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Exchange SP1 update available
The Service pack 1 update for Microsoft's Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 is now available, providing better iuntergration with Office Communications Server 2007 and improved security and management for mobile devices. It also pffers support for Windows Server 2008, better integration with Office Communications Server 2007 and improved mobile device security.
Other new features are "an enhanced user experience" in Outlook Web Access, more Management Console features, and improved disaster recovery. Trial version of SP1 are available here and the additional Forefront module is available here
PCW on Facebook
Fans of social networking phenomenon Facebook will be happy to learn that Personal Computer World now has its own dedicated Facebook page. You'll find RSS mini-feeds for all our latest news and reviews, plus new announcements and updates, so head on over there and join our fan club!
Motion detection gets granular
A new version of Webcam Zone Trigger is aimed at extending the uses of motion-detection beyond security applications. The utility can be configured to monitor movement in selected hotspots, as well as the entire field of view of a webcam, making it applicable to tasks such as interactive shop displays and product monitoring.
The standard and pro versions cost $45.95(£22) and $95.95(£46) respectively from developer Omega Unfold. You can also download a free trial edition.
Share mapping with Google
There is a new collaborative feature in Google maps. Tools under the My Maps tab already allow you to make customized maps; the new option allows others to edit these. Google says this will help family and friends plan a vacation, adding details and images of routes. Read more about it here.
Also new is a Terrain view that shows features such as mountains, valleys, and trails in a given location. See here for details.
Excel component library
The Oxford researcher who has developed an Excel programming language has also called for the establishment of a kind of Excel component library to cut development time and reduce costly errors.
Jocelyn Paine says that there is currently no Excel equivalent to the component libraries for languages like Java because the only way to share code between spreadsheets is to copy and paste. But he says he has found a way to 'modularise' Excel routines so that can be slotted into different spreadsheets as required.
The advantage is that specialist components can be written by experts and tested before reuse.
Paine is asking for examples of difficult or error-prone Excel tasks that could be usefully modularised. See his site.
Pirate hunters face backlash
The Business Software Alliance, which hounds illicit software users on behalf of the likes of Microsoft and Adobe, is hitting something of a backlash in the US, according to an Associated Press report.
Critics admit that BSA is well within its rights to seek license fees and fines that amounted to more than $13m in the US alone last year – 90 percent of it from small businesses.
But they say companies often break licensing rules because of problems the industry has itself created by saddling customers with complex deals instead building anti-piracy measures into their products. And small companies are said to be hardest hit because they have fewer technological or legal resources to avoid problems.
iPhone glass half-empty or half-full?
PCW has long been so irritated by Apple's inability to refrain from bullshitting, even when it has something to boast about, that we have to examine our prejudices carefully before reviewing its products. But sometimes anti-hype can seem just as misleading, as in the case of a new survey which says that "only" two percent of UK consumers have put Apple's iPhone on their Christmas shopping list.
If you put the number of UK consumers as low as 20 million, fewer than one in three of the population, that works out at 400,000 sales in the space of a few weeks - a figure both Apple and operator 02 would surely be delighted by.
On the subject of tales told by figures, we were intrigued by reports that the lost HMRC data was on two CDs. That makes roughly 1.5GB storage space maximum for the records of 25m people, or 7.5m households. That's 60 bytes per person, or 200 bytes per household - less than you could put in an SMS. Either the information provided was extremely limited, or HMRC has found a very efficient way to pack it.
Help save world and win big money
Do you have a good idea that could harness the power of a supercomputer or high-performance cluster? If so you could enter a Microsoft competition with £20,000 in prizes – but you will have to be quick about it, because the deadline is December 14.
The High Performance Computing competition is just one of several under the Microsoft's Imagine Cup 2008 programme. The theme this year is "Imagine a world a world where technology enables a sustainable environment.” It is not all about computing - some sections are open to artists and designers – and you get a chance to win an Xbox 360 just by entering. See here for details
320Gb portable hard drive
Buffalo Technology claims it is the first company to launch a 320GB portable external hard drive. The 5400rpm HD-PS320U2 MiniStation TurboUSB, available from December, packs TurboUSB technology which is said to speed up file transfers. It has the highest capacity of a range starting at 80GB capacity, and priced from £80 to £155.
There's no room for complacency on Internet or sneaker net
The HMRC debacle is a reminder that despite all the fuss about internet security, traditional systems can be even dodgier. The lost data was sent by what the Americans call a sneaker net - carrying or posting it physically on disks, making it vulnerable to any sneak thief with a moment's opportunity and half a brain.
Experienced hackers would balk at the task of trying to steal the same data sent over a government-class network, or even the open internet used with sensible precautions. If they did take it on they would most probably resort to old-fashioned methods like stealing or conning log-on details from an authorised user.
Cash desks in the days before chip-and-pin payment provided a nice illustration of how confused risk assessment can be. People would cheerfully give their card details to a stranger at the till of a petrol station far from home, yet refuse to buy anything over the web. Perhaps something of this psychology infected the HMRC clerk who sent the disks.
There is no room for complacency on or off the internet. As Lord Erroll said today, the principles of keeping data safe are the same. either way.
