The boffins at Microsoft Research have given us a glimpse into their crazy minds, and into what can be done by thinking outside the box, or inside it…

This cardboard dome houses an omnidirectional projector, and it displays a spectacular view of the cosmos. But that’s not the best part. The images can be manipulated by hand gestures in the air – just like Minority Report, and you don’t even need gloves!

You may recognise the origins of this technology as Microsoft Surface – the multi-touch coffee table that’s been full of promise but hasn’t made much of an impact in the real world.  I’m not sure whether this new dome has a practical application in a commercial or home setting, but I can see a ton of uses in the defence and space industries.

I don’t suppose it’ll be too long until this thing flips inside-out and we get a gesture controlled globe for Google Earth Bing Maps.

What uses can you think of for this thing? More pictures and videos below…

This is no mean feat, and it is to Apple’s credit that is has dominated the smartphone market and maintained its ‘cool’ image with a wide range of customers.

For some reason, there are still many Apple fans who see Microsoft as a big evil corporation, taking away their freedoms and stealing money. Apple is actually the bigger corporation, taking away a lot more freedom, and charging hugely extortionate prices…

Examples

All Apple consumer products (Macbooks, iPods, iPhones and the iPad) prevent the user from removing or replacing the battery – you have to send your device away to Apple for them to do this, and they’ll probably charge you a lot to do this.

The iPod can only be used with iTunes, which prevents you from buying your music from any other music store. This could be construed as an abuse of market dominance. The same applies with the iPhone and iPad, which also need iTunes to be configured.

The iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch can only use applications purchase from the Apple App Store – you can’t just download an application from the web, like you can for Windows Mobile. Apple is notorious for being seemingly arbitrary and very anti-competitive in approving applications to the App Store – often banning applications from being installed on any of these devices for no reason.

Adobe Flash has been banned from the iPad. And when an employee misplaced a recent new iPhone prototype, they launched a manhunt to get it back and are pursuing legal action against everyone who handled it.

Then of course there’s the price. A Macbook Pro can cost £400 over a matching-spec laptop from HP or similar OEMs.

So what does this mean?

These don’t sound like the actions of cult, creative designers; they are the actions of a huge corporation which is dictating how its followers should live. They are abusing their status by forcing every user to use Apple for everything they do with their devices – adding software, buying music, repairs, accessories etc etc.

Does Microsoft get off scot-free? Of course not. The vast majority of the company ignores the consumer market and the huge potential in it. Threats to Microsoft’s market share in web browsers home OSs and web services are affecting the corporate environment now, with many universities running macs with gmail, and servers running some lightweight Linux distros. Although huge strides are being made to correct this, I’m still not convinced that it’s working. Today’s reshuffle of management for mobiles and gaming is probably a good start to the process of reengaging with the consumer base.

The difference with Apple is that it is still a hit with the press and the younger generation. The heavily-restricted interfaces don’t bother those who just want to use it, and the glossy white designs resonate with those who favour form over function. The media forget that other markets exist, and that an iPhone is completely useless for masses of people.

Gadget blog Engadget has been the target of an uproar from its users over its heavy coverage of Apple products and news. In a day, a third of the Engadget articles could be Apple-related – and around a product launch this rises to almost complete saturation. THey responded by creating an exclude function for their blog and RSS feeds.

A commenter on Engadget’s report today lays down the facts, with reference to Apple’s Macintosh advert from 1984, which showed Apple as the freedom fighters revolting against the IBM monopoly:

Heeeeeeere comes the new 1984! No more black, no more buttons (not even on your mouse!), no more build-your-own computer horsecrap, sharp steel edges for all wrists, form over function, SWAT teams at your door if you get ahold of a new prototype, flash is dead and gone, only one company produces all technology hardware, you HAVE to use iTunes (perhaps the scariest of all!), no user-replaceable batteries, no user-removable storage cards, no netbooks, and turtle-neck sweaters are deemed cool and stylish.

I wonder how long the illusion of ‘cool’ will last. Sure, Apple products can be pretty nice, but looking at the overall experience, the products are very restrictive and severely overpriced. It will be interesting to see whther Microsoft’s reorganisation, the upcoming Windows Phone 7, the improvements to Google’s Android or any other devices can unseat Apple’s lucrative dictatorship.

The Kaoss Pad is used by a wide range of artists and DJs, including The Prodigy, Enter Shikari, Muse, Radiohead, Slipknot, The Mars Volta and Beardyman…

Many of you will have seen the Kaoss Pad’s touchpad integrated into guitars, notably that of Matt Bellamy from Muse. In this setup, the pad controls the Kaoss Pad main unit, which either modifies the audio directly, or is just used to control another MIDI device.

