Before the rise of Internet-hosted online gaming setups, we saw the existence of multi-player multi-machine gaming setups that existed either peer-to-peer with a cable or a local area network.

What was valued about these setups was that you could establish ad-hoc local games challenges ranging from connecting up a pair of PlayStations to each other towards the huge “LAN party” frag-fests with players playing various games on many overclocked PCs connected via a business-grade Ethernet network to a games server in a large room that is hired for that party. In some cases, it could include a Bluetooth link between two phones or PDAs to play a game while on a train or over a coffee at that café/

There were advantages like being able to play against people you know well, through having the network game become a feature for a party to the ability for a venue to host their own challenges based on these games.

As we have moved towards the online games model, we have drifted from the localised multi-machine gaming model. But we can re-integrate the localised model with the online model if the game or situation allows for it.

One approach would be to create local teams, gaming challenges or play spaces for your immediate area. These would require users with the online accounts to be aware of and play with the teams, challenges or spaces. They could be locally authenticated using GPS, network discovery or manually through the user entering in a seat number or room number for the local challenge.

Another way of facilitationg these local challenges is to “go hybrid”. This is where you have the online gaming setup but you also have a local games server available to a local network, which could be the function of a high-end network-attached storage device. This local server can team with the online server either to cache activity when the online link is a slow link or to host the local challenges.

This concept of local-network gaming may go against the dream for the purely cloud-driven online lifestyle but can allow for increased opportunities for developing the network-gaming concept further. It doesn’t matter whether you are at home, run a public-access network or want to take gaming further than the online gaming services.

Introduction

Some accommodations plans offered by hotels like this one do include wireless Internet access

A common gripe I have heard from travellers in relation to Internet access at hotels, especially the “big-time” hotel chains is that they charge too much for Internet access rather than providing it as a complimentary service.

There are two ways you can benefit from this access without having to pay extra.

The business-focused accommodation deal

Some hotels offer a business-focused deal which includes at least accommodation, breakfast served in the main restaurant along with the Internet access for the duration of your stay. Most often, some of these packages are offered through the weekdays and, in some cases, may be cheaper that the standard accommodation-only rate. Different properties may throw in extras like reduced business-centre costs, or a rebate on your food or drink bill.

This is in a similar vein to how some of the accommodation+breakfast deals may cost slightly more than the accommodation-only deals yet you have the breakfast which would cost significantly more as part of the package.

Examples of these include:

• Online Over An Omelette deal offered by Rydges Melbourne (breakfast in restaurant, Internet access)
• All Inclusive Corporate Access deal offered by Rydges On Swanston (breakfast in restaurant, Internet access, welcome drink in bar, AUD$10 towards drinks in the minibar)
• Business Sense deal offered by Intercontinental Melbourne The Rialto (breakfast in restaurant, Internet access and 25% of business-centre services)

It is also worth paying attention to the club-floor or concierge-floor programs that some of these hotels offer which will have complimentary or reduced-price Internet access. These premium-priced programs are related to a cluster of rooms on a particular floor where you also have access to an exclusive-access lounge, complimentary food and drinks amongst other things depending on the program.

That frequent-lodger program that the hotel offers

Some of the hotels who run a frequent-lodger program may offer cheaper or inclusive Internet access for all members of the program. An example of this is the Marriott Rewards program which provides inclusive Internet access to guests checking in using this plan. Another example is the PriorityGUEST program which reduces the standard property-specific Internet access costs by half for members who check in at a Rydges, QT or Art Series hotel with their PriorityGUEST card.

Conclusion

It makes sense to spend extra time trawling through Websites and similar material offered by a big-name hotel chain or other hotel that charges for Internet access and look for the accommodation packages or frequent-lodger programs that integrate access to this service.

It is worth knowing that any particular package or promotion that I mention in this article may be subject to change.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Sony SRS-BTM8 Bluetooth speaker which is one of the newer Bluetooth speakers optimised for that music-filled smartphone, tablet or Ultrabook. Here, it allows you to use your NFC-equipped Android smartphone or tablet to facilitate “touch-and-go” setup for that device as well as an easy-to-access pair-up button for other Bluetooth devices.

