A Swedish software developer, Global Gaming Factory X, has announced that it has bought The Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish crowns (7.7 million dollars).

The company reckons that the peer-to-peer technology developed by the site can become an effective economic model that will aid the content industry.

"We hope to introduce models that guarantee that suppliers of content and holders of copyright will be remunerated for content that is downloaded from the site", says Hans Pandeya, CEO of Global Gaming.

The sale of The Pirate Bay comes at a time when the legal standing of its founders still has to be decided. Condemned at a first hearing to a year of prison and a fine of 3 million dollars in damages to be paid to the music and film industry, they have appealed against the decision.

This unique service from Garmin means you can leave the major roads and discover the Saint-Emilion area by following an itinerary designed by the local tourist office.


In addition to its primary function – getting its user from A to B – the satnav is introducing a new service. In partnership with Vox Inzebox – specialist in the development of tourist and cultural audio guides – and the Saint Emilion tourist office, Garmin is offering the users of its GPS range the opportunity of visiting this winemaking region (that has, for ten years, been listed on the Unesco World Heritage list as a cultural landscape) in an unusual way.

Across the countryside

The Saint-Emilion district includes the medieval city, several villages, numerous castles, a rich history, culture, way of life and of course a passion for wine. With the satnav audio guide, you can settle back and allow yourself to be guided (currently only in French but with an English version coming out for the summer). Download your guide free here.

Once you’ve arrived, get the progamme going and drive through the area. At the wheel of your car you’ll visit the vineyards via pretty country roads. When approaching one of the 8 featured villages or points of interest (Château Cheval Blanc, Château Laroque, Château de Pressac, Château de Ferrand, St Laurent des Combes, St Pey d'Armens, Vignonet and St Sulpice de Faleyrens), a short commentary automatically begins. For three or fours minutes you’ll learn something about the history of the place as told by specialists (historians, chateau owners and so on). Well thought out and anything but boring – we would have preferred them to be longer and more informative – these vignettes give you a taste of the history of the place you're visiting.

If you don’t have a GPS, you can request one at the local tourist office.

The partnership between Garmin and Vox Inzebox should see further areas covered in the near future. And so much the better!

The service is compatible with Garmin nüvi 3, nüvi 6, nüvi 7, nüvi 8 and zümo 500, 550 and 660.

Our GPS product survey

While the iPhone dreams of becoming the ideal games consol for casual gamers, the celebrated Sony consol may be about to turn into a consol-smartphone.

After having made music portable by creating the Walkman 30 years ago, the Japanese manufacturer would desperately like to come up with another success story. While its mobile games consol, the PSP (far behind the DS with 50 million units sold as against 96 million) is doing pretty well, Sony can no longer ignore the arrival of two new clearly ambitious incursions on its gaming territory. These are the iPod Touch and the iPhone (40 million units sold in barely 2 years) which work with an accelerometer and in tandem with the AppStore, with great success among consumers. You have to say that there's no lack of titles, developers having no hesitation in betting on the success of Apple products. And the cost of these titles is far lower – even for the most expensive games – than those sold on a cartridge (average cost of 7 pounds against 30 pounds).

News came yesterday that Sony had set up a team dedicated to development of a hybrid device, somewhere between the PSP and the smartphone, with Sony-Ericsson involved of course.

Will Sony, far behind Apple in the market for digital music players, manage to pull back some ground with the PlaystationPhone?

The download boom for the iPhone has now turned to the games category. You have to say that the opportunity is there and Apple is not skimping when it comes to investment in turning its multimedia terminal into a games consol too. Others predict the arrival of a new device that is more games orientated. In the meanwhile, the celebrated Dr Kawashima, of DS clinic fame, should soon be here.

Not content with having set the standard in the new smartphone market, Apple is also becoming a major mover in the soaring mobile video games market. The little world of video games is nevertheless already very well populated. Before Apple, other players had given it a go, following the example of Nokia with its Ngage platform, without however managing to achieve anywhere near the same success. Long before the existence of Appstore, we had Steam (a download platform for games that was well known among initiates) but Apple has decided to make things even simpler.

Carried by the success of the Appstore (definitely now the model to follow), the Cupertino-based firm has made a great success out of mixing its platform with content, either free or available cheaply. It is no coincidence that Sony and Nintendo rapidly adopted Apple's model in creating their own stores. Once again though, Apple has managed to take things a step further by popularising and not only preaching to the converted.

An economic model, signed Apple

Apple has managed to federate the top game publishers (Electronics Arts – there are even rumours of an Apple buyout -, Gameloft, Sega), some of which have dedicated themselves entirely to iPhone games. How? After the iPod / iTunes pairing, Apple has reasserted its successful economic model with the iPhone / AppStore pairing, determined to get casual gamers onside by ensuring ease of use (buy when you want, where you want) and attractive pricing.

The games publishers did not get it wrong: above and beyond the potential sales volumes you can add a simple procedure that is, in addition, remunerative. The difference with a games consol is that you can get your game online very fast and cut out the middle men (manufacturing, distributors etc), and therefore the costs. The general public has bought in to the idea, even those who never played anything beyond Pac Man on their Atari. The average cost of a downloaded game on the Appstore is 7 pounds (30% goes to Apple), compared to 25 pounds for a DS or PSP cartridge game.

