LG has added a new cell phone to their range by releasing the LG GD510. The phone comes jam packed with a 3-inch WQVGA touchscreen display with a resolution of 240 x 400, a 3-megapixel camera, and a 8GB of storage space to store your captured pictures or videos. Additional features include a brushed aluminum [...]
Google is today sending out Google Wave beta invites.
If you registered your interest back when Wave was announced, you may already have a Wave invite in your in-box.
If you didn’t register, or you don’t receive an invite, then you should track down someone who did: just like when Gmail first launched, those on the programme will have a limited number of invites that they can send out to friends.
It’s likely that sites will spring up offering to share Wave invites, so don’t pay the scalpers who are starting to offer them on eBay.
What is Google Wave?
Wave is designed to be a ground-up reinvention of the way we communicate and collaborate. Think instant messaging, but with the open platform potential for plugging in Twitter and other methods of communication, too. (See this video for Google Wave in action on the iPhone.)
For the moment, Google Wave isn’t a full public launch but after it was made available to a small number of developers at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco earlier this year, Google is now sending out 100,000 beta invites.
In a conference call with TechRadar in May 2009, Lars Rasmussen, Software Engineering Manager, explained Wave: “It’s a communication and collaboration tool we’ve been working on for a couple of years down in Sydney.
“A Wave is a single shared space where two or more users can exchange real time dialogue, photos, videos, maps and documents in what we call a Wave. Everyone can reply to a Wave, people can come and go and you can drag and drop information from all over the web.”
PLAY GAMES: You can drag in information from the web and comment as you go
As well as running in a web browser, waves can be embedded in sites, while open source code means that you could even run your own Wave server. “Everything you’re [can see in Wave] is an HTML 5 application built with the Google Web Toolkit.
“It does push the limits of the web and it does require a modern browser,” adds Lars. It won’t work in IE6, but it will work in later versions as well as Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
“Later when we show the demo [at May 2009's Google I/O conference] one of the new things we’ll add is integration between Google Wave and Twitter which is an example application we hope will inspire developers to build things for real. You build an extension for Wave that users can install, similar to installing extensions for Firefox.”
ACCEPT OR DECLINE: Meeting request or BBQ invite - you can collaborate with your mates or colleagues on events and chat about them in your Wave
Rasmussen has worked on Google Wave alongside his brother Jens. Both used to work for the mapping startup, Where 2 Technologies, acquired by Google in October 2004 – subsequently the brothers developed Google Maps before moving onto Wave, sparked by their own idea, originally code named Walkabout.
“We were looking at all the advances in technology that have occurred since email was invented over 40 years ago. We looked at how computers have improved dramatically and the many types of communication [that has come about] since then,” explains Lars.
CHAT AND SHARE: Look at pictures, then talk about them - you can drop into the conversation at any point
“We tried to come up with a new form of communication, as simple as we could make it, which has functionality spanning as many of these existing tools as we could come up with. We’re aiming to rethink what communication might look like if we try and rethink everything from scratch,” continues Lars.
“After months holed up in a conference room in the Sydney office, our five-person “startup” team emerged with a prototype. And now, after more than two years of expanding our ideas, our team, and technology, we’re very eager (and a little nervous) to return and see what the world might think.”
EDIT CONCURRENTLY: You’ll see updates appear letter-by-letter, while you can see everything happen in realtime
In Google’s own words, Wave will “try out some new ideas” such as concurrent rich text editing – you can see on your screen almost instantly, letter-by-letter, what your fellow collaborators are typing into a message or document in a wave, unlike in instant messaging where you need to wait to see what someone is typing. (If you don’t like this, there is a draft mode.)
You can also view ‘playback’ waves so you can see how conversations have evolved.
INVITE: You can add participants to a Wave at any time
Google is planning to open source Google Wave while any developer can build extensions to Google Wave using our open APIs.
“The way we think about Wave is that it’s a communication system, a productivity tool as well where you can produce content but there’s a very rich set of APIs that come with the tool and that of course is why we’re releasing it to developers first,” explains Lars.
