New Technology Reviews!.: Opinion

Apples strikes new blow to Samsung in German court kerfuffle

Apples strikes new blow to Samsung in German court kerfuffle

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is officially banned in Germany. In what is surely the most tiresome, baffling and ill-welcome tech stor...

Verizon’s Android Market Share Slips as AT&T and Regional Carriers Gain

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<img alt="" class="aligncenter" height="212" mce_src="http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/2933/androidmarketshare540x3.jpg" src="http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/2933/androidmarketshare540x3.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: #444444; display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 640px;" width="324" />Online advertising data gatherers, Chitika have published a follow up to research they conducted in March about the division of the Android market share among U.S. carriers. The data shows some interesting, but not all too surprising shifts over the past few months. Let’s take a look at how things have changed.</div>
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The original survey found Verizon to have over half the market, no doubt thanks to the likes of their enormously popular Droid line, sheer size, and lack of an iPhone. Since then Verizon’s launched several new LTE devices, but the Verizon iPhone has also been around for several months. What really caused Verizon to lose 10% of the market share, in my opinion at least was other carriers stepping up their game.</div>
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In the last few months, AT&T and regional carriers, such as Virgin Mobile and U.S. Cellular have shown a new commitment to Android. AT&T’s Motorola Atrix and Samsung Infuse are a couple of the 4G devices that it was desperately in need of at the start of this year. It hasn’t been enough to propel Ma Bell to the top, but it did more than double their previous, disheartening share of 3.583%.</div>
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While smaller regional carriers have usually been limited to older, or far less impressive phones, a few jewels have shown up. These phones, like the Motorola Triumph for Virgin Mobile and cheaper prices have made these other carriers more attractive. This all sounds good to me. I’ve always been one for consumer choice (I do love Android after all…)</div>
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Verizon’s Android Market Share Slips as AT&T and Regional Carriers Gain

Online advertising data gatherers, Chitika have published a follow up to research they conducted in March about the division of the Andr...

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<img alt="" class="aligncenter" height="237" mce_src="http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/6352/htcunlockedbootloaders.jpg" src="http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/6352/htcunlockedbootloaders.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: #444444; display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 640px;" title="HTC unlocked bootloaders" width="297" />HTC promised everyone that come August we would be able to unlock our bootloaders and so far they have stayed true to their promise. Word on the street is HTCDev.com is now allowing users to unlock the European HTC Sensation. The last thing we heard is they would offer this via an online web-based tool and it appears that has gone live this morning.</div>
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If you head over the HTCDev.com you’ll find all the details as well as that “Unlock Bootloader” option near the bottom right to get started. While we can’t test this out on our T-Mobile Sensation 4G I’m sure there is hundreds of users over at XDA doing it this exact moment so be sure to check that out. Many of us have already unlocked and rooted our devices with the recent Revolutionary tool released by some popular developers.</div>
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<img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-47570 aligncenter" height="212" mce_src="http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/8420/htcunlocking.png" src="http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/8420/htcunlocking.png" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: #444444; display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 640px;" title="HTC unlocking" width="153" /></div>
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When you get to the bootloader page over at HTCDev you’ll see the above image showing only the European HTC Sensation is available for unlock currently. We should be seeing more devices receive the green light soon. I have a feeling we will see the T-Mobile Sensation 4G and the EVO 3D before the end of the month, but that is only if this initial start goes well. HTC has had plenty of time to test the procedure so it should be pretty solid.</div>
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Remember you’ll have to sign up, agree to their terms and even give them your full contact information and email address but its worth it in my opinion. I’m sure the site will remind you but this will void your warranty of course. Get started at HTCDev.com/bootloader/ and enjoy that unlocked HTC Sensation.</div>
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HTC promised everyone that come August we would be able to unlock our bootloaders and so far they have stayed true to their promise. Wor...

