Do we really need motion control?

by Jeff Bakalar

"You mean you have to use your hands? That's like a baby's toy!"

(Credit: Universal Pictures/MoviesOddity.com)

It's by far the definitive theme this year at E3 2009. It seems everyone wants in on motion control. At their respective press conferences, both Microsoft and Sony debuted compelling demos of what they envision as the future of gaming.

Microsoft introduced Project Natal, an initiative to allow the user to play games and navigate through menus using body movements in place of a handheld controller. We got to see what game design guru Peter Molyneux was able to do with the technology in the form of the Milo demo, where a human seemed to convincingly interact with an artificial boy on-screen.

While that demonstration leaves plenty of skepticism and unanswered questions on the table (even with a Steven Spielberg endorsement), most will agree it was the rubber ball block-breaking game performance that really proved that the technology has potential.

Sony on the other hand, presented a seemingly less polished exhibit of the company's motion control ambition. Around the office, we wondered whether or not this was a last-minute addition to the keynote. Surely there's no doubt Sony has been working on a collaboration between the Eye Toy camera and a motion-sensing controller, we're just not sure the company was planning to show it off on Tuesday. That aside, we were impressed by the physics in the tech demo itself and agree that motion control needs some sort of "button pushing" in order to encompass the various genres of gaming. This was made abundantly clear during the first-person-shooter segment of the demo.

Let's give credit where credit is due. If Nintendo did not come out years ago flooring audiences with the Wii, it's tough to imagine that both Sony and Microsoft would be devoting the time and effort in exploring this technology. I know I'd be complacent if both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 never entered the world of motion-based interactivity with games this generation.

This all leads us to the question, "do we really need motion control?" Ask most hardcore gaming enthusiasts and the unanimous answer is simply "no." In an industry fueled by these early adopters, we can't see the conventional video game controller going extinct just yet. That said, we understand the need for such innovation.

Nintendo has proved that reinventing the way people think about games sparks the curiosity of those who might not normally find themselves owning a console. If it's for that reason, to expand the audience of those who play, then we're all for it. But for those who grew up with an Atari 2600 joystick or NES pad in their hands, it's still going to be a much tougher sell. That generation of button-mashers only take graphics and hardware upgrades seriously--they aren't impressed by the wiggle and shake of a Wii remote or Sixaxis controller.

Once motion control doesn't come off as a gimmicky add-on is when it will be widely accepted as a viable way to interact with a game. Until we see the implementation of the magic that Wii hacker Johnny Lee was able to accomplish in an actual game is when we will see a changing of the tide. Interestingly enough, he was recruited by Microsoft and is working on Project Natal.

It's clear each of the big three console manufacturers all have different takes on how motion control should be implemented in creating the most satisfying interactive experience. Whether it's the motion capture and voice recognition of Project Natal, the combination of camera and motion controllers in the Sony effort, or MotionPlus on Wii, it'll be the technology that convinces hardcore gamers to jump on board that will set the tone for the future of gaming.

What do you think? Do we really need motion control in video games? Sound off in the comments section below

Yahoo-Microsoft deal less likely, analyst says

June 16, 2009 9:03 AM PDT

by Ina Fried

In Vegas terms, the likelihood of a Microsoft-Yahoo search deal is now a "pick 'em."

That was the takeaway from a report Tuesday by Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal.

"In our view, the likelihood of a Microsoft-Yahoo search deal has gone down materially in recent weeks," Aggarwal wrote in a research note. The biggest hurdle remains the price of a deal, he said.

"We believe that a Microsoft-Yahoo search deal can happen but we are reducing the probability from 80 percent-plus to 50 percent, and with the lowered probability, we restrain ourselves in terms of assigning any timeline," Aggarwal wrote.

Of course, a historian might also offer the same caution. Microsoft first went public with a bid to buy Yahoo early last year. The two sides never came to a deal, despite a few months of negotiations.

For the past year, Microsoft has indicated it is open to some sort of a search partnership short of an outright deal, but the two sides have remained far apart on price, Aggarwal said.

When Carol Bartz was hired as Yahoo's CEO, hopes for a deal increased. The two sides have resumed talks, and while Bartz has said she is open to some sort of deal on the right terms, she has sounded less than optimistic at times. (See video below of Bartz on Fox Business News.)

