Computer and Technology

Unknown · at 7:11 pm

Unknown · at 6:19 pm

Dell’s XPS 12 Ultrabook Convertible is one of the better marriages of laptop and tablet. The version reviewed here, which Dell shipped over the summer, isn’t tremendously different from the original XPS 12: It’s slightly thinner and a little lighter, but it’s powered by one of Intel’s new Haswell-class processors. That update helps the new XPS 12 deliver better performance and much better battery life than its predecessor offered.

This machine’s key feature is a 12.5-inch touchscreen with a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels that pivots inside its aluminum frame—just as on the original. Open the lid, and you can use the computer as you would any other notebook. You simply push the top front or bottom back of the display to pop it out of its frame, and then flip it over and close it to convert the machine into a tablet.

ROBERT CARDINThe aluminum frame around the pivoting display is stronger than it looks.

The configuration we tested consisted of an Intel Core i5-4200U processor, 4GB of DDR3/1600 memory, and a 128GB mSATA solid-state drive. It posted an excellent Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score of 296, and the Windows log-in screen appeared in just 9.2 seconds. Tested battery life was a cool 6 hours, 49 minutes: That’s enough for a coast-to-coast plane ride with time to spare, and it’s 2 hours longer than the battery life of the first XPS 12 we reviewed, which used an Intel Core i5-3317U CPU.

The XPS 12 still relies on integrated graphics, so don’t expect to play hard-core games on it. Dirt Showdown played at 44 frames per second at 1024-by-768-pixel resolution and low visual quality, but you’ll need to drop most games down another notch for smooth play. Video looks superb, and the system easily handled high-bit-rate high-definition video. If you want to use an external display, you’ll need a Mini DisplayPort cable (the beauty of DisplayPort is that you can buy adapters for any other type of display, including analog VGA for when you need to use an old-school video projector).

ROBERT CARDINThe redesigned model is thinner and lighter than the original.

Although Dell has reduced the XPS 12’s weight to 3.35 pounds (the earlier model weighed 4 pounds), it’s still too heavy to hold in one hand and use as a tablet for any length of time. Dell also needs to outfit the XPS 12 with better sensors for detecting the screen’s orientation. I often had to pick up the unit and manipulate its angle before it would rotate to the correct orientation.

Dell’s XPS 12 earned an excellent Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score, although its gaming subscores were low.

I have no complaints about the XPS 12’s excellent backlit keyboard. Being a writer, I consider keyboards to be a big deal, and I wish every laptop had one that felt as good. The layout is spacious, the keys are slightly sculpted, and the feel is nothing short of fantastic. The touchpad and touchscreen are also nicely responsive.

The XPS 12’s audio system is better than average for its class, too. The low-end emanating from the speakers is more low-mid punch than thump, but I could pick up the bass in the intro to Van Halen’s “Runnin’ with the Devil,” a frequency that stymies many portable devices.

Battery life is excellent at 6 hours, 49 minutes.

The XPS 12 has just two USB 3.0 ports, one of which is always on for charging devices such as a smartphone or a digital media player. A headset jack and a built-in dual-array mic sit next to the webcam for videoconferencing. The machine has no hardwired ethernet, but this is one of the few laptops we’ve seen to boast an integrated 802.11ac adapter (Intel’s dual-band Wireless-AC 7260, which also supports Bluetooth 4.0 and Intel’s wireless display technology).

The Dell XPS 12 is well equipped, fast, and fun to use. Like most convertibles, it’s better as a notebook than as a tablet.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
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Unknown · at 5:28 pm

It might seem as though every new Windows laptop has a bright, glossy touchscreen. After all, Windows 8 is a touch-centric operating system, and Intel requires any notebook powered by a fourth-generation Core processor to have a touchscreen. The hulking desktop-replacement models that gamers gravitate to, on the other hand, rarely have this feature. That omission has two reasons: First, gamers prefer to use wired mice or gamepads. Second, large touchscreens are expensive.

Acer’s Aspire V3 (model V3-772G-9402) isn’t necessarily a gaming machine, but it does have a 17.3-inch display (with resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels) and a powerful discrete graphics processor. Acer describes it as a “versatile entertainment powerhouse,” and its $1100 price tag puts it in budget territory for people who don’t mind lugging an 8-pound machine.

The absence of an SSD suppressed the Acer Aspire V3's overall benchmark performance numbers compared with the pricier Toshiba Qosmio. But its Haswell-class Core i7 processor and 12GB of memory helped it beat the older Asus VivoBook. (Click to enlarge image.)

It’s powered by one of Intel’s fastest fourth-generation Core (aka Haswell) processors, the Core i7-4702MQ; 12GB of DDR3/1600 RAM; and Nvidia’s third-fastest discrete mobile GPU, the GeForce GTX 760M. But Acer skimps on storage by equipping the machine with just a 500GB, 5400-rpm hard drive. That component choice explains the Aspire V3’s somewhat unimpressive Notebook Worldbench 8.1 score of 177.

While that score marks the Aspire V3 as 77 percent faster than our reference machine, the Asus VivoBook S550CA, pricier gaming notebooks have delivered scores well north of 400. But when you look at some of the gaming benchmark results that go into that composite score, the Aspire V3 looks a little better. With Dirt Showdown and BioShock Infinite at resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels and visual quality set to low, it delivered very playable frame rates of 65.6 and 69.7 frames per second respectively.

