Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Microsoft is being all mysterious today by running a teaser ad for a new mouse technology with the intriguing - or completely misleading tagline - ‘Say Goodbye to Laser’. The company looks set to bring something new to the world of computer mice on September 9 and, if the company hopes to have any chance of ousting the fabulous laser mouse, it will have to come up with something really special. Laser mice were a massive leap on from optical ones so it will be interesting to see what new spin emerges. The suggestions are flying in, from the somewhat practical to the downright silly and amusing. The return of the trackball? Accelerometers? GPS? Proton lasers? In-built hadron colliders? Bluetooth to get get rid of the need for USB dongles? A mouse that makes the Windows experience enjoyable? There is actually some information from an Italian site regarding something called Microsoft BlueTrack, for a new mouse called Explorer. According to the Google translation, we are looking at something with blue LED tracking that will work across lots of surfaces, even carpet. Especially handy for those who like to surf while rolling around on the shag-pile. All speculation welcome. -Martin Lynch [Engadget via Microsoft] news mouse gadget

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The price of a dedicated Blu-ray player has remained high - too high - even after winning the HD war against HD DVD but, Tesco has teamed up with German PB big-shot Medion to sell a performance PC with Blu-ray drive for just £600. The PC in question is the shiny, black Medion Akoya P36888 and, despite the attractive pricing, it’s no slouch. The P36888 is powered by the Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600, runs Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium, has a 1TB 7200rpm hard disk drive, 3GB of RAM, a hybrid TV tuner and the all-important Blu-Ray Reader/DVD-ReWriter. Here’s the full line up:* 3GB DDR2-SDRAM * 1000 GB Hard Disk - 7200rpm, interface Serial ATA * Blu-Ray Reader/DVD-ReWriter o Max: 4x DVD+R9 (DL), 4x DVD-R9 (DL), 16x DVD+R, 16x DVD-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 40x CD-R, 24x CD-RW, 5x DVD-RAM * NVIDIA® GeForce® 9300GS o PCI-Express Graphics card with 256MB, DVI-I, 1 x D-Sub VGA and 1 x TV Out * Integrated Memory Card Reader o reads from and writes to all standard memory cards** * DVB-T/Analogue TV tuner card*** * Network controller Gigabit 10/100/1000 Mbit/s * IEEE 1394 FireWire * 8 Channel Audio * PS/2 keyboard and mouse * Remote control The PC will be available in Tesco Extra and Tesco Homestore outlets around the country, as well as online.-Martin Lynch PC blu-ray news

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If you have a PS3 or an Xbox 360 then this news story isn’t for you. In fact you probably laugh in the face of all the fools who have to wait to play the controversial, record breaking game on a PC. For everyone else though this is a big deal, so run along and go play on your flashy next-gen console so we can get down to business. Rockstar has recently revealed a number of improvements to the upcoming PC version that includes better visuals thanks to the maximum 2560×1600 resolution, a greater draw distance and enhanced multiplayer that will be capable of supporting more than 16 players; the maximum allowed on the consoles. Most intriguingly though there’s a built in replay mode that automatically records the last 30 seconds of whatever you’re doing, rather like Sky+, which should make it even easier to catch your most glorious killing sprees and death-defying stunts. There may well be a few more surprises on offer before the game is officially released in Europe. The date for your diary is November 21st on which this poor soul, who opted for a Nintendo Wii rather than the 360, will be straight down the shop to buy a copy. - Paul Lester [1_UP] GTA PC games

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Microsoft might want the world to believe that Vista is a massive improvement over XP but, according to new research in the US, the public strongly disagree. In fact, some startling figures indicate that 1-in-3 are downgrading their Vista PC or laptop to good old XP. Devil Mountain Software said nearly 35% of the 3,000-plus PCs it examined had been downgraded from Vista to XP. Microsoft has already had to extend the life of XP due to furious customer demand. Craig Barth, the chief technology officer of Devil Mountain, explained: “Either these machines were downgraded by [sellers like] Dell or HP, or they were downgraded by the user after they got the machine. In any case, these machines are no longer running Vista. The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base. People are taking advantage of Vista’s downgrade rights.” It seems that many have been taking advantage of Microsoft ’s end user licensing agreement (EULA), whereby Vista Business and Vista Ultimate can be ‘downgraded’ to XP Professional. Those businesses that purchase Vista Enterprise can also downgrade to XP. Barth based the stats on data provided by users to the company’s exo.performance.network, coupled with data from Infoworld, collating things like the vendor and system model number with manufacturers’ catalogs. The result was a large list of machines shipped in the last 6 months, the vast majority of which were offered with Vista as standard. The sample may not be applicable to all Vista business users but it’s certainly big enough to cause some concern. Have you downgraded lately?-Martin Lynch [Macworld] Microsoft software Windows

