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The city of Topeka — the capital of Kansas — has renamed itself 'Google' for the month of March 2010, hoping to draw the company's notice so it will be chosen for fibre optics trials that Google has said it will start soon. This event had not, of course, happened when New Yorker business writer Ken Auletta finished work on Googled, but it's a sign of the times that even the home of the Wizard of Oz can't escape the playschool-coloured arm of the white-paged search giant.

Auletta asks, is it innocence or arrogance that leads Google to make, repeatedly, engineer-led mistakes about people? Google has been persistently blind about privacy risks, despite its notorious 'Don't be evil' motto. Many Google products — notably StreetView (in multiple countries), Google Books and most recently Buzz — display the same pattern: launch product, express surprise at complaints, eventually compromise.

Only ten years ago Google was little more than a glint in the minds of fellow Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. At the time, the received wisdom was that what mattered were portals to attract and keep visitors: Google's notion of getting its customers to leave as quickly as possible to other sites was seen as a pretty dumb idea. When they first demonstrated their new search engine to Silicon Valley angel investor Ram Shriram, he thought it was fast at producing relevant results, but didn't see a market opening for another search engine. He suggested selling it to InfoSeek, or perhaps Yahoo! or Excite. It was only when they reported back on the results of those meetings — Yahoo! said better search results would cost it page views needed to satisfy advertisers — that Shriram began to see their ideas as disruptive technology.

Underestimating Google was a common pastime right through the company's 2004 IPO, when Wall Street analysts insisted the company had no way to lock in customers. Now, of course, things look very different. Google has shaken up advertising, book publishing, newspapers and television; it competes with everyone from eBay (Paypal) to Apple, Microsoft, mobile phone manufacturers and Rupert Murdoch. Who is next to be drenched under a Google wave? And do old media have a future? Advertising, after all, has its limits: it's the first thing companies pare back in a recession.

As a magazine writer and book author, Auletta of course has his own interest in answering that question. As much as people like the sound of 'free', he could not have written Googled without access to funding for his 13 one-week visits to Google, as well as his time writing and doing other research.

But Google, too, depends on advertising. So far, it has managed to keep its revenues rising. But it's in an industry where large companies get subsumed under the next big technology. Ten years ago, AOL was just peaking; ten years before that DEC and Lotus were market leaders. And ten years before that — 1980 — any number of companies were competing to lead personal computing. Will Google prove as enduring as IBM? No-one knows, not even Auletta.

Googled: The End of the World As We Know It
By Ken Auletta
Virgin Books
384pp
ISBN: 978-0-7535-2242-4
£12.99

Wendy M Grossman

The 'Bloom box' fuel system that Silicon Valley is fussing about isn't free energy or perpetual motion; it's a clever way of storing the energy from gas (natural or biogas) in solid oxide fuel cells more efficiently than a gas generator (although when they say it's far more efficient than the US electrical grid that's not saying much, as that emits considerably more CO2 than the UK national grid and loses more of it in transmission). There are companies in the UK, Germany and Australia working on domestic and small business sized fuel cell systems, also using ceramic plates (the Bloom box has two ceramic plates made from fired sand, a metal alloy sheet between them and some appropriately-green secret ink as the anode). Google and eBay are happy with their Bloom boxes, but the $700,000 price will mean you're not going off grid with one at home for a while.

How about something smaller? Toshiba recently showed us the direct methanol fuel cell it sells in Japan (for $200). You squirt methanol from a small bottle into a device the size of a small brick and it creates enough electricity to charge two small devices (like a mobile phone or an iPod), in about the same time as plugging them into the wall; a larger cell that could charge a laptop is still in development and Toshiba isn't sure if there's a market for it. Methanol, says Toshiba's Ken Chan, is easily available, easy to make and very cheap - at least at wholesale prices. A gallon costs less than $1, although by the time it's been packed in a spill-proof, leak-proof, airplane-safe 50ml squirt bottle that dispenses the 15ml required for each refill, the Japanese are paying $7 for the methanol (and no, we're not sure what happens to the extra 5ml after you've had three refills).