And having a discrete mobile graphics processor boosted its performance with demanding games. (Click to enlarge image.)

Spend an additional $800 to buy something like Toshiba’s $1900 Qosmio X75, on the other hand, and you’ll experience those games at 119.7 and 165.3 frames per second respectively (and at lower—but playable—frame rates at higher resolutions).

The Aspire V3 is an attractively designed, well-built machine constructed mostly from plastic, but with a finish that looks like brushed aluminum. Its island-style keyboard is well spaced, includes a numeric keypad, and delivers very good tactile feedback. But if you like to play in the dark, you won’t like the fact that it’s not backlit.

ROBERT CARDINThe Acer Aspire V3 has four USB ports, but only two are USB 3.0. A DVD burner is nice to have, but a Blu-ray player would be better. (Click to enlarge image.)

Since it’s not a touchscreen, the 17.3-inch display has a nonglare finish (most touchscreens are highly reflective, which can be problematic if you’re using the computer near a bright light source). I didn’t miss the touchscreen, because the large multitouch clickpad supports most Windows 8 gestures. You can pinch to zoom, for instance, and swipe in from the right to reveal the charms bar and in from the left to switch application windows.

Don't plan to be away from a power source for more than two hours—that's about all the Acer Aspire V3's battery will last. (Click to enlarge image.)

The screen looks good, for the most part. It displays crisp, clean text and images with an accurate color balance. But I did notice a few issues with it: First, I saw some occasional shimmering, even in static images. Second, I had intermittent problems with the machine’s brightness setting: Occasionally, when I turned the computer on, the display would be set to maximum brightness and refused respond to changes (even when I changed the power scheme). A restart resolved the problem each time it happened.

ROBERT CARDINThe Aspire V3's other ports include gigabit ethernet, VGA, and HDMI-out. (Click to enlarge image.)

The Acer Aspire V3-772G-9402 isn’t for everyone. It’s big and heavy, it’s a little clunky, and it doesn’t deliver top-shelf performance. If you’re looking for a powerful gaming laptop, or if you want to watch Blu-ray movies, Toshiba’s Qosmio X75 is the better choice. But if you need an inexpensive desktop replacement with a big, high-resolution screen, the Aspire V3 is one of the better choices on the market right now.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
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Unknown · at 7:19 pm

Even though LG was behind last year’s Google-backed Nexus 4, that wasn’t enough to launch it into the Android spotlight. What the company needs is a standout phone—something that differentiates it from the Samsungs and the HTCs. It’s on the right track with its focus on solid performance and a high-resolution display, but if you took a quick look at G2, you wouldn’t find much to set it apart from the crowd.

Image: Michael Homnick

Almost nothing about the G2’s design stands out. It features an edge-to-edge screen, rounded corners, and an easy-to-hold chassis, but it looks like a stock phone. On its back you’ll find—in place of the Nexus 4’s glittery hexagonal design—a muted, striped pattern.

IMAGE: Michael HomnickLG's rear-facing buttons are oddly placed.

LG decided to put the volume and power buttons on the rear of the device rather than on the side, supposedly to make the phone easier to use one-handed. It doesn’t work. You can hold down on the screen with your thumb to press the buttons on the back, or you can risk dropping the phone by cradling it and reaching one finger back. It’s weird, and more than once I managed to double-press a button by accident.

At least LG made the smart design decision to put the headphone jack on the bottom. If you’re using it as music player, this makes the process of pulling out the phone from your pocket a little easier.

IMAGE: Michael HomnickThe G2 feels great in your hand.

IMAGE: Michael Homnick

These days, many handsets, including the G2, come packed with a Snapdragon 800 system-on-a-chip (SOC). The power provided by its 2.26GHz processor and 2GB of RAM is obvious when you’re multitasking, launching apps, and playing graphic-intensive games. Apps start up quickly and close out fast, and that performance holds true across the myriad apps that LG bundles with the phone.

The G2’s 3,000mAh battery pack will get you through a full day of watching videos, if you’re on a binge. On a full charge, at half brightness and with Airplane Mode turned on, the phone managed a whopping 9.5 hours of video streaming—about an hour longer than both the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4. LG made some tweaks under the hood to help save battery life when the screen isn’t doing much, significantly reducing the display’s energy consumption.

The company’s success in manufacturing TVs has trickled down to its mobile products. The G2’s vibrant, 5.3-inch, 1080p IPS display looks great from any angle, though it gets intensely bright when you crank it all the way up. That option comes in handy on sunny days when you need to use the phone outside. Unfortunately the display can be quite a battery sucker if you’re not using power-saving settings.

One particularly neat feature of the G2 is its support for 192KHz music: The G2 can playback WAV and FLAC files that produce sound at far better than CD quality.

IMAGE: Florence IonThe G2's 'night mode' (left) a photo taken outside during dusk with no camera modes (middle), and a photo taken in the morning with no camera modes.

We’re living in an age when a phone that can’t capture the moment is not worth buying. To its credit, the G2’s 13-megapixel camera takes clear pictures, indoor and out. While it’s output can’t match that of Nokia’s Lumia Windows Phones, its bundled features—such as the ability to use a manual focus slider, and the the ability to home in on a subject in your videos with Audio Zoom—are enticing.

