In case you’re wondering, Google doesn’t just offer up search results for the fun of it; the vast bulk of Google’s income comes from advertising that hangs off the search results. Google got to where it is partly because its search results were good, but also because it could offer tailored and unobtrusive advertising that paid out; if you got ads in your search feed that were relevant to your interests, you were more likely to follow them up, and therefore everybody benefits — at least in theory.

Google also isn’t, according to one of its famous early promises, evil. To be precise, one of Google’s early company mottos exclaimed “Don’t be evil”, so that while you were handing over lots of information to Google in return for free search services — and later other offerings ranging from office software to calendars to social networking — you could rest easy that the company wasn’t trying to be evil, and your private data was safe and secure.

At least, that was the theory. Recent online uproar against Google has focused on a couple of Google’s most recent alterations to search and to its privacy polices. Firstly, in the area of search, Google’s started to give more prominence to results given a +1 mark through Google’s own Google+ social network. That’s a policy somewhat rife for abuse, but what’s got a lot more folks concerned are changes to Google’s privacy policies due to hit on the first of March. The full details of the new policy were announced on Google’s official blog here.

Google’s main product might be search, but a single Google account can link to RSS reading, email, calendar, documents, photos, YouTube and a plethora of other sites and services. Previously all the information within the bounds of one Google site stayed where it was, giving your data and preferences a certain quantity of relative anonymity. From March 1st, Google will start collating the data from one service against each other, building up a much more comprehensive profile of who you are and what you do than it did before. Technically speaking, Google already had all this information (or as much as you chose to give it); its new policy makes it explicit that it’ll leverage this information across all services. Google’s spin on this is that it’ll lead to a simpler overall Google experience, but there’s reason to be wary. Google’s sitting on an information goldmine — one perhaps not just relevant to simple advertising — and it’s one that users have largely handed to it for free. Cross-collated data in one single place also represents a tasty vector for attack by cyber criminals, although here at least we can hope that Google’s defences are good. Actually, given that an individual user can’t do much to improve Google’s security, that’s all we can do — hope that it’s up to the task.

Despite the (slightly) differing pricing, the core of all these services is basically the same. You pay a set monthly fee, with cheaper subscriptions offering a smaller subset of either features or methods of access, build up playlists of artists and then have your subscription period to listen to “your” music as much as you’d like. Some services are more closely tied to specific technology platforms — so it’s no shock that there’s a Qriocity client for the Playstation 3, or for that matter a Music Hub application for the Galaxy SII and Galaxy Tab — but it’s still music. The hook for all of them is the breadth of the offering; for around ten dollars a month you’re getting much more than the equivalent amount would buy you in cold hard compact discs.

Well, sort of. The big and most obvious difference between buying a CD and these kinds of services is that you never actually own the music you’re paying for. Buy a CD and you own it; you can listen to it endlessly, quite legally transfer it to other devices for your own personal listening pleasure or use it as a shiny coaster if you have a sudden epiphany and decide that, say, Romanian trumpet sonatas aren’t actually all that thrilling after all. Whereas with a subscription, all you’ve got is the time you’ve paid for, and that’s all.

In case you’re concerned about the absolute value of a service, it’s worth noting that most of them offer some kind of limited time trial period for you to peruse their archives and make sure that their musical selection matches yours. Everyone’s tastes are different, and there’s bound to be some obscure tracks that are missed over; most of these services do cater to the mainstream.

In one sense, streaming music isn’t all that different from the way that many people enjoy video entertainment; while many folks own impressive DVD or Blu-Ray collections, there’s plenty more who plunk down a set number of dollars each month for a Foxtel or Austar subscription, and that’s entertainment that’s solidly there while it’s being watched and then gone.

Kinect might have its roots in gaming, but it didn’t take long for keen hackers to see the potential in hooking up the sensor to a regular PC and use its 3D modelling capabilities for other purposes. To Microsoft’s credit, it didn’t shy away from or try to block the hackers; there was (in effect) unofficial “support” for Kinect hacking; Microsoft didn’t specifically sell the sensor to do anything but gaming, but was happy enough with some of the side efforts that came out of it. If the hackers broke a Kinect sensor or two along the way, Microsoft was more than happy to sell them another.