The fuel cells will come to the UK, but not imminently; not in the next two months or even the next six months Chan said, but certainly 'this decade'. (Again, we're not sure if that means before the end of 2010 or 2020 - and we're not sure how many people would want to deal with the buying and squirting, even if the price is lower).

Another alternative energy product Toshiba will be selling in the UK - and rather sooner - is E-CORE LED light bulbs. Just finished fitting energy-saving bulbs through the home and office? You probably won't rush out to buy these when they come onto the market in April at £35 each, although the 40,000 hours (about 15 years) before they start to get appreciably dimmer makes it good value (especially for light fittings that are hard to reach). Plus you'll save on electricity; most dramatically compared to halogen bulbs that can use as much as 85% of the power they consume putting out heat and just 15% on light; incandescents do a little better, with 60% of the power making heat and 40% making light. More like 90% of the power used by an LED bulb makes light.

They look more like a light bulb than a CFL does - no ugly twist - and they turn on instantly, unlike CFL that can leave you in the dark while they warm up. Because they don't have a fragile, temperature sensitive wire they don't break easily and they stay cool to the touch so 15 years later when you come to change the bulb you won't have to wait for it to cool down. Toshiba will offer 'cool white' and 'warm white'; LED light is closer to natural daylight than a CFL, though it's not like the daylight spectrum incandescent bulbs that have been available for some years.

Compared to CFLs, the 155 lumen 'warm white' bulb we've been trying out is possibly a little less bright, probably because LED bulbs put out a more directional beam of light than a general glow - and both the 150 lumen LED and CFLs are dimmer than the last conventional light bulb in our office. There's a brighter bulbs - up to 290 lumens today and 480 lumens on the way soon, so you'll be able to choose.

There's no flickering with the LED bulb the way there is while a CFL warms up - add that to no waiting for light and the years they'll last and you'll want to do the sums on whether you want to pay now and light later…
Mary

Finally some good news to write about! Opera 10.50 is available for Windows, and Linux versions will follow soon, they say. Opera has been my favorite browser for quite some time, and it just keeps getting better. This new version is even faster, and has some very nice cosmetic changes. The upgrade installed over my existing Opera 10.10, and all of my Speed Dial settings were intact.

The first thing you notice on starting it up is that they have shifted all of the menu bars and buttons from across the top of the window to a new drop-down menu at the top left corner. This makes even more room for the web pages you are looking at, which is quite nice. If you just can't live without those fixed menus, there is a "Panels" icon at the bottom left of the screen, click that and you get an icon bar down the left side with "Bookmarks", "Widgets", "Downloads" and such, and a configuration option that lets you select what you want displayed in that bar. Very handy. if you like that sort of thing, but I use Opera almost exclusively with Speed Dial, so I will probably not bother to have that bar visible.

When you have multiple tabs open, placing the cursor on a tab will show a mini-window of the contents of that tab. Mini, but not micro; small, but still large enough to be able to show pretty well what is going on.

Of course, all of the additions and innovations that have come along with previous Opera 10.x releases are still there, and many have been refined - Opera Link, Opera Turbo and Opera Unite. There is also a "Private Browsing Mode", which seems to be all the rage these days... I guess I don't visit the right web sites to actually need this.

I would summarize this new release with the same thing I have said about previous Opera releases. Give it a try, there's a lot to like about it.

jw 4/3/2010

Dell’s Vostro range is aimed at smaller businesses, and the V13 is a 13.3-inch screened model that is both thin and light. Dell doesn’t always do well in the design stakes, but this notebook, which has a starting price of £359 ex VAT, is a real stunner.

Thin (16.5mm) and light (1.6Kg) it has a brushed aluminium lid and base which provides plenty of protection for the screen and underside makes the notebook look rather different from the norm.





The 13.3-inc screen offers 1366 x 760 pixels and with a mat rather than reflective finish it is good to use in office situations. The keyboard is very solid and for those who like a large Enter key the double height, 1.5 width offering here is superb. There is a generously sized touchpad which allows you to get about 4/5 across the screen in one sweep.

