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Punch-drunk Microsoft cuts Vista prices - but not in Britain
Microsoft must be feeling punch drunk this month after a poor reception to its $40b bid for Yahoo, a tricky end-game in its battle to get its Open XML formats adopted as an ISO standard, scepticism over its claim to be launching an new era of openness over its programming interfaces, and a £608million fine by EU regulators overshadowing what had been billed as the company's biggest enterprise launch in history – the release of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008.
A shocking new game controller
Fed up with mere force feedback? Fancy something a bit stronger? Mindwire's V5 could be just what you're looking for. This odd device delivers game-synchronised electric shocks to your body via several strap-on electrode pads. According to the blurb from the Midlands-based company, the V5 costs £99.99 offers the following wonderful features:
- Multiple hit points on the body.
- Special effects / 'feels' create electrically, which can be controlled to mimic the on-screen actions in the game (when driven by USB).
- The ability to work 'dumb-dumb' from hundreds of existing games, using the force-feedback signal on the PS2, gamecube, XBOX, and PC.
- It has both the 'OUCH!' element, and the more soothing replacement-for-regular-dual-shock-force-feedback elements combined.
- It has settings to configure it to work with virtually any game, for example, changing the way that the power levels build up, or configuring the way that the force feedback signal is used.
- A single device, instead of providing multiple hit points for 1 player, can be used in 2 player mode where each player takes 2 of the pads.
- It features an additional port which allows the V5 to do some very cool things that (sorry) we are keeping a tight lid on for now.
- A device that is safe: that has layers of safety features from its conceptual design through to its hardware and software, and conforms to all applicable European safety standards.
But our favourite picture is the self-explanatory one from the safe usage guide:
Microsoft releases Vista anti-hacker patch
An 'Important Update' arrived last night via Windows Update on my Vista PC. I'm running the RC1 of Vista Service Pack 1, and since installing that I've not received any other 'Important' updates so I investigated further. The update is described in the MS Knowledge Base article 940510 and is an update that's intended to weed out illegal or cracked installations of Vista.
If the updates detects exploits that indicate you have a counterfeit or hacked copy of Vista, it will warn you and point you to a Microsoft website that will enable you to remove the exploits. If you don't want to do this
Windows may disable the exploits and then ask you to use a valid product key to activate Windows.
According to a discussion on the MS forums, the update is actually a one-time check for two of the most common Vista hacks, the 'OEM drive activation' and 'grace timer activation' exploits, which are described in another KB article.
Presumably this is all part of the preparations for the public release of Vista SP1 during March. But given that most serious miscreants are hardly likely to have automatic updates turned on, it seems to be a bit of a shotgun approach.
Frugal 3x3 11n access point runs off standard PoE link
One of the big advantages of Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) is that you need only a single standard Ethernet cable set up devices like Wifi access points or cameras in positions where no convenient power supply is available.
The 802af PoE standard allows connected devices to draw a maximum 12.95 watts over a distance of up to 100 metres. It seems that manufacturers have found it hard to deliver 3x3 MIMO dual-band 802.11n access points that fall within this envelope. They need no fewer than six transreceivers, three for each band, compared with two for 11b/g.
Seimens is boasting that it has done the trick with its Siemens HiPath Wireless AP3620 draft-11n access point, and that testers at Farpoint have verified the fact.
If you wish to use a more power-hungry device, PowerDsine, now owned by Microsemi, offers proprietary technology delivering up to 30 watts over an Ethernet cable.
Miniature Bluetooth dongle
If you're fed up of USB dongles that stick out of your laptop and break, you might like to check out the Nano USB Bluetooth 2.0 (2.1Mbits/sec) dongle from UK accessories specialist Mobile Fun. This tiny dongle has a rounded head to prevent snagging, and worked first time with no drivers needed in Windows XP. And even better, it's currently on offer for just £9.95, down from the original price of £17.95.
Don’t mention the HD DVD!
Aside from a brief Q&A session, HD DVD was strictly off the menu at Toshiba’s annual product tradeshow in Hertfordshire earlier today.
Journalists present were told Toshiba representatives at the show would not be commenting on the company’s decision to drop its HD DVD business, which was formally announced on Tuesday.
During the Q&A session a spokesman denied recent HD DVD player price cuts were an attempt to shift stock before the announcement, insisting they were simply trying to make high definition video affordable.
Indeed, many of the Toshiba representatives appeared just as surprised as we were about the company’s decision. As you can see, the DVD player room at the tradeshow looked very empty with just a few upscaling DVD players on show.
