry analyst Colin Sebastian believed that a potential Xbox 720 and PS4 could appear. But does the market really need another generation of hardware?
Unlocking your iPhone can be a bit of a nightmare and it depends what network you're on and whether you're still in contract.
Once you've been informed by your network that your iPhone has been unlocked, you'll need to pop in your new SIM card and connect your device to iTunes to complete the process of the unlock – you can't just do it on the handset alone. iTunes will then confirm the unlocking of your handset.
10 unboxing videos to make you go WTF?
You've bought something? Good for you! Well done. You earned it. Remember to fill in the warranty card and send it off the manufacturer, just in case. And charge it up properly the first time, else you might knacker the battery.
What you shouldn't now do is film a video of yourself struggling to open the packaging and expressing interest in the fact you get a charger with it. Yet people do. People do all the time, thanks to the unboxing video having become a phenomenon, with boxes excitedly sliced open on film as if the user is the first person to see inside the miniature Tutankhamen's tomb a stressed Chinese factory worker sealed up several weeks earlier.
The 10 most influential computers in history
Some people view the digital revolution as being just a little over 50 years old – but the fact is, today's most powerful computers are the result of decades, centuries and even millennia of development.
At the beginning of the story, you could argue, we humans counted with our fingers, and from that clumsy process the Intel Core i7 was eventually born.
Top five reviews
Expectations were high for the HDR-FOX T2 and after feeling frustrated and let down by most other Freeview+ HD boxes it comes as something of a relief to be able to say that Humax has come up with the goods.
With the Nokia C7 looking like it'll pack Symbian S^3 when released, and MeeGo on the horizon, the Nokia C6 looks like it could be something of a swan song for Symbian S60 on the Nokia's smartphones.
The world's biggest commercial OLED screen arrives at a not-so-whopping 15-inches. It's a beautiful telly, but canyou justify spending £1,700 on one?
The Stream is the best smartphone we've ever seen from Acer. The hardware is well-designed and there is a lot of good stuff under the hood. But there are also many negatives.
A budget of £400 typically buys you a 26 or 32-inch LCD TV from one of major manufacturers. All credit to Hannspree, then, which has managed to deliver a fully blown 42-in, full HD set at this price.
Also reviewed this week
AV Accessories
TrickleStar TV TrickleSaver review
Coosis HD Universal Converter (Scart/HDMI) review
Desktops
YoYoTech Warbird 750 SE review
Chillblast Fusion Magnum review
Digital TV recorders
Graphics cards
Hard disk drives
Iomega eGo Mac Edition 1TB review
Memory
Crucial Ballistix 4GB DDR3 1600MHz review
Mobile phone accessories
IK Multimedia AmpliTube iRig review
Motherboards
EVGA Superclocked GTX 465 review
Networking
Galaxy Link Tsunami Wi-Fi Booster review
Printers
Epson Stylus Photo R2880 review
Canon PIXMA Pro9000 Mark II review
Storage
TVs
comments off Jamie Middleton | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Friday 13 Aug 2010
Weird Tech: How to explain the internet to the authorities
Chris Poole, the man who founded the 4chan network of internet forums, was asked to explain the site's collection of shorthand terminology by a US court, as part of a larger case involving the hacking of Sarah Palin's email account.
Excerpts from the court proceedings, published by Gawker and The Smoking Gun, make for amazing reading, as Poole is asked to explain commonplace internet terminology such as "lurker" to the court and ends up spelling out to the judge precisely what the term "Rickroll" is and how it works and that, yes, it is supposed to be a joke.
IT'S LIKE A JOKE: A little bit like a joke
And that Rick Astley was a popular singer an unspecified number of years ago. We can understand the judges perhaps not knowing the full range of modern emoticons, but surely the works of Astley ought to transcend generations?
Astronaut underpants
A recent auction of space memorabilia saw lots of quirky space items sell, including a rather nice pair of blue astronaut underpants as worn by space shuttle crew.
The underpants appear to have velcro around them, hinting that astronauts either require velcro-ing to their trousers, or perhaps even velcro-ing to their bed sheets, or velcro-ing to each other during emergencies. Or maybe all three.