Ports and connectors run to just two USB ports, one an eSATA combination connector. In addition there’s an Ethernet connector, SD and compatible card reader, Express card reader, VGA connector, and microphone and headphones jacks. The latter two are on the front right edge, making them very accessible. Handy, perhaps in use alongside the webcam or just for listening to music.

There is no optical drive, though, so personal DVD watching is ruled out unless you expense an external drive, and you are going to have to go up from the base price if you want to build a notebook with a large hard drive, Windows 7 Professional and top notch processor, too.

All three variants of the V13 sport CULV processors so we are hopeful of good battery life.

First impressions are positive. Hopefully we’ll be writing a full review soon.


Sandra Vogel

Will I never learn?

Every so often a press release comes along announcing that some clever company has managed to enhance a watch so that it is a phone, a PDA, or sometimes, even a TV. I take the bait every time, and every time I am disappointed.

The most recent example is the sWaP Signature watchphone. (sWaP stands for Smart Watch and Phone).



It looks OK in the photo, doesn’t it? And the specs are rather alluring too. They include:

- Touchscreen
- Music playback
- Stills and video camera
- Built in memory with microSD card support (2GB card provided)
- Bluetooth
- WAP browser

The trouble is, the reality just doesn’t do the paper specs justice.

First off, the Signature is enormous and heavy. The watch weighs 124g, and even on the chunkiest of wrists it is going to look large.

Then there is the problem of getting data into the device. You have to use a miniature stylus and a couple of side buttons to fiddle around putting your contact book in there, making settings for the WAP browser (a very round the houses task), and so on. When you are set up, finding the contact numbers for people you want to call, and writing texts that you may want to send also require the stylus.

Prodding at tiny menu options on the 1.5-inch, 176 x 132 pixel screen with the teeny stylus that sits in the phone’s casing gets tedious after a very short time, and even the handwriting recognition system was only fun to use for the first half dozen characters.

The camera, whose lens is on the right side of the casing, did not seem to have a focussing tool so that images were incredibly blurred. Video playback was similarly blurry.

When it comes to making phone calls you have to either use a headset, and you get a Bluetooth one with the phone, or let everyone hear both sides of your conversation as you hold your wrist to an ear. It is, and you’ll have to trust me on this one, a look that gains more than one strange glance from fellow train passengers.

With a recommended price of £350 this is a very expensive toy. And when I can get a phone that can do all this, tell the time for more than one country, and do more for the same money, I have to wonder who on earth would buy this particular piece of kit.

Then again……… sWaP has just launched a ladies’ collection. And of course, I’ve asked to see a sample.

Announced at MWC in Barcelona, and now available for free download, BES Express takes the familiar enterprise-grade BlackBerry server, lops off a few features and delivers a surprisingly capable small business mobile email solution. The one thing about BES Express that isn’t Express is the download. It’s a hefty 650MB, and will take a while to download over a typical SMB broadband connection. That’s pretty much the only downside on this free version of the popular BlackBerry Enterprise Server push-email system.

So what is BES Express? It’s a version of the enterprise BES 5.0 system, with many of the capabilities of its more powerful sibling. There were a lot of rumours following the BES Express announcement at Mobile World Congress. Some said it would be based on the venerable BES 4.6 platform, others said you’d only be able to provision devices connected the BES Express server. Still others said there’d be a $5 per month charge for each user, and a limit of 70 users. Those rumours were all wrong.

It’s easy to see where the rumours came from. BES Express replaces the old BlackBerry Professional System, which was based on BES 4.6. Device provisioning is different with BES Express, as one of the biggest differences between it and BES is BES Express’ support for consumer BlackBerry devices without BES data plans — users who would normally be using the BlackBerry Internet Service. Their devices need to be provisioned through RIM’s desktop tools or using BES Express’ web-based self-service desktop, unlike devices with BES data plans which can use BES Express’ over-the-air activation tools. There are no user limits, or user charges (RIM will still be getting revenue from mobile operators for BES Express users, much like it does for traditional BES or BIS users).