Despite some good early traction for Microsoft's Bing search engine, Aggarwal said the software giant can ill afford to wait, particularly since it has no other means of significantly boosting its search share.

"As far as Microsoft is concerned, it cannot afford to wait for long because Bing can help Microsoft (bridge) the gap in core relevancy, etc. but cannot deliver 20 percent search share (required to remain sustainable/meaningful in search)," Aggarwal wrote. "In addition, Google is getting more aggressive both in search and online applications and Microsoft cannot delay much the adoption of Cloud Computing (in absence of viable/scalable online ad business model)."

Microsoft backtracks, extends XP availability to 2011

Hammered over downgrade plan, company gives OEMs more time to sell XP PCs

By Gregg Keizer

June 17, 2009 08:13 PM ET

Computerworld - Just hours after a noted research analyst criticized Microsoft's plans to limit sales of Windows XP PCs, the company said it would extend the aged operating system's lifespan in the post-Windows 7 world to as late as April 2011.

On Tuesday, Michael Silver of Gartner took Microsoft to the woodshed over the company's decision to let computer makers sell PCs with Windows XP for only six months after Windows 7 debuts.

Silver blasted the idea as a "real mess," and said that it would make it more difficult for companies to manage their PCs, and more expensive to upgrade them to Windows 7 down the road.

Because of Windows 7's Oct. 22 launch date, the six-month cap meant that OEMs would have to stop shipping PCs "downgraded" from Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows XP Professional at or around April 22, 2010.

That policy put enterprises in a bind, Silver argued yesterday. "For an organization that's trying to skip Vista, that means they really need to buy new PCs that they need to run on XP, and want to upgrade later to Windows 7, by April 21, 2010," Silver said.

"[But] since a lot of organizations won't be ready for Windows 7 until later in 2010 or even early 2011, any PCs they buy from April 22, 2010 on, and until they are ready to deploy Windows 7, would need an upgrade license or [Software Assurance] to allow them to run Windows XP temporarily, and upgrade to Windows 7 later on," he said.

The alternative, said Silver: After April 2010, companies that wanted to stick with XP for a while longer would have to buy new PCs with Vista Business or Vista Ultimate, which do have downgrade rights to XP, then downgrade to the old OS. Later, those companies would have to buy an upgrade license from XP to Windows 7, essentially paying twice.

Microsoft: Our bad

Hours after Silver blasted the plan, however, Microsoft backed off the six-month limit, and confirmed a new policy.

"Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate customers will have the option to downgrade to Windows XP Professional from PCs that ship within 18 months following the general availability of Windows 7 or until the release of a Windows 7 service pack, whichever is sooner, and if a service pack is developed," a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

"This is good," said Silver of Microsoft's new plan. "It proves that Microsoft listens to their customers. They have changed licensing decisions in response to customer demand before, and hopefully they will do it again, because this is still not great."

Silver said his problem is with the possible "out" that Microsoft gave itself. "The new policy is 18 months or SP1 delivery, whichever is sooner," he said. "It means that if SP1 shows up in six or eight months, the date suddenly moves in."

Many software vendors may not release Windows 7-specific versions or officially support the new operating system for a year or longer after Microsoft rolls out the OS this October, Silver added. Microsoft's movable deadline for the end of downgrades could put some enterprises in an awkward spot.

"Organizations waiting on a critical vendor to support their product under Windows 7 may still have a problem," he said.

A better solution would be a hard deadline, Silver said. "The policy should be 18 months or SP1, whichever is later, or just have a reasonable date for the end of the downgrade right, like Dec. 31, 2010," he said.

Assuming that Microsoft holds off delivering Windows 7 SP1, it's possible that OEMs could be selling XP-equipped PCs as late as April 2011.

That's unlikely, however, as Microsoft typically rolls out the first service pack for a new OS much sooner. It released Vista SP1 to most users in March 2008, less than 14 months after Vista's retail availability. Windows XP SP1 appeared even sooner, in September 2002, a little more than 10 months after XP's launch. Windows 2000 SP1, meanwhile, was released just six months after that OS shipped.

Microsoft also slipped in a reminder about XP's limited lifespan in its e-mailed announcement. "Windows XP is currently in the extended support phase and Microsoft encourages customers to migrate to either Windows Vista or Windows 7 as soon as possible," the spokeswoman said yesterday.

