Hands on with the new Google Maps

Friday, May 17th, 2013

I’m still waiting for my Glass headset… but for now Google has at least given me a new version of Google Maps for the web. Here’s what it looks like:

The first change you’ll notice is that the map now fills your window. The map itself looks subtly different too: there’s a new cleaner design, with a paler palette, more white space (well, light grey) and – if I’m not mistaken – Google’s Roboto font now used for labelling.

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How we produce the PC Pro podcast

Thursday, May 2nd, 2013

A few people have asked me, over the years, about the processes and equipment we use to record and produce our podcast. If you’re curious, here’s how it happens.

Every Wednesday, we go into the recording studio at around noon. Prior to this, we’ll have agreed on the news stories we plan to discuss, and who’s going to introduce which topic; but within this basic framework the conversation is allowed to flow quite freely.

The discussion is recorded “as live” using four Shure SM58 microphones connected to an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra interface. I record and edit in PreSonus Studio One: arguably it’s overkill for this job, but it’s the DAW I use at home, so using it here as well makes life easy for me.

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3D printers: five things I’ve learnt

Friday, April 19th, 2013

 
This week, I’ve been playing with a 3D printer. The Afinia H-Series – also known as the Up! Plus – arrived on Monday, and I’ve been fiddling with it more or less non-stop since then. There will be a full dissection of the technology in a future issue of PC Pro, but here are some of my initial impressions from my first few days of tinkering.
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Raspberry Pi Fuze enclosure revives 1980s micros

Saturday, April 13th, 2013

This post was updated on 13 May 2013 to add information about the Fuze’s project cards and final hardware design.

It’s fair to say the Raspberry Pi is a hit with at least two constituencies. Without a doubt it’s captured the imaginations of youngsters attracted to its simple versatility. To those of us from an older generation, it also has a certain nostalgia value, harking back to the days when bare circuit boards were de rigueur and writing your own software was all part of the fun.

It’s appropriate then that the Fuze enclosure – made by Aylesbury-based Binary Distribution – looks like something that itself fell out of the eighties. Following consciously in the footsteps of the BBC Micro, Binary Distribution has aimed the Fuze at schools – a fact which explains its tough, aluminium casing. Each unit comes with a deck of 16 colourful and jovially written project cards (aimed at key stages one to four) that guide students through the fundamentals of BASIC programming, starting with a classic Hello World program and moving on to more advanced concepts such as variables and loops.

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Five things I thought I’d hate about the Kindle

Monday, March 4th, 2013

I bought a Kindle yesterday. A mere ten months after admitting (in issue 213 of PC Pro) that the concept had won me over, I’ve finally taken the plunge.

I realise I’m somewhat behind the times on this one. The hardware itself is now in its fifth generation. I very much doubt I can tell you anything about how it works that you don’t already know. In fact, my decision to invest was encouraged by several helpful PC Pro readers on Twitter sharing their own positive experiences of  the device.

All the same, I was braced for some compromises. There were several things about the Kindle I had long expected to hate.

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Were we unfair on Microsoft Security Essentials?

Friday, January 18th, 2013

If you’ve read the latest issue of PC Pro, you’ll have seen one of the conclusions of our latest round-up of security suites: Microsoft Security Essentials isn’t doing a great job of protecting against current malware threats, especially not brand new “zero-day” ones.

Microsoft isn’t happy about this conclusion, and it’s published a blog post challenging the research carried out by AV-Test.org to which we refer in our Labs.

The post doesn’t seek to claim that the test results are actually incorrect. It accepts that Security Essentials (and its business-oriented Forefront Endpoint Protection package, which uses the same engine) failed to protect against 28 out of 100 genuine zero-day attacks, as well as 9% of a huge collection of recent malware, representing almost 20,000 missed samples.

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The techs to watch in 2013

Monday, December 31st, 2012

With the January sales looming, you might be wondering whether it’s time to grab a bargain, or whether you should  hold out a little longer and see what technologies the new year brings. I’ve been closely watching the industry in 2012, and keeping track of announcements for the coming year – and below you’ll find my predictions of what’s going to happen in various areas of technology in 2013.

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The USB stick that turns into a keyboard

Tuesday, December 4th, 2012

To Covent Garden, where James Lyne – director of technology strategy at Sophos – has been presenting a review of the security landscape during 2012, and a look forward to next year’s threats. The review is an annual event, and always entertaining thanks to Lyne’s bona fide geek credentials: this year’s talk included references to Anonymous masks, the obligatory Gangnam Style allusion and several exhortations to “[verb] all the things”.

Predictions for 2013 include increasingly sophisticated and targeted attacks, on mobile platforms as well as PCs. No surprises there. More interestingly, Lyne also expects to see a rise in ransomware, which locks away your files and provides the decryption key only on payment of a fee. So far, malware ransoms have typically been around the £200 mark, but Lyne reckons criminals will soon start to recognise high value targets (such as company CEOs) and demand much higher fees for the return of sensitive documents. He describes this type of attack as “irreversible”, as there’s nothing third-party software can do to recover your files if they’ve been strongly encrypted: the only defence is to keep backups. You’ve been warned.

The part of the talk that particularly struck me, however, relates to the little device pictured above, which Lyne demonstrated with glee. Fully assembled, it looks just like a regular USB flash drive. Or, from the internal microSD slot, you might assume it was some sort of card reader. In fact – believe it or not – it’s a keyboard. (more…)

Intel NUC mini-PC review: first look

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

It’s not just transistors that are shrinking at Intel. In an unobtrusive corner of IDF, the company has been demonstrating its new “Next Unit of Computing” (NUC) mini-PC, based on a 4in square motherboard and a tasteful moulded plastic case.

Internally, the NUC is powered by a 17-watt Core i3-3217U processor soldered to the underside of the motherboard. It’s a dual-core, Hyper-Threaded Ivy Bridge part clocked at 1.8GHz with no Turbo Boost – not exactly a powerhouse, but considerably more capable than the Atoms we’ve come to associate with tiny PCs.

The motherboard offers two SO-DIMM slots, supporting up to 16GB of DDR3, an mSATA slot for storage and a mini PCI-E slot for adding a wireless or other card as required. (more…)

HP Envy x2 (Intel Clover Trail) review: first look

Wednesday, September 12th, 2012

Intel has been struggling for years to get its Atom processors into smartphones, but handset manufacturers’ existing investment in ARM-based processes and software is a big obstacle.

(It was no surprise when product marketing director Sumeet Syal, speaking here at IDF, revealed that most of the hardware and software for the San Diego smartphone had been developed in-house by Intel, and handed over to Orange as more or less a finished product.)

Atom, however, isn’t only about smartphones: Intel has long been pushing it as a tablet processor too, and with the advent of Windows 8 it looks like that ambition is about to be fulfilled. Here, all the history is on Intel’s side: ARM is the newcomer, suffering from limited hardware and software support, while Atom-based Windows 8 tablets can run the full range of desktop applications, as well as supporting business-friendly features such as joining domains and participating in group policies. Syal described Atom as, quite simply, “a great solution” for tablets. (more…)