T e c h n o d eIssue 1 sprIng 2011

TableTs aUGMeNTeD RealITY

4G MobIle D IG ITal aRT R IoT ING

PlUs 2011’s 20 hoTTesT GaDGeTs

new tech to changeyour world

Welcome to the very first issue of Technode, a new technology magazine from the team behind the TechDigest and Shiny Shiny websites.

In it you’ll find round ups of what we think are the hottest gadgets of the summer, a look at how disruptive 4G technology could be to the mobile phone industry, a glance at the future of digital art and a whole lot more.

Rewind a minute though. So what is a web company doing producing a magazine? Why not just put the stories on your sites?

Well, we felt that there were some stories we wanted to write which would be much better served by a magazine format because they were lon-ger reads. There was also a series of stories - all focusing on the immediate future of technology - that we thought would sit well together in one publi-cation. Lastly the introduction of the iPad and other tablets PCs has changed magazines so they no longer have to follow a rigid pattern. It is early days for us for but as time goes by we hope to play a real role in re-inventing tech publications. There’ll be a lot more flashy stuff next time.

The best part of all though is that Technode will be available in a num-ber of formats. You can grab a fully interactive version of the mag if you own an iPad. Alternatively download a PDF version and read it on your PC or your mobile device. Or if you want to read the features in the bath there’s always the printed version courtesy of our partners at Magcloud.

Oh, and unless you buy the printed version, for which there’s a fee to cover print costs, Technode is completely free.

If you have enjoyed this then issue two of Technode will be available sometime during the summer and will mainly focus on technology and how it is changing the car. Until then...

INTrOducing Technode

T e c h n o d eTechnode was a collaborative editorial project with contributions

from the following: Gerald Lynch, Anna Leach, Elisabeth Edvardsen, Laura Scott, Ashley Norris, Chris Price

Designed and prepared for iPad by onegoodeye.co.ukThanks to Alligator Digital Magazines and Magcloud

Shiny Media. 5a Goodge Place, London, W1T 4SD. UKTel: +44 (0)2031 671 944

Contact: Ashley@shinymedia.com

contents 4 This Year’s Key Tech Trends We look at the big tech developments for the next 12 months. Including 3D games, in car connectivity and entertainment. Plus the latest web tablets

8 How Augmented Reality Is Coming Of AgeMore than just a gimmick AR really is going to change your life

12 Summer’s 20 Hottest GadgetsThe battle of the hottest handhelds incuding the Nintendo 3DS and the Sony NGP. Also Blackberry’s Playbook and more

22 The Future Of Mobile Devices3D tech hits tablet and smartphones. But are European manufacturers losing the smartphone race?

26 Facebook RiotsPublic demos have come a long way since the days of home made placards and chants of ‘Maggie Out’. Now demos are organised us-ing social networks like Facebook and Twitter

28 How 4G Might Mean Free Mobile Data Fourth generation, or 4G, technology offers super fast data speeds without the need for a fixed connection

30 Social LiarsAre social networks encouraging us to embellish the truth in or-der to win friends and influence people?

34 Why Digital Art Is All About TechnologyDigital art is merging hi-tech with creativity. Once the preserve of geeks, code is now the hottest new raw material

4 26 34

3 key Tech Trends

by gerald lynch

The next six months look like being pivotal ones for the gadget world

with several key technologies finally hitting the mainstream. here are three

to keep your eye on.

It’s been the industry buzzword for nearly half a decade now, but 2011 finally sees all the pieces in place for the 3D revolution to really kick in. From 3D content creation to video consumption, there’s no reason for a 3D-ready device not to make it into every tech-savvy household this year.

For starters, decent 3D TVs are dropping in price faster than mince pies do in January. The superb 40-inch Samsung LE40C750 now costs less than £750. But those who can afford to splash out even further can also look forward to truly luxurious sets in the coming year, such as the 70-inch Sharp Aquos Quattron LE935 with quad-pixel technology, which is due in the Spring.

While there still isn’t as much 3D content out there as the TV manu-facturers must surely be crying out for 2011 will be the first full year of broadcasting for the UK’s first 3D-only TV channel, Sky 3D. A successful trial in pubs over the last year has seen it slowly creep into homes, with now a wide range of

3D programming available to Sky’s premium subscribers. 3D content creation on a personal level is also becoming increasingly affordable thanks to the sliding prices of dual-lens camcorders, with the pocket-sized Sony Bloggie 3D touching down in April, expected to cost little more than £150.

The ever-improving attempts at autostereoscopy (e.g glasses-less 3D) will also push 3D TV into the mainstream this year, with excel-lent examples from Sony and Toshiba on show at January’s CES show. It has the potential to totally negate the now-tiresome “passive vs. active” debate that surrounds and confuses potential 3D adopt-ers. There are still a few teething problems (limited “sweet spots” in which to truly appreciate the 3D depth effects still plague the sets), but the continued advancements here will eventually break the bar-rier that the need for expensive glasses has put in place. In terms of quality it’s a gamble at this stage, but Toshiba are planning on releas-ing an autostereoscopic TV to the public before the year is out.

Look beyond 3D movies on TV and the potential for the technol-ogy becomes even greater. It’s not uncommon to find web connected sets sporting webcams and Skype video-calling capabilities these days, and here is an area where 3D TVs could really come into their own. Picture being able to see a loved

The grOwTh Of The 3D ecOsysTem

1

tech trends

Companies like Sky and Disney have pioneered 3D content across the globe

one many miles away in full 3D, being able to give them a virtual hug or a virtual handshake during an overseas video-conferenced busi-ness meeting.

Or think of the possibilities for shopping from a 3D TV. Imagine being able to spin around a 3D, virtual version of a pair of trainers that you’ve been eyeing up to view them from all angles before pur-chasing. It could be possible: pair a web connection with an inte-grated motion sensing unit inside a television, similar to the popular Xbox 360 Kinect which tracks limb movement, and you could use it to preview a product from all angles with a sense of depth from the display. Gesture controls could also be used to wave through item lists, or browse different virtual stores. It could bring augmented reality into the home, allowing a web connect-ed TV and camera to scan items in your living room and suggest other products you may like based on what you already own

(just like Google Goggles), before allowing you to manipulate them on screen in 3D.

Games consoles are also now ready to get in on the action too. Both the Xbox 360 and PS3 can now play 3D games (with the Sony machine also acting as a 3D Blu-ray player) but the most interesting 3D gaming prospect of all comes from the Nintendo 3DS handheld.

Featuring a 3.5 inch autostereo-scopic display (made far more watchable thanks to the close proximity in which it’s held to the user), it makes 3D content acces-sible as it too doesn’t need a pair of 3D glasses to work. If sales of the original DS are anything to go by, the console is likely to be the first mass-market 3D device due to its relative affordability compared to 3D TVs. Just as portable will be 3D smartphones, with LG and Sharp both rumoured to have devices with autosteroscopic displays in the works.

The grOwTh Of The 3D ecOsysTem

1

Below - punters gawp at Sky football in 3D. Opposite - videos of 3D phones and headsets.

These super-powered tablets and phones will need strong apps to make any proposed hardware advancements worthwhile and the future here definitely lies in web-based ones. The reasoning here is simple; there’s nothing better than having all your info synced and ready no matter what device you’re using, and web based apps make that easier than ever. As examples, think of using Amazon’s Kindle ereading apps, perfectly syncing bookmarks across tablets, PCs and smartphones, or Google’s Docs, instantly updating edited files across platforms no matter what device the changes were made on. Stored and backed-up remotely, the safety of your data is (for the most part) doubly guaranteed by their use. The importance of web-based apps will only grow over the course of the year, especially if Google’s forthcoming Chrome desktop OS, which relies almost entirely on this form of “cloud” computing, proves popular.

Apps are allowing all forms of technology to become “smart” or “connected”, from web connected TVs to fridges that prompt you to stock up on essentials if they think you’re running low on milk. This increasingly expanding connected

eco-system will be felt no more acutely than in in-car technology, which may be the most exciting development in automotive circles since the introduction of the electric vehicle.

