WTF is... Weightless?
Internet of Things enabler in the space between the TV signals
Weightless, the would-be world standard that allows devices to talk to devices without human intervention, reaches its first major release milestone this spring.
Version 1.0 of the technology specification is set to be published in March or April and then it will be able to begin making the much-hyped but yet to be delivered ‘ …
What ereader decline? Kobo pumps up the volumes despite grim forecasts
Big gains in 2012 even though world+dog in a fondleslab frenzy
A chirpy Kobo has claimed it now has more than 12 million registered users, four million of them creating ebook buyer accounts with the company during 2012.
It lauded its device sales too - well, its e-ink kit, not its Android-based tablet offerings - insisting it had captured 20 per cent of the world ereader market in 2012. …
VIA bakes a fruitier Rock cake to rival the Brit Raspberry Pi
Updated ARM-powered micro also brought to book
Computer electronics biz VIA has updated its Raspberry Pi rival APC - a micro-motherboard its maker calls a “bicycle for your mind” - which it brought to market last May.
The new board sports a new processor, more flash memory, better video output and, VIA said, more expansion options.
VIA APC Rock Rock'n'ruler: The new VIA APC …
WTF is... WebRTC?
Feature Voice and video communications game changer
Last week’s release of Firefox 18.0 saw the not-for-profit browser gaining “preliminary” support for a technology called WebRTC. Folk downloading the browser afresh or updating from a previous release may have been keener on Firefox’s new support for Apple’s “retina” displays or the browser’s promised JavaScript performance leap …
Ten stars of CES 2013: Who made the biggest splash?
CES 2013 Las Vegas eye-catchers
As the 2013 Consumer Electronics Shows (CES) wraps up in Las Vegas, we’re left to ponder whether it as was a good show this time round. In 2012, IT vendors, buoyed by Intel encouragement and marketing money, were keen to show off their first Ultrabooks. A year on, and the chip giant’s skinny laptop brand has largely failed to …
Report: Tablets to outsell ALL PCs by 2016
Yes, but today's PC isn't the same as tomorrow's...
It was claimed by one market watcher this week that tablets will outsell notebook computers during 2013. By 2016, says another, slates’ share of the PC market will have surpassed all other devices combined.
The research firm in question is Canalys, and it reckons Wintel’s share of the PC market will drop from 72 per cent in 2012 …
Sony PS3 extends lead over Microsoft's Xbox 360 by a cool million
Upcoming next-gen machine a console-ation for 360 fans
Bad news for Microsoft and Xboxers: in December 2012, Sony shipped sufficient consoles for the number of PS3s the Japanese giant has sold to exceed the volume of 360s Microsoft has sent out by a margin of a million machines.
And that’s despite the year in which the second-generation Xbox had no direct competition from Sony. …
Panasonic pitches Ultra HD 4K x 2K monster tablet
CES 2013 Pixeltastic, and makes your hands look really dainty
Asus has an 18.4-inch tablet-cum-all-in-one-desktop-PC on display this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), but Panasonic has it beat: the Japanese giant is showing off a Windows 8 slate that not only packs a 20-inch display but sports an Ultra HD resolution.
Yes, Panasonic’s mammoth fondleslab contains 9.8 million pixels …
Standards sultan sanctifies 60GHz wireless LAN tech
IEEE blesses WiGig's HDMI-over-the-air, publishes 802.11ad
The IEEE has published a 60GHz wireless networking standard, 802.11ad, much to the joy of the WiGig Alliance: its 60GHz "USB/PCI/HDMI/DisplayPort" technology sits on top of the radio-based communications spec.
