Universe’s Tech Blog

Microsoft employee Andre Vrignaud, who works for the Game Tech Group, claims that Sony’s PlayStation network is “busted” and offers a “broken” user experience. He believes that a number of companies are trying to position themselves to become the sole provider of an online solution for the PS3.

Microsoft loves to champion their Xbox Live service, and they have every right to; starting with the original Xbox they’ve built up a tremendous online platform with a robust feature set. The general consensus is that Sony has a lot of catching up to do in the online arena, even with free online and a more standard set of features on their PlayStation Network. Now, in the competitive spirit of the console wars, Microsoft has called out Sony, labeling its online platform as “busted.”

Andre Vrignaud, Microsoft’s director of technical strategy for Xbox Live, wrote on his Ozymandias blog about a lawsuit that Xfire has brought against Gamespy. Apparently Xfire believes that GameSpy Comrade’s “Buddy Sync” feature, which seeks out friends lists from other programs like Xfire and AIM, is infringing on its copyrights. What does this have to do with the PlayStation Network? Well, Vrignaud notes that “this suit highlights how busted Sony’s PS3 online network is, and how companies are fighting to position themselves to take advantage of this financially.”

When PS3 owners first use the system’s online functionality they’ll be asked to create a “Sony ID,” but Vrignaud points out that you will likely need separate IDs or friends lists depending on the game. Talking about the upcoming game Resistance: Fall of Man, he said, “Even though I already have a ‘Sony ID’, I may have to create a new ‘Resistance ID’ to play. And then start thinking about just how broken the experience is when you try to invite someone to a game. Do you send it via the Resistance UI? What screenname do I send it to? If I want to add you to my ‘Sony ID’ friends list, do I need to send you an in-game message to ask you what your real ‘Sony ID’ name is? What about game invites? How does that work across even just these two IDs?”

He continued, “You think that’s bad? Now let’s open up a few more games from different publishers. Each of these publishers had to make a choice of what online interface to use - again, because Sony’s online network just isn’t ready. So they’ll choose between writing their own (as did Insomniac for Resistance), or perhaps licensing Xfire, or GameSpy, or Quazal, or Demonware. So now we have five potential networks with different namespaces, and an inherent lack of ability to communicate (chatting, voice, invites, finding friends, etc.) between them, and even across to just the ‘Sony ID’ namespace. Think we’re done? Nope… what happens if each publisher doesn’t stick with the same online solution for all of their games? This is very likely as most publishers use different developers - so even across a single publisher, you may find fragmented communities.”

Getting back to how it relates to the Xfire/Gamespy suit, he explained, “What we’re really seeing with this suit are online middleware companies trying to position themselves to become the eventual de facto solution that publishers will use. Just as with web search and instant messaging, these companies are trying to get momentum and user base that will cause them to be the ‘PS3 online’ solution of choice. And this suit is simply one of many battles we’ll see in this space, especially as PC and console crossplatform connectivity becomes more important in the coming years.”

f you haven’t managed to procure a good, solid pre-order yet from a credible retailer, you just might want to take a good hard look at those unboxing pics we shared last night, ’cause it could very well be as close as you’re getting to a PlayStation 3 in 2006. See, despite Sony’s repeated reductions to the launch quantity predictions, EA thinks they’re still “exaggerating” a bit, and we might actually end up with around 500,000 to 800,000 units by year’s end in North America — as opposed to the 1-1.2 million currently being predicted by Sony. Sure, we would figure Sony would know its own numbers better than anyone else, but it also has the greatest motive to “exaggerate,” and we’re sure EA has plenty of insider info of its own. For our part, we’re relatively certain Sony will have 14-17 of these things ready by November 17th. Maybe.

In this post by Shaheen Gandhi, an engineer on the Xbox 360 Platform Team, a massive amount of code went into the HD DVD playback system for the Xbox 360.

