Wii; £24.99; cert 3+; Ubisoft

If we're being honest, you probably already know if Dance on Broadway is for you. When you went to open this review you were almost certainly looking for one of two things: justification for a purchase already decided on (or perhaps already made), or justification for your disdain.

Last November Ubisoft released Just Dance to underwhelming reviews but some of the best sales figures ever achieved by a third-party publisher for the Wii. With Just Dance 2 pencilled in for an October release, Dance on Broadway is a straightforward gap-filler – a quick and easy title certain to generate some revenue while also helping build anticipation for the main event.

The gameplay is almost identical to Just Dance, with players mimicking the actions of on-screen dancers, while holding a Wiimote. Just as with the former title, this feels entirely inadequate. Good dancing requires the whole body to move in unison, yet the nature of the hardware means that Dance on Broadway can only ever judge your performance on the basis of one limb. Even this is not done well.

At one point early on, while getting to grips with the concept, I found myself standing perfectly still, yet repeatedly being scored "great" for movements I hadn't even made. Knowing this, it was hard to shake the feeling that all subsequent successes or failures were rather arbitrary and at times it felt as though accidental motions were just as likely to be rewarded as intended ones.

From a presentation standpoint the game looks fine, if hardly inspiring, though the silhouetted images that appear along the bottom of the screen to warn you what moves are coming up can be more confusing than helpful. In terms of depth, the game offers little – with 20 show tunes to choose from but no career mode and nothing to unlock.

Yet this game will appeal to fans of Just Dance, of show tunes, and of games that provide an excuse to get up and throw yourself around your front room. Lyrics are displayed during the songs to allow players to sing along and as a party game it will provide plenty of cheap giggles. Some people will love it. And they knew they would from the moment they saw the title.

Rating: 2/5

Apple has some competition from a slew of companies. But it made its design decisions in a vacuum: so why did it go for the features that it did, and do they matter more than others?

Here's a question: why is the screen of Apple's iPad 9.7in across? Why that size? Why not bigger? Or smaller?

If we examine this question, we may be able to figure out the answer to another question: how are the slew of tablets being released now (hello Samsung) going to fare in the market?

Consider what the iPad was going up against when it was being designed: the range of Windows-based tablet computers, which would have had screens in the 12in to 13in range; the Amazon Kindle, a dedicated e-reader, with a 7in screen; and the Kindle DX, launched in May 2009, which has a 9.7in screen. (There was also, of course, the smaller range of machines, bottoming out at the iPod Touch, with its 3.5in screen.)

Apple's engineering and design team will have played with all sorts of screen sizes, and they'll have compared the Kindle and Kindle DX screens to see which was the more satisfying in terms of user experience – because that's where Apple really sweats it, on the user experience. You can imagine Steve Jobs wandering around with prototypes with differently-sized screens, trying to figure out which was the ideal. Given a certain screen size, you get a certain battery life. Or vice-versa.

Apple plumped for 9.7in, with 1024x768 pixels, and stuck in a huge battery too, which is what has given the iPad its (alleged) 10-hour battery life. Though for once, that claim seems to be backed up by anecdotal reports around the web: the iPad really does seem to last through the day. (Using 3G, Apple says you'll get a nine-hour battery life.)

But that battery life is also the reason the iPad weighs more than other tablets: because it's got a big battery.

Now we come to all the other tablets, which have been built and launched in the aftermath of Apple's January announcement – and may well have been designed since January too.

Here comes Samsung; here too is Viewsonic, and Archos, and we even got an email from Binatone, one of the really old British consumer electronics names. It's offering the "HomeSurf" for £130: 7in screen, 800x480, resistive touch screen "with stylus", 2GB storage, Wi-Fi, Android (2.2 we assume, but it's not specified), MicroSD card slot, plays MP4, H.264, XVID. The claimed video playback time: 3 hours. Plus there's an 8in version for £180: 800x600, touchscreen with stylus, 2GB storage, video playback MP4, H.264 (but not XVID, apparently), video playback time 4 hours.

Toshiba has also launched a tablet, with a 10.1in screen (interesting) with Froyo; apparently the 16GB version will cost about £399 – making it a challenge to Apple (the 16GB iPad is £429).

Samsung, which has attracted a lot of attention with the announcement of its Galaxy Tab – whose specifications were well-known ahead of the launch, apart from the price, which then didn't get announced – might struggle to make a big impact. Why? Because of the price: Heise Online at IFA says that the price for the unlocked 16GB 7in Wi-Fi/3G Galaxy Tab will be about €800. And Expansys has (since this article went up) set the price for the 16GB unlocked version at £680.

Does that sound reasonable? Well, if you compare it to the 64GB Wi-Fi/3G iPad, which costs exactly the same amount in Euros, and only £19 more in the UK, then … no. The suggestion is that Samsung is actually letting the mobile carriers – which will be the only retail avenue – decide the price. Mobile carriers may be able to lower the up-front price through 3G contracts.

Next, battery life: the Samsung will manage seven hours of video playback, it's claimed: we'll have to see whether that's the case. And you do get a camera on the front and back, plus other little extras.

Tim Bray, formerly at Sun and now looking after various Android-y things at Google, has had an early hands-on with the Galaxy Tab. "The world still isn't sure just where it is that tablets are the right tool for the job," he notes (which echoes my own ponderings about the function of the iPad, before it was released).

His other thoughts on the product:

"It's got a phone but (at least on the pre-release model I used) you can't hold it up to your head, which is a good thing as that would look supremely dorky... Did I mention that the screen is beautiful? Also it feels really good in the hand and looks pretty nice, and is obviously in the first microsecond's glance not an iPad."

So what will he do with it?