Companies like Parrot are already experimenting with web-connected dashboard stereo systems. Its As-teroid unit, is packing in the Android OS and had the potential to stream cloud-based music from the likes of Spotify directly into the car, as well as more conventional uses such as looking up map and directional data.

Ford take the concept one step fur-ther, having been developing their own connected solution for some years now in the shape of Ford SYNC. It’s a voice-activated dash-board system that will allow drivers to access content when on the road. The release of the Ford SYNC SDK is of particular significance, al-lowing developers to create apps or modify existing ones to work with the smart dashboard. Connectivity between BlackBerry and Android handsets and the Ford kit is already available, with iPhone compatibility set to follow.

In carcOnnecTIvITy

2

Jason Johnson demonstrates the My Ford System in the new Ford Focus

tech trends

“More and more drivers will find a way to use their devices and their apps while in the car,” said Der-rick Kuzak, Ford Motor Company’s Group Vice President of Global Product Development.

“They can do it unsafely, or they can do it through safer voice-acti-vated solutions such as Ford SYNC - keeping their eyes on the road and their hands onthe wheel.”

App submissions for the platform already number into the thousands and it’s little wonder why; Ford SYNC is now in 3 million vehicles and counting, a genuinely sig-nificant figure that is only set to expand, representing an intriguing new area in which app developers can spread their wings.

Look a little further into the future and networked, connected cars could completely revolutionise the way we travel. We’re talking about cars that could potentially drive themselves; with a precise GPS unit in every cay that could track vehicle positioning within inches, motion sensors in bumpers to prevent collisions and a Sat Nav to decide destinations, a network of computer controlled cars could become an electronic chauffeur service for every passenger.

The same principles could apply to networked emergency ser-vices, which could drastically lower response times to life threatening incidents or thefts. A car that can sense when it has been in a serious accident and automatically calls the ambulance or fire brigade, with location aware features allowing

them to track down the address of the incident in an instant. Or a mobile app that kills the ignition in a stolen car, calling the police to track down perpetrators before they’ve had a chance to make a getaway.

Some of these ideas are already making their way into new vehicles, soon to be available from a car dealership near you. The latest Ford Focus model, already in production and up for pre-order before general sales begin next year can auto-matically parallel-park. If you pull up near a parking space and switch on the automatic parallel parking assist function, the car will calculate whether or not it can fit in the gap and set about squeezing itself in while you sit back, never needing to crane your neck around to avoid scrapes.

Likewise, Volvo are experimenting with cars that can automatically fol-low a lead vehicle in a convoy. The project is codenamed SARTRE (add in any existential readings of the technology as you see fit!), which stands for Safe Road Trains for the Environment. Sensors built into one lead vehicle send information to a fleet of driver-less cars trailing behind, which automatically adapt their speed, steering and distance between each other dependant on the actions of the human-manned front car. By closely monitoring each vehicle in this way, there’s great potential for increased road safety, driver and passenger com-fort in the following vehicles and reduced CO2 emissions.

In carcOnnecTIvITy

2

The Volvo Road train where cars follow each other in a convoy automatically adapting their speed, distance and steering independent of human actions.

Just as unavoidable as 3D this year will be tablet computers. The Apple iPad opened the flood-gates last year, a total trailblazer for the form factor that proved not only that slate devices could be useful, but that they could be sexy and desirable to consumers too. It’s taken a year of playing catch-up for the other major manufacturers to put their devices together, but a line-up of genuine contenders are now standing tall and ready to rock Apple’s dominance. Or at least until the iPad mark-2 rears its “magical” head.

The iPad 2 could prove a tipping point in tablet trends, potentially moving them away from media consumption to creation too. Re-sourceful artists are already using the tablet as a makeshift lightbox, and it has even become the stan-dard as a portfolio presentation tool for photographers. But expected hardware improvements could make creativity flourish from within the device itself. For instance, with Apple expected to include decent

front-and-rear facing cameras this time around, you’d have everything you need for a great mobile blog-ging platform; a 3G connection, a great web browser, a generously sized keyboard, an integrated stills camera for capturing all the action and a video recorder for “vlogging” interviews and more.

Motorola’s Xoom and the Galaxy Tab 2 will lead the Android charge, rocking the new Honeycomb ver-sion of the operating system, the first from Google to be made spe-cifically optimised for tablet-sized devices. It will (hopefully) lead to devices with interfaces just as slick as Apple’s iOS, and will increasingly be bolstered by multi-core CPUs, a trend that’s set to ignite mobile computing in smartphones too.

LG’s forthcoming Optimus Pad makes use of just such a dual-core processor in the shape of its Nvidia Tegra 2 chip in order to power its 3D visuals. Again the potential ap-plication for such a display in tablets is riveting; a mobile workstation in which to organise our files and media in a faux-3D space, browse maps with depth-defining topogra-phy not to mention consuming 3D movies and games. The Optimus Pad’s Achilles hell however is it’s need for 3D glasses, stunting it’s portability somewhat.

The Tablet that may yet surprise us all is the Playbook from Blackberry. Built with work applications as its key features it could prove itself to be the corporate must have for 2011. It will raise the bar in making Tablets productive work tools.

TableTs cOnsumpTIOn

anD creaTIOn

3

Pretty much every mainstream consumer electronics maker now has a tablet PC.

tech trends

Augmented reality: still the future?how aR is moving away from fluffy gimmicks to truly enrich our experience of the real world

Smartphones have been the catalyst for a host of innovative uses for Augmented Reality like this Dutch museum tour.

by anna leach

TechnODe OpInIOn

!One of the big issues facing the Augmented Reality industry in the next six months is sorting out the hype from the true devel-opment, the gimmicks from the ground-

breaking.This is hyped area. Mostly because it’s a sexy area.

It’s visual, it’s dramatic and to those of us who like to think technology can change the world it’s almost ir-resistible – you can see the world changing through your mobile phone – dragons hover above Oxford Street, information hovers above buildings, tweets pop up on streets as people post them and you can read about what’s going on behind walls you can’t see through. All in real time.

It’s imaginative, visual and sexy – little wonder that two of the industries most interested in exploiting it are advertising and the music industry – who have both sunk a lot of money into the enterprise producing anything from a Rolling Stones app to the Black Eyed Peas BEP360 animated augmented music video app to pop-out virtual games on the back of cereal packets. And where they go - money follows - the AR industry was given a projected value of $1.5bn by 2015 by Juni-per research.

But - is it useful? That is the question Augmented Reality fans and developers are going to have to deal with in the near future. Insiders have been sceptical about the promised $1.5bn revenues for the AR industry by 2015. We’ve seen some fun apps, and some attempts at great works – like groundbreaking translator app Word Lens. But even in apps like Word Lens, the user experience hasn’t fully caught up with the ideas and the overlaid translation on top of the original text can be shaky and flickery. I think it is still more of a toy than a useful tool.

WHAT’S IN THE WAY There are a bunch of external factors that are holding up the devel-opment of Augmented Reality. Things like the processing power of mobile phones, the inaccu-racy of civilian-grade GPS and that battery power needed to fuel complex tasks.

Consequently there’s a hitlist of obvious improve-ments that will make augmented reality significantly bet-ter. And they are largely to do with mobile phones which is where most augmented reality stuff is right now. Most smartphone batteries only last a day, which means that

power-hungry AR apps will never be things you leave on in the background or have running for more than a few minutes at a time. When our phones are jacked-up power boats, this will all be a lot easier.

Currently GPS for civilians is only accurate to about 10m which restricts what can be done with geolocated AR. That’s set to improve to about 2-3m in 2015 but in the meantime there is a more accurate form which uses local cell phone towers as well as satellites to triangulate the position of the user, though not all handsets support this.

Since AR relies on downloading and displaying information from the internet, it works best when there is a good internet connection. A one bar 3G connection isn’t always good enough to keep up with the demands of streaming heavy content - graphics for example. When 4G mobile internet finally hits - it’s looking like this will be about 2015 in the UK - this will only get bet-ter, faster and more convincing..

As for processing power - things are looking up already: LG’s 2X smartphone unveiled at CES

since Ar relies on downloading and displaying information from the internet, it works best when there is a good internet connection.