Toshiba says it will continue to support those who have bought HD DVD players (700,000 units have been shifted), but it added that it would cease all HD DVD shipments by the end of March.
Unsurprisingly, Toshiba confirmed there were no plans to manufacture Blu-ray drives, but it did say it was still reviewing its PC drive strategy for HD DVD.
Full text of 02 femtocell Q&A
Here is a full (well, slightly edited) version the answers John Carvelho, head of core network innovation at O2, gave to our questions about its femtocell trial and strategy. They are summarised in our news story today.
Where is the trial - in just one area or dispersed?
The trial will has started and is currently internal to O2 in order to test the functionality and applicability of the solution. We are testing a small number of nodes currently, but if the trial is successful we would look to roll out in larger numbers, leading to approximately 500 units during summer this year.
Mobile industry ignores emerging new formats
More topics and snippets from last week's Mobile World Congress. The headline news was that the mobile industry appears to be consolidating around LTE as the 4g technology of choice, though how this plays out with Wimax (which has also been called 4g) remains to be seen.
Beauty and the beastly hack, LTE v Wimax, and indexing conversation
A startlingly beautiful, sharp and impeccably groomed young woman interrupted me as I questioned a man demonstrating 4g LTE links on the Hauwei stand at Mobile World Congress. I was trying to ascertain how they were going to play against Wimax, the wireless link being pushed by Intel.
The young woman, a Huawei employee who spoke rather better English than the demonstrator, said (implausibly I thought) that LTE is not going to rival Wimax, that they were addressing different markets. At least, that is what I think she said. I don't know for sure because she suddenly realised that my digital recorder was on, said that I should have warned her, and demanded furiously that I erase everything that had been said.
I complied politely, even though it was she who had spoken me, and my press badge was prominently displayed to warn her to watch her words if need be. But her sensitivity reflected the fact that billions are being staken on the future of wireless.
LTE proponents claim it is technologically superior to Wimax because it is newer. Both could coexist, with the same client cards able to cope with either technology and using whichever is most appropriate at the time. But it is yet another technological layer that users will have to pay for.
The young woman's attitude continued to trouble me, even though I felt she had overreacted. She was not Chinese, so it was hardly a case of lingering post-Mao paranoia. Perhaps she had a point.
It is possible with digital recorders now to record virtually everything that is said to you. At the end of a week in Barcelona I had perhaps thirty voice files of various people I had talked to, all in a tiny machine.
Among them were talks with speech-recognition specialist Nuance and a smaller company called Simulscribe, both of which offer technology that translates voice mail into text. The transcriptions are not perfect – though Nuance offers also offers a service through which you can have them checked by humans - but the claim is that they are good enough to get the gist of a message,
What I need, I told Nuance's marketing manager Robert Weideman, is something similar on my voice files – or at least the ability to search them for keywords. The latest version of Microsoft's excellent One Note utility can do this, but so far as I know works only on files it has itself recorded.
It turns out that Nuance already offers the facility as a service and has considered offering it as part of its Dragon Naturally Speaking product. “We might well look at it again,” Weideman said.
It would be very useful for journalists and anyone else who has to take notes. But also a little scary because even with current technology it would be perfectly feasible not only to record your entire waking life, but also to index it automatically as well. It might help settle arguments about who said what to whom but you could see how some people would find it intrusive. Perhaps we should pay more attention to the etiquette of recording.
I’m back from Mobile World Congress now and have yet to write about a couple of the most interesting things there. So watch this space.
Can Apple sue if rivals mimic features of its i-interface?
Interesting talk yesterday with John Feland, technical marketing manager at Synaptics, which makes touch pads and the interactive component of touch screens. They are based on a grid of interlocking diamond shapes, each acting like a tiny capacitor which charges up as your finger comes close.
They are scanned rather like an image sensor to build up a picture of what is happening across the whole surface – as opposed, say, to resistive sensors that track the x-y co-ordinates of a single finger. The advantage is that the Synaptic sensors can track more than one point, enabling some of the more exotic gestures that I reported yesterday.
Incidentally, one thing I did not report is that it may be possible to retrofit the new gestures on to some of the older Synaptic products but Feland was not promising anything.
He sounds quite confident that Apple will not be able to sue for patent infringement, claiming that the company has done nothing new except use ideas that have been around for years. Apple has been here before, of course, having “borrowed” the idea of the mouse-driven iconised graphical interface from Xerox Parc – and later trying to sue Microsoft for pinching Mac look-and-feel for Windows.