IMAGE: Florence IonA photo taken with the G2's manual focus mode (left), and an example of the camera's zoom capabilities.

LG's Home screen and Notifications shade.

Like most other Android phones, the G2 doesn’t use the stock Android interface. The notifications shade is crowded to make room for the G2’s brightness and volume settings and the QSlide apps, which are LG’s pop-up, multitasking apps. If only LG could find a way to include them without jamming everything together.

LG's QSlide.

The G2 is packed with the latest top-tier hardware, and it features a long-lasting battery and a perfectly capable camera. But it’s beset by small problems—the crowded notifications screen, the awkward rear-facing buttons, its plain-Jane design. It makes you remember that LG is still missing the je ne sais quoi that sets other top phones apart from their competitors.

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Unknown · at 6:00 pm

Adobe’s consumer video editing program Premiere Elements is back for the 12th round in the battle to be the home video editing champ, and this version has some powerful new features that make it a strong contender for the prize.

Premiere Elements has often been viewed as a cut-rate version of Premiere Pro, inheriting pro features a couple of versions old. That’s not a bad thing, though, as Premiere Pro is one of the most powerful professional video editing programs available. With version 12, Premiere Elements gets sound effects, a dynamic soundtrack, and a new motion-tracking feature from its big brother. The interface gets a makeover as well, with the addition of a guided mode (like its sibling Photoshop Elements) alongside the quick and expert modes.

The Elements Organizer can be accessed from within the editor to load files.

New to Premiere Elements—though old hat for on Photoshop side—Guided Mode takes you through nine common tasks such as importing a video, adding a soundtrack, and trimming clips. It does a good job for the novice video editor, highlighting the correct buttons in the interface to avoid flipping between windows. It would be nice to have even more guided tasks available, though: things like the motion tracker and saving the finished video are not covered. Other parts of the interface are mostly unchanged from Premiere Elements 11: and those users will feel right at home.

The additions to the audio features are also useful. This version adds a wider range of cartoon and other sound effects, plus a soundtrack feature that creates a custom music track from 52 scores in 7 categories that are included (the program downloads them only when you use them to save space). When you create a score from these, it is customized to the length of your video so that it starts and ends properly, and the level is adjusted for the sound in the video; a nice touch that makes a video look and sound more professional.

The new Guided Mode takes you step-by-step through several features of the program, but not some of the more complex tools.

The new motion tracking feature is also easy to use: Just drag a box around the object to track in the video, and the program tracks the object as far as it can in the clip. You can then attach an image or graphic to this track, which makes it easy to add cartoon speech bubbles or effects that follow someone on screen. It lacks the sophistication of the Premiere Pro tracker, though; there's no control over the tracking process and no ability to tweak the path after the tracking is done. If it isn’t quite right, all you can do is scrap it and start again.

In addition, there are tweaks to the video effects. These include the addition of what Adobe calls Hollywood effects, but which are mostly cheesy looking. The only ones that might find some use are the FilmLooks, which tweak colors for a motion picture style. Presumably to avoid licensing issues, these are called things like Trinity (for a Matrix green look), Sparta (a 300 muted color look), and Pandora, which turns skin tones (or ginger cats) blue. Unless you are producing an Avatar fan film, this is best left unused. The same is true of most of the included templates.

The Pandora filter turns your family (or ginger cats) into blue-skinned aliens. Will James Cameron sue? Probably not, but we doubt he will be using this on the Avatar sequels, either.

One fine feature though, is the Auto Smart Tone, a filter that tweaks the video to look better by adjusting the contrast, color, and gamma. It did a nice job on several dull and gloomy clips, boosting the color to more usable levels without overdoing it. It would be nice if you could apply this to an entire movie, but instead you have to apply it to each individual clip: a rather tiresome business for complex videos.

You can, however, apply most of the other effects to an entire movie by putting them into an adjustment video layer—like a Photoshop adjustment layer.

While generally I found this version of Premiere Elements easy to use, there were a few irritations. For example, I found that using the timeline to find a specific spot in a video was difficult: when moving through the timeline, the on-screen preview would often lag behind by a second or two, especially when effects were applied. Other programs get around this by generating previews while the computer is idle: but to get a smooth preview in Elements, you must render the preview files by clicking on the render button. Elements doesn't use the GPU to accelerate creating previews and effects the way other programs—like Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro—do.

The Auto Smart Tone feature of Premiere Elements 12 automatically corrects video, boosting brightness and tweaking colors

Adobe Premiere Elements 12 features some interesting new tools, but they aren’t compelling enough to make this version a must-have for owners of previous versions (the upgrade costs $80). But those who are just starting out in video editing, or are looking for a step-up from the lightweight iMovie will find a good home in Premiere Elements 12: this $100 program (or $150 when bundled with Photoshop Elements 12) offers a good balance of features and ease of use, providing powerful tools without overwhelming users with choices.

Richard Baguley has been writing about, testing and breaking technology for the past 20 years. He has written for Wired, Macworld, USA Today, Amiga Format and many others
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Unknown · at 5:55 pm

Adobe’s annual update to Photoshop Elements, its consumer image organizer and editor, offers a satisfying array of new features. While changes in version 12’s Organizer focus on syncing and sharing photos for access on mobile devices, the Elements 12 Editor includes slick Instagram-inspired effects, textures, frames, new guided edits, and a content-aware move tool. Even more exciting is an intuitive image-correction method that remembers how you use it and a red-eye tool that works on animals—two features that even its flagship sibling Photoshop CC doesn’t have.

