May 2006

Google Web Toolkit: Analysis Of Its Impact
Back on Tuesday Google released their latest offering, the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). For those who didn’t catch the news at the time, it’s a downloadable application that lets developers write Java code that is translated into Javascript.
At first glance this appears a pretty strange concept, outputting JavaScript from Java, but code is the near-mythical AJAX code, heavily assisting the production of Web 2.0 applications.
You’ll know we think AJAX applications are special, not for the buckets of hype that’s surrounding Web 2.0, but because the taking up of AJAX marked the death Microsoft’s dominance of the interface. It’s the point where using an application through a Web browser became less tiresome because information is updated without the Web page having to be refreshed.
Google slowly remove the gloves
Google’s attacks on Microsoft have been consistently more intense. Early moves like the extended beta of Gmail chipping away at Microsoft’s Hotmail service.
The moves on to the Windows desktop via Google Desktop Search (GDS) stepped it up a gear. When we saw the release of GDS, we advised our friends to buy Google stock. This was the point where users no longer needed to use Windows Explorer to locate the documents that they had created on their machine. A Google application became the route to documents on ‘their’ platform. The vice-like grip in place for so many years was starting to weaken.
The interface – Now they’re ready to box
We see the release of the Web Toolkit as Google’s most direct pop at Microsoft yet.
There is still a mystique around creating AJAX applications, primarily because most of the people who are trying to make them are not programmers, but are enthusiastic amateurs, designers, or people who have never learnt the basics of programming logic.
While GWT still requires programming skills in Java, there are more programmers around that know the inaccuracies that each version of browser requires, to have the interface working consistently.
It’s not just Microsoft that is getting a bloody nose from this, it’s also quite an aggressive move against Java, effectively removing its usefulness as a Web interface language. If this tool gets wide usage – and given the buzz (real or otherwise) around Web 2.0, it’s likely – it’s going to be pushing Java to the server, although many would argue that it doesn’t have much benefit there either.
Summary I’ll leave you with the key point – Google Web Toolkit gives people the tools (literally) to write applications that work in any Web browser, circumvent Microsoft’s crown jewels, the Windows interface.
We know an AJAX toolkit won’t be a surprise to Microsoft, but it will be a big blow.
Google Web Toolkit
19 May, 2006
Review: Metro Public Transport Guide For PDA and Smartphones (95%)
For globe trotters, city slickers, urban commuters and spoddy transport types, the freeware Metro looks to be a very useful application.
Available on a host of mobile platforms from PalmOS to Symbian to Pocket PC, Métro is a predominantly text-based program that computes the shortest route between two subway stations.
The program’s looks may be basic, but you can’t knock its coverage, with guides for over 300 cities around the world – including Dublin, Las Vegas, London, Tokyo and even ‘umble Croydon.
Impressively, the program is available in 39 languages.
The guides come with differing levels of detail, with some offering both bus and subway routes, places of interest and a ‘tourist version’ offering extra info and directions to local sights.
Using Metro
Using the program is simplicity itself: just select the city and time you want to travel, select the ‘start’ and ‘end’ points of your journey.
This can be done by either inputting the names yourself (Metro will offer to auto-complete as you type) or by selecting the stations from a list.
Then it’s a case of bashing the ‘start’ button to get Metro to automatically suggest two different routes (fastest and least connections), with the option to instantly compare alternative routes by clicking on other stations and lines.
Possibly of particular use in France, there’s also a ‘Line deactivation’ option letting you navigate routes around sections of the subway that might be closed for strikes (or maintenance).
Using the program’s simple interface, you can also get Metro to display station details, stops between the stations on your journey and even associate contacts with stations.
The program is certainly comprehensive, offering 721 stops in London, 939 in New-York, 1813 in Tokyo and 838 in Paris, and a handy MétrUp updater makes it easy to keep city files up to date on your handheld.
i-Metro
Describing itself as ‘the ultimate public transport guide on your WAP or iMode phone’, i-Metro comes in Web, iMode and WAP versions for accessing route information on the move.
We couldn’t get any joy out of the WAP version (but we were using our wobbly old Ericsson T610), but the Web version worked just fine and we were able to quickly access London night bus info. Neat!