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Peripherals maestro, Logitech, has taken the wraps off its new Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave Pro keyboard-and-mouse combo, building on the popular Wave Keyboard and throwing in the full-size, hand-contoured MX1100 wireless mouse. The MX1100’s MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel has two scrolling modes, including hyper-fast scrolling for zipping through long documents (a 10,000 line Excel document in 7 seconds) or long Web pages. There are 8 programmable buttons for quickly flipping between apps. Using the software bundled, there’s a stealth thumb button for jumping between apps and zoom controls that allow you to zoom in and out of documents without using the keyboard. The mouse boasts adjustable dpi (up to 1,600dpi), which can be useful for editing an image at the pixel level or, when you need to move the cursor quickly within a document. Logitech says the 2.4GHz wireless technology used by the mouse dramatically reduces interference, eliminating delays and dropouts, with the receiver and mouse swapping data 300 times faster than the conventional 27MHz wireless technologies used in many wireless mice. The bundle, which has a US price of around £65, comes with a USB plug for recharging the mouse while in use. A 15-minute charge is enough for a full days’ use while a 7-hour charge will give you enough juice for 6 weeks. The mouse also comes an AC adaptor for powering it from the mains.-Martin Lynch [Logitech] news mouse gadget

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It seems like games companies are finally catching up with those gamers who feel overwhelming generosity to their fellow men [and women] by sharing their games online. This illegal activity has just landed one UK woman with a massive £16,000 damages fine in court. And what did she share with the world? GTA iV? Mass Effect? Nope, it was Dream Pinball 3D. Its creator, Topware Interactive, has won the test case at London’s Patents County Court which could see thousands more UK gamers end up in courts, and out of pocket, for sharing games online. Three more sharers of the pinball game are also awaiting damages hearings and thousands more have been identified. Topware started its fight back last year by winning a legal action that forced 18 British ISPs to pass on details of suspected pirates that it had identified. Letters were sent to 500 people that shared the game on game sharing networks, asking for a £300 settlement to offset further legal action. The unlucky lady with the £16,000 bill decided to fight the action. The moral of the story is either (a) don’t share games because it’s illegal (b) pay the £300 and don’t get smart or (c) if you’re going to get done for sharing a game, make it something more worthwhile than Dream Pinball 3D.-Martin Lynch [BBC] games internet crime news

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If you can’t afford £75 to get your Star Wars fix with the stunning 2.5-ft long Legacy Collection Millennium Falcon, then maybe you can settle for this small, yet very cool, TIE Fighter Web cam which comes in at a lot more reasonable £18. Snap it on to your monitor and you have Star Wars memories all day, while humming the theme and making space battle laser sounds when no one is looking. And the fun doesn’t stop there either. Alongside the camera’s ability to capture audio, video and images, it also throws in a light-show and featured digitised sound effects as used in the Star Wars movies. I don’t even need a Web cam and I’m already reaching for the plastic. The downside is that it’s only available to pre-order now over at Play but, is expected to hyper-jump into our galaxy at the end of October - I know 10 more weeks of making the sound effects yourself.-Martin Lynch [Technabob] star wars news camera pc