There also doesn't seem to be any kind of "easy access" hole, so presumably the astronauts have to... anyway. We won't get to try them out, as the astronaut underpants sold for $390.
Pile of art
A radical rethink of the electricity pylon has won the creators an architecture award, thanks to making the pylon into an open air work of art.
Apparently it only requires "minor alterations" to the usual format of the electricity-carrying supports to turn them into human-shaped structures, with the end result being hills populated by enormous metallic giants striding over the landscape, linked together by power cables and occasionally holding hands and turning to face each other when lines meet.
OOH ME PYLONS: "You take it for a while, Arthur, I need a sit down"
The original idea was submitted to an Icelandic power company as a design concept in 2008, but has remained unbuilt thus far.
The age of Aquariums
The "next generation of aquariums" for gadget fans has arrived! UK distributor AquaVista is responsible for the upgrade, promising to bring "widescreen" fish-viewing and a selection of controllable "apps" to its latest range of fish prisons, presenting the aquatic action in convenient, TV-shaped cases for our TV-shaped eyes.
SEA VIEW: Or just put David Attenborough on the telly
You can customise the bezels of these "living gadgets" if you want, with AquaVista proud that the new models feature touchscreen controls. Like an iPad or something.
The company says they're better than art, as art gives you a "never changing" scene. But then art doesn't die and require flushing down the toilet while children and wives cry.
comments off Gary Cutlack | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Wednesday 11 Aug 2010
10 unboxing videos to make you go WTF?
You've bought something? Good for you! Well done. You earned it. Remember to fill in the warranty card and send it off the manufacturer, just in case. And charge it up properly the first time, else you might knacker the battery.
What you shouldn't now do is film a video of yourself struggling to open the packaging and expressing interest in the fact you get a charger with it. Yet people do. People do all the time, thanks to the unboxing video having become a phenomenon, with boxes excitedly sliced open on film as if the user is the first person to see inside the miniature Tutankhamen's tomb a stressed Chinese factory worker sealed up several weeks earlier.
The poor unboxers often struggle, and it's writ large on their faces. Do they read the full specs on the box or summarise? Is their camera good enough to pick out the wording? Is their hair still looking OK, and are they sitting in such a way that their ironic t-shirt logo is visible?
As these thoughts go through the head of the unboxer, we viewers are left staring at a video of a stuttering man opening a mobile phone box who doesn't know what to say and isn't sure if he should read out the manual or simply flick through its pages and move onto talking about the cable selection.
It's a grim world. To illustrate the painful futility of the modern unboxing trend, we bring you 10 particularly awkward examples of people showing off their new stuff - with disastrous consequences.
1. Unboxing: iDox Traveler Series Case
It's a case, within some bubble wrap, stuffed inside a padded envelope. This is revealed halfway through the unboxing clip - the rest is yet more padding. What did he expect to be in there? The poor youth even has to look at the instructions. Yes, he has to look at the instructions to see how a case works. And it turns out it isn't even really a case, it's more of a stand. It's all out-take, from start to finish. A disaster.
2. Warhammer Fantasy: Unboxing the High Elf Army Pack English Subtitles!!
Here's a longshot, but do you by any chance want to watch a subtitled video of a Norwegian man opening a box of limited edition Warhammer toys? Oh go on, he goes through them in painstaking detail. He's put the effort in. You could at least help his video break the 1000 views barrier. Those Warhammer fans really care about stats like that.
3. Windows 7 Unboxing Video (HD)
The most exciting thing about this video is when the man discovers the disc is in the DVD case the wrong way up. He awkwardly pages through the manual, pausing for the odd quip. He's also cheated by cutting through the security tag with a knife before filming began, so he's probably already had a good look through the box to think of things to say about its contents in advance. That goes against the ethos of the true unboxer.
