Linux

Apple, Samsung, Google and LG's fixation with phones and tablets could be about to end. ll are heavily rumoured to be unleashing smart watches in 2013, but it's not clear whether the (possibly curved glass) iWatch, Google Watch or Galaxy Watch will be standalone products or link up to existing ecosystems centred on the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S4, respectively.Smart watches are a fledgling market, for now, but we do know that wearable gadgets are the future, with analysts at ABI Research stating that wearable devices could number 485 million by 2018 as a wave of new gadgets hit shops. While most wearable gadgets are, for now, sporty devices such as the Nike FuelBand, smartphone-compatible watches are beginning to emerge too. Here are the best smart watches we know about so far, and details about their ability to pair with smartphones.1. Cookoo - £110/US$130/AU$150(iPhone 4S/5, iPad mini, iPad 3/4 & iPod touch 5th gen)Looking more like a designer accessory than an armful of computer power, this modern-looking wristwatch has some great connected features, but is only for iPhone owners. Specifically those who are getting a bit bored of their iPhone. After establishing a Bluetooth link to an iPhone, the Cuckoo can alert you to incoming calls and messages, enables you to check in on Facebook, and even operate an iPhone's camera remotely. Great idea, but who's going to hold it? We do like the calendar reminders, iPhone low battery alert, alarms and its waterproof design, though if you head off into the sea without your phone, you will get beeped at as you dive under the waves.2. Pebble - US$150 (around £100/AU$155)(iOS & Android)Finally announced at CES 2013 after a few months as a Kickstarter poster boy, the Pebble - the maker of which may or may not be in discussions with Apple - is a watch for iOS and Android apps that uses power-saving e-paper rather than a conventional LCD display. Consequently, the battery lasts for a whole week; that's the big draw. Connecting to smartphones via Bluetooth, Pebble has a customisable clock face that can receive the same notifications from a paired phone - including social media - as most other smart watches can. A dedicated app store will also be available.3. Casio G-Shock GB-6900AA - £163/US$180/AU$245(iPhone 4S/5)It's brand new, but you could argue that Casio's Bluetooth-powered smart watch represents simple first-gen thinking. Linking to an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 hosting Casio's G-Shock app, the Casio G-Shock GB-6900AA's LED-backlit display notifies the wearer of incoming phone calls, emails, texts and Facebook and Twitter updates. You can also operate the iPhone's alarm - thus finding it if mislaid - with the GB-6900AA vibrating if it loses the Bluetooth link (which stretches only to about 2m). Another useful travel feature is world time; the GB-6900AA syncs with the iPhone's refreshed time when you step off the plane in foreign climes. There's no touchscreen here, but the GB-6900AA is a smart-looking, traditional watch (which could be its trump card) with added extra smartphone-sync goodness, that uses a CR2032 button-cell battery. Read our Casio G-Shock GB-6900AA review4. Martian G2G - US$250 (around £165/AU$260)(iOS & Android)Another Kickstarter-funded project that's just begun shipping to its early backers, the Martian G2G is much the same as the Casio and Cuckoo in that it beeps when it loses sight of your phone, tells you about text messages and calls, works as a phone camera remote and interacts with Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and weather apps. However, it also has a (noise isolating) microphone so you can voice-dial phone numbers, speak-in text messages and have Siri speak to you. It's also got a swish design that centres on a tiny 96 x 16 pixel OLED display. Determine what your G2G actually does via a Martian Watch Alerts app on any iOS or Android device. It uses a rechargeable lithium battery, so will need charging via a USB or wall adaptor at night. 5. i'm Watch - £300

In the series of my efforts of pushing for more Linked Data to be published by FLOSS development tools, here’s another installment. The ADMS.SW plugin for FusionForge that I’ve developped has seen its first public deployment on the ADULLACT forge, thanks to the funding of the ISA programme of the European Commission. This means that the 500 more projects hosted on the ADULLACT forge, mainly developped by public adminstrations, are now documented using the RDF Turtle dialect, as Linked Data. A first use can be for Free and Open source portals which will be able to harvest them from the source. See more details at First deployment of ADMS.SW plugin for FusionForge on Adullact. Other forges are expected to follow, like CENATIC’s or Debian’s Alioth, all powered by FusionForge. The plugin is not yet perfect, and in particular wrt performance issues, but that was kind of expected from a first prototype. Stay tuned for more news.

