If you have listened to previous episodes of my podcast(MHF Tech), then you will know that we had announced that we were working on a new website. I can now tell you that the website is now live. You can check it right now by going to mhftech.net.
Why I think SMS is dying
Text messaging has been an effective way for us to send messages between one another on a phone. That being said, you are limited to 160 characters(spaces included) . That means you have to make sure you try and keep your message short and to the point. However, I think that text messaging is dying. Why?
Apple have their own messaging system known as iMessages. It works currently with iPhones, iPods and iPads. Essentially, you can send each other text messages, pictures and video for free. Of course, you have to pay for your internet connection from your phone network(O2, AT&T, T-Mobile etc. ), or from an ISP (Virgin Media, Comcast, O2). Best of all, there is no limit on the number of characters that you can have in an iMessage.
In addition to that, there is BlackBerry Messenger(BBM), which does a similar job to iMessages.
In some cases, some mobile operating systems have third party apps that do the same thing for free as well.
Now all of these services offer free messaging, this is going to make the mobile phone networks scared! Why, it’s because they charge a monthly fee for you to send text messages and an additional fee(in some cases) for sending pictures in a text message.
For example, the CEO of AT&T(one of the big US mobile phone networks) said that he was “losing sleep” over iMessage because he is worried that people will just use their 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi to send messages and not use SMS. This means that mobile phone networks like AT&T, O2 and T-Mobile don’t take any revenue when you use a free messaging service. This is because these services bypass the SMS protocol running on these networks.
I think that it might take some time for this to happen, but everyone will eventually shift to one of these free messaging platforms, and will no longer use SMS as a way to send text messages.
All-in-all, I think that SMS is not dead yet, but it is going to die a slow death.
Facebook goes public on the Nasdaq
Facebook is currently the world’s biggest social network with over 800 billion users worldwide. Today, the social network went public and started selling shares on the Nasdaq stock market with the symbol FB. Today they opened up at approximately $38 a share(approximately £24 a share), hit a high of $45 a share(£28 a share) before going back down to $38. This gave them a market value of $104 billion(£66 billion).
I don’t know about you, but I have no plans at this time to buy shares from any tech company. That being said, I think that this is not a bad day’s work for the world’s largest social network.
Microsoft Announces parental control for Windows 8
Microsoft have been hard at work on their upcoming operating system for desktop PCs, laptops and tablets, Windows 8. Amongst one of the features that are in this upcoming release is a parental control system.
So one way which the system can control what is accessible through web filtering.
As shown in this screen shot here, parents can choose what web content their children can access.
In addition to that, when a “child account” is created, it will be treated as a standard account. Children will be able to access their personal documents, music, videos etc. but they will not be able to access their parents’ data. In addition to that, children will not be able to download malware or software from a site with a questionable reputation. However, they will be able to set their own account settings.
There are also some time limiting functions in the parental control system. For instance, a parent can set the restrictions so that a child could only access the computer for 3 hours between monday and friday, and give them access for 5 hours on the weekends. This adds to the time limiting function that is already in Windows 7.
In addition to that, you have a limiter for applications from the Windows store, so that you can limit the child from downloading games that are not suitable for them.
In terms of the applications on your computer, you can also restrict the child from launching applications or games which are not appropriate for their age, just like in Windows 7.
When creating a user account for a child, Windows 8 will turn on the family safety feature. This will allow parents to track their child’s behaviour and see what they have been using the computer for. It will also generate a report to show you what the child has been up to. You can click on the picture below to see how one of these weekly activity reports woud look.
I think that this is a good way to make sure that the children are safe when using a computer. That being said, some of this functionality was already there in Windows 7.
Pirate Pay is being backed by Microsoft
Time for a quick background on this one.
The Pirate Bay is an infamous website where you can essentially find people who have infringing content on their computer. This relies on a protocol called bit-torrent. Bit-torrent depends on people sharing chunks of a file from their computer. There have already been some internet service providers which have been blocking The Pirate Bay here in the UK. Virgin Media and BT have already been blocking access to The Pirate Bay.
However, it turns out that there is a russian software developer called Pirate Pay which is allegedly supposed to stop people from downloading pirated content via the Bit Torrent network. Microsoft have said that they are backing Pirate Pay.
So how does this tool work? Well, the tool poses as real bit torrent users but then “confuses” peer-to-peer networks, causing disconnections.
In fact the tool has already gained it’s respect from Microsoft Russia, who have already awarded the developers with one million Rubles(£62,000 or $100,000USD).
Buffalo releases the first wireless AC router
A lot of you already have a wireless router so that you can share your broadband connection with multiple Wi-Fi devices.
