A new mouse has hit my desk - the so-called Cyborg R.A.T. 7. It's not yet available in Australia, it's been shipped straight from Mad Catz themselves! But, they didn't do it because they love me, it's a review unit so I could analyse it. And analyse it I did!

Check out that link to the review, and leave your feedback. :)

Benchmark Reviews has an article on building a bang-for-buck enthusiast PC, for Q3 2010. If you haven't already heard, I recently joined their team of contributers, and this is my first article there. Here's a short snippet.

Performance is often attributed to expensive objects of desire. In the automobile space, it's generally accepted that a higher performing vehicle will incur a significant markup over the average fuel-efficient family offerings. Computing is much the same. Retail OEM machines are pre-built at predetermined price points, often targeting the humble office/Internet-centric user. Performance isn't a primary concern for these systems, nor are upgradability or customisation. On the other hand, you have the expensive 'gamer' orientated machines which cost several thousands of dollars! This is where Benchmark Reviews steps in. We've sat down and created three enthusiast machines without the dreaded price gauge of many pre-built setups - the 'Enthusiast PC Build' for Q3 2010!

Keep in mind that prices are in USD. You can read the full article here.

Apparently someone at Google didn't realise that people can use  <script> tags to insert scripts in YT comments. Naturally, 4chan and ebaumsworld have discovered this vulnerability, and have spammed all popular videos with lord knows what scripts.

Some videos are redirecting to malicious sites, others have explicit content, or offensive marquee text.

Just thought I'd warn you all. Afterall, scripts are very dangerous. If you have visited YT lately, please ensure your PC hasn't been infected.

If you have an infected video, please disable comments.

Update: Youtube have removed the offending comments.

Netcasts (also known as webcasts) are the new age talkback radio. They're an audio file - sometimes pre-recorded, other times live - which is broadcasted via the Internet. The popular 'podcasts' are a derivative of netcasts, but are typically restricted to the iTunes distribution channel. The term 'podcast' is often abused and used in place of netcasts, much like how the term 'iPod' is used in place of 'MP3 player', despite the brand. From a technical perspective, a netcast is just an ordinary audio file, typically MP3.

I've collated some of my favourite tech netcasts for you all to enjoy!

TWiT Network
TWiT is arguably the most popular netcast network in the world. Regularly topping the podcast ratings in iTunes, TWiT broadcasts shows which cover all corners of technology - and more! The founder Leo Laporte participates in most shows, and has been hailed the President of the Internet by TechRepublic in a mock election. His great personality and long history of radio produces entertaining and intellectual shows with his regular hosts and guests alike.
If you want to keep up with tech, the TWiT network is hard to pass up.

AtomicMPC
Atomic's new podcast is all about enthusiast tech, covering articles in their magazine, trade shows, and anything else that stumbles into their labs. Being new, it's still getting on its feet, but it's a good listen nonetheless.

Engadget Podcast
Humour, awkwardness, tech - that's the Engadget podcast! Editors from the popular tech blog Engadget meet up once a week to talk about the latest news and reviews in the tech world. Definitely one you want to add to your netcast feed!

PC Perspective
PC Perspective is the netcast associated with the popular review site of the same name. The host Ryan Shrout and his panel of guests talk about the latest in enthusiast computing hardware. This netcast is a great way for enthusiasts to keep up with the ever expanding world of hardware.

So, what do you listen to? Let us know in the comment section below!

There's an abundance of utterly hideous equipment on the market, ranging from mobile phones to desktop computers to anything designed by a collection of stale engineers. Sometimes it's a subtle flaw, such as an upside-down logo on your laptop lid. Other times you'll come across something that's so insanely blemished, that you struggle to comprehend the fact that a living human being produced and released this device to the market - at least, not with a straight face.

With the aim of outing the design flaws which plague the consumer tech industry, I've written a few specific examples which clearly explain why some 'features' are best left to concept art.

Gloss
Perhaps the most prevalent, glossy paint jobs are used anywhere there's a need to cover cheap plastic and subpar design choices. It's as if designers look at the product, know it sucks, and think that gloss is the magical solution to the whole mess. Well, it isn't.
Glossy hardware is a magnet for body oils, including figerprints or residue from your lunch. It looks cheap when it's clean, and revolting when it's been used for five minutes. If a manufacturer is keen to go at a design with a gloss covered brush, at least make it resistant to prints. Otherwise, stick to matte.

Chrome, real and fake
Chrome is another ugly trend. Both real and fake scratch into an awful palette of circular scarring, the latter looking like a knock-off from the local two dollar shop. As with gloss, it attracts fingerprints, and breeds compulsive shirt wiping. And don't get me started on fake carbon fibre - c'mon, these things ain't cars!