WiGig’s everything-over-the-air system is expected to deliver up to 7Gbit of data per second, albeit only over a …
Razer uncages Core i7, GeForce megaslab for hardcore gamers
CES 2013 Ten-inch play slate gets green light for sales
Games peripherals specialist Razer is finally bringing to market the concept gaming tablet it introduced at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
A year after unveiling "Project Fiona" at CES 2012, Razer used CES 2013 to unveil the Edge - geddit?! - a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-based 10.1in, 1366 x 768 pixel megaslab. It's …
Bletchley Park boffins start trailblazer EDSAC computer rebuild
First replica parts go into production
Physical production of a replica of EDSAC, aka the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, has at last begun at The National Museum of Computing, located at World War II crypto centre Bletchley Park. EDSAC is an early computer originally put together at Cambridge University in the late 1940s.
The initial work on the …
Dell dangles dongle PC at enormo-display-desiring road warriors
CES 2013 USB stick-sized Android mini computer, anyone?
Dell, is that a memory stick-sized Android computer in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me? The former, it turns out.
Dell’s Wyse subsidiary - the thin-client computing pioneer the PC giant acquired in April 2012 - will today show off ‘Project Ophelia’ at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas/ Ophelia is a …
Tablets to out-sell notebooks this year, reckons tech prophet
But laptops will become de facto fondleslabs
Will 2013 be the year that tablets overtake laptops as the most-shipped type of computer tech? Market watcher NPD DisplaySearch certainly thinks so. It now reckons some 240 million tablets ranging in screen size from 5.6 inches to 13.3 will ship during 2013 - almost 16 per cent more than the 207 million notebooks that will ship …
Mega-res telly demand to boom, say ball-gazers
CES 2013 Ultra HD TV demand will start slow... then explode
If the world’s television makers are eager enough to try to convince World+Dog to buy a 4K x 2K TV, the world’s market watchers are no less keen to suggest the proponents of Ultra HD will be successful in the near future, with sales rocketing five years from now.
This week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas will …
Bendy screens are the future, screams maker of bendy screens
CES 2013 Plastic Logic pitches tablet that isn't
It sounds so promising: a "revolutionary paper tablet computer" that will completely change "the way people work with tablets and computers". Alas, the PaperTab, a concept device lauded today by "printed electronics" firm Plastic Logic, isn’t quite the gadget the company is pitching it as.
PaperTab was created at Queen’s …
Nvidia takes fight to Sony, Nintendo with Android handheld console
CES 2013 Will the green Shield get stamped?
Nvidia’s Project Shield seems positively daft at first thought. Who in their right mind would launch a new handheld gaming device today? If Sony and Nintendo can’t win over the millions of folk who play games on phones and tablets with their dedicated gaming handhelds - and very strong gaming brands - how the heck can a …
MEGAGRAPH: 1983's UK home computer chart toppers
Updated No prize for guessing the leader, but the rest may surprise you
How popular - relatively speaking - was your early 1980s home computer? Thanks to some old chart data, we can tell you.
Back in the day - 1983, to be precise - VNU Business Publications’ launched Personal Computer News, a glossy magazine pitched against the weekly incumbent, Sunshine’s newsprint Popular Computing Weekly. A …
Making MACH 1: Can we build a cranial computer today?
Monitor How SF gets it right by getting it (mostly) wrong
is an occasional column written at the crossroads where the arts, popular culture and technology intersect. Here, we look back at 2000AD's MACH 1 - the first secret agent with his own, in-body computer.
In 1977, Pat Mills, the first Editor of 2000AD comic, created MACH 1, a strip telling the story of John Probe, a super-powered …
Samsung, LG 'lose confidence' in OLED TV tech
Waiting for an organic telly? Be prepared to wait some more
Don’t expect reasonably priced OLED TVs to hit the market for a fair few years yet. Do, however, expect 4K x 2K Ultra HD LCD TVs to be all the rage in 2013.
So suggests David Hsieh, an analyst at NPD DisplaySearch, a market watcher. He claims to have detected a change in the mood of those two major display manufacturers, Samsung …
Micro-computer bakers open Raspberry Pi shop
Mmmm, tasty apps
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has opened an online software shop tied to its cheap-as-chips micro-computer.