Google's Eric Schmidt says the internet giant has "a clear business incentive" to protect your privacy. Speaking at Google's Big Tent UK event this week he was at pains to state why it's in Google's interests to respect data. "We try to be as transparent as possible on what we do with people's data. From our perspective, we disclose what we are doing. So we basically made a broad statement of 'this is what we do with your data' – we did this about a year ago and it was widely covered. "Anybody who cares about privacy would have read this and understood it and knew what we were doing. From our perspective we had disclosed what we were doing."But Schmidt acknowledged the continuing concerns over Google's data use, before moving on to the reasons why he believes such concerns are unfounded."My interpretation is that there is concern that we might be misusing this data and we're not telling you [about it], which I assure you is not the case. We're very committed to telling you what we do. There appears to be a separate concern that we use the data at all, but that's how our systems work, that's how we are able to afford the data centres and the services that are free."So we're sort of caught between these rhetorical points. But I can assure you from a privacy perspective – if we were to violate your privacy in a way that was material we would lose you and we would not get you back.""We would get sued to death"And Schmidt says you should believe in Google's good intentions even if you don't like the company. "Independent of whether you like us, we have a clear business incentive to protect your privacy. Because if we violate it, we will lose you. Furthermore, if we do it, the Europeans and US will legislate against us, restrict our actions. So there are many reasons why you should think your privacy is protected."We say it, we do it, we suffer a penalty if we break it, we lose you as a customer, we will get regulated and we will get sued to death, because we get sued over everything. I think that's roughly how it's going to play out. If people are genuinely concerned, we need to fight for our privacy because it will get taken from us – not from Google, but from others who have other agendas."Talking more generally about the concept of privacy – tackled in his new book – Schmidt said it was more important than ever that we all work to protect our own privacy. "It's difficult to separate privacy and security. For example, everyone expects Google to respect the integrity of the data you give to Google. It would be a huge problem if your information is somehow leaked or given to Governments. That makes sense to me. "I think you have a responsibility for judgement; the internet has retention. It's difficult to delete things. If you post things, they're unlikely to be deletable. This is a problem for parents. Schmidt cited the recent examples of 3D printed guns and ammunition being made as a reason why information online is so indelible. Referring to a specific US case he said: "This information is now all around the world and is essentially undeletable because it's in so many different places. People will die because of what this gentleman – and I call him that with derision – decided was a clever idea."Schmidt is clearly forthright on the issue of privacy and says he has long thought about the implications of putting ever-increasing amounts of data online: "We need to fight for privacy now, or we're going to lose it," is his advice for us.

Lenovo has announced record profits for the fiscal year ending March 2013, bucking the general trend of the PC market right now.The company reported its PC shipments were up 10.2 per cent, compared with the 8.1 per cent decline the rest of the industry has suffered.Lenovo's impressive performance was repeated across its entire portfolio, with total sales seeing a 15 percent increase from the prior year. Nice going, guys.Its ever-increasing PC market share in the US meanwhile peaked at 15.3 per cent, which puts it almost neck and neck with HP.Fingers in all piesOf course, Lenovo isn't just focused on PC sales. In January it unleashed an assault on the market by announcing six new smartphones, and the company has said it will be strongly focusing on the smartphone arena as it moves forward.As with PC sales, its biggest smartphone market is in China, where it's implemented an aggressive marketing strategy to take on Samsung as the leading provider, to which it's second to.CEO Yang Yuanqing commented: "Smartphone shipments were 3.7 times greater than last year globally, and we are now number two in the China smartphone market." "This has laid a solid foundation for the successful transformation of Lenovo into a PC Plus leader."