Screen border
This one is a problem with portable devices, and to an extent, monitors. So many touch screen phones have an insane amount of plastic framing around the screen. With the advent of capacitive screens, your entire attention when using a modern phone is directed to the screen itself. Both control and display are all in one, so perhaps manufacturers should build the phone around the screen, not just shove it where it'll fit. An excellent example of this is the HTC Evo 4G.

An example of good screen usage

Regarding monitors, the frame gets in the way of multi-monitor setups. For example, using Eyefinity for gaming would be much more attractive if the gap between screens was minimal.

Stickers
No one cares about what fancy features are part of their device - we already know, we bought it! At least make them remove easily, leaving a sticky mess isn't going to win you any favours.

Branding
If you're a small company, and want to make a name for yourself, don't plaster it all over your product! Sure, put it on there, but be subtle about it. If you're not a household name, then you'll probably find excessively branding your products will do more damage than good. There's only so many times people will put up with "What the heck is VuvuzelaTec?" every time they take their device out in public.

Cheap build
No one wants to pick up a product and feel it buckle under their moderate grip. It might be cheaper to skimp on structural integrity, but customers hate it. Are you building a product for people, or margins? It's particularly bad when you can see the warping of the frame, thanks to reflections in the glossy exterior!

There's a lot of odd design choices when creating products. What irritates you? Put your response in the comment section below! :)

Not to be outdone by insignificant humans, IBM's Watson supercomputer has made an appearance in a behind the scenes sneak peak video, showcasing its ability to answer complex natural language questions in real-time. Watson is one of IBM's latest projects, designed to push the boundaries of computing hardware/algorithms, and ultimately, produce convincing artificial intelligence. But, IBM aren't aiming to pass the ever conquering Turing test. Instead, they're going to compete during an episode of the American quiz show Jeopardy! using Watson as a contestant. Excited? Watch the video below and bask in its awesomeness!

Microsoft have announced a new name for their Xbox 360 motion-tracking peripheral today. The Microsoft Kinect - a play on 'kinetic' and 'connect' - allows users of the XBOX360 console to interact with their games and media without a physical controller.

Kinect is expected to sell for $150USD, and should be available for purchase in the near future.

Video chat for up to four persons simultaneously is also rumoured, along with a slimmed down Xbox 360 model.

Check out the possible uses for Kinect here!

Sources: Major Nelson via Engadget

I'm sure you've all heard about Australian Senator Stephen Conroy's craziness during a recent press conference. The pro-filter communications minister had a few things to say about the usage of portals, and their habit of being targets of malicious spam.

But, I'm not here to regurgitate prior news. Nope. I'm here to reveal that Conroy was hinting at the upcoming game Portal 2 (sneaky!). And I have proof!

Ok, so it's not really the new Portal game, but I must say, Conroy had me convinced! For those starring at me blankly, here's the footage that explains it all:

Let's just hope he's better at protecting portals than he is at protecting children. :)

Before delving into the software and physical development of BOB++, it's important to get a good idea of the tactics that the robot will perform. Making a sumo bot involves many behaviours which are critical when encountering a dynamic opponent. This worklog encompasses the behaviours which will eventually be implemented using LeJOS and Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Eclipse.

Note: You can find the previous worklog here.

The Static Environment
As we know, all battles are held within a small ring. This nature of the ring is known well in advance, which provides a point of reference when developing the robots behaviours. The rules of the battle are also used to determine what actions the robot can, can't and should take. These factors are always considered when creating a behaviour.

The Dynamic Environment
The opponent robot will behave unpredictably, unless you design your robot to find patterns in behaviour. Since prediction is very difficult to implement, it is wise to design a robot to act on events as they occur. These events are many and varied, and it can become tempting to scheme up elaborate solutions to specific situations. The most effective way to design behaviours is to think about the core functions that the robot will need to compete, and how they can be implemented. Once you have a functional robot, elaborate algorithms may be warranted. That being said, the best approach is to keep things simple, and to prioritise the behaviours you wish to develop. For instance, 'seeking the opponent' is of a much higher priority than 'rip their wheels off'.

So, what will BOB++ do?
After some thought, I've decided on a few core behaviours. I've created the following list, however I may alter them later if required.

Seek
The seek behaviour is insanely trivial, but will provide the basis for navigation in BOB++. When an object isn't in sight (according to the ultrasonic sensor), the two drive servos will rotate in opposite directions. This will cause the robot to rotate on the spot. If an object is detected, the EMF breaks are applied to stop the robot as accurately as possible. It will then move toward the object. If the robot loses sight of the object, then it will rotate again - rinse and repeat.