Conclusion
It may not be the most attractive travel program around, but for a freeware product the attention to detail and scope of coverage is simply astonishing.
Such is the reliability of the program that mobile moguls like Sony Ericsson, Palm and T-Mobile are bundling Metro in with their products, and even SNCF (the French national railway company) have given it their seal of approval.
For commuters, tourists and travellers we thoroughly recommend Metro.
Features: 85%
Ease of use: 85%
Value For Money: 95% (it’s free Godammit!)
Overall: 95%
Metro i-Metro Available cities
19 May, 2006
Sony HDR-HC3: Hands On With HC1 Successor
The HC3 has a tough act to follow – its own big brother, the HC1. Last year’s HC1 brought High Definition recording within the budget of almost any home movie-maker for the first time, and did it with assurance and style. Luckily, Sony hasn’t rested on its laurels, and the HC3 feels very much like a replacement for the HC1 rather than a mere upgrade.
For a start, the HC3 is 30% smaller and lighter than its predecessor, giving it the size and heft of a traditional MiniDV palmcorder. It shares the 2.7-inch touchscreen of the SR90, as well as a generous 123,000-pixel wide viewfinder if you need to save power. Like the HC1, it records 1080i High Def footage onto MiniDV tapes in the HDV format, although the HC3 has a brand new 1/3-inch 2MP CMOS sensor that Sony suggests will match the 3MP chip in the HC1. We didn’t have the opportunity to see full quality footage from the HC3 on a HD display.
Changes to the imaging pipeline have enabled Sony to offer a couple of new features in the HC3. The first is the ability to capture up to three 2MP still photos while filming (the images buffer until you stop recording). The second is Smooth Slow capture, where the capture rate increases from 50 to 200 fields per second for three seconds. Audio recording and the Super SteadyShot audio are disabled while you shoot. You can then play back this footage at a normal frame rate, giving 12 seconds of smooth slow motion footage.
The HC3 has an HDMI output (no cable supplied) and should manage around 105 minutes of recording using the supplied battery. Like the SR90, the HC3 has a flash unit rather than a video light, but a hot-shoe for accessories. But some of the HC1’s more advanced features are missing: manual shutter speeds, zoom ring and external microphone input among them.
The HC3 seems to be a worthy successor to the HC1: smaller, lighter and cheaper (£1,000). Our only concerns would be that the reduction in size of the CMOS sensor has affected image quality and that Sony is dumbing down its High Def offering for a mass audience. Despite these worries, the HC3 will almost certainly spearhead the assault of HD into the mainstream and that can be no bad thing.
19 May, 2006
IT Staff Top Stressed-Out League
IT workers who spend all day battling with clueless idiots who have just deleted critical OS files because they looked ‘messy’ already know it, but now it’s official: people who work in IT are the most stressed folks on the planet.
Surging ahead of traditional stress leaders like medicine, engineering and education, a survey conducted by research firm SWNS for online learning provider SkillSoft found that a staggering 97% of IT workers claim to find their life at work “stressful on a daily basis”.
The poll – involving more than 3,000 people – also discovered that four-fifths of IT consultants felt stressed “before they even enter the workplace”, while around a quarter were so crushed by the “enormous pressure to perform at work” that they’d taken time off suffering with stress.
One poor techie sod who responded to the survey blubbered into his Coke can, “I spend most of my day fielding calls from people who don’t even have a basic knowledge of computers and printers. It is amazing the amount of time I spend teaching people where the on-off button is. And when I do actually find a technical problem to solve, I have my manager breathing down my neck wondering why I have a backlog of complaints.”
Meddlin’ managers
Interfering managers were also found to be a source of extra stress, with a third of IT professionals saying that pesky meddling managers made it difficult for them to get their jobs done.
The survey unearthed the main stress factors for people at work (why not see how many you can tick off?!) and these include deadlines, workload, feeling undervalued, having to take on other people’s work, lack of job satisfaction, lack of control over the working day and having to work long hours.
The survey insists that employers should take the problem of stress seriously, citing the Health & Safety Executive’s research that puts stress as the biggest cause of working days lost through injury or ill health [an estimated 12.8 million lost days each year].”