I have no idea whether Feland is right about patents on Apple’s latest interface. But Microsoft faces a similar issue over alternative office suites that look, superficially at least, like clones of its flagship products and I have yet to see any court cases over them. There are only so many ways you can lay out a screen, and if it is possible to claim ownership of one of them then you could start suing over the layout of a newpaper.
Similarly, if you could sue over gestures you could claim ownership of dance step or a nifty way to thwack a golf ball.
Here, a little later than promised, is Nokia’s latest N96 handset, successor to the popular N95. As I reported Nokia has stayed roughly with its legacy though it does plan a touch-screen interface. I’m interested to see whether it will take its little N800 web pads any further, given the growing interest in these slightly larger formats.
They also use an ARM-cored processor, though I guess a lower powered version than the ones used in the Texas Instruments´s OMAP3440 platform which that company says has the legs to run a Linux-based general purpose platform. The N800 is essentially a thin client, with few onboard applications, and it would be a big step for Nokia to pack on more power.
Ups and downs of life in Barcelona, now Mobile World Congress is here
Barcelona, Sunday. Ah, the life of a techie journalist! Spent Thursday and Friday night at the one of the poshest hotels in town, courtesy of NetEvents, being briefed by companies involved some of the communications infrastructure we tend to take for granted. You could tell the hotel was posh because it charged seven euros for a half-litre of water, left out temptingly in the room's dry air.
Also it charged fifty euros a day for internet access - just ten euros less than the cost of the room I have for the rest of this week, which has free Wifi access but is the size of a cupboard. There is not much space left in Barcelona, with Mobile World Congress starting tomorrow - the picture above shows the massive showground as it looked today.
Obviously the big hotels are trying to cash in on Internet links while they can. It wasn't so long ago that you daren't make a phone call from a hotel room without checking out the very, very small print. One friend of mine was presented with a bill for more than a thousand pounds after a weekend's stay. But of course mobile phones killed off that little scam (and replaced it with a few of their own).
They'll kill off extortionate hotel web charges too, if the MWC people have their way. There is talk of mobile links going up to 100Mbit/sec, and there will be very little point in offering people that if they can't afford to use it.
I've been in Barcelona three days now, MWC hasn't even started yet, and I already have more to write about than I have time for. As a taster take a look at the picture right, taken this evening at an MWC preview event. It's a games controller for mobile phones from a company called Zeemote. The idea, I suppose, is that instead of dislocating your thumbs trying to control a game from a keypad you can do so in more style, and impress your friends, using this miniature joystick.
Eee PC a great chance for open-source - but niggles need sorting out
My £220 Eee PC and its Linux software is standing up well after a couple of weeks of use but it does have limitations compared with a full-blown PC. The Writer module in Office.Org looks like a Word clone but it does lack some features. For most users who simply want a typing pad they won’t matter but I particularly miss the fact that you can't search-and-replace paragraph marks.
I need to do this sometimes several times a day to clean up text taken from emails or the web that comes in DOS format – that is, with each line terminated by a carriage return, and usually with the paragraphs marked by two carriage returns. The format is virtually uneditable as it stands and I have a macro in Word that cleans it up at a single mouse click.
(If you haven't worked it out for yourself, record the following sequence: first search for twin paragraph marks using the search term ^p^p; replace them with a marker, say zzz; replace all single paragraph marks with a space; replace zzz with a paragraph mark; optionally search for "space ^w" - ie a single space followed by white space - and replace with a single space to clean out multiple spaces.)
For some reason Office.Org allows you to find an empty paragraph –ie the second of two consecutive paragraph marks – but not one with text. The only work-round I can see involves a loop, which means you have to program rather than record a sequence. It is a mega hassle for a common task.
Almost worse for my pedantic journalist's mind is that whoever wrote the menus for Writer does not understand the difference between "fewer" and "less". What price a grammar checker?
My brother-in-law, who also bought an Eee PC, reports trouble getting his printer working; and the machine got the sulks after he inserted a 16Gbyte SDHC card. I'll report more on that when we have figured out what is happening.
He too is delighted with the Eee PC, though. It should be judged as a second machine, complementing a home or office machine, rather than as a main platform. And considering that it works well as a media player, a photo frame, a video phone, and an internet radio as well as a working mobile it remains very good value.
The Eee PC is a great chance for open-source to break into the mainstream world and the Linux and OpenOrrice.org people would be crazy not to jump at the format and make it work. I'll be writing more about that in our print edition.