Lift main weapon
If you look back to the last prototype, you would have noticed the main weapon - a lifting device. This weapon is used to (hopefully) lift the opponent partially or completely off the ground. Doing this will make it easier to remove from the ring.
This behaviour dictates when to lift the main weapon. If an object is detected within 10cm of the robot, the main weapon will raise. The 'seek' behaviour will still be running, so the robot will be moving forward at the same time. If the robot loses sight of the object, or the edge of the ring is detected (via the light sensors), the lift will lower again.

Edge tracking
Tracking the edge of the ring is essential when competing. Even when running solo, it is difficult to keep an autonomous robot within the small bounds of the ring. Detecting the edge allows BOB++ to act immediately when leaving the ring.
The edge tracking behaviour of BOB++ will immediately halt BOB++ on detection of a black line. If the weapon is up, it will be lowered immediately. The robot will then reverse a distance of 15 cm. The 'Seek' and 'Lift weapon' behaviours may take over during the reversal.

Disorientation correction
Due to the nature of BOB++'s weapon, it is possible that BOB++ may start to flip if attempting to carry an excessively heavy load. For the reason, a touch sensor will be fitted to the rear of the robot. When the robot is firmly on the ground, the touch sensor will be pushed by the weight of the robot on the rear wheel. If the robot starts to lift, the touch sensor will release, and the robot will be alerted.
When the touch sensor reports false, i.e. it's not being pushed down, the main weapon will lower in an attempt to reorientate the robot.

These are the only behaviours I'll be implementing at first. The current prototype hardware design facilitates the above, apart from 'disorientation correction'. Fortunately, this behaviour is not necessary to compete, thus can be assigned a lower priority.
In the next worklog, I'll be implementing the seek and attack behaviours using Java and Eclipse.

I've been busy, and a robot has emerged from the Lego filled trays that occupy my desk. Usually I'd document the building process as I go, but I decided to build the thing bit by bit between doing uni work, thus documentation was left to last. So, I'll be analysing my first finished prototype as a whole, whilst focusing on individual design choices and implementations. Here we go!

Note: You can read the previous log here.

BOB++ v3.0 Prototype 1

The first prototype is quite different from the original BOB++ design. The servos have been placed perpendicular to the Intelligent Brick. The reason for this was to combat a couple of issues, the first being structural integrity. The original design had the servomotors adjacent and directly attached to the Intelligent Brick. Although this allowed for a low centre of mass (the Intelligent Brick is heavy with batteries installed), the mounting points were insufficient to secure the servos without them being moderately loose.

The old servo connection.

The current prototype fixes this by removing the direct connection, thus allowing a frame to be built around the brick. This frame can then facilitate the servos in addition to other sensors. A strong frame is superior to connecting everything directly to the brick since the available mounting points are often awkward to use.

Having the servos mounted as they are in the prototype was a decision to allow:

a) A frame to be built without the servos being in the way.
b) The servos to be mounted to the front of the robot to prevent an overly wide design.
c) A low centre of mass.

The position of the Intelligent Brick is improved over the original design, particularly in regards to battery access. The bottom of the brick is now completely accessible, meaning the battery door can be removed and replaced without issue. On the other hand, the LCD display and brick controls are difficult to access due to the overlying frame. This isn't much of a concern since there's a sufficient gap to navigate the firmware menus, and the screen can be read if need be. At least I don't have to rip the robot apart to charge the batteries!

You may have noticed that there's only two rubber tyres on this build. This is because I plan to bring across the spin behaviour its predecessor utilised. This involves rotating the two drive wheels in opposing directions, causing the robot to rotate on the spot. Since this spinning motion causes the back wheels to slide perpendicular to their rotation (i.e. to their side), I decided that it'd be better off to have a single low friction rear wheel. At this point in time its a solid plastic wheel, however it'll likely be replaced with a trolley wheel in a later prototype.

The ultrasonic sensor is at a higher level than before. The position of the sensor was chosen to allow for the main weapon to move freely at the front end of the robot.

This may change since there's a chance it'll overlook close opponents with a small physical profile, as seen below.

At first you may think that the solution is to aim the ultrasonic sensor on a larger angle...

This doesn't work well, though. It severely limits the scanning range of the sensor since it's always looking at its "feet". The solution is to move the ultrasonic sensor to a lower position if possible.