Kinect for Windows changes that arrangement somewhat. For a start, the “official” Windows Kinect (which will launch in Australia on February 1st) is more expensive than the Xbox version; a sensor and software will cost $299, something Microsoft puts down to the Windows Kinect sensor being a standalone product; it figures that money can be made with Kinect games on the Xbox 360, whereas the PC version may not generate any more income directly.

It’s also somewhat annoying to note that the official CES announcement pegged the price at $US249, but the Australian price is a chunky $50 more; while there are some tax considerations to take in mind, not to mention shipping, that kind of price difference does sting a bit.
The really interesting question for Kinect For Windows is what it’ll be good for. Clearly there’ll be some cross-porting of existing games titles, but that leaves the Kinect as only a rather expensive games controller.

There’s all sorts of potential for a touch-free navigation environment on the PC, albeit one that’d work a lot better for a PC connected like a home media centre than one connected to a notebook that’s sitting right in front of you. Microsoft’s claim for the Windows sensor (and not the cheaper Xbox one) is that it’s optimised for close up work of this kind, but I’m a little lost to work out what’ll make the most sense for that kind of interaction (outside of certain mobility limited scenarios) that couldn’t be done just as well with the tap of a mouse button or click of a keyboard. The new Windows 8 “Metro” user interface is built on Microsoft’s experiences with touch on the Windows Phone platform, and I can see how that could work with Kinect, but at the same time interface designers will have to work around implementing both Kinect and standard interfaces; at a $299 per user price point I’m not totally convinced that many will.

Last month we looked at converting a boring beige box into a whisper-quiet lounge room companion. Now we’ll tackle configuring the media centre interface (MCE) and playing your favourite video files.

MCE is built into Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. You can use it to play CDs and DVDs, as well as music and video files. MCE also lets you watch and record free-to-air television if you add a TV tuner card or USB dongle.

After you’ve run MCE’s initial set-up wizard, in the main menu go down to Tasks and choose Settings. Under General you can set MCE to start automatically with Windows and always stay on top. Go into Visual and Sound Effects to kill off the annoying ping as you navigate the menus. Enable Optimisation to force the MCE interface to restart once a day to improve stability.

Thankfully an MPEG-2 codec is pre-installed with MCE versions of Windows 7, so you don’t need to install separate software to watch DVDs and free-to-air TV. It doesn’t offer native Blu-ray support, but most Blu-ray drives come bundled with Blu-ray playback software, some of which offer MCE integration.

If you encounter stuttering when watching live TV, you could have digital reception issues or perhaps your tuner card is overheating. If you only experience stuttering when watching something you recorded earlier, perhaps while recording something else, then you should consider dropping in a second hard drive just for storing your recordings. If you’re recording to an external drive, you might need the performance boost of USB3 or eSATA.

When it comes to scheduling recordings, MCE can extract the Electronic Program Guide from the digital TV signal. You still might consider a third-party EPG service such as IceTV, which offers extra features such as scheduling your recordings via a web browser or your mobile phone.

MCE also makes a great DVD jukebox. If you rip your DVD collection to the hard drive as .vob files, MCE still lets you navigate the menus and access the extra features. You can add the folder containing your DVD collection to MCE by dipping into Settings, Media Libraries and Movies. MCE’s Movie Library doesn’t always display your DVD collection by default, but you can fix this by editing the registry. You can also install plug-ins such as My Movies for Windows Media Center, which downloads cover art and other metadata.

If you’re downloading video files from the internet, you’ll want to install a codec pack to extend MCE’s format support. Shark007’s Codec Packs are a one-stop-shop codec packs for MCE, with versions available for Windows 7 and Vista/XP. Format support includes DivX, Xvid, MKV, QuickTime, RealMedia and MPEG-2 as well as DirectVobSub for handling subtitles and AC3Filter for playing AC3 and DTS soundtracks.

With MCE configured, next time we’ll wrap up with a look at controlling your media centre from the couch.

Just prior to the 2012 CES (as I’m writing this), Broadcom has announced availability of chipsets that support the next generation of wireless networks. Not wireless networks in the sense of wireless (paid) broadband as I’ve discussed previously through companies like Telstra, but wireless as in WiFi; using an existing network connection (or none at all) to share files across computers, tablets, smartphones and anything that can talk basic IP.