AUGMentd reALItY

has a dual-core chip, we’re likely to see a lot more of these in future. The advent of tablets will be a big deal here too, because it will make mobile devices bigger and more powerful - able to deal with the demands of com-plex applications. However, I don’t see people wandering around the streets with iPads perched on their faces, the way people wear glasses so, user experience will have to be compelling and useful for this sort of AR to become useful.

BEYOND MOBILE PHONES Branching out from phones and tablets, I think we’ll see AR winding up in other things too. Cars are one of the obvious areas where Augmented reality could work well. Windshields can act like display units, there’s a strong supply of power from the car’s bat-tery and information like directions, traffic infor-mation could be easily displayed and mapped on top of the real world. A big issue will be making the displays prominent enough to be useful but not distracting, obviously there are major issues with safety in cars.

Gaming is another area we’re likely to see a strong take-up of AR - whether it’s enhanced Kinect style devices that put the monsters to fight into your living room and track your arms, making the image interact as you punch it, or real-world games that involve people running around with headsets seeing virtual bombs and enemies overlaid on the real world. See Human Pac-Man - the game where contestants in augmented reality headsets chase each other through the streets for a fun though ridiculous example of this.

GOOD AND GIMICKY AR As the obstacles clear out of the way, developers can get on with the business of making great applications using Augmented Reality. AR needs creativity and some really hard thinking about usefulness and user experience to really make it mainstream.

To reconsider that - let’s drill down to just what Augmented Reality is. It’s when the real world is con-nected to the virtual world in a meaningful way. Gim-micks happen when the AR is only pasted on top of reality with no interaction or purpose. In some apps for example, little cartoon figures will just be superimposed on a picture of the real world and float around on top

of the image coming in through your viewfinder - that’s not true AR because there’s no interaction between real and virtual. All the developer has done is substitute the background to his drawing for a feed from the camera of the phone. It’s a neat trick, but there’s not meaningful connection.

If the virtual character winces when you touch it with your real-world fingers, or if he reacts to standing on a table, then that is real AR. That’s the virtual world connecting to and interacting with the real world.

HOW IT WORKS Currently, there are two ways of making that connection between the vir-tual and the real one. One is location based and uses GPS to work out where to pin the content, this is like having the Wikipedia article for Brit-ish museum pinned to the location of the Brit-ish museum; and the other is image recognition based and uses visual clues to position the virtual content. This is like the webcam on your laptop positioning a virtual moustache on your face be-cause it knows which bit of the image is your face because of smart image recognition software.

Brands are increasingly using AR. Walt Disney launched the worlds first Augmented Reality outdoor campaign for Prince of Persia in May last year

Applications of geolocated AR include in-drive navigation on cars, tourist guides and local discovery engines. Consumer applications for image-recognition AR include anything to do with facial recognition or advertising - characters pop out of cereal packets and magazines. Industry has many uses for this kind of thing - helping engineers fit parts of an engine together visu-ally, for example.

MAKING AR USEFUL The big challenge facing AR is making that connection between the virtual world and the real world useful. The appeal of virtual reality is obvious. We know that people can spend hours and hours engrossed in virtual worlds like computer games or Second Life.

Reality is, well, what we live in – we have no choice but to be interested in it.

But being neither real nor virtual - augmented real-ity is a tricky thing to get right. It doesn’t have the fan-tasy escape function of virtual reality – you’d never fire up an AR app to escape from it all, same way you might play World of Warcraft. As for the real world - well - the problem is that often when we’re doing things in the real world we don’t want to be distracted from them. If you’re with your friends in the pub, for example you don’t want to be looking at them through a screen, even if it lets you interact with their social media profiles.

There are dangers to wandering the streets of a city with your eyes glued to a screen. We do

Howard Ogden of AugmentReality and MobiliStar is one of our favourite aug-mented reality developers. Based in Am-sterdam, he has worked a lot with aug-mented reality platform Layar and made the ground-breaking Beatles AR app which landed him headlines across the world. He tells about the Microsoft Kinect and his AR Shazam..

Are we correct in thinking that the two main branches of Augmented Reality are geolocated AR and image recognition AR?We can use either location or computer vision as triggers for AR content. Currently there’s only one mobile platform that can serve both types of AR content (Junaio) but expect more coming to market in the first half of 2011 (Layar is developing an IR solution). Both branches of AR are seeing a stratospheric rise in popularity, acceptance and usage.

That said, it shouldn’t matter how the content is being served. We think the technol-ogy behind the delivery of AR should remain invisible to the end-user. The only clear dif-ferentiation that should matter is whether the user is static (i.e. in front of a fixed screen) or mobile.

What are the advantages and general uses of geolocated AR?The platforms that allow us to deliver Geo-lo-cated AR content (Wikitude, Layar and Junaio) are cloud-based systems with API’s that can be updated in real-time. This is great when you have lots of evolving data (or points of interest). For companies like Yellow Pages or Funda (a Dutch real estate company) who we worked with last year, this is perfect.

Augment reality’s howard Ogden on the different types of Ar

so if Ar is to work it needs to pick up reality at the times when reality isn’t quite good enough or needs to be improved.

it now because we need to – to reply to that text or work out where we’re going on Google Maps, but would we do it for pleasure? Would we do it constantly as a kind of second vision?

Let’s be honest most of the time reality doesn’t need augmentation. Most of the time it’s just fine and we don’t want a layer of slow-loading pixels intercepting between us and the people and things around us.

So if AR is to work it has to pick up reality at the times when reality isn’t quite good enough or just needs to be improved. And it’s going to take some vision and smarts to work out when, where and how to do that. Those will be the apps that we switch on everyday, and they will be the ones that make their developers famous.

Tim Maly, author of blog Quiet Babylon really sums it up in an interesting conversation on social media site Quora:

“We will see improvements in enabling AR to con-nect the real world (identified via Computer Vision, GPS etc) to the online world. The intelligence of the connec-tion, enabled via social/search/AI/magic/who-knows will be a big factor in finding utility in an AR experience.

AR will abandon gee-whiz look-what-we-can-do in favour of its usable destiny: Delivering information just-in-time, just-in-space.”

So let’s lose the gimmicks, improve the basic tech-nology, wait for external problems to be resolved and then set about working how and where the world needs improving. When all this happens AR will really be the future.

There are NO Computer Vision based AR apps That can be trained to recognise more than 10 images. So that’s 10 experiences maximum from the one app.

One drawback to this is that you always need a data connection or your phone to get the content.

What are the advantages and uses of AR based on image recognition?Computer vision based AR apps have the advantage of being standalone. This means (generally) no data connection is needed to view the content. It also means that the con-tent itself can be more complex as it doesn’t have to download over a wireless connection. So expect to see high quality 3D animation, sounds and multimedia in these types of apps. The drawback is the limitation of the number of objects they can recognise.

We've seen AR in phones and now in gaming consoles what other areas are we likely to see it in the near future?This year will be all about Tablets. Samsung are promoting their Galaxy tab heavily. Apple has v2 of the iPad – this time with cameras so we can get started on developing AR content for that platform. We are also seeing a lot of promise from Microsoft’s Kinect which has already been hacked to deliver AR - perhaps we’ll see the first commercial implementa-tions of this shortly. AR Glasses too, Vuzix have made some available now...

What other trends are likely to affect AR in the short-term?The chip manufacturers are taking AR seri-ously. Qualcomm have released an AR de-velopment kit and Intel just heavily invested in Layar. The CEO of Metaio (an alternative augmented reality platform) recently said his company is in discussions about embedding their platform into a chipset. This would be a massive step forward as it would deliver faster processing speed (and therefore more capabilities) and lower battery consumption.WATCH: Leading Augmented Reality platform Layar demo

their new features and make aliens do battle over the Amsterdam harbour

our 20 Most wanted gadgets

From the crisp feel of an unbroken cellophane seal or the tight pop of a never-before-opened box, there’s nothing quite like getting your hands on a brand new gadget for the very first time. To save you the effort of sifting the tech-wheat from the gizmo-chaff, we’ve compiled this list giving you a glimpse of all that is set to be good and great during the next few months of gadgetry.

by gerald lynch

What is it? A PC monitor with a design so striking you’ll want it in your living room rather than your musty old office.Why should you care? The at-tention to detail on Samsung’s 9 Series 3D monitor makes it look more like a prop from 2001: A Space Odyssey than an actual real PC display. But real it is, and it’s feature-filled to boot. Inspired by a folded piece of paper, not only do you have that super-cool, super-slim asymmetrical design to make your jaw hang around by your ankles, but you’re also getting a LED-backlit 3D-ready display, complete with glasses and a TV tuner.When is it coming out? We’re expecting to see them in stores by Summer.