As per its lifecycle policy, Microsoft will officially retire Windows XP, halting all patch development, including security updates, in April 2014.

NASA looks to launch shuttle Endeavour in July

Hydrogen leak forces NASA to scrub Endeavour launch for second time

By Sharon Gaudin

June 17, 2009 12:55 PM ET

Computerworld - After a gaseous hydrogen leak today forced NASA to scrub the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour for the second time, the space agency said it is now looking to try again in July.

Endeavour and its seven-person crew was set to launch at 5:40 a.m. EDT today but the launch was aborted at 1:55 a.m. when the leak was detected at the shuttle's Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate. Today's leak was located in the same area as the one that forced NASA to cancel Endeavour's scheduled June 13 launch.

"We're going to step back and figure out what the problem is and go fix it," said Deputy Space Shuttle Program Manager LeRoy Cain during a briefing today. "Once we get it fixed and we're confident that we have a solution that's going to work and allow us to go fly safely, then we'll proceed forward."

To make sure its engineers have time to figure out and fix the problem, NASA pushed the next scheduled launch date back to July 11.

Astronaut Mark Polansky has been Twittering about his role in the Endeavour crew. About 2:30 a.m. EDT today he wrote, "I'm sure you all know that we postponed again It's a reminder that spaceflight is NOT routine." And then late this morning, he tweeted that the crew will be getting back into a mission training schedule on Monday.

Endeavour's crew is slated to conduct a 16-day mission to expand the Japanese laboratory housed on the International Space Station. NASA has called the operation one of its most technical missions yet - one that will call on the power of three separate robots.

The highly complex mission will include five spacewalks and the use of three robotic arms -- two robots working together and one that will "walk" across the outside of the space station.

NASA is still set to launch two lunar satellites -- the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite - late on Thursday afternoon. The satellites are scheduled to lift off together aboard an Atlas V rocket between 5 p.m. and 5:32 p.m.

Both satellites will be focused on sending information back to Earth to help NASA scientists determine safe landing sites and resources for a human return to the moon.

HP Officejet 6000

Product summary

The good: Prints high quality text and photos, fast print speeds compared with the competition, network ready.

The bad: No USB cord included, no LCD makes it difficult to troubleshoot.

The bottom line: We like the simplicity of the HP Officejet 6000 single-function inkjet printer. The print quality meets HP's high standards and it outputs full color photos at an impressive rate, but its lack of an LCD screen takes some getting used to. Nevertheless, the HP Officjet 6000 performed well and earns our recommendation as a great single-function printer.

Specifications: Printer Type: Workgroup printer - Ink-jet - Color ; Max media size: Legal (8.5 in x 14 in) ; Printer type: Workgroup printer ; See full specs

The Officejet 6000 is HP's latest offering in the single function inkjet printer category. It doesn't have many of the bells and whistles of the popular all-in-ones, but what it lacks in features, it makes up for in print quality and speed. Topping out at a competitive 0.46 full color photos per minute, there's no doubting the capability of the 6000, but it's missing a few critical features such as a USB cord, LCD screen, and media card reader. The Officejet costs an affordable $90, but you can get much more office functionality out of the Canon Pixma MX330, a multifunction printer with a built-in fax machine, copier, scanner, color LCD, and an auto-document feeder for only $20 more than the HP. Check out the Canon if you want the most features for your dollar, but if all you're looking for is a fast printer, you won't be disappointed with the HP Officejet 6000.

Design and features
There isn't a lot going on with the HP Officejet 6000 in terms of snazzy design. Like most of the printers in the Officejet line, the matte beige and black color scheme is designed to match the drab, unassuming palette of any office. Since it's only a single-function printer, the footprint is easily manageable at 18.03 inches long by 15.31 inches wide by 6.45 inches deep and weighs 10.56 pounds. The printer could've been a bit shallower, but a fixed output tray protrudes from the bottom and demands a little more space on the desk. While most single function and even some all-in-one printers can only hold 100 pages, the robust input tray on the 6000 stores up to 250 sheets of plain paper at a time.