Build a virtual BMW
At the recently opened BMW Welt showroom in Munich, prospective buyers have been shown a system that uses the latest 3D visualisation systems to help them configure their dream autobahn muncher.
Using a system developed by Realtime Technology, visitors chan choose trim, colour and wheel options on a touch-screen console and see the results in real time on a 3D image of the car projected on a high-resolution 8 megapixel screen by a Sony SXRD 4K projector.
Processing the massive amount of 3D data requires some serious horsepower. RTT's Powerwall system is a clustering solution using 5 Fujitsu Siemens R40 computers each with 16GB of Ram and an Nvidia Quadro FX5600 graphics card.
Steganos launches new free encryption product
German software company Steganos has today launched a totally free data encryption utility designed to let you securely store sensitive data. Safe One lets you store files in encrypted 'safe' partitions on a hard disk or USB storage device, such as an iPod. The free version is limited to 2 x 1GB partitions, and you can download it right now from the PCW Downloads site.
Irony of the birth of the transistor
The BBC notes that it is 60 years since the invention of the transistor, which has done as much as anything else to shape the modern world. William Shockley, of Bell Labs, began immediately after the Second World War to see whether a class of materials called semiconductors could be contrived into a device that would replace the delicate, power-hungry thermionic valve amplifier. The importance of its switching function, on which processors depend, was not widely recognised at the time.
It was known that the electrical properties of semiconductors like silicon and germanium was affected by heat, electric fields, or injecting charges, but no-one understood why.
Two of Shockley's collaborators, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen, created the first working transistor on December 16, 1947. It consisted of two gold contacts less than a hair's breadth apart on a slug of germanium which had an excess of electrons in the surface layer (ie N-type), to create a point contact transistor. A small change in current at the germanium 'base' had a much larger effect on the current between the gold contacts – the much-sought amplifier effect.
Shockley, angry that the other two had beaten him to it, began working on a more practical design known as a junction transistor, a sandwich of P-type and N-type semiconductor. He succeeded in a matter of weeks.
He set up his own company called Shockley Semiconductor in what became known as Silicon Valley. By many accounts he was an unpleasant, difficult man and some of his best engineers left to found Fairchild Semiconductors. Two of these, Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore, went on to found Intel.
The most used transistors today are field-effect-transistors (FET) in which the base is insulated from the other two electrodes, controlling current between them by an electric field. Ironically, it was this type that Shockley first tried to implement in 1945; but he could not get it to work.
Foxconn searches for the best overclockers
Foxconn is using cash and high end components to lure out the best overclockers to test its new equipment.
Its Quantum Force Scholarship program promises the goodies if you can hit high sky 3DMark scores with liquid nitrogen cooled processors on Foxconn motherboards.
Foxconn won't say how much cash is up for grabs but apparently you won't need to travel anywhere to do the testing (at home is fine) and only those with thoroughbred overclocking credentials need apply.
If there was a solid sum of money attached (and I didn't have a job) I would consider applying. I successfully fried my first chip (a 486 DX2 66MHz) by pushing the voltage too high back in my early teens. Today I have a liquid nitrogen dewar in my shed to help with such experiments:
National Museum of Computing at Bletchley seeks sponsors
A event in London on November 28 will aim to raising £7m to establish the new National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, where German codes were cracked during World War Two.
Tony Sale, who rebuilt the Colossus computer used by the codebreakers, will welcome potential donors at the offices of lawyers Lawrence Graham at 4 More London Riverside, London SE1 2AU from 6:30 pm
The new museum will open early next year. Potential sponsors are asked to contact kevin.murrell@tnmoc.org
Flash hard disks prompted quick Giant Magnetoresistance award
The 2007 Nobel prize for Giant Magnetoresistance is "a Nobel prize that in two or three year's time we won't cherish" announced Fujitsu Siemens' CTO Joseph Reger last week.
By taking advantage of Giant Magnetoresistance, hard disks have about 10 times the density of hard disks made that are unaware of the quantum effect.
Reger's point was, of course, that flash based hard drives are due to take over. He praised the scientists who made the discovery but said it was now or never for the Nobel prize going their way. FSC's top brass predicts that, based on current trends, Nand Flash drives will be as cheap, reliable and as spacious as mechanical hard disks for servers by 2008.
Server hard disks are more expensive because their heat tolerance is a lot higher and their access times usually lower, so the rest of us could be waiting a bit longer for solid state drives in our machines. If my pockets were lined with gold, then a flash hard drive would definitely be at the top of my shopping list.
Fujitsu Siemens calls for graphics cards manufacturers to open up
Graphics card manufacturers should open up their libraries fully so programmers can start taking advantage of hardware in new ways, Fujitsu Siemens' chief technology officer Joseph Reger announced at its annual Augsburg conference.
Reger went on to say Nvidia's Cuda programming tools were not enough, claiming "if you buy a graphics card today you have no idea how to use it."
Stream computing performed on high end graphics cards has been getting lots of press recently. Kaspersky recently ran an anti-virus scan on a Radeon HD 2900XT 21 times faster than using the regular instruction based method on a top AMD dual core. Graphics cards are also far superior in many biomedical modelling and astronomy calculations and we've looked at, and continue to investigate, Windows password hacking with an Nvidia card.