"I know what I'll use the Galaxy Tab for: to show off Android. The big screen just makes everything easier to see and point at, and graphics look outstanding, and it passes from hand to hand easily. Showing off Android is part of my job and this will help me do my job better."

That leads him onto his thoughts about what tablets are for:

"Which leads to a general theory, reinforced by informal observation of hipsters with iPads in coffee shops: a tablet is, crucially, a more shareable computer. A laptop, with its fragile hinge-ware and space-gobbling keyboard, is just not comfy to share. A tablet is easier to bring to the café, easier to hand across the table or along the sofa, easier to seize in the heat of the moment, easier to hold up in triumph, easier to set aside when you need to meet someone's eyes."

Key question:

"How big a market is that? Anyone who says they know is lying."

At which we turn to Ray Chen, the president of Compal, one of the big Taiwanese computer assembly companies – which builds tablets for companies including Dell, Acer and Lenovo. He thinks sales of non-Apple tablets will "not exceed" 15m units in 2011, and that there will be a fearsome shakeout soon after as the market turns out to be tougher than expected. Compare that to Apple, which says that it sold 3.27m iPads in the three months since the device launched in April. Clearly, Apple works out as the biggest player in that market.

But come around again to that question at the top: why is the iPad screen the size it is? If Apple thought that 7in was the sweet spot for this, it surely would have built it that size. Ignore the lack of features; remember the Slashdot observation when the first iPod came out: "No wireless. Less space than a [Creative Labs] Nomad. Lame." But what the iPod did have was size (the Nomad was a giant compared to it) and battery life.

I think the same applies for tablets. The specs, and things like cameras, are all subsidiary to the main things that people want to do with tablets: browse on them and share them (per Bray) and use them for long periods without having to hunt around for a power source. True, it would be nice if we could browse for hours on end on our laptops, but the choice there seems to be between netbooks offering long battery lives but pokey screens and keyboards, or nice big laptop screens but unsatisfactory battery life.

And even for the former of those categories, things aren't going well:

"Chen also noted that Wintel netbook sales have recently been devoured seriously by tablet PCs and if the two firms [presumably Microsoft and Intel] do not consider dropping prices or improve performance, sales will continue to drop."

This chimes with something Jack Schofield posted at ZDNet: while sales of desktop and laptop PCs are rising towards 1m per day, "Gartner also sees diminishing sales of netbooks, which it calls mini-notebooks. Netbooks accounted for 20% of mobile PC sales at the end of last year, but Gartner expects it to fall to around 10% by late 2014."

Netbooks are even beginning to look like a brief spasm in personal computing's history; Apple's disdain for them, and its refusal to produce one in the face of analysts and press who thought it was cutting its own throat by not doing so, now looks well-placed. Certainly, better to be the leader in a sector like tablets than a follower in netbooks.

But until more people have bought and tried out these tablets, we're not going to know if a 7in screen can do the job – or if, as one ever so slightly suspects, it's the 9.7in measurement that actually does the job best.

Chen's forecast is definitely one to watch – and it will be interesting to see if tablets turn out to be a sort of computing flash in the pan, like netbooks are looking, or if they turn into the equivalent of the MP3 player, and carve out a whole new mode of use. And if the latter, the really interesting question will be: what's the best-selling screen size? And how long is "long enough" for the battery? And is there any other essential element to a tablet that guarantees sales?

Jon Sawer needs to upgrade his old but dearly loved radio and wants to buy a high-spec DAB radio

I'm about to reluctantly upgrade from my existing extremely old but dearly loved radio. I'm intending to spend as much as I can afford on a top range, high specification standalone DAB radio. You have in the past published many articles on the subject on the UK DAB radio format and how you consider this to be inferior to the European model being developed, and I don't really wish to make an error in my purchase when shopping around.
Jon Sawer

You can't really buy decent standalone radios any more, unless you want a portable of the sort often called a "kitchen radio". Above that are "tabletop radios" that usually include other functions. The main features are FM and DAB digital radios, a connection for an MP3 player (often an iPod dock), and internet or Wi-Fi radio. Some have CD players and some have hard drives for storing music files. Finally there are "lifestyle" or microsystems that are actually mini hi-fi units with separate speakers. You'll have to decide which kind of system best fits your needs, and your budget.

This diversity reflects changes in the way people listen to music.
Radio now comes from a variety of sources, including thousands of internet radio stations. Also, many people now listen to music files from their portable music players or PC hard drives, not just to CDs and cassette tapes. The most common factor is FM radio, because it's cheap and because FM radio's network coverage is still much better than DAB's.

Portable DAB/FM radios tend to be mono and have "retro" (old fashioned) designs. The top-of-the-range model in this class is the Pure Digital Evoke-2S (from about £130), which has a smart veneered finish. It's also a proper stereo radio, although the speakers are too close together to create much of a stereo effect. It has the usual telescopic aerial but you can unscrew it and use something more capable if you live in a weak signal area.

There's a very similar Pure Evoke-3 model (from £154), which can record to SD memory cards and also comes with a remote control. However, it doesn't say it's upgradeable to DAB+ (see below), so you'll need to check. A cheaper alternative is the "piano black" Roberts Sound 80 (£85), which has a downward-facing bass woofer of the sort more common on tabletop designs.

Tabletop radios are trending towards a boxy design exemplified by the Roberts MP43 Sound 43 (CD/DAB/FM/Dock, £180). The Monitor Audio AirStream 10 (£224) is a more stylish and distinctive unit that also includes Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections. Pure's challenger is the Avanti Flow Table-top Digital Music System (£228), which also has a downward facing 5.25 inch subwoofer. However, the one to beat is the award-winning Vita Audio R2i (Walnut finish, £280), which has a reputation for its sound quality.