Blotter for Mac puts iCal on your desktop

<img alt="" class="aligncenter" height="179" src="http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/2961/blottertuawle.jpg" style="width: 450px; height: 298px; margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;" width="270" /> Back when I was in corporate America, an annual tradition was to order new calendars for the desk. I preferred the "day at a glance" type, but many of my fellow wage slaves liked these large desk blotter calendars that displayed a full month. Now there's a Mac app from WireLoad, Blotter (US$9.99) that turns your iCal events and tasks into the electronic equivalent of the desk blotter calendar. <h3>Blotter</h3> After you purchase Blotter from the Mac App Store, an app icon appears in your Dock. I have enough icons in my Dock, so I usually drag 'em off, and that was the case with Blotter. Not to worry, though -- once you've launched Blotter, a tiny menu bar icon appears for setting preferences and creating new events and tasks. Blotter can be set to auto-launch at login, and that's the way it should be. The main feature of Blotter is the beautiful translucent calendar that appears on your Mac desktop. By default, it shows the current week, but can be set in preferences to show the seven days or only weekday dates. The current date is listed as a large number, with the month, year, and day of the week listed below. There's also a list of To Do items, as well as a "Right Now" mini-view showing the next four or five hours at a glance. I have my Blotter calendar set to fade out after 60 seconds -- a quick click on the menu bar icon brings it back to full intensity. <div> Gallery: <a href="http://www.tuaw.com/photos/blotter-for-mac/">Blotter for Mac</a> <a href="http://www.tuaw.com/photos/blotter-for-mac/#4263968"><img alt="" src="http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/502/blottertuaw1thumbnail.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.tuaw.com/photos/blotter-for-mac/#4263969"><img alt="" src="http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/8728/blottertuaw2thumbnail.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.tuaw.com/photos/blotter-for-mac/#4263970"><img alt="" src="http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/4217/blottertuaw3thumbnail.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.tuaw.com/photos/blotter-for-mac/#4263971"><img alt="" src="http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/7750/blottertuaw4thumbnail.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.tuaw.com/photos/blotter-for-mac/#4263972"><img alt="" src="http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/9784/blottertuaw5thumbnail.jpg" /></a> </div> Blotter isn't meant to replace iCal. Instead, it is meant to work with iCal so that you don't need to actually open your calendar to look at it. It's always there on the desktop for you to see if you need it, much in the manner those desk blotter calendars were on our real desktops in the past, soaking up coffee spills and giving us a look at what was coming up in the next few days or weeks. If you use Google calendars, no problem -- as long as you're subscribing to those calendars in iCal, they'll show up on Blotter. The calendar can be set to take up a lot of screen real estate or a smaller area, and in the smaller views it is movable to various locations on your desktop. There's a "narrow" mode that displays just the date, To Do list, and the Right Now mini-view, but it seems to defeat the purpose of Blotter for me. On my 27" iMac I tend to always have a lot of windows open, so they obscure the view of Blotter and also defeat the purpose of the app a bit. However, it's possible to hide windows temporarily by pressing Command-H repeatedly while in the Finder, and that makes it very easy to hide windows very quickly, glance at the Blotter calendar, and then return to work without taking my hands off of the keyboard. Within the Blotter preferences, there is a setting for displaying all iCal calendars or just a selected few. One of the few negatives I see with this app is that for some reason, the color of one of my calendars -- which is orange in iCal -- came over as a sickly olive color in Blotter. The two main calendars (home and work) showed up in their proper colors. What about adding new events and tasks to the calendar with Blotter? The app would be worthless without this capability, and Blotter makes it as easy as either clicking on the menu bar icon and selecting New Event or New Task, or by setting up a keyboard shortcut. In either case, a small dialog appears for entering in the scheduling information on the fly. <h3>Conclusion</h3> Blotter is a very attractive Mac utility for displaying iCal events and tasks on otherwise unused space on your Mac desktop. I fear, though, that Blotter might be made obsolete by Lion. While testing the next version of Mac OS X, I've found it useful to place iCal in full-screen mode. From any screen, it's available with a gesture and a click; much faster and easier than clicking on my desktop and hitting Command-H until I can see Blotter. Still, the translucent Blotter calendar is much sexier than even the Lion calendar in full-screen. Apple should take some design cues from the Blotter developers for the future. Don't just take my opinion about Blotter. I've included a video review of the app by friend and frequent TUAW TV Live guest Doc Rock, who was the person who turned me onto this amazing utility.

Blotter for Mac puts iCal on your desktop

Back when I was in corporate America, an annual tradition was to order new calendars for the desk. I preferred the "day at a glance...