Whilst the original KP1 debuted back in 1999, the KP3 dates back to 2006. There are also others in the range, such as the KPE1 which also processes video, and the mini-KP. Related Korg products include the Kaossilator and Kaoss mixers.

Looking at the connectivity, the KP3 has quarter-inch jacks for microphone input and headphone output, each with a volume/trim control; on the back there’s phono pairs for line-in and line-out, a USB connector, and a pair of MIDI in and out ports. There’s an SD card in the front for storing loops. The power supply is a simple 12v DC wall-wart.

The UI varies from beautifully simple to strangely awkward. Many functions require shift to be pressed, and one of the knob selectors has a secondary use if pushed in. These are clearly marked on the unit (shift functions are in a white box), but it’s still easy to forget about a functionality.

Whilst pushing audio through the unit, set the program knob to any function (or use the 1-8 buttons as shortcuts) and run your fingers around the touchpad to get the effects. This is the simplest usage of the KP3, although watch out for the volume, input selector and effects depth controls. The effect programs themselves range from simple (synth, filter, eq) to some stranger filters and delays which can take a long while to figure out what you should do on the touchpad to get the sounds you want.

The next set of functionality is the sample bank on the ABCD buttons. These are pre-loaded with loops, but you can record over them and import more via USB onto the SD card using the provided application. The BPM can be changed by pushing and turning the program selector, via tapping the round button, or auto-detected from the input. You can edit a loop using the 1-8 buttons to determine which parts of the loop play, and use the touchpad to alter their respective volumes.

The audio quality has been great, with no hum or distortion. The volume has been tricky to match on a couple of occasions, but that’s bound to happen when the KP3 has five different ways to change it (level, fx depth, input volume, headphone volume, sample volume) and then the effects have an effect on it too.

Overall, this is an amazing piece of kit – highly recommended for live DJs and studio artists who want an amazing level of control over their effects. I’d hesitate to recommend this to a casual guitar player, but the effects in this make it a great tool for those dedicated to those kind of sounds. It’s well built, full of features, and has limitless possibilities. Just don’t expect it to be automatically awesome.

Offical specification: Korg

This is a small webpage that will pop up for all Windows 7 users in March, allowing them to choose a default web browser from a list of 11. The first six browsers are arranged randomly (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari) then the next seven are also random (Flock, FlashPeak, K-Meleon, Avant, Maxthon, Sleipnir & GreenBrowser).

Not only does this update let all users freely select a browser, but it also un-pins IE from the SuperBar (the Windows 7 replacement for Quick Launch).

You can view the browser ballot directly at: www.browserchoice.eu

Do you think this browser ballot is enough to give users adequate choice? Do you think it is fair for Microsoft to have to do this? Will the ballot suppress the critics? Leave a comment to tell us your views.

The HTC HD2 is the flagship Windows Phone, with some impressive specs. Launched in Europe in November 2009, it won’t reach the North America market until well into 2010. There’s a lot to boast about, and a few pitfalls to consider. But will the HD2 win you over?

Hardware

But let’s start with the glossy 480×800-pixel multi-touch capacitive screen. This is what the phone is all about. It’s great to look at – bright, crisp and clear. The high resolution means a wide variety of fonts, sizes and even ClearType being available, ensuring a comfortable read for pretty much everyone. The capacitivity means that instead of pushing the screen, you touch it and stroke it. No more tapping away with a stylus or jamming your finger into a dodgy resistive touchscreen, this is the real deal. This is a real step up from almost all other phones I’ve used. Fingerprints are the obvious risk, but this isn’t quite the magnet that other glossy devices are (particularly the iPhone), and a quick wipe whenever you notice a smudge sorts it out, so no need to panic.

The handset is sleek and thin, but still a fairly large size (due to the screen). However, it is still pocket-sized and solid without being stupidly heavy, so no qualms from me – particularly since I’m used to the E90 and X1. I’ve kept it in the leather pouch to protect from scratches and smudges, although it can be a pain to get it out quickly when you need it without accidentally answering/rejecting a call.

The phone-down button is also the lock/unlock button, and press+hold for shutdown options. If you have a passcode (like me), hitting this button costs you five seconds every time; so you need to get out of the habit of pressing it to close everything and return to the home screen. The five front hardware buttons are annoyingly not illuminated, but there’s only five so it’s easy to figure out which is which and press them in the dark. The volume control on the side is easy to access, although some applications annoyingly take control of this for some up/down functionality, making it very confusing and more than a little awkward when you need to silence a blaring NSFW Youtube video in the office!

The HD2 has a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU with 512MB of RAM – better than some laptops I have lying around. Definitely a very capable piece of kit, and it’s barely missed a beat. I defy anyone to do better in the next six months.

