TechPortal

With Intel’s recent announcement that it will be “de-emphasising” the two year old Viiv brand, the holy grail of vendor-controlled home media has slipped further from questing fingers.

In the case of Viiv, Intel was making a rather clever bid to sneak DRM in on the back of a Centrino-style hardware base. The basic concept of Viiv – at least, the most publicised aspect – was to provide a well-defined hardware platform aimed at the home media server market, as Centrino did for the laptop market.

This did have certain benefits for both OEMs and customers – if a system is branded “Viiv-ready” then as an OEM you know what platform you’re working towards, and as a customer you have a solid idea of what you’re buying.

However, Intel also sought to use Viiv as a staging platform for digital content providers to encrypt their content and only have it played back on Viiv systems, by means of the embedded TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip which was part and parcel of the Viiv branding.

Luckily, although Intel had agreements from companies like TiVo, Virgin Records and DirecTV, from its release Viiv was not locked into only playing encrypted content and although the TPM chip was part of all Viiv systems, it wasn’t explicitly relying on it to function. Of course, releasing a product which was only capable of playing encrypted content would have sunk Viiv as a brand before it even got off the ground.

The failure of Viiv is probably to be found with its dependence on Microsoft Windows XP MCE 2005 and Vista Home Premium/Ultimate. Although these operating systems have been the basis of all PC-based commercial home media systems sold, the market remains a stubbornly limited one. This is mainly due to two factors. Firstly, media computers (whether PC-based or otherwise) require more technical expertise by their very nature, and this is meant that the more expensive HTPCs have struggled in the general consumer market against comparatively cheaper and far more user-friendly media players like the MediaGate MG-350HD or TviX M-4130SH, and even Microsoft’s own Xbox 360. Secondly, as both operating systems use a standard Windows driver base, they work on practically any hardware platform – including those which fall well short of Viiv’s specifications. This has spawned a worldwide community of HTPC enthusiasts who are far more interested in building their own custom machines rather than purchasing off-the-shelf branded systems – especially those with potential DRM lurking under the surface.

By comparison, AMD’s competitor product – AMD Live! – sought the support of content providers via a software-based delivery system, rather than relying on embedded technology to protect content. The AMD Live! Entertainment Suite also features many freely-available packages like media streaming and online backup – the only requirement is an AMD Live!-ready system which is essentially any system with a relatively recent AMD dual-core CPU. It’s worth noting that all the available packages are completely optional – you still have an AMD Live! system without them. There are AMD Live! solutions for notebooks as well as desktops, and the most recent innovation is the HP MediaSmart system built on Windows Home Server and supported by AMD Live! So although AMD Live! is also largely dependent on Microsoft Windows, it seems to have avoided Intel’s mistakes with Viiv by making the platform much more accessible to end-users as well as OEMs, and looks set to continue strongly in the HTPC market.

Intel plans to focus its attention now on MIDs – Mobile Internet Devices. This could work for them, but with the popularity of devices like Apple’s iPhone, and other emergent devices like Google-powered mobiles, there’s a distinct possibility that Intel has effectively missed its opportunity to be a defining force in the digital media market.

Blackberry maker Research in Motion today announced strong quarterly earnings that beat Wall Street expectations and more than doubled revenue from the year ago quarter. The results shot RIM stock up more than ten percent in after-hours trading. RIM shipped over 3.9 million devices and added 1.65 million new BlackBerry subscribers, for a total of 12 million subscribers worldwide.

More importantly for RIM however was the uptake of consumers and small business customers who chose a BlackBerry over other smartphones. According to Jim Balsillie, RIMs co-CEO, ‘about 34% of BlackBerry subscribers in the quarter were consumers and small businesses’ and RIM signed up a record number of new subscribers during the Thanksgiving holiday, a traditionally sluggish time for BlackBerry sales.

The RIM result comes as anticipation mounts for the next BlackBerry model, nicknamed the 9000 series. According to a report here, the 9000 series has been confirmed to have a 480 x 320 screen, quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and will feature WiFi capabilities. The device will also feature a full QWERTY keyboard, and may or may not feature a touch-screen. The 9000 series will feature the same OS as the current Pearl and Curve, but will launch with version 4.3.2. It will not, however, be HSDPA or even 3G capable.
Is this the new BlackBerry 9000? (photo: www.boygeniusreport.com)

If you can’t wait for the 9000 series BlackBerry check out the recently released Pearl 8120. It’s got built-in WiFi, media player, a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and provides BlackBerry email in a small package. In my testing the interface improvements over the original Pearl 8100 make a significant difference, and the the on-screen font rendering finally gives the Pearl a more graphically rich UI feel.

Source : APCMag.com

All Microsoft wants for Christmas is your download limit. The long-awaited first service pack for Vista — a whole freakin’ gigabyte of it — is due to arrive early next year, but patch junkies can give themselves an early injection of bug-fixing with a general pre-release of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.

Microsoft has quietly made the release candidate for XP SP3 available on its web site. For the most part, the service pack rolls up previous patches, and only “includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system”, according to Microsoft’s release notes. (The idea that you can “include functionalities” might change your experience of the English language, of course.)

The most significant of these additions include support for Network Access Protection, a much-touted feature of the forthcoming Windows Server 2008 which allows network access to include assessments of system health (in other words: if you’re not patched and up to date, ain’t no way you’re connecting to this network, bud).