Elements 12 OrganizerOne huge challenge in mobile photography is getting images off of your device. In version 12, the Elements Organizer lets you create mobile albums with Adobe Revel—a free online storage, syncing, and sharing utility, similar to Apple’s iCloud and Photo Stream. The free Revel iOS app also includes handy editing abilities. A Revel account gives you unlimited photo imports for one month, and 50 photos per month thereafter (a $6 monthly fee gives you unlimited imports). You can import photos into Revel and create mobile albums on your iOS device or in the desktop Elements 12 Organizer; you can them share automatically sync between them and share them via email.

The album is viewable in a Web browser (on a pleasing, but uncustomizable grid on a black background) in the invitee’s own Revel account or Elements 12 Organizer—a great way to share vacation photos. You can share single images via social media, with Twitter a welcome new addition.

Rounding out the upgrades to the Organizer is the ability to see Places and Event tags in the Tags/Info panel. You just drag and drop a tag onto an image to apply it; and in Places view, you can click a location on the map and choose Show Media to see just those photos.

Once you share a mobile album, others can add, edit, and even download photos (if you granted permission to do so when you shared the album), though only the person who uploaded a photo can delete it. Elements 12 EditorIn the Adobe Elements Editor’s Quick mode, you’ll spot three new buttons at the bottom right of the window: Effects, Textures, and Frames. Applying these Instagram-style treatments is a single-click affair, though clicking the single Reset Image button at the top of these panels removes all the effects, textures, or frames that you’ve applied. To undo specific effects, you have to click into each panel separately and then click Undo from the Action Bar. It’s a little awkward.

In Quick mode, you can create Instagram-style treatments using the new Effects, Textures, and Frames buttons (the Light Leak effect and Aged frame are shown here). Click and drag a photo to reposition it within the frame. Switch to Guided mode and you’ll find three new step-by-step techniques: Zoom Burst Effect (for simulating motion), Puzzle Effect (for creating a puzzle out of your photo), and Restore Old Photo. That last one walks you through a complicated series of tasks including cropping, using the Spot Healing Brush, the Healing Brush, Clone Stamp tools, Dust Removal (which triggers the Dust & Scratches filter), Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Color Correction, conversion to black-and-white, and sharpening. Whew!

The new Puzzle Effect guided edit lets you choose the puzzle-piece size, as well as select and extract individual pieces. When you’re finished extracting pieces, you can switch to Expert mode, activate the layer of an extracted piece, and use the Free Transform tool to rotate it. Take a peek in the Enhance menu, and you’ll find a new Auto Smart Tone feature for automatic lighting and contrast corrections. Using a unique, on-image interface, you can fine-tune the autocorrections by clicking and dragging a joystick controller in the direction of a corrected image thumbnail (they’re positioned at each corner of the dialog box). By dragging the joystick toward a thumbnail, you apply more of that particular correction.

If the object you want to move has free space around it, and you don’t move it very far, the Content-Aware Move tool works well. That said, you may need to do some cleanup with the Clone Stamp tool. Last but not least, photographers will appreciate the File menu’s new ‘Open in Camera Raw’ command for opening supported file formats in the Camera Raw plug-in; and, happily, you can now delete layers by pressing the Delete key on your keyboard.

The new Auto Smart Tone feature is intuitive: It remembers how you fine-tune corrections in order to apply them the next time you use the feature. The interface also includes a handy Before/After switch at the bottom left. Bottom lineFamily memoirists will love the Restore Old Photos guided edit, while the Auto Smart Tone feature saves time for the snap-happy. Fixing a pet’s eyes and repositioning items in a photo is highly useful, and the former is unique to this program. iPhonography fans will dig the mobile albums, and scrapbookers will adore Effects, Frames, and Textures. If you use Elements regularly, this upgrade is worth the money; if you’ve outgrown iPhoto, then Photoshop Elements 12 is the next logical step.

Lesa Snider, founder of PhotoLesa.com, is on a mission to teach the world to create better graphics. She's the author of Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, coauthor of iPhoto '11: The Missing Manual (Pogue Press/O'Reilly), a creativeLIVE instructor, stock photographer, and a columnist for Photoshop User magazine.
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Unknown · at 7:19 pm

Dragon Fantasy Book II $15.00 Dragon Fantasy Book II is a game at odds with itself, improving on a timeworn genre but often fumbling the fundamentals.

So how do you feel about 16-bit JRPGs? Think Super Nintendo era: wandering about world maps as a colorful sprite, taking turn-based swipes at fantastical monsters, and tapping through dialogue trees on a quest to save the world. They compensated for the technological limitations of the mid-'90s with rich, sweeping narratives, and occasionally devolved into nigh endless grind-fests, trudging through repetitive battle sequences to grow strong enough to overcome increasingly tougher challenges.