Operating System

Windows Mobile 6.5 is a bit confusing. It has the flashy interface of a brand-new operating system, and although it’s built on the recent Windows CE 5, it’s still got Pocket PC 2002 at heart. WM6.5 was never actually planned by Microsoft, but released as a much-needed update after huge delays to Windows Mobile 7 – the vastly-rewritten mobile OS now due in mid-2010. WM6.5 is still a decent improvement, with a good touch-focused UI so long as you don’t dig too deep. However, delve into ancient areas such as networking settings and you end up with dropdown lists and tiny scrollbars that should have been ditched as soon as people realised they had fingers. This isn’t the end of the world, as your day-to-day usage.

However, the HD2 has one useful trick up its sleeve to beat all this. When Windows Mobile 7 comes out (sometime in 2010), you can install it on your HD2 for free. Unlocked phones can be upgraded directly from the HTC site, but carrier-specific devices need to wait for their network to release a custom version (and some are notoriously slow with that). Still, WM7 is a great incentive to get this phone now, and ensures its resell value for a couple of years. In between WM6.5 and WM7, there are a few extra releases which should keep things improving until the big changes come in.

Dragging things about can be slightly laggy compared to the iPhone, but it doesn’t put you off, it’s just not quite spot on with the immediate response of a mouse cursor on a PC. This is most likely a software performance issue that should be addressed with Windows Mobile 7, rather than an intrinsic hardware fault. I’ve also found myself accidentally hitting the soft keys  – the bottom left and right buttons on the touchscreen (labelled Phone/Menu above), sending texts before I’m finished; but that’s just something to watch out for.

The Windows Marketplace (WM equivalent of the App Store) works well, but the number of applications available is pitiful compared to Apple. Of course you can get trillions of WM applications from all over the web – and even many ancient PocketPC apps will still work – but it still would be nice to see some centralised place for the vast majority of your app needs, and it would be nice if they were all of the same consistent quality as on the iPhone. One main issue is that because of the wide number of handsets that WM runs on (some big screens, some small, some touchscreen, some stylus, some just with buttons), the apps rarely suit all of the possible variations. Apps made with one handset in mind will be horrible on another, unlike the iPhone where there is only one size, so all their apps work as intended on every single iPhone.

User Interface

HTC Sense is the HTC user interface they have now ported to Windows Mobile. This is not just a custom home screen, but a whole suite of really nice touch-friendly applications, such as Peep (for twitter), a calendar and contact list manager. The most annoying thing is that if you disable the HTC Sense home screen, all those applications disappear too. This means that if you prefer the default WM6.5 UI or a 3rd-party shell such as SPB Mobile Shell, you have to stick to the default (or downloaded) applications even though your phone has better ones built in. In fact, you need those to be active tabs in Sense (taking up home screen space) for them to work. I find HTC Sense overly complicated and quite restrictive, so I tried using the normal UI and SPB, but it was these applications that forced me to use it, and I’m doing my best to tailor it to my methods of working. A compromise would be nice HTC!

The one issue I do have is that pressing the X in the corner doesn’t exit a program, although Menu>Exit does (if the app has that). I can understand multitasking, but it is virtually impossible to actually stop many intensive applications from running. You have to go into the HTC settings, switch to the Windows Mobile settings, find the task manager and kill the process from there. It doesn’t have the normal task manager in the status bar, which is pretty awkward. However, the HD2 is more than capable of running a lot of programs, so there’s no need to panic about this unless you notice some lag or need to kill a network-draining app.

The Obvious Question

Of course, as with every touchscreen phone in the past three years, everyone is comparing the HD2 to Apple’s iPhone. And for good reason – the iPhone is a good piece of hardware with a lot of applications and has dominated the consumer smartphone market. However, there are a lot of deep-rooted problems with the iPhone. It only gained major functionality (ie: copy/paste, video recording) in its most recent version, it’s completely locked down against tweaking and modifications, and the applications are restricted to those Apple approves in its App Store. Windows Mobile doesn’t restrict users at all, allowing anyone to hack in, install software and tweak to their heart’s content – just like a real PC. That is a completely necessary difference if you aren’t 100% sure that the default OS functionality and App Store meets all your needs.

Verdict

Unless you fancy waiting six months for the next wave of WM7-dedicated phones, the HTC HD2 (also known as the HTC T8585, HTC T9193 and HTC Leo) is going to be your best bet, particularly as it will be upgradeable when that launch finally goes down. The huge capacitive multi-touch screen is great to use and absolutely future proof. The software is decent, the UI is full of features, the handset is nice and the internals are powerful. Unless you really can’t tear yourself away from a physical keyboard, or have a nasty case of Appleitis, I’d strongly suggest you give the HD2 some serious consideration.