In case you’re wondering about the other stressful jobs, here’s SkillSoft’s top ten stressful jobs
IT
Medicine/Caring Profession
Engineering
Sales and Marketing
Education
Finance
Human Resources
Operations
Production
Clerical
Skillsoft
Top tips to avoid office frazzle Elsewhere, an “office stress” study conducted by CareerBuilder.com found that more than three quarters of respondents felt “job burnout”, while over half felt under a “great deal of stress.”
Rosemary Haefner, CareerBuilder.com‘s vice president of human resources insisted that “high-pressure work environments are taking their toll on workers’ morale,” adding that the stress “can be detrimental to both workers, whose health and career progress may suffer, and employers, who pick up the tab in higher insurance costs and lost productivity.”
Happily, ol’ Rosie babe kindly offered some four top tips to help reduce office stress:
– Organize and prioritize by taking care of the more difficult and important tasks early in the day.
– Manage expectations so that you can achieve your goals and deliver on promises to others.
– Set aside a period of time dedicated to responding to e-mail and voicemails.
– Lastly, take care of yourself. A healthier you is more productive and happier.
We’d give that a go ourselves, but we’re busy with some idiot on the line and he’s… making…us…. chuffing…crazy… grrr…..
18 May, 2006
Sony DCR-SR90: Hands On With Their First HDD Camcorder
Just when you thought Sony couldn’t add any more formats to its camcorder range (the electronics giant already carries MiniDV, MicroMV, Hi8, Digital 8 and DVD models), along comes a new hard disc camcorder (the DCR-SR90) and a re-vamped Hi Def pro-sumer shooter (HDR-HC3). We caught up with both at an exclusive hands- on presentation in London. Details of the Sony HDR-HC3 will follow tomorrow.
Sony DCR-SR90
The SR90 is going head-to-head with JVC’s well-established Everio range of hard disc camcorders, with which it shares many things in common. A 30Gb disc can store around seven hours of top quality MPEG-2 footage, although not, as yet, in High Defintion. The Sony’s 9Mbps maximum bit-rate just pips JVC’s 8.5Mbps, although we wouldn’t expect that to affect video quality noticeably. Both have hard drive drop protection and traditional palmcorder designs, although the SR90 is heavier and chunkier than JVC’s Everios – and even many of Sony’s MiniDV models.
Build quality is good, and is reflected in a specification that includes a Carl Zeiss T* 10x zoom, which zips between extremes silently and quickly, and a 3.3 megapixel CCD sensor (against the Everio’s 2MP chip). Although it’s a pity Sony opted for a photo flash rather than a video LED, there is at least a hot-shoe for adding a decent external light.
The interface is generally very good, with a 2.7-inch folding touchscreen ported straight from Sony’s MiniDV range, giving access to a good range of creative features, including true 16:9 recording.
Sony has also borrowed from its DVD camcorders, nicking a built-in microphone that encodes audio in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound (although we didn’t get a chance to test this properly). Super SteadyShot is one of the industry’s better digital image stabilisers, and there are some digital effects on offer, too.
Playback features include basic editing tools that let you move scenes around but not cut or join them. Ease of use is emphasized with a One Touch DVD burn button for Windows computers with a DVD writer – just plug in via USB, slip in a disc and away you go.
Utilising the strengths of its traditional camcorders has helped Sony avoid the SR90 feeling like a ‘me too’ product. It might be priced a little higher (£850) than similar Everios but it offers a little more, too – if not yet the High Def recording that would have made it a must-have. A solid hard drive debut then, and it’s great to finally have some competition for JVC.
18 May, 2006
Scope Watch – Possibly the Daftest Yet
Without doubt quite the silliest timepiece we’ve seen for a long time, this new watch by Japanese manufacturers Scompe manages to turn the mundane task of checking the time into some sort of sci-fi adventure.
Offering no hands, dials or any kind of alpha-numeric LCD/LED readout, the makers clearly thought that such tried and trusted (and efficient) methods of displaying the time were simply too uncool for cutting edge hipsters.
Instead, the Scope watch employs a bonkers ‘scanning’ system, activated by pressing a button on the fascia which animates two onscreen green lines – one vertical, the other horizontal.
