Social networks are redefining the way people find and share information, they’ve provided a platform for a new wave of applications, and their impact has even spilled over into this year’s revolutions in Middle East. The operations of these networks make money primarily through ads, wooingadvertisers with the prospect of campaigns better targeted than anything competitors like search engines or television can provide. Consequently,social networks present the first serious challenge to the dominance ofGoogle’s search-based advertising business. But to provide preciselytargeted advertising, they must continue to make the most of the personal information provided by users. In the past, network operators have had a largely free hand in how they used that information, but on a number of occasions they provoked howls of protest by overstepping the mark. Now privacy concerns are becoming the focus of attention from consumer advocates and governments around the world.
These concerns will become even more pressing as social networking is integrated with more and more online services, such as personalized search tools that factor in what you and friends like or recommendation engines that suggest which movies to see, restaurants to visit, or news read. But even as privacy issues linger, it’s likely that before long, not having a profile and some connections on at least on one social network will seem as strange as not having an e-mail address or a cell phone. – Stephen Cass.
— Google to let WiFi access points opt out of providing location data (via thenextweb)
(via thenextweb)
For what it’s worth, Nokia E6 may be the latest Eseries smartphone released by the Finnish handset manufacturer with Symbian on board. Given the fact that the company decided to refocus its production on Windows Phone 7 devices, it won’t come as a surprise if Symbian handsets will become a budget lineup for Nokia.Nokia E6 Review – The Best of the Eseries
Nokia E6 takes most of the good features of the previous Eseries models, but only few of its negative points, and offers them in a slim, compact body. It is certainly one of the best Eseries smartphone, as Nokia E6 greatly improves the functionality of the old Symbian operating system.
It is also worth mentioning that the phone has gotten its Symbian Anna update, which makes it even more appealing to those who were looking for E71/E72 successor.
Unveiled back in April along with the X7 model, Nokia E6 hit shelves in June with Symbian^3 on board. Some may consider the E6 a bit overpriced, as the phone is now available for about $350, depending on the location. Customers can choose any of the three color schemes available, black, silver and white
The Allure of painting on a PC with something “just like watercolor” has tempted both developers and users for years, and Corel Painter 12 brings that dream closer to reality than ever before. The first thing that struck me is the new Real brushes set. I selected a Real Watercolorbrush and then clumsily scratched away on my Wacom tablet. When I stopped, my “paint” strokes blended into the “paper,” diffused, and “dried” in from of my eyes, fading slightly. Out of the box, Painter has 700 brushes, but you can also choose a paper type from a rich library, and create new textures. Although, the new brushes seem computationally intensive, Painter 12 was quite speedy (and my test PC is no monster). It did slow down a bit when I used the Real Wet Oil brush with gleeful abandon, but I did not see such a lag with Real Watercolor. Among other new features, Painter has Mirror Painting mode for creating symmetrical objects, as well as the funky Kaleidoscope mode. Painter 12 is one of the most inspiring and striking applications I’ve seen. If you’ve ever wanted to draw with “natural” media on your PC, it will blow you away.
Image-sharing service slammed regarding rights controversy responds with ‘clarification’
Source: Brennon Slattery – PC Mag
What does Microsoft have up its wrapper for Windows 8? Details are limited, but cell phones, tablets, the cloud, and even gaming appear to be assuming strongly into Microsoft’s thinking for its next operating system. The company seems to be mixing the best of many of its products and services into once restructured computing experience called Windows 8.
Here are some things about Windows 8 I scrapped from the Web that hint at what we might see in the final release.
1. The UI: One small but expressive, change to Windows 8’s user interface steals a page from Windows Phone 7’s playbook. Windows 8’s welcome/lock screen has the same interface as Microsoft’s smartphone OS.
2. The Office Ribbon Returns: The context-aware Ribbon, which made a mess of Microsoft’s Office suite, will swap the drop-down menus and toolbar in Windows 8’s Explorer windows, making many more of Windows’ hidden features visibly discoverable. And the Ribbon’s big buttons simply beg to be touched – perfect for a touch screen Windows 8 tablet.