The Pi Store - not, alas, "the Pi Shop", which Brits will surely agree sounds better - is intended to provide a port of call for users seeking apps, games, tools and guidance to help them make the most of their wee, ARM- …
Qualcomm bucks global chip biz slump - report
But Intel and Samsung don't need to panic just yet
Phone chip-maker Qualcomm defied the semiconductor industry decline to show double-digit year-on-year growth at a time when almost all of its rivals saw their sales slide, and the market as a whole dipped.
Or it will have done if a forecast made today by Gartner, a market watcher, proves correct.
Gartner today said it expects …
Happy birthday, Transistor
The first working version powered up 65 years ago
The transistor, the ubiquitous building block of all electronic circuits, will be 65 years old on Sunday. The device is jointly credited to William Shockley (1910-1989), John Bardeen (1908-1991) and Walter Brattain (1902-1987), and it was Bardeen and Brattain who operated the first working point-contact transistor during an …
Sinclair ZX Spectrum FAILS latest radio noise rules SHOCK
1980s tech for 1980s rules
A pal of mine suggested a short while back that it might be fun to obtain the blueprints for Sinclair Research’s ZX Spectrum and have a batch built up to sell to fans of retro computing. It’s a good job this plan never made it out of the pub: the dear old Speccy would have immediately fallen foul of modern electromagnetic …
Punters rate Apple, Samsung more highly than ever
And turn their backs on other tech titans
Are we all becoming fanboys? If you broaden the term beyond those who favour Apple products to encompass folk keen on Samsung kit, the answer appears to be yes.
At least that's what data from Strategy Analytics, a market watcher, suggests. It polled 6500 Europeans and Americans in October 2012, asking them all to name and rate …
Apple TV demand may drive Samsung-sapping sales
Cook, consumers keenly interested in iTelly
The idea that Apple is working on some kind of smart TV refuses to die, the notion regularly refreshed by rumour and the occasional soundbite from senior company executives. CEO Tim Cook only last week expressed his “intense interest” in the evolution of the TV in a nudge, nudge, wink, wink interview with US TV channel NBC.
The …
YES! It's the TARDIS PC!
'It doesn't roll along on wheels, you know'
No, it won’t allow you to enter the Vortex, “that mysterious region where time and space are”, as Terrance Dicks so aptly put it, “one.” Nor, even if you max out the available storage options, will it give you space enough to hold the entire Matrix. Its CPU is not APC.
But - let’s be honest - you don’t buy a PC casing that looks …
Valve chief confirms Steam-centric console-killing PC
'We will do it,' pledges Newell
Expect to see a Steam-brand console-style living room PC in 2013, Gabe Newell, the head of Valve, has revealed.
There have been hints the company is working on such a box. The debut earlier this year of a TV-centric UI for the Steam client, called Big Picture, which came out of beta last week, is perhaps the most important one …
Nook Video store launches, brings UltraViolet to Blighty
First digital retailer for universal content library
UK bookseller Barnes & Noble has become the first retailer in the UK to support UltraViolet, the online film library that’s the closest thing we have to a universal digital content format - and which Tesco reckons is "too complicated" for Brits.
Enter Nook Video, a B&N service with makes movie and TV show downloads available to …
Review: Apple Mac Mini 2012
Update Nice media centre, shame about the HDMI glitches
On 10 December 2012, Apple posted the called for Mac Mini HDMI-centric firmware update, after this review was written and published. We will be testing the machine with the new code, and will report back here shortly.
I should say right up front that, much as I quite like the Mac Mini’s form-factor, looks and, more particularly …
E-reader demand slumps, slapped down by slates
E-ink kit falling out of consumers' favour
E-book readers sales are taking a pummelling from tablets. IDC, a market watcher, reckons some 19.9 million dedicated e-readers will have shipped in 2012 - 28.2 per cent fewer than were shifted in 2011.