Tom Goguen, RIM’s Vice President of Product Management for BES Express points out that while server capacity limits BES Express to “up to 75 to 100 users on same hardware as an existing Exchange Server, it’s very feasible to install on a second server, which means it’s feasible for BES Express to support 2000 users. In fact people could have multiple servers, so in theory they could have 100 thousand people connected.”

Like BES 5.0, BES Express has a web-based user interface, and its own Apache-based Java web application server to handle integration with the BlackBerry. That means your best option is to install it on a server that’s not running IIS. The two can run together, but you will need to change the secure HTTP ports used for the administration and user web front-ends. Again like BES, you get the option of installing different components on different servers — but as BES Express is intended for SMB users, it’s probably best to stick with the default single server installation.

BES Express has many fewer user policies than its more enterprise-focused sibling. That’s not a problem — the key policies you’ll need are here, from managing password rules to ensuring that users can’t fill their business phones with games and other downloads. You can also turn off cameras and control the attachments users can download. You can deliver different policies to different users (or specific policies to specific groups of users), as BES Express uses Active Directory to manage users, groups and roles.

One interesting use for BES Express is to quickly extend the reach of an existing BES installation. Instead of giving all your users access to high-end BES features like PABX integration or links to line of business applications, you can keep those for the staff who need them, and use BES Express to just manage email and contacts for everyone else, without having to invest in BES client access licences and in additional BES servers. You won’t get the business continuity features of BES 5.0 with BES Express, but you will be able to provide a best effort service for your users — especially those who have brought their own devices.

So why a free BES now? There’s been a major shift in RIM’s strategy over the last few years, opening BlackBerry up to consumer and SMB. That’s led to a huge explosion in the number of BlackBerry devices out there, and in the number of people relying on BlackBerry for email and PIM. The consumer BlackBerry Internet Service works well for email, but can’t handle calendar and contacts (although tools like Google’s Sync have provided some workarounds). BIS isn’t true push mail either, as it uses a scheduled scrape to extract mail from POP3, IMAP4 and Outlook Web Access, before pushing it to devices. But that’s not enough for small businesses, which need all the push features of BES — without the high-end enterprise data connectivity tools and unified messaging features.

This is BES for the rest of us, for the small and home business looking for a quick and easy way to push mail to users and devices on the road, without having to worry about which data plan they’re on and how many CALs you’ve ordered. BES Express is well worth considering for even one or two BlackBerrys. It’s a quick install, and like BES 5.0 needs very little administration when it’s up and running. All you need to do is set up your users, and they can do most of the work themselves — even running their own remote wipe when their phones get lost.

Simon Bisson

One of the problems with carrying a laptop around with you is that it looks like a valuable laptop, and a laptop bag or sleeve doesn't disguise it much. The Undercover laptop sleeve gives your notebook a place to hide; it looks like a padded mailing envelope complete with label, stamp, postmark, return address, delivery instructions, creases and all. It claims to be splashproof and tearproof - and you can even scribble notes on it for added authenticity (ballpoint works better than gel or fountain pens).


Hide your laptop

From across the room, the Undercover sleeve certainly looks like a (large) padded envelope; up close the stitched edges might give the game away and the stamp and Luckies-branded postmark are obviously fake. You wouldn't want to leave your laptop on the table with this while you went to the toilet, but it wouldn't attract a casual thief the way a naked notebook or a trendy sleeve would.

But couldn't you just use a real mailing envelope? We put them both to the test.

The padding is better in the Undercover. The bubblewrap (or the shredded paper in some envelopes protects against some bumps and knocks but the foam layer concealed in the Undercover is thicker and denser - and the satin lining protects it (we found bubblewrap started bursting pretty quickly and would tear if the laptop fitted too snugly and you tugged it out too fast); plus the satin looks and feels nicer, even if it gives the game away thanks to being labelled 'Undercover laptop sleeve'!

Splashproof and tearproof? You can't tear the Undercover, because while it looks like paper it's made out of Tyvek (used for untearable envelopes, car airbag covers and protecting the wood frame in American houses), but if you pull really hard you might be able to tear one of the seams. We could easily tear the paper padded envelope open completely and while it survives a few journeys it quickly gets battered, tattered, punctured and torn; the Undercover keeps on going.