The current state of the art (in terms of what you can buy right now) is 802.11n, and that was a product that took a long time to stabilise and get ratified; for a long while many vendors offered “pre” N products with varying speeds and cross-compatibility. We can look forward to that same merry dance with the next generation, variously called 5G or more technically, 802.11ac. Broadcom’s new chips can burst at up to 1.3Gbps — at least that’s what they claim — but the as yet to be ratified standard suggest peaks of up to 3.6Gbps. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll see actual 3.6Gbps throughput in anything at all, but that’s not likely to stop wireless manufacturers touting that the new chips are many multiples faster than the existing 802.11n gear. Bear in mind, though, that 802.11n tops out at a (theorectical) 600Mbps, but nobody gets that either; there’s always network overhead, frequently interference, shared spectrum and the issues of moving away from the wifi source to deal with in any wireless configuration setup.

802.11ac isn’t just about speed. The working theory is that it should be more applicable to devices that are power sensitive, such as smartphones and tablets, partly due to the design of the mooted specification, and partly due to the higher potential speed. At least in theory, if you can send a file (of any type) across a wireless network quickly, the chips responsible can then drop down to a low power state more rapidly as well; the end result should be longer battery life when using WiFi, something that’s typically quite challenging.  Broadcom doesn’t make wireless equipment itself; its chips are likely to show up under the hood of other more well known brands such as Netgear. At some point in 2012 it’s likely that the first 802.11ac products will hit store shelves. 802.11ac is backwards compatible, so it should work well with existing 802.11n gear (not to mention the older 802.11a and 802.11b equipment). At first, though, you can expect to pay high prices for highly hyped equipment, but whether it’ll last through to the ratification of the standard and work seamlessly with later 802.11ac equipment remains to be seen.

Any kind of prediction about the technology landscape is inevitably one that involves a certain amount of guesswork, and that means I could be hopelessly (or even haplessly) wrong with any kind of prediction that I make. With that caveat in mind, let’s jump headfirst into the crystal ball, taking a look at three industry heavyweights and how they might fare in 2012.

Apple gets first place in my tea leaf readings, purely on alphabetical grounds. Apple’s widely tipped to update its iPad, iPhone and Mac lines this year; those things are pretty inevitable simply from a marketing point of view. On the Mac front, new chipset availability will allow newer Mac models (the exact same thing is true on the PC front), and it doesn’t take a degree from the dubious institute-of-psychic-studies-that-I-just-made-up (established eight seconds ago) to suggest that new iPhones and iPads will see money flowing into Apple’s coffers. That kind of repeat business latest-model hype is exactly what Apple does, and based on previous years, that’s clearly what it’ll continue to do.

One rumour doing the rounds here at the moment is that Apple will unveil an “Apple” TV. Not to be confused with the small set top box that the company already sells, this would be an Apple branded TV set, hooked into the iTunes store for video delivery.

I doubt it. I strongly doubt it, although I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that Apple had prototyped such a thing; big IT companies go through lots of prototypes during research and development. The reason why I’m doubtful is that while it sounds good in theory (Apple has a content ecosystem in place, it does good industrial design and as yet nobody’s really “cracked” a good Smart TV), it ignores one of the factors that’s made Apple a whole lot of money in recent years — namely that it likes repeat business. People drop iPhones and iPads all over the place, and new features prompt some buyers to replace every year. Who replaces their TV every year? Almost nobody. A TV is a long-term prospect, and as such Apple would need lots of content to make its model of TV compelling. The existing Apple TV set top box already provides a gateway to its iTunes ecosystem for selling and renting content; I’d be less shocked to see, a say, LG-presents-TV-with-integrated-Apple-TV than a genuine Apple TV.

Next on the reading of the livers of unfortunate animals (and next in the alphabet) would be Google. Google’s likely to continue chipping away at many markets, essentially doing what Microsoft’s done for years; subsidising some products via the massive profits made from just a few. In Google’s case that’s largely search advertising, and it’s funded all sorts of acquisitions (some of which Google shuttered during 2011) and startup projects, most prominently Android-based smartphones and tablets. I suspect 2012 is the year we’ll see a “Google” Android tablet. Previously this could have been one built by another company — in the same way that Google’s own Android phones have been HTC and Samsung models respectively — but with Google having gobbled up Motorola in 2011, it could be an entirely in-house effort. Google’s own moves in the netbook space with its Chromebooks seems to have stalled for the moment, as has Google’ own TV ambitions; I’d be surprised if either made significant headway in Australia, if they ever make it here at all.