Lower prices, the rise of the 7in screen, colour, apps, aggressive promotional activity by tablet makers Apple, Amazon and …
The best e-readers for Christmas
Feature Nexus 7, iPad Mini, Kindle Paperwhite - the top book-reading tech of 2012
Digital reading devices separate into two basic types. On the one hand, you have the traditional e-reader, based on e-ink technology, and designed specifically reading. But now we have the 7in tablet, an altogether more sophisticated gadget, but one now starting to challenge the old-fashioned e-reader on price, especially when …
Latest Call of Duty sequel shoots past Avatar sales benchmark
Black Ops beat blue cats
In December 2011, Activision boasted Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 had clocked up $1 billion in sales more quickly that James Cameron’s sci-fi blockbuster Avatar had done back in 2009. CoD reached that milestone in 16 days, ‘Dances with Wolves in space’ in 17 days.
A year on, the games publisher is making exactly the same …
Netflix wins first-show TV rights to Disney flicks
IPTV deal puts future Star Wars movies on Xboxes, PS3s, TVs, tablets
Netflix is to become Disney’s exclusive pay-television partner from 2016 in a deal that gives it first pick of all of the studio’s new films, from future Pixar and Marvel hits to the second and third instalments of the new Star Wars trilogy.
Terms of the deal, which only covers the US, were not disclosed, but the Financial Times …
Google puts Nexus 4 back on sale, sells out pronto
Hot cake impersonation continues
Google’s Nexus 4 smartphone is back on the UK Google Play store, but you’ll have to wait until the new year to get hold of one should you place an order.
The LG-made handset has been much in demand and after its launch quickly sold out. Early reports suggested the initial allocation of the secretly 4G smartphone sold out within …
Windows 8 fails to revive world CPU biz
Forecasts scaled back as analysts, trade see continued decline
IHS iSuppli, a market watcher, has admitted that its expects world PC sales to fall this year even further than it previously thought they would. Whatever the degree of decline, it will mark the first time global personal computer shipments have fallen in 11 years.
In a discussion of world chip sales posted yesterday, iSuppli …
Motörheadphönes Overkill earphones review
Only way to feel the noise is when it's good'n'loud
I like Motörheadphönes’ cans, but when I’m out and about I’d prefer a pair of ‘phones that are a little more discreet and, yes, easier to stash when not in use. Enter the band’s in-canal cans: Overkill.
And Trigger too, since both sets sport identical business ends. Only price and the presence of a microphone/remote control …
Lovefilm does a Wii after rival gets loaded on new Nintendo
Wii U version coming to compete with Netflix 'soon'
Britain’s eight million Nintendo Wii owners now have a reason to blow the dust off their console and power it up once more. Well, at least those of them who also happen to be Lovefilm subscribers do.
According to the Amazon-owned streamer of films and TV shows, it has just released a free app on the console’s online shop. The …
Motörheadphönes Motörizer rock 'phones review
Meet the beat
One retailer’s Motörheadphönes Motörizer page caught my attention today. “Warning!” it shrieked, “The packaging and product includes explicit language. Not suitable for children under the age of 18.”
Quite apart from the fact that whoever wrote those words has clearly not set foot in a British secondary school for a fair few …
LG claims UK Ultra HD TV first
Monster 84in telly makes Blighty high street debut
LG has put its first 4K x 2K - aka Ultra HD - LED-backlit LCD TV into shops. Its 84in monster, the LM960V, will today be available to view in posh peoples’ shops Harrods and Peter Jones Sloane Square, part of the John Lewis group.
Of course, how many punters - even well-off ones - will feel the need to fork out £22,500 for a big …
Sony tempts 4K Ultra HD TV buyers with free films
Bundled on a gratis video server, natch
Fancy a 4K x 2K TV - aka '4K Ultra HD' - but you’re worried you won’t have any native content to watch on the living room filler? Look to Sony. Today, the consumer electronics giant announced a server box stuffed with ten 3840 x 2160 movie transfers ready to play.
