Rumors have been swirling for awhile about Kinect’s impending integration into devices not traditionally called “Xbox 360,” so this one comes as no surprise. Microsoft is busy working on an embedded version of Kinect for laptops (and probably) tablets. This iteration of the polarizing tech aims to replace the ditzy little webcam found on typical mobile computers, enabling a slew of gesture and voice controls no doubt geared toward the new Windows 8 user interface. But the big question on everyone’s mind is: how will it work?

Gaming seems like the most obvious use to the fine folks of The Daily, for a fairly obvious reason: that’s all it’s really being used for right now (awesome hacks notwithstanding, of course).

Click here to view the embedded video.

But what else might the system be used for? For starters, voice control of applications and the operating system. Think about the current integration of Kinect voice commands on Xbox 360, but integrated throughout the entire operating system or embedded into apps.

Another possibility, hinted at about a year ago, is the idea of facial recognition logon. This already works with Kinect on Xbox–at least, it does if the lighting conditions are right–but in the up-close space of a laptop it should be very accurate pretty much all the time. Better hope you don’t have any local doppelgangers, though.

Gesture support for the new Windows 8 UI is a given, I think. The OS was clearly built with the idea in mind, and combined with both voice and tough could signal a paradigm shift in how we interact with our computers. If they can pull it off, such a combination will make Microsoft’s competitors look like they’re standing still.

What are your thoughts, though? How do you see Kinect integration in laptops and tablets affecting the way you do the things you do? Sound off in the comments!

From: Joystiq
Source: TheDaily

There are things that never cease to amaze me in life, but this is not one of them. Symantec–a storied company which makes decent products for the Enterprise Computer market but isn’t really worth the price for home users–has announced that yeah, they got hacked. Okay, fair enough, right? After all, hacks happen, and nobody’s immune. But get this: they were hacked all the way back in 2006, and only now are realizing that their source code was stolen.

Holy.Freaking.Crap. And it gets worse.

According to the Wired article, Symantec now believes that the source code for their “2006 era” software was stolen. OK, fair enough–but software doesn’t start over from scratch each and every year–the codebase is built and evolved over time, meaning that some portion of that code is still part of today’s products. It’s likely that it’s a fairly large portion of code, to boot, given the breadth of products Symantec offers on a common platform, including consumer and professional level antivirus applications, to say nothing of remote access apps.

This latter area should be of particular concern to IT administrators. Apparently, hackers have not only distributed Symantec’s source code for these products, but have reverse engineered the PC Anywhere product to allow for easy control of remote PC Anywhere servers. That’s bad news any way you slice it, and a superb catalyst for getting your organization the hell off of their products. Luckily, with highly competent alternative services abounding these days, it should be easy to replace PCA with the likes of a Team Viewer or Go To My PC type alternative.

What an embarrassing turn of events for Symantec, and a wake up call for Systems Administrators everywhere to look elsewhere for their antivirus and remote access software needs.

Source: Wired

Whenever a new operating system is released–and especially if said OS is released by Microsoft–there’s much ballyhooing to be done about its specs and requirements. Particularly after the debacle of Windows Vista, which was sluggish on even the very newest hardware at the time of its release, Microsoft has been under a lot of pressure to “de-bloat” Windows. With Windows 7, they proved they could do that by shipping an OS that was smaller and tremendously faster than its predecessor. With Windows 8, we’re seeing that evolution continue as Windows slims down and speeds up yet again.

Of course, this time it’s very different: Windows 8 is a complete reinvention of the desktop operating system, with a front-and-center focus on the touch and, if rumors are correct, voice, experience. With all these new bells and whistles, the natural question is: what the hell kind of minimums will I need to run this?! Click through after the break for the full lowdown, sans bellyaching!

Source: Within Windows

What follows is from the Within Windows website, with AtNS’s commentary in blue.

Minimum component set for tablets and convertible PCs
These are the BASELINE specifications for Windows 8 tablets and PC’s. While some sites we’ve seen today are stirring the “ZOMG! Teh Rez is too l0w!” pot, there are already Windows 8 tablets announced with higher resolutions up to 1080p. So let’s not get our panties in a twist for no reason!

Storage: At least 10gb free space after the out-of-box experience completes. In all likelihood, this means that the minimums we’ll see in storage for these devices are 16GB of NAND storage, similar to iPad and other tablets.

System firmware: UEFI. This is the new “Basic Input/Output System” replacing the decades-old BIOS. It should ensure that new systems have a lot more protection from malware running in the OS or from bootable media.

