| Week in Tech: Week in Tech: Twitter's 'MySpace problem' and the revenge of PC gaming Aug 8th 2014, 10:43, by TechRadar 
What's white and invisible? The iPhone 7! We're not just resurrecting our favourite joke: as we discovered this week, future smartphones could actually be invisible thanks to some seriously cool technology. Come with us as we discover the power of PC gaming, why romance is powering the instant messaging boom, how you'll charge the Moto 360 and what exciting new gadgets are on the horizon. Holy headcrabs! The PC is BAAAACK!Amid rumours that the Xbox One is getting another price cut, James Rivington knows what's wrong with the current crop of state-of-the-art consoles: they're not PCs - or rather, when it comes to gaming consoles are not as good as PCs. We're already in a golden age of PC gaming and that's before Oculus Rift ships, Rivington says, and to prove him right it seems that Valve has just sneakily launched the next generation of its Source engine. It's time to get the Half-Life 3 Rumour Tractor out of the shed again… Feel the Shield!PCs may be great for gaming, but they're hardly portable - and even the tiniest laptop is bulkier than a tablet. Hurrah, then, for the new Nvidia Shield gaming tablet. Jimmy Thang likes it a lot: it's "pretty dang cool", he says. Attack of the invisible iPhonesFind My Phone is about to get a whole lot more useful if James Rivington has his way: he wants to see (or rather not see) invisible iPhones. "Imagine a smartphone that remains 'cloaked' until its owner whispers a pass phrase," he says, describing the tech that could well make future phones invisible. We've got our passphrase already. It's: "Where's my damn phone?" Moto in totoThere's more Moto 360 news than you can shake a stick at, including the first look at its rather groovy wireless charger. Matt Swider has all the facts, including the awkward one that the reliance on wireless charging means you'll have to lug the charger around with you when you're travelling instead of just blagging a spare micro USB charger. Note 4 NoteIf you're excited about the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, you don't have long to wait: it's going to be launched on September 3 at IFA 2014. We're also expecting to see LG's Note rival, the LG G3 Stylus, also due for an IFA reveal, as the phablet market becomes increasingly crowded. Apple's planning a September phablet showcase too, with a larger iPhone 6 expected to debut on September 6. Rumours suggest that a second, even bigger iPhone won't launch until later. Everyone's getting the (instant) messagingInstant messaging is booming, and it's all because of romance: a new study reckons that love-struck youngsters will use apps such as WhatApp, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat to send some 300 billion messages by the end of 2014 in the UK alone. According to Deloitte Technology, Media and Telecoms Research Chief Paul Lee, "A constant among humans is courting and they use different tools to do it. It used to be hanging on the phone, now it's instant messaging." The same mistakes as MySpaceSocial networks! Huh! What are they good for? Spamming, says our resident grump Gary Marshall. "Twitter's latest idea is to let you see posts from people that you don't follow, but your followees do," he explains. "You can see the problem on Facebook already, where it tells you that people you know 'Like' sports you aren't interested in, political views you find absolutely abhorrent, hoaxes that were debunked before you were born, celebs you don't care about, and all kinds of made-up crystal-chomping new-age nonsense." The danger of such promotions is that they can swamp the very conversations people signed up to see in the first place. "MySpace did it, Facebook appears to be doing it and Twitter is at least thinking about it," he says.        |  | Jeremy Laird: In-car apps are terrible and it's time for an urgent rethink Aug 8th 2014, 10:00, by Jeremy Laird 
Cars are not smartphones. A simple enough notion, but not one that most motor manufacturers seem to grasp. For proof, observe the rush to implement irrelevant and maybe even dangerous apps in the latest cars. You're nobody today without in-car facebook and twitter support. But I've reached the point where every time I see social networking support in the feature list of an in-car multimedia system, I have the urge to self harm. I can't take the nonsense any longer. In fact, I'd wager virtually nobody really uses that kind of integrated in-car social networking functionality. It's there so that car companies can stick it in brochures, make the spec list look edgy and up to date and to give salesman an extra line or two for their showroom patter. Awful. It's all part of a trend that's seeing car makers increasingly attempt to mimic smartphone and tablet functionality in their cars. Renault even has its own app store for its (dreadful) Android-based R-Link system. It's not a smartphone, stupidBut somebody has got to put a stop to this silliness and rethink the direction of in-car multimedia. Tweeting and driving are simply incompatible. And if you're a passenger, you're far better off using your smartphone or tablet to browse Facebook, not a clumsy in-car system. More to the point, if as much effort went into creating genuinely useful apps as goes into tick social networking boxes and the like, we'd have some really awesome apps by now. Instead, I'm struggling to count the number of excellent apps on the fingers of one hand. I'd group a range of nav apps as one with Google Send-to-car topping that list. Being able to plot out your route in comfort out of the car and then pinging it straight to your car is just fabulous. Likewise, being able to track your car on your phone can come in handy – but has limitations such as underground and multi-storey car parks. Ditto being able to lock and unlock your car remotely, which offered by some manufacturers including BMW but obviously only works when your car has a cellular signal. 