"These are the first steps away from the von Neumann principles" Reger said, where the data stream decides what's happening, rather than classical instruction driven execution. Despite his own hype though, Reger proclaimed data centres packed full of graphics cards won't ever happen.
BT Vision self-install bargain pack uses Powerline communication
BT Vision certainly seems keen on us all signing up to its services, which offer videos on a pay-per-view basis and no need to sign up to a lengthy contract. Provided, of course, that you are already signed up for BT Broadband on a lengthy contract.
It has just announced a self-install deal which gives you a Freeview box with a 16OGbyte PVR and a pair of powerline adapters for just £30. The box and the adapters alone would cost between them around £250 off the shelf.
The Freeview box also contains the circuitry to pump video stream from your broadband link to your TV. You can use Cat5 cable to link it directly to your Home Hub but this is not always easy. The Powerline link means you can use the nearest power point as a data connection. If you use a direct cable you will have a powerline pair left over, which is nice.
Little worrying to see BT pushing powerline into cities, seeing as it is an RF link in disguise and no-one is absolutely sure what the cumulative effect of all that low-level radiation will be on aircraft communications. The Civil Aviation Authority has said it is monitoring the situation, and I'm told it has resolved to take action at the first sign of trouble. Fingers crossed.
What has the Blackberry got against 3G?
Rim, the guys who make those ever so popular Blackberry mobile email machines, popped in today to demo the new Blackberry Pearl 8120.
It comes hot on the heels of the Pearl 8110 and has a mix of business and entertainment features. Upgrades for the Pearl 8120 include a 2 megapixel camera (with video capture mode), enhanced interface and Wifi connectivity.
However, one glaring Apple iPhone-esque omission is support for 3G. The 'battery life' excuse doesn't sit well with me - my Nokia N70 has 3G but, if I want to extend the battery life, I can always simply turn 3G off and stick to GPRS.
Personally, I would never buy a handset without 3G - indeed I often let out an audible sigh whenever I slip into a non-3G area while browsing the web on my phone.
The Blackberry Pearl 8120 is available exclusively on O2, although it will be available through other operators at a later date (Rim couldn't confirm when this would be, though).
However, when we paid quick visit to the 02 online shop the 8120 was nowhere to be seen - presumably this will be remedied in the very near future since the handset is supposed to be on sale now.
Windows Home Server 120-day trial now available
Microsoft has in the past couple of days made a 120-day trial version of Windows Home Server (WHS) available via the WHS website. UK users can't download it but can order up to 5 copies of the DVD for a nominal shipping sum of £4.58.
OEM versions of Windows Home Server have been available online in the UK for some time now, and cost around £90.
UWB, fried brains, shouting Wifi, and the death of the smart phone
Delegates at the London Bluetooth conference were taken aback yesterday when representatives of major mobile phone companies waxed less than enthusiastic about ultrawideband (UWB) links, which as our story today explains are intended to provide fast transfers for the next Bluetooth generation.
The picture above shows how this will work: each laptop has both a Bluetooth dongle using a protocol stack from iAnywhere, and a prototype UWB dongle from Artimi. The Bluetooth devices pair with each other, and when called upon to do a large file transfer they call up the UWB link. The Bluetooth and UWB dongle would of course be reduced to a single module in marketable products.
Nvidia to formally launch tri-SLI?
November 8th might be the day Nvidia formally launches triple SLI in the UK, according to a rather indiscreet email in my inbox.
This coincides nicely with Nvidia's launch of the Geforce 8800GT graphics card, which is a space-saving, single slot card. It has a smaller cooler because it's based on a 65nm process with an estimated 110W power draw, lower than its high end siblings. SLI isn't very efficient in Vista though, which you can read more about in our Wired2Fire Diablo Extreme review.
The 8800GT's core speed is 600MHz, shaders sit at 1.5GHz – on a par with the Geforce 8800 Ultra – while GDDR3 Ram is clocked at 1.8GHz. With 112 stream processors, more than an 8800GTS's 96 and less than an 8800GTX's 128, it's positioned right between the two and performance looks intriguing; Expect a review soon.
Online retailers are already taking orders for the card (for less than £180) and AMD will respond in the coming weeks with its RV670 GPU, which is a die shrink of the 2900XT from 80nm to 55nm, with a few tweaks. I've been informed by manufacturers that performance isn't as good as the 2900XT because it only has a 256bit memory controller.
AMD says the processor will form its Radeon HD 3800 series. It has DirectX 10.1 support, which will be included in Vista Service Pack 1 in early 2008. DirectX 10.1 fixes a lot of DirectX 10 limitations and its biggest new feature is Cube Map Arrays that can produce mimic many ray trace effects like indirect lighting, soft shadows and refraction.
ATI's and Nvidia's new cards just missed out on our mammoth graphics card grouptest (in the Christmas issue on newsstands today), where we put every other ATI and Nvidia card (14 DirectX 10 cards in total) through DirectX 9 and 10 benchmarks.