Price

The unit itself:

RRP including tax: AUD$129

Connections

Speakers

The unit itself

The Sony SRS-BTM8 Bluetooth speaker system can work on 4 AA batteries which are installed underneath the unit, or the supplied AC adaptor. Here, it supports orthodox power arrangement for portable audio equipment where the AC power is more about avoiding the need to compromise battery runtime or allow the unit to run with batteries. The fact that this unit can run on regular batteries can mean that you can safely use it in the bathroom or by the pool.

Useability

Controls located across the top of the Bluetooth speaker. Also where you touch your NFC-capable Android phone when you set it up with the speaker.

The near-field-communication setup routine works as expected with the Sony NFC setup ap. But you have to hold the phone or other device to the speaker until the connection procedure is finished, which is indicated by a blue light that glows steadily.

Here, it paired up quickly with my Samsung Galaxy Note II phone. I also tried to pair it up with an iPhone using the standard pairing routine and this was very simple, thanks to the “pairing” button.

As well, I wanted to find out whether this speaker can be reinstated to an existing device without you needing to pair up the device again, a problem I have noticed with some Bluetooth speakers, car stereos and other devices that I have had to help people out with. Here, it didn’t take long for the Sony speaker to reinstate itself with my phone once I used the “connect” function on my phone’s Android user interface.

Like with most Bluetooth speaker systems, you can press this Sony unit in to service as a handsfree speakerphone for your smartphone or Skype-equipped computer. Here, this can come in handy for group calls or if you just want the ability to answer that call while you are undertaking another activity.

There is also a 3.5mm line-input jack that you can use to connect that Discman, DAB portable radio, cassette Walkman or music-full iPod Classic to keep those tunes flowing.

Of course, all the controls are located across the top for volume adjustment and control of Bluetooth devices, including call management when serving as a speakerphone. This makes it easier to locate all the controls when using the speaker such as in a bathroom.

Sound quality

The Sony SRS-BTM8 speaker sound like a small radio yet is able to provide some bass in to the sound mix. It also provides a sound that is more room-filling than the speakers that are typically integrated in a smartphone, tablet or small laptop.

Other usage notes

A teenager who lives with us tried the speaker with his music-filled iPhone and found that it worked well for bedroom or bathroom use and was impressed with the sound for the product’s class.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

Sony could have this as the base product for a variant that has a built-in broadcast radio tuner i.e. as a Bluetooth-equipped portable radio.

As well, Windows and Android could have native support for NFC-assisted Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct setup so there isn’t a need to download applications to set up these devices using Near Field Communication pairing.

Conclusion

I would recommend this as an alternative to a small boombox when you want to use it to amplify the sound from a smartphone, tablet or Ultrabook. As I mentioned before, it would come in handy with use by the pool, in the bathroom or in the kitchen due to the fact that it runs on batteries.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Toshiba Satellite P870 which is a 17” desktop-replacement laptop that has a lot of features and expectations of a modest fully-equipped desktop in a laptop chassis. It is the first of its kind that I have reviewed that comes with Windows 8 but the lack of a touchscreen doesn’t really do the operating system justice.

There are some variants of this model including one variant that has all the multimedia fruit such as 16Gb system RAM, 1.5Tb hard-disk storage with 8Gb solid-state caching, a 1080p screen and a full Blu-Ray burner.

The computer itself

Aesthetics and Build Quality

There is a lot of use of the aluminium panelling around the Toshiba Satellite P870’s keyboard escutcheon and palm rest as well as on the back of the lid. This provides for a use experience that feels more cool to the touch and less sweaty.

I have noticed the durable construction for a machine of its value as well as no overheating under normal use. Even video playback doesn’t cause the Toshiba to overheat. This means that you can use it on your knees without it feeling hot, and you don’t hear a fan kicking in, trying to cool the laptop down, as you use the computer.

User Interface

The keyboard that the Toshiba Satellite P870 is equipped with has the backlit keys. But they are pretty slippery. On the other hand, the keys are easy to locate by touch and wide enough so you can touch-type comfortably.

There is a numeric keypad which is good for working spreadsheets, bookkeeping and other number-crunching applications.

The trackpad is overly sensitive when it comes to typing and the ability to disable it is very similar to what happens with recent HP laptops and can cause confusion. Personally, I would prefer that Toshiba maintain the separate hardware switch for controlling the trackpad. As well, I would prefer Windows 8 users to use a Bluetooth mouse for better control of the screen because this computer isn’t equipped with a touchscreen and the trackpad can take a fair bit of getting used to.