4. Demon's Souls: First Deluxe Edition Unboxing Video
There's a worrying new trend which sees the unboxing video hijacked and used as a PR technique, with company employees such as the above expressing excitement that the finished version of the product they've been working on for the last 18 months does indeed contain all the things they know are inside it. As if the unboxing video wasn't bad enough, it's been turned into another form of advertisement.
5. Metal Gear Solid 4 Unboxing, Install, and Opening
"We are going to have a party tonight" says a youth calling himself Fox McCloud DS, as he peels the cellophane off his copy of Metal Gear Solid 4 and shows the disc to the camera. The manual comes with a cartoon that "tells you like what's going on" - and then we get to watch it load. At least he stops filming before the game starts, as that's even more dull.
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6. Unboxing Ipad 64GB 3g
You worry about the poor man waving such a sharp pair of scissors so close to his face. Events take a sensational twist two minutes in when he manages to lose the scissors, and has to resort to using his keys to rip the plastic off the box. But then he finds the scissors again and... oh god. It's marginally less frightening than spending half an hour on Chatroulette, but only just.
7. Isle of Wight Blue cheese: unboxing
This one's quite arty and hypnotic, to be fair. The lack of sound adds a palpable sense of menace to proceedings, so much so that you half expect the cheese knife to start hacking off the fingers of the demonstrator. The only verbal feedback is an "Mmmmm" when a sample portion is consumed at the 1:14 mark. Sounds like a positive "Mmmmm" as well.
8. Dynex Car Charger Unboxing
He got an iPod car charger kit for Christmas, but only got around to unboxing it on January 15. The video had 34 views last night, and two of those were generated by us - once to watch it, and once again as we reloaded the page to check we really had just watched it.
9. Tactical Pants Unboxing
So we thought we'd search YouTube for "pants unboxing" to see if anyone had unboxed some pants on video. And people have, although only in the American sense of the word. So here's an American taking a pair of trousers out of a box, then giving us all a rundown of the pocket placements.
10. Unboxing TYPE A Hoover Vacuum Bags
Good god. He bought vacuum cleaner bags off eBay, despite not yet having a vacuum cleaner. And here is a video of them. A very long video of them. Some people are taking social media way too far. The clip goes black for a while at around the 0:50 mark as he has to put the camera down to open the box. He should've storyboarded it out first.
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comments off Gary Cutlack | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Saturday 07 Aug 2010
Catch up: this week’s most popular posts
This week, Vodafone users went ballistic when their HTC Desire update turned out to be a branding update and not the Android 2.2 update many were hoping for, while a new report showed that Android phones are outselling the iPhone.
And to help you choose a new laptop, we put together our list of the 20 best laptops to buy.
Read on for this week's most popular stories on TechRadar…
Top five news stories
Vodafone users angry at HTC Desire 360 update
The Vodafone UK forum is alight with posts from angry owners of the HTC Desire who feel they have been duped with the latest firmware update for their handsets.
While most were expecting the firmware update that landed this morning to be Froyo – Google's latest OS – it turns out the update was something called 2.1-update1 which commenters are calling a "branding update".
HTC Desire HD and Desire Z coming soon?
HTC looks likely to be announcing two new handsets in the near future, with the Desire HD and Desire Z showing up on inventory lists.
The two new phones have surfaced on Vodafone Germany's inventory lists, with the Desire HD and the Desire Z being rebadged from the Ace and Vision codenames respectively.
O2: HTC Desire Android 2.2 update 'several weeks' away
O2 has told TechRadar that it will be 'several weeks' before HTC Desire owners on its network will get the Android 2.2 upgrade, with tests on a service provider specific version ongoing.
The eagerly awaited upgrade to the Android OS brings a host of new features and functionality, but its arrival for phones locked to networks will be weeks and not days away.
Google Android phones more popular than iPhone
Google Android Phones are outselling Apple iPhone so far in 2010, according to a new report of the US market by leading analyst group Nielsen.
Despite the fact that Apple seems to dominate the headlines with the recently-released iPhone 4, Nielsen's latest data shows that Google is so far winning the sales race this year.
Vodafone to launch BlackBerry Torch 9800 in UK
Vodafone has told TechRadar that it will be one of the first carriers to bring the BlackBerry Torch 9800 to the UK, with more details soon to go live on its website.