I’m not a great believer in big TVs or monitors, as they tend to be impractical, distracting or just pointless. However the 43 inches of curvature in the NEC CRV43 are simply sublime, and an impressive solution to a number of display problems.

It’s not all good news though. At $8000 it’s not exactly in league with a pair of normal 22-inchers, and the display is very thick (see photos after the jump), and an extremely unusual 32:10 aspect ratio. However for that size and money you get 200 nits of brightness (candelas per meter squared), 10,000:1 contrast, 0.02ms “Rapid Response,” covers 99.3% of the Adobe RGB color gamut, and packs at least one USB2.0 jack and DVI-D and HDMI 1.3 connectors.

The NEC CRV34 will be on sale in July for $7,999. Check out the tech specs and a link below…

Read NEC CRV43: 43-inches of curve on sale July.

Replacing email is a big claim. They point out that email was first used in 1965, predating the Internet itself, and has barely changed since the standards were codified around 1970. It is a one-to-many system that makes collaboration awkward, and branches of conversations can get lost and people can miss out parts. Some email applications (including gmail) artificially group emails into conversations, but this still relies on every individual messages being sent to everyone involved.

Wave changes that by focusing entirely on conversations, and working backwards from there. Through an email-style interface, you can view the conversations you are a part of, with each one showing as an single document, called a wave. Within a wave you can format text and embed images, videos and maps – much like the best online WYSIWYG editors.

Collaboration & bots

You can invite people to the wave, and they can reply to the entire conversation, or just a part of it – similar to adding your reply in a different colour, part-way through the email you are replying to. You can protect parts of the conversation. A cool feature is that if multiple people are editing the wave at the same time, individual keystrokes are (optionally) transmitted, so you can see in realtime what they are editing, so you can avoid overlapping. The inspiration for this is a flaw with IM, where you spend half the time waiting for someone to finish typing before you can start reading their reply.

One of the main ‘new’ ideas in wave is allowing bots to join in the conversations. You can invite a bot to your wave which will post it on your blog; and replies on the blog will show up as replies into the wave.You can have a conversation showing all your twitter feeds, and do any amount of funky stuff through APIs. This also means it will work with mobile applications and a wide range of web gadgets.

One cool feature is that you can interactively track back through the history of the conversation, like on a wiki, seeing how it developed. This leads to some nifty gadgets such as one for Chess, where you can play a game and track back through the history of it.

Wave also has decent language tools built into it. Firstly, an inline spellchecker based on the context of a word (correcting “been soup” and “I have bean out”). Secondly, a realtime translator, allowing instant multilingual conversations in a wave…

The cloud & open source

Wave is a hosted service, not unlike email. The conversation is hosted on one server, and everyone collaborates through a web interface (or through APIs). This means it is best suited to the cloud (big centralised distributed server setups), as gmail currently is.

Surprisingly, Google have opted for this project to be open-source. Pretty much all the code will be freely available for people to develop on, and this means they can even run and host the service themselves. Google are being strangely transparent here, so if you host your own Wave installation, and collaborate with people solely on there, the conversation will never leave your servers, and will never call home to Google.

The next big thing?

So will Wave replace email? No chance. Whilst this is a very interesting collaboration tool, it is ideally suited to collaborations within a small team. It is totally inappropriate for quick messages (like IM), mass-messaging (bulk email) or solo documents (Google Docs). It is too complex and intricate for most uses, compared to a basic email – bearing in mind many people have trouble understanding Twitter. People will have trouble understanding what it is for, and pitching it as a replacement for “email” will give people the completely wrong idea.

Email is successful not just because of its simplicity, but also its compatibility. It has survived thousands of email clients coming and going. From Lotus notes to Netscape to Hotmail to Outlook to Gmail – it doesn’t matter what you use, email is still there in its simplest form. Even with Wave being open source and able to communicate with other instances, and even though Google have invented a wave protocol and started a foundation to manage it – it seems far too much like a google-based invention. With that attatched to it, people won’t trust it, and it won’t be able to be at the centre of what we do.

Google Wave will be available later this year, and you can sign up to try the beta when it becomes public at wave.google.com

Google Wave – videos and beta signup
A Curmudgeonly Look at Google Wave – Daniweb article on the key drawbacks with Google Wave

The RC1 (build 7100) has a few changes since the public beta (build 7000) from January, and is mostly tweaked and improved. Compared to other RC1 releases (especially Vista), this is an incredibly stable piece of software. It’s not quite perfect yet, so I wouldn’t recommend it to your Grandma for her first PC – but it should be absolutely fine for most users who want to try this exciting new OS out.