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The fifth annual report on the state of communication in the UK by regulator Ofcom highlights how we are all talking/emailing/IM’ing and texting more than ever and, it’s costing less too. The whopping 365-page report shows that in 2007, we spent an average of 7 hours and 9 minutes using communication services - from phones to TVs and radios. Oddly though, this is only up 6 minutes on 2002 but, the greatest increases were seen in mobile and Internet. Between 2002 and 2007 the time spent talking and texting on our mobiles doubled, up from 5 minutes to 10 minutes each day. Time spent on PCs and lap-tops quadrupled in the same period, from 6 minutes to 24 minutes per person every day. Ofcom found that we are also getting more for our pound - albeit marginally - with the average household spend on comms services at £93.63 a month in 2007, a fall of £1.53 on 2006. The reduction is attributed to discounts from bundles, lower prices for broadband and our newfound skills at bargain hunting and swapping from crap suppliers to better ones. Peter Phillips, Partner, Strategy and Market Development, said: “We are spending more and more time with our communications devices but spending less on them. Our devotion to watching, listening and staying in touch wherever and whenever we want shows no sign of diminishing and, with healthy competition, overall prices offer increasing value for money. That is what consumers demand and what Ofcom helps deliver.” My favourite stat is that if every set-top box in the UK is left on standby for one year [more than half of us do] this would use the same amount of power needed to make nearly 80 billion cups of tea. Scroll down to see a breakdown of the main findings in key services markets.-Martin Lynch Converged communications * We are increasingly listening to the radio online. The number of people listening to radio via the internet has increased to 14.5 million by May 2008, up 21 per cent from 12.0 million in November 2007. * Online advertising spend is up by almost 40 per cent year-on-year reaching £2.8 billion in 2007. For the first time, more money was spent on internet advertising than the combined advertising spending on ITV1, Channel 4, S4C and five (£2.4 billion). Paid-for search advertising still dominates the internet market up 39 per cent during 2007 at £1.6 billion. Classified advertising saw the largest increase in 2007 - up 54 per cent to £600 million while display advertising grew by 29 per cent in 2007 accounting for a further £600 million of advertising spend. * The vast majority of people (88 per cent) said that, when they use their DVRs, they use them to fast forward through advertisements. * The number of people using voice over internet protocol (VoIP) fell from 20 per cent in 2006 to 14 per cent in the first quarter of 2008. Television and Radio * By July 2008, nearly 9 out of 10 households had digital television (87.2) compared to 7 out of 10 twelve months ago. * By March of this year, nearly 80 per cent of all TV sets sold in the UK were High-Definition (HD) ready, up from 50 per cent in twelve months. The number of HD subscriptions more than doubled to reach 829,000 over the same period. * People are favouring larger television screens - a fifth of all TV sales were for 33 inch screens and larger. * When asked which media activity would be missed the most, more than half of us (52 per cent) said it would be watching TV, up from 44 per cent in 2005. The next highest ‘most-missed’ activity would be using a mobile phone at 13 per cent, up from 10 per cent in 2005. Conversely, the 16-19 age group put their mobiles ahead of the television. Some 42 per cent of these teenagers said they would miss their mobile most. For them, watching TV came next at 20 per cent. * Over half (57 per cent) of viewing in homes with digital television was of the five main Public Service Broadcaster (PSB) channels, down slightly from 58 per cent in 2006. * That was more than offset by the viewing share of the PSBs’ other channels (such as ITV2, BBC Three and E4) which grew from 11 per cent to nearly 14 per cent of all viewing. * By March 2008, 7 million households (27 per cent) had a DAB radio set, up from 17 per cent on last year. Telecoms * By the end of 2007, there were almost 74 million mobile connections serving a population of 60 million in the UK. This was an increase of 3.7 million connections since the end of 2006. The total number of mobile connections increased by 48 per cent in the five years from 2002. * Seven out of ten people with a mobile phone and a landline use their mobile to make calls, even when they are at home. One in ten people with a landline at home said that they never use it to make calls. * We are a nation of texters. In the UK, nearly 60 billion text messages were sent in 2007 - an increase of 36 per cent since 2006 and up by 234 per cent since 2002 when we sent 17 billion texts. The average mobile phone user sent 67 texts per month from each mobile compared to 53 texts per month in 2006. * The majority of children have access to the internet and most have a mobile phone but they use them in different ways. Boys aged 8-11are twice as likely to use the internet every day than girls of the same age (45 per cent compared to 22 per cent). Meanwhile girls aged 12 -15 are more likely to use a mobile phone than boys of the same age (74 per cent compared to 65 per cent). * Instant messaging is more popular than email amongst children with 62 per cent of 12-15 year old sending an instant message, compared with 43 per cent of them sending an email. Adults prefer to email - 80 per cent of adults sent an email compared to 34 per cent who used instant messaging. news technology life

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The scare stories about the evil of games are on a real roll at the moment - just check out the latest view on the ‘Most Violent Game Ever’. Now, the latest large US survey of concerned parents found that they preferred their teen angels were exposed to porn over Grand Theft Auto. The survey for What They Play, a site for concerned adults wanting to know what kind of games their kids are playing, asked 1,600 parents what would concern them most if their 17-year old was going to a sleepover. GTA pulled 19% of the vote versus just 16% for porn, followed by ‘drinking beer’ on 14%. Topping the panic list though was smoking pot, with 49% of parents freaking dude, about young Gerald getting mashed by the wicked weed. “Although these findings seem surprising at first, they hint at fears parents have about video games,” says Cheryl K. Olson, Sc.D., co-author of Grand Theft Childhood. “To some parents, video games are full of unknowable dangers. While researching for Grand Theft Childhood, parents we spoke with in focus groups often bemoaned the fact that they didn’t know how to use game controls - and felt unequipped to supervise or limit video game play. Of course, parents don’t want their children drinking alcohol, but that’s a more familiar risk.” Another example of things being blown out of proportion? I’d be far more concerned with a teen going to a sleepover, drinking a bottle vodka while watching porn and then knocking up another drunk, porn-watching teen, before losing his teeth in a fight over the last Hobnob and ending up in hospital getting his stomach pumped at 4am. Maybe I’m just old fashioned.-Martin Lynch [What They Play] games violence GTA news