The printer comes with a removable paper output tray that installs on top of the fixed output tray and collects finished prints on their way out. You can also extend the output tray even further to corral longer prints. Just above the paper trays, you'll find a series of buttons and LEDs that control all the functions of the printer. From left to right, you'll see a power button, paper feed button, cancel button, and a network setup key. Also, the top right of the control panel features four LEDs that blink to indicate depleted ink levels. Unfortunately, you won't find a dedicated LCD screen on the printer: instead, you have to access all of the options, settings, and features through the driver. Since it's also lacking a media card reader and USB slot, the Officejet 6000 is unable to operate autonomously from the host computer. Finally, we're irritated to see that HP doesn't include the necessary USB cord. HP recommends buying its proprietary "hi-speed" cable for a lofty $20, but you can get one cheaper at your local electronics store or online.

The HP Officejet 6000 uses HP's 920 series ink cartridges. The top of the printer pops open with a latch on the side, revealing a compact bay for individual black, cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges. In addition to the standard cartridges, HP also sells extra-large models that we use for the highest potential cost-savings in the following cost per page analysis. According to the HP Web store, the XL black cartridge costs $32 and lasts for 1,200 pages, and the three-color cartridges cost $15 each for 700 pages. By our calculations, you'll pay 2.7 cents for a page of black and 2.1 cents per page of color, which is a bit less than the average cost by today's printer standards.

Performance
After putting the HP Officejet 600 through the usual speed tests, we found that it outpaced the competition by a large margin in both photo and graphics speeds. We're particularly happy with its capability to produce 3.54 pages of our color graphics document per minute, since the next printer in line is substantially slower at 1.79 pages per minute. In fact, the only test that the 6000 didn't place first was the text speed test, where the Lexmark Z2420 achieved a crowd-pleasing 11.13 pages per minute. Still, the HP settled comfortably into second place with an admirable 7.38 pages of text per minute.

Performance test (in pages per minute)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Photo speed (one sheet)

Color graphics speed

Text speed

Lexmark Z2420

0.82

11.13

HP Officejet 6000

1.33

3.54

7.38

Canon IP2600

0.89

1.79

5.68

Canon Pixma MX330

0.93

1.88

5.54

Per usual, HP comes through again with the exceptional print quality we've come to expect from the brand. Our full color graphics document printed on HP's Premium Presentation Paper came out bright and clear. Specifically, we noticed the extreme clarity of facial colors and construction, and while we did see a few jagged edges and minor wicking, we agree with HP when it says that the 6000 can produce near "laser-quality" text. In fact, the photos we printed out produced more accurate and pleasing images than many of the multifunction printers we've tested, even ones that cost hundreds of dollars more than the 6000. We should note that this printer is definitely office-oriented, so don't expect the highest quality prints (some of the photo elements were washed out, for example), but you won't be disappointed if you plan to use it more for text, with the occasional snapshot printout.

Service and support
HP backs the Officejet 6000 printer with a standard one-year warranty that covers parts and labor. You get toll-free phone support from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. weekdays and 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Saturday for no extra cost and the benefit of HP's Total Care package that includes an online learning center, FAQ, and a comprehensive support forum. You can also extend the warranty an extra two years for $35 or an extra three years for $50.

Corel Home Office

Product summary

The good: Small megabyte footprint, built-in PDF creation tools, and Flash installation work well on tiny Netbooks; Microsoft Office 2007-style interface; reads and saves documents in multiple file types, including Microsoft analogs; multilanguage support.

The bad: Often renders text differently than it should when pasting or importing content; lacks advanced features applicable to Netbooks users.

The bottom line: Despite some compatibility setbacks, Corel Home Office suite is useful for creating documents. Its conscientious size, small-screen optimizations, and attractive price make it a good buy for a Netbook office suite, or for saving space by shedding advanced features.

Specifications: License qty: 1 user ; Min processor type: 1 GHz ; Peripheral / Interface devices: USB drive , Mouse or tablet ; See full specs

Thanks to an interface design that mirrors Microsoft Office 2007, Corel Home Office is familiar, attractive, and easy to navigate. A few color customizations let you personalize the software, but the accessible, responsive, and intuitive features and tools are what will satisfy users more. Lighter in features and modest in size, Corel's brand-new Corel Home Office productivity suite was designed with Netbooks in mind. Of course, the $70 suite will work on laptops and desktops, too, but the three office applications--Write, Calculate, and Show--handle word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations with basic and intermediate tools sufficient for most Netbook users' office needs, but certainly not all.

While Corel prides itself on compatibility with Microsoft's file types and with PDFs, our tests produced an uneven track record with a few embarrassing gaffes.