It’s still a lot more stable than Vista, a lot more intuitive, and seems to be a lot faster. XP still has a lot of advantages compared to both Windows 7 and Vista, but in terms of features and security, Win7 really looks like a worthwhile upgrade. Finally, people (like me) who refused to go to Vista can upgrade in confidence.

Let’s just hope that Microsoft have learned the lesson from the Vista launch, and let everyone use it from the start. A staggered initial business-only launch hurt consumer adoption, as people couldn’t even buy it if they wanted to! Also, they aren’t hyping up Win7 as the amazing next-big thing, which they did with Vista, then when it turned out to be “passable” or “adquate”, people were hurt and rejected the upgrade. Now they’re being reserved and honest, letting people figure it out for themselves.

RC1 will expire on June 1st 2010, whilst old Beta 1 installations will expire August 1st this year. Final release is expected any time in the 2nd half of this year – Microsoft say in time for Christmas shopping, and Paul Thurrot cites a precise date of October 1st.

In related news, the new branding for Windows 7 (right) was leaked out by Microsoft China during their RC1 launch event. Let us know what you think!

Check out Windows 7 RC1 for yourself here.

MSDN, TechBeta and Technet subscribers can download the software now, whilst the rest of the public can get their hands on it on Friday 9th Jan (tomorrow) from microsoft.com/windows7

I’ve been using a pre-beta build of Windows 7 (build 6801)as my main PC for a month or so now. With the exception of a couple of drivers missing (which also don’t exist for 64-bit Vista), and the system bluescreening when I overclocked too much, there have been no problems. At all.

It has been a lot more stable than I’ve ever seen Vista, and appears to be just as fast as a ‘used’ installation of XP. Now imagine what the final build will be like!

It has loads of nice features, and seems to be much more logical than Vista. All the changes are necessary and concise, rather than anything feeling like they changed it because they “could”. The new taskbar (which you can enable in 6801) took a small amount of getting used to, and can be slightly confusing if you don’t see the orange glow, or you can’t tell if a programs running, or you accidentally bring up the menu instead of the list of windows. But overall it’s a good feature.

I suggest that anyone who ever tries out new operating systems gets the Windows 7 beta. Your faith in humanity (and Microsoft) might just be restored…

Check out our (small) Windows 7 Image Gallery, or google for images.

EDIT: You can now download the beta version of Windows 7 here – choice of 32 or 64 bit. The server seems to be busy (and refusing requests), and there are only 2.5 million downloads available, so you might not be lucky!

EDIT: It’s gone! “Due to very heavy traffic we’re seeing as a result of interest in the Windows 7 Beta, we are adding some additional infrastructure support to the Microsoft.com properties before we post the public beta. We want to ensure customers have the best possible experience when downloading the beta, and we will be updating this page once the beta goes live. Stay tuned! We are excited that you are excited!”

EDIT: “Thanks for your interest in the Windows 7 Beta. The volume has been phenomenal — we’re in the process of adding more servers to handle the demand. We’re sorry for the delay and we’ll re-post the Beta as soon as we can ensure a quality download experience.”

EDIT: The links are still down (Saturday 4pm GMT) but the downloads are actually still available on the Microsoft servers. Click to download 32 Bit or 64 Bit Windows 7.

The TVonics DTR-Z500 is a digital-terrestrial Personal Video Recorder (PVR) – basically a Sky+ or V+ box for recording free-to-air digital TV; also imaginateively known as Freeview+

It has several advantages over Sky+ and V+, since they both require a subscription to their services. According to TVonics, Sky+ installation costs up to £150, and there’s a minimum subscription of £16 per month. However, the Z500 works off terrestrial digital TV (not cable or satellite), which is free to receive and watch. The Z500 costs just under £200, so is instantly cheaper on paper, if you use it for more than a couple of months.

As for features, there’s another big difference – the Z500 has a 500GB hard drive for recording TV to, which works out to 250 hours of digital TV. This is massive in comparison to Sky+, which can only offer 40 hours. Other features are equally impressive – the Z500 can record two channels whilst watching a recording (or record one, and watch/record a second), pause and rewind live TV, and schedule recordings using the in-built Electronic Programming Guide (EPG)…

The device is fairly straightforward to plug in and use, although it initially wouldn’t work in any of the TVs we tried, it suddenly started working from one moment onwards. Setup is incredibly straightforward, just pressing OK on the remote whilst it scans your channels, and then you’re sorted. There are only 3 LEDs, which would be quite awkward if there was a problem. The only real complaint here is that there is no HDMI. Also, the shape is a little awkward, and doesn’t really fit in well with most home cinema setups; but it is shiny, so we’ll forgive it.