Opinion: The future of computing is ARM

<img src="http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/6614/pcp00insight3laird20020.jpg"> The future of computing isn't x86. It's not Windows-based either, condemning both halves of the 'Wintel' alliance to death row. But then it's been a long time since anything from Microsoft looked like the future rather than the past. As it happens, Microsoft was partly responsible for the announcement that inspired my smell-the-coffee moment. I speak, of course, of the Windows-for-ARM announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas back in January, where Microsoft head honcho Steve Ballmer revealed that the next version of its core Windows OS would support ARM processors as well as x86 chips. The other half of the equation was Nvidia's Project Denver, an attempt by the graphics specialist to create a high-performance ARM processor for desktops and servers. It's a catastrophic cliché, but when I put the two announcements together, I immediately knew my world of computing would never be the same again. Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that Windows for ARM itself is going to be a big deal. On the contrary, it's probably best characterised as a lumbering giant's desperate attempt to remain relevant in a fast-changing world. Likewise, I've no idea whether Project Denver will be the success Nvidia needs it to be. Established trend Instead, it hit home because everyone instinctively knows that any trend behind-the-curve Microsoft is picking up on must already be well established and widespread. And Microsoft has seen that the future of computing might be ARM instead of x86. You might argue that this is hardly a profound observation. After all, ARM chips already dominate most mobile and embedded applications including the increasingly ubiquitous smartphone segment. But what the Microsoft and Nvidia announcements underlined was that ARM has a real shot at extending up into the traditionally performance-orientated desktop and server segments - x86 territory, in other words. Likewise, Windows for ARM and Project Denver put Intel's efforts to move down into ARM's traditional mobile and embedded segments with the Atom processor into new context. Previously, Atom seemed like a sensible tactic to get Microsoft into an ultramobile market experiencing explosive growth. What I hadn't truly considered was that Intel, and by extension AMD, was at risk in its core desktop and server market. The way I see it, the likely scenario goes like this. As transistors become smaller and smaller, the issue of outright performance in all computing devices becomes less critical. Already, you could argue that a decent quad-core desktop PC processor provides all the general purpose performance most consumers are likely to need. The fastest ARM chips remain a long way off the performance of any quad-core x86 CPU. But with the latest out-of-order Cortex A9 core and the emergence of multi-core ARM designs, it's only a matter of time before that gap is closed. That's not to say I expect processor technology to remain static - quite the contrary. But instead of ever more general purpose cores being added, future chips will sport a mix of special-purpose circuitry designed to accelerate specific tasks. Think graphics, media encoding, encryption and maybe even features like facial recognition, all accelerated in hardware. What future processors won't be are wall-to-wall general purpose cores. Strong ARM Massively multi-core is not the answer. To my mind, this scenario plays to the strengths of ARM chipmakers. ARM itself doesn't make chips - it licenses the IP needed to make ARM-based processors, leaving Samsung, Qualcomm, Nvidia and up to 15 other outfits to bring in their own tech and that of third parties to create a product tailored for an application. Intel and AMD's traditional approach has been a one-size-fits-all chip designed, manufactured and distributed by a single company. That demands both be experts in all areas of chip design, and compete with specialists in areas like graphics and multimedia. More recently, AMD has spun off its manufacturing arm, leaving it positioned halfway between ARM and Intel in terms of business model. Similarly, Intel revealed a deal with Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC to build Atom processors containing third-party IP. But the implications are clear enough. Desktops, laptops and servers are currently dominated by processors from just two companies. In five years or so, AMD and Intel could well look like the victims in a cheap horror flick, covered by and being consumed by a swarm of small nasties. Some kind of future, eh?

Opinion: The future of computing is ARM

The future of computing isn't x86. It's not Windows-based either, condemning both halves of the 'Wintel' alliance to death r...