3. The Cloud: A closer look at the Explorer Ribbon shows two placeholder buttons, Sync and Web Sharing. Microsoft has been spinning to push a lot of its services into the cloud, and that cloud functionality might be excavating deeper into the core OS. The Sync button may work like Windows Live Mesh, which syncs program settings across PCs and enables offline connectivity. Web Sharing may use Windows Live SkyDrive, cloud storage and sharing feature that hands out 25GB for free, integrates with Office, and works just like Dropbox.
4. Xbox integration: The possibilities of Kinect plus Windows 8 are limitless, but we know that Microsoft plans on using proximity detection and facial recognition to start up and unlock PCs. The company also apparently intends to meld the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live to the Internet as a whole, especially for social gaming. Such use of Kinect technology to interact with online buddies, plays PC games, and perhaps do much more could be the future of platform integration.
5. 128 bits of power: Windows 8 will employ 128-bit architecture, which would represent the next leap in computer performance.
6. Tablet hardware: Dropping the x86 platform, Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 8 will operate on the ARM microchip architecture the same tech that powers most of the world’s smart phones and tablets. Conclusion: Microsoft has gotten serious about a tablet, and wants to power it with the upcoming Windows 8.
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Source: PC World Mag – Jun 2011
You have to take only a couple of business trips or vacations with a 6 pound laptop in tow before you start thinking about switching to a PC with a little less meat on its bones. Although 14” and 15” all-purpose laptops are abundant and often inexpensive, just throw one into your backpack or briefcase and lug it around for a few days – your shoulders will soon beg for mercy. Fortunately, you can find plenty of laptops on the market now that are slimmer, lighter, and more powerful, than almost anything that you could have bought just a few years ago.
What qualifies as a “lightweight laptop”? Professionals draw the line at 4 pounds. There’s a marked difference in design, features, and feel between laptops under that weight and their heavier friends. It may not seem like much, but a pound or two can make a big difference.
Truly light laptops rarely have a screen larger than 13-inches, but they otherwise come in a variety of styles, sizes, and prices.
Here are some of the UltraLight Laptops in a short review:-
1. Lenovo IdeaPad U260
Performance:-
WorldBench 6 score: 75
WorldBench 6 rating: Good
Overall design: Superior
Tested battery life: 04hrs-13mins
Features and Specifications:-
1.33GHz Intel Core i5 470UM
12.5-inch widescreen
3.0 pounds weight
320GB hard drive
Supporter Review:-
This ultraportable model achieves only median performance, but its style, keyboard, and touchpad will wow you.
2. Lenovo ThinkPad X120e
Performance:-
WorldBench 6 score: 57
WorldBench 6 rating: Fair
Overall design: Superior
Tested battery life: 05hrs-26mins
Features and Specifications:-
1.60GHz AMD Fusion E-350
11.6-inch widescreen
3.4 pounds
320GB hard drive
Supporter Review:-
This ThinkPad is not an ultraportable, even though Lenovo refers to it as such. Rather, it’s one of the best netbooks ever.
3. Lenovo ThinkPad X220
Performance:-
WorldBench 6 score: 122
WorldBench 6 rating: Very Good
Overall design: Superior
Tested battery life: 07hrs-15 mins
Features and Specifications:-
2.5GHz Intel Core i5 2520M
12.5-inch widescreen
3.3 pounds
320GB hard drive
Supporter Review:-
Fast and light, with great input ergonomics and battery life, this unit is best of breed; its old-school look lacks appeal.
4. Samsung Series 9
Performance:-
WorldBench 6 score: 103
WorldBench 6 rating: Good
Overall design: Superior
Tested battery life: 05hrs-30mins
Features and Specifications:-
1.4GHz Intel Core i5 2537M
13.3-inch widescreen
2.88 pounds
128GB solid-state drive
Supporter Review:-
If you can afford it, Samsung’s high style, superthin laptop will make you the envy of your friends with bulky PCs.
5. Sony VAIO Z-Series
Performance:-
WorldBench 6 score: 118
WorldBench 6 rating: Very Good
Overall design: Superior
Tested battery life: 06hrs-20mins
Features and Specifications:-
2.5GHz Intel Core i5 460M
13.1-inch widescreen
3.1 pounds
256GB solid-state drive
Supporter Review:-
They don’t come any better or more expensive than this slightly larger than average ultraportable laptop.