The genre has always been a bit polarizing, and its popularity has waned in the face of modern action-RPGs and MMOs. But those of us who love them rest assured knowing that the Chrono Triggers and EarthBounds never die—they just get re-released, or re-imagined by plucky indie developers with a penchant for spritework and MIDI tunes. Available on the PlayStation 3 and Vita, Dragon Fantasy Book II is one such tribute: a $15 love letter to the good old days that’s unapologetically old-school, yet manages to iron out many of the genre’s more annoying wrinkles. But it’s a game at odds with itself, skirting many of the JRPG genre’s flaws but plagued by a desire to revamp time-honored (and timeworn) mechanics and inject personality and humor, often at the expense of narrative and compelling gameplay.

If you don’t like JRPGs, you’re gonna have a bad time. Dragon Fantasy Book II (hereafter DFB2) makes no effort to deny the source of its inspiration, from the sweeping introduction replete with narrative “cutscenes” involving maiden-munching dragons, to an epic musical score, menu-driven turn-based battles, and the requisite hunt for better loot. You’ll tap through dialogue boxes to learn that the hero, Ogden, has allied with pirates on a quest to save the world—a magic crystal, betrayals, and plot twists are involved.

Dragon Fantasy Book II doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Much of the story is presumably laid out in the first game in the series (which I haven’t played), but the game does an amicable job of getting you up to speed, tossing you into combat relatively quickly to give you a feel for the mechanics, while doling out bits of narrative along the way. DFB2 goes out of its way to avoid being taken seriously, which is at once a blessing and an annoying curse. Chock full of knowing winks to pop culture and in-jokes, you’ll tackle an Earthbound-esque cast of nonsensical foes—including Land Sharks and Rock Men equipped with blue helmets—and encounter a whimsical cast of characters, including a seemingly omnipresent pirate ally who admits his only raison d’être is to push the action along.

And you’ll fight. A lot. Fortunately, combat feels refreshing. There are no random battles here: the enemy is always visible, wander the dungeons you’re exploring. Get close enough and they’ll give chase—if they catch you, combat menus will slide into place to allow you to assign commands. As you fight, you’ll need to take enemy positions into account, as baddies will occasionally change position, weaseling their way out of the effective range of some of your abilities. You’ll also want to keep an eye on the foes you aren’t fighting—they’ll continue to scamper about while you’re mid-battle, and if a pack gets close to your characters, they’ll join in the fight. It doesn’t happen too often, but this randomized element of danger is actually kind of exciting, and left me thinking about positioning myself while luring enemies towards me, lest the baddies I couldn’t see show up and overwhelm my party.

You can recruit all manner of foes to fight for you.

It’s rather nice that fighting feels fresh, because you’ll be doing a lot of it: the game suffers from that JRPG need to all but overwhelm you with foes to fight, padding the time between narrative chunks with wave after wave of repetitive fisticuffs. A Pokémon-inspired capture system allows you to trap just about any foe and recruit them to your team, which assuages the monotony a bit by given you a seemingly endless array of team members with unique abilities to wade through. The game also takes another note from Earthbound and will let you beat enemies who are much weaker than you automatically—refreshing, if you do a bit of backtracking and tire of fighting the same old foes.

DFB2 gets a lot of things right, but it ultimately still plays like fan fiction. All the clever little jokes start to feel like so much fluff rather quickly, and after the hundredth quip about Mr. and Mrs. Rock’s marital issues during their attacks, you begin to realize you’ve been fighting the same foes (or variations on a theme) for hours.

The game prides itself on offering plenty of sidequests, but these amount to little more than tapping through a bit of NPC dialogue, and remembering to kill or capture a particular baddie you were probably going to encounter anyway. The art and animation is often gorgeous, with neat little effects for spells and combat abilities. And then you’ll notice how static much of the rest of the world is, overland streams or indoor fireplaces seemingly frozen in time.

You’re forced to navigate the poorly-designed menu system on a regular basis.

But the greatest offender—besides a poorly designed ship-combat minigame—is the menu system, which is simply awful on the PlayStation 3. It’s clearly scaled for displays with much lower resolutions, which means scrolling through endless, poorly organized lists of equipment, items and abilities every time you head to a shop or choose a spell in combat, with much of your HDTV's screen real estate wasted.

It makes a bit of sense—buying the game gives you access to both versions, and Sony’s excellent Cross Save feature lets you store your save game in the cloud, then pick up the adventure on whichever device you’d like. The experience fits much better on a Vita, and you can use touch controls to zip about the menus with ease. A tiny development team necessarily needs to optimize, and working within the Vita’s constraints and scaling up makes sense. But JRPGs have been handling item-wrangling for decades—you’ve taken inspiration from most everything else, just add a few sorting options, direct visual cues when thumbing through weapon upgrades, and at the very least the ability to buy more than one item at a time.

There’s a lot to like here—love, even. My inner curmudgeon can get annoyed with a comedic take on a Serious Business sort of genre, but it all feels like a light-hearted conversation between fans of a bygone era.

But is it worth $15? If you’re a JRPG fan itching to try something new, it’s a fun cross-platform romp, best experienced on a PlayStation Vita—PlayStation Plus subscribers can get it for $12 for the next few days. If you’re not a JRPG fan, you should probably just steer clear. New to the genre and on the fence? Well… they’re both almost two decades old, but Chrono Trigger is on the PlayStation Network and Earthbound is on the Nintendo Wii U’s eShop, and both will only set you back $10—start there, and circle back when you’re done or Dragon Fantasy Book II goes on sale.