Last but not least, there's the lifting mechanism. This has been drastically changed to allow for a smaller profile, stronger lifting power, and reduced chance of self inflicted damage (such as failing under an opponents weight).

Perhaps the most obvious change is the length of the lifting mechanism. The previous model was quite lengthy to ensure an opponent was well positioned to be flipped or carried away. This does not come without disadvantages. A large distance between the load and fulcrum (turning point, i.e. the servo) will give the opponent a greater mechanical advantage. What does this mean? Think about when you're opening a door. Is it easer to push it from the outer edge, or near the hinges? Try it, and you'll soon realise that the further away you are from the fulcrum (or hinge), the easier it is to manipulate. This is also why you can lift something easier if you shove a large stick/plank/etc. under it and push down. The effects of mechanical advantage are found everywhere, but are usually associated with simple machines.

One equation of mechanical advantage is the following:

In this situation, the load is my robot, and the effort is the weight force of the opponent acting on the lift. Therefore, the longer the lifting device, the larger the application distance of the effort force. This increases the numerator value of the above equation, which as we know, means the MA value will also increase. Unfortunately, the 'advantage' is not ours, and if it's large enough, it will either flip the robot or damage the lifting mechanism. This is precisely why I've shortened it.

In addition, the gearing set up has changed. Previously we had a 8-tooth gear attached to the servo (acting as the drive gear), and a larger 24-tooth gear attached to that. This resulted in a gear ratio of 1:3. In layman's terms, this means for every rotation of the smaller gear, the larger one will move 1/3 of a rotation, or 120 degrees. Why do we want this? The sacrifice in speed of rotation gives us a larger torque value (which is inversely proportional to the speed). When we're trying to lift a heavy object, speed is not nearly as important as power, and torque gives us that power.

The original gear set up. The 8-tooth gear is not visible.

Since the servos are quite fast, I altered the gear ratio to the following in the current prototype build:

The drive gear is still a 8-tooth gear, and the gear directly proceeding it is also the same 24-tooth gear. This time I've added a 40-tooth gear to bring the gear ratio to 1:5. This is a 40% torque increase from the previous design.

What's next?
And that's it for this log! More to come soon, including design alterations, and a bit of logic programming!

Considering the public perception of robotics, if you were to ask someone to help you construct a robot, the chances of them accepting would probably be influenced by their technical enthusiasm. A layperson will likely assume it's beyond their abilities, which is not necessarily the case. This is why I've started this worklog, I want to give people a look at the development of a simple robot. If anything, it'll get more people interested in robotics. :)

For the sake of intuitiveness, I'm going to be using Lego in this project. It's great for modelling physical structures, and the Mindstorms kits make the process of assembly easy. More specifically, the kits of interest are the NXT and NXT 2.0 models. I'll be working off the original NXT kit, however version 2.0 is very similar, and for the most part interchangeable with the first. Before you shout "But Lego is for 8 year olds!" I'll put things into perspective. I will only be using the NXT hardware. That is, the 'brain' of the kit, also known as the Intelligent Brick, will be re-flashed with LeJOS firmware. This allows me to program the robot in Java. For the uninitiated, Java is an object orientated programming language which is commonly used for cross-platform applications, mobile phone apps, and Internet applets. Wherever there's a Java Virtual Machine (JVM), you can run a program written in Java. This is what LeJOS provides - a compact JVM.

Note: This worklog isn't a tutorial. It's a written update of the work I'll be doing on this robot. I'll aspire to include as much information as I can to assist anyone who wishes to use it as a guide. I will be writing a separate step-by-step tutorial, and will inform readers when it's completed.

What's the robot for?
The robot is a remake of a project my UNSW ENGG1000 team and I built over a year ago. We called it BOB++ (don't ask), and its sole task was to sumo wrestle. The goal of the project was to compete in the annual ENGG1000 SumoBot competition - and win. The higher you made it up the competition ladder, the more marks you got. Without getting into too much detail, our robot was significantly hard to beat. We won 5/5 qualification rounds, before getting into the final. This match was almost called a draw due to the length of time the robots were fighting; we had almost broken the 3 minute time cap. Unfortunately, a brief slip of our drive wheel allowed the opponent to remove us from the ring. Nevertheless, in the grand final, where the three best robots were placed into the one ring, BOB++ didn't hesitate to barge both opponents out ASAP.

It was sweet revenge.

What are the rules of the competition?
Much like a traditional Sumo fight, the aim of the game is to remove the opponent from the ring. This ring is 500mm in diameter with a 15mm non-reflective black borderline. The inside of the ring is white.