What is it? The smartphone to put Sony Ericsson back on the map.Why should you care? Sony Eric-sson have been given a fairly bad rap recently for their use of the Android OS, but all will be forgiven if the Xperia Arc proves to be as good as our quick preview ses-sion suggested. Running Android 2.3 Gingerbread with SE’s rubbish Timescape social stream reduced to a mere widget, it’s a super slim smartphone with a beautiful 4.3 inch TFT LCD screen. It’s using

the same Bravia Engine usually re-served for Sony’s HDTVs, meaning colour accuracy for media playback should be spot on, with an 8.1 megapixel snapper on the rear.When is it coming out? Should be in the stores by the time you read this.

What is it? Sharp’s quad-pixel Quattron HDTVs get an added third dimension.Why should you care? They say bigger is better, and they really don’t come much larger than this stonking set from Sharp. 70 inches in size, it combines quality 3D visuals with Sharp’s much-lauded four-pixel colour tech to spice up the TV’s colour range. When is it coming out? Ready from late Spring, you might have to knock a wall out of your flat to get it inside first.

What is it? A concept wristwatch that uses a Bluetooth connec-tion to pull notifications from your smartphone.Why should you care? - Going for genuine usability rather than pipe-dreams to supplement-rather-than-replace your phone’s functions, the watchface shows caller IDs, text and email previews and time zone updates, as well as the ability to mute a ringing phone just by

20

19

18

17

SAMSUNG 9 3D MONITOR

SONY EXPERIA ARC

SHARP AQUOS lE935

CASIO BlUETOOTH WATCH

17

18

20

tapping the display. Using the Bluetooth Low Energy standard means all this syncing wont be a massive power drain, with Casio promising a two year battery life.When is it coming out? Casio are looking to get the tech into their next line of G-Shock watches, due out in the third quarter of 2011.

What is it? It’s what happens when you give the genuinely-slightly-men-tal pop-princess Lady Gaga the title of Creative Director at Polaroid.Why should you care? Because the Pokerface star’s ec-centricity has evolved into one of the most creative camera designs we’ve seen in an age. The Polarez GL20s are worn like a pair of wrap-around glasses, but feature a cam-era in the bridge. In the ultimate turn of tech narcissism, this sensor streams whatever the wearer is seeing to two outwardly facing 1.4 inch OLED screens, meaning whoever is gawping at you in the eye-catching specs will also be see-ing exactly what your eyes are. We think it is a genius idea, though we are not quite sure exactly who will be buying them when they finally go on sale.When is it coming out? Though the “2011” release date is vague, we’re chuffed that these mad frames are getting a retail release at all. As for price, well we expect only Gaga herself will be able to afford them though.

What is it? A compact camera that breaks the mould thanks to its twisty-turny frame.Why should you care? The Tryx doesn’t boast out of this world specs (12.1 MP, wide-angle 21mm lens with 1080p video recording capabilities), but it does ooze great design creativity. Hinged in two places, you can twist and turn the 3 inch touchscreen and sensor to almost any angle, with the chassis acting as the camera’s own built-in tripod. When is it coming out? Due im-minently with an estimated RRP of $249 (£160).

What is it? A slick tablet/laptop hybrid aimed at the indecisive tech fan.Why should you care? Tablets are great, but when it comes to getting some actual work done, tapping away at a touchscreen is less than ideal. The best of both worlds, this tablet and netbook mash-up boasts both a full hard-ware QWERTY keyboard and a sliding touchscreen that allows you to access loads of apps optimised for finger prodding. It’s got a rea-sonably impressive spec sheet too, powered by Intel’s 1.66GHz Z670 Oak Trail processor, with a 1366 x 768-resolution, 10.1-inch 340-nit display, 32GB / 64GB SSD options, and 2GB of RAM.

16

15

14

20 hOttest GAdGets

lADY GAGA’S POlAREZ Gl20

CASIO TRYX

SAMSUNG SlIDING PC 7 SERIES

14

15

16

When is it coming out? We’re expecting to see this bastard child of a laptop and a tablet touchdown later in the summer, and it will set you back around $699 (£440).

What is it? An exciting in-car laser projected navigation system that syncs with your smart-phone.Why should you care? A laser projector that sits on your dash-board, it hooks up to your smart-phone to beam mapping data, directions, caller IDs and poten-tially any other web-connected notifications like Facebook updates directly onto the inside of your windscreen. When is it coming out? Hope-fully soon, but potentially never. Due to safety concerns Pioneer will have to jump through some serious hoops to make this one road-worthy!

What is it? RIM’s answer to the iPad.Why should you care? Aimed predominately at BlackBerry-own-ing business types, this is the first tablet that’s designed to let you get some work done. Running the QNX OS, the 7 inch touchscreen tablet will let you run two screens simultaneously off the device, perfect for giving presentations via a projector. You’ll also get full HD

recording and playback, extensive email support and of course the excellent BBM instant messaging service, with a bezel that hides secret touch controls.When is it out? Expected to hit stores this summer, you’re looking at £300+ price tag.

What is it? The best example of glasses-free 3D we’ve seen this year.Why should you care? We all want to embrace the 3D revolution that’s taking place in TV Land right now but, boy, do those 3D glasses feel uncomfortable! Autostereos-copy, as employed by Sony in this sweet OLED screen, is the way forward, allowing for 3D without any glasses. It’s a technology still in its infancy, but is improving every time we see it.When is it coming out? No pric-ing or release info yet, but with Toshiba planning on getting their own (inferior) autosteroscopic screen out before the end of the year, we’d imagine Sony will be following suit sometime in 2012.

What is it? Nintendo’s follow up to the DS, now with added 3D visuals!Why should you care? - Not only is the Nintendo 3DS far more pow-erful than its predecessor, but the 3D visuals it’s

13

12

11

10

PIONEER NETWORK VISION

BlACKBERRY PlAYBOOK

SONY 3D OlED TV

NINTENDO 3DS

10

11

12

7

8

9

touting are of the glasses-less kind. A slider on the side of the dual-screen handheld lets you set the intensity of the 3D effect, and while it works, early reports are suggesting it’s going to be an acquired taste with the depth set-tings turned up to the max. Still, even with the 3D visuals toned down you’re getting a super-cool bit of kit, with a built in 3D stills camera, augmented reality smarts and Nintendo’s three-decades worth of videogame-development expertise.When is it coming out? Launched at the end of March it retails for around the £200.

What is it? - An affordable, pocket-able 3D camcorder from a com-pany that’s going for 3D cameras big time.Why should you care? 3D televi-sion may be the future, but there’s still a dearth of 3D content to make buying one of the expensive sets worthwhile. The Bloggie 3D will let you shoot your own Avatar alter-native without breaking the bank, squeezing in dual 1080p lenses into a unit no bigger than a mobile phone. It is small and light and pretty simple to use too. Sony has also packed it out with plenty of innovative and interesting features too.When is it coming out? - You’ll be able to slip a Bloggie 3D into your trouser pocket any day now. We think it will be priced somewhere in the region of 250 quid.

What is it? A tiny laptop/ tablet hybird with one of the most inven-tive keyboards we’ve ever come across.Why should you care? If you’re a PC gamer, the Razer Switchblade is pretty much the portable device you’ve been dreaming of. Tiny at just 7 inches, the Switchblade is thought to be using the Oak Trail processor, keeping it slim, cool, near-silent and relatively powerful. The display is a touchscreen, with a sleek media-browsing interface that’s just crying out to be stroked. But the coolest bit of all is the LCD keyboard, which automatically changes the function of each key depending on the application you are using, lighting up with a differ-ent symbol as necessary. When is it coming out? Techni-cally still a concept piece (if a very advanced one) we’re still unlikely to see this in shops until 2012.