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Source: PC Advisor Magazine [Jul 11]9mm-thick GoFlex is significantly slimmer than Seagate’s existing GoFlex line-up.
Seagate has exposed what it claims is the world’s slimmest claims is the word’s slimmest portable hard drive. The 160g GoFlex Slim is just 9mm thick, which is meaningfully slimmer than the firm’s 14mm-thick GoFlex portable drive.
The drive’s width is about that of a pencil, and not much larger than many smartphones.
Inside is a version of the 7mm-thick Momentus Thin drive, announced in 2009 for smaller and thinner laptops and netbooks. Despite having only a 1mm-thick protective casing, the GoFlex Slim has shock absorption built in.
“Netbooks and slim laptops are great for overwhelming media, but are limited when it comes to creating and storing HD films and photos,” said Seagate’s retail storage vice-president, Patrick Connolly.
The technical specs include a 7,200rpm spin speed and USB 3.0connectivity. There’s no encryption technology built in, although an unnamed backup suite lets you apply 192bit DES security.
The GoFlex Slim drive was expected to go on sale in the US at press time, costing $99 for the entry-level 320GB model. Exact UK pricing and details about larger-capacity versions have yet to be accounced.
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No. 5: Foxconn Rattler No. 4: ASRock Fatal1ty P67 No. 3: Gigabyte GA-P67A-D3-B3 No. 2: Asus P8P67-M Pro No. 1: MSI P67A-GD53Intel’s latest processors are an obvious choice, but which motherboard should you use? Here are five P67 models tested by “PC Pro Mag”
Choosing a new processor is pretty straightforward right now – it has to be Intel’s Sandy Bridge – but picking a motherboard is trickier. To help you, I have put five motherboards with the firm’s P67 chipset through some tests.
Loaded with the same components as our reference PC – a 3.4GHz Core i7-2600K and 4GB of DDR3 RAM – as well as an Intel 510 series SSD, we’ve run our Real World Benchmarks to look for differences in potential application performance, our data transfer tests to measure SATA 6Gbits/sec, USB 3 and eSATA speeds, and SiSoft Sandra’s benchmarks to measure memory performance. We’ve also tested for power consumption and temperature.
The Rattler is the most expensive board here but, with a POST display, onboard overclocking switches and power and reset buttons, it has plenty admiring its dramatic black-and-red PCB.
There are two SATA 6Gbit/sec and four SATA 3Gbits/sec sockets, and they’re sensibly positioned away from the primary PCI Express x 16 slot. Two x 16 slots support a pair of graphics cards in Nvidia SLI or AMD CrossFireX at 8x speed. Five fan headers are spread around, and the Rattler is the only board here to prove two each of Gigabit Ethernet and eSATA ports on its backplate.
The Foxconn’s benchmark score of 0.95 was the slowest, and it returned mixed results in file test: second-fastest when writing large files at 376.3MB/sec, but slowest of the five with smaller files, writing at 117.1MB/sec, Elsewhere, it’s the only board to drop below 14GB/sec of memory bandwidth, and its latency and cache results were also poor, albeit by small margins.
A peak processor temperature of 87oC, a maximum chipset heatsink temperature of 54oC and upper power draw of 297W make the Foxconn the worst offender on all three counts. Moreover, it still uses BIOS, which feels archaic next to the more modern UEFI systems.
So although the Rattler has a fine specification of paper, it doesn’t do a lot to justify the outlay in the real world.
Enthusiasts could do better with ASRock’s offering. Line the Asus and MSI boards, it replaces the BIOS with a UEFI front-end packing improved visuals and much simpler mouse input.
On the board you get power buttons, a POST display, four DIMM sockets ready for 32GB of RAM and six perpendicular SATA sockets, ready for 32GB of RAM and six perpendicular SATA sockets, two of which run at 6Gbits/sec. The backplate is well-stocked with USB 3, eSATA and a Clear CMOS button. Our only grip is that the single PCI Express x16 slot rules out a dual-graphics setup.