Networking: WLAN and Bluetooth 4.0 + LE (low energy). Obvious, but the good news about Bluetooth 4.0 as a minimum specification is that we can count on battery life improvements from even the most basic of devices.

Graphics: Direct3D 10 device w/ WDDM 1.2 driver. Good news for gamers, though I’m a little surprised they didn’t mandate DirectX 11 since that’s been the current version for more than 2 years. Still, DX10 is very capable.

Resolution: 1366×768. This has some folks up in arms. Don’t be pissed–it’s a MINIMUM, which means that even the cheapest, lowest end device will still have better resolution than your iPad 1 or 2. 3 is up in the air .

Touch support: At least 5 touch points, must pass all tests. Better than some tablets, less than others. For reference, iPhone supports 5, iPad supports 11.

Camera: 720p Don’t get too excited. That’s 0.9 Megapixel.

Ambient Light Sensor: 1-30k lux capable w/ dynamic range of 5-60K. Neat! Sensors.

Magnetometer. Even MORE sensors. We like sensors. Sensors are sensible. They make sense.
Accelerometer: 3 axes w/ data rates >= 50Hz. In case you were worried there aren’t enough sensors.

Gyroscope. Last one. We promise. Maybe.

USB 2.0: At least one controller and exposed port. Likely, these will be MicroUSB ports, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few tablets shipped with full size ports. Personally I’m looking forward to the “Transformer Prime” variants.

Speakers. So you can hear stuff, I’ll bet. Surprised Microphone isn’t listed, given it’d seem to be a requirement for Microsoft’s TellMe service.

But among it’s perceived failings is that, unlike earlier attempts at mobile, the new Windows Phone is not typically known as a “hacker’s paradise,” instead opting for a very locked-down experience that keeps the OS running ship-shape 99% of the time. That’s a good thing for most users, but it annoys the crap out of people who want to customize their phones to the Nth degree. The good news is that in recent months, that’s begun to change, and today there’s a new ROM for the much-beloved HTC HD7, this time featuring the latest build of Windows Phone 7.5 (AKA Mango). Head on over to XDA Developers to check it out!

Luckily, that’s very possible thanks to a free downloadable app called iRinger, which will allow you to convert almost any audio format you can throw at it to an iPhone appropriate ringtone that’ll work with any version of the device, included the much-maligned (yet celebrated) iPhone 4. There is no application to install–you simply download the executable and run it. In my tests I found the app speedy, easy to use and virus free, though as a precaution I do encourage you to always perform a virus scan on any executable file you download from absolutely anywhere before you run it. You can never be too safe, after all.

The process is pretty simple. Open the program, click “Import,” and your music will appear on the timeline. By dragging the “In” and “Out” sliders at the bottom right of the app window (it’s a small app window, you can’t miss them) you can select the portion of the song you want to use as your ringtone. When you’ve got the clip you want to use (up to 30 seconds in length, which is the maximum the iPhone supports,) simply click “Export,” browse to the file location where you want to save the ringtone, click the checkbox that says “also export to iTunes,” and click go. In about 10 seconds your new ringtone will both save to the folder you specified and add itself to iTunes, making it quick and easy both to sync to your phone and to email your ringtone to friends, family, and of course to Steve Jobs, along with a note that says “Neener-neener-neener, I still have my $1.50!” Or something like that.

Software: iRinger

Price: Free, though they do ask for a donation if you like it.

Rating: Highly recommended if you prefer an app on your PC vs a web based solution like Myxer.

Download: iRinger

Yes, I know-we’ve been slacking off on the updates for awhile. We’re leaving that in the past and moving forward now; hope you don’t mind!

Today the Windows Home Server Team Blog (don’t try typing that while holding your breath!) lifted the veil on ‘Vail’, the next version of Windows Home Server. Like all of Microsoft’s other server products, WHS will be turning x64 only starting with this generation of the software, so for those of you with existing Intel Atom powered devices–sorry, you’re SOL. On the bright side, chances are that if you own a WHS device already, you’re a bit of a nerd and will be eager to drop the cash to upgrade your hardware along with your software. Thank goodness for Capitalism! And Chef Boyardee. They both warm our hearts and tummies!

Anyway, they’ve got a nice introductory video available on their blog site showing off some of the cool new features (streaming to devices outside the LAN and video transcoding ftw!), and the WHS Team would just love to have you test out the software, give them some feedback, and maybe help shape the final outcome of Windows Home Server’s snazzy new design, built from the ground up on the Windows 7/2008 R2 codebase.

Check out the video, and look for our impressions of the beta here in about a week!

Update: Finally got into the beta, and it sucked. BORING as dirt.