As it has done with most of the major handsets on the market, those interested in getting their hands on the BlackBerry Torch 9800 will be able to pre-register their interest.
Top five in-depth articles
20 best laptops in the world today
There's no shortage of cheap laptops out there to choose from, but with new models bring released and almost immediately replaced by manufacturers, the choice is no easy task.
That's why we've pored over our huge database of laptop reviews and picked out the best notebooks money can buy. We've picked out five of the best cheap laptop computers in each of four categories - the sub £400 and sub £600 price ranges as well gaming laptops and lightweight notebooks.
20 best web apps you've never heard of
Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr - a few giants so dominate the web app world that it's hard for anyone else to make an impression.
We've spent some time looking beyond the leading sites, though, and discovered a host of interesting tech startups.
How cheap technology is costing us dear
Cheap technology isn't as cheap as you might think. When something's designed to a particular price, compromises have to be made. Those compromises aren't just in the design, although of course you can't expect Porsche quality at Primark prices; they're in every part of the technology company's business from the factories it uses to the way it provides technical support. Typically, cheap technology means cutting every possible corner to make the price as low as possible.
Android 2.2 release date: when will you get it?
If you're waiting impatiently for the Android 2.2 update to arrive on your mobile, then hit this page, because we'll be keeping it up to date with all the latest Android 2.2 release dates.
How to make your own iPad or iPhone 4 micro SIM
Despite the 3G version of the iPad being sold unlocked, both that and the iPhone 4 requires a whole new type of SIM card - the micro SIM. Or does it?
Top five reviews
Though the Zylo doesn't have all the fancy PS3 connectivity that made the Aino so unusual, it still has digital playback at its core.
Sony Bravia KDL-32EX503 review
If you're after something more than just a basic flatscreen TV, this polished affair from Sony makes for a tempting option. It's low-end, but it's packed with features worthy of more expensive sets.
Few Freeview+ HD recorders made it to shelves in time for the World Cup, but post-South Africa sees a swathe of new boxes – and this Sharp is on the front of the grid.
Hands on: BlackBerry Torch review
The BlackBerry Torch is RIM's first slider phone, and the first time we've seen a 'normal' touchscreen too. It seems smarter than the Bold and better than the Storm, but what's it like to use?
Hands on: New Amazon Kindle review
Amazon is doing its best to convince the world that dedicated ebook readers are the way forward, and this new reader and an update to the Kindle Store shows this.
Also reviewed this week:
Televisions:
Sony Bravia KDL-46EX503 review
Sony Bravia KDL-32EX503 review
Freeview+ HD PVRs:
Phones:
Hands on: BlackBerry Torch review
SSD drives:
Corsair Force F100 100GB review
Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB review
Patriot Torqx 128GB SSD review
Motherboards:
You might also like: Best TV 2010: top-rated TVs on TechRadar
comments off TechRadar | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Friday 06 Aug 2010
Weird Tech: Winston Churchill’s UFO files released
If you have nothing particular planned for the rest of your life, try searching through the enormous database of UK UFO sightings over at the National Archives.
The collection of alien encounter reports hit the headlines this week after claims that Winston Churchill himself ordered a UFO cover up during the war years when a returning pilot claimed his plane was "approached by a metallic UFO", and Winnie didn't want to alarm the nation with fears of possible new Nazi technology.
The sighting was taken to the very top – a subsequent letter claims the incident was discussed in a wartime meeting between Churchill and US president Dwight Eisenhower.
The rest of the latest batch of material released by the National Archives makes for equally interesting reading, with letters to the Ministry of Defence – and the MOD's replies – scanned into huge PDF files for our enjoyment. The occasional illustrations from confused elderly spotters are the highlights.
Foot patrol
Amy Windom got herself out of an extremely serious spot of bother in a very clever way – by typing an appeal for help on her laptop using her toes. She couldn't use her fingers, because she'd been tied to the bed by a rather rude intruder, who then proceeded to ransack her house.