Real-world performance was disappointing. It scored 0.97 in our benchmarks, and it wrote large files over SATA 6Gbits/sec at 365.8MB/sec, almost 20MB/sec slower than the leader. Results were better over eSATA, but it isn’t really a fast board in this company.
These performance gaps might not be huge in the grand scheme of things, but they can be a deciding factor, and we expect better from a “gaming” board. It isn’t bad, but others are better – and that makes the Fatal1ty impossible to recommend.
The Gigabyte GA-P67A-D3-B3 is a bit more palatable and more modest in its features. It starts well, with four DIMM sockets for up to 32GB of DDR3 memory, a pair of SATA 6Gbits/sec ports and a quarter of slower SATA 3Gbits/sec ports, three PCI Express x1 slots and two PCI sockets.
Elsewhere, though, the budget bites. The second PCI Express x16 slot runs at 4x speed, wiping out any dual-graphics aspirations, and the positioning of the fourth fan header in the bottom corner of the board seems strange. The meager backplate offers only four USB 2 ports and no eSATA, and with only three audio outputs you’ll have to use S/PDIF to get 7.1 sound. You do get parallel and serial ports for those using cutting-edge hardware with antique peripherals, however.
It’s the basic specification that puts paid to the Gigabyte’s prospects. It’s a fine budget board but, without eSATA, dual graphics or additional features, it doesn’t offer much future-proofing.
This month’s only microATX board also comes with the cheapest price. Despite this, the inclusion of three PCI Express x16 slots is generous – two run at 8x, with the third at 4x – and there’s a single PCI Express x1 slot.
It has seven SATA sockets (four at 3Gbits/sec, three faster), and four DIMMS will take up to 32GB of RAM. There’s a vacant TPM connector so you can easily upgrade security, and you get four fan connectors, three of which have speed control. The backplate is one of the best here: eSATA, FireWire and two PS/2 sockets alongside USB 3, USB 2 and optical S/PDIF.
The P8P67-M Pro was the fastest board here in our benchmarks, albeit by a tiny mergin. Its performance in our data transfer tests was mostly fine, too, with fast SATA 6Gbits/sec speeds – although it struggled to read over USB 3: in our large file test it was less than half as fast as the leaders, despite table-topping write speed.
The UEFI front-end serves up a screen full of diagnostics information, albeit not very well laid out: to access advanced options you have to switch to a special mode. The desktop AI Suite offers little besides overclocking options, fan settings and automatic tweaks, but at least it’s presented well.
The Asus doesn’t have everything you’d expect from a full ATX board, then, but if you’re building in a smaller case it’s a surprisingly well-featured alternative at a reasonable price.
If you’re after a full ATX board, however, MSI P67A-GD53 ticks most boxes. It comes with UEFI software and, while it isn’t as enthusiast-friendly as the Fatal1ty or Asus, it’s sensibly laid out of novices. If that’s too detailed for you, try MSI’s OC Genie switch, which automatically overclocks your processor.
Two PCI Express slots run at 8x speed when both are occupied and the four DIMM sockets can handle 32GB of DDR3. There’s no sign of internal USB 3 headers for connecting to a case’s front panel, and there’s also no eSATA or FireWire on the backplate; you do get two USB 3 and eight USB 2 ports – the most of any board here – as well as SATA 6Gbits/sec and a Clear CMOS button.
It scored 0.99 in our benchmarks, memory latency of 78.3ns was the second-best here, and SATA 6Gbits/sec and USB 3 speeds were decent too.
While it may lack the flair of other boards, the P67A-GD53 is well featured, well rounded and comes at a perfectly fair price. If we were building a Sandy Bridge PC tomorrow, we’d go with the MSI.
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Patriot Memory’s newest line of SSDs (solid-state drives) all use the SandForce SF-2200 processor (also new) to achieve 555MBps read speeds and 520MBps write speeds. Each drive in the Patriot Wildfire series is the standard 2.5-inch size and uses the SATA6Gbps interface. The SSDs are currently available in 120GB and 240GB capacities; a 480GB version is “coming soon,” ac-cording to Patriot.
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