Microsoft confirms Kinect pricing, 4GB Xbox Arca

Microsoft has finally got its act together and come up with the pricing details for its motion-sensing Kinect controller. It'll cost £130, and come bundled with "Kinect Adventures" -- a collection of minigames for mucking about with the device.

Those games will include obstacle courses, raging rapids and "exotic locations", according to Microsoft. It's basically the company's answer to the Wii Play collection that came with Nintendo's motion control peripheral. Other titles will be available too, including Kinectimals, Kinect Sports and Kinect Joy Ride. Each will go on sale for £40 -- and in new purple boxes (instead of bright green).

If they do, you can save some cash by grabbing both the Xbox 360 4GB and the Kinect motion sensor for a bundled £250 price. That's nice, but doesn't really address my gut feeling that Microsoft has priced this a little aggressively. I do wonder how the company is planning to justify charging more than a hundred quid for what is a essentially just a microphone, a webcam, and some software to glue it together. Microsoft has also confirmed pricing for the Xbox 360 4GB, which is a cut-down, redesigned version of the console with 802.11n Wi-Fi, 4GB of internal flash memory and touch sensitive buttons. It'll cost £150 and go on sale on 20 August, just in time for your kids to start demanding one for Christmas. (Or demanding the new Elite version we recently covered.)

If, however, you're disgusted by our cynicism and are sold on Kinect and its possibilities, then set aside a small pile of coins for whenever the device goes on sale, which isn't set in stone yet but is promised to be in time for Christmas. While you're at it, can I interest you in this 3DTV?

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Swedish Pirate Party launches its own ISP

The Swedish Pirate Party knows how to court media attention. A few weeks ago, the group of copyright reformers promised to host notorious file-sharing site The Pirate Bay in the Swedish Parliament if elected later this year, taking advantage of immunity from prosecution for acts occurring within Parliament.

Now, the party has declared that it's planning to launch its own ISP. Beta testing has begun for a broadband service called Pirate ISP that will offer anonymity to its customers and generate money for the party. The service is planned to operate on principles in line with Piratpartiet's ideals, maximising privacy.

Beta testing is taking place in the city of Lund, with 100 residents being hooked up to the web. The aim is to start slowly, so that quality service can be assured, before ramping up over time to the rest of the country. The initial target for the ISP is to gain around 5 percent marketshare.Pirate Party member and CEO of Pirate ISP, Gustav Nipe, told filesharing blog Torrentfreak that the service has been founded on a long-held hacker adage: "If you see something and you think it’s broken you built a patch and fix it. With that as a benchmark we are launching an ISP. This is one way of tackling the big brother society."

"The Pirate ISP is needed in different ways," said Nipe. "One is to compete with other ISPs, let them fight more for our internet. If they don’t behave there will always be someone else taking their share." As for government intervention, Nipe says that they're prepared: "It would be a pity to reveal all the tricks that we have, so we will save those for later. But we have ways to ensure that no customer should have to get a sad letter home from (Sweden's antipiracy chief) Henrik Pontén."

If all goes well, the expansion into the rest of Sweden will take place later this summer, shortly before the Pirate Bay founders' appeal begins in the Swedish courts.

For more Software and Technology News and Review - Nuclear Software

Inside Apple’s antenna design lab

After a press conference Friday addressing the iPhone 4’s antenna, Apple gave journalists a private tour of its radio-frequency test facility to provide a glimpse into the process of designing wireless products such as iPhones and iPads.

Led by Ruben Caballero, a senior engineer and antenna expert at Apple, the tour gave about 10 reporters and bloggers a peek at Apple’s custom-built wireless testing lab, which consists of several anechoic chambers to measure frequency of each device in various settings.

Apple called the lab a “black” lab because it was a secret facility that even some employees were unaware of. The company made the lab’s existence public to show that Apple takes antenna design and wireless testing seriously.The tour was held after a press conference, in which Steve Jobs attempted to mitigate a media thunderstorm surrounding the iPhone 4’s purportedly flawed antenna by offering free cases to customers. During the conference, Jobs reinforced his original position that every phone has reception issues when held in certain ways, and he said a flawed software algorithm was making the iPhone 4’s attenuation look worse than it actually was.