During play, the following rules must be followed:
- Robots cannot fire projectiles
- Robots cannot intentionally damage their opponents
- The first robot to have more than 50% of itself outside the ring loses
- Robots must not exceed 1KG
- If a detached part of your robot is removed from the ring, you lose
- A robot must wait 3 second after being activated before moving; the match officially starts after these 3 seconds
- A robot must move within 10 seconds of the match starting, otherwise it's disqualified
- A match is a draw if 3 minutes pass without either robot winning
- The robot must be autonomous; you cannot use the inbuilt Bluetooth functionality

The initial starting positions are as follows:

How did BOB++ work?
BOB++ was built using a Lego NXT educational kit. A typical kit includes a multitude of Technic pieces, an Intelligent Brick, three servos, and a range of sensors including:

Ultrasonic sensor
Uses ultrasound to determine the distance between it and another object.

Sound sensor
Determines the decibel (dB) loudness rating of ambient sound.

Touch sensor
Basically a simple switch. It's either on or off, the former being when the button is held down.

Light sensor
Determines the intensity of ambient or active reflected light. The latter is achieved via a red LED on the sensor.

The ENGG1000 course permitted the addition of a second light sensor.

Instead of using LeJOS, we were told to use NXC, which is based off the C programming language.

The design of BOB++ was quite simple. We focused on creating a robot which was simple to build, simple to program, and highly effective. The main weapon was a lifting mechanism attached to the front of the robot. When an enemy was in range (as determined by the ultrasonic sensor), the lifting mechanism controlled by a single servo would raise. The aim was to get close enough so that we could lift the opponents drive wheels off the ground. If nothing was in range, or the edge of the ring was detected, the lift lowered itself.

During some trials, we noticed that our robot was capable of lifting itself off the ground if the opponent was heavy, or if the lift got stuck. To determine this, the touch sensor was placed near the rear of the robot so that it was always touching the ground (i.e. it was always on). If the robot starting lifting from the floor, the touch sensor would turn off, and the lift would know to release its load.

Since the ultrasonic sensor was fixed, we set the default robot movement to spin until another robot was detected, effectively giving the robot a 360 degree view. The robot would move toward the enemy on detection.

The light sensors were attached on the front and rear of the robot to help determine when we were going outside the ring. If the light sensor detected a low light value (the black line representing the ring's border), appropriate actions were taken to remain inside, as defined by our program.

Note: We did not use the sound sensor.

BOB++

How can BOB++ be improved?
There are many ways the design can be improved. At this time, the main focus is to build the robot so that the following issues are addressed:

Easy access to the battery compartment
The mounting points on the Intelligent Brick are difficult to work with. Half of them are on the underside of the brick adjacent to the battery door. For this reason, it's important to make the Brick either removable, or to keep the underside unobstructed. This was a major issue with the original BOB++ robot.

Low center of mass
A lower center of mass means the robot is less suseptable of being pushed over by an opponent. Top heavy designs are easier to topple, so its a good idea to keep most of the weight near the bottom of the robot.

Structural integrity
BOB++ wasn't as strong as we would have liked. Several small changes before the competition meant there was less strength in the design. Fortunately this wasn't a problem in the competition, but it's always a good idea to have a solid design.

Enhanced behaviours
The AI in BOB++ was functional, but it had its quirks. For instance, the main weapon would forget its position on occasion, and try to raise the lift whilst its already at its highest point. Crunching of gears assured! There was also very little in the way of filtering data from the sensors. We opted to use raw data directly, which can be a problem if the sensors briefly report an erratic reading.

What's next?
That's all for now! In the next log, I'll get into building the robot and showing off my design decisions. I'll describe what I've done, and the reasoning behind it. Stay tuned!

If you haven't done so already, here's your last chance to tell the Australian government that we need an R18+ rating for games! You can get the appropriate document here.

Don't fret though, it takes 10 minutes to fill out, and the comment section is optional (it's only 250 words anyway). When you're done, it's as simple as e-mailing the document to the provided e-mail address. Get to it!

It's official, Microsoft have released their new mobile OS. It's not Windows Mobile any more, in name nor functionality - it's literally a new OS experience. Playing on their lucky 7 history (read: Windows 7), Microsoft has taken the plunge to deliver a fancy new way to cater to user wants and needs. I've scoured the Internet for information on this new competitor, and have collated the main points of interest.