TOE-TYPING: Ctrl+P would be tough
According to AJC News, Amy convinced the robber not to take her laptop because it would be traceable. So, with it lying on the bed, she opened the case, unlocked it, opened up AIM and typed "HELP. CALL 911" and "IM HOME TIED TO BEED" to her boyfriend using her toes.
And that's why people shouldn't type in capital letters on the internet. Your rage-filled paragraph could be interpreted as a toe-typed call for help.
Little Black Phone
If you're in the extremely lucky position of having so much sex with so many different people you have trouble keeping on top of who exactly you were rubbing it up against last night, DateMate – The Dating and Sex Tracker might help alleviate embarrassing mix-ups over stuff like the names, hobbies and favourite TV programmes of your conquests.
MET A GIRL ON MONDAY: Bluetoothed photos of her to my mates on Tuesday...
Designed to help attractive people schedule and organise their sexual lives via – what else? – iPhone, DateMate enables users to create profiles of each of their dating partners, building a fact-packed little bio of each person to refer to when conversation has started running dry halfway through the main course. There's isn't an Android version. No need.
Knee-jerk reaction
If you're getting on a bit, and kneeling down on the floor isn't the enjoyable, relaxing leisure experience it once was due to the pains and stresses of getting back up again, Japanese researchers have the answer. Robotic knee enforcements.
ONE BENDED KNEE: His feet needs recharging overnight
According to CrunchGear, the under-the-trouser robotic knee is actually more of a walking aid, one that's been designed to help people get around without relying on crutches. Although there's one slight problem – it currently requires a backpack full of equipment in order to power the thing.
comments off Gary Cutlack | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Thursday 05 Aug 2010
In Depth: Facebook: the hotbed of cybercrime?
We meet Graham Cluley from Sophos – and occasional TechRadar columnist – in a central London hotel. We're here to talk about Sophos' new six-monthly report on the state of cybercrime across the globe, and social networks with people proliferating information are at the forefront of his mind – as well as international cybercrime and his wife's iPad.
"There's a new kind of cybercrime – for want of a better word – which is occurring on social networks," he says, talking about the recent rash of viral messages on Facebook that "your friend endorses, he's 'liked' it. There was one saying there was a secret message in Toy Story 3".
Usually, the link – which purports to be something of interest but just takes you to a survey – enables the originator to make a few cents.
Facebook's weak point remains security, believes Cluley. "You can't report an individual link. We see umpteens of these every day. Because Facebook's privacy settings are so rubbish, you can pick them up just by searching people's status updates."
It's ironic that security researchers take advantage of Facebook security lapses to search for these. Cluley searches for 'shocking' and 'video' – some more quickly appear from the last hour.
Platform agnostic
Rogue apps are also a problem: "Facebook apps aren't vetted, they just ask for a credit card or mobile phone number."
Cluley says that the proliferation of dodgy Facebook links is because the action of spreading them isn't strictly illegal and is a "grey area".
"The beauty of [these links] is that they're completely platform independent," says Cluley. "They don't need Windows and just run in the browser. There's 500 million people on [Facebook], many of whom are all too willing to click on a link."
Cluley believes the proliferation of non-Windows devices merely makes this social networking manipulation more attractive – not least on the iPad he bought for his wife.
"I think with touchscreen devices like the iPad, there's another contributing factor – you don't know where links are going. The whole concept of hovering over a link doesn't really exist with a touchscreen and people are just in the habit of clicking [on links].
Too much information
"We're seeing more activity on Facebook than we are on Twitter – there's a bigger pool of people. Obviously, there's still potential for the spreading of a link. There's also the issue of whether your Twitter client is secure, though I don't think we've actually seen that yet.
Again, people are sharing too much information, such as people's precise date of birth. There are issues regarding [geolocation] – the likes of Foursquare are beginning to rumble away and become more successful."
Cluley talks about the example of a woman in the States who got burgled and realised that the offender was one of her new friends on Facebook. Extreme perhaps, but Cluely is just indicating that people need to be more careful when posting location-related information.