Opinion: My dad is more tech than me

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com///classifications/events/ces2010/Samsung-LED9000-3d-200-200.jpg"> I have a confession to make: my dad is more tech than me. It never used to be like this. I was always the one with the games consoles, latest MP3 player and camera. I was the one that got him into DVDs – showing him that, unlike, VHS, they don't take an age to rewind, can't be chewed up (I skipped the part about them being scratched) and they have this magical thing called special features. It was the same with Blu-ray. But then something changed; the apprentice became the master. Having not lived at home for more than a decade, each time I come back my parents have got some new fangled tech to show off. Apple iPod touch? Check. iPhone? Yup. Nintendo DSi – he's got one of those too. The latest purchase is a 50-inch Samsung 3D TV and 3D Blu-ray player, something I am staring at with envy right now writing this. The logic behind the buy is actually pretty sound – the shop he bought it from had an offer on that made the TV cheaper to have than a non-3D one. Saying that, it is a big purchase. Too big, as he apparently went white when the TV was delivered, knowing it was too big for the room. Like all dads, though, he sorted out this problem… by sawing off the legs of the stand so it is lower to the floor. The whole thing will probably collapse if you breathe on it, but this 30cm adjustment has probably saved his marriage to my mum. Deep into technology I have been pretty blessed in the last two-and-a-bit years working at TechRadar, trying out the latest technology years before it hits the shop and, in all honesty, a sense of jadedness does seep in from time to time. It's not that my love affair for technology is ending, it's just that I am more enthused about products that aren't out yet. While I am clinging on to the (increasingly unlikely) possibility that the PSP Phone being amazing, 3D is hitting living rooms. This is something that brings the 'wow' factor to people like my parents, like it did to me back in 2008. But this doesn't mean I don't want it. Seeing this 3D TV in my folk's house has brought out my jealous side. And knowing what my mum has got my dad for Christmas (you can probably guess given the above list) has me even more craving the technology he is stockpiling in his home. My dad is now so tech, he uses his iPhone for sat nav in his car (the original sat nav is probably now gathering dust in the boot) and he has rigged up the lights in my parent's three bedroom semi detached house to dim when he wants them to; this switch also currently controls the Christmas tree. I haven't quite worked out how to turn the Christmas tree lights on yet because of this. Mum won't be happy. Have you turned it off an on? My only saviour in this is that I get to play with all the toys when I come home. Play and actually show my parents how they work. Last year it was how to stop the iPhone constantly synching with the computer. This year it is showing that they can convert 2D TV to 3D via the television. Jeremy Kyle has never looked so in your face. I still wake up in cold sweats, remembering the time I tried to explain to my mum how to get music on to the frankly rubbish MP3 player my dad got her for her birthday one year. I wrote her a five-point checklist to keep with her at all times. She was over the moon. Then lost the list and bought an iPod. I also sorted out the Sky+ HD box, last night as it was playing up. I only turned it off and on but it worked and they are happy. Considering the mountain of tech procured, TechRadar is barely read in this household. I've always been confused about this, as there's some stuff on the site my dad would love. But he seems to want to work things out for himself and listen to what the folks in Currys think than looking it up on the web – something I think a lot of parents still do. There may be a point when I overtake my dad when it comes to technology but, at the moment, his disposable income wins out, as does the amount of time he has on his hands to enjoy these gadgets. At least my mum isn't as tech savvy. She's only got the iPod, netbook, Freeview PVR… I have a confession to make: my mum is more tech than me.

Opinion: My dad is more tech than me

I have a confession to make: my dad is more tech than me. It never used to be like this. I was always the one with the games consoles, late...