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Until very recently I had a PC with a USB 1.1 interface which meant any large data transfer usually allowed me to take a hike into the countryside, slaughter some innocent bunnies, return home, pop them in a pot and make a cuppa before the transfer had finished. I’m now the proud owner of a PC with USB 2.0 ports and now I just transfer data for the speedy novelty factor. Yesterday, Intel got the fire burning under USB 3.0 by releasing the draft specification that will allow hardware and software makers the chance to get ahead of the curve and kickstart the market for super speedy peripherals. The xHCI draft specification provides a standardised method for USB 3.0 host controllers to communicate with the USB 3.0 software stack. The most important aspect is that the Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) draft specification revision v0.9 [a v0.95 version will be out in Q4] is royalty-free as Intel really wants to ensure that USB 3.0, or SuperSpeed USB, become dominant fast. It also ends fears that Intel was withholding its specs and that we were going to face a split in the USB 3.0 specification, resulting in competing standards and products. And we all know how much we love those. According to Intel: “This specification describes the registers and data structures used to interface between system software and the hardware, and are developed to be compatible with the USB 3.0 specification being developed by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group. The Intel xHCI draft specification revision 0.9 is being made available under RAND-Z (royalty free) licensing terms to all USB 3.0 Promoter Group and contributor companies that sign an xHCI contributor agreement.” Those coming out in support of the draft release include rival AMD, Microsoft, Dell and others. For us punters, SuperSpeed USB means 10 times the bandwidth of USB 2.0. [Intel] PC USB intel

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Dell has gotten all fancy recently by launching the tiny Studio Hybrid line of fashion desktops which also manage to be Dell’s greenest. That could be aided by the fact that they are significantly smaller than anything else it makes. Still, there’s no denying that they are slinky and, if you want a close-up look at just how small and cute the Studio Hybrids are, take a look at one of the first unboxing videos after the jump.These are not for serious PC users but would certainly go down a treat with those in your home who hate PCs and just want something tiny and fluffy that enhances the living room, rather than some big, grey technological troll skulking in the corner with a million leads hanging out of it and growling at everyone. The Studio Hybrid will win no performance awards but prices supposedly start at £399. I tried finding that price on the Dell site but the closest I could get was £499, after removing a monitor from the list and going for one with a 160GB HDD instead of the more common 250GB model. Not exactly value for money then. The basic specs include an Intel Core 2 Duo T2390 CPU, 3GB DDR2 RAM, 8x slot-loading DVD burner, Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 and an Intel X3100 GPU. Oh, and if you want one of those funky colours, it’s £30 extra. Otherwise, it’s sexy slate grey. Oh yeah.-Martin Lynch [Digital Home Thoughts] PC dell video

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We’ve has any number of reworked keyboards cross our paths here at Gizmodo UK, from bendy glow-in-the-dark ones and pricey cutting edge OLED ones to keyboards with blank keys. Now, for those who are finding it hard to find bling junk to waste their money on we have the Kirameki Pure Gold Keyboard. It’s not pure gold, of course, because then you’d need to hire a dwarf - if you don’t already have one, that is - whose sole job would be to lug it around from meeting to meeting. The key covering is gold leaf but that doesn’t make it cheap. This is what they say: “Kirameki Pure Gold Keyboard coated with 100% pure gold leaf by Wazakura Studios. Not just a stunning object of worship, this fully functional keyboard features a base that adjusts for height and two USB ports, plus right, left, and center options for the connector cable. While gold leaf has a long artisan tradition in Japan, the craftsmen behind this glittering computer accessory have updated their technique for the rigueur of daily use, meaning the Pure Gold Keyboard is as durable as it is enviable.” See a close-up below and find it here for £178.-Martin Lynch [Red Ferret] keyboard cool gadgets fun