“This is the most advanced lab for doing RF studies that anyone in the world has,” said Phil Schiller, vice president of marketing at Apple. “The designs we do wouldn’t be possible without it.”

Each test chamber is lined with blue pyramid-shaped styrofoam designed to absorb radio-frequency radiation. A robotic arm holding gadgets such as iPads and iPhones spins 360 degrees while a piece of analytics software (ironically running on Windows XP) visualises the wireless activity of each device. Caballero said each gadget is run through a chamber for at least 24 hours.

In another test process Apple also has people sitting inside test chambers, holding a device for about 30 minutes while software analyses its wireless performance to evaluate its interactions with the human body. Synthetic heads, hands and even feet (think Nike +) are used for some of these tests as well.

Apple’s testing lab looks similar to Cetecom’s mobile radiation testing lab that Wired.com visited last year. Manufacturers who create wireless products must gain certification from an independent lab, which verifies that each device meets acceptable radiation standards set by the US Federal Communications Commission.

The difference with Apple is it built its own lab for the sake of having full, granular oversight on the design (and redesign) of its products. Prototypes go through several iterations and tests before they’re finalised into Apple products. (Of course, having its own lab also helps Apple better guard its secrets.)

Before the iPhone 4 became an official product, prototypes of the device were tested in chambers for about two years until Apple settled on a design, Caballero said.

“It’s not trivial to design antennas,” said Caballero, reminiscing on the days older antennas had a single frequency.

After “passive” testing of devices inside isolated chambers, eventually Apple engineers drive around a large van containing synthetic hands gripping gadgets, with a laptop in the back running wireless analytics software to determine how the devices perform in real-world settings. Sometimes humans sit in the car seats holding the devices, too. During the tour, Apple showed a van containing a table full of synthetic hands gripping iPhone 4 devices.

“To do the most challenging design in the world, this is what we have to do,” said Bob Mansfield, Apple’s senior vice president of Macintosh hardware. “This is hardcore stuff.”

Apple earlier today also posted a description and video of its test lab.

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Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo makes first manned flight

SpaceShipTwo staged a dress rehearsal for its glide flight and flew with a crew for the first time.

Anticipation mounted as word spread that SpaceShipTwo, attached to its mother ship Eve, departed the Mojave Air and Space Port. Many were anxious to hear whether the first glide flight of the spacecraft also known as VSS Enterprise would happen, especially since we knew a chase plane (used to observe experimental aircraft) followed SpaceShipTwo into the sky.

Virgin Galactic, the company behind the development of SpaceShipTwo and private space tourism, says yesterday’s flight marked the first time SpaceShipTwo flew with a crew on board.The flight test team at Scaled Composites has been busy preparing for the first glide flight. There have been four flights of WhiteKnightTwo in the past month where the crew has made practice approaches similar to what will be flown in the VSS Enterprise.

Peter Siebold, test pilot and director of flight tests at Scaled, joined fellow test pilot Michael Alsbury aboard the VSS Enterprise as it remained mated with WhiteKnightTwo throughout the flight. It was the third captive flight for the craft and the 33rd flight for the mother ship. The craft spent six hours and 12 minutes aloft testing SpaceShipTwo’s systems. Virgin says all went well.

There has been no announcement on a date for the first solo flight of SpaceShipTwo.

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Coalition delays UK's universal broadband rollout

The coalition government's culture spokesperson, Jeremy Hunt, has confirmed that the roll-out of universalbroadband to the entirety of the UK has been delayed by three years. By 2015, everyone in the country will be entitled to 2Mbps access to the web. The previous target was 2012.

Lack of funding has been blamed for the decision, which follows disconcertingly soon after the Conservatives promised 100Mbps to the "majority" of homes by 2017 during the election, calling Labour's 2Mbps pledge "paltry".