Opinion: Why I don't want a Kinect for Christmas

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//Review%20images/TechRadar/Home%20Entertainment/Kinect%20Xbox%20360/DSCF3752-200-200.jpg"> Trust me, it's not cynicism. I'd love to be excited about the new <a href="">Xbox Kinect</A>, and if you'd told me about it a couple of years ago, I'm sure I'd have been eagerly pre-ordering it just like I did the Wii. Unfortunately for this year's big toy, there's a small problem keeping me from being excited: I've played with one for more than five minutes. For the moment, that's all the Kinect I feel the need in my life. Progress is a funny thing. We need the small steps so that the big ones can happen, and we need people to spend money on them so that there's a reason for companies to keep working. To that end, I actually hope Kinect does well. The ideas behind it are definitely impressive. Your body is the controller. Wave at the screen and magic happens. Interact without the need for extra devices. Burned before Unfortunately, we've been burned like this before – virtual reality, augmented reality, Nintendo Wii, Sony EyeToy. Somewhere between premise and product, the magic has a tendency to slip away, or at least be crushed under the weight of reality. We keep spending our money on the next big thing, hoping that this time it'll be different, but secretly knowing that no matter how good it is, or how close it gets to perfection, it'll be gathering dust soon enough. The problem with Kinect isn't that the technology isn't interesting, it's that it doesn't really gel with modern gaming. That could be a good thing if it leads to brand new ideas, but I suspect that we're more likely to see what happened to the Wii – lots of party games and standard designs, only with the Kinect equivalent of waggling the controller. Purely in terms of wish fulfilment, it's difficult to see how most of the obvious game interactions could be done well without some kind of tool. Not only is gripping a steering wheel peripheral more efficient than holding your hands out like one, it feels better. You can't feel like a master swordsman just by clenching one fist and waving it. As for guns, we've yet to see how Kinect plans to handle them, but what can it ultimately offer beyond pointing two fingers at the screen and yelling 'bang'? If anything, Kinect's open controls feel more limited than a primitive controller. Something like a DualShock may be more of an abstraction of the action than making the right moves, but it quickly becomes invisible. When you press B, you press B – the console doesn't have to work out whether you really meant to press X, or bring up the menu, or were just picking your nose. Playing via a console also removes the subconscious expectation of haptic feedback. Hitting an enemy with a force feedback rumble effect can feel weighty, but swinging your fist through empty air in exchange for a mere sound effect has no, well, punch. Appealing technology All this said, despite my lack of interest in the initial selection of games – most of which seem to be variants of old stuff like Wii Sports, Nintendogs and dancing titles – the technology does appeal. As a multimedia control system, Kinect definitely has merits (even though I suspect that a traditional remote control would be faster and less prone to error), and there'll certainly be some interesting games and projects that make good use of it in the near future. The irony is that, right now, the best use for Kinect wouldn't be replacing existing control systems, but supplementing them instead. Head-tracking to control vague camera movements. Leaning around corners in-game by actually leaning. On a wider level, maybe detecting the number of people in the room and adjusting a few settings automatically. Think along the lines of force feedback – the sort of things you don't really notice until you don't have them any more. Kinect with the PC Transplant that to the PC, and software developers could finally live the dream of writing an application that really does watch out for the worst possible moment to crash and delete all your hard work. The trouble is that such subconscious improvements aren't the kind of things that sell £130 worth of hardware, or warrant claims of extending a console's life by several years. Just ask Nintendo, which has yet to get much other than laughter for its Wii Vitality Sensor (a pulse monitor) despite its possibilities for action, horror and fitness games. Still, there's time. The real benefit of Microsoft's Kinect push isn't that it'll take over the world, but that a technology with definite potential will spread. If and when we see some great games that use it, I'll consider picking one up. Until then, my mouse, keyboard and standard Xbox controller are all I need to control my digital life.

Opinion: Why I don't want a Kinect for Christmas

Trust me, it's not cynicism. I'd love to be excited about the new Xbox Kinect , and if you'd told me about it a couple of years...

Opinion: 'Software vendors are mere stewards for ideas'