So, it’s been nearly two weeks, and generally speaking I have been enjoying my PS3 quite a bit. I finished Metal Gear Solid 4 last night (more on that later), I’ve played a fair amount of God of War Collection (including the very nice looking demo of God of War 3), and I’ve tinkered a little with Little Big Planet. And of course, I’ve downloaded some demos from Playstation Network, AKA PSN, thinking it would be awfully fun to play some potential purchases.

The problem is, PSN sucks. It sucks a LOT. For all those fans who decry Xbox Live and its yearly fees, citing the free PSN as the holy grail, let me tell you something: You get what you pay for, and PSN is the proof in that pudding. Let me give you some examples of why this is so. I decided to try out the demo of Dante’s Inferno, which weighs in at about 1GB, and I thought at the same time that it would be fun to try out both the PS3 and 360 versions. So I fired up my PS3 and kicked off the download, and watched as the progress bar slowly crept to 1%. “Well,” I thought, “This is boring. I might as well start the 360 download too.” And so I did. One hour later, I was playing the 360 version-and the PS3 version was at 30%. 5 hours later and the PS3 version finished downloading at last. “Woohoo!” I thought: “Now I can try it out, too!” And then the install screen popped up. The Install Screen, people. On a CONSOLE. Luckily the install only took about 5 minutes, but still: On Xbox 360, you never, EVER install demos. Once the download is finished, you’re ready to play.

So today, they released the public beta of MAG: Massive Action Game. I’ve been a little excited about this. I’m not typically an FPS fan, but this one seemed like something special, what with its 256 player online doolabob and huge levels, and so I eagerly signed into the Playstation Store and found my download. “Hooray!” I thought, “it’s only 289MB!”

Three hours later, it finally finished. Three.Fucking.Hours.

I know what you’re gonna say: “But Jason, it’s your internet connection, it’s too slow for the awesome size of 289MB!” And to you I say “Ha! In your dreams, buddy! I’m on a 10Mb Fiber connection! I can stream HD movies from Netflix and hulu and rarely have so much as a blink!” But here’s the fun part: So I go to launch the MAG demo, and what do I find? After going through the tedious 5 minute install process, it pops up a screen to ask if it’s OK to download another 1.8GB before I can play the demo. That’s about as lovely as it can get, isn’t it? So that’s where I am.

Waiting on PS3 to download. Can’t do anything else with the system while that happens.

Good thing my 360 still works. Moral of the story? You get what you pay for, and you need look no further than the free PlayStation network to see that in action.

So, for Christmas this year (my favorite Consumerist holiday; go Commercialism!) I was fortunate enough to receive a brand new PS3 Slim console, with a 120GB hard drive. I’d been looking forward to it for a month (we actually got it on Black Friday, but figured since it was an expensivish item close to the holidays we’d make it a gift), so I was excited when, late on Christmas Eve, I finally got permission to open it up. The experience was cool at first (is opening up a new gadget ever not fun?), but quickly took a dive into frustration before it finally emerged to become cool again. Here are my thoughts:

Little Big Planet is awesome. Blows away almost every other game this gen, especially the “realistic” garbage! BRILLIANT art design!

Metal Gear Solid 4 looks pretty good, but certainly no better than games like Modern Warfare 2 or Gears of War 2. This is one of those games that was supposed to be a “360 can’t do this” example but, ummm…it’s not. Controls sucked at first, but I got used to them after an hour or so and then it became fun. The Cinematography and voice acting are phenomenal.

God of War Collection kicks ass. Looks very nice. Clearly still just an upscaled PS2 game, but the filtering and other enhancements make it passable, like a first gen PS3 or 360 title almost. Still a great game!

PS3 itself-is not a consumer friendly product at all. Out of the box I had to manually enable Optical audio out (connecting an HDMI cable automatically disables all other audio output. Why? Silly!), then find out which codecs my Onkyo 6.1 receiver supported and manually enable those before it would work. The download of the firmware update was fast (5 minutes) but the install was ridiculously long (literally, 30+ minutes. WTF?). Software updates to games are unbelievably slow. 2 hours to update MGS4 so I could play it, 20 minutes to update LBP. Mind you, I’m on a 10MB Fiber connection, and the downloads were speedy enough, it’s the installation process that’s slow, which is systemic. Four other friends have told me that’s the way theirs are as well. Why is it so mind numbingly slow?

Installing demos after download is lame and varies wildly. Fairytale Fights took about 30 seconds, Ghostbusters about 5 MINUTES. Why do these need to be “installed” at all?