“We intend for Wave to be an open system much like email where you can have an account with any provider. We would love to see a future where different organisations build their own Wave services. We want to make sure users can interoperate with each other.
“All of the underlying protocols and algorithms have been designed with this in mind. We are going to make the protocol openly available and we intend to… open source the lion’s share of our code.
“We have built in some very important features, in particular anyone can run their own Wave server. This is particularly important for enterprises that would prefer to run their own Wave servers.”
SET TO DRAFT: If you don’t want people to see as you type, you can set to draft
Waves are also searchable “When a web crawler comes by a site with a Wave on it, our servers will serve up that Wave in static HTML so they can be easily indexed,” explains Lars.
ADD AND SHARE: Drop in Google Maps to events, for example
Finally, we asked Lars whether Google had any current plans to introduce advertising into Wave. “We have no such plans, this again is a very early release and at Google we have quite a luxury that in the beginning of the life of a product we focus exclusively on technology and making a product successful.
“The question of monetising we deal with later, this was also true of our last product Google Maps – it was a year and a half in before we even started to discussing [monetising it].
“By then it was even easier to do it as our existing advertising customers had lined up around the block wanting to advertise on Maps. We’re hoping a similar scenario with unfold,” he explains.
If you’re interested, Google Wave information for developers is available while you can opt to be notified when Google Wave is launched as a public product.
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If you are in the UK and about to go to university, you are in luck as Microsoft is offering a cut-price deal on Windows 7 for students.
Essentially this means you will be able to get the software for an extremely low price of £30.
Student discount
The offer is on until 3 January 2010. After this you will have to pay the normal price for Windows 7.
To be eligible for the offer, all you need to do is log on to www.microsoft.com/uk/windows/studentoffer/default.aspx, enter your a valid .EDU email address (an email address given by the college or university, eg name@leeds.ac.uk) and away you go.
£30 is a bit of a bargain for an OS which is compatible with touch screen technology. Other features of Windows 7 include remote media streaming, improved gaming experience, enhanced security and integration of Windows Media Centre for more central and convenient management of music, movies and photos.
To find out more about the software, point your browser to www.microsoft.com/windows. Windows 7 official release date is 22 October.
UPDATE
Microsoft has informed us that the student deal is live right now.
In a statement the company has said: “The offer gives students the chance to purchase either Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade OR Windows 7 Professional Upgrade from a special website (http://www.ultimatesteal.co.uk) with both versions available for the discounted price of £30 each.
“For those students requiring the full packaged product (FPP) they can opt to receive a boxed version, by post, for an additional cost of £9.”
It almost makes you want to return to student life again. Almost.
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One of the most popular charitable causes for companies to donate money to is cancer research. Belkin has recently released a couple of iPod touch cases that are being sold and part of the proceeds will be given to help find a cure for breast cancer. The DualFit and Grip will be available for purchase [...]
Sony’s pocket-sized PSP Go is finally out in the UK this week, with SCE ditching the unpopular UMD disc format in preference of digital downloaded games from its online store.
And while Sony has come under fire for not making the entire PSP back catalogue available to PSP Go gamers, the new machine is certainly a looker and has the huge advantage over its bigger, older brethren in the PSP family in that it pretty much fits in most pockets.
And yet while some traditional retailers bemoan the fact that they cannot make money from downloads and that small (yet vocal) hardcore PSP gaming community mocks the fact that their favourite games are still only available on physical discs, Sony is sure to make a splash in the run-up to the busy Christmas gift-buying season with the new PSP Go.
Sony’s Claire Backhouse, Product Manager for PSP in the UK is quick to point out the differences between the new PSP Go and PS3 Slim, telling GamesIndustry.biz: “The Slim is actually taking over from the old PS3, whereas with PSP Go we’re not taking over from the PSP 3000, it’s very much a console that’s going to sit alongside the PSP 3000.”
Movies, Facebook, Skype
Sony is aiming to take a slice of the older gaming market, those, “16-34 year olds… like iPhone users who watch films and want high quality downloadable games on the go… that suit their lifestyle.”