The Amazing Spiderman, Total Recall (2012), The Karate Kid (2010 …
Android seven-inchers swipe rug from under Apple
iPad share slumps
The question is, does Apple’s tablet market share - or Android’s for that matter - actually matter? Apple is certainly selling more of the darn things, but after a brief year’s relief, sales of Android alternatives are rising even more quickly.
According to ABI Research, a market watcher, Apple’s share of the world tablet market …
Japan firm offers mums-to-be 3D printed unborn infants
The fruit of your loins, in plastic
If your partner is up the duff, and you want to record the pregnancy for posterity, you could keep the ultrasound pictures and even get a cast made of your missus’ extended abdomen. Or, if you live in Japan, you can get a 3D printed foetus.
For a mere ¥100,000 (£764), one Japanese company will squeeze your partner into a MRI …
Ten technology FAILS
Tech that might have revolutionised your life but you have now completely forgotten
Nokia's N-Gage, Palm's Foleo, Motorola's Atrix, Apple's Newton MessagePad, HD DVD, Sony's Rolly, Sony's Mylo, Philips' CD-i, Commodore's CD-TV, IBM's PCJr, the Camputer's Lynx, Gizmondo, the Phantom, Atari's Jaguar, MySpace, Beenz - behind every iPad there are dozens and dozens of technology products that aspired to greatness …
Raspberry Pi seller calls for hack match contestants
24 hours to bake the best Pi rig
UK-based hardware hackers have just over a week to apply for Hackday, a tournament tuned to the Raspberry Pi micro-motherboard.
The contest takes place on 1 December at Leeds’ Munro House. Proceedings kick off at 10.30am, but the competition starts at 12pm, after which entrants have 24 hours to build a Pi-based system they think …
Intel pays Creative $50m for ZiiLabs GPU licence, people
Small change for one firm, lifeblood for the other
Creative Labs is to all sell parts of its graphics chip wing, ZiiLabs, to Intel for $50 million (£31.4 million).
The deal involves a $30 million payment for “certain engineering resources and assets” from ZiiLabs' UK operation and a further $2 million for “the licensing of certain technologies... relating to ZiiLabs' high …
Kobo Glo illuminated e-reader review
Read between the covers - and under them
Kobo’s Glo is yet another of the current wave of e-readers with what amounts to a backlit screen.
Yes, the light isn’t situated behind the screen, but let’s not split hairs. The system works by shining LED light through the screen and bouncing it back off a reflective layer toward the reader, but the effect is much the same. …
How Intel's faith in x86 cost it the mobile market
And why Paul Otellini's successor needs to embrace corporate heresy
You can’t fault departing Intel CEO Paul Otellini by claiming he didn't spot the way personal computing was becoming more mobile. He certainly did. But you can argue that his strategy for adapting the chip maker to the trend really wasn’t the right one. But as a 40-year Intel veteran it was never very likely he would reject one …
WiGig crew to cut DisplayPort cables
60GHz high-speed wireless tech to support screens
VESA, the organisation behind DisplayPort and past monitor connection technologies, must have fallen a little out of love with wireless connectivity. Two years after entering into an alliance with WiGig, the 60GHz band high-speed WLAN standard, it this week felt the need to renew its vows.
Highlighting the two institutions’ “ …
Liberator: the untold story of the first British laptop part 3
Feature Into the maelstrom
In the early 1980s, civil servant Bernard Terry devised a 'portable text processor' to make his fellow civil servants more productive in the office and out. Electronics giant Thorn EMI designed the machine with help of a team of former Dragon Data engineers. As the Liberator, it launched in September 1985 to become the first …
Phone users favour Wi-Fi for dataslurp
Only 22 per cent of info sucked into phones over cellular
Don’t think mobile data is too expensive and too slow in the UK? Then you probably work for a network operator. Few others would agree with you, which is why smartphone users get more than 78 per cent of their data over Wi-Fi links.
So claims market research company Nielsen, which bases its conclusion on the results of putting …
