BT fibre broadband cable UK rollout accelerated

Telecoms provider BT is accelerating its fibre broadband rollout. It now plans to offer "super-fast" internet speeds to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014.

A report found the UK ranks 25th in the world in terms of broadband speed

The target is a year ahead of its original plan. 

The firm says its main product will offer maximum download speeds about 10 times faster than at present, at 70-100Mbps on average.

That will help it compete against Virgin Media's 100Mbps offer.

BT says it is employing an additional 520 engineers and bringing forward £300m of investment to achieve the goal.

The company says six million premises already have access to its fibre broadband technology, about 25% of the total.

It aims to increase that to about 10 million properties, or about 40% of those in the UK, by the end of next year.

"Our rollout of fibre broadband is one of the fastest in the world and so it is great to be ahead of what was an already challenging schedule," said BT's chief executive Ian Livingston.

Global position

 

A recent report suggested the UK ranked 25th in the world in terms of average broadband connection speeds. 

Akamai's State of the Internet Report said the average UK connection speed was 5Mbps compared to the Netherlands' 8.5Mbps and South Korea's 13.8Mbps.

"For a long time people thought the UK was on a low-fibre diet and it was taking us a long time compared to everyone else," said Matthew Howett, senior analyst at the telecoms consultants Ovum.

"These investments are expensive and risky - especially when you don't know if people even want the faster product. But BT has seen demand for its top speeds and that's encouraging them to roll out the fibre more quickly."

Speeds of up to 100Mbps will allow households to stream multiple high definition television programmes, music and games at the same time. 

Experts say most homes will not need such fast speeds for the foreseeable future, however it will help future-proof the network against further developments.

http://www.bbc.co.uk

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Amazon Boosts Kindle Fire Production

By Sarah Jacobsson Purewal

Amazon is boosting production of its Kindle Fire tablet, thanks to immense pre-order demand. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said the company is "increasing capacity and building millions more than we'd already planned."

The Kindle Fire is Amazon's first Android tablet device; the device launches Nov. 15 and costs $199. It's not the most tricked-out tablet -- it ships with just 8GB of memory (and no expandable memory), no camera, and no 3G, but its sub-$200 price tag and the fact that it runs Android (albeit Android 2.3) appears to be more than enough to get people riled up.

Amazon has high hopes for the upcoming holiday season. According to Bezos, "Sept. 28 was the biggest order day ever for Kindle, even bigger than previous holiday peak days."

"In the three weeks since launch, orders for electronic ink Kindles are double the previous launch," Bezos said in a statement. In addition to the Kindle Fire, Amazon also introduced the Kindle Touch 3G, which sells for $149; the Kindle Touch, priced at $99; and the Kindle, which retails for $79.

Tablets are expected to be a hot item this holiday season. According to a recent report by the Consumer Electronics Association, everybody wants a tablet for Christmas. In fact, tablets are second only to clothes on adults' holiday wish lists, and first on adults' holiday consumer electronics wish lists.

After tablets on the consumer electronics wish list, people want laptops, TVs, e-readers, and video game consoles. After tablets on the overall list of gifts, people are looking for laptops, peace/happiness, and money.

The association said consumers plan to spend, on average, $246 on electronics gifts this season -- and with the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, that's actually a doable price.

Amazon also released its third-quarter earnings report Tuesday afternoon. According to the report, Amazon's sales are up 44 percent to $10.88 billion. However, net income is down 73 percent to $63 million, compared to $268 million in the third quarter of 2010.

http://www.pcworld.com

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iPad 3's High-Res Display a Technical Challenge

By Ben Camm-Jones, Macworld-U.K.

LG Display and Samsung are facing a tough challenge, sources in the manufacturing industry have reported -- making a high-resolution display for the iPad 3.

Cnet reports that Apple is aiming for a much higher resolution of 2048-by-1536 pixels on the next-generation iPad, four times the current 1024 x 768 resolution of the first- and second-generation models.

This will give the iPad 3 a 264 ppi (pixels per inch) display, close to the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S' of 960 by 640, which works out to 326 ppi.

However, an insider told Cnet that LG Display and Samsung haven't begun manufacturing the displays yet -- that'll happen some time in November -- and that is likely to prove very challenging.

iPad 3 with smaller dock connector coming in March 2012 -- report

"It's not a question of making just one. That, of course, can be done. The challenge is making lots of them," the source told Cnet. "This is a quantum leap in pixel density. This hasn't been done before."