As for non-games download plans for the PSP Go, the Sony exec admits that, while at launch they are “very much focusing on the gaming part of it… in the next couple of months you’ll get other people that are interested in just general entertainment and things like Skyping - you can Skype on the console really easily - and going on the net, checking Facebook, that sort of thing”.
Perhaps, most controversially, while she admits that Apple’s iPhone has opened up the casual “social gaming on the go market” Backhouse thinks that “PSP Go is… even better than an iPhone” when you consider the range of gaming and entertainment services on offer.
A bold claim indeed and one which only time and the ever-changing whims of the mass market consumer while bear out.
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Welcome to TechRadar’s CES 2010 page, where we’ll be hosting all our CES 2010 coverage when the show kicks off on January 7th. In the meantime, make a note of these important dates:
Key dates
Opening keynote: 6th January 2010 (Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer)
Show dates: 7th January - 10th January
Free registration: closes October 1st 2009; costs $100 until January 2nd, and $200 on-site thereafter.
Contacts
Recent news
CES 2010: MSI’s new touchscreen, Pine Trail powered Wind
CES 2010: iLounge snags Macworld exhibitors
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TalkTalk has announced plans to implement a ratings scheme for broadband connections to give parents tighter control over their kids’ online habits.
Charles Dunstone, CEO of TalkTalk, says the ratings would mean parents wouldn’t need to install blockers on computers, thus making the whole process easier.
“We are working on introducing parental controls within our network, so your household can decide whether you want to be a U, 14 or 18 certificate or unclassified,” he told the Financial Times.
Helping customers
“This is something that we are going to do anyway, as a service to our customers,” he added. “But through doing it we can also help the content industry by blacklisting sites that have BitTorrent files on them.”
The Government is keen to clamp down on online piracy in the UK, in a bid to stop the rising amount of illegal downloading.
However, talk of shutting off the internet accounts of persistent downloaders has angered a number of users, and moves such as this by TalkTalk would move the control back to the consumer.
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The boss of cloud gaming company OnLive has said that the service is set to launch sometime this coming winter and that the service is already valued in the region of $500-$750 million.
OnLive CEO Steve Perlman has not specified an exact date for the final release to consumers, as the cloud gaming service is still in its beta testing phase.
Perlman has, however, hinted to VentureBeat, that the service – originally slated for a 2009 launch – may well slip into early 2010.
Goodbye gaming discs…
“Over the last decade, we’ve seen an enormous upheaval in the media business as the written word, photos, music, and video have been steadily moving away from physical media to online delivery,” said the OnLive man on his blog.
“One major category that still remains largely based on physical discs is fast-response interactive media — in particular, video games. And, of course, OnLive’s goal is to enable that last remaining transition.”
US telecom giant, AT&T doesn’t think so and Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Lauder Partners LLC have both handed over oodles more venture capital cash to OnLive.
This prompted games analyst Michael Pachter to comment: “It establishes Onlive as a real player. This is not just some goofy video game delivery company.”
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2009 has been one of the trickiest years in Apple’s recent history - lawsuits to the left and right, Steve Jobs’ enforced hiatus and rumbling of discontent over the App Store and much, much more.
We’re going to put forward the evidence for the prosecution and defence in TechRadar’s kangaroo court.
Is Apple guilty of losing the plot? These arguments for the prosecution and defence can help you decide.
1. Mac clones
The prosecution
Apple is currently embroiled in a bitter courtroom battle with Psystar - a Mac clone maker which argues that the Mac operating system should be set free to run on any platform - and that anyone should be able to make a Mac, not just Apple.
PSYSTAR: When is a Mac not a Mac?
A free and fair market for Mac clones would deliver better value for money for consumers, and would make the Mac software available on a wider variety of computers – addressing demand among some PC users for a high quality, low cost alternative to Windows.
Apple would also benefit from opening up the Mac platform to third-parties. It would be able to grow market share for the Mac, it would spur innovation and competitiveness and would satisfy demand for cheap Macintosh computers, leaving Apple to retain its status as a premium computer maker.
The defence
Apple is not now, and never has been, a software company – it’s a hardware company.