Managing to complicate the simple task of reading the time, users must read off the vertical line for the hour and the horizontal line for the minutes, checking their values against the tiny onscreen numbers.
Minutes inbetween are displayed in a circular display to the right, which is made up of four LEDs (so 20mins + 2 LEDs = 22 minutes.)
Powered by 2 lithium cells, the SCOPE watch is quite a chunky beast, measuring 45mm x 33mm x 11mm.
The watch – available in Brushed Silver or Gun Metal – comes with a one year warranty and a stainless steel strap and sells for around 14900 Yen ($130, £75).
Tokyo Flash
18 May, 2006
Fisher-Price Launch Digital Toys For Three Year Olds
Back in our day, we were lucky if we got a lump of mud as a toy (Luxury! – editor), but kids today are spoilt rotten with an endless succession of frivolous gadgets demanding an unwelcome draining of parents’ wallets.
Latest in a long line of toys for the tiny tot that must have everything is the new ‘Kid Tough’ range from Fisher-Price.
Aimed at preschoolers as young as three years old, the brightly coloured digital camera and digital music player look set to distract kids from boring tasks like, you know, playing with other children, reading books and talking to their parents.
Camera
The durable camera looks like it might survive several tantrums and buggy-lobbing fits, and offers a two-eye viewfinder, sturdy hand grips and a small colour LCD preview screen.
Fisher Price’s website doesn’t offer any details about camera resolution, but we figure it’s going to be pretty crappy.
There’s no memory card slots for kids to dribble into, with the camera offering built in storage for 60 pictures, backed up USB connectivity for transferring photos to a desktop PC.
Music player
Styled in a similarly chunky design, the Kid-Tough FP3 player comes pre-loaded with six songs (which will no doubt be repeated for infinity) as well as a less-than-generous two stories in what appears to be Fisher-Price’s proprietary FP3 format.
The circular player features big buttons and an LCD screen with icons to let kids pick their own choons and be a junior DJ Selectaaaaaa!
Naturally, there’s an option to buy some silence from your kid by buying and downloading songs and stories from the Fisher-Price Song and Story Online Store.
The FP3 player can store over 30 songs and 15 stories with the option to add a memory card and rip banging techno tunes for your kids from your own CDs.
With safety in mind, the child-sized headphones are restricted to kid-friendly volume levels and the neck strap is designed to snap if the local bully tries to swing your child around by his/her FP3 player.
The camera and FP3 player are predictably available in pink or blue, and are described as ‘coming soon’ on Fisher-Price’s website. No details of pricing have emerged yet.
Fisher-Price
18 May, 2006
MTV and Microsoft Take On iTunes With ‘Urge’
Apple’s hugely popular iTunes music download service looks set to face some mighty competition in the coming months.
Although many contenders have tried to take on Apple’s market leading music download business, all of have left with a bloody nose – but the arrival of a new service by a powerful pair of rivals could be Apple’s biggest battle yet.
The new ‘Urge’ service sees industry titans Microsoft and music video monsters MTV Networks teaming up to offer a heavyweight contender to iTunes.
Unlimited downloads
Like Apple’s service, buyers will be charged 99-cents per song download, but there’s an added twist: users subscribing $9.95 a month will be able to download unlimited songs from Urge’s 2-million-song catalogue to their personal PCs.
Users wanting to transfer songs onto portable music players can subscribe to the $14.95 service, with tunes protected by anticopying software from Microsoft.
Hoping to succeed where Napster, Yahoo, RealNetworks’s Rhapsody and even Microsoft’s own MSN service have failed, the partnership of the world’s biggest software company and the marketing might and ‘cool’ of MTV could prove a formidable challenge to iTunes.
“They are probably the strongest contender to come into the market for some time,” commented Phil Leigh, a senior analyst for Inside Digital Media, in Florida.
Geoff Harris, product unit manager for Windows Media Player at Microsoft, pointed out that although that other music subscription services have millions of songs on tap, that didn’t help listeners discover new tunes that they might like.
Noting that consumers have embraced satellite radio because it features dozens of channels with music chosen by experts, Harris reckoned that this could prove a real advantage to the Urge service.”You’ve got the experts in music here from MTV doing programming across a whole bunch of genres,” he commented.