Microsystems attempt to deliver hi-fi, or something close to hi-fi, without the overhead of having a large stack of units and speakers on stands. For a very long time, small silver Denon CD/radio receivers have been the ones to buy, though the line has been challenged by Onkyo and others in the value-for-money stakes. The Denon RCD M38 (up to £300) is the latest model, and it now supports USB playback and DAB+ as well as DAB and FM. It's also available for £200 without the two small SC-M37 speakers usually supplied. This allows you to spend a bit more on better speakers.

There are dozens of small bookshelf speakers on the UK market including the Q Acoustics 2010 and 2020, Tannoy F1 Custom, Monitor Audio BR1 and Mordaunt Short Aviano. They are heavily discounted if you shop around, though in the long run, it's better to buy from a dealer who will let you listen to them first. Most sound much better on stands, but you can use four generous blobs of Blu-Tack to lift each speaker off a shelf.
Sony also offers a lot of "mini hi-fi" systems at low prices. The Sony CMTBX77DBI (CD/DAB/FM/Dock, £130) provides the advantages of separate loudspeakers and room-filling sound for less than the cost of many portable radios.

I've quoted current prices from Amazon.co.uk for convenience, and this is also a good site for checking star ratings and user reviews. You can also use TestSeek.co.uk to find magazine and website reviews of most products before shopping around.

In terms of future-proofing your purchase, the main thing is to look for support for DAB+. This is the relatively new digital radio standard that is replacing the old and inefficient DAB system currently used in the UK. Of course, there are no plans to use DAB+ in the UK at the moment, and even DAB+ will never see the global adoption enjoyed by FM. However, it is painfully obvious that DAB is floundering in the UK, and DAB+ provides the chance to offer higher sound quality, more channels and lower transmission costs than DAB so ultimately it cannot be avoided.

This doesn't mean DAB would be phased out immediately: DAB+ is backwards-compatible so the two would co-exist while 10m DAB sets drop out of use. Before there's a switchover from FM to DAB, digital radio listening must reach 50%, and national coverage has to match FM coverage. There is zero chance of digital radio listening reaching 50% by 2013, let alone that being DAB digital radio. Indeed, the number of FM radios is still growing much faster than the number of DAB radios, because FM is also appearing in mobile phones and MP3 players. There's also very little chance of DAB matching FM coverage in time: that would require the BBC to spend more than £100m on building out the network. (The government isn't going to pay for it directly, and commercial radio doesn't have the money.)

But it may never happen. If the government thinks it can make perhaps 150m FM radios redundant then it's in for a very rude shock. (Technically, FM will never be switched off: the plan is to use it for "hyperlocal radio" – presumably schools, hospital radio, community stations etc.)

However, as I've pointed out before, Lord Carter's Digital Britain report said: "To prepare for any such change or additional upgrade we will work to ensure that digital radio receivers sold in the UK are at least compliant with the WorldDMB receiver profile 1; which includes DAB+ and DMB-A." This prepares the way for moving beyond DAB, though I suspect it had more to do with the European Broadcasting Union's desire to find a standard that would actually work across Europe.

You could, of course, wait for radios that support WorldDMB receiver profile 1 (PDF), but don't hold your breath.

New social network built inside iTunes fails to keep out the spammers, showing a curse of social media – even inside proprietorial walls

Apple chief Steve Jobs's trumpeting of the 160 million credit card holders on iTunes was a siren call to spammers. As if they needed any invitation.

The most common incidence of scamming on Apple's latest social venture, Ping, is the offering of free iPhones from a dodgy URL. These avatar-less lurkers are mostly hanging around Ping's more famous participants – Katy Perry, for instance.

As MacRumors points out, no credit card details are needed to sign up for an iTunes Store account – the requisite accreditation for joining Ping – which would appear the spammers' way in.

"[Ping] implements no spam or URL filtering," says internet security firm Sophos, adding that the service is "drowning in scams and spams".

And it appears that Ping has also received a touch of the early-day Twitter, musician Ben Folds last night saying that an account had been created in his name. Verified accounts, Mr Jobs? (And are you sure those were Jack Johnson's tour photos? Was that really Coldplay's Chris Martin on stage on Wednesday?)

Graham Clulely, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said: "We're used to survey scams like this being spread far and wide via sites like Facebook, but clearly the lack of filtering on Ping is making it a brand new playground for the bad guys to operate in.

"It's ironic that the most common scams on Ping right now revolve around Apple's own iPhone. It's safe to assume that Ping does incorporate some rudimentary filtering to prevent offensive messages from being posted, so hopefully Apple's security team can extend this to also block scam messages and malicious links. In the meantime, though, Ping users should be wary of believing what they read on the new service."

Remember back in 2009 when Twitter was plagued by spammers? This is what happened when the site announced a declaration of war on spam in October last year:

Sophos also say the iTunes 10 update fixes 13 "separate vulnerabilities" in the components used to render the iTunes interface.

Lobbying by London Mayor Boris Johnson has paid off once more - and put the city further forward in the open data stakes

Tube train, on time. Photo by fabbio on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Want to get the bus and underground timetables, in a zippy XML format? You can, right now, via the London Datastore.

As the page explains, "The data available in the attached zip file consists of almost 800 xml files, with each relating to a particular service i.e. one per tube line, bus route, riverboat route, dlr route etc. Each xml file contains the following data elements: StopPoints; RouteSections; Routes; JourneyPatternSections; Operators; Services; VehicleJourneys."

Getting this data out hasn't been a trivial task - and my understanding is that it's been down to persistent lobbying from the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, himself.