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Unknown · at 7:02 pm

The Federal Trade Commission is examining Facebook’s proposed new privacy policy, which has rankled privacy activists who contend it allows users to be inserted into advertisements without their consent.

The FTC’s review is not an inquiry, but part of a regular monitoring program set in place after a 2011 settlement with Facebook, an agency spokesman said Wednesday.

The social networking site proposed updates in August to its policies that explain how people’s content is used in advertisements for which they receive no compensation. Facebook contends the change merely clarifies language that already allowed such use.

As a result, six privacy groups complained to the FTC in a Sept. 4 letter, saying the changes to its Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities violate the 2011 settlement.

The proposed change to Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities states that users give permission to Facebook to use their name, profile picture and content in connection with commercial, sponsored or related content.

“This means, for example, that you permit a business or other entity to pay us to display your name and/or profile picture with your content or information, without any compensation to you,” according to the proposed update. It goes on to state, “We do not give your content or information to advertisers without your consent.”

A Facebook spokesman said via email that “we routinely discuss policy updates with the FTC and this time is no different. Importantly, our updated policies do not grant Facebook any additional rights to use consumer information in advertising. Rather, the new policies further clarify and explain our existing practices.”

Facebook reached an agreement with the agency in November 2011 after the agency alleged the site was repeatedly sharing information that users believed was private. Under the settlement terms, Facebook admitted no guilt but agreed to obtain users’ consent before sharing their information beyond their established privacy settings.

Under the FTC order, Facebook isn’t required to submit changes to its privacy and data use policy to the agency. But the order does require Facebook to obtain third-party certifying audits every two years over the next 20 years to ensure its privacy program meets or exceeds the order’s requirements.

Facebook has faced other legal pressure over how it has used people’s data.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California approved on Aug. 26 the establishment of a $20 million fund for people whose personal information was allegedly used without permission in “sponsored stories,” an advertising product that draws on items people have indicated they “Like” on the site.

Facebook will pay $15 each to users who submitted valid claims and were part of the class-action suit, filed in 2011. The settlement also called on Facebook to makes changes to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to give users clearer guidelines on how their information is used in sponsored stories.

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Unknown · at 8:38 pm

Google's rivals on Monday called for a second full review of the search giant's latest proposed measures aimed at avoiding a fine from the European Commission for allegedly breaking competition rules.

Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia received new proposals from Google last week, his office said Monday, and now the search giant's rivals want a chance to comment on them.

Google has been under investigation by the European Commission since November 2010, after rivals accused the search giant of directing users to its own services by reducing the visibility of competing websites and services in search results. It was also accused of content-scraping and imposing contractual restrictions that prevent advertisers from moving their online campaigns to rival search engines.

In April Google proposed a set of measures to avoid sanctions, including labelling links to its own sites in search results. It also promised to include links to rival search engines for specialist restaurant search results that generate revenue for Google, remove exclusivity provisions from advertising contracts for five years and offer tools to prevent web scraping by allowing content owners to opt out.

The Commission gave interested parties the opportunity to comment on the April proposals, a process it calls "market testing". Most rivals and complainants said the measures were not good enough.

Now FairSearch Europe, a group made up of companies that have complained about Google, says that the new proposals should also be market tested.

"Given the failure of Google to make a serious offer last time around, we believe it is necessary that customers and competitors of Google be consulted in a full, second market test," said Thomas Vinje, FairSearch Europe's legal spokesman in a statement.

However, under Commission rules, Almunia is not obliged to run a second market test.

Google spokesman Al Verney said that the company is working to address the Commission's four main areas of concern.

The Commission can impose a fine of up to 10 percent of a company's annual turnover if it believes its concerns have not been addressed. It can also order changes in the company's operations to remove any antitrust breaches. However Almunia is reluctant to go down this time-consuming route in the fast-moving IT sector, preferring to reach mutual agreement with companies under the so-called Article 9 provision. Once measures are accepted by the Commission, they become legally binding.

Follow Jennifer on Twitter at @BrusselsGeek or email tips and comments to jennifer_baker@idg.com.

Jennifer Baker reports on the European Union: Commission, Parliament, technology policy, regulation, and competition.
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Unknown · at 7:25 pm

To dabble in scriptwriting without the full $250 investment for Final Draft, Celtx provides a pared-down set of features at a much more palatable price. The full-featured Celtx Plus package weighs in at a reasonable $15 (often $10 on sale via the Celtx company website, and with a 15-day free trial). A personal-use free edition centers on screenplays, but Celtx Plus allows for storyboards, catalogs, specialized viewing modes and includes clip art and other extras.

Celtx includes many of the features you'll find in screenwriting software Final Draft, but it costs far, far less.

Both free and Plus editions are available for Linux, Mac, and PC.

Celtx also offers mobile versions for Android and iOS and hosts the web-based Celtx Edge, which uses the Google Docs model to provide script and other collaborative media writing tools via browser window.

Note: The download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you must register to download any edition of the software.

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Unknown · at 7:07 pm

You're an audiophile and a neat freak. Years of burning CDs onto your computer have left your digital music library a tattered mess of unnamed tracks by unknown artists—and it's driving you nuts.

You can go through and name them one by one, but that would be an annoying slog, and it wouldn't solve the blank album cover problem. Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder to the rescue!