Internet-connected multimedia apps like internet radio can be great but here we're beginning to stray into territory where such functionality is better handled by your smartphone. That said, you want seamless and intuitive control of such smartphone features in-car and on-screen, which several manufacturers including Mercedes have begun to grasp. Audi also deserves some kind of gong for its upcoming rebuild of the MMI platform as seen in the new TT sports coupé. Audi has done something very rare – taken inspiration from mobile devices and put it to good use. Reboot, rethinkSpecifically, Audi what has implemented is the global search function found in mobile Oses. No need to jump through endless sub-menus. Just start punch in an address and MMI will work out it's a navigation destination. That's genuinely useful in-car where digging through menus can be distracting for drivers and therefore genuinely dangerous. OK, that's not strictly an app, but then I am struggling for good examples. Anyway, overall, what's needed is a rethink of what actually works in-car. Apps that make driving more fun, finding places easier or doing something new that's actually useful. It's an issue that's been niggling away at me for some time and it came to a head when I had a play with the new GoPro app for BMWs in the M3 super saloon. It gives you control over GoPro's Hero cameras directly through BMW iDrive. It's not perfect, but it does offer unambiguous advantages – especially for the driver – over a smartphone as the control device in-car. It's the rare 'good' app like that that makes you realise just how pointless the checkbox apps including social networking truly are. As for ideas for better apps for the future, well, if I could answer that I'd be making my fortune in another way. But while car manufacturers continue to concentrate on pointless trinkets for apps, we're unlikely to find out.        | | Nokia Lumia 730 leaks with new software and selfie snapper Aug 8th 2014, 09:43, by John McCann 
We've had the high-end Nokia Lumia 930 and Lumia 1520, plus the budget focussed Lumia 630, 635 and 530, but things are looking pretty bare in the middle of the range for Microsoft and its newly acquired mobile division. The gap could be filled soon though, as pictures of a new Nokia handset have leaked onto the web via WP Central, claiming to be the Nokia Lumia 730 (formerly rumoured under the moniker 'Superman'). Unsurprisingly the Lumia 730 would be the successor to the Lumia 720 which launched over a year ago, and according to the report it'll sport a 4.7-inch display and a 5MP front-facing camera - perfect for the selfie obsessed youth. 
Caught red handedWhile there's no other details on the specs on the Lumia 730 currently available, one of the leaked shots suggests the Lumia 730 may rock up with a fresher version of Nokia firmware on Windows Phone 8.1. Codenamed 'Debian Red', there's not a great deal known about this particular release, but it's expected to be rolled out in November this year - potentially around the time the Lumia 730 may launch.        | | IBM squeezes a million brain neurons onto stamp-sized chip Aug 7th 2014, 20:06, by JR Bookwalter 
For the last six years, IBM researchers have been looking for a way to bring the power of the human brain into a computer processor, and the project just hit a significant milestone toward that goal. The IBM Research blog today announced a landmark step forward for a "brain-inspired machine" chip funded by DARPA's Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (better known as SyNAPSE). Billed as a "synaptic supercomputer in your palm," the second-generation chip known as TrueNorth "redefines what is possible in the field of brain-inspired computers, in terms of size, architecture, efficiency, scalability, and design techniques." After accomplishing a modest single-core prototype three years ago, the research team has accomplished the remarkable feat of cramming one million neurons, 256 million synapses and 4,096 parallel cores into a self-contained chip the size of a postage stamp. Not a brain (yet)Chief Scientist Dr. Dharmendra S. Modha is quick to note that IBM has "not built the brain, or any brain," but rather a computer "inspired by the brain," which for the first time can process sensory data in parallel, much like the human brain itself. Traditional processors have historically required more energy as they've become faster and more powerful, but TrueNorth consumes a mere 70 milliwatts of energy, roughly the equivalent to what a hearing aid battery produces. While IBM refers to TrueNorth as a "direction" rather than a "destination," the technology could have huge implications for future devices including smartphones, self-driving automobiles and even "multimedia processing on the cloud." For comparison's sake, IBM's first-generation chip was only capable of storing 256 neurons compared to TrueNorth's one million, which scientists hope will lead to computers nearly as powerful as the human brain by the year 2020.        | | Samsung Galaxy Note 4's three-sided display looking more likely Aug 7th 2014, 16:28, by James Rogerson 
If the idea of a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 with a three-sided screen sounds familiar, it's because it's popped up before. We were sceptical then but we're a tad less so now, as a new report claims that a three-sided Samsung screen has entered a trial production phase. The report, from South Korean site ZDNet and spotted by G4Games, cites supply chain sources and claims that it will use a flexible Youm panel, but that Samsung's affiliates can only produce it in limited quantities. So if it makes it to market it will likely be in a limited edition handset, or possibly a version that only launches in South Korea. So unfortunately we may never see it on these shores. The original report also doesn't mention the Galaxy Note 4, but with previous rumours pointing to such a display making it onto Samsung's phablet and with little else on the horizon it seems possible at least that there'll be a three-sided version, even if there's also a more conventional model. Two very different NotesWe've also come across a rumour in the past saying that there'll be two versions of the Note 4, one of which would be curved and the other flat, so this adds up. If there is a three-sided version it remains to be seen whether it will shake up the market or be little more than a gimmick like the Galaxy Round, but it has potential. You could potentially swipe across one of the sides to unlock the phone for example, or have an extra row of buttons or icons along the edge - out of the way but accessible if you need them - so there are certainly some uses for it. With Samsung likely unveiling the Note 4 at an event on September 3 we should know soon enough.        | |
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