This is another significant tranche of data to come out of TfL - an organisation that for years has been seen by developers and some within the Greater London Assembly as something of a black box; as one person put it to me, "you pour money in at one end and you get transport out at the other, but you're not allowed to see inside it." Previously, TfL released data about locations of bus stops, and then some real-time data about movements of tube trains - which led, you'll recall, to Matthew Somerville's live tube train map. (Unfortunately, the API for that has been suspended: it couldn't cope with 10m hits per week, and hasn't come back since June. Ahem, ahem, TfL.)

You can see all the London transport-related datasets via the London Datastore. With Johnson pushing it, though, light is starting to shine inside TfL.

By far the most successful demonstration of the power of making data free though has come from the London Cycle Hire scheme - where you can now get real-time information about availability of bicycles for hire, by location, in apps for Android and iPhone.

But if we can now add information about bus and tubes to apps like that, we're getting closer to the point where TfL really is being run for the citizens of London, rather than (as many bureaucracies are) for its staff. The distinction is a fine one - most organisations think of themselves as having their users' best interests at heart; the difference is that when you can get feedback, then the organisation may discover things about their users that they never knew.

There's still some way to go with TfL: for example, it collects data about how many cars pass particular points (using induction loops in the road) which is used for traffic light timing; that's data that many developers would love to get their hands, or processors, on. You never know: if the pressure continues, it might come too.

You might think that Boris Johnson's presence pushing this along is just a bit of grandstanding, but that wouldn't be correct. He's actually been in the vanguard of politicians introducing open data. If you have a long memory for public data-related stories, you'll recall that he did a rather neat end-run around the Labour administration's Home Office in 2008, when as part of his manifesto while running for the office of London mayor he declared that he would publish crime maps.

We were a little sceptical on the Free Our Data blog, although the blocking attitude of the police and the Information Commissioner's Office did nudge us towards Johnson's side.

Johnson did go on to publish them, and London has been in the forefront of cities which have tried to do innovative things with the data that its local government and authorities collect. First came the London Datastore, launched in January. Then came the datasets. And that brings us to the present day. For the many who don't live in London, this might all seem academic - but really the Datastore, and the political impetus behind it, are examples for the rest of the country that making data open and reusable actually can have a benefit. Would the Bike Scheme be as useful if you couldn't find out availability easily? Probably not. And once the TfL timetables have been processed, someone is sure to have a smart use for them.

Can't wait, personally. Overall, 2010 has already been a fantastic year - possibly the best ever - for making data free: first the London Datastore, then the Ordnance Survey OpenData release in April, and now the drive by central government to get both central and local government to publish data (soon to include the text of contracts) about spending. Results don't come much better than that.

Plus Toshiba's tablet hands-on, Twitter's bad OAuth, TfL timetables and more

Everything must go! Photo by And all that Malarkey on Flickr. Some rights reserved

A quick burst of 11 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Vox is closing September 30, 2010 >> Vox
"Vox has been a fun place to explore, create and connect with your friends. But Vox is closing its doors on September 30, 2010.
"This doesn't mean you have to say goodbye to your blog. We want you to make sure you can keep the great content you've shared on Vox, and continue to have a home for your blog. To help you make the transition off of Vox, we've added new export features that make it easy to move your blog to a free TypePad account, and your photos & videos to Flickr."

My job was to game Digg using infographics, voting networks, and bait-and-switch >> Reddit
A Digg-gamer explains the how, why, and how much.

Why Users Fill Out Forms Faster With Top Aligned Labels >> UXMovement.com
Because they don't have to move their eyes back and forth so much. Sounds obvious. Isn't.

It's time for the baked-in Android UI to die >> Computerworld Blogs
Not sure whether the mobile carriers are listening, but.. "Listen up, Android manufacturers: The time has come for your built-in Android user interface to go away. Call it Motoblur, call it Sense, call it whatever you want -- as long as it's coming preinstalled on Android phones, it's officially overstayed its welcome."

Toshiba Folio 100 preview >> Engadget
For €399, you get.. "We just got to handle the Folio 100, after witnessing it bolted to a wall earlier, and we have to admit that it's lighter and thinner than it looks at first glance. Unfortunately, it still feels pretty cheap, and we're not sure how much we trust ourselves one-handing something this large and fragile seeming. Our brief glimpse of Toshiba's custom skin on here was most depressing -- it's not final, but we're not sure why Toshiba is even bothering showing anything in this abysmal state." Oh.

Compromising Twitter's OAuth security system >> Ars Technica
"Sadly, Twitter's extremely poor implementation of the OAuth standard offers a textbook example of how to do it wrong. This article will explore some of the problems with Twitter's OAuth implementation and some potential pitfalls inherent to the standard. I will also show you how I managed to compromise the secret OAuth key in Twitter's very own official client application for Android."

Reddit 'excited' about chance to eat Digg's lunch >> VentureBeat
"Reddit saw an uptick of about 30 percent in "self-serve" ad sales this week, and is seeing a strong rise in new subscriptions to it's 'Reddit Gold' program, (which gives users who pay a sneak peak at new features), according to Erik Martin, Reddit's community manager. "It's still going up. Our numbers have been going up significantly for the entire year, and in the last week or so with the refugees from Digg, a lot of people are hearing about us from friends or on Twitter. We're seeing a lot of new users.""

TfL Timetable Listings >> London DataStore
"The data available in the attached zip file consists of almost 800 xml files, with each relating to a particular service i.e. one per tube line, bus route, riverboat route, dlr route etc". Ooooh yeah.

iPod nano (sixth generation) review: first look >> PC Pro blog
"my overwhelming first impression is that the new nano is a miniaturisation too far."

Essex Councty Council CIO on mysterious 'indefinite leave' >> ComputerWorld UK
In the midst of a major transformation programme with IBM, his leave only drew the comment from the council that "we use a leave of absence as part of our resolution procedures". Odd.