Audio and Video

Harman-Kardon speakers to give this laptop full sound

The visual experience for the Toshiba Satellite P870 was very smooth and responsive although you may not know what graphics mode you may be using for the application, thanks to the NVIDIA Optimus setup. Here, this engages discrete or integrated graphics depending on what you are doing as well as whether there is much battery runtime left in the computer’s battery.

When I played some music using Toshiba’s Media Player software, the laptop yielded full-response sound, thanks to the Harman-Kardon sound tuning. It didn’t sound wimpy and was adequate for a desktop replacement computer. Also, I was watching some content from SBS Video On Demand and found that the sound quality was impressive when it reproduced the dialogue and sound effects from the movie while I was using the integrated speakers.

Connectivity, Storage and Expansion

Left-hand-site – Gigabit Ethernet, 2 USB ports and a Blu-Ray reader / DVD burner driver.

The Toshiba Satellite P870 has plenty of connections like a VGA and HDMI output, separate audio input and output jacks, Gigabit Ethernet and 4 USB ports. Three of these are the 3.0 variety for newer higher-performance peripherals while one of these is a 2.0 variety for external mice and similar peripherals. The USB 2.0 port also provides the user-selectable “Sleep and Charge” function so you can charge your mobile phone or other USB-charged gadgets from this laptop especially while it is plugged in to AC power. This function worked as expected when I set the Toshiba up to charge my Samsung Galaxy Note II smartphone and can be a bonus if you are in those areas where there aren’t many power outlets to plug mobile-phone charges in to.

Right-hand side – audio input and output, 2 USB ports, HDMI and VGA video outputs.

The hard-disk capacity for each of the variants of this model is realistic to current expectations for a desktop replacement especially where you intend to take the Toshiba between home and work. This is more so if you are a media packrat and you have heaps of digital pictures, music tracks and video material on the hard disk.

The release button on the optical drive is located on bevel underneath the laptop, and is asking for trouble due to accidental opening when the computer is switched on. Personally, I would have the switch located on the front of the optical-drive tray or, for the price position, I would prefer to run with a slot-load drive.

Battery life

For regular use, the battery runtime is very good when you engage in most tasks. If you do intend to watch online video for longer than an hour, you have to make sure that the battery is charged up fully or you are using external power.Similarly playing a DVD would last for around two and a half hours from a full battery.

With this class of machine, I wouldn’t really expect to have a long-tine of battery use when engaging in multimedia.

Other usage notes

The Toshiba Media app that come with this laptop is no crapware. Infact it worked tightly with the home network and was able to play what was on my WD MyBook World Edition network-attached storage clearly and reliably.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

For a laptop of its price range, the Toshiba Satellite P870 could benefit from a touchscreen, which would make the Windows 8 user experience worthwhile. Similarly, the Wi-Fi network functionality could be set up for 802.11a/g/n dual-band across the range.

Conclusion

I would recommend the Toshiba Satellite P870 Series of desktop-replacement laptops for its purpose as a desktop-replacement computer rather than primarily for portable “on-the-road” use. This would be preferred by those who value the large screen for imaging, multimedia and related activities. It is one of these laptop computers that suit a person who lives out of their car boot (trunk) and only uses it in the location where they stay; or those of us who want to have a computer that they can easily move around the house or stow away in a drawer out of sight.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Highlands and Islands in £146 million fibre boost

From the horse’s mouth

British Telecom

Press Release

My Comments

Another rural area in the United Kingdom is being enabled with real broadband. This time it is the Highlands and Islands region in Scotland.

The mighty Scots will have a fibre-optic infrastructure that will intend to pass at least 84% of homes and businesses in this area. The setup will be primarily of the FTTC (fibre-to-the-cabinet / fibre-to-the-curb) fibre-copper setup with some installations being FTTP (full fibre-to-the-premises) setups.

This £146m project is being primarily provisioned by BT but, like a lot of these projects, has a lot of public funding. There will be £19.4m pitched by BT and £12m coming from the Highlands and Islands Enterprise business group with balance being public money from BDUK (Broadband Delivery UK) and from Edinburgh.