With no physical buttons, the Z500 is intended to be entirely operated using the provided Universal remote control, which can also be quickly programmed to operate your TV and DVD player, regardless of manufacturer. These are nothing new, but it is interesting to see a device providing one instead of its own branded remote. As always, there can be problems if you can’t find the remote code for your TV, but a bit of trial-and-error with the provided codes (which can be up to around 20 per manufacturer) should see it working. The provided remote is fairly straightforward to use, but a couple of functions are difficult to find, such as the “SUB” button for changing the input AV source on my TV.

For watching TV, it’s absolutely great. The onscreen devices (channel number, info boxes etc) are all easy to read and really well-designed. There’s also a nice feature that shows you the hours of programming remaining (starting at 268), rather than just a percentage. If you’re watching a channel and want to rewind, it keeps a recording of the past 2 hours, so long as you’ve been on that channel that long, which is double what Sky+ offers.

The in-built Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) is very pretty and easy to read; and it is very easy to program more complex tasks such as recording an entire series. However, we did have some issues. Firstly, the current channel you’re watching is shown behind the EPG, so is unwatchable – unlike V+ which shows the program in a small window in the corner, at the sacrifice of a couple of lines of the EPG.

Also, in the unit we used, the EPG got very confused. If you scroll up, the channels get mis-aligned, and you end up with “BBC Red Button” showing on the “CBBC” channel, and if you click OK it actually shows BBC Parliament. It’s pretty obvious when this confusion has happened, and it can usually be fixed by scrolling down again or exiting the EPG. I daresay this would be fixed in an update, but seems like a pretty major flaw to me.

One helpful reader has pointed out that hiding the BBC Red Button channels (302, 303 and 305) solved this problem for them. Chances are that it could be fixed in an update or later version of the box, so it probably shouldn’t deter you from buying the unit if the rest of it seems good to you.

The Z500 also has green credentials, using 15W whilst operating, and only 1.5W whilst in standby. I’m also impressed that it is British designed and made. But the lack of buttons and only 3 LEDs makes me uncomfortable, and I wouldn’t like to try and troubleshoot this if it went wrong, which it did for us, and took a couple of hours of wiggling cables to get it to work.

There are a couple of things that this device is lacking – HDMI is one; and a favourite-channels list would be useful. The Z500 does seem like a work-in-progress to me, but would be absolutely ideal for a non-technical person.

If those problems (and the EPG error) were fixed, this would be pretty much second to none. If the price was brought down to around £100, I could see this being a really top seller. As it stands it is a pretty decent device, and probably worth plumping for given the lack of subscription, but there are cheaper less-powerful equivalents on the market if you’re unconvinced.

The TVonics DTR-Z500 and Z250 can be bought for £194.99 and £175.49 respectively at the TVonics Store.

The Oral-B Triumph with SmartGuide, also known as the ProfessionalCare 9000, is cited as Oral-B’s most technologically advanced toothbrush. But it’s less of a brush, and more of a total dental healthcare system.

Just looking at what’s included is enough to make any dentist squirm for his job. As well as the brush unit, charger, brush container and travel case, there’s the SmartGuide wireless display. This wirelessly connects to your brush and relays a lot of useful information. It’s battery powered and sufficiently waterproof to live on the side of your sink.

The SmartGuide shows you how long to brush each quadrant of your mouth for to reach the recommended 2 minute total brushing time, and your brushing time is coutned on the screen. It also warns you if you’re brushing too hard (with a bright red triangle), tells you when to replace the head, and even has an icon to show which brushing mode you’re using. And when you’re not brushing, it’s a useful digital bathroom clock, which actually comes in handy when rushing to work and need to shorten your beauty regime…

The brush itself is pretty impressive. As with most brushes of this caliber, it’s quite sturdy, not too heavy, and easy to fit brushes and other attachments onto. The rubber grip keeps it in your hand, and the shape of the unit suits my hands fine. I usually brush with an Oral-B ProfessionalCare 6000, which appears to be quite a popular mid-range electric toothbrus. However, the Triumph kicks out a LOT more torque than the 6000.

There are two buttons and a large battery power display, similar to that in the corner of mobile phone screen. The main circular button is simply on/off, and the smaller triangular button switches between modes. The brush has four modes: clean, massage, polish and sensitive. Clean is a pretty powerful constant vibration; Massage is more gentle; Polish is a rhythmic 3-on-1-off pulsing; and Sensitive repeatedly gets faster, then stops – likened to a car revving up and changing gear repeatedly. These modes actually seem to be pretty useful, and sufficiently different for you to want to switch for different purposes.