• Xbox Live integration
• Zune-esque UI (Metro)
• Social networking centric
• Fixed hardware specifications between mobile partners. This includes the processing hardware, high resolution (WVGA) capacitive touchscreen, and three dedicated buttons 'back', 'start' and 'search'.
• Four-point multitouch
• 'Hub' based navigation. These include 'Games', 'Office', 'Music + Video', 'Pictures', 'People', 'Marketplace' and 'Applications'.
• Consistent UI between partners. No more custom UI on top of the existing Windows OS.
• Large range of carriers including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone
• Several hardware partners - Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm
• Possibly no more multitasking. Background applications will 'pause'.
• Sync over Wi-Fi

It's become clear that Microsoft are taking this market very seriously, and have laid down the lines for what is expected of their partners. It begs the question, has Microsoft restricted this platform similar to the iPhone? Let's hope it's a good mix between the openness of Android, and the consistent quality of the iPhone.

Not many people realise the degree of degradation music quality has experienced over the years. It has got to the point where the old vinyl records of yesteryear, the same ones that were popular some 100 years ago, provide higher quality dynamic range and clarity than today's CD audio. Remasters of old classics are sounding worse than the originals, and new music is sub-standard from the get go. It begs the question; surely technology has improved since vinyl?

In fact, it's improved immensely. So why has quality gone backwards of late? It's because of a shift in priorities in the mainstream market. Consumers have been conditioned to enjoy highly compressed low quality audio, to the extent where the original sound is significantly different from the original. With the advent of portable digital media players, the lossy audio format knows as MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) has become a widespread hit. It can convert a typical CD quality lossless song (say, 30MB) into a handy 3MB file size at 128kbps, or 9MB at 320kbps (the highest bitrate that MP3 facilitates). That's ten times smaller. 30MB might not sound like a lot of data in this day and age, but when people have music collections well into the thousands, it all adds up; and therein lies the problem. People don't listen to thousand of songs on their music player, it's a matter of convenience. Why transfer songs as you need them when you can have your whole library with you wherever you are?

Flash storage in today's compact Portable Media Players (PMPs) is still quite limited compared to the vast amount of music available to us. 32GB is the upper limit of these players, and they're not exactly cheap. You can fit over one thousand lossless songs on a 32GB storage device. Sounds feasible, doesn't it? Unfortunately, MP3 is still the prominent way of distributing music. It almost sounds like inserting cassette tapes into a blu-ray player! Why would someone use such a low quality format on these awesome new players?

Think back to the first flash MP3 players. About six or so years ago I had a Creative player with a whopping 32MB of storage, with the ability to insert an SD card, up to 512MB if I remember correctly. Now, 32MB is tiny by anyone's standard. Using the 3MB MP3 figure above, that's a measly 10 songs. It was important to have highly compressed music, lossless was not feasible. The trade-off was between quality and file size, for the ultimate convince factor. Why carry a bulky CD or Cassette player if you can have a compact solid state device?

With the advent of these small capacity MP3 devices came the distribution of music digitally. P2P was (and still is) a huge deal. Broadband had measly quotas, high costs, and limited bandwidth - assuming you were lucky enough to obtain it! Many people were still stuck on 56k dial-up connections. As with cassettes and CDs, piracy was not uncommon. With the Internet and P2P came sharing of copyrighted music, however this music had to be compressed considerably to facilitate those on low speed connections. The age of convenience was born. Any music could be obtained freely - on demand - and placed onto a portable compact device. However, this seemingly perfect concoction had a downside - music quality. 128kbps MP3 is by no means high quality. On good audio equipment, there's a distinct difference between it and lossless. For people with mediocre headphones, you probably can't tell the difference. To make the point easier to understand, here's an example of the compression artifacts introduced when lossy encoders are used:

I tried this with my FLAC copy of '1,000,000', a track by Nine Inch Nails. Here's the MP3 compression artifacts at 128kbps, and at 320kbps. Audacity and LAME were used to encode the MP3 files for this test. You can get the original track for free at NiN's website.

Despite the reduced quality, majority of people were happy at this stage. All the boxes had been checked, and the future of miniature digital players was underway. Audiophiles sourced lossless versions of their music to match their expensive high fidelity gear, so MP3 compression was not a concern. All was not perfect, though. You can choose a lossless music source, but you can't choose the master copy; and the music industry was starting to do some nasty things to their masters.