What is it? Instant web- connectivity for your crusty old HDTV set.Why should you care? LG’s Smart TV platform is an intuitive, app-centric way of accessing web content from a big screen TV, but not everyone is going to have the dough to upgrade their set to a brand new

9

8

7

SONY BlOGGIE 3D

RAZER SWITCHBlADE

lG ST6000 TV UPGRADER

20 hOttest GAdGets

LG one just to go online. The LG ST600 Smart TV Upgrader is the solution, being a small add-on that connects to your home network via your TV’s HDMI. Once connect-ed, you can browse online con-tent and check out all manner of widget-based web treats such as YouTube and your own networked DLNA content.When is it coming out? No of-ficial date yet, but we’re guessing around late Spring/ early Summer. It shouldn’t cost any more than £100.

What is it? A mad dual-core smart-phone/laptop hybrid thanks to its unique docking bay. Includes 4G connectivity in the US. Why should you care? Because it’s not only an excellent Android smartphone (with a beautiful 4-inch touchscreen, 1GHz dual-core processor and 4G connection where available), but also a fully featured workstation. The Atrix manages this via its truly innova-tive Laptop Dock; a slim keyboard and monitor set-up that springs to life when powered solely by the smartphone. With the two devices paired, you can use all manner of web-based apps to get some real work done. When is it coming out? May in the UK for the standard Atrix, but you’ll be waiting some time for the superfast 4G connection as that won’t hit the UK’s mobile net-works until at least 2015. Doh!

What is it? A Tron-style headset that provides the wearer with their own immersive personal 3D display. Why should you care? The tech entertainment equivalent of a one-man band, it packs all the compo-nents of a great multi-component AV set-up in a single device that you can wear with relative com-fort. Sliding over your head like one of those old-school virtual reality helmets, a quick set-up optimises two tiny OLED screens in front of your eyes for video content of the third-dimensional kind. Totally immersive, you can turn your head anywhere and not lose track of the action, with the built in pseudo 5.1 surround sound speakers pumping soundtracks and sound effects into your ears. Sony’s visor would be perfect for a late night 3D gaming session that doesn’t disturb the neighbours. When is it coming out? No time soon; this one is just a Sony ex-periment at the moment, the big teases...

What is it? The world’s first commercially available dual-core smartphone, previously known as the LG Optimus Star. Why should you care? The Opti-mus 2X is the first Android handset we’ve seen to match iOS devices for slickness

6

5

4

MOTOROlA ATRIX

SONY 3D VISOR CONCEPT

lG OPTIMUS 2X

4

5

6

20 hOttest GAdGets

thanks to its NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor. Multi-tasking, web browsing with Flash content, mes-saging, HD video and polygonal gaming is a breeze for the smart-phone, while the super-bright 4 inch screen looked really lush and vibrant too. When is it coming out? On sale now for around £450.

What is it? Sony’s ridiculously powerful follow-up to the PSP.Why should you care? A four-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor makes the NGP handheld games console able to play titles graphi-cally comparable to that of a full blown PS3, with a touchscreen OLED display rendering them in pinsharp quality. It has the po-tential to be the most graphically impressive portable device of all time, barring perhaps some high-end gaming laptops. When is it coming out? No word yet on a UK launch, but safe money would see it hitting stores before Christmas.

What is it? The “Daddy” of CES 2011 tablets, it’s the first slate device to make use of Google’s Android version 3.0 “Honeycomb” OS. Why should you care? - Because this is an Android tablet done right. By Google’s own admission, earlier

versions of their operating system have not been optimised for tablet-sized screens; Honeycomb is. The Xoom backs the intuitive new-look OS with an incredibly impressive spec sheet too, packing in a 10.1 inch capacitive multitouch screen, dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 1GHz processor, 720p recording capabili-ties, full HD video playback, front and rear-facing cameras and a forthcoming update to allow for 4G mobile internet in the territories where it’s available. When is it coming out? - Should be on sale now with pricing set at around £500.

What is it? The sequel to Apple’s infamous game-changing tablet.Why should you care? Only the iPad 2 has access to the sleek iOS software and hundreds of thou-sands of apps. With a much slim-mer and lighter design, front and rear cameras, a 1.2Ghz dual-core A5 processor and new Apple-built apps including Garageband and iMovie, it’s as “magical” as its predecessor.When is it coming out? You can get one now. You know you want to.

3

2

1

SONY NGP

MOTOROlA XOOM

APPlE IPAD 2

1

2

3

With the iPhone and android ruling the mobile roost, most of the serious phone development appears to be coming from North america. but europe does still boast MWC, the world's biggest mobile show.

As another February passes, the GSMA once again close the doors on the annual Mobile World Congress telecoms con-ference. Held each year since 1987, initially under the GSM World Congress banner, 2011’s event saw record numbers of

over 60,000 attendees file through the gates of the Fira Mountjuic exhibition centre in Barcelona as the leading lights in mobile communications software and hardware came together to flaunt their wares.

However, while the gadget-loving hordes flocked to continental Spain to glean info on the latest mobile technology, a sea change in the industry over the last few years makes MWC’s Barcelona setting seem ever-more dis-placed. The European telecoms old-guard seem to be increasingly falling behind their transatlantic rivals.

For example, 3G mobile internet found its first foothold on the conti-nent, launching in March 2003 in the UK via the Three network while our US counterparts wept into their 2G-only cells. Less than a decade on and Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile USA are all leading the superfast 4G mobile broadband charge (with both LTE and WiMAX) whilst we bemoan our increasingly redundant last-gen connections, with at least two or three more years before any comparable service crosses the pond.

Then there is the battle of the handset manufacturers. Nokia, once the go-to company for innovative phones has been totally left behind in the

has europe lost the the mobile battle?

by gerald lynch

TechnODe OpInIOn

MWc’s hottest new phonesYour complete guide to who launched what

LGThat’s not to say that the other manufacturers didn’t bring their A-game to Barcelona though. There were still stellar offerings on show from LG, HTC and Sony Ericsson among others.Firstly, smartphone offerings. LG were already off to a flying start to the year with their dual-core LG Optimus 2X and 4G LG Revolution handsets onshow at CES in Janu-ary. These again made an appear-ance at MWC, but were now very much overshadowed by the LG Optimus 3D. Billed as the first 3D capable smartphone (though the Docomo SH-03C/Sharp Lynx has just as valid a claim to that title), it features a 4.3 inch parallax barrier display for glasses-free 3D visuals.

A 1GHz dual-core processor from Texas Instruments powers the handset, with a dual-lens camera ar-ray on the rear for 3D still shooting and video recording. Highlighting the dearth of 3D content available, LG have also inked a deal with YouTube to bring their 3D channel to the smartphone and allowing all Optimus 3D owners to upload to the channel from within a device-specific Android app, in essence creating a user-generated ecosys-tem of 3D videos for the handset.

HTCHTC’s flagship offerings were a little more prosaic. “S” branded sequels to the Desire and Wildfire made sturdy improvements on their predecessors (greater

MWC 2011 saw high profile mobile launches from the likes of LG and HTC.

smartphone stakes, while Apple’s iPhone and mobiles making use of Google’s Android platform reap the sales rewards.

Too concerned with proprietary operating systems and chasing mega-pixels (see the N8 flop), the Finnish company has all-but conceded defeat by bunking up with Microsoft, who will ensure future high-end Nokia handsets tow the party line when running their Windows Phone 7 operating system. Many had expected Nokia to side with Google in the smartphone OS stakes, a sentiment shared by exiting chief Executive Eric Schmidt:

“We would’ve loved if they would have chosen Android; they chose the other guys,” he said.

“I think we were pretty straightforward. We would like them to adopt Android at some point in the future; that offer remains open. We think An-droid was a good choice for Nokia, and we’re sorry they made a different choice. “

And sorry Nokia may very well end-up: where they were once sitting pretty on piles of cash in the low-to-mid range handset market, the increas-ing prevalence of cheap Android devices casts a shadow over their long-term fortunes in that area too.