Currently, about 11 percent of Britain's homes -- about 2 million -- can't get 2Mbps speeds. About 160,000 can't get any broadband at all, and are either suffering on dial-up or (more likely) are simply not connected to the web.Labour's plans to fund roll-out to those homes were based on a 50p phone line levy, but that proposal was abolished by George Osborne in the coalition's first budget.Hunt told an industry conference: "I have looked at the provision the government had made to achieve this by 2012. And I'm afraid that I am not convinced that there is sufficient funding in place. So, while we will keep working towards that date, we have set ourselves a more realistic target of achieving universal 2Mbps access within the lifetime of this Parliament."

Oddly, Hunt spent the rest of his speech talking up the potential of the telecoms industry, telling the audience that he wanted Britain to have the best superfast broadband in Europe by 2015. A 2007 survey placed Finland at the top of that chart, with an average speed of 20Mbps, and the country has since pledged that most citizens will get 100Mbps connections by 2015. The country has also made internet access a legal right.

From that perspective, Britain seems to be flagging extremely far behind. The reasons are diverse, but predominantly revolve around the aging telephone network that most of Britain's broadband infrastructure relies on. The roll-out of fibre is taking place -- Virgin's 50Mbps service covers about half of the UK's households -- but it's not economically viable for companies to extend that infrastructure to the most rural areas.

However, it's this "market-led solution" that the coalition is pinning its hopes upon, saying that the situation will be reviewed before subsidies are introduced. BT Openreach boss Steve Robertson claims that the figure for running fibre to every home will run to at least £2 billion of public funding, which would be matched by private companies.

That may seem daunting, but even with the delay at least there's some political will behind the roll-out of superfast broadband. Hunt says: "All of us recognise that the broadband network is as fundamental to Britain's success in the digital era as railways were in the industrial revolution." Too right.

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Flying Ants Swarm over Twitter

If you check Twitter's highest trending topics in the UK right now, the fourth highest on the list -- behind Jason Stackhouse, Joey Cole and the concerning "Scrotal implosion" -- is flying ants. Approximately once a year, known as Flying Ant Day, the species of ant that's usually found in Britain's homes and gardens (Lasius Niger) takes to the skies for an elaborate mating ritual to ensure the survival of the colony.

The queen ants grow wings, as do the males, and they swarm in their millions for about 10 hours, before the queens land again and lose their wings, and find somewhere to hibernate for the winter. Only a few queens are successful, however, and those that aren't will be killed when they try and join an already-existing colony. Once a queen has mated, she's fertile for the rest of her life.

A certain type of weather is required for the event to occur. It needs to be hot, but also moist -- muggy, like the weather before a thunderstorm. Winds speed is crucial too -- it needs to be windy enough to spread the insects out a bit, ensuring the genetic diversity of the colony, but not enough to damage the creatures' fragile wings. Once the necessary conditions are met, all the colonies in a local area take flight at once to reduce to risk of predation and, again, ensure genetic diversity.

The insects are harmless, beyond the occasional bite, and Dave Clark, the head keeper at London Zoo's entomology division, told the BBC last year that the ants bring benefits too -- they pollinate flowers and feed on other insects which cause damage to plants. Following the swarming, any dead ants are eaten up quickly by birds.

Response so far on Twitter has been split between disgust and excitement. "WHERE HAVE ALL THESE FLYING ANTS COME FROM?" yells Kayleighmartin. "It's weird enough without them all doing it at the same time," adds LondonMUgirl.

All I can think is that I wish I'd shut my windows this morning.

For more Software and Technology News - Nuclear Software

Apple has posted video of the iPhone 4 press conference held today at its campus in Cupertino, California. The company has also posted severalnew pages on its website dedicated to explaining the antenna issue and showing off the company's antenna design and testing facilities.

The press conference offered a presentation from Apple CEO Steve Jobs outlining the company's belief that antenna issues with the iPhone 4 are common to nearly all smartphones and that only a very small fraction of iPhone 4 customers have reported the issue. He noted, however, that Apple is committed to making sure that every customer is happy and to that end announced that the company will be offering free cases to all customers purchasing iPhone 4s through September 30th. 

The company also acknowledged issues with the device's proximity sensor and reported that they will be addressed in a future software update.

Following Jobs' presentation, a Q&A session was held with Jobs, Tim Cook, and Bob Mansfield. The Q&A session is not, however, included in the video posted by Apple.


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