As a result of the complexities of decoding HD DVD audio and video content, as well as providing a user interface and DRM, over 4.7 million lines of code went into the HD DVD software. Among the components that had to be developed and integrated:

* Video Codecs: H.264, MPEG-2, VC1
* Audio Codecs: Dolby Digital+, DTS, TrueHD, LPCM, MPEG
* HDi: The HD DVD runtime engine
* GDI: Drawing stuff like menus
* AACS: Cryptography/DRM stuff
* MF: Audio/Video pipeline

Remember, there is no hardware HD DVD decoder chip set on board the Xbox 360. As a result, the HD DVD subsystem is almost entirely written in software. It’s one of the most demanding applications written for the 360 to date, using up all six of the system’s hardware threads. According to Shaheen’s post:

At the moment, the player software pushes Xbox 360 harder than any other (save, perhaps, Gears of War during some particularly busy parts of the game).

Now keep in mind, it’s not like millions of lines of NEW code had to be written here, with many of the codecs and graphic libraries already in existence. That said, it’s still staggering how much effort went into the development of this add-on.

BM’s Zurich Research Lab has announced a technology that it says imitates nature and increases the cooling properties of otherwise regular heatsinks by an impressive twofold.

One of the major challenges with cooling processors is designing effective units that can dissipate the heat, either through convection with heatsinks — passively or forced with fans — or through alternatives such as water cooling and thermoelectric Peltier systems.

The other challenge that is equally important is heat transference. This is often overlooked, however, as it’s difficult to improve upon with current processor heat-spreader designs. That is, efficiently moving the heat from the metal plate on top of the processor — the heat-spreader — over to the heatsink or whatever is cooling said chip, is quite challenging.

This is where IBM says it has a solution.

To encourage this transference, presently we use thermal paste — or what we elegantly like to call ‘goop’. This goop reduces the tiny imperfections of both surfaces to allow for better surface contact and permits slight movements due to expansion and contraction from the heat.

Many people swear by different types of thermal goop, however the performance differences generally come down to a margin of error, but that which still barely changes by a degree Celsius or two. Vegemite and grainless toothpaste would be similarly useful if it weren’t for their delicious properties.

This paste is ’smooshed’ — another fine technical term — between the processor and the cooling unit. It usually involves a business card, patience, and a firm hand to spread just the right amount evenly across the entire surface.

While spreading on the paste, one must be careful not to leave too much on the surface so as to inhibit its heat transference properties, but not too little for it to be of hardly any benefit.

Yes, with all this goop smooshing going on, it is by no means an exact science.

This all changes, according to IBM, with its new design of heat-spreader it lovingly calls ‘high thermal conductivity interface technology.’ Addressing the transference point where the processor and cooling unit meet, it says the powerful design has taken a page or three from biology.

This design consists of a hierarchical structure of channels on the processor, like tree roots, that ensure the goop is much more evenly distributed across the two conjoined surfaces. The end result is a near-perfect connection with a thermal paste thickness of merely 10 micrometres.

This, claims IBM, increases the transference efficiency a fair and reasonable tenfold.

IBM also spoke of a similar, albeit closed-water system comparable “to the human vascular system.” It contains 50,000 tiny channels fashioned in a tree-branch hierarchy and can cool a remarkable 370W per square centimetre. This system uses much less power to pump the liquid than existing cooling systems, it says.

Basically, there is a flicker of hope for our oncoming 6000 degree processor overlords.

Last month we made some predictions on how much you’d be asked to shell out for Office 2007 based on Microsoft’s US pricing. Today, Microsoft Australia finally posted the local pricing — and our estimates panned out pretty well.

In fact, our forecast of “a whopping $1,149″ for Office 2007 Ultimate (the edition with everything but the beetroot) was just a dollar short of the official $1,150 tag.

The less stratospheric members of the Office 2007 family have prices that are closer to earth. Microsoft has largely pegged each Office 2007 bundle to the same price as its 2003 equivalent, which is nothing to complain about.