It seems almost grovelling then for the GSMA to award Apple’s iPhone 4 the ‘Handset of the Year 2011’ prize, considering the Cupertino company’s continued snubbing of the event; it’s a bit like the nerdy kid pleading with the prettiest girl in school to turn up at his birthday party. The mobile monopoly has certainly migrated from Europe to pastures new.

storage, newer builds of Android, faster processing power), but now lacked the “wow-factor” that those handsets landed with in their first iterations. However, two notewor-thy devices were launched in the shape of the QWERTY packing HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa phones. While not processing powerhouses and certainly not high-edn smart-phones, each featured a dedicated Facebook button, allowing users to update their statuses within a few seconds of booting up the phones, and represent the first partnership of their kind between Zuckerberg’s all-powerful social empire and a handset manufacturer. I think we’ll see more Facebook/HTC collabora-tion later in the year.

SamsungSamsung’s refresh of the Galaxy S, in the shape of the Galaxy S II, was a little more exciting. Impossible thin at 8.49mm thick, it feels light enough to blow away in your hand. It makes it all the more impressive then to consider all the features Samsung have managed to pack in under the 4.27 inch super AMOLED touchscreen; NFC technology, 4G networking, as much as 32GB of

storage, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 1080p HD video recording, Android Gin-gerbread. You name it, the Galaxy S II seems to have it tucked away inside. The original Galaxy S sold some 10 million units, and we see no reason why the Galaxy S II can’t match that.

Sony EricssonSony Ericsson kept the gaming con-tingent happy by finally unveiling the long-rumoured and often-leaked Xperia Play handset, AKA the PSP Phone. Running Android 2.3 with a 4 inch touchscreen, it’s the first handset to come with PlayStation certification thanks to its slide-out gaming keypad. As well as the usual raft of Android games, you’ll be able to download titles from the first PlayStation home console direct to the smartphone, as well as eventually sharing the same PlayStation Suite functionality as seen in the forthcoming Sony NGP handheld console beast.

TabletsMost interesting though was the

increased dominance of tablet devices at the show, of which there were many lust-worthy offerings available from multiple manufactur-ers.

LGAgain LG put on a promising display with another 3D enabled device, the Optimus Pad. Packing Android 3.0 Honeycomb into its 8.9 inch frame, the dual-core tablet is zippy enough to handle multiple memory intensive apps at once. However, what should have been killer 3D functionality proves a little moot; recording in stereoscopic 3D, it outputted to a 3D-ready HDTV fine in this format, but was restricted to old-fashioned anaglyph (red/cyan) glasses viewing when playing back on the slate itself.

HTCHTC took a slightly different tact to the recent wave of finger-friendly tablets with their Flyer device. While still a touch-savvy

Sony Ericsson’s long promised PSP phone - the Xperia Play - finally arrived at MWC 2011.

LG’s MWC 2011 offering was very innovative and different, while HTC took a different tack offering subtle upgrades of existing handsets.

next Gen MObILes

capacitive number, 7 inches in size, it comes complete with a stylus for precise annotation and note taking, whereas many other companies have veered away from pen input as it remains so closely associated with the disappointing early wave of resistive-screen tablets. Pow-ered by a 1.5GHz Qualcomm core, the Flyer also represents the first fruits of HTC’s recent partnership with the OnLive game streaming service, bringing console quality gaming to the device by sending a video stream of titles played via remote super computers to the slate’s screen.

Why networks love TabletsSo why the big push towards tablet devices from pretty much every major exhibitor at MWC 2011? While it’s difficult to say the smart-phone market is saturated (low-to-mid range devices still dominate worldwide sales) the show did re-veal a lack of innovation somewhat in smartphone design. Take the Xperia Play or Optimus 3D

handsets for instance; these are not examples of innovation, but of con-vergence, only bringing gaming or 3D elements together with existing mobile standards rather than trying to re-invent the wheel.

It has once again become a num-bers-and-gimmicks hardware race, as manufacturers push for faster processors, higher-pixel density in screens and so on and so forth. The fact also stands that almost every-one now has a functioning mobile phone of sorts, even if it is not a smartphone; tablets still represent a brand new proposition for the majority of consumers.

Despite the allure of a new form factor from a consumer point of view, relatively little new tech-nology has been needed for the development of the tablet designs too, making them a natural product progression for smartphone manu-facturers, and a reasonably safe and inexpensive investment to boot. 3G and 4G technologies, capacitive

touchscreens, the concept of apps and download portals; these have all been pioneered in smartphones, and are now proven successes. The popularity of Apple’s iPad has shown that just repackaging these in a larger form, coupled with some savvy marketing, can give these gadgets a “magical” air. And to consumers that equates to highly desirable devices.

The devices lend themselves equally well in terms of ongoing partnerships with mobile network providers; the need for a mobile data connection in many cases keeps the networks happy, continu-ing the symbiotic relationship with the hardware manufacturers as they offer subsidised units and reap the rewards of lucrative data packages. Don’t be surprised if the next Mobile World Congress show throws up an equal split between tablet and smart- phone launches.

It seems quite likely that MWC 2012 will see as many tablet launches as it will mobile phone handset debuts.

Tablets offer a fantastic new opportunity for networks, especially if they can offer the devices at subsidised prices.

1The protests in the Middle East have radically changed how we think about social media. From being something for the social lives of college kids to being a tool that can bring down govern-ments and change the balance of global power – the real impor-

tance of the software Mark Zuckerberg created in his dorm room has come a long way in 7 years. The impact of social media has been felt in media, in advertising and retail, but never before in politics. Now we have felt it.

But opinion is divided as to how important it actually is. Big hitters make claims both ways - sociology guru Malcolm Gladwell, along with Techcrunch and the New Statesman, argues that social media was a mi-nor player in a revolt that was really all to do with long-standing political tensions, but the Guardian and The Next Web counter claim that Facebook’s horizontal social network provided the framework in which the revolution could take place...

Public demos have come a long way from the days of home made placards and chants of Maggie out. We look at how social networking has empowered a new generation of activists

the Facebook Protests

Protestors cross Waterloo Bridge to join the TUC March For The Alternative in London to protest against Government spending cuts in March 2011. by anna leach

John

Stil

lwel

l/PA

Wire

TechnODe OpInIOn

But in all the discussion of people power and the revolution, what tended to be lacking was a look at what you can and can’t do with Facebook or Twitter: how the software actually works and how people re-spond to it.

Being techies, not political analysts, we’d just like to look at how social media can help to organise and document a protest. What on Facebook and Twitter will cause people to actually get up, get out and start protesting on the streets?

I want to look specifically at a situation we in Britain are familiar with and understand much better than the Arab Spring – the protests and riots in Britain in the past year.

The massing of 50,000 students in London in November 2010 and con-sequent riot was the first time in a generation anything like that had hap-pened. It was a reaction to the Higher Education Act by the new government which tripled fees for students and took away maintenance grants for poor sixth-formers. It was the most significant example of a wave of activism - from Climate Change protests (involving stunts like presenting Nick Clegg with a giant Viagra tablet) to flashmobs on TopShop and other tax-evading businesses by new organisation, UKUncut.

Protesters stand next to a fire following a march by thousands of students protest-ing against tuition fees in London, November 2010

A UK UNcut flashmob take to the London streets to demand Philip Green pays his taxes in December 2010

AP

Pho

to/L

efte

ris P

itara

kis

We talked to long-standing climate change activist Deborah Grayson about how this new breed of activism is organised online and what makes it successful...

In this new strain of political activism, technology has been present from the very start... forums sprang up after the Conservative party victory of disenfranchised young lefties and out of the “what shall we do next” con-versations sprang up three or four groups which have been behind much of the activism of the past few months - including UKUncut and False Econ-omy.

Deborah emphasises that this was an addition to real-world contact that had already existed.

“We all knew each others’ faces” - but that the space and structure al-lowed for more to be achieved than could have been with just traditional means.

Similarly with the organisation of the protests: pre-existing organisa-tions like Student Unions were enhanced by online tools. So Student Unions organised transport, placards and meeting points and shared the details with their members on Facebook, then Facebook users shared the event among their friends and also crucially, their feelings about it.

Facebook was useful for two things 1) being a noticeboard where all the details could be easily found and shared. And 2) allowing for the spread of feelings - anger at the threat to education, disappointment at the jobs market - feelings that were essential in making the events significant.