The Loudness War

There's a highly sought after quality in music called dynamic range. Dynamic range describes the ratio between the loudest undistorted signal, and the root mean square amplitude. In laymans terms, dynamic range represents the difference between the 'loudest' and 'softest' sound signals. If you've ever seen an audio waveform, you would have noticed that the higher the wave peaks are (i.e. the amplitude), the louder the signal is, relative to the waveform as a whole. A higher dynamic range means the difference between these loud and soft sound signals is greater, thus allowing a crisper reproduction of sound. When the dynamic range is limited, soft sounds come across louder, and loud sounds start to lose their punch. The process of limiting dynamic range is known as dynamic range compression (DRC). Think of it as forcing all the loud and soft sound signals into a smaller range of volume. The higher this compression is, the harder it is to differentiate between these loud and soft sound signals, because they approach the same volume. Exccessive use of this compression technique (with amplification) can cause clipping, which loses valuable audio data, and distorts the sound significantly.

Top: Sarah Blasko's song 'Bird on a Wire' with 10:1 dynamic range compression applied.
Bottom: The original waveform.

The same waveforms again, in detail.

When you're listening to music, chances are you'll want some insturments to have a strong kick, such as the beat of the drums, and other to remain soft and mellow. DRC kills this.

The record industry decided that the Compact Disc (CD) method of audio distribution would be a great opportunity to take advantage of dynamic compression. (As a side note, dispite the term 'compression', there's no change in file size when it is applied, unlike MP3 compression.) It might sound odd (no pun intended) that someone would want to apply DRC if there was no advantage to doing so. It just so happens that the definition of 'advantage' depends on what side of the story you're on. While the consumer may prefer a higher quality audio track, the industry thinks otherwise. Apparently people prefer their music made artificially louder. To demonstrate this, I've obtained a video which describes how sound engineers 'enhance' audio:

When a publisher has their music aired on the radio, they want it to stand out. Have you ever noticed how loud TV ads seem to be in comparison to the movie or show you were watching? That's DRC in action. They want to grab your attention - music is no different.

There's many examples of how this can negatively affect sound. Here's an example of DRC on Nirvana's hit 'Smells like Teen Spirit':

A great (and somewhat laughable) example of how bad this phenomenon has become can be seen by comparing Metallica's CD album 'Death Magnetic' to the Guitar Hero version. From what I can gather, Guitar Hero requires a decent amount of dynamic range in order for the music to function well with the game's audio analysis algorithms. This video compares the CD and Guitar Hero versions:

That's quite a bit of difference.

Why people don't care

Audio is often neglected by the general consumer. It's almost considered insane to purchase a $100+ set of high fidelity earphones, despite the massive difference in quality when compared to the likes of the common iPod offerings. Musical finesse rarely crosses peoples minds at all. You buy a CD or MP3 album, a new iPod, and off you go. No one questions the ability of the music player, let alone the earphones. Nor do consumers consider how the master of their favourite songs may have been sabotaged. When you're accustomed to listening to music from P2P clients, torrents, and YouTube, the artifacting introduced at low bitrates doesn't phase you. It's considered 'normal' for music to crackle and go wacky at high volumes, and having the loudest speaker system with the greatest amount of bass is considered 'audio bliss'.

Fortunately, for people who do care, there's a database which lists the dynamic range quality of many artists. It's called the Dynamic Range Database, and it's very handy if you want to avoid buying low quality media. If you want to test the dynamic range of your own tracks, the appropriate analysis software can be found here.

As it stands, CDs remain the easiest way to obtain lossless music. For people who want the very best, vinyl is still the way to go - according to extreme audiophiles. That being said, you need very high quality kit to hear the difference. This is assuming the master hasn't had a dose of DRC beforehand.

It's a sad state of affairs when it has got to the point where the masters are completely ruined to compete in a silly loudness competition. Perhaps there will come a time when having the prettiest MP3 player is considered a lesser priority than using decent headphones and rich high quality music. At least then people will come to appreciate just how stark the quality difference is between a 'good' and 'bad' track. We live in a world of ever advancing technology, let's utilise it! :)

For those interested, here's a few links to interesting articles relating to DRC use over the years:
What Happened To Dynamic Range? - Bob Speer
Wikipedia - Loudness War
Whatever Happened to Dynamic Range on Compact Discs? - George Graham

Note: I'd like to point out that I'm not a professional sound engineer. This article was written based on my own personal research. I've provided the sources for this article within.

So, the long hyped Apple tablet has finally been announced. As expected, it very much resembles a larger iPod Touch. A single hardware button, minimal ports, and a screen which consumes most of the device's top surface. It's touted as a new platform, somewhere between the smartphone and the netbook, which is interesting. Of course, it's not exactly a new platform; Apple is essentially entering an existing one with their own offering. Android based tablets have been around for a while, and haven't really taken off. Regardless, there's been much excitement over this particular device for a couple of reasons. It was a long rumoured product, and it's from Apple. But will the hype pay off? Is the device compelling enough to warrant purchase? Let's find out.

