How would the Twitter generation have coped with 9/11?

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

There was a staggeringly good programme on Channel 4 the other night called 9/11: Phone Calls From The Towers. I say “staggeringly good” because I was expecting this to be a sensationalist, intrusive sham of a documentary that exploited the final moments of people who died in one of the most horrible ways imaginable. Instead, it was a sensitively made and fascinating insight into the moments before the towers collapsed.

What surprised me most about this documentary was the way the relatives of the dead cherished the recordings of those conversations. Several of those interviewed had kept the answerphone messages from their dying husbands, wives and siblings; one had recorded the voicemail message from his brother and kept it on his iPod. Instead of recoiling in horror from the emotion-strewn messages of their loved ones dying (as I expected they would), they were proud and comforted by the sound of their voice.

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Is Firefox turning into the ultimate nagware?

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Firefox, it must be said, is beginning to get on my Bristols. Like a death by a thousand cuts, the accumulation of minor irritations is pushing me desperately close to permanently decamping to Google Chrome.

From the irritating freeze that seems to temporarily paralyse the address bar about 30 seconds after it has first booted, to the mystery disappearance of the close button when you’ve got nine or more tabs open, to the clumsy implementation of the new Private Browsing mode, to the way the browser refuses to reboot for about 30 seconds after it (increasingly frequently) crashes… Firefox is heading for a fall.

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How to stream Spotify to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and digital radios

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Spotify may have launched its iPhone and Android apps, but how about streaming the Spotify sounds to other devices in the home, such as games consoles and digital radios? After all, many of us have expensive speaker systems connected to the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, while the speakers found on the average laptop give even Barry White the nasally whine of the Bee Gees.

Although the Spotify software itself doesn’t support streaming to other devices, it’s perfectly possible to do so with the third-party software, Jamcast. What’s more, the Jamcast software is completely free of charge and (unlike the iPhone/Android software) you don’t need a premium Spotify account to take advantage.

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First look: Corel Digital Studio 2010

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

I’ve just hot-footed it back from the London launch of Corel Digital Studio 2010. The product is a combination of photo and video editing software, along with apps for burning and watching DVDs, all for the very reasonable (suggested) price of £60. But is it any good?

It’s certainly very slick. Both the PaintShop Photo Express and Video Studio Express applications share a common interface, which is clearly focused on making the software as easy to use as possible. In fact, if I had a pound for every time the words “easy” or “simple” were used in the hour-long demonstration, I wouldn’t have bothered coming back here to write this blog post, and would by now be sipping champagne with a lovely lady on my knee in one of Soho’s finest establishments.

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Porn collection put people off upgrading to Firefox 3

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Mozilla’s Security team has disclosed a very interesting piece of research which suggests people refused to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox because they were afraid the browser would expose their, ahem, private collection of websites.

In May, the company decided to have one last attempt at persuading the people on Firefox 2 to move up to Firefox 3, by hitting users of the old version with a pop-up that prompted them to upgrade. Those who declined were invited to fill out a questionnaire, asking them to reveal why they didn’t want the latest software.

The number one reason for not upgrading was the new location bar, and the fact that it delved into people’s bookmark collections to suggest sites as they typed. No fewer than 25% of Firefox 3 refuseniks cited this as the reason they wouldn’t upgrade. In fact, almost all of the people who provided feedback had tried Firefox 3, didn’t like what they saw, and headed back to Firefox 2.

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Why you could lose your broadband connection for doing absolutely nothing wrong

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

How nice to have friends in high places. Having failed to convince Digital Britain author Lord Carter to cut off the connections of alleged illegal file sharers, the creative industry has somehow managed to convince Lord Mandelson and the new Minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms, that it’s a good idea after all.

Hence today’s announcement that the Government will now urge Ofcom to suspend people’s broadband connections as a “last resort”. But on what evidence will ISPs be forced to clip your connection?

Rights holders will be required to identify the IP addresses of people they claim to have caught file sharing, and pass those details to the relevant ISP (as they do currently). But here comes the clincher. “The standard of evidence required from rights holders should, as a minimum, establish an infringement on the balance of probabilities,” the Government’s own consultation on legislation for illegal P2P file sharing states. So no innocent until proven guilty – a high likelihood that you’re in the wrong is all that the rights holders need to press the ISPs to cut off your broadband.

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How to keep freeloaders off your Wi-Fi connection

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Here’s an ever-so-slightly ingenious way of keeping spongers, hackers and the proletariat off your home or office Wi-Fi connection – just rename your router as follows:

(Image via F-Secure’s Mikko Hypponen)

iPhone: a return to the golden age of gaming?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

When I were a lad, a new computer game didn’t cost the same as a tank of petrol. I remember eagerly scanning the shelves of my local WH Smith, hoping to find a new release among the stacks of Commodore 64 tapes priced at £2.99. If I hadn’t given my mum too much lip that week, I might even have been able to persuade her to part with £3.99 for one of the premium titles, such as The Way of the Exploding Fist.

The era of the low-budget game pretty much died with the Commodore 64, Spectrum and Amstrad era. Before long the Amiga and the Atari ST had raised the budget bar to £9.99 – not so much an impulse purchase, as a couple of weeks pocket money at the very least.

Yet, that was nothing compared to the inflation of the console era. New PlayStation titles routinely cost £30. Today, a brand new Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 title can set you back £50. I sympathise with the parents I see dragging their disappointed offspring away from the game aisles in Tesco, explaining they simply can’t afford the latest releases. For my mum it was a couple quid on top of her copy of the Daily Mail and Woman’s Weekly; for today’s mums it’s almost as much as the weekly shopping bill.

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Eyes down for Windows 7 upgrade bingo

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Now that Microsoft’s done away with those silly E versions and decided to offer upgrade versions of Windows 7 in the UK, you might be wondering what versions of Windows can and can’t be upgraded.

Fortunately, Microsoft has produced a chart to show you what’s possible (click to enlarge):

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Our very own Windows 7 chkdsk bug

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Microsoft’s Steven Sinofksy was right to elegantly demolish rumours that an error with Windows 7’s Check Disk facility could derail the launch of the operating system.

However, chkdsk has been causing a fair bit of irritation in the PC Pro office since long before this particular molehill was Googled into a mountain.

So far, it’s only affected myself and fellow newshound Stuart Turton, but practically every time we boot our Windows 7 RC machines, chkdsk kicks into action. That gives us precisely ten seconds to remember to press a key to cancel the process, or sit there for a couple of minutes while chkdsk diligently scans our drives and reports… no problem whatsoever.

Has anyone else seen this bug? If not, we’re launching a full-scale investigation into why Microsoft’s trying to monkey with the PC Pro news team.