The software it makes, good as it is, is really a means to an end. Customers get hooked on the user experience and so buy the hardware – Mac, iPhone, iPod and so on.
In doing that Apple has been able to carve out a small, but growing niche for itself as a premium computer and consumer electronics maker. And it’s very happy to keep on doing so. The last time it licensed Mac clones in the mid-1990s, it proved disastrous for the company – it leeched hardware sales away to lower cost rivals and was one of the reasons Apple nearly went to the wall.
If Psystar wins, it could well be the beginning of the end for Apple as a hardware company and everything than follows from that. Hardware companies like Dell may have expressed interest in Mac OS X in the past, but Apple’s vertically integrated business model works very well – it doesn’t have to support a bewildering variety of third-party and legacy hardware like Microsoft does.
It can deliver a complete platform where every component (hardware and software) has been designed to work well together. If you don’t like it, don’t buy a Mac. There are plenty of other PC makers out there.
2. The App Store
The prosecution
It’s a mess. Apple appears to be making policy on the hoof, approving some apps, while denying others - the current row over Google Voice being a case in point. All of this would be avoidable if Apple stopped insisting on being a monopolistic gatekeeper and enabled anyone to develop software for the iPhone and iPod touch - and then let them sell those apps on the open market.
Instead, Apple insists on taking 30 per cent of anything developers make, and coming up with an arcane approvals process only it understands.
Apple uses open source when it suits its own business practices, but denies access to those who want to do the same. Result? A thriving hacking community that Apple has to play a pointless game of cat-and-mouse with.
The structure of the App Store also makes it difficult for developers to get their apps under customers’ noses - many simply vanish without a trace unless you know to ask for it by name using the Search option.
The defence
Some of the arguments presented by the prosecution are fair, but let’s look at it another way. From the moment the iPhone was launched in January 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs argued that the iPhone should be a ‘closed’ platform, chiefly so users wouldn’t have to put up with badly programmed apps that stopped their phones from working properly.
Since then Apple has made several concessions to developer and consumer demand - first by opening up the iPhone to third-party web apps, and then by enabling developers that could be developed for the iPhone under a strict approvals process that tries to ensure standards, while delivering a good user experience.
ALL GO: Spotify is one of many third-party apps that Apple has approved for the iPhone
Apple didn’t have to do this. The overwhelming success of the iPhone – and the enthusiasm of developers and customers for it has inevitably caused some problems, but Apple is learning fast.
Last week it approved 1,400 apps for use on the iPhone in a single day, and it has granted approval to apps that compete, in some cases, with its own business offerings.
This way of working has been so successful, it’s already been copied by RIM with its BlackBerry store, Palm and Microsoft. Google’s business model for Android is different. If you don’t like the way Apple works, don’t complain about it – go get a Google phone instead.
3. Build quality
The prosecution
Exploding iPhones. iPods and Macs that catch fire, dodgy marketing claims that can’t be met by the real world demands upon the product.
Apple isn’t the BMW or Mercedes or computer makers - some days its products would make a five-year-old blush. If the company continues to demand a premium for its products, it had better make damn sure its products are up to snuff. In a great many cases, it doesn’t.
MACBROKE: Some MacBook Pros suffered a faulty graphics card
Apple is guilty of placing too much emphasis on the demands of its marketing and design arms, and not enough on quality engineering. Apple’s obsession with secrecy also stops its products – both software and hardware – from being rigorously tested in the field, which is why you end up with problems – from blue screens of death on Leopard to oily palm marks and faulty video cards on MacBooks.
The defence
A lot of the claims about hardware ‘failure’ actually have dubious merit, which is why Apple investigates them. Firstly to establish that fraud isn’t taking place; secondly to ensure that if there are real problems they can be investigated and a remedy found.
Where problems have been found in the past, Apple has issued recalls and fixed them for free, but often the problems aren’t of Apple’s making – remember the dodgy laptop batteries of a couple of years back? It affected a wide range of PC makers, not just Apple, and the problem was laid squarely at Sony’s door.