The base is perfectly servicable, and the Triumh sits nicely in it, and it also stands freely fine. The base was a little tricky to assemble, with the cable getting in the way. The unit we received came with a four-brush stand as part of the base (pictured above), which is a nice way to store your brushes, and keeps them covered from dust and splatter. However you do have to pick them out of the stand by holding the brush head – the part that goes in your mouth 5 seconds later – so that would be nice to be changed.

The charger is a two-pronged jobbie for shaver sockets, but adapters for 240v sockets are plentiful. It’s rated for 100v to 240v, so should work fine in most shaver sockets and domestic sockets. On side of the plug is a triangular portrusion, which is used as the “key” to unlock the base of the brush, to extract the battery if it needs replacing. However you shouldnt’ need to do this, and it’s suitable tricky that you wouldn’t bother trying unless you needed to, and it is impossible to open the brush by accident, although I’m sure someone will try.

The brushes appear to be the same for the whole ProfessionalCare range. Included is the FlossAction, which as well as brushes has little yellow rubber flaps that dig between teeth, and the Pro White, which has a little yellow rubber eggcup to hold toothpaste against teeth to polish them. My bog-standard Precision Clean brush worked fine, and also availible for the Triumph are the Sensitive, Dual Clean, Power Tip, Ortho, Braces Care Essentials Pack and Tongue Freshener.

The power of the Triumph is immense, but I don’t think it is unnecessary or excess power. One colleague exlaimed “I’m fairly sure thats not for brushing your teeth…”, no doubt taking into consideration the triangles and dubious attachments. However, ater following the instructions and the SmartGuide to the letter, the Triumph has given my teeth the best clean they’ve had in years, and the difference really is staggering. I was walking around all day licking the front of my teeth, which felt incredibly shiny and almost rubbery.

The SmartGuide is a really useful tool, and may surprise you as to just how bad your regular brushing is. Oral-B say they work so that you never brush alone, but this really feels like you’re being watched – and a guilt trip is usually enough to force you into good brushing. Perhaps a backlight would be useful, but other than that the Triumph is a marvellous brush which I can highly recommend.

Available from Amazon for £62, down from the RRP of £139.99. There is also a mail-in rebate of $15 for US residents.

The 1500 has all the features we expect from these phones, such as a 100-number phonebook, polyphonic ringtones. It also features text messaging, and fairly good battery life. However it does lack a colour screen which other comparable devices do feature.

The handset features a white on black screen, and sunken buttons for a smooth streamlined finish. The Stratus’ functions include text-messaging, polyphonic ringtones and a 100 name and number phonebook.

The Stratus 1500 has a range of up to 300 metres outdoors and 50 metres indoors; and boasts battery life of up to 10 hours talktime and 100 hours standby time.

The handset feels firm and comfortable; and although light, feels robust and worth holding. However other people who have tried our unit have complained that they have to grip the phone, due to it being quite thin, and that it is awkward to hold between ear and shoulder. The buttons are the silly type of U-cut in the faceplate, which means that only around half the button actually pushed in. They don’t have to be pushed in far, and the click and beep is useful to reassure that it has been pressed…

The button layout is unorthdox, especially with the 4-way D-pad being vertically aligned, so left and right are hard to use. That said, left and right aren’t arrow keys, but dedicated buttons for messaging and internal calls. Either way, they’re not the easiest targets to hit. Other than that, the soft keys do their job, and everything else is self-explanatory. The space key is on number 1 as opposed to 0, which is not what I’m used to. It takes a fractional amount of getting used to if your mobile doesn’t use that configuration already. Holding down the number 1 also dials 1571, which is BT’s answerphone system. The pick-up button also doubles as a speakerphone toggle whilst in a call. The hang-up button is also the power button, as per many mobile phones.

The screen is clear, and while 3 lines of text (plus soft key names and status icons) is not small, it can get a little frustrating. There is a distinct feel of nostalgia for the likes of the Nokia 6210, although it is saved by not having the horrible green-on-green tint of phones gone bye. One issue is whilst the horizontal viewing angle is adequate, the screen inverts if you tilt ir forwards or backwards even slightly, so it’s tricky to keep an eye on it if it’s perched on your desk, especially if you’re caught between the normal and inverted phases, so you just get murky middle-blue mottling.

The menus are intuitive, although the “fade” effect gives the appearance of the phone just being slow. It’s fairly straightforward to do anything, and everything is in the same style. You just have to read what it says and follow the logical instructions, no guesswork required. Error messages, such as low battery, are clear and helpful

The base station is well-designed, the LED screen showing the number of messages is very bright and clear, and the buttons do what they’re supposed to. One clever trick is that the page button (to find a handset) is hidden behind the handset. Since we only have one handset, that is ideal, as you don’t need to access that button unless the handset is absent. However I could imagine with multiple handsets, and you wanting to page the one that isnt in the holder, that would be awkward. That said, I suppose that’s what the internal handset-to-handset paging is for. The voice for introducing messages sounds somewhat muffled, but is clear english.