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//Review%20images/PC%20Plus/PCP%20293/PCP293.insight5.graham-200-200.jpg"> From the outside, the world of open source software can appear turbulent, disorganised and disparate. But when it comes to the creation of software, these consequences work to its advantage. Open source development is a democracy. These attributes make Linux effective, interesting, diverting and productive. You can do what you want with the source code behind the software. You can add features, remove broken ones, fix problems, bolt on attachments and even copy an entire project verbatim. You can sell the software, use it as part of a commercial endeavour, rebrand it, copy it, redistribute it and charge to support it. You can make it your own. The set of free software licences used by most open source software guarantees these freedoms, and for most of them, your only obligation is to share your changes to the source code. It's still the best reason for using free software, and it's something none of its competitors can touch. This is why there's so much choice and diversity, and it's from this chaos of unstructured development that order eventually coalesces, forming some of the major open source projects we all love, from OpenOffice.org and GIMP to Fedora and Ubuntu. It's a competitive environment, where the low cost of software means features and usability are what bring a project to dominance, rather than a great piece of marketing or an influential sponsor (even if both of these are having an increasing effect). In a world that's become used to six-month release cycles and free updates, it's easy to forget that the random fluctuations of free software development are never far from the surface, and that's definitely a good thing. This fluctuation is the best evidence we've got that the developers still care, and that apathy isn't taking a project to the retirement village of an inactive SourceForge account. Dramatic changes still happen, and two influential free software projects have recently undergone the ultimate metamorphosis – they've been forked. Forks are cataclysmic A fork is the complete duplication of a project from one host to another, usually by a group of developers and users who have become so dispossessed and disenfranchised by the original project that they have no other option. Outwardly, it's a sign that a project's leaders aren't listening to its contributors. Inwardly, it's a sign that nothing is changing and that the project may have lost its purpose. A fork is a cataclysmic event. It's never taken lightly, and usually only as a last resort. It's happened many times in the past, most notably with XFree86, the X Window system used by the vast majority of Linux distributions and many other free operating systems. X is one of the most important components in Linux. It handles screen updates and the way the user interacts with the system. The old guard at XFree86 had become unpopular – in a world where other GUIs were rapidly gaining functionality, such as anti-aliased fonts, shadows and compositing, X was going nowhere with XFree86. It was forked and became X.org. At the time, many of us thought this was a mistake. Why risk a vital OS component with an untested new group? But the results were staggering. X.org implemented almost all the features we'd wanted for years, and went from strength to strength. Mandriva, the Linux distribution, has become Mageia. Some of its core developers and community members have taken the brave decision to go it alone. Like XFree86, it's a fork that's come after many years of apathy, with too little innovation and financial reward. A fork in this case has nothing to lose, because the alternative is nothing. A fork for those people who still care means Mandriva's survival, and that's exactly what can't happen in the world of proprietary software. Even more dramatic is the latest fork of OpenOffice.org, the essential office suite that gives many people the only real alternative to Microsoft Office, and is now owned by Oracle. Under its previous owner, Sun Microsytems, change happened too slowly. There was a particularly draconian grip on what changes were allowed, and even the copyright over those changes. Things haven't improved quickly enough at Oracle either, and this has given the community enough momentum to create the LibreOffice fork. LibreOffice and Mageia are important parts of the continued success of free software, but what's more important – and quite unlike the proprietary world – is that free software vendors need reminding that they're stewards for people's software and ideas. And Linux is the best possible ark for bringing those ideas home.

Opinion: 'Software vendors are mere stewards for ideas'

From the outside, the world of open source software can appear turbulent, disorganised and disparate. But when it comes to the creation of s...

Opinion: Is 2011 the year for affordable OLED?

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//Review%20images/PC%20Plus/PCP%20287/PCP00.insight3.laird-200-200.jpg"> </div> 
 
<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=latesttecompu-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0036WHNVS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>This month, I was planning to bring you an uplifting story of hope and promise. 
 
 
Recently, I've been giving the microscope-and-tweezers treatment to a wide range of the latest LCD monitors. Thus, the theme of my column was to be the improvement of that most ubiquitous of panel technologies: twisted nematic, or TN for short. 
Then something unexpected happened that threatened to make the finer points of TN technology thoroughly moot. For the moment, though, stick with me on the tale of TN tech. 
Currently, TN panels dominate the more affordable end of the monitor market. Nearly every monitor selling for sub £300 is powered by a TN panel. Historically, that hasn't been a good thing.

Opinion: Is 2011 the year for affordable OLED?

This month, I was planning to bring you an uplifting story of hope and promise. Recently, I've been giving the microscope-and-twee...

Opinion: Chrome OS: a new beginning for web apps?