Last in my prognosticating list is Microsoft. While it’s not definite, it’s highly likely we’ll see Windows 8 emerge sometime in 2012, although I wouldn’t put a pin anywhere in the calendar before June if I were you. Windows 8 is clearly part of Microsoft’s strategy to more closely align all of its consumer IT properties, from smartphones to consoles to computers under one well understood interface, and it’ll be fascinating to see how well (and how quickly) Microsoft manages this. Its coffers are immense (as are its spending habits when it comes to both R&D and marketing) and it’s got an easy head start in terms of Windows existing place in the market; while big businesses will no doubt take a slow approach to the new operating system and everything it may offer, the push for individual users to bring their own devices (and increasingly laptops) into work may make Windows 8 a very rapidly adopted operating system indeed.

The most recent shift in the ISP space has seen iiNet buying up a number of smaller players; last month it was Canberra-based TransACT, and just before Christmas it was announced that iiNet had bought out the highly popular ISP Internode. Internode and iiNet have long rated highly amongst the technorati for the quality of their service; both in the value of the plans they offer (and a number of similar freebies, such as free access to ABC’s excellent iView streaming service) and the after-sales support. The official word is that the buyout of Internode won’t result in any changes in the short term; iiNet will continue to run Internode as an iiNet “brand” — in much the same way as it does Westnet. That’s confirmed by Internode’s Simon Hackett, who’s written an excellent explanatory document — http://blog.internode.on.net/2011/12/26/q-and-a-internode-iinet/ — that states that Internode will continue as a brand and as it has done
“Providing that plans are sustainable in economic terms”. That’s quoting directly from Hackett, and it’s the key thing that anything to do with Internode rests on; it’d be unlikely that we’ll see no changes to Internode’s offering in the medium term simply because it’d be economically inefficient to do so, and I’m sure that if it became prudent to so, some of Internode’s offerings will become similar (if not identical) to iiNet’s. That doesn’t mean it will happen, but I’d be surprised if this particular acquisition didn’t lead to a little less variety in the ISP space.

So where does that leave Aussie consumers in terms of ISP choice? The obvious answer is that (at least technically) there’s a few less than there used to be, but that’s to a certain extent all just manoeuvring prior to the NBN becoming a fully fledged entity; once that happens the floodgates open for access, and clearly ISPs are all trying to get as large as possible before that happens. While the NBN does offer the possibility for smaller wholesalers, it’s in the extra capabilities and perks that ISPs can offer customers that they’ll sell well; Telstra for example has a number of contracts with sporting bodies for online rights to the AFL, and that’ll be a key thing to get customers on board both prior to the NBN and after it. Paying for those kinds of rights isn’t a cheap exercise, and it’s only the largest providers that are likely to be able to compete.

The most recent company to leave the netbook market behind is Dell. They’ve dropped the Inspiron Mini line, instead focusing on the thin and light ultrabook-and-above market for its consumer lines. It’s not a confirmed matter, but it’s suspected that Samsung will also pull out of the netbook market in the near future. It’ll be interesting to see whether the ultrabook market has more profit potential for Dell (or anyone, for that matter), but from a consumer end it’s a little sad to see netbooks being left behind, although in reality they’ve been being left behind for quite some time now.

Over time, the number of netbooks available on store shelves has shrunk, and these days they’re not as enticing as they once were. When first launched, netbooks weren’t the most powerful systems out there, but the problem, essentially speaking, is that that’s exactly where they’ve stayed. Most netbooks you’ll find run on only a handful of processors, most markedly a smattering of Intel’s Atom processors, and there hasn’t been a significant speed or performance boost in those for quite some time. What that means is that while tablets have come along in leaps and bounds, whether you sit on the Android or iOS side of the fence, netbooks have mostly stood still. The kind of performance you get out of a netbook today is a little bit better than the original batch of netbooks, but not by any great deal. As such, while they’ve stayed cheap, they’re comparable in price to a tablet, and even an entry level notebook will offer more power and flexibility at a price point that’s not notably higher than the entry level price of a tablet.