Hype is a double edged sword. It can cause massive excitement for a product, but it can also cause over-expectation. The iPad copped both sides. People expected this thing to be the pinnacle of tablet innovation, with dual cameras, an OLED screen, stereo speakers/microphones, MacOSX, resistive and capacitive touch, the list goes on and on. When long time followers (read: enthusiasts) saw a mere extended iPod Touch, they weren't happy. On the other hand, this same hype generated enough momentum to get it aired on news services internationally. Good news, you ask? Yes and no. News reporters tend to be technically illiterate, and advertised the device as a 'large iPhone'. Who wants a large iPhone? It still impressed many people though, which is all that matters to Apple. The hype may have paid off after all.

The funny thing about hype, however, is that it's short lived. The iPad won't be released for a couple of months, probably more in Australia. Will the average consumer remember it by then? The iPhone made its success by a) being an innovation of an existing established market, and b) being portable enough that you could take it out, and people would say "hey, that's awesome, what is that?" The iPad doesn't really fit into any of these. It's too large to take with you, unless you're carrying some sort of bag as well, so you'd leave it at home in most cases. That can't be good for word of mouth, especially when the device is yet to prove itself. Should Apple have waited until the release date to announce it? I believe they should have.

Regardless of popularity, there's also a concern about the type of functionality this device offers. Now, let's think about what the average consume would want to use this device for:

e-book reader
The iPad has a nice large screen and a snazzy UI, which is a plus. However, the backlit panel is not suitable for reading large amounts of text. As much as people like to believe that this claim is a load of crud, reading off such a panel will give you eye strain, especially in low light. This is why devices such as the Kindle use e-Ink. Not because they like black and white images, but because it doesn't rely on additional lighting. I know I personally have to print off large documents to read them - LCD just doesn't cut it. Perhaps the self-illuminated OLED technology would have been a safer bet.

Web browser
Decent resolution screen, good UI and browser. But no Flash. That really kills it for me. Sure, you can blame Adobe for that until the cows come home, but in the end, no matter who's fault it is, it's still missing. And that sucks. There's also this Micro SIM business, which is annoying if you want to use an existing 3G SIM.

Music
The inbuilt speaker is mono. Sure that's adequate for an inbuilt sound solution, but it would have been nice to have stereo. That being said, with decent headphones, the audio aspect should be great.

Note taking
We know that this device uses a capacitate touch screen, I think that's quite obvious. But does it also have a resistive layer? I don't believe it has, which is a real downer for people who'd want to use this for uni. You can type notes, but you can't type equations and diagrams - you'd want to use a stylus. I realise there's styluses out there for capacitive screens, but the nature of the technology means the input wouldn't be as accurate, and by extension reliable, as a traditional resistive touch screen set-up.
For typing purposes, I can't see people using this for more than IM and quick blog posts. Virtual keys are very good for finger strain. Also, the iPad doesn't offer haptic feedback.

Picture viewer/frame
I think it's safe to say most people have a point and shoot camera of some kind. It'd also be reasonable to expect that said cameras use an SD card. Wouldn't it have been a good idea to include an SD card reader so that we could see our photos on a larger screen, without the hassle of hooking this thing up to iTunes on a PC/Mac? In fact, not just for photos. An SD card would be a great way to get any media on there quickly and easily.

Conferencing
The iPad would have made an awesome little Skype companion for the home. Unfortunately, the lack of a camera makes video conferencing a non-reality. Many people, including myself, thought that this would be an obvious inclusion. I guess not.

Watching movies
Apple touted the iPad's ability to watch HD movies. That's awesome and all, but the screen isn't designed to play widescreen video. I'm sure if you watched the announcement, you'd have noticed that the letterbox format rendered over 40% of the screen real-estate useless. It was literally a thin strip of your movie in the centre of the screen. Not impressive. However, I do understand that having a wide screen aspect ratio would have caused problems for the form factor. But, in the end, it's still an issue.

Multitasking
I think this one is self explanatory. People like doing many things at once. If the Nexus One smartphone can handle several applications simultaneously, I don't see why this, or the iPhone for that matter, can't do the same.

This all being said, I do see a future for this device. Maybe not this generation, or perhaps even the next, but it's definitely got a chance to do well. I just have this sneaking suspicion that Steve Jobs is omitting features on purpose, to keep costs down, and to leave an upgrade path for later revisions. People want this thing to work how they want it to now, not after buying five of them.

So, what does this thing do right for you? What will you use it for? Is it really worth the money for such a device? Leave your comments below. :)