Otherwise, as Deborah says - people don't pay attention to Event re-minders.

“I don’t know about you, but I have hundreds of invitations to things that I don’t look at, at all. If I just email an invitation to everyone, it gets lost. Facebook actually make it quite hard to invite lots of people – it can take 2 hours to invite a hundred people.

“Facebook is a way to put all the information out there in one place, it’s not a way to get people to come to stuff. You have to send an individual email, write a personal message, post on individual people’s walls..”

With the 2010 demos it wasn’t just one person contacting thousands, it was friend to friend, thousands contacting thousands. But that’s an usual situation - there needs to be a really strong general feeling for that to work.

Twitter is a natural tool for a live event and came into its own dur-ing the protests. Official accounts like @ucloccupation and @ukuncut used Twitter to announce movements, changes, speakers and acted as a local news service for protest. Protesters there, all equipped with smartphones tweeted what was going on around them – what they were doing, what the police were doing.

TIMELINE:

technology and political demonstrations in the UK

POLL TAX RIOTS, 1990 A peaceful march against the very unpopular Poll Tax turned into a massive riot with parts of Central London vandalised and more than 500 demonstrators arrested.Key Tech Mobile phones have been available in the UK for a few years but they were very much the preserve of flashy busi-ness types.

ANTI-CAPITALIST PROTESTS, 1999Anti-capitalist protestors caused 2 million pounds ($3.2 million) worth of dam-age to London. Demonstra-tors clashed with riot police, burnt cars and attacked buildings.Key tech By 1999 mobile adoption had rocketed but phones were not widely used

Mar

tin K

eene

PA

Arc

hive

Pet

er J

orda

n/PA

Arc

hive

The information quickly became documentation - the hashtag trended, people outside the protest retweeted tweets from within, and fed in messag-es of support and external information from mainstream media. The same thing happened on Facebook – though to a smaller extent.

At the protests, 3G internet went down very quickly, phone signal was erratic and went down at the peak of the protest, and mobile phone batteries ran out particularly in the 7-9 hours kettles that police trapped protesters in.

There are of course disadvantages to using social media to organise protests. The biggest one is that you really don’t know who else is monitoring the conversations. For example it has been suggested that having published plans on Facebook allowed the police to kettle protestors.

In Britain, we live in a democratic society and battles are rarely physical ones, they’re more about telling the story. That battle to tell the story is one that’s waged between protestors and police and between social media and traditional media.

It’s not just that social media and technology gives more power to the peo-ple - it also gives more power to any one who can use it well.

In the future social media could get co-opted by smart governments too - stuff like Facebook’s plan to use facial recognition to auto-tag faces would give them a database of the world’s faces that could easily be used by police to identify offenders.

Increasingly social networks are going to face political pressure and political decisions - when do they give information to the police? When do they co-operate with authoritarian regimes? Just like Google’s dithering over China there are some tough decisions ahead and in many respects CEOs of major technology companies aren’t really best placed to make these calls.

So social media is not just a new tool for the people, it’s also a new battlefield. However, Deborah, along with many others, holds out one hope for how social media can outsmart an organised authoritarian regime.

There is something about the horizontal structure of social media that has its own advantages: “with social media is that everyone can talk to every-one else and when that’s working well, information spreads very fast hori-zontally, in that case it’s really difficult for a top-down organisation like the police to track that or counter it because they have to go up the hierarchy and get commands before they can take any action.”

Perhaps there is something inherently democratic about Facebook and other social network sites after all. Whether they are going to be a force for good in the world is a moot point, but they certainly will be a force for change.

by the protestors in this demonstration. Cross network SMS was only introduced in 1998.

ANTI IRAQ WAR PROTEST, 2003The UK’s biggest demonstration with one million people urging the government to pull back from war with Iraq. A very good natured demo with only one arrest.Key tech Early adopters were using first gen smart-phones like the XDA to ac-cess the web, but mostly contact between protes-tors was by text messag-ing. Social media was still several years away.

STUDENT PROTESTS, 2010Demos in November and December against govern-ment plans for higher edu-cation resulted in damaged buildings and smashed shop windows as well as injured protestors and police officers.Key tech Social media played a huge role in the organisation of the demon-strations. How influential smartphones were in influ-encing the way the demon-strations evolved is still a hotly contested issue.

FAcebOOK PrOtests

Sim

on D

awso

n/A

P/P

ress

Ass

ocia

tion

Imag

es

TechnODe OpInIOn

the

future

4g4g4g4g4g4g4g4g4g4g4g4ghow the next generation of mobile technology could mean that paying for data is a thing of the past

by aShley nOrrIS

II am sitting on a coach which is driving round the centre of the Russian city of St Petersburg watch-ing high definition videos streamed to my laptop. There’s no drop out and the picture quality is per-

fect. And the magic that is making all this possible is a mobile technology called 4G provided by a company called Yota.

4G, which is already available across parts of the globe, is heralded by its champions as the technol-ogy that will change the way in which we use mobile devices (phones, laptops and tablets) both at home and on the move. All the things we use high speed broad-band for at home, like high definition video, running multiple connections etc, will be available anywhere we go.

Over a decade ago now mobile phone companies across the globe spent heavily in buying 3G spectrum from governments, promising that it would deliver the Internet on the go. Since then we have seen glimpses of mobile broadband (especially with technological advancements like HSPA) but for most users the web on a mobile device is nothing like the experience they have at home. It is slower, clunkier and most impor-tantly much much more expensive. Which might make consumers just that little bit cynical about 4G. So should they be?

In the UK Telecoms regulator Ofcom will start auctioning off the 4G mobile spectrums in 2012, with the goal of securing nationwide coverage. We will have to wait until 2014 before we get to enjoy the benefits of 4G.

Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards said: ‘The auc-tion is of significant importance to the wider economy. It will support a wide range of data services that are fast becoming essential features of the modern world.’

There are other compelling reasons why 4G (and indeed LTE) might become a worldwide mobile Inter-net platform. Firstly lots of countries might go straight for 4G and bypass home broadband and 3G and not just in the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) but also in other developing nations like Ghana, Argentina and the Philippines.

Secondly the popularity of web connected devices means that operators might not have a choice but to upgrade.

As Stephen Rayment CTO, BelAir Networks (a leading mobile wireless broadband solutions provider) says The £22 billion raised from auctioning of the 3G licences was largely a speculative move as operators weren’t completely sure how the spectrum would be used. Now, the vast surges in data consumption are wreaking havoc across 3G networks, particularly in areas of high user concentration. Consequently, buy-ing new spectrum is no longer a speculative move for mobile operators it’s an absolute necessity.’

LTE 4G operators are expected to offer more ag-gressive data tarrifs for their services. In the US Veri-zon Wireless rolled out its LTE 4G network to 38 cities in and in a sign of what might follow has undercut its 3G tariffs offering consumers 4G at $10 a month cheaper. Clearwire and T-Mobile already offer US cus-tomer 4G systems using the rival WiMAX system.

‘I anticipate a price battle, for sure,’ Tolaga Re-search analyst Phil Marshall told US website Computer World. ‘Price is what these guys are going to be focused on to try to drive demand to their networks.’

And in what might be a tantalising twist some net-works are suggesting that 4G services could be free to the consumer with operators making their money from ancillary services.

‘In a few years Internet access as a paid service won’t exist any more’, argues Rodion Shishkov, the VP Services of 4G company Yota. ‘Rather than collect subscriptions from customers providers will make their money by charging third parties to use their networks to offer services to consumers like banking, music and video.’

Shishkov adds that his company Yota, which has 4G networks in Russia and South America and is launching in several more countries in 2011, will pio-neer the free web in the next couple of years. He also believes that both US and Western European networks will adopt a similar approach soon after.

‘We are seeking new partners to develop this busi-ness model,’ adds Shishkov. ‘We are about to launch Yota Bank and we can see that there are many other companies that could develop their business using our network. I think in particular that video communica-tions could prove to be very successful.’

So could networks offer consumers web access for free via 4G? LTE 4G networks are cheaper to run as they make more efficient use of radio spectrum than 3G. It is unlikely that telecoms companies will pay the inflated amounts they paid governments for 3G li-cences. So cheaper/free options may prove more viable. The set up costs of creating the 4G network are also cheaper than 3G and it is likely that most 4G providers will focus on cities rather than offering blanket cover-age across a country.