DVD playback is gorgeous. Easily the best upscaling dvd player I’ve ever seen, not even a question. It’s dvd upscaling playback capability pisses all over the 360’s, and to my surprise even passed up my dedicated DVD player’s upscaling. Nice indeed. I haven’t played or bought any bluray movies, but I don’t really care, either, as I don’t think most movies are worth paying double or more. The only way I’d buy the bluray version over the DVD version is if they were the same exact price, maybe a dollar more. With the upscaling, though, I don’t think I’ll have a need in most cases anyway. Visual Effects heavy epics might be an exception on occasion, but again, only if the cost is comparable to the cost of a DVD.

Audio output is phenomenal-easily better than 360’s, especially on DVD’s. Star Trek sounds and looks better than ever when played on the PS3.

The lack of an IR port for the universal remotes is lame, as the selection of Bluetooth capable remotes is simply awful. The dedicated PS3 dvd remote is garbage, useful for absolutely nothing but the PS3, as it has no IR port for compatibility with other devices, making it essentially useless. I’ll just keep using the controller, I guess, but in my view, Sony really missed the boat on either a)putting an IR port on the PS3 itself, or b) adding IR capability to the official remote so you could use it as a universal. Remotes that only control one device are so…1980′s.

I love the design of the slim. It’s sexy, relatively small (compared to the phat) and has a nice finish instead of that “ghetto fabulous” gloss crap on the old model. I’m still not sold on the controller, because even though it’s dual shock 3 it still feels a little too light and flimsy compared to the solid heft of a 360 controller. It’s also not nearly as ergonomic or comfortable, but then, we’ve been dealing with the exact same controller shape since 1995. Sigh.

All in all, I really like the system. The games, of course, look about the same as 360 games, but the audio is better on movies (and I’m using an optical connector on both). It doesn’t do streaming as well as the 360 does (for some reason the PS3 stutters video from Hulu, streamed via PlayOn media server, while the 360 does not, from the same server. Errors in the server event log indicate that PS3 doesn’t handle the DLNA implementation correctly, which is probably why. Hopefully it gets fixed in a firmware update).

I love that I can stream stuff from the PS3 to the PSP, I just wish the PSP had a more reliable battery. Even my double capacity battery only lasts about 3 hours with wifi enabled. So far the functionality of streaming to PSP from a remote location over the internet is spotty-sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, which is a bit of a drag, but to be expected.

Anyway, I’m glad to add the system and a few games to my library. So far I have MGS4, LBP, Warhawk and GoW Collection. I plan to snag Motorstorm next week, since gamestop has it for $9.99 used, and it seems like a nice HD Excite Truck type game, so hopefully I’ll enjoy it.

 When Sony announced their very own evolution of the Wii Remote this year at E3, nobody was particularly surprised. After all, even Microsoft joined the fray with it’s no-controller motion controller system, Project Natal (oh, but for a cooler name), and let’s face it: Nintendo’s more than proven that motion control in some form is the way forward for video game interaction. At this point, it would be more shocking if the big boys didn’t leap in and try to parrot Nintendo; after all, they’ve managed to nearly outsell the two combined.

With that said, I can’t claim to have seen this one coming: The Wii Remote…now for Playstation 3. Luckily Sony’s not exactly behind this (it’s coming from Blaze Products Europe), because oh how the fanboys would howl. No doubt there’s a collective sigh of relief at Sony HQ today, the kind that comes with the ability to smile and say “wasn’t us!” As you can see from the diagram at left, the new “BLAZE PS3™ Motion Freedom 3D Controller” (yeah, I copied and pasted, so sue me) is virtually identical to the Wii Remote, with the sole exception being the addition of a ton of buttons (wonder how often they’ll get pressed by your palm while swinging a virtual tennis racket or baseball–err, cricket bat).

The description isn’t clear as to whether it has a pointer functionality to it or not, nor does it tell us whether it has the full range of detection found in the Wii’s Motion Plus adapter, so we’ll just have to sit on our hands and wait for more info. In the meantime…sit back and chuckle a bit as the “fad” migrates to the “big boy” consoles.

Of course, you probably already know that the story has the 360 Elite (120GB) receiving a $100 price drop (to $299) to counter the newly minted PS3 slim 120GB version that was announced the other day at Gamescom, but still, for $229 you’d be hard pressed to find a better deal on the 360 right now. My feeling is snag it while it’s cheap, it won’t be too long before all you’ll get in this price range is the hard-drive-less Arcade model at $199 (though if Microsoft is smart, they’ll drop that sucker to $149 post-haste!).

Now about that Wii price drop…