Adding songs to the program is an easy process using one of the five options.

MP3 Cover Finder works well, there's no doubt about that. It found art for every obscure song I could throw at it, pulling from sources including Amazon, Bing, Google, and iTunes to find the correct cover art and track information. If it couldn't use its fingerprint technology to identify the MP3 via metadata and file names, it still came up with the best match from all the information provided.

In my cruelest test, I used an unreleased song for which the artist is presumed but not confirmed and the title is just a rumor. It managed to find some generic cover art of the presumed band photos as well as some fan-made art for the song. The service works great.

Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder couldn't be simpler to use, either. Clicking the "Add" button brings up five different ways to add songs: a single file, a whole folder, your dedicated music folder, drag and drop, or from your iTunes. The songs load up, and the software asks if you'd prefer to find the covers immediately or later. The process could take anywhere from two to ten minutes depending on how many songs you choose: It's off scouring the Internet and file data for the correct information, and these things take time.

Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder finding covers

The program will load up the songs and scour the internet for the proper covers and data. Be patient!

Hitting the Optimize button lets you select which tracks to change and which options to apply. It automatically clears any manual data and selects the highest rated cover to apply, so you don't have to manually select data for each song.

Despite its usefulness and simplicity, there are major drawbacks. The initial price is $30 for a one-year license. After that you'll have to extend it, presumably by paying for another year, to continue using the product. That's a hefty subscription just to organize your music library. The changes stay in effect, of course, so any improvements made remain after your subscription expires.

Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder lets you store only 1000 songs at one time as well. Throwing your entire library into the fray takes a few steps. You can load all your songs, optimize them and find the covers, and then clear them out to make room for others. It's a hassle for those with huge libraries, but won't likely affect the majority.

Vendor Ashampoo doesn't bill the program as a music player by any means, and other than quick preview of the song it shouldn't be used as such. Double-clicking a song begins to play it, but there's no way to queue up more. You can click around while a song is playing to review and edit metadata, but the music player doesn't display the current song that's playing. This makes editing a song manually frustrating and confusing, since you can't be sure if the song you're listening to is the song you have selected without double-clicking again and restarting the song.

The user interface is simple and easy to use. Your songs are on the left, available covers are on the right and all the song's information is in the center.

Those who can't stand the blank covers and mislabeled songs when setting up playlists on a phone or MP3 player will get a kick out of Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder and will make the steep price tag worth it. However, anyone short of being a music organization freak won't get the same value. You'll get a good one-time use for the initial 20-30 songs that have been evading your labeling and then sit dormant until it's time to renew.

Alex covers desktops, everything from fancy to practical. He's also an avid (addicted) gamer and loves following the industry.
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Unknown · at 9:58 pm

Infoworld - Every time there's a new version of OS X, there's also a new version of Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, the two desktop virtualization products that let you run Windows, Linux, and OS X in virtual machines on your Mac. As Apple has sped up the pace of new OS X versions, the Parallels and Fusion upgrades have gotten, well, skimpier, with fewer compelling new features.

Yet the price remains the same: for Parallels, $50 to upgrade from the previous version, and $80 from any version before that or for new purchases; for Fusion, $50 to upgrade from the previous two versions, $60 otherwise. Like last year's upgrades, this year's versions fail the value test. It's becoming a tax on using Windows on a Mac, and most people I know rarely fire up Windows on their Mac after the first few months of switching, unless their business requires it.

[ Parallels Access lets you run Windows and Mac apps on your iPad -- but you may not like what you get if you do. | Test your Apple smarts with our Apple IQ test: Round 2. | Keep up with key Apple technologies with InfoWorld's Technology: Apple newsletter. ]

With the imminent arrival of OS X Mavericks, Parallels has released Parallels Desktop 9 and EMC VMware has released VMware Fusion 6. You can run the previous versions -- 8 and 5, respectively -- in Mavericks, so you don't have to get a new version to maintain compatibility with Apple's latest OS. Although both companies tout "new" Windows 8.1 and OS X Mavericks guest-OS compatibility in their new versions, I ran Windows 8.1 Preview and OS X Mavericks beta just fine in the previous versions. Further, OS X Mavericks beta runs both products' previous versions without a hitch. You don't need a new version of Parallels or Fusion just because of OS X Mavericks or Windows 8.1.

Because the OS updates are compatible with older versions of the virtualization programs, it becomes even more essential that the upgrade price match the new capabilities' value.

Of the two, Parallels Desktop has the greater number of interesting features (it did last year as well) -- ironically, they're meant to improve Windows 8 by adding a true Start menu and by making it work more like OS X.

VMware Fusion 6: Nothing much new hereMost of Fusion 6's enhancements are under the hood. You can allocate more RAM to each VM (64GB, up from 8GB) and use larger drives (8TB, up from 2TB). Fusion 6 also supports -- as any app does, with no modifications needed -- new OS X Mavericks capabilities such as the options for multimonitor setups that let you put a full-screen app window in its own desktop and use an Apple TV-connected monitor as if it were a monitor attached to your Mac.

When running Windows 8, Fusion 6 lets you place Metro apps (those purchased from the Windows Store) onto your Mac's Dock, in addition to the traditional Windows 7-style applications.