However, the source didn't go into any further detail about the specifics of producing high-resolution displays in volume.

Samsung recently showed off a 2560 by 1600 pixel LCD panel for a 10.1in tablet, which it is thought could eventually make its way into Samsung's Galaxy Tab range.

http://www.pcworld.com

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A Windows 8 smartphone could be coming next year

by Eric Mack

A Chinese company says it will bring the yet-to-be-released Windows 8 to the small screen.

 The XPPhone 2 is slated to run Windows 7 and 8. (Credit: ITG)

In Technology Group has seemingly dedicated itself to merging the Windows PC experience with the smartphone--something the company has dubbed the "post-smartphone." They started with phones running Windows XP a few years ago, and by earlier this year, ITG's XPPhone was available with Windows 7. Now it says a far slimmer, lighter, and energy efficient XPPhone 2 that will run both Windows 7 and the PC version of Windows 8 (once it's released) is in the works.

Though it seems doubtful to me that many consumers will find a need for so much Windows in their pocket, ITG has made sure to pack the XPPhone 2 with the meaty hardware to pull it off. This beast will boast a 1.6GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. ITG's Web site also mentions the possibility of an insane 2GHz model. There's also plenty of storage space to house Microsoft's notoriously bulky OSes, with 112GB on board.

ITG sees the XPPhone 2 as a desktop replacement. (Credit: ITG)

ITG is billing the XPPhone 2 not just as a phone but as the "smallest notebook PC in the world," measuring 140mm X 73mm X 17.5mm. The pitch is basically that the phone is easily dockable and can stand in for a laptop, desktop and in-car navigation system.

The success of this kind of a device will likely depend on it being at least more usable than the English translation of its press release, which requires several aspirin to navigate, with sentences like: "The Editor considers that, presently it forms three camps of smart phone in the way of tripartite confrontation--The Apple, Google & Moto, and Intel & Microsoft & xpPhone, of which stands for three complete different technical orientations."

Let's hope they took the money they saved on their translator and put it into engineering.Engadget reports that we could see an XPPhone 2 release as soon as January.

http://news.cnet.com

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Minecraft awarded GameCity videogame arts prize

By Leo Kelion
Technology reporter

 Minecraft allows players to manipulate a randomly generated landscape

Minecraft is the winner of a new arts award for computer games.

The prize was announced at the finale of the GameCity videogame culture festival in Nottingham.

The title is the work of an independent Swedish company, Mojang. Players have to build objects out of blocks in an open environment.

The game was selected over rivals from big name publishers, including Valve and Electronic Arts' Portal 2 and Microsoft's Ilomilo.

"It's a great honour to be compared to those games," said Markus Persson, Mojang's founder.

"Winning this award helps us to try to make Minecraft the best game it can be."

Nearly four million people have already bought the title online, despite the fact it is still in beta. It is scheduled for a formal release next month.

"It just wasn't like anything else... it felt like it had an expanding life of its own. It had an organic nature," one of the judges, Ed Hall, told the BBC.

"It's simplistic and addictive, and there's an element of beauty in what you are doing."

"I think that technology is a real red herring.... 

Otherwise we wouldn't cry at Bambi. It's not about photorealism.” 

Iain Simons
Director, GameCity

Culturally confident

GameCity's director, Iain Simons, said he was "delighted" by the choice.

His festival is now in its sixth year. Over that time he says he has seen a rise in the average age of gamers, and more women attracted to the activity.

"There is a much broader constituency of people playing games," he said.

"They have become more normalised, they have been more culturally confident and this prize, and the festival, is very much about exploring that confidence."

Part of the phenomenon is linked to the rise of smartphones. Today's handsets helped popularise the kind of sophisticated games that used to be restricted to dedicated mobile games machines, and larger home consoles.

The GameCity festival was created to give the public a chance to meet the talent behind computer games.

 

The GameCity festival was created to give the public a chance to meet the talent behind computer games

Advances in computer processors and graphics chips undoubtedly offer developers a bigger palette to choose from. However, Mr Simon does not think the developments make any difference to the designers' status as artists.

"I think that technology is a real red herring. What technology is driving forward is the ability for games to look more real. To look like what a triple-A blockbuster would look like," he said.

"I don't think that is in itself something that makes them art. Otherwise we wouldn't cry at Bambi. It's not about photorealism."

The contest's judges appear to agree, admitting they picked the most basic looking title on offer.

The diverse 13-person jury included Dr Who actress Frances Barber, Labour MP Tom Watson and the artistic director of London's Southbank centre, Jude Kelly.