Free Domain Reports with Safety Ratings >> AVG Threat Labs
Basically, much like what other AV companies have been offering - a "safe surfing" method of checking sites. Not much use without an API, to be honest; but an API might be easily abused. Conundrum.

You can follow Guardian Technology's linkbucket on delicious

IFA 2010: premium customers can use music streaming service through home music service from end of this month. Meanwhile Sonos is replacing a number of faulty controllers for its systems.

Internet music service Spotify has joined forces with Sonos, adding to the multi-room player's roster of web-based music partnerships as part of an industry-wide drive to get more people to pay for music.

Spotify's 500,000 paying customers - those on its £10-per-month "premium" service - will now be able to stream their digital library through a Sonos home entertainment system, provided they live in Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden or the UK. Because Spotify is still not available in the US, due to licensing issues with record labels there, Sonos customers there - one of its biggest markets won't be able to get it yet.

Sonos already has similar tieups with the international music service Napster, as well as Last.fm, Audble.com and Deezer.

John MacFarlane, chief executive of the California-based company, says the latest move is a "complete reinvention of the home stereo system", adding that "Spotify on Sonos has been the number one request from our European customers and we're thrilled to deliver it."

"It's great that people will be able to listen to Spotify whenever they want, wherever they want in their home," said Daniel Ek, Founder and CEO Spotify.

Sonos and Spotify customers with a ZonePlayer, Sonos S5 music player and a Sonos Controller – available either as a separate controller, or as a free iPhone app and soon-to-be-launched iPad app – will be able to use the service from late September.

"No money changes hands in this deal," MacFarlane told the Guardian. "We have a very good business in all areas Spotify sells in so it makes sense for both companies to make each other better. Spotify do a nice job on focusing on user experience and it streams really well."

He added: "The labels are putting more and more pressure on Spotify to move members to a paying service so that made more sense from their perspective. What's happening in the digital music landscape...the traditional players are now starting to embrace it and part of that is users paying for music. That's a trend that's only going to increase."

Spotify has garnered momentum in Europe, despite still not launching in the US after four years. Although it has forged licensing deals with labels including Sony and EMI, some songwriters still appear disenchanted with the service's ability to generate income for artists.

Patrick Rackow, chairman of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, told the BBC earlier this year: "At the moment, the amounts of money that are actually being received are tiny. That might be because there is no money there."

The streaming space is looking increasingly complicated. Sony yesterday announced its own move into the music streaming space with a subscription-based service centred around its Playstation 3 console.

Speaking at Berlin's IFA fair, the electronics manufacturer said the new "cloud-based" service would allow customers to download songs and HD movies over the internet and watch them on other web-enabled Sony devices, including TVs, laptops and music players.

• Sonos is offering a free replacement to owners of its newer CR200 touch-screen controllers affected by manufacturing defects. Some owners of the CR200 have found that parts of the screen become unresponsive. The CR200 uses a capacitive touchscreen.

In an email sent to owners, Sonos says:

"We have recently discovered a potential issue with a small number of Sonos Controller 200s (CR200) manufactured within a specific period. As a registered owner of one of these controllers, we wanted to let you know right away and inform you of our decision to extend your warranty."

"Specifically, a single area or areas of the touch screen may be unresponsive to normal touch usage. The reported failure rate, while low, does not meet Sonos quality standards. Therefore, Sonos is extending the product warranty for your Sonos Controller 200 for an additional year at no cost, in the event it fails in this manner."

Customers who have had problems with the CR200 should contact Sonos's support pages to organise the replacement.

Plus Yahoo's Korea problem, DLL fixes and more

Cooked! Photo by DC Central Kitchen on Flickr. Some rights reserved

A quick burst of 6 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Windows Phone 7 Is Released to Manufacturing >> Gizmodo
"Microsoft's releasing Windows Phone 7 to manufacturing today—in other words, it's done. Final. Complete. Microsoft managed to add a few new bits before shrink-wrapping it, too.
"What RTM means is hardware makers and carriers can start finalizing their own plans for Windows Phone 7—tweaking drivers, preparing carrier-specific services for integration, that kind of thing. Gettings things ready to go. What that doesn't mean, however, is that Microsoft is telling us when Windows Phone 7 will actually land in our grippy hands. Octoberish, as previously rumored, still seems like the safe bet."

Google now indexes SVG >> Google Webmaster Blog
"We index SVG content whether it is in a standalone file or embedded directly in HTML. The web is big, so it may take some time before we crawl and index most SVG files, but as of today you may start seeing them in your search results. If you want to see it yourself, try searching for [sitemap site:fastsvg.com] or [HideShow site:svg-whiz.com]". HTML5 creeps further into everything...

Don Draper Checks His iPhone >> Gizmodo
Don't worry - no plot spoiler involved. Don simply gets asked to create a phone that can connect to the radio around the world. No, come back!

Yahoo Search Customer South Korea Naver Quits, Takes $600m Revenue >> Business Insider
"More bad news for Yahoo--and for Microsoft, now that Yahoo's search business is Microsoft's search business.
"Yahoo's biggest search affiliate, Korea's NHN, is taking search in house. NHN runs Naver, Korea's biggest search engine, which has a Google-like 65% share of the market.
"According to Doug Anmuth of Barclays, this will cost Yahoo an astounding 10% of gross revenue in 2011." Ouch.

Microsoft ships 'Fix-It' for DLL load hijacking attack vector >> ZDNet
Get downloading: "Microsoft has released a Fix-It tool to help mitigate the latest DLL load hijacking issue that exposes Windows users to remote code execution attacks.
"The flaw, publicly discussed by Metasploit's HD Moore and others, affects hundreds of Windows applications and require separate patches for each piece of affected software."