Installation and setup
Corel offers two installation methods. You can download the suite or install it using the product-branded Flash drive. Flash installation is another concession for Netbooks, which don't often have a CD drive, but which do have multiple USB ports. In our test, installation took about 5 minutes on an Acer Aspire One Netbook and used just 107MB in disk space compared with 358.39MB for the Corel Word Perfect Office X4 full-bodied office suite for desktops, and 1.5GB for Microsoft Office 2007 Standard.

To install the software, you'll need to locate and enter the serial number. USB installers will find the serial number printed in the Quick Start Guide shipped in the box. Corel will e-mail the serial number to electronic buyers.

After installing, Corel Home Office opens a launcher to start one of its three productivity apps.

An installation launcher assumes you want to install the entire suite, but you may uncheck boxes if you would only like to install the word processing, spreadsheet, or presentation components. If checked, additional tick boxes in the installation launcher will create desktop icons and will automatically look for updates.

Interface
Corel Home Office opens with an attractive launcher almost identical to the application installer. You'll click either Write, Calculate, or Show from this dashboard to open one of the office applications.

Microsoft Office 2007 users will find the application interfaces in Corel Home Office extremely familiar. As with Microsoft Office 2007, Corel Home Office uses a visual ribbon layout that replaces the long, text-heavy drop-down menus of old with menu tabs that are divided into submenu boxes. Each submenu box displays its tools as icons or labeled icons.

The similarities don't end there. Corel Home Office also mirrors Microsoft Office 2007's top-level row of quick action buttons to open a new document, open a saved document, save a document, undo, and print. The circular Start button in the top left similarly emulates its Microsoft rival. Corel isn't the first to crib this highly visual design (TechSmith's Snagit also uses it effectively), but we're glad the company did. The end result is a familiar layout that's as modern and fresh as it is easy to use. If you're not a fan of this look, however, you can switch--via the Options drop-down menu--to the traditional toolbar mode of Microsoft Office 2003 and Corel WordPerfect Office X4.

Corel Home Office mirrors Microsoft Office 2007's tabbed ribbon design, but adds its own flair with custom workspace colors, as seen in Corel Write.

Corel's most significant interface contribution to this new Home Office suite is the F11 hot key, which toggles the menu bar between collapsed and full-screen view. Shrinking the menu bar buys you an extra inch or so of screen real estate--significant on 4.5-inch-tall screens like that on the Acer Aspire One. The menu bar won't disappear completely. Instead, it shrinks down to a small button that you can also click to recall the expanded menu.

In a nod to the personalization craze elsewhere in computing and on the Web, Corel Home Office adds four toolbar skins to the Options menu and three options in the Page Layout menu to color-customize the workspace, columns, and page backgrounds. For the latter three, Corel makes the entire color palate fair game. You won't find texturing akin to Microsoft Office 2007's shaded-gradient blue workspace background, but the splash of color does add a certain something, especially for those with sensitive eyes who prefer composing and reading text on a nonwhite background.

Features overview
Corel Home Office automatically renders the application proportionately on a Netbook, resizing buttons and screens to fit the smaller resolution. In order to keep the suite's footprint dainty and the feature set relevant to a wider swath of users, Corel has done away with several features that were present in the fuller-fleshed Word Perfect Office suite, which was written with a separate code base. Some of these omissions include the legal writing mode and support for OpenDocument Format (ODF). You won't be able to import PDFs to edit, "redact" copy you want to hide in PDF, Doc, or WPD format, or convert slides to Flash format in Show. Likewise, Corel Home Office dispenses with endnotes, the Oxford dictionary, and saving files without metadata. Most casual users won't notice the omissions most of the time, or will use other services. Students, though, may suffer from the loss of endnotes and the dictionary definitions.

Corel Home Office supports Unicode in saved files, Microsoft Vista's MUI spec for multilingual user interface switching, and a language pack to run the suite in multiple languages.

Corel Home Office is a lighter version of Corel WordPerfect Office.

Thankfully, the PDF creation feature to save and e-mail documents as PDFs remains in all three applications. We had no trouble creating PDFs from native documents born from Corel Home Office, but we encountered errors when creating PDFs from Write and Calculate docs that had been previously converted from Microsoft Word and Excel. The trip-ups ceased after copying and pasting the contents into a new Corel document.