Enhancing life

Not everyone was convinced of Minecraft's merits at first. The composer, Nitin Sawhney, who was also on the panel, was critical of its soundtrack.

But ultimately neither the look of the game nor its music proved fatal to its chances.

"[We asked] was there one that we felt was head and shoulder above the rest? Was there merit in the game enhancing life and enjoyment beyond just playing the game itself? Could it make your view of the world better?" said Mr Hall.

Minecraft lets players become architects, creating buildings and changing the game's landscape.

 

 Minecraft lets players become architects, creating buildings and changing the game's landscape

"Could a computer game be viewed as something that wouldn't be sneered at in the future?"

Minecraft does involve traditional staples of gaming, including night-roaming monsters and the chance to fight multiplayer battles online.

However, it was ultimately selected on the basis of its mood and ability to encourage gamers to become creative.

"It's the broadest definition of art that you can have," said Mr Hall.

"But computer games are definitely artistic. There are images and storylines that engage you, ideas that confuse your mind for hours and a whole package that keeps you coming back for days."

Valve and Electronic Arts announced their retail distribution agreement for Portal 2 last December. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk

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MHL demo: Samsung Galaxy II turned home-entertainment system

 by Dong Ngo

 The MHL standard allows for turning a mobile device into a full-featured home entertainment and presentation system when coupled with an HDTV. (Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

Around about this time in 2010, I blogged about WHDI and its potential to change the way we entertain ourselves in a big way when this wireless display is implemented in mobile devices. Now a year later, that reality is still in the distant future.

Fortunately, there's something else to take its place. It's already here, and chances are your phone and HDTV at home come with it. It does require a wire, however, but that's a good thing.

The technology in question is called MHL, short for Mobile High-Definition Link (it definitely deserves a better name than that), which is a mobile audio/video interface standard for directly connecting mobile phones and other portable consumer electronics devices to high-definition televisions and displays. If you haven't heard of it, that's because it's quite new, first introduced in June of last year.

Unlike wireless display technologies that are fragmented with multiple standards, such as WHDI, Intel's WiDi, and Wi-Fi-based WirelessHD, the MHL Consortium was founded by major electronics vendors: Nokia, Samsung, Silicon Image, Sony, and Toshiba. In addition, it's currently adopted by a long list of major hardware vendors. This explains the wide adoption of the standard, considering its young age. Chances are your Android-based phone and HDTV at home already has it built-in, if they were released this year.

In a nutshell, here's how MHL works: with an MHL-enable device, all you need is an MHL cable. One end is the regular Micro-USB that fits into the charging/syncing port of the phone, and the other end fits in an HDMI port of an HDTV. When the mobile device is connected to an HDTV via the cable, it will mirror the display onto the big screen, with a resolution up to 1080p and 7.1 surround sound. And that's not all.

MHL offered me a demo yesterday, using the Samsung Galaxy II, one of many current smartphones that has built-in support for MHL, with a few HDTVs, including both those that have MHL built-in and those that don't. After the demo, I was sold to the point that now I am contemplating moving to Android from my current iPhone 4.

During the demo, once the Galaxy II was connected to an MHL-enabled TV, it immediately mirrored its screen to the big display. This means, apps (including games), high-def movies, music, photos, and so on look bigger and clearer. And best of all, I was able to use the TV's remote control to navigate the phone, even when the phone was behind the TV, out of sight.

According to Tim Wong, MHL Consortium president, the MHL standard allows any MHL-enabled TVs' remote control to work with the connected portable devices. In the demo, this literally turned the Samsung Galaxy II into a full-featured media player, from which users could stream Netflix or movies stored in a network storage device, or video captured by the phone itself.

Apart from the TV's remote control, Wong also used a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, which works with any Bluetooth-enabled smartphone, to turn the Galaxy II into a workstation on which he could display presentations, surf the Web, and so on.

Now your question may be how this affects the phone's battery life. Well, you can use the phone this way indefinitely since the MHL cable will also charge the phone at the same time. And it's likely that future HDTVs will come with flexible docking stations that allow you to dock the MHL-enabled mobile device on it, for charging purpose at first, and then perhaps to turn on the TV to watch news or browse YouTube. "With this flexibility, there's endless implementation of MHL. Think about airplanes, cars, even elevators, and so on. You can just plug the phone in and you're all set," Wong said.