There are a few standards of Wi-Fi available at the moment, these are 802.11 B, 802.11 G and 802.11N. 802.11 G provides data transfer speeds of up to 54Mbps(6.75MBps). In theory, 802.11 N can provide data transfer speeds of up to 500Mbps(62.5MBps). However, 802.11AC(still being drafted by the IEEE) is in the works. In theory, 802.11AC should be able to provide data transfer speeds of up to 1.3Gbps(approximately 165MBps).
At the moment, the most powerful routers are known as ‘N’ routers. This particular type of router provides the longest range and the fastest data transfers and is also backwards with devices with 802.11 B and G Wi-Fi adapters.
Buffalo is a manufacturer that makes optical disk drives, external hard drives, NAS boxes(network attached storage) and many other storage devices. In addition to this, they also do some networking hardware. In particular, Buffalo has beaten everyone else and released the world’s first 802.11 AC router(WZR-D1800H). The router (pictured on the left) has gone on sale today at a lot of retailers in the USA for around $180(around £112). It sports 4 ethernet ports so that you can connect up to 4 devices.
In addition to that, Buffalo has also released the first 802.11AC media bridge(WLI-H4-D1300) (pictured above)which also has 4 ethernet ports and is also on sale for $180 in the USA at the moment.
To the best of my knowledge there are no 802.11AC adapters for our laptops or desktop computers that would be able to connect to one of these to take advantage of this new, super fast standard of Wi-Fi. However, I am looking forward to using one of these here in the UK.
note: Mbps=megabits per second
MBps = megabytes per second
Adi’s Pick of the Week: Arctic P311 Bluetooth Headphones
When I mention the brand Arctic, a lot of you might think of coolers for your Intel or AMD CPU. Little might you know it, but it turns out that Arctic also do headphones.
So my pick of the week goes to the P311 behind-the-neck bluetooth headphones from Arctic for iPhones, iPads, iPods, computers, android devices and other devices. I have to give a huge thanks CUBS Computer Warehouse for sending us a pair of these headphones for this review.
Inside the box, you get the headphones themselves, a sleek-looking case to protect your headphones and the USB cable to charge the headphones. The headphones themselves have a few buttons on the side. As shown in the picture, you have a button with a phone icon which(as you can guess) allows you to pick up and hang up your phone calls. You also have buttons to turn the volume up, turn the volume down, skip to the next track and go back one track.
So I’ve had a few days to listen to stuff using these headphones and I was impressed with the quality of these headphones. Normally, you would not expect to hear good quality sound from any pair of bluetooth headphones. That being said, the Arctic P311 headphones sounded awesome. Even when I was more than 7 meters away from my computer, they still sounded great. I tried my usual choice of talk radio, rock, reggae, country, podcasts, funk and metal. No matter what I threw at them these headphones still came out pretty good. You would be able to leave your phone in your pocket and still get great quality audio on them.
I would say that the P311 headphones were very responsive when I tested it with a few phone calls on my personal phone. The call quality was great on this pair of headphones. I would definitely recommend them to anyone after a pair of wireless headphones on a budget.
The arctic P311 headphones are available from Amazon for £30 . You can also get them from eBay for under £30.
Adi’s Pick of the Week – Microsoft Flight Simulator X
So it’s time for a pick of the week and this week I have chosen Microsoft Flight Simulator X.
To be honest with you, I don’t think that I will ever be able to become a pilot for any airline. That being said, technology allows us to fly a plane in any location we want from the comfort of our own home.
First of all, I want to say that you cannot call Flight Simulator X(FSX) a game. A game has some kind of point-scoring system along with a goal you reach at the end of it. FSX is a flight simulator.
However, you get to fly planes such as the F/A 18(yes, that does include after burner), Boeing 737, Cessna 172 and many more. In FSX, you have a few ways to fly an aircraft, keyboard and mouse, an XBox 360 controller, a joystick or a full-on flight desk. I pesonally prefer using a keyboard and mouse because I found that the easiest and cheapest way to fly the different planes.
There are also missions to complete in FSX. If you are a first time flyer, then I would recommend going through the tutorial missions which give you enough skill to get you flying. If you are unsure of anything, then I would recommend playing each tutorial mission at least two or three times(practise makes perfect!).
You also have a free-flight mode in FSX. If you don’t want to fly to complete a task, then this is the thing for you. In free flight, you simply select the aircraft you want to use, the location you want to take off from, the date and time and away you go!!!
While I have played with some flight simulators like X-Plane and Flight-gear(a free and open-source alternative), I personally found that FSX is the easier of the flight simulators to learn.
I would highly recommend this one to anyone who wants to fly a plane from the comfort of their own home.
Microsoft FSX is available on from the XBox Marketplace as a special Golden Edition for £19.99. You get FSX Deluxe and an expansion pack known as Acceleration. You can also get it from Amazon for approximately £24. I know this maybe an older title, but in a recession it is sometimes better to buy older titles get them cheaper. After all, not everyone is going to have £40 or £50 to spend on a simulator.
note 1: FSX is not to be confused with Microsoft Flight, which is the free version of the simulator where you are only flying smaller planes around Hawaii.
note 2: Please visit the official FSX website and read the system requirements.