The theory then runs that companies like Yota will offer free web in emerging markets like Russia, Brazil, India, Africa etc and agree deals with banks, entertain-ment companies to offer services which previously haven’t been available in those countries. Then the free web will undergo a domino effect as bigger multi-national players like Vodafone or T-Mobile then offer a free service in the United States or Western Europe.

So are Yota’s predictions likely to come true? It would be a seismic shift for the industry to adopt a free model giving up billions of pounds of revenue along the way.

There is also the prospect of some new players in the 4G world. If the future is based around mobile broadband and data it would not be beyond the realms of possibility that companies like Google and Microsoft looked at buying 4G spectrum in key countries and using it to develop their services in an integrated way. Imagine how powerful it would be for say Google to own the operating system on the devices as well as the means in which they connect to the web.

4G is likely to have a profound effect not just on the way we use mobile broadband but how the tele-coms industry develops over the next decade. Interest-ing times are ahead.

4G FUtUre

WHAT IS 4G?

4G is the next generation network for mobile broadband. It comes in a couple of key flavours WiMAX and LTE (Long Term Evolution). In theory it will mean that mobile devices from phones through to tablet PCs will be able to de-liver data at speeds that even outpace your home broadband system.

LTE, the main 4G format (ie the one that we’ll get in the UK) provides downlink peak rates of at least 100 Mbps, an uplink of at least 50 Mbps, though of course we all know that it will be a lot less than this in the real world. Nevertheless that is still much faster than the speeds we have with 3G. It could also signal the deathknell for home wired broadband connections as your laptop/tablet PCs will have LTE compatibility built in or added via a dongle, so you won’t need a wired connection.

WiMAX has slower speeds and is unlikely to be adopted in the UK. Nevertheless it is big-ish news in the US with both T-Mobile and Spring already boasting WiMAX networks.

As for LTE 4G you can already access it if you live in some US cities, Russia, bits of Sweden and a few other places. The big story in the US is that it first LTE 4G network launched in December by Verizon and AT&T have also indicated that its 4G network will go live later in 2011. There was also a slew of LTE 4G mobile phone announcements at CES in January notably HTC’s Thunderbolt, Sam-sung’s Infuse (below) and LG’s Revolution.

As for Apple the sensible money is on an LTE phone launching in 2012. 4G will finally be the missing piece in the iPhone jigsaw, the element that takes the phone from be-ing a glorified iPad touch to a truly connected go anywhere Internet handset.

INearly every aspect of our daily lives is mediated through com-puter technology, so it comes as no surprise the art world has also been significantly impacted by this digitisation of culture. Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical

Reproduction (1936) explored the influence of technology on art and com-pared old and new forms of expression, ie. the traditional/singular works of art such as a painting versus technically reproducible forms such as photog-raphy and film. He correctly believed new mediums would have an increas-ing importance and influence on Western culture.

Now 75 years later we are witnessing the progression and development of these mediums as a new breed of digital artists begin to emerge and thrive. These artists are using new technologies to change the way art is created, dis-tributed, sold and displayed.

They are using innovative new technology to create works that include photopainting, digital collage, integrated digital art, virtual reality, holo-grams, fractals, and more. For them technology has increased the number of tools through which they can express their vision and create new works of art.

They are completely reliant on coding and technology to do everything from controlling lighting to video effects. This shift in artistic production forces us to think about how our relationships and interaction with art are affected.

The digitisation of art has made its production accessible in a way that many traditional formats could never be, and while many argue that it is a democratisation of culture, there is a fear that talent is being flooded out and drowned in a vast digital ocean of mass culture. Artists are increasingly turning into creative programmers who use code to create new and innova-tive visual displays.

once the preserve of the geek, programming code is a new raw material that artists and designers can use to create digital art.

Top: Divide By Zero by Hellicar & Lewis

by laUra ScOTT

how code is changing art

But if art starts to become all about coding what happens to the value of the actual works of art. If it is something that can be mass-produced or has no tangible existence, is there still a monetary value to it?

Shane Walter is the creative director and co-founder of onedotzero, a company that’s been exploring new forms and hybrids of the moving im-age for many years, and is in many ways a leader of this new digital culture. Walter often speaks of the massive transformation of a number of industries not just the arts over the last 15 years. “It is a backdrop to an ever-evolving creative playground where art forms have collided,” he explains.

“Hybrid creators have risen and more importantly the appetite of the audience has skewed to a more progressive and diverse entertainment expe-rience,” adds Walter.

He argues that the digitisation of the creative realm is a reflection of a true cultural revolution. Those who are involved in creative processes are the same people who have grown up with access to computers and digital tools, and have witnessed how it has reshaped their world. Cross media thinking, Web 2.0 attitude, communities, and collaborative production are there to offer new forms of art that mix cinema with clubbing, theatre with photog-raphy, graphics with live music, opera with computer gaming.

Data visualisation, crowd sourcing, and open source are all playing a major role in digital art and the way we interact with it as a society. It is this that’s helping to reinvent the image of the programmer. In the past they were not seen as “creative” types. Now as Walter points out “code is, in its purest form, a new raw material that artists and designers can shape and sculpt in myriad ways to create interactive art, generative designs, and stunning mo-tion sequences. I really see this shift having an impact on art, culture, and entertainment as we move forward.”

Digital art is merging the hi-tech with creativity. This has, not surpris-ingly, taken art away from the gallery space. Digital Art is a bricoloage of styles and mediums often used to enhance the live experience. Artists such as United Visual Artists have used lighting to enhance the live performances of musicians, such as, Massive Attack, Jay Z, U2 and Chemical Brothers, turning their audiences into active participants and collaborators.

Digital arts ability to live outside the gallery through limitless medi-ums has made the live experience of art more important. The aura around art now lies in the way in which we can interact with it and how it creates experience.

Art is more accessible then ever and is increasingly becoming a part of our public space. It is less exclusive and more interactive then ever before. However, if anyone can now be an artist, will there be a future for the profes-sional artist, or will the artist be forced to

United Visual Artists created the stunning backdrops on the Massive Attack world tour in 2010

dIGItAL Art

Five of our favourite digital artistsJason Bruges An experimental artist with a history of producing striking installations in public places, Bruges and his team recently worked on a distinctive illuminated facade for the W Hotel in London’s Leicester Square.

Our favourite though is his virtual platform at Sunderland station which was unveiled in 2010. Behind a three metre glass wall a disused platform has been turned into a hive of virtual activity with ghostly characters walking up and down the platform waiting for their train. Bruges is also rumoured to be involved in an installation on one of the bridges to the Olympics stadium where those crossing will be able to race against a shadowy version of the world’s fastest athletes.

Brian EnoThe one time maverick synth genius behind Roxy Music who then became a key player in the development of ambi-ent and experimental music, Eno has also played a signifi-cant role in digital art. One of his most acclaimed works is 77 million paintings, a program that creates endlessly unique individual paintings which are then accompanied by innovative ambient soundtracks.

Chris LevineLevine is perhaps best known for his extraordinary, holo-graphic portraits of Queen Elizabeth which were created for the channel island of Jersey back in 2004. The artist has also taken his laser and light driven work to major music festivals creating a stunning backdrop to a series of events at the Eden Project in 2009.

QuayolaAn Italian artist currently working in London, Quayola is a hugely versatile individual who creates everything from in-stallations and AV performances through to videos and web pages. His art is very much at the cutting edge between graphics, video and coding.

David HockneyThe legendary British artist is one of a growing number of people who are using Apple’s iPad as a high tech canvas. in 2010 he worked on a series called Fleurs Fraiches, or Fresh Flowers, which was displayed in Paris and featured work created using several apps including Brushes.

From top: Jason Bruges W Hotel in London. Jason Bruges Virtual Platform. 77 Million Paintings created by Brian Eno. Chris Levine Light. A short excerpt of Topologies by Quayola. David Hockney Fleurs Fraiches

A still from Brian Eno’s 77 million paintings

Prepared by MagCloud for Ashley Norris. Get more at sutrodigital.magcloud.com.