MHL works with other non-MHL TVs and displays, too, as long as they have an HMDI port. In this case, you'll need a small adapter, such as the the Kanex adapter, which is available right now for around $20.

Note that some HDTVs, especially those released in 2011, might already have MHL and only need a firmware update to turn that on. The Samsung UN46D7000, for example, doesn't support MHL with its initial firmware but the latest version will add the support.

For now, you'll find support for MHL in most, if not all, recent and new products coming out from the founding vendors, as well as many others on the list of adopters. As for Apple, it's unclear if the company is onboard. According to Wong, it's totally possible to make MHL support other port configurations, other than the standard Micro-USB, such as the 32-pin of the iOS devices. I hope that the next iPhone will have support for this standard. "You already carry your whole life on your hip, why not make it more interesting?" Wong asked. Exactly, why not, Apple?

http://news.cnet.com

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Three Surprising Things About Hard Drive Defragging

By Rick Broida

Back in the bad old days of computing, hard-drive defragmentation was a big deal. You needed a quality third-party “defragger,” and you needed to run it regularly—at least once a month—to ensure optimal system performance.

Times have changed. Although computer files still get split into fragments and scattered across your hard drive’s platters, the computers and drives themselves are so much faster now that fragmentation isn’t the same performance-wrecking problem it once was.

What’s more, if you’re a Windows 7 user, you really shouldn’t have to worry about fragmentation at all. Check out these three important facts about hard drive defragging:

1. In Windows 7, the built-in Disk Defragmenter utility runs automatically at scheduled times, usually once per week. This happens by default, so chances are good your hard drive is already defragged. And by most accounts, the utility compares favorably with third-party alternatives, so don’t spend money on another defragger unless you have very specific reasons for doing so.

2. You don’t necessarily have to leave your computer on overnight. If Disk Defragmenter isn’t able to run at, say, 1 a.m. Wednesday, it will kick in the next time your computer is idle.

3. You should never defragment a solid-state drive (SSD). Doing so can shorten its lifespan. In fact, whether you purchased a laptop with an SSD installed or upgraded your laptop with one, be sure to disable scheduled defragmentation in Windows 7. Click Start, type disk, and then click Disk Defragmenter. Click Configure schedule to disable the feature.

By the way, if you have an external hard drive, one that’s not always connected to your PC, it may not get the chance to benefit from Windows’ scheduled defragging. Therefore, you should run Disk Defragmenter on it manually every month or so.

http://www.pcworld.com

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Google TV gets major Honeycomb update

by Matthew Moskovciak

 (Credit: Google)

A year after Google TV first hit the market, Google has announced the first major update to the Google TV platform.

The latest update is built on Android's Honeycomb operating system and Google promises a significantly simplified user interface. The update also finally enables Google TV products to access the Android Market and Google says there will be 30 TV-optimized apps at launch.

From the released screenshots, the new interface certainly looks to be a big improvement on last year's Google TV experience. There's a new section called TV and Movies, which presents a browsing-friendly interface that combines content from your cable/satellite service, Netflix, Amazon.com, YouTube, and HBO Go. It also includes pricing information and lets you filter by content that's currently playing live.

Search is also said to be improved and capable of searching through the same services available in the TV and Movies section. Google says search also does a better job of filtering out content providers that currently block Google TV from accessing their services, which was a major problem with the older software.

(Credit: Google)

The access to Android Market could be the killer feature for Google TV, but it entirely depends on whether it attracts developers. The list of Google TV-optimized apps currently available on the Android Market Web site is underwhelming, especially without major services like Hulu Plus or Vudu.

The lack of Hulu Plus also points to a more fundamental philosophy that Google is stressing in its promotion materials: Google TV isn't designed to replace your cable/satellite service, only augment it. Since Google TV is designed to work with an existing cable/satellite subscription, the lack of a Hulu Plus app matters less, since presumably you already have content from NBC, Fox, and ABC.

That's going to be disappointing to the growing number of cable-cutters who were looking to Google TV to bring the free streaming videos available on the Web to their HDTVs. And it's telling that of all the press photos released for this update, only one shows the Chrome browser in use.

The Honeycomb update will start rolling out to the Sony NSZ-GT1 and Sony NSX-GT1 series of LCDS on Sunday, October 30, with the Logitech Revue's update to follow "shortly afterwards." And while no new products are being announced yet, Google says there will be more devices coming in 2012.

We'll be getting hands-on with the Google TV update next week to see how it stacks up to the increasingly crowded streaming-video-box competition.

http://reviews.cnet.com

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