This will be considered one of the most ambitious rural-Internet-enablement projects in the UK due to the geographical makeup of the are i.e. the hilly nature of the Highlands as well as the Scottish Islands separated by water. One of the main costs would be to run 19 undersea fibre links to the Scottish Islands that are in this district. As well, areas that are considered to be remote will be the target of a £2.5m innovation fund to get broadband in to them.

What I would see of this is that the Highlands and Islands project can he used as an example of deploying real next-generation broadband to areas that have a mixture of geographically-difficult terrains like mountains or islands.

Article

Why You’ll End Up Wearing A Smart Watch | Gizmodo Australia

My Comments

With the increase in smart watches being developed by various companies including Google, Apple and Samsung, there has been optimism and doubt about whether we will start wearing these watches on our wrists.

What is the smart watch?

The smart watch is an extended-function watch that works with a smartphone as a wrist-based display for the phone. These watches are in a similar vein to the 1980s-era digital watch where the more functions it had, the more you could impress others with it. In a lot of cases, these functions served many practical uses like being able to time a process or log the duration of events like races.

It would tell the time using a customisable analogue or digital display but would be able to show up notifications from your smartphone. As well as being the clock, calendar, stopwatch and timer, it could also work as a remote control for your smartphone such as navigating the music that you are playing, selecting a contact to call or text or answering a call while you hear and talk to the caller via a Bluetooth headset. Another advantage that these would offer would be the ability for us to have a discreet glance at the watch if a message comes in on our phone.

Some doubters suggested that the smartwatch wouldn’t take off because of the fact that most young people don’t wear watches anymore. Instead they use the smartphone to tell the time or, if they have to have a watch, they would wear a quartz-driven dress watch. Of course, I would expect to see the smartwatch be considered as a wearable accessory to the smartphone and can evoke a level of curiosity from other people as we wear one of these watches just like it did with the digital watch.

What I would expect of the smartwatch would be to make use of Bluetooth 4.0 and similar technologies so it can run for at least 6 months on regular watch batteries. This is in addition to having a ladies’ form factor with similar functionality but appealing for the women to wear.

As well, it should be able to keep time independently of the host smartphone device yet use that device as a master clock for setting itself when initially started and when you cross time zones or whenever we change between standard time and daylight-saving time.

Personally, I would see these watches come on the scene as a viable practical mobile accessory for our phones rather than just a fashion accessory.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

Onkyo

T-4070 | ONKYO Asia and Oceania Website (Catalogue material)

My Comments

Previously, I had seen in action the NAD C446 Media tuner which is effectively a “four-band” (AM/FM/DAB+/Internet) broadcast-radio tuner and file-based audio-content player that can play from USB memory sticks or the DLNA Home Media Network. This was able to do its job in a very exacting manner yielding high-quality sound from these sources to the sound system that it is providing these playback services to.

Denon fielded a network audio player with FM/AM tuner functionality in the same box but those of us who have DAB / DAB+ digital radio broadcast services in action may find that this tuner misses the mark. This is more so if the AM talk and sports stations like ABC Radio National in the metropolitan areas do simulcast on DAB and you find that you can’t hear the programme hosts on these stations due to electrical interference but you find that the DAB simulcasts “answer your prayers”.

But Onkyo have shown up with a tuner with the same functionality as the NAD C446 tuner. This means it can pick up broadcasts from FM, AM or DAB as well as Internet streams; alongside playing audio content that exists on your DLNA-enabled home network or USB memory keys, providing these services to the sound system that it is connected to. If you have a smartphone or tablet full of music, you can stream audio content that exists on the device to this tuner via your home network using Apple AirPlay or DLNA.  The same holds true with computers that are packed to the gunnels with music and use iTunes, newer versions of Windows Media Player or other DLNA-capable media management programs.It also has access to the Spotify online music service as well as another service called Aupeo.

This function set, whether with or without DAB+ broadcast reception could end up being determined for audio-based network media adaptors, especially when it comes to gaining access to broadcast and Internet radio as well as network-hosted audio content, including online services. As well, the fact that mainstream hi-fi names are cutting in to the market shows that the class of product is being given serious thought.

I would see this device and its peers becoming simply a network media adaptor for audio content or a high-quality way to add DAB and Internet radio to that hi-fi system you so love.