While the compatibility across documents has its low points at times, being able to save and send as Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2003 documents in addition to Corel's file type is an indispensable workflow feature.

Microsoft Office users should also note that many keyboard shortcuts will work in Corel's intentionally lighter office suite. Those advanced hot keys that don't cross over, like Excel's Alt+W+U, could interrupt workflow for power users who rely on shortcuts over the menu and mouse.

Write
Though leaner than its professional Corel counterpart, the feature set in the Write word processor is far from thin, and is a breeze for Microsoft Word 2007 users to pick up. (Some menu options and icons differ slightly, so expect needing a few moments to get acquainted with the finer points.) Corel Write features five tool menus: Home, Insert, Page Layout, and View. It lacks the References, Mailing, and Review tabs of Microsoft Office 2007 and Corel's WordPerfect Office X4 suite, but it does roll some reference tools into the Insert menu and bundles basic mailing tools into the Tools tab. There's also a Mail Merge shortcut in the Insert tab.

Many home users may not ordinarily use the Reviews tab, but students and entrepreneurs using Corel Home Office for their Netbooks will miss being able to view edits a friend made to their work, or track document changes themselves.

A spelling dictionary is included in Write (as opposed to a definitions dictionary), along with a thesaurus, grammar checker, and an autocorrector you can edit or decline altogether by opting out. Corel also includes macros, charts, and illustration tools, but no highlighter--one tool we missed most.

While past versions of Corel have had trouble maintaining multiple open documents, this version utilizes the Ctrl-Tab hot-key combination to pull up a list of active files, in addition to showing open documents on the taskbar.

Corel Write (left) seems to strip formatting and images during a paste. Microsoft Word preserves them.

Corel Write succeeded in the majority of its composition tasks, though pasting content from the Web and from other documents stretched Write's abilities. Write stripped the images, formatting, and spacing between paragraphs from an article copied and pasted from the Web. Microsoft Word 2007, on the other hand, kept all three. The word processor also altered selected text pasted from a Word 2007 document, this time treating the content like a small image we had to expand from the corner to read.

Calculate
Like Write, Corel's Calculate spreadsheet app includes most of the features you need for creating spreadsheets, plus a few more. Strong support for symbols, sums, charts, illustrations, and pivot tables are a plus, especially on documents created within Calculate.

However, like Write, Calculate suffers from some missing keyboard shortcuts and compatibility garbling. Calculate does not support Microsoft Word's macros, but you can make your own within the program.

Calculate, Corel's answer to Microsoft Word, looks good, but it suffered from acute conversion hiccups.

We were disappointed by the experience of importing a Google Docs spreadsheet saved in the XLS file type. Calculate dramatically altered the row and column colors. The 12 tabbed spreadsheets in the single document were difficult to manage and navigate on the Netbook, given its shorter display bar that only comfortably held half the total tabs.

Corel's suite faltered again when creating a PDF from the same imported XLS document. A blank PDF (except for its title) and an error message that Calculate "could not start print job" followed. The PDF feature worked flawlessly after pasting a portion of the original document into a new Calculate doc.

Show
Of the three applications, Corel's presentation creator, Show, is the more basic compared with its Microsoft 2007 analog. That said, if your only goal is to create a simple slideshow, flier, or presentation, Show will do a fine job. It handles layouts, the master slide, shapes, pictures, charts, colors, and animated transitions between slides.

What's more, it supports Microsoft PowerPoint's PPT and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007's PPTX file types, and saves as PowerPoint and PowerPoint Show files for both the 2003 and 2007 products. Corel Show's compatibility extends to inserting a wide variety of objects and documents, including those from Adobe, Corel, and Microsoft.

Even with fewer tools, Corel Show whips up attractive, effective presentations.

Since Show automatically saves your slides to the PPT format, importing and exporting presentations ought to work seamlessly. It didn't quite seem to. Text and images carried back and forth without a hitch, but the charts imported and exported as images, despite sharing an identical file type. The content remains intact. If you don't intend to edit many charts from imported documents, it shouldn't pose much inconvenience.

While there's enough substance in Corel Show to create presentations with some polish, the much slimmer application departs from PowerPoint 2007 by leaving out full-color templates, write protection, proofing, and video support, not to mention several artistic touches for the background, layout, and charts.