The size of this patch, while unquestionably smaller than the Vista equivalent, is a matter for some conjecture. The current download page lists it as 336MB. Microsoft’s white paper on the subject suggests that the eventually released version on Windows Update will only be 70MB in size, but that the full download version for enterprise deployments will be 580MB. Whichever way you slice it, people stupid enough to sign up for plans with 200MB download limits will be found sobbing quietly in the corner.

There are two possible ways of interpreting this release. If you’re feeling optimistic, then it’s further evidence that there’s no immediate need to rush onto Windows Vista, since Microsoft is continuing to maintain the somewhat more stable and generally less painful XP alternative. Break out the champagne!

If you’re conspiracy-minded — and who wouldn’t be at Christmas? — then the release of the new service pack might actually be seen as part of Microsoft’s ongoing attempts to get corporations and, frankly, anybody, more enthused about moving to Vista. The logic would go a little like this: you’re going to have to do a bunch of compatibility testing to roll out XP SP3 anyway. So why not go the whole hog and shift to Vista anyway? (Possible answers to that question include hardware requirements, networking at the speed of a crippled gnat and User Account Control.)

Source : APCMag.com

Want to speak to someone overseas but can’t speak their language? Google has added the world’s first live translation system to its instant messaging network, truly delivering on the science-fiction promise of the “babelfish”.

Google’s IM network is available via the downloadable Google Talk software, on the web using the Google Talk Gadget, or through any software that supports the open-source Jabber chat protocol. It’s also available via the left hand side bar in the Gmail window.

Today Google improved on Talk by adding on-the-fly language translation via ‘bots’ that you add to your Google Talk friends list.

Do you speak French? Or Arabic? Now you do with new Google language ‘bots’

Translating using iChat and Jabber

To use the translation tools you’ll need to add each individual language-to-language bot as a friend in your G Talk buddy list.

There are currently 24 supported bots and adding them is easy as long as you know the two languages you want to translate between.

You’ll also need to append ‘@bot.talk.google.com’ to the end of the two languages. I fired up Google Chat and used it to translate between English and French and English and Arabic and the response is almost instant.

For a complete list of language codes see here . If you add them and nothing happens it means that Google doesn’t support it yet.

There’s also another feature that I hadn’t noticed before called Group Chat – this lets you invite multiple people into a chat, and can be used in conjunction with the languages bots to help a translation between you and your foreign friend. However, it’s worth noting that both Group Chat and language translations are only available within G Talk and not to your AIM buddies unfortunately.

If you’re not a fan of web-based IM clients then any Jabber compatible client (iChat included) should let you sign on to G Talk and add buddies locally.

Now, the only thing Google has to do now is add language translation to the voice call side of Google Talk

Source : APCMag.com

With an eye firmly on the rapidly growing market for mobile devices, chip giant Intel has announced a new SSD device that can store up to 16GB in a space the size of a small coin.

The Z-P140 comes in 2, 4, 8 and 16GB models and weighs just 0.6 grams – about the same as a drop of water. Samples are in the maket already and full production is expected to begin early next year.
The new drives are part of Intel’s Menlow chipset which has been designed from the ground up for use in mobile internet devices. Such devices have traditionally been limited by factors such as power consumption and storage capacities. Switching to SSDs addresses both these challenges.

The Z-P140 uses an industry-standard PATA interface and is significantly smaller than a hard drive with similar storage capacity. With no moving parts it is well suited to applications where devices can expect to receive their fair share of bumps and jolts during use.

Intel quotes read times of 40 megabytes per second and write times of 30 MB/s for the drives. Power consumption is rated at a miserly 1.1 miliwatts when idle and 300 mW when operating.

No pricing has yet been announced for the drives.

Source : APCMag.com

In case you missed it, Firefox 3 Beta 1 went live in late November. As a regular Firefox user I’ve been using it and have been extremely impressed with the speed and reliability of the latest release. So impressed in fact, that I deleted Firefox 2 from my Mac today.

Before we get on to the version 3 enhancements, I have to say that on my Mac running Leopard, Firefox 3 is much more stable than version 2 ever was. For instance, when using version 2 I used to have to force-quit at least once a day, with version 3 I’ve had to force-quit about once a week.

Firefox 3 looks much more ‘Mac’ like now, without the use of skins

Like all other Firefox installations getting Firefox 3 up and running was a cinch. Simply grab a copy from here, and drag it to your applications folder. If you do want to keep an older version just create a folder within your Applications folder called ‘Firefox Old’ and copy the old version in to the folder before installing the new version. I’d also recommend backing up your preferences folder (On a Mac located in /User/Library/Application Support/Firefox and on a PC at C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\).

Apart from stability, Firefox 3 offers a raft of other improvements according to Mozilla including:

• Improved security features such as: better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, and version checking for insecure plugins.
• Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista and Mac OS X.
• Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart search bookmark folders, direct typing in location bar searches your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
• Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
• Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 300 memory leak fixes, and a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks.

Mozilla is recommending Firefox 3 Beta 1 for developers and testers only however in my experience I’m using it as my main browser, and having great success. That said, if you use a lot of Firefox add-ons, most of them are not yet compatible with Firefox 3 yet, so you may want to hold off until the initial release.

Source : APCMag.com