Why Paul Allen doesn't want to be a troll >> FOSS Patents
"They sue a number of large players over some patents, but there's some history there that sets them apart from other licensing (or "non-practicing") entities. Among 11 defendants, the lawsuit targets Google (as well as its YouTube subsidiary), and Google once gave credit to Interval Research."

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Apple is expected to announce "social streaming" for iTunes, an update on iPods and (possibly) more on AppleTV. Stay with us from 6pm.

7.16pm: Looks like we're all wrapped up here. Let's have a run through of what Apple has announced today:

• Ping, a social network for music, is built inside iTunes. Available on iTunes 10 desktop app and iOS apps, users can follow their favourite artists and other 'Pingers', view their stream and converse around music. Available immediately.

• AppleTV cut in physical stature and price, to $99. Available later this month, AppleTV will no longer store your media – it will be based on renting content and streaming media from connected devices. Fox and ABC are on board from launch with more to be announced in the future; renting a HD TV show will set you back 99 cents, $4.99 for a first-run HD movie.

• A whole new range of iPods, including an iPod Touch with front and rear-facing cameras and FaceTime. The rear-facing camera will be be able to record HD video content.

• iOS4.1 available from next week for iPhone and iPod Touch, including a new Games Centre and many a bug fix.

Thanks for joining us, keep the discussion flowing.

7.13pm: Martin takes to the piano for a closing rendition of Yellow. His little girl's called Apple, remember. All clicking into place now.

7.10pm: Jobs: "We started doing music stuff for a really simple reason: we love music. And even though we're more successful now than when we started, that hasn't changed one bit." Jobs introduces Coldplay's Chris Martin (!!!!) on stage to perform, Mr Johnson has been royally ditched by the polo-necked one.

7.08pm: "Strongest line-up of iPods ever," Jobs sums. "Ping is going to be really popular, very fast, because 160m people can turn on as soon as they want, starting today."

7.06pm: Price of AppleTV was $299 – users said they wanted something more affordable, now lowered to $99. Available later this month, pre-order today.

7.02pm: Jobs now giving a whistlestop tour through the new AppleTV interface.

On "AirPlay", coming in November with iOS4.2: can stream content from an iOS device to an AppleTV.

6.58pm: Rotten Tomatoes review site also integrated with AppleTV. Can also stream music, photos and video from own computer via the AppleTV box set.

6.56pm: ABC and Fox on-board from launch, other broadcasters should follow, Jobs hopes. You can also stream Netflix and YouTube content through your AppleTV.

6.55pm: Here's the news on AppleTV content: $4.99 to rent first-run HD movies, day and date they come out on DVD. Get cheaper as time goes on. To rent HD TV shows: 99 cents.

6.52pm: AppleTV customers also don't want to manage storage, Jobs says, or syncing to their computer.

So here's the announcement on 2ndGen AppleTV: One-fourth the size of previous iteration, palm-sized, HDMI connector, wifi and ethernet connector. All HD when available, all rentals (no purchases) – that's the new model. No storage because of rentals.

6.50pm: "One more thing..." time: AppleTV.

Introduced four years ago, "never been a huge hit, nor has any other competitive product." But the people who have them love them, Jobs says.

So what's new to AppleTV? They want HD, they want Hollywood movies and TV shows, they want to pay lower prices for content, they don't want a computer on their TV.

6.47pm: All activity based around artists and performance can be seen by your followers, whom you can automatically accept as followers or moderate case-by-case.

Ping is also available on iPhone, iPod Touch (there's a new button in middle of iTunes app). "Social network for music, created by Apple, built into iTunes."

And it's available today...

6.46pm: Ping has an interface very similar to Facebook's, with the lingo of Twitter. But all is based around music artists.

6.44pm: "Be as private or as public as you want. The privacy is super easy to set up," says Jobs. Over 17,000 concert listings; Ping is available for sign-up to more than 160m iTunes users.

6.41pm: To reiterate, Apple has launched a social network for music, dubbed Ping.

You can "follow" updates from your favourite artists. "Social music discovery," says Jobs. "Follow and be followed" – you (seemingly) opt-in to being followed by other people and "set up a circle of friends."

6.39pm: Announces iTunes 10: a new logo (ditched the CD), "more elegant and simple". The iTunes store's biggest focus is discovery: what are my friends listening to? Favourite artists up to? Concerts? Email? There must be a better way.

Ping – social network for music. "Facebook and Twitter for music" – social network all about music built into iTunes.

6.37pm: Here's the iTunes news: people downloaded 11.7bn songs from iTunes, over 4.3m TV episode, 100m movies, 35m books, and over 160m accounts with credit cards and one-click shopping.

6.35pm: So a new array of iPods so far. Has Jobs got anything else up his sleeve? (Currently running through the new iPod adverts).

6.33pm: Edit videos on the iPod Touch with iMovie app. Can make FaceTime calls between iPhone 4s and new iPod Touch. 8GB for $229, 32GB for 299, 64GB for $399. All available next week, pre-order today.

6.31pm: New iPod Touch is thinner, retina display (4x pixels, 326 ppi, 24bit colour, LED), Apple A4 chip (powers the iPhone), 3-axis Gyro, iOS4.1, front-facing camera with FaceTime. And a rear camera with HD video recorder.

6.30pm: 8GB iPod Nano for $149.

iPod Touch news: most popular iPod, as of the past 12 months. Number one portable game player in the world. Outsells Nintendo and Sony portable game players combined, 50%+ market share in US and worldwide.

6.26pm: Rotatable screen on the new iPod Nano, introduced to a solitary "whoo!" from the California crowd. That went better in rehearsal, clearly.

6.25pm: Almost half as small, almost half as light as its fifth generation predecessor – the new iPod Nano with 24hour battery life.