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//classifications/computing/software/operating-systems/images/Chrome_OS/chrome-cr48_crop-200-200.jpg"> Google has finally announced full details of its web only <a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/google-chrome-os-what-you-need-to-know-914070">Chrome OS</A>. Whilst the response to the release date (mid 2011) was slightly muted, the general reaction has been a positive one. At the same time Google announced the Chrome Web Store, a place to source and purchase web applications compatible only with the Chrome web browser. Obviously the big idea here is for the store to become the main source of apps for Chrome OS users, in the same way the Apple App Store is the only place to go for new iOS software. But web applications aren't exactly new, so what does the Chrome Store, and Chrome OS, give us that is new? First, let's look at the Chrome Store in isolation. Right now it is a slightly strange experience. 'Downloading' a web app seems to just add it to your Chrome start page, and er.. well that's about it. Launching the app opens it in a new tab, and you interact with it just like any other website. Because that's exactly what it is: a website. For example, installing the 'Aviary Image Editor' from the Chrome store offers exactly the same experience as browsing directly the site, even in a different browser. All change Right now apps are written in HTML5 and JavaScript, current web standards, but that will change. Earlier this year Google released more details of its 'Native client' or NaCI for short. This allows the Chrome browser to run x86 native code, allowing its hosted web apps to consist of more traditional code in addition to HTML and JavaScript. This is Google's attempt to advance the cause and power of web apps, and allow them to offer an experience more akin to traditional desktop apps. It will also make the offerings of the chrome app store much more enticing, as they begin to tempt us with features that standard websites can't match. Enter Chrome OS Which brings us onto Chrome OS, the real reason for the app store. Used from within the new browser-based operating system the store feels a much more natural experience. But what about the apps themselves? It's currently a similar experience to just using the browser on another OS. Apps are accessible from a central 'app screen' but launch in the browser function pretty much like the vanilla web sites they basically are. NaCI again has a huge role to play here in increasing the sophistication of the apps, but their integration with the OS will also be significant. Let us take Gmail, probably one of the more sophisticated web applications currently out there on the web, as an example of where web apps could be heading under Chrome OS. Firstly, sophisticated offline access is an absolute must. Google previously had its own Gears plugin for offline access to its apps, but has been moving toward a HTML5 implementation for some time. Chrome OS will allow you offline access to apps, but it remains to be seen if there will be offline access to individual files, like we are use to on current operating systems. In fact, it remains to be seen if we will be able to access a 'filestore' at all just yet, or whether files will only be accessible inside of their respective apps. My guess would be Google Doc's slow transformation into an online hard disk will come into use here. Secondly will the look and feel of apps develop? Will we see multiple windows inside one app, like Word's ability to handle multiple documents? Will people use a tab per app, or separate instances of Chrome? Will the 'instant' save feature of many apps completely remove any notion of 'saving' files? There are many metaphors in the traditional operating system that may not travel well with a web OS. System-wide cut and paste? The humble web app feels relatively mature right now. However, I suspect that Chrome OS may show us that we are only at the beginning of a very exciting journey.

Opinion: Chrome OS: a new beginning for web apps?

Google has finally announced full details of its web only Chrome OS . Whilst the response to the release date (mid 2011) was slightly muted,...

Opinion: Open source 'community' doesn't exist

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//Review%20images/PC%20Plus/PCP%20293/PCP293.insight5.graham-200-200.jpg"> Many users, forums and magazines like to speak of the open source community. It's the glue that holds free software together. Without it, we're told, there would be no open source, no Linux and therefore no future. Books have been written about nurturing it. Websites thrive on serving it, and its chambers are the first port of call for many a lost Linux user. But community is a double-edged sword. For each of the hundreds of individuals who have made contributions to the Linux kernel, there are endless posts, comments and rebuttals. For every person who writes a message of help and encouragement, there are more who prefer to berate and belittle users who don't fit their expectations of what a community should be. Unfortunately, this is a sub-culture that won't go away. The result is that there's no real community, and this is because 'community' is too lose a term to describe the many different kinds of people who use open source software. It's a word that may help the open source propaganda machine, but it doesn't help the sustainability and growth of free software. There is no such thing as a single, homogeneous Linux group. It's a term that implies a shared goal and some kind of kinship, when there is none. It's a term that implies cooperation and cohesion, when there's just too much conflict and disagreement for this to happen. Instead, there are disparate groups of individuals, businesses and enterprises, as with any other operating system. Each group may contain those noble elements of kindness that have helped to make Linux such a success, but to describe the entire collection as a community is wrong. Flock of starlings There's a certain group of users, for example, that behaves like an immense flock of starlings at dusk. Its members fly with seemingly random abandon, casting their malevolent shadow over social networks, online forums, advocacy sites and blogs as they move together. There's no obvious leader or motivation in their movement. Their language is filled with RTFM, STFW and LART, and it has much in common with the partisan chatter of the 1980s computing era. It feels more like 'C64 versus Spectrum' and 'Atari ST versus Amiga' than the furtherance of an open source operating system. This might be news to Windows, OS X and general PC users, who thought his kind of thing disappeared years ago. To see an example, just ask a simple question on almost any Linux forum or, even worse, dare to state your opinion. What's interesting is that there seems to be a parallel between new research into how birds flock together and how this demographic of Linux users behaves. This might sound crazy, but a paper published by researchers in the York Centre for Complex Systems Analysis at York University suggested that birds react only to the seven others closest to them and limit their processing to a very limited set of information, such as the position and heading of those birds. No real community The flock is a community in appearance only, which would help to explain the occasional headless, and heedless, behaviour of open source commentators when they descend upon a subject, post or point of view. Linux seems to have more than its fair share of zealots, and I think this is for two reasons. Firstly, many of its original users chose Linux because they were anti-something. Early on, Linux was an island for the disenfranchised. Whether this was against competition, the price of software or the uniformity in the industry, starting on such a negative footing was never going to be productive. Secondly, as an underdog, Linux needs vocal supporters, and those who shout the loudest are going to get heard. This has left us with the fragmented group of users we have now. To become more cohesive, this non-community needs to tolerate different opinions. It needs to be able to take criticism without resorting to fanaticism. And it needs to change its attitude towards new users and the direction Linux is going in. If someone can't respond positively, maybe they shouldn't respond at all. New users, alongside potential users, are the most vital group if we want Linux to grow, and its stagnation over the last few years is evidence that the current strategy isn't working. Open source needs to return to the concept of nurturing inclusion and passionate users. Only then will it become a viable alternative to the increasingly locked-down world of its rivals. And only then will the various flocks of migratory communities settle on some rock and finally make a difference.