However, people who have been lobbying for a lower-priced version of Office for home users for the past decade will be delighted to learn that the academic edition is now called “Home and Student 2007″. This gives you Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote (the first time Microsoft’s notebook app has been rolled into an Office bundle) for just $249, which is truly affordable.

This new version is targeted at all consumers — there is no need to prove you are a student to buy it.

The standard Office version — cunningly named Office Standard 2007 — packs Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook for $690, or $399 for upgrades. It’s a big price hike just for the inclusion of Outlook, which is odd considering licences to Outlook are included with Exchange Server anyway.

A Small Business 2007 edition adds the Contact Business Manager to Outlook and lifts the price to $749, or $499. We’d surprised that this doesn’t include Office Accounting Express 2007, the cut-down version of Office Accounting Professional 2007 (which is, in turn, the successor to Office Small Business Accounting 2006) which Microsoft last week made available as a freebie. Sure, it’s already a freebie, but why not roll it into the suite just for the hell of it?

Closer to the top end of town sits Office Professional 2007, which adds Publisher 2007 and Access 2007 to the mix. The RRP is set at $849, with upgrades for $549. It’s an amusing paradox that Publisher is included in a “professional” version of Office — it would be more appropriate in the “home and student” bundle.

As for Office Ultimate 2007 — with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access, OneNote, the Groove P2P virtual workspace and the more esoteric InfoPath XLM-based workflow platform — as we noted earlier, the cost of entry is $1,150, or $939 for upgraders.

There are three more new SKUs of Office 2007 which Microsoft will not be making available to the masses. Office Basic 2007 is an appealing bundle of Word, Excel and Outlook that’s sold only to OEMs for installation on new machines. Professional Plus 2007 and Enterprise 2007 are available only through companies with a volume licensing agreement.

What’s in each office:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX101635841033.aspx

We’ve all seen Outlook Web Access before — it’s slow and has limitations that become glaringly obvious compared to the real Outlook. No longer - OWA in Exchange 2007 rocks!

Microsoft is “de-emphasizing” the little-used public folders feature of Exchange, so the 2007 version now gives access to SharePoint documents and Windows file shares directly from within the OWA interface. The idea is that SharePoint will take over as a general document repository from Exchange public folders.

You can open files in two ways via OWA 2007: directly in your browser (or saved to your local disk) or “web ready document viewing” which formats the document for viewing in your browser. File access settings are controlled by the Exchange Server administrator, including the option to block access to particular servers.

OWA2007 now lets users manage Windows Mobile devices, such as PDAs and smart phones.

If you’ve forgotten your phone’s password, it can be retrieved via OWA, but even better, if you lose your device, you can issue a remote wipe command via OWA which erases all your personal data from the phone. This was possible in Exchange 2003 SP2 but it was only accessible to the server administrator.

Grouping and sorting emails is easier. Search is vastly improved in Exchange 2007 and OWA takes advantage of this so now you can actually use the search facilities.

Out of Office messages can now be scheduled from OWA so that you don’t have to remember to do it just before going on holidays. These messages can also be different for internal and external recipients.

The Global Address book and your own contacts list are now easily accessible in OWA. Earlier versions of OWA presented a search interface so you had to enter a name first; OWA 2007 lists addresses directly.

The calendar is more accessible and you can read details of meetings without opening each item. Scheduling meetings is improved with colour coding of suggested times corresponding to best availability of all attendants.

Meeting reminders show up on top of OWA as a separate dialog box, just as in Outlook.

Notification of incoming messages can be different for mail, fax, and voice messages. Exchange 2007 supports integration with telephone systems and will realise the idea of the Universal Inbox with built in support for voice, fax and email.

It’s a never-ending quest; attempting to make a web application, with nothing installed on the client except for a browser, behave as a fully-fledged installed application. In OWA 2007 Microsoft has come much closer to that goal.

Overall the OWA experience is vastly improved in Exchange 2007. It feels more like the real Outlook and it’s easier to use. OWA 2007 is the first version where I could recommend it as a solution for people who want to use it as their sole email client.

It’s been created and is active.