Emulating PowerPoint's chart interface would have left Corel Show's own chart creation process better off. Creating charts from the inserted template was confusing, and Show's help manual was thin on guidelines. Show also seems to have skipped over the chart's formatting menu when giving the application its new visual emphasis--Corel's chart formatting remains a linear text menu that's less meaningful than the thumbnail icons favored elsewhere in the application.

Service and support
Free support for Corel Home Office is available via e-mail, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as is the self-service online support forum. Telephone support is also available during business hours to several regions--9 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET in North America; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. GMT in Europe; and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. GMT+8 in Asia. In addition, a toll-free call for technical support costs only $15 per incident, a steal compared with Microsoft's roughly $50 e-mail or phone assistance for Office 2007.

Conclusion
Corel Home Office isn't the cheapest, easiest, or most comprehensive office suite on the market, but it holds its own as a light productivity suite and is the only one at the time of this review that's been optimized for Netbooks' munchkin size. As such, it strikes a good balance between feature set and size, and is fairly priced for a commercial application. Consumers looking for the familiarity of Microsoft Office 2007 without the hefty price tag will do well with Corel Home Office, as long as they don't foresee using the more advanced features for composition, spreadsheets, or presentations.

While we find Corel's $70 price tag quite reasonable, it's hard to beat the cost of Sun Microsystem's free OpenOffice.org suite. OpenOffice.org, however, is neither as flashy nor as small as Corel Home Office, and it may include more features (like separate database and drawing tools) than a Netbook user needs.

We're disappointed that Corel still suffers from compatibility and rendering issues, which we found frustrating and inconvenient, though not abortive to most projects. The rest of the feature pack performed well in our tests, making Corel Home Office a solid, if imperfect, productivity suite for basic and intermediate users. While we wouldn't recommend that Netbook owners who have Microsoft Office 2007 preinstalled replace it with Corel Home Office, it's definitely worth considering if you're looking for a brand-new installation

AT&T's launch day iPhone 3G S preorders sold out

June 16, 2009 5:19 PM PDT

by David Martin

If you were looking forward to avoiding that iPhone line at the Apple or AT&T store by ordering early from AT&T, you're too late now.

AT&T preorders have sold out and folks placing preorders now are being told they'll have to wait up to two weeks to get a phone.

AT&T customers lucky enough to get their orders in early can still report to their respective AT&T stores at 7 a.m. Friday to get their iPhone 3G S. They will have a guaranteed slot if they show up, but others who did not preorder will have to fight over the remaining stock at Apple and AT&T stores.

AT&T is still accepting preorders, but not for an expected delivery on Friday. Preorders placed at an AT&T store will be picked up at that store, whereas online orders will be shipped directly to your home or office. We suggest ordering online and having the iPhone shipped directly to you unless you like spending a lot of time in line making new friends.

It should be noted that besides Apple and AT&T stores, Best Buy and Wal-Mart locations should also have the iPhone 3G S for sale on June 19.

What plans do you have for buying an iPhone 3G S? Tell us about it in the comments.

Iranians find ways to bypass Net censors

June 17, 2009 5:46 PM PDT

by Declan McCullagh

A new generation of Iranians has found ways to bypass the country's notoriously censorial Internet restrictions and disseminate details about Iran's internal turmoil in the wake of the recent election.

In technical circles, at least, Iran is well-known for erecting one of the world's most restrictive Internet blockades, second only to China in its scope. Certain blogs are cordoned off, politically unacceptable keywords are blocked, and Web sites like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, the BBC, and YouTube remain--at least at the moment--off-limits.

That has complicated the task of distributing videos and e-mail descriptions of the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marching in the streets to protest the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Supporters of reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have alleged that the election was a fraud.

But the government's censors have been unable to staunch every data leak. "The bottom line is that a lot of information is still getting out," says Zahir Janmohamed, advocacy director of the Middle East and North Africa for Amnesty International USA.

Some of the online restrictions appeared around the time of the election: that's when Facebook, BBC English (BBC Persia was already blocked), Technorati.com, and YouTube were added to the verboten-in-Iran list. One report says that YouTube's traffic from Iran has dropped by 90 percent in the last few days, and another says that Yahoo Messenger was blocked early Wednesday. Unconfirmed reports from Iran say Twitter.com is also blocked.

One way around the government's online blockades is to find the electronic equivalent of a detour, which involves using something known as a proxy server.