6.23pm: Fifteen hours of music on the 5thGen Shuffle: $49, available in five different colours.

On the Nano 6thGen: smaller, no clip wheel, touchscreen, "multi-touch" screen.

6.21pm: Bringing back the buttons to iPod Shuffle 4thGen, even smaller than 2ndGen: has voiceover and playlists, too. And a clip, importantly.

6.19pm: Here's the biggie: iPods.

How many sold? 275m. Secret to its success: never rested on our laurels, says Jobs. "This year we've gone wild."

New design for every single model of iPod. "Biggest change in iPod lineup ever".

6.19pm: iOS4.2 comes out in November, free update for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

6.17pm: Jobs demo's printing: looks very smooth.

Bit of a biggie: AirPlay is AirTunes, allowing you to stream audio and video over wifi devices.

6.15pm: Next week iOS4.1 will be available.

Sneak peek at 4.2 (which will come later this year for iPad). Multitasking, folders, games centre, wireless printing, "AirPlay".

6.14pm: New game out later this year from Epic Games. Invites on stage the president, Mike Capps to introduce.

MC: codename for this new game is Project Sword, social integration. "Project Sword is a gorgeous action packed RPG adventure. Everything you see is in realtime."

6.09pm: Games centre new and built in with iOS 4.1: APIs for developers. "All about multiplayer games," challenge friends, compare scores, discover new games. Apple moves into mobile social gaming.

6.08pm: 250,000 apps on App Store, 25,000 iPad apps.

First big(ish) announcement:

iOS 4.1 to include: Proximity sensor bugs fix, bluetooth bugs fix. Adds high dynamic range photos, HD video upload over wifi, TV show rentals and a game centre.

6.06pm: New iOS activations per day: 230,000 per day (new activations). If we counted upgrades (hints at Android) that would be a lot higher.

Over 6.5bn apps in App Store. 200 apps downloaded every second.

6.05pm: How many iOS devices shipped? 120m since launch.

6.05pm: iOS news: "a revolution in touch and apps," says Jobs.

6.04pm: Over a million people are visiting in some stores around the world.

6.04pm: Really cool stuff to show us, says Jobs. Update on new retail stores first off: Paris, Shanghai and London.

London store update: "beautiful, restored old building. Lot of restoration required." Not so much a retail update then, Steve.

Covent Garden was the 300th Apple store in the world, in 10 countries. Soon to open first store in Spain.

6.00pm: Jack Johnson fades to mute and we begin. Steve Jobs enters stage right to whoops and hollers.

5.58pm: "Switch your phones to silent, please," asks a mystery voice from behind the black curtain. On the projector comes the scene from California, lots of happy-looking folk sharing jokes and listening to Jack Johnson.

5.54pm: 99-cent rentals of movies through iTunes? According to "people familiar with the matter" cited by Wall Street Journal. Fox and ABC are said to be the companies on board:

"Some of these people said Fox agreed to participate in 99-cent rentals for a short period of time, and agreed to the lower-cost price only for broadcast shows it both produces and airs, such as "Glee," "Bones" and "Lie to Me." The Apple proposal won't affect cable shows such as FX's "Justified," or Fox network shows, including "American Idol," for which Fox doesn't control the digital rights.

"According to the people familiar with the matter, part of the calculus for Fox is that News Corp. wants Apple's help with other digital projects, including the iPad version of The Wall Street Journal and a digital news offering known inside News Corp. as the "Daily Planet," the name of the fictional paper in Superman comics."

Five minutes to go...

5.49pm: Would you believe it? Sony has moved to trump the Cupertino company's announcement(s) from its temporary hovel at Berlin's IFA fair.

Sony will offer a cloud-based media streaming service on Playstation 3s, Bravia TVs, Blu-Ray players and Sony's personal computers. Initially it will stream movies, with music to be added by the end of this year, reports the BBC.

Any more before Apple takes the stage in 10 minutes?

(In other news: it's filling up here at the UK press screening in Barbican. Not as many MacBooks as you might expect. Friendly-looking, yellow-shirted staffers saunter round with purple placards, directing media and guests to their seats. Free water and free wifi await. How's it looking from the comfort of home?)

5.40pm: To cover all bases, The Inquirer is hedging its bets on Apple announcing an update to AppleTV (not before time, I hear you grumble):

"[...] Amazon has made an announcement that would appear to be a spoiler for Jobs' dreams. It will be offering a subscription service that will deliver TV shows and movies over the Internet, which sounds jolly similar to the rumours and speculations we've been hearing about Apple's ITV plans.

"The Internet retailer has pitched a web-based subscription service to several major media companies, including NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp and Viacom. Amazon's video content subscription push is a challenge to rivals such as Netflix, Google's Youtube, and if Jobs announces it, Apple."

5.36pm: With 20ish minutes until kick off (6pm UK time), speculation is mounting.

The Financial Times cites sources inside the media industry when it says Apple will increase the amount of time customers can sample singles in the iTunes store from 30 seconds to 90 seconds. Users will also be able to make purchases direct from web pages, rather than opening the iTunes application, the FT predicts.

Hello and welcome. Web stream or no web stream, sit back and enjoy our minute-by-minute coverage live from (the UK screening of) Apple's California press conference.

Speculation about what Apple could announce ramped up a gear last night, with the company announcing it will *stream* the announcements online – but only to devices running its own operating systems. Is "social streaming" now almost certain to be visited on iTunes?

Here's our own Charles Arthur:

"This looks very likely, given Apple's $85m purchase last year of Lala.com, which it closed in May. Why purchase it to close it? Lala would stream music to users' PCs, for a price. And for years people have been talking about the likelihood of iPods getting streaming, or some sort of Napster-style subscription service. But while selling iPods was a good business, subscriptions weren't (witnessed by the failure of so many companies that tried to offer it).