VMware didn't take the opportunity to standardize how it maps the Windows key commands in Fusion; as in the last version, sometimes you press Command and sometimes you have to press Cmd-Shift with the key to get the Windows key equivalent. That's a real usability blocker.

In other words, Fusion 6 is not much of an upgrade. Make no mistake: Fusion is a fine product, but there's no reason to pay $50 for the current version.

Parallels Desktop 9: Making Windows 8 a little less objectionableUnlike Fusion, the new version of Parallels tries to add something new for users to experience.

A neat idea is shared access to your cloud storage -- be it iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, and/or SkyDrive. Its appeal may not be so apparent until you realize that these cloud storage services copy their files to your local devices in a cache while you're connected; if both your Mac and VM access one of these services, you end up with two caches taking space. When running Windows, Parallels displays the iCloud (including Photo Stream), Google Drive, and Dropbox caches on your Mac as if they were local folders in Windows. They're actually aliases.

Likewise, your SkyDrive folder in Windows is supposed to appear as an alias on the Mac, in the Devices section of Finder windows. But even after installing the SkyDrive desktop app in the Windows 7 portion of Windows 8 (so that it appears in the File Explorer), I couldn't get it to display on the Mac.

Also, if you use SkyDrive on the Mac, it's not aliased to your Windows VM as the other services are, nor to Box in either direction. Cloud aliasing doesn't work if you're running an OS X VM on your Mac either.

But most of what Parallels proposes to make Desktop better in the new version has to do with Windows 8. Nearly everyone who's used Windows 8 strongly dislikes it; everyone I know who's tried it has bought a Mac or found one of the few remaining Windows 7 PCs at Dell or Hewlett-Packard instead. Not a single person I know went with Windows 8 by choice -- and these people were not fanboys of any platform.

So making Windows 8 work better is a laudable goal that may have limited appeal. After all, one of the beautiful aspects of running Windows in a VM is that you aren't forced to switch to a new version when you get new hardware. A Mac can be a Windows 7 PC you run forever.

But let's say that you have to run Windows 8. Parallels Desktop 9 claims to make it less obnoxious.

First, Parallels promises that you'll get a real Start menu, not the silly button in Windows 8.1 that merely switches between the Start screen and the Desktop -- which the Windows key on your PC (or Command on your Mac) already does for you. But Parallels' Start menu is not there out of the box. To get it, you need to ... well, I don't know. I couldn't figure it out, and Parallels didn't respond to my several queries. You might as well get an app like Start8 for your current VM and not fool with the new version of Parallels Desktop.

Parallels also promises that you can run Metro apps in windows on your Mac's Desktop, rather than in Windows 8's ungainly full-screen-only Start Screen mode. I guess the folks at Parallels took InfoWorld's suggestions for improving Windows 8, even if Microsoft didn't. However, you can't run Metro apps in their own windows within the full-screen Windows Desktop -- where this feature would be most useful. Worse, I couldn't get this feature to work as advertised on the Mac Desktop, either. Parallels' PR shows multiple Metro windows on the Desktop, sized appropriately. But in my tests, every Metro app took a full screen (and required switching to what Parallels calls Coherence mode) -- a major waste of screen real estate if you have a 27-inch monitor as I do.

There are some promising under-the-hood improvements in Parallels Desktop 9. For one, Windows apps can update while Windows is asleep, using the Power Nap mode in late-model Macs that allows OS X background app updates during sleep. Another is direct support for Thunderbolt drives, which can be directly connected to the Windows VM, if formatted as NTFS, FAT, or ExFAT. Then there's the ability to print straight to PDF from any Windows app's Print dialog box, offered by OS X for years. (Unlike some of the other Parallels additions, these actually work!)

Linux gets more support in Parallels Desktop 9, including new compatibility with the Mint and Mageia distros, as well as the ability to share apps between a Linux VM and OS X, as you could long do with Windows apps and OS X.

None of Parallels' enhancements are worth the upgrade price, especially given the futility of the key features, but at least they try to make your virtual life better.

What you should get: Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion? I suspect few people buy new copies of Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion these days (they're $80 each, by the way). Most users have probably been using one or the other for a while and are trying to decide whether to upgrade. I wouldn't pay money for VMware Fusion 6, and I would buy Parallels Desktop 9 only if I were using Windows 8 a lot. Most users can stick with what they already have.

If you're new to virtualization on the Mac, get Parallels Desktop 9. Although both Fusion and Parallels will run Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP without issue, as well as OS X Lion and later and the popular Linux distros, it's clear that Parallels is more invested in its product and is offering more Mac-like usability and clever features.

However, Parallels implements its new capabilities haphazardly, a lingering issue over the years. I dropped Parallels for Fusion two years ago for that reason, and I dumped Windows six years ago as my primary platform due to the uneven quality. As someone who already has the previous versions of both products, I'm slightly tempted to upgrade to Parallels Desktop 9 but not at all intrigued by VMware Fusion 6.

As you can tell, I'm leery of returning to a world of mediocrity -- Parallels is too PC! That alone should make you think twice before spending your hard-earned money to upgrade or switch to either of these products.

This story, "Review: New Parallels, Fusion virtual desktops for OS X fail the smell test," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Keep up on the latest developments in mobile technology and security at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

Read more about virtualization in InfoWorld's Virtualization Channel.

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Unknown · at 8:54 pm