State-sponsored cybercrime
We ask Cluley whether about the remainder of the threat landscape. "There are interesting things that happen from time to time, but normally they happen in an isolated way…Blackhats say they can hack the Nintendo Wii. Well, yes you could. Frankly, cybercriminals aren't very inventive. We continue to see SEO poisoning, identity theft, things like that."
Cluley brings up the issue of state-sponsored cybercrime – one of the key issues in the report where 63 per cent of people think it's okay for the UK to spy on other countries using hacking and malware. Although 40 per cent of them added the proviso 'only if we're at war with them'. the general consensus was that it's fine to use cyber-spying at the government level.
"There's an interesting endorsement of state-sponsored cybercrime among the general public. I think over the course of time we've seen more and more accusations of this kind of thing," says Cluley, referring to China being under the spotlight.
Cluley believes that we're entering the third era of cybercrime – economic, political and even militarily motivated. "First we had the hobbyists, and then there were the financially motivated [cybercriminals]" says Cluley.
"We're seeing more attacks [on individual companies] in the form of malformed Word documents or boobytrapped PDFs coming in to break into your company and steal information.
"There's been a real growth in that over the last 12 months. Is it all state sponsored? Probably not, but we'd be naïve to think that countries [don't indulge in this]. Secret services have used every trick in the book – why would the internet be different? Secondly, there's less physical danger. Thirdly, it's a cheap way to spy."
But surely it's ridiculously difficult to prove the origin of an attack? "Yes, extremely," says Cluley. "Google had evidence to say that [an attack] had come from China. It's very difficult to prove that it's state sponsored and very difficult to prove that it's of Chinese origin – spammers take over computers all over the world every day. But why wouldn't it be happening? It's easy, it's cheap and it's effective."
comments off Dan Grabham | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Wednesday 04 Aug 2010
Sterilising water bottle wins Dyson award
A water bottle that uses ultraviolet light to sterilise drinking water has won the UK competition in this year's James Dyson award.
InventorTim Whitehead is now looking to win the overall £10,000 prize fund with his innovative sterilising tech.
Pure and simple
Whitehead, a design and technology graduate from from Loughborough University, came up with the idea for the clean water bottle while travelling in Africa.
The Pure bottle means that there is no longer the need to use chlorine and iodine tablets to purify drinking water
Whitehead's design will be put forward for Dyson's global final this coming October.
Whitehead said of the Pure bottle tech: "I thought that there must be a way of using new technology to clean drinking water. I began experimenting with using ultraviolet light to sterilise water quickly, without any distortion to taste."
How does it work?
The tech is both simple and effective. Users put dirty water into an outer chamber and then a filtering inner chamber is plunged through the water.
After the initial filtering, the water is finally sterilised by a wind-up ultraviolet bulb, which takes only 90 seconds.
Whitehead's prototype has been shown to eliminate 99.9 per cent of bacteria and viruses.
Dyson Award judge Professor Matthew Harrison, of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said of the tech: "Pure provides a practical solution to a real problem - how to get clean drinking water in the most hostile of conditions.
"It has the potential to make a real difference to people's lives."
comments off Adam Hartley | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech
Saturday 31 Jul 2010
Catch up: this week’s most popular posts
This week saw Samsung take a swipe at the iPhone 4's reception problems with a new ad for the Galaxy S while Microsoft defended the price of Kinect – which some have been criticising as high.
We also posted our wishlist of 10 things Google should change for Android 3.0, and also in the Android world, HTC confirmed that the 2.2 Froyo upgrade is being rolled out to Desire owners.
Hot reviews included Motorola Milestone XT720, the Samsung Galaxy Apollo and our hands-on with the Apple Magic Trackpad.
Read on for this week's most popular stories on TechRadar…
Top five news stories
Samsung Galaxy S advert pokes fun at iPhone
The latest Samsung Galaxy S ad has taken a less than subtle, but very amusing, swipe at the Apple iPhone.
The advert for Samsung's well-received new smartphone features bars of network characters making up the Ls in the world Hello.