The iPhone, the story of a consol that isn’t a consol

Of course the iPhone does have its limits and there are still many pure gamers who laugh at Apple’s attempts in the video gaming world. Compared to a DS, the iPhone is limited by the fact that it just has a tactile screen. This screen is both its strength and weakness. No joystick, no physical buttons, everything depends on the finger and the accelerometer. However in some games the touch screen lacks precision.

And in the future? In the future, Apple could well bring out a new type of device, a mobile consol that is something like a netbook, crossed with a touch pad and a video games consol.

Apple looks like making even more waves in the video gaming world (and there won’t be a lack of investment) and wake up a snoozing market that has rested too long on its laurels.

A great screen is a screen that comes with a VA or IPS panel for wider viewing angles, is responsive, sits on an intelligent stand and for a lot of people today, offers a Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels.  The Dell 2209WA is a great screen, but it's expensive, has less than perfect contrast and has a resolution of just 1680 x 1050 pixels.   The Samsung F2380, which is about to be launched, might just steal the show.

	Samsung F2380 MARCHANDS €     Amazon.fr m...  289.75  Amazon.fr m...  389.00  Pixmania.com  394.00  Amazon.fr  399.00  Amazon.fr m...  486.00  Rue du comm...  1000.30  Compare prices

Currently only available in Germany (where Amazon.de has listed it at 309 euros), it has the following tech specs:

• 23'' Full HD 1920 x 1080 pixels
• PVA panel, like the Dell 2408WFP
• Viewing angles: 178° / 178°
• Height-adjustable stand with pivot mode
• Official response time: 8 ms -- but forget about this.  Because it's a PVA screen, the actual response time will be close to a good TN screen with an advertised response time of 2 ms
• Video inputs: VGA x 1, DVI x 2 (but no HDMI!)
• Energy consumption: 1 W in standby but a maximum of 45 W when in use -- which represents progress for PVA screens, if it's really the case

The risk of Samsung 'juggling panels' and shipping different hardware to what it's advertised is almost zero.  In the whole world, there's only one supplier of PVA panels ... and that's Samsung.  It should be impossible for them to make any major changes to the screen.  What might happen, though, is an update of the panel, designed in theory to improve it, by changing its default colour rendering, for instance.

For it to become widespread, a screen like this is really going to have fall under the £200 barrier, but that won't happen immediately.  But even at its current price, which might be even lower in other online stores, this is a screen that could prove attractive to a lot of users, whether at home or in the office.  On paper, it's not far off what we'd consider our perfect screen to be ... here's looking forward to a chance to test it!

> Product Survey: 23'' Monitors and up

Today, we've got two very different digital cameras joining our Product Survey.  One is a very standard compact, with a 5x zoom and 12 Megapixel sensor--but the other is the first 'real' digital Polaroid.  It's the first digital camera to include a built-in printer, allowing you to relive the fun of (almost) instant photo printing.

The Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W270 is just one camera from the Japanese manufacturer's very large selection.  The inclusion of a wide-angle lens and a 12 Megapixel sensor will certainly attract some attention, as will its ability to film in HD, but it does lack a little originality in a market that's already heaving with models.  Will it be able to stand out?

The Polaroid Two is a combination of a 5 Megapixel digital camera with a fixed lens and 4x digital zoom with a PoGo printer.  In just forty seconds or so, you can print out your photos--just like you could on the earlier analogue models that built Polaroid's reputation.  They were much-loved by professionals who used them to quickly check lighting or composition, so will the Two be able to live up to its predecessors?

> Producy Survey: Compact Digital Cameras

Those of you who read our news regularly might have noticed that--although most people tow the editorial line--I sometimes let rip and rebel.  Most recently, I lashed out at Dell, criticising the changes that it seems to have been boxing itself into overt he past few months.

The morning after our story 'What's happening at Dell?', we received a call saying that wishes would be granted.  Last time, we said ''we like this manufacturer, we like the usual quality of the products. Lets hope things get back to normal soon.''

Well, we're pleased to announce that this package just arrived in our office, ready for test:



The G4120, which came out at the start of the year, is a mid-level monitor with a 5 ms TN panel and a 1920 x 1080 resolution.  We weren't expecting miracles, but who knows ...

We should soon receive the updated 24'' and 27'' versions of Dell's flagship PVA monitors.

So ... Dell is back!

> Product Survey: 23'' Monitors and up

A standard phone charger will be available across Europe in 2010.  In an excellent development for the average consumer, the European Union has brought forward by two years the launch of the agreement made between ten mobile manufactuers.

A universal charger was originally announced in Feburary last year at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, where the manufacturers agreed to standardise a single charger based on micro-USB that would work with every phone.  Brussels, however, decided to accelerate progress, with the aim of reducing the production of electronic waste and saving consumers money.

Saving Money and Energy

Today, mobile telephones waste energy in all sorts of ways.  The average life cycle of a phone is estimated at just 18 months.  Every time somebody buys a new phone, there's a charger in the box--and most manufacturers still use their own proprietary settings.

By 2010, phones compatible with the new standard should be on the market, meaning that customers won't need to spend extra money.

The European Commissioner charged with Enterprise and Industry, Günter Verheugen, has suggested that this measure, which has not required any legislation, might extend to other electronic products like cameras and laptops.