As well as music files, subscribers to Urge will be able to download video streams of MTV Network programs, including shows from MTV, VH1, and CMT, a country music video channel. Yee-hi!
Sod the iPod
But there is a serious fly in the MP3 ointment for the new Urge service: crazily, its music downloads won’t be playable on the Apple iPod, despite the player hogging around 70 percent of the market for portable music players. Instead, users will have to invest in rival players like those from Creative Technology.
Although Harris admitted that the iPod incompatibility issue was “a hurdle that we have to get over” (an understatement, we reckon!), he added that, “there’s a long way to go in this market,” pointing out that the zillions of iPods sold still represent a fraction of the potential audience for music downloads.
Jason Hirschhorn, MTV Networks’ chief digital officer, insisted that Urge wasn’t interested in taking on Apple.’It’s not about beating Apple, it’s not about beating Rhapsody,” he said, pointing out that MTV has already teamed up with Apple elsewhere to flog some of its TV shows as downloads on the iTunes site.
We believe you, Jason.
Windows Media Player 11 beta
Although Urge is wholly owned by MTV Networks, Microsoft has committed ample resources to the service, embedding the software in its new Windows Media Player 11 beta, a spruced up upgrade to its media software offering iTunes-like integration.
The new player adds browsing by album cover and a search box to find media as well as offering improved content management, with less clicks needed to burn a CD, for example.
Urge will only be available initially in the United States, with the beta player linked to US-only music stores until the final version of Windows Media Player 11 is released.
Jonathan Arber, a research analyst with Ovum in London has high hopes for the service, “I think there’s a real chance we will see them become the top of the second tier below Apple.”
Assuming the thing is stable and doesn’t come with a zoo-full of bugs, of course.
Urge
Windows Media Player 11
17 May, 2006
Sony Launch AR-Series Blu-ray Laptops And VGN-UX50 Ultra Mobile PC
Sony has whipped out its first laptop equipped with a next-generation Blu-ray optical disk drive, saying that it will be available in Japan next month.
The electronics and entertainment giant also said that it would be unveiling a handheld PC that uses NAND flash memory instead of a hard disk drive during the same month.
VAIO AR-Series
The Blu-ray equipped Vaio notebook is expected to retail for about 400,000 yen ($3,600) – matching the price tag for Toshiba’s new notebooks equipped with the rival HD DVD drive.
Flagship of the new VAIO AR-Series is the AR11S laptop which will feature a hefty 17-inch WideUltraXGA2 screen with a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 for watching full HD resolution video.
The AR-Series will also come with a HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) output for hooking up the lappie to a HD-ready TV or Full HD desktop display.
Lurking inside the shiny beast is an Intel Core Duo processor (up to and including the 2GHz T2500) and a NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 graphics card with 256MB of dedicated video memory.
There’s also a built in digital camera and microphone onboard, a hybrid Digital TV-Ready (DVB-T) Tuner and a veritable ton of storage space available, up to 200GB.
Full pricing details for the UK are yet to be announced, but the words ‘Sony’ and ‘Blu-ray’ invariably mean, “wallet draining,” with the AR Premium Blu-ray enabled model looking set to be banged out around the $3,500 mark, while the AR Standard model be around $1,800,
Sony’s VGN-UX50 takes on Origami
Sony has also announced a palm-top computer set to compete with Microsoft’s much trumpeted Origami project.
Smaller than a paperback book, Sony’s new handheld computer runs on Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system and comes with a touch screen and small built-in keyboard.
Powered by Intel Core Solo U1400 (1.2 Ghz)/U1300 (1.06 Ghz) the pint-sized PC will sport an Intel 945GMS Express chipset, 512MB RAM, 20/30 GB hard drive and 69 key QWERTY keyboard.
Sony’s engineers have managed to wedge in a slide-out 4.5 inch WSVGA (1024×600) touchscreen display which can be used in portrait and landscape modes.
Other features include a 1.3 Megapixel Motion eye camera, Wi-Fi a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.0, Fingerprint sensor, Memory stick / Compact Flash card slot and a dock offering 3 x USB ports, 1 x Firewire port, Ethernet jack, 1 x VGA out and Felica reader (wireless payment service in Japan).