The stitched seams and Velcro-close flap are the reason the Undercover is splashproof rather than actually waterproof. We tested this with a sacrificial Toshiba Portégé (that had suffered terminal water damage in the past) by pouring a glass of water over it, putting it under a running tap and putting it down in a sink with an inch of water in.

Tipping a glass of water over the front or back of the Undercover will leave your laptop dry (unless it gets under the flap); do the same with a paper padded envelope and the water soaks through straight away, getting the laptop wet at once. No water soaked through the seams when we held the Undercover under a running tap either, so you don't have to worry about a light shower of rain (again as long as the flap is closed). When we put the Undercover face down in the sink it actually floated but after a couple of minutes a few drops of water did seep through the seams; so you can't drop it in a pool but you don't have to worry if you put it down in a little spilled coffee.

A paper mailing envelope is good for sticking shut once or twice; the Undercover has a strip of Velcro under the flap that attaches to three stripes of Velcro on the back (which make it look much less like a mailing envelope from the back). This means the Undercover fits most laptop sizes and shuts every time.


Velcro; it does let you fit the Undercover to most sizes of laptop...

But the flap doesn't seal all the way across and folding it down to fit your laptop also makes it very bulky for smaller machines; with a netbook or even a 12" tablet PC, you're folding the envelope over so much that you've got something rather unwieldy to carry. This is actually my main criticism of the Undercover; it's perfect for a 17" laptop and just too big and bulky for anything under 14". If Luckies brought out a range of specific sizes, the Undercover sleeve would be an excellent product.


Undercover: protection and anonymity but not a good enough fit for smaller laptops

Mary Branscombe

According to developer Kerio Technologies, its small business MailServer product does a lot more than just email. It’s also big on collaboration, connecting together colleagues and business partners to share information and develop new ideas, whether in the office, on the road or at home. So, with the latest release there’s a new name — Kerio Connect — to better reflect what it’s all about.



Of course, the software doesn’t just get a new name, with the usual bug-fixes and performance enhancements included in Kerio Connect 7.0, together with improved support for over the air synchronisation of mobile devices.

Contact list synchronisation using the open CardDAV protocol is another new feature, while management gets an overall with full web-based administration as well as a conventional Windows based console.



The new release also sees the company looking beyond small single server customers to larger, distributed organisations – prompted, perhaps, by the increasing popularity of hosted alternatives in its traditional SME market. To this end the new product allows a single domain to be spread across multiple, geographically dispersed, member servers, commonplace in larger companies. That way it can offer the benefits of delegated management as well as connecting users in different offices and enabling them to collaborate and share information as if attached to the same server.

Available now, Kerio Connect 7.0 can be hosted on Windows, Linux or Apple Mac systems and can also be had as a ready to run VMware or Parallels virtual appliance. Trial versions are available and we’ll be evaluating it on ZDNet soon, as part of a forthcoming group test of Exchange Server alternatives.

Alan Stevens

We're used to seeing imaging devices and notebooks supporting SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) cards, which offer storage capacities up to 32GB. You can buy a 32GB SDHC card for around £60, although a fast Class 10 (10MB/sec minimum write speed) card suitable for high-performance HD video recording will cost at least double that.

Last year saw the announcement (at CES in January) of the next-generation SDXC (Secure Digital eXtended Capacity) format, which caters for capacities up to a massive 2TB. Panasonic, one of the founders of the SD Card Association, recently announced 48GB and 64GB Class 10 SDXC cards priced at an eye-watering $449.95 (£291) and $599.95 (£388) respectively. A 64GB card can hold about 8 hours of HD video.


SanDisk Ultra SDXC: 64GB for £259.99

SanDisk has just weighed in with a slightly less expensive Class 4 (minimum write speed 4MB/sec) 64GB card, the Ultra SDXC, which will cost £259.99. The Ultra SDXC, whose read speed is quoted at up to 15MB/sec, will ship in the UK from 26 February.