Microsoft defends Kinect pricing
Microsoft's Brett Siddons believes that Kinect for the Xbox 360 is very competitively priced, pointing out that you only need to buy one thing to get the complete experience.
Brits say no to paid-for web content
A major survey by KPMG has found that 81 per cent of UK web users would opt to go somewhere else rather than pay for content on the internet.
Firefox and Chrome are playing catch-up, says Internet Explorer team
If the impressive performance of the IE9 Platform Preview is down to hardware acceleration, how will IE compete with Firefox 4, which is already in beta and has its own GPU acceleration?
Quite happily, thanks, says Rob Mauceri, group program manager for IE, pointing out that the hardware acceleration in IE9 is a lot more comprehensive.
HTC Desire Android 2.2 update coming this weekend
HTC has just sent us a statement - Android 2.2 is coming to the HTC Desire from this weekend. Though don't get super-excited just yet - if you've got an operator-locked handset, you won't be getting it straight away.
Top five in-depth articles
Android 3.0: 10 things Google should change
The only phone currently running a non-hacked version of Google's latest OS incarnation is the Nexus One, with all the other Google-powered smartphone users of the world still anxiously scrolling up and down the 'About Phone' page waiting for an over-the-air upgrade to arrive.
But that won't stop us getting excited about Android 3.0, which Google is referring to as "Gingerbread". It's believed that the Android 3.0 release date will be in time for this year's autumn/winter smartphone collection.
Top 20 best free games you should play today
You need to break out your wallet if you want the latest big AAA shooter, but the free route is becoming increasingly interesting. Many older games are now opening out in search of a wider audience, and more and more companies are finding ways to profit from free releases.
For indie developers, it's the perfect way to make a name for themselves, either just for the glory or to build an audience for future games.
The Beeb has announced the free BBC News app for iPhone and iPad.
Those on other platforms shouldn't despair though - because of the corporation's commitment to universality, we suspect development for other platforms isn't far behind. Indeed, the BBC has confirmed that BlackBerry and Android applications are coming later in the year
100 best ever free PC system tools
There's a tool for just about anything you can think of in Windows. And if you look hard enough, you'll find a freebie is more than capable of doing the job you want – in some cases, free tools outclass their shareware or commercial rivals.
The trick is knowing what's out there and where to find it, which is where we come in. We've done the hard work for you, trawling the web for hundreds of free Windows tools and selecting the finest 100.
Android 2.2 release date: when will you get it?
If you're waiting impatiently for the Android 2.2 update to arrive on your mobile, then check this story, because we're keeping it up to date with all the latest Android 2.2 release dates.
Top five reviews
Motorola Milestone XT720 review
The Motorola Milestone XT720 is a versatile smartphone that puts Motorola right back at the top of the tree as far as features are concerned.
The resurgent Samsung, fresh from the global success of its Galaxy S, is now scaling down its touchscreen ambitions for those who can't afford to top smartphones
Gigabyte X58A-UD3R Rev.2 review
Intel's LGA1366 socket is the highest performing PC platform, period. With boards costing over £200, it's also pretty pricey. But the recently revised Gigabyte X58A-UD3R is a bit of a bargain at just £159.
Hands on: Magic Trackpad review
The surface of the Magic Trackpad is glass, just like the MacBook Pro trackpad - but the surface area is 80 per cent larger than the trackpad on a MacBook Pro .
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gbps review
For ultimate performance, SSDs rule. But WD's Caviar Black combines huge capacity with reasonable performance at a very attractive price point.
Also reviewed this week:
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge (Core i5 430M) review
Mesh Discovery Slim 15.6 review
Toshiba Satellite P500-1DZ review
Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1600MHz 4GB review
Samsung Galaxy Apollo i5800 review
Motorola Milestone XT720 review
Sapphire Pure Mini 785G review
Netgear ReadyNAS NVX Pioneer Edition review
Microsoft Windows Live Sync review
Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery review
Microsoft Windows Live Mail review
Microsoft Windows Live Messenger review
comments off Jamie Middleton | Digital Camera, News, Photo Accessories, World of tech