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Whether you’re a work-at-home professional or well-heeled gamer, Lenovo thinks its new 17in mobile workstation, the W700, is just the ticket, especially since it’s the first with an ‘optional’ built-in palm-rest digitizer and color calibrator for creative types. The digitizer in the new ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation is aimed at digital content creators and users, allowing them to easily configure an image, either mapping it to the entire screen or to an area defined by the user. The colour calibrator allows photographers to adjust the display’s colour on the fly, with Lenovo claiming it provides ‘the most accurate, true-to-life images in an integrated package’. The rest of the notebook has been built to match too. It’s powered by… …a 3.0GHz Core 2 Extreme quad core processor, up to 8GB DDR3 RAM, dual hard disk drives and/or Solid State Storage (SSD) drives, 1GB nVidia Quadro FX 3700M graphics and an optional Blu-ray drive. This is the first Lenovo notebook with a big-ass 17in screen and it’s a good one too with a brightness rating of 400nits - that’s twice as bright as the displays in existing ThinkPad mobile workstations. The W700 also boasts Dual Link DVI, Display Port and VGA connections alongside 5 USB slots. No HDMI though. Photographers will be chuffed to hear that it comes with a 7-in-1 multicard reader as standard as well as an optional CompactFlash reader. Prices start at around £1,500, but expect that to jump with all those ‘options’. See another shot below.-Martin Lynch laptop news notebook

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ATI Technologies [now AMD] has put aside a few years of living in nVidia’s performance shadow by launching what is widely being called the world’s fastest graphics card, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2. The traditional ‘mine is bigger than yours’ contest played out between nVidia and ATI might bore some but, for many gamers, every extra bit of performance counts. The new ATI offering seemingly thrashes the fastest nVidia cards - the GTX 200 series - which we covered here in June. With the new ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, ATI/AMD has come screaming out of the wilderness to the top of the heap, at least according to early reviews. Here’s what the experts are saying:”Make no mistake, the new Radeon HD 4870 X2 marks ATI’s return to the top of the 3D graphics food chain. It took a few years, but through steady improvements in multi-GPU software support, and a new strategy regarding the design and manufacture of high-end graphics cards that utilizes two mid-sized chips in lieu of a single monolithic one, AMD was able to produce a graphics card capable of outpacing the best NVIDIA currently has to offer.” Marco Chiappetta, HotHardware “Our gameplay experiences with the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 were phenomenal, especially once we raised the antialiasing setting to high levels… Who would have thought we’d ever be seeing Oblivion at 2560×1600 with 24X AA? This means you can load up old games and set crazy high AA settings. AMD deserves huge kudos for really kicking AA up a notch.” Brent Justice, HardOCP “The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is looking like it beat [the GTX280] as it spanked even the overclocked GeForce GTX 280 in our testing. AMD has pulled off another one with the Radeon HD 4870 X2.” Nathan Kirsch, Legit Reviews “The Radeon HD 4870 X2 undeniably is the fastest performing product on the market right now. But next to the sheer gaming power do not forget the additional features like DirectX 10.1, the UVD 2.0 engine to decode the hottest Blu-ray 1080P movies, full HDMI compatibility with support for 7.1 channel sound.-Hilbert Hagedoorn, Guru3D I guess the downside is that for this kind of pants-wetting performance, you’ll need the readies. It’s selling now for $549 in the US (around £275), but it’s expected to cost - wait for it - around £400 here. Thankfully, AMD has also announced the HD 4850 X2 graphics card, which is also blisteringly fast but will cost around £50-75 less. Theoretically, that is.-Martin Lynch [AMD] games PC news

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We like our Steampunk gadgets here at Gizmodo UK, from outlandish PCs and stunning mice to re-imagined Stars Wars characters, which is why this Gothic PC from Datamancer strikes all the right notes and even throws in a little holiness to try and save our damned souls. This is The Archbishop, a PC like no other, complete with carved wood and arched stained glass windows, behind which lies the modern 20in widescreen LG monitor. The motifs carved into the wood have been carried through to the wonderfully unique, brass keyboard with ye olde typewriter keys. The PC is housed under the monitor. Datamancer says: “This is a PC/LCD/Keyboard/”Mouse” combo built using some of the more attractive design elements of the Gothic school of architecture. The LCD lives inside a scratch-built Gothic arch with quatrefoil designs and stained-glass doors. The PC case features the same Morisco-patterned glass, brass embellishments, a hinged lid for access to the drives and hardware, and soft, ambient red lighting. The PC is quite fast and is actually built as a gaming computer.” And no, the big book is not a Bible. It serves as the pointer device because under the cover is a Wacom drawing tablet that can use either a pen or a mouse, which can be stored in the velvet-lined area. It goes on show in NY for a couple of weeks in a posh antique store of all places and will hit eBay in early September, should it fail to find a buyer. See more shots below.-Martin Lynch [Bornrich via Datamancer] PC gadget steampunk

Original post by nafiz