Adi’s Week in Tech News(Week Ending 13th May 2012)
It’s Sunday so that means it’s time for Adi’s Week in Tech News.
to celebrate the 20th birthday of Wolfenstein 3D, Bethesda have developed a special web-based version of the game which you can play through your web browser for free. You can play it and try your hand at some old-school FPS action by clicking here . This is not some demo version of the game or just a 1-level teaser, this is the full thing. Go forth shoot them bad guys down.
A lot of you may know of DropBox(a cloud storage service). Dropbox has started their second ever DropQuest scavenger hunt. It’s harder and even has a story. They recommend that you download the DropBox software and install it on your PC as it would make your life easier. If you finish the challenge, then you will get a gigabyte of extra storage for free.
Apple released a software update for Macs running OSX Lion. Version 10.7.4 of this operating system fixes the security flaw, where the password to log into your mac is stored in plain text for anyone to read, whilst keeping the older FileVault encryption system enabled. In addition to that, Apple also released version 5.1.7 of their Safari web browser which also includes some security patches. For example if Safari detects that you have an older version of Flash Player that is not able to be updated by itself, then Safari will automatically disable Flash Player.
Virgin Atlantic has become the first airline here in Britain to offer mobile phone calls during a flight. The service will initially be available on Virgin’s new Airbus A330 planes flying from London to New York but will be available on 17 planes on at least 10 routes by the end of the year. In-flight mobile access will be provided by AeroMobile, which is part-owned by Panasonic. Virgin will charge passengers approximately the same as normal roaming charges.
Microsoft has announced that Internet Explorer(their web browser) will be the only browser that will work on Windows RT(Windows 8 for ARM devices). Following up from this statement, Google has decided that they share the concerns of Mozilla “regarding the Windows 8 environment restricting user choice and innovation”. In light of this, both Mozilla and Google have called for Microsoft to allow other web browsers to be installed.
On the lighter side of tech news, there is a media player for your desktop computer known as VLC Media Player(a free, open-source media player). During this week, VLC Media Player has hit one billion downloads(and that’s not including Linux downloads). Congrats to the VideoLAN organization for reaching this epic milestone.
No FireFox for Windows RT(yet!)
A lot of you have seen my first impressions of the consumer preview of Windows 8(Microsoft’s next version of Windows). Microsoft have said that they will have a version of Windows 8 that is built on ARM processors. They have already announced that they will call this version Windows RT. In terms of the software, Microsoft have also announced that Internet Explorer will be the only web browser that will work on Windows RT.
Following up from this statement, Google has decided that they share the concerns of Mozilla “regarding the Windows 8 environment restricting user choice and innovation”. In light of this, both Mozilla and Google have called for Microsoft to allow other web browsers to be installed.
On one hand, I am not surprised that Microsoft have made this move. Other companies have taken similar decisions with their hardware. When the first iPad came out in 2007, Apple decided not to put Adobe’s flash player software onto the iPad. Steve Jobs(the then CEO of Apple) wrote an open letter called Thoughts on Flash. While web browsers that run under the Metro UI will work on Windows RT, Internet Explorer will have access to all the APIs that it needs.
That being said, I personally believe that Microsoft should really allow any browser to be installed on Windows RT, if they are to compete with the other mobile operating systems. I also think that Microsoft should provide some sort of patch that would allow other web browsers to be installed. Alternatively, during the installation phase of Windows RT, Microsoft should allow the user to choose whether they want to install another browser. Otherwise, Windows 8 and Windows RT are going to be the next Windows Vista.
If this is the case, then I know for a fact that I will not be upgrading to Windows 8(or Windows RT for that matter).
Carmageddon to make its return
Disclaimer: I do not condone, promote, endorse, glorify, advocate or encourage violence in any way shape or form. I am only reporting the facts of the article.
Another history lesson here: In 1997, there was a PC game called Carmageddon, an action racer where you raced against some other drivers. You had to destroy your opponents’ cars whilst trying to run pedestrians over. It was very controversial due to the gratuitous violence featured, but sold over 2 million copies nonetheless. There were also two other games in the series called Carmageddon 2 and Carmageddon TDR 2000.
Since then, Square Enix(the people behind the Final Fantasy series), have held the rights to Carmageddon. However, Stainless Games have bought back all the rights to Carmageddon and have announced that they will be rebooting Carmageddon if they raise $400,000US (approximately £249,000) by June 6th 2012 using Kickstarter.
So what is Kickstarter? Well, Kickstarter is a website where someone can go to “crowdsource” funding for any creative project they want to do.
If someone pledges $1000US(or more), then they will have their face mapped onto the pedestrians in the game.