At times like this, Week In Tech likes to quote the words of Christina Aguilara: "You are beautiful, no matter what they say." And what they've been saying about the Xbox One, is that it's U.G.L.Y. As Matt Swider reports, its design "puts the 'box' in Xbox". It couldn't be any more boxy if it were a box inside a box with a picture of a box drawn on it in the middle of a boxing ring.But what's in the box, doc? The answer is: lots. James Rivington has the details: "comes packing an x64 8-core AMD CPU, USB 3.0 ports, 500GB hard drive and 8GB DDR3 RAM. Connectivity-wise you've got 802.11n Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi Direct functionality for exchanging data between devices - specifically the new Xbox controller. There's also the addition of a Blu-ray drive, which marks Microsoft's first move to embrace the disc format created by Sony et al, which vanquished HD DVD back when TechRadar was but a glint in someone's eye."Check out the competition: PS4 release date, news and rumours"The Xbox One has Kinect functionality built into its very core," Rivington says. "To turn the console on, you need only say the words "Xbox on" - the console is always listening." It doesn't require a living room the size of a football pitch any more, it can see in the dark and it can detect your heart rate. The sound you hear is horror game developers rubbing their hands in glee. Kinect will come to Windows too.The special One?Whenever a new bit of tech appears, the same question arises: is it an Orwellian spy tool? Apparently not, says Hugh Langley. While Kinect constantly listens for your commands, it "won't always be spying on your living room activity". Microsoft promises complete privacy when you expect it.We've heard rumblings that the Xbox One wouldn't play pre-owned games, so there's good news and bad news on that front: you will be able to play pre-owned titles (but not Xbox 360 ones: it isn't backwards compatible), but you'll have to pay Microsoft for the privilege. As Langley explains, "you'll need to be signed into the Xbox account the game was activated on, according to Microsoft's Director of Programming Larry Hryb, or else you'll have to pay a fee to play."And what games will you be able to play? You'll be shocked - shocked! - to hear the words "Call of Duty", "Forza" and "Halo", although Remedy's Quantum Break looks interesting and we've got the footage to prove it. But games weren't really the focus: Microsoft wants the Xbox to be your all-in-one TV, something it's tried before with Windows Media Center and WebTV, and it's even roped in Steven Spielberg to make a Halo TV series. We're quite excited about that.Next gen head-to-headThe Xbox One isn't the only big console launch, of course: we've got Sony's PS4 to look forward to too. So which is better out of PS4 and Xbox One? Jeremy Laird and Matt Swider fired up their compare-o-meters. "As much as the two warring systems are different, the heart of the Xbox One and the PS4 remain very similar," they explain: "That's because they're both running x86 octa-core CPUs, and these eight-core processors are built by the same chipmaker, AMD." That's great news for AMD, because it's tempted Microsoft away from IBM's PowerPC and Sony from the Toshiba/IBM Cell. "Both console makers are also relying on AMD to design their next graphics processors" too. The Sony device has the faster RAM, but they're both heavyweight bits of kit. We can't wait to see what game developers do with them.Wonder what you'll play on Xbox One? These are our 10 most wanted games

The Xbox One's launch might have shown us a bit more than the PS4's in terms of hardware, but the question over how it will tackle used games is yet to get a proper answer.But according to ConsoleDeals, which got its information from a "senior employee" at one of the UK's largest gaming stores, game retailers will be forced to sell second hand games at no more than 10% less than the RRP, giving buyers a second "licence" to access the content.Microsoft told TechRadar that beyond what it had already stated, it would not comment further on the specifics of its used-game policy. Treading on X-shellsAfter the Xbox One launch event, there was a lot of speculation over whether gamers would be able to trade used titles on the next gen platform, and whether a charge would be incurred for doing so.We do know that when you buy a game you will have to enter a one-time code that locks the game to your Xbox Live account. This means that you'll need to be signed into the same account if you take a game to a friend's house.If this "leak" is to be believed, Microsoft is likely to have a fight with gamers on its hands. We expect we'll get full clarification at this year's E3.We've contacted a few other game stores to see if this information has been heard elsewhere, and will update if we hear more.

This is an update on the Xfce 4.10 transition to unstable. Most desktop components have been uploaded, built and installed to the archive. We're now currently building and uploading the various goodies, and especially panel plugins. There's a lot of them so it takes some time. Once we'll have finished to build and upload all the goodies, we'll ask for binNMUs on the packages which don't need a sourceful upload but need to be rebuilt against libxfce4util or xfce4-panel 4.10. You can follow the transition status using the release team page. In any case, please be patient while we upload all the packages. Again, no need to report installability issues in unstable for now, we are aware of it and don't need more warnings. We'll fix the fallouts in due time.

I’ve been hacking on some static analyses stuff for debuild.me, and i’ve been involved in a multi-year long yak shaving exercise. As today’s fun part, I wrote python-schroot to help run commands in a schroot chroot (say that 10 times fast!) After a while, I got some neat stuff working. Here’s an honest example: from schroot import schroot with schroot('unstable-amd64') as chroot: chroot.copy('/etc/issue', '/etc/issue', user='root') This will copy a file (/etc/issue) from the “host” system into the schroot chroot. Neat! Now, to run something: with schroot('unstable-amd64') as chroot: out, err, ret = chroot.run("whoami") print(out) Then, in an effort to make a DSL, I set out to create the following syntax: with schroot('unstable-amd64') as chroot: "apt-get update" in chroot  but, hit some issues with implementing it, and got the following to work: with schroot('unstable-amd64') as chroot: "apt-get update" > chroot // "root" # apt-get update as root More later!

(Posted 23 May 2013 by falko)

(Posted 23 May 2013 by finid)