"It's only now, as those other streaming services have started to make it into a viable business - one enabled by apps on phones and computers - that Apple seems interested. After all, at present the money paid to those services goes to Spotify or we7; why, you can see the Apple execs reasoning, shouldn't Apple get a slice?"

Apple could also announce a price cut to AppleTV – Steve Jobs's "hobby" – which has underwhelmed the market since launch.

The Financial Times predicts an update to iTunes will allow 90-second streaming of singles in the iTunes store, as opposed to the 30-second clips it currently allows.

Gizmodo pontificates about the possible launch of an iPod Touch with front-facing and rear-facing cameras, saying such a device would be a "ninja assassin squad against a whole range of other middling gadgets".

Let the predictions begin. Leave yours in the comments below...

Plus some more detail on why the music business needs iTunes – and the iPods/iPhones – to get streaming to help revenues build

First, very quickly, let's revisit what's going on with iPods, iPhones, and digital revenues.

As I pointed out in this article, the music business isn't seeing the rapid takeoff of digital download sales that it might have hoped for. The fact is that iPod sales (that is, devices Apple classes as "iPods", which includes the iPod Touch but excludes the iPhone and iPad) are falling both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. And the iTunes Store is the biggest single retailer of music in the US. (That doesn't mean it's the majority, but it has a significant influence.)

Plus, the numbers show that digital download sales follow the sales of iPods + iPhone rather closely. On this basis, people have therefore been saying "so what's the problem? iPod sales might slow down, but iPhone sales are going great! iPhone play music too! So no problem!"

Two problems actually. One is about the "installed base" of iPods. The other is about the alternative ways in which people can get music. Either or both point to problems for the industry. (Here's the table of data, so you can see why. Sales figures for the iPod/iPhone are given in thousands; revenues for the music business in billions of dollars.)

First: installed base. Steve Jobs said in a presentation recently that 50% of iPod buyers are new to them. Obviously, that means that 50% are replacements in some way. That means the installed base of functioning iPods is bigger than just the headline per-quarter sales figures. Yet it doesn't matter what sort of replacement cycle you choose for iPods + iPhones (two years in which half of the old ones get thrown away, for example), you still find that the digital downloads follows iPod sales very closely... but tails off latterly.

"Pah!" some people say. "iTunes isn't the download business. You're ignoring all the services such as Comes With Music and Amazon and all the other ways in which people can download music."

Perhaps. But if that's the case, then things are even worse for the music business, because it's got all these new ways of getting revenues, but it still isn't growing faster than the total number of iPods + iPhones out there. And if iPod sales slow (given that iPods, optimised for playing music, despite some incursions into video, were for some years the ideal repository for downloaded tracks) then the music industry has to find other outlets.

Yes, "performance" revenues (from streaming services such as we7, Pandora and Spotify) are growing rather well, up to $800m worldwide last year. They don't - indeed can't - work with iPods, except for "iOS" devices such as the iPod Touch. Happily for those services, that's where the growth is for Apple - selling iOS devices, including the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

And so we come to the rumours about what's coming up tomorrow. John Gruber of Daring Fireball is quite sure the iPod Touch is in for a major revision:

"I expect a new iPhone 4-caliber iPod Touch (retina display, dual FaceTime-ready cameras), new iTunes TV show rentals, and a new iOS-based Apple TV. The wildcard is whether there's going to be an App Store for the Apple TV.

"Readers are asking about iOS 4.1. I expect that, too, along with the official debut of Game Center, which is part of 4.1 and will help reinforce the image of the iPod Touch as a mobile gaming device (and the App Store as a gaming platform) going into the holidays. Look for a bunch of Game Center demos during the event."

Other suggestions we've seen all over the place:
• "Classic" iPods (shuffle, nano, "Classic") won't receive any sort of update at all. Personally don't think that's likely - they'd get a tweak on storage or price, surely.

• New "iPod Touch mini" with a 3" screen on the way. Again, can't see that that's likely: imagine trying to type anything on it. An iPod with a touch-only interface is just about conceivable if you had loads of playlists already set up, but it would be no good at all for apps. Can just about imagine an iPod nano with a touch interface, but it's hard to think it would be much of an improvement on the scroll wheel.

• "Social streaming" coming to iTunes. This looks very likely, given Apple's $85m purchase last year of Lala.com, which it closed in May. Why purchase it to close it? Lala would stream music to users' PCs, for a price. And for years people have been talking about the likelihood of iPods getting streaming, or some sort of Napster-style subscription service. But while selling iPods was a good business, subscriptions weren't (witnessed by the failure of so many companies that tried to offer it). It's only now, as those other streaming services have started to make it into a viable business - one enabled by apps on phones and computers - that Apple seems interested. After all, at present the money paid to those services goes to Spotify or we7; why, you can see the Apple execs reasoning, shouldn't Apple get a slice?

• Revised AppleTV running iOS. This is quite likely because Apple is now going to have to think about how it competes with Google TV and similar "app"-based models for getting TV to you. The existing AppleTV is a bit pointless, so it would make sense to have an in-between device. Here's the problem, though: iOS is a touch-based OS. How do you set up a remote so that you can control a screen that was designed for touch? That is the only fly in the soothing ointment for those wishing that Apple would "fix" TV (I'm not one, to be honest - and don't really think that Google TV sounds like it has the answer either).

But if – big, though promising if – you get a new generation of iPods which are suddenly enabled to stream music from Lala (or whatever Apple calls it) then the music industry might be able to feel that at least the "performance" slice of its income is going to grow nicely... even if the "digital" one isn't.

And what are you expecting, if anything, from the announcement?