Here's how it works: Normally, a Web browser makes a connection directly to a Web site's Internet address. But that address can be easily discovered and added to the government's blacklist. The trick is to redirect Web browsing through a proxy, which could be a permanent commercial service or someone volunteering his or her computer temporarily.

Then, instead of the relatively easy task of blocking Facebook.com or YouTube.com, the Iranian government has the far more difficult job--in practice, an impossible one--of identifying and blacklisting thousands of individual proxy servers.

In the last few days, Web sites like proxysetupforiran.blogspot.com have sprouted, as have exhortations to engage in a bit of social activism by creating your own proxy server, complete with detailed instructions on how to do it.

Twitter is abuzz with information on how to set up proxies and tips on how to keep addresses known to correspond to Iranian government computers from using them. Other sites have suggested filter-bypassing utilities like a Firefox plug-in that bypasses bans on connecting to Flickr.com or software called FreeAccess Plus that claims to circumvent restrictions on YouTube, MySpace, and some Persian-language sites blocked by Iran.

Similarly, Iranian usage of the Tor anonymizing network has spiked. "We have seen a doubling of Tor users from IP addresses in Iran over the last few days," says Andrew Lewman, executive director of The Tor Project.

Think of Tor as a far more complex and powerful version of a proxy server; once a computer with the right software installed connects to the Tor network, the rest of the connection becomes very difficult for even government agencies to monitor. Unlike some Web-based anonymizers or proxy servers, Tor can handle instant messaging communications as well.

Tor's public addresses can be blocked, of course, but enterprising individuals can set up private entry points. "You act as a secure relay into the Tor network," Lewman says, referring to private entry points. "From someone watching it, it looks like an SSL session between a browser and a web server, so it doesn't stand out. We look like SSL by design, because who's going to suspect a web browser?" (SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, the standard method of encrypting Web connections to banks or credit card companies. There have been reports that Iran is blocking SSL too.)

A Web site called iran.whyweprotest.net has recommended Iranians use Tor to cloak their identities and bypass government filters; a related one called TorIR.org offers instructions on how to configure the software for most common Web browsers.

Daniel Calingaert, deputy director of programs at Freedom House, a human rights group, says Iranian authorities have been focused on jamming phones and satellite connections and have not paid as much attention to the Internet.

"They're still focused on cat and mouse games with satellite broadcasting," Calingaert says. "They had jammed BBC Persia, which is probably the most respected and known source of news. And then we've heard that BBC moved to different frequencies. A lot of people are able to get it. It varies based on time of day and neighborhood."

Janmohamed, from Amnesty International USA, says that because SMS text messages are curbed, Iranians have been using the Twitter application on mobile phones as an alternative. And now, he believes, the government has begun to pay attention. "When I look at the pattern of arrests from Saturday to today, initially you had the Mousavi supporters, the Calvin Klein activists--the urban elites--and now you're getting people of all different backgrounds," he says. "They're cracking down on a wider group of people."

According to the OpenNet Initiative, a collaboration of Harvard University, the University of Toronto, the University of Cambridge, and Oxford University, Iran "uses the commercial filtering package SmartFilter--made by the U.S.-based company, Secure Computing--as the primary technical engine of its filtering system."

McAfee now owns Secure Computing and sells the software as McAfee SmartFilter; a product description boasts of "a proven repository of more than 25 million blockable websites across more than 90 categories." (A U.S. economic embargo against Iran prohibits software licensing and the company has said in the past that the software is pirated. McAfee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain, an OpenNet contributor, wrote in a blog post this week that "today Iran runs its own home-grown filtering software.)

Even if Iranians can't always secure a reliable Internet connection to the outside world, they nevertheless have a potent voice: the Iranian and Persian diaspora, amounting to millions of former residents living abroad. It just takes one e-mail message with a video or photo attached for the contents to rocket around the diaspora and eventually end up on a place like TehranBureau.com. In a pinch, a simple phone call to a family member abroad can be transcribed for a Twitter feed.

Freedom House's Calingaert says: "What makes this situation different from others and is driving a lot of it is that you have a very large and vibrant online and blogger community of Iranians outside the country."

"People are really bypassing channels though Facebook and Twitter and contacting their cousins," Amnesty's Janmohamd adds. "You've got one of the largest Iranian diasporas in Los Angeles. Information is getting out there."