Opinion: Open source 'community' doesn't exist

Many users, forums and magazines like to speak of the open source community. It's the glue that holds free software together. Without it...

Opinion: Beatles on iTunes: Here's why it matters

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//classifications/world%20of%20tech/beatles-200-200.jpg"> My colleague and esteemed virtual mate Gary Marshall asks why we should be bothered about The Beatles appearing on iTunes. <a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/audio/beatles-on-itunes-so-what--908668">He thinks it doesn't really matter</A>. But he's wrong. If you're a real fan, you may well have all the fab four's music on vinyl and cassette, on CD and remastered CD. You've probably also got a lock of Ringo's hair in a tin and a piece of toast that Jane Asher once looked at. But The Beatles are a special case that transcends conventional fandom. They are part of the fabric of musical history and of popular culture. This release is not really for fans - it's for everyone else. It's for you and your mum and your kids. Everyone who's ever thought, "I fancy listening to that long chord at the end of A Day in the Life" or who wanted to put on Yellow Submarine to placate a toddler's tantrum. It's for everyone who felt like vaccing the living room to She Loves You, but who couldn't download a copy the same way they can download Britney or Kylie or Queen. New context In this digital era, you can't look at The Beatles in their original context - as an album band from the black and white days. This is a different time, where people no longer buy albums. But isn't that the point? Because instead of buying albums, folks download single tracks now for 99p a pop. And this is the first time you've been able to do that with a Beatles song. A peerless back catalogue that transcends its time and origin. That's a pretty big deal. It's not just old people that like and listen to these songs either. A quick look at <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles/+listeners">Last.FM statistics</A> shows that the biggest fans of The Beatles are still the kids, scrobbling playlists as they shake their heads and play air guitar to Twist and Shout. Flawed argument There is an argument that anyone who's been waiting for a digital copy of The White Album could have torrented it a long time ago. Well, you could say that about any single artist, couldn't you? It's like asking, "What's the point in iTunes? What's the point in paying for music?" It's like saying, "What's the point in paying for that cheese when I could have just put it in my bag?" People do pay to download music. Millions of them, every year. Some of them even pay for music they could have pirated for free. There's a much bigger significance to The Beatles on iTunes, though. The CD format has always been more functional than popular, a transition between vinyl and virtual that is now coming to the end of its life. This is about much more than a band and a download service. It's about a tipping point. It's about the end of tapes and discs and the mainstreaming of bits and bytes. The Beatles on iTunes sends a clear message. These are the last days of the compact disc. And we won't mourn its passing, because The Beatles are back.

Opinion: Beatles on iTunes: Here's why it matters

My colleague and esteemed virtual mate Gary Marshall asks why we should be bothered about The Beatles appearing on iTunes. He thinks it does...