It’s also true to say that when you have a product as successful as the iPod, iPhone or even the Mac, there are inevitably going to be a few rogue examples that don’t measure up – it’s something all manufacturers have to deal with.
Apple has a 14-day returns policy, offers a free 1-year limited warranty and offers an extended 3-year warranty called AppleCare. All Apple products are subject to continuous assessment and improvement – which is why Apple’s latest MacBook Pros offer a unibody enclosure, designed to make them more robust.
4. Innovation
The prosecution
The world’s ‘most innovative’ company simply doesn’t innovate any more. It’s been two years since the launch of the iPhone, and all we’ve had since then are some unexceptional software and hardware updates.
TV FLOP: Apple TV hasn’t been Apple’s finest hour
In many cases Apple has actually fallen behind the market – it still doesn’t offer a netbook or tablet PC, you can’t buy a Mac with a built-in Blu-ray drive and even the iPhone has stalled – Apple still only offers one form factor, when surely it should have come up with a variety of different models – and at different price points by now.
The innovations it has introduced have flopped: Apple TV being a prime example. Even Microsoft has more interesting hardware these days – just take a look at Courier.
The defence
Wow. Let’s take a look, shall we? Most companies would struggle to come up with one true innovation in a lifetime let alone several – Apple has the Mac, the iPod and the iPhone for starters.
Apple continues to lead, while other PC makers – hardware and software – follow. It has come up with a raft of innovative features in the last couple of years, from the unibody construction of the MacBook Pro, to Grand Central Dispatch and Open CL in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard also sets the stage for future OS innovations.
Apple has also had a hand in helping Intel develop a simplified, multi-protocol interface for high-def displays with Light Peak. There’s also more to innovation than just being first – there’s also being right. Apple didn’t invent the portable MP3 player; its innovation was doing it better than everyone else. It didn’t invent the smartphone, but the iPhone solves a lot of the problems rival smartphones created.
Apple argues that it’s not interested in making a netbook, chiefly because it already has the iPhone – which is powerful, pocketable PC. It doesn’t follow that Apple is completely immune to the idea – and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that it is prepping a consumer tablet PC for launch early next year. But it’ll only do so when it can offer something truly innovative to users, and that it can charge a premium by doing so.
5. Security
The prosecution
Apple is complacent about security, despite increasing evidence that hackers are now targeting the Mac with malware, worms and other threats.
Its apparent security strength is more of a result of the Mac platform’s obscurity than anything else. The Mac operating system still switches off the built-in firewall by default and the latest version – Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard – actually shipped with a vulnerable version of Adobe Flash that left Mac users who installed the software open to attack.
Additionally, the malware ‘protection’ Apple offers in Snow Leopard is laughably poor. It doesn’t even address all the current threats to the Mac platform. Oh, and the iPhone’s anti-phishing protection doesn’t work.
The defence
Of course it’s right that Apple should take malware threats seriously – and there’s plenty of evidence it does.
It offers regular security updates for its operating system and associated software. It’s actually taken a great deal of trouble in Snow Leopard to beef up security at the ground level; and to warn users against installing unverified applications.
Both the Mac and iPhone have nothing like the legions of hackers lined up against them that Windows has – Microsoft’s own December 2008 security report showed that millions of PC worldwide are infected with malware.
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Shooting has started on the next Resident Evil movie, which is set to star Milla Jovovich and be filmed in 3D and is currently being shot in Toronto, Canada.
The Czech beauty reprises her role as Alice, with Paul W.S. Anderson returning to the director’s chair, shooting a script that he also wrote himself.
Zombie apocalypse 3D
A quick gander at IMDB informs us that in addition to Jovovich returning as the zombie-fighting heroine Alice, Ali Larter reprises her role as Claire Redfield from Resident Evil: Extinction and Spencer Locke, who played K-Mart in Extinction is also returning.
Wentworth Miller is set to play Chris Redfield , while Shawn Roberts will play the role of Alice’s nemesis Wesker. Boris Kodjoe and Kim Coates have also been cast.
Paul WS Anderson shooting (his new wife) Milla in glorious 3-D. This is one game-to-movie we are now really looking forward to seeing next year!
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