That doesn’t mean that a netbook’s always a bad buying option — but it’s certainly one that you’d want to buy quite cheaply right now; while premium netbooks have all but vanished to be replaced by ultrabooks, you’re still largely buying old technology, and the old maxim about technology holds as true as it ever did; if you buy the best thing within your budget at the time of writing (subject to your needs, naturally) it’ll be capable of running the latest software iterations for longer than if you just buy the cheapest unit available.

Computers don’t have to be boring beige boxes which stay hidden away in the study. These days you’ll find a range of sleek home theatre PC cases, designed to look at home alongside your television and run whisper quiet.

If you’re not looking to build a new computer from scratch, you can give your existing PC a lounge room-friendly makeover. If your primary concern is noise, swap out noisy case fans for quiet alternatives from the likes of Antec, Zalman and Acousti.

Remember, fans are for cooling and heat is the mortal enemy of PC stability. Silent fans tend to be larger so they can spin slower but still move a large volume of air. Look for variable speed control and take extra care if you’re putting your computer inside an AV cabinet with limited airflow.

Silencing your computer and managing heat is a matter of trial and error, particularly if you’re using a cramped desktop case rather than a roomy tower case. With your case fans muted you might find that the fan on your CPU, power supply or graphics card is now the loudest component. Switching to a quiet or fanless heatsink for your CPU is the next most economical move, after which you might consider a silent power supply.

Keeping the heat down lets the remaining fans in your PC run slower and thus quieter. Tying down loose cables helps improve airflow, as does removing the covers over unused PCI slots. Vibration is another source of noise, so use rubber washers to install the fans, hard drive and optical drive.

Next consider how you’ll connect to your television. Many new processors feature an integrated graphics chip with built in MPEG2/4 hardware decoding, which is important for smooth playback. If you’re looking at Intel’s Sandy Bridge chips, opt for HD 3000 graphics (rather than HD 2000) and a motherboard with an HDMI output.

If you need to add a graphics card for the hardware decoding, AV outputs and extra grunt, you don’t need as much grunt as a high-end gaming machine. Opt for mid-range graphics card with a heat sink rather than a fan, but keep in mind the heat sink might cover the adjacent PCIe slot. Many graphics cards come with AV adaptors for connecting to component, composite and s-video inputs on your television.

If you want to watch and record free-to-air television you’ll need a digital TV tuner. Opt for dual high-def tuners so you can record two shows at once and watch all the new channels (you can downscale them to standard-def if you don’t own a high-def television). Assuming you have a spare motherboard slot, internal TV tuners generally feature stronger tuners than USB sticks. Try to get the tuner as far away from your other components as possible, to avoid interference and heat issues which can cause reception problems.

With the hardware in place, next time we’ll look at configuring the software on your media centre PC.

For the truly technology keen, the 10.1’s been available through grey market importers for some time, so it’s not exactly a new product to our shores in one sense. I’ve not had the chance to test out an “official” Galaxy Tab 10.1 through Samsung directly as yet, but I have had some hands on time with a directly imported unit. It’s certainly a nicely designed tablet; I can see why it could have irked Apple as the feel is terribly iPad-esque, but having said that I’d better clarify again; I’m not a lawyer and even with that caveat I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea that this should be enough to have any product banned per se.

Getting them onto retail shelves will be the interesting next step, especially depending on how keen consumers end up being to actually buy them. There’s no shortage of competing tablets; even ignoring Apple you could buy a tablet from vendors such as Acer or Asus already, and whether the Tab 10.1 will grab attention will be interesting to see. I’m writing this at the moment rather remotely from the UK, where the Tab 10.1 has been available for many months, and anecdotally from what I can see — and especially what I can see busy technology shoppers actually stopping to test — the Tab 10.1 is seen as “just another tablet”. Given how long and hard Samsung Australia’s fought to have it appear on Australian shelves, I’m betting that’s not the response they’re hoping for from Aussie consumers. It’s worth noting that the Tab 10.1, like much of the rest of this year’s Android tablet crop, is an Android 3 product; the latest Android iteration, Android 4.0 (“Ice Cream Sandwich”, if you want its official product name) is currently only officially available on one phone, although ironically that’s a Samsung product; a phone produced for Google called the Google Galaxy Nexus. Ice Cream Sandwich is meant to bridge the divide between phones and tablets and is expected to be available on a wide variety of tablets, but it’s not yet confirmed at all if it’ll come to the Tab 10.1 or not.