Overall, the stratus is a very nice phone, kitted out with all the features you would expect. I personally love the design and the feel of the unit. There are no major problems, but a couple of issues may arise as a result of the focus on design. If you are concerned about the usability of the device, I suggest that you try one in a store, and if it feels right to you, then you’ll be very happy with this unit.

The BT Stratus 1500 is currently available from shop.bt.com in a single unit and base for £39.13, twin pack for £63.60 and and trio for £88.07.

Please note that Technolysis will be reviewing the Motorola D11 cordless phone in a few days, a similarly priced set, but targeted differently.

We’ve all seen basic face-tracking software in webcams, including ones that can paste objects on top of someones face. This takes that a lot of steps further, allowing you to assign text/graffiti to any object in a video and it applying throughout the video; being able to draw arrows that track people through a video; and drawing speech/thought balloons that stick to their source and don’t overlap with anything.

However, the best of these features is the dynamic selection of frames. You can video someone, then drag their face around to select a decent frame, or just to drag them around like a ragdoll. A more practical application is where you can get a perfect still image, by selecting the best frame for each individual person.

Check out the video to learn more:

Interactive Video Object Manipulation from Dan Goldman on Vimeo.

The key new features are due to its integration with the Windows Live Mesh, which shows Microsoft is really thinking about cross-device collaboration.

• Several users can open the same document at the same time, without being locked out, and collaborate. You get a little notification saying someone else has changed this part of the document, and you can accept their change or communicate with them (email, IM, call).
• There will be web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote,  similar to Google Docs
• There will also be Mobile versions, which can also get in on the collaboration act
• The gist of this is that several home/office PCs, web browsers and phones can all collaborate on the same document at the same time, receiving and providing real-time updates to/from each other. This is a big mashup of simultaenous editing, online storage, instant messaging and whiteboarding.
• The Ribbon interface, which has proved popular in Word/Powerpoint/Excel etc is being ported to Visio and Project

This new version of office won’t be tied to Windows, nor Internet Explorer, nor Silverlight. It will work on Macs, Linux and the iPhone, in Firefox and Safari and across many other demographics.

Microsoft has said a technical preview of the Web-based Office apps will come later this year. Microsoft hasn’t explicitly said there will be a free version, though executives have said the apps will be part of Office Live, which has both free and subscription-based options.

We’ll provide more information as it comes!

Key highlights are multi-touch, the new taskbar and fixed User Account Control…

• Windows 7 is a new Operating System, but built on Vista
• One big change in the UI is the new taskbar, which instead of just listing open windows, has icons (no text)
• The icons in the taskbar have popups with control interfaces (eg for Windows Media Player).
• When you hover over a program’s icon in the taskbar, all other windows go transparent so you can see through them to the window you’re pointing at
• Gadgets now reside on the desktop, with no sidebar – very useful for those with limited screen space. And you can ‘peek’ at them at any time by making all other windows briefly transparent.
• Window resizing is now automatic – dragging a window to the top of the screen maximises it, and dragging it to the side sizes it to 50% for easy tiling
• The system tray (next to clock) now only displays what you explicitly tell it to
• User Account Control (the annoying “are you sure” nag screens) are now fully customisable per-application
• Documents is no longer a single folder, but a way of accessing all your documents, no matter where they’re stored
• Homegroup uses the Windows Live Mesh to merge your documents across all your PCs and devices
• DirectX now works for 2D graphics, so GDI is no longer required
• When using multi-touch, the start menu gets 25% bigger, to make it easy to use
• There’s a giant on-screen predictive keyboard for touch use
• Even with multi-touch, Windows 7 runs well on a 1GHz netbook with 1GB RAM
• Windows 7 now supports up to 256 cores, as opposed to 32 or 64 in Vista.
• Multiple-monitor management has been refined, and hotkeys are finally incorporated
• Remote Desktop now also works with multiple monitors
• Media Centre has been overhauled with a Zune-like interface, a new Mini Guide during videos and Music Wall artwork screensaver

Developers at PDC received a pre-beta version of Windows 7 today. Real feature-complete betas will start early in 2009. This leads us to believe that Release Candidates will happen in late summer, with a release either side of Christmas 2009. That fits in with the official “3 years from Vista” deadline which is our only official clue so far.

Read – Keynote videos on the PDC site
Read – Technologizer Windows 7 hands-on
Read – Ars Technica Windows 7 interface walkthrough
Read – Laptop Windows 7 hands-on
Read – Windows 7 Media Center revealed