When we say 'slightly less expensive', bear in mind that the Ultra SDXC's £4-per-gigabyte compares distinctly unfavourably to about £2.50/GB for an 80GB Intel X-25M solid-state drive or less than 10p/GB for a mainstream 1TB hard drive.

Devices that support SDXC cards are currently thin on the ground, but that's expected to change as new camcorders, cameras, phones, notebooks and more come to market through 2010. SanDisk's own ImageMate card readers, for example, are SDXC compatible if connected to a PC whose OS supports the exFAT file system. At least one notebook, the Asus Eee PC T101MT multitouch tablet, includes an SDXC card reader.

SDXC cards are expensive right now, and Gerry Edwards, SanDisk's senior product marketing manager, EMEA, told ZDNet UK that the company expects demand to be low at first. However, as more SDXC-compatible imaging devices appear and HD video becomes the norm, that's bound to change.

When you think Toshiba, you think notebooks (and TVs), but the company is also doing a thriving line in accessories. Its Dynadock U10 universal docking station is already the best-selling USB docking station on the market, says Toshiba storage business manager Graeme Simons (especially in the public sector where purchasing switches between different notebook brands and models frequently, so dedicated docking stations just don’t work). The U10’s cut-down baby brother, the V10 is half the size with many of the same features. It still uses DisplayLink’s chipset so one USB connection from your laptop transfers signals from multiple ports and devices – and only having one cable to unplug is a lot more convenient.


Dynadock V10

The £94 V10 has four USB ports (rather than 6), 100Mbps Ethernet, headphone and microphone sockets and a 1920 x 1080 DVI port (with a VGA adapter) that Simons says can drive two screens – and that’s enough for 108p video. At this price, the V10 should sell very well when it comes to the market in April.

Microsoft has its three screen strategy (PC, phone, TV plus cloud); Toshiba talks about two screens – PC and TV. That’s not just because it makes TVs and notebooks; it does actually have ways of connecting them. One is putting an interface on new TVs that lets you do the Windows 7 Play To thing in reverse, so instead of telling Windows Media Player to send your video or photo to the TV you use the remote control to browse through the video, photos and music on your PC. Another is adding multitouch overlays to TVs so you can use them for interactive presentations. And the newest idea is a ‘multimedia hard drive’ that you stick on your network and plug into a TV.


The StorE TV+

The StoreE TV+ will be on the market in Q2 or Q3 with a 1.5 or 2TB hard drive in, HDMI to connect to your TV, plus an SD socket and both USB host and device ports for connecting a hard drive or using the StorE as a drive on another device. There’s also an Ethernet port and built-in Wi-Fi; that means you can transfer video from your PC to watch on TV.


Behind the TV+

Currently it supports 720p HD video and 1920 by 1080; Toshiba says the specification is “about 90% done” so that could change. There will be a “whole host” of codecs; again the list isn’t finalised. And the StorE TV+ will support DRM because, as Simons says, “What we're not encouraging is piracy. There’s stuff on the PC that we think people will want to move to TV to watch it.”

Those same large drives are going into the portable StorE range too; 1.5TB is the most popular capacity at the moment for 3.5” drives but Simons expects that to change to 2TB, with the ‘sweet spot’ for 2.5” drives moving from 220GB to 500GB – and a 1TB 2.5” drive reaching the market at the end of Q3. He didn’t want to predict the price; “Pricing on hard drives changes a lot,” he joked, “but it never goes up.”

In Q2 Toshiba will have a vertically mounted 3.5” drive with up to 2TB of storage, with eSATA ports as well as USB; it will have a new name as well, though this isn’t decided. USB 3 drives might arrive in Q3 if Toshiba introduces USB 3 on its notebooks then, although product manager Ken Chan told us that with the advent of Intel’s LightPeak optical connectors he’s not sure USB 3 will take off so he’s making no promises.

Simons also noted that the best-selling StorE drives aren’t the cheapest models, but either the sleek and shiny metallic StorE drives or the StorE Art drives which cost about £5 more but come with backup software.

Mary Branscombe