Sony will also be releasing a NAND Flash memory version of the Ultra Mobile PC, providing ‘instant on’ capability.
Sony plans to start selling the handheld PC in Japan from the end of May (for around 170,000 yen ~£820), with US deliveries following some time after.
Sony
17 May, 2006
Spammers 1 Internet 0 As Blue Security Surrender
A promising anti-spam service by Israeli company Blue Security has been brought to its knees by a renegade spammer hell-bent on protecting his spamming industry
Created by Eran Reshef, Blue Security came up with what looked like a cunningly simple plan to mash up the mass mailers: fight spam with spam.
The company set up a ‘Do Not Intrude Registry’ (similar to the Do Not Call Registry for telemarketing) and invited members to download a small application called Blue Frog, which automatically sent out requests to spammers to stop sending junk e-mail.
Of course, spammers aren’t renowned for paying attention to opt-out requests, so Blue Frog came with a rather nasty bite to make sure they paid attention: the software bombarded spammers with requests from all 522,000 of its customers at the same time.
It seemed to work too – Blue Security claimed that “six out of the top ten spammers” had complied with their opt-out requests and after signing up to the free service, we found our spam dropping dramatically. But not for long.
Spammers fight back
Not surprisingly, spammers don’t like it up ’em and soon started fighting back with a counter attack, launching a campaign of extortion e-mail messages threatening to flood users with nonsensical spam and viruses unless they removed their name from the Do Not Intrude registry.
This was followed by a sophisticated denial of service attack using tens of thousands of hijacked computers which managed to knock Blue Security’s Website off the Web.
According to Reshef, a shady Russian-speaking spammer known as PharmaMaster then managed to bribe a staff member at a top-tier ISP into ‘black holing’ Blue Security’s former IP address (194.90.8.20) at Internet backbone routers – effectively rendering Blue’s main Website invisible to anyone outside of Israel.
Rather sinisterly, PharmaMaster told Blue Security in an ICQ conversation, that if he can’t send spam, there will be “no Internet.”
With Blue Security reduced to communicating through their secondary TypePad-hosted Weblog at bluesecurity.blogs.com, the spammer moved in for the kill, launching a ferocious denial of service attack that closed down the TypePad and Live Journal servers owned by Six Apart.
This resulted in thousands of blogs disappearing off the Web for a few hours, with the net operations of five top-tier hosting providers in the US and Canada also being disrupted.
The attack also shut down operations for around 12 hours at Tucows Inc., a Canadian Internet services company who helped manage Blue Security’s site.
Surrender
Faced with this endless aggro, Reshef has pulled the plug on his anti-spam operations, commenting, “It’s clear to us that [quitting] would be the only thing to prevent a full-scale cyber-war that we just don’t have the authority to start.”
“Our users never signed up for this kind of thing,” he wearily added, admitting that in retrospect he’d made the mistake of not anticipating that PharmaMaster would go “beserk.”
Commenting on the DoS attack on his server, Tucows CEO Elliot Noss declared it to be “by far the largest the company had ever seen,” adding that very few companies currently have the infrastructure in place to withstand similar full-on assaults.
“This attack really was like trying to take out a mosquito with an atomic bomb,” Noss added.
According to Six Apart, the FBI is investigating the attacks, but we won’t be holding our breath on seeing anyone behind bars.
Told You So
Speaking to the Washington Post, Todd Underwood, chief of operations and security for Renesys Corp, tried hard to stop himself from saying, “I told you so”:
“When the company’s founders first approached the broader anti-spam community and asked them what they thought of the idea, everyone said this was a terrible idea and that they would eventually cause a lot of collateral damage,” Underwood commented.
“But it’s also extremely unfortunate, because it shows how much the spammers are winning this battle,” he added.
Where this leaves the venture capitalists who invested more than $4 million in Blue Security in 2004 is anyone’s guess, but we’re saddened to see the outcome.
The fate of Blue Security’s initiative proves that steeenkin’ spammers still rule the Internet and until governments take a unified and global approach to prosecuting junk mailers, they’re free to do whatever they like.
17 May, 2006