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Audi officially unveiled its Polo-sized A1 at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. It debuted alongside a concept version, the A1 e-tron, that’s a plug-in series hybrid in the mould of the Chevy Volt, albeit one that’s got a rotary engine as its battery range extender.

Two petrol and two diesel engines will initially be offered on the A1. All engines feature turbocharging, as well as start-stop functionality that automatically turns the engine off when the car’s at a standstill and fires it back up when you’re ready to move off. A seven-speed dual-clutch transmission is optional.

Like the Mini that it hopes to snatch sales from, the A1 will be highly customisable. For instance, owners can opt for numerous interior trim packages, as well as different paint finishes for the roof arch - Union Jack-painted roofs aren’t on the list yet, though.

The A1 promises quality interior trim and top tech.
(Credit: Audi)

Audi promises that the A1 won’t diminish its reputation for high-quality interiors. Those who tick the box for the MMI entertainment and navigation system will get a 6.5-inch LCD screen that pops out of the dash-top. Navigation and music selection can be controlled via voice recognition or the system’s traditional multi-function knob.

There’s a hard disk with 20GB of space set aside for music, an SD card reader, Bluetooth for hands-free and streaming music, DVD playback for audio, data and video discs, and iPod/MP3 player connectivity. Also available is a 14-speaker Bose surround sound system with a claimed output of 465 Watts.

Outlook

Conventionally powered A1s are about to start rolling off the assembly lines soon, with sales due to begin in Europe shortly thereafter. Australians, however, will have to wait until sometime in early 2011. The Yaris-sized A1 will initially be available as three-door, although it seems inevitable that a five-door version will join the ranks at some stage.

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The Move is the PlayStation’s answer to the Nintendo Wii-mote, offering gamers the option to control the on-screen action with physical gestures rather than with directional sticks and button presses. If the similarities to Nintendo’s control scheme weren’t obvious enough, Sony today rolled out an accessory to complement the Move; a second wand-like controller with a D-pad and buttons, similar to the Nintendo Wii’s Nunchuck, known as the Move sub-controller.

As it is with announcements of this nature, game developers were also on hand during the Sony naming ceremony at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Games announced to coincide with the launch of the Move include a street brawler called Dukes, a predictable collection of sports mini-games wrapped together under the title Sports Champions, and a unique title called Slider, where the player performs a range of kung-fu moves while the character careens through city streets sitting on an office chair.

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(Credit: LimeWire)

LimeWire’s peer-to-peer file-sharing network is notorious as a malware ghetto, where distributed files that have legitimate-sounding names turn out to be trojan horses hiding pernicious threats. In an effort to attract more users to the LimeWire premium upgrade and to protect those users better, the company signed a deal with AVG to extend download file scanning and blocking to LimeWire Pro users.

By integrating AVG’s antivirus SDK engine, all files that LimeWire Pro users download will now be scanned before they run. A pop-up will appear letting users know when a file has been scanned or blocked.

This is a smart move to make, as users become more aware of the risky nature of running audio, video and program executables from unverifiable sources without scanning them first. However, many security suite options already offer download scanning. Most of the premium ones, such as Norton, McAfee and Kaspersky, as well as some of the free ones, such as AVG, Avast and Avira, will block a malicious download before anything gets saved to your hard drive. Nearly all will prevent an already-downloaded file from running.

LimeWire pointed out in a press release that it has 50 million users worldwide, but didn’t specify how many of those were premium-version users who would receive the AVG protection.

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While HD-quality video capture is becoming more common on compact digicams, there still aren’t many mobile phones that can do the same. The Samsung i8910 HD is the most prominent example with its ability to shoot 720p videos, and now, Sony Ericsson has joined the league with its Vivaz smartphone. We managed to get our hands on a prototype unit and here are our observations.

The first thing that struck us about the Vivaz design was how compact it is. Given the number of features it packs, we would have imagined it to be larger. Instead, the Vivaz is smaller and lighter than the i8910 HD and Sony Ericsson’s own Satio, at 107×52x12.5mm and 97g.

The device looks sleek with a curved back battery cover and clean, simple front. Like other Symbian S60 5th Edition touchscreen phones, the display has a resolution of 640×360 pixels. This is of the resistive variety, which means it will respond to stylus tips.

Buttons on the front of this smartphone include your standard Call and End buttons with a menu key between. The left is where you will find a micro-USB port for charging and syncing and a 3.5mm audio connector. This is great news for music lovers as you will be able to plug in your favourite headphones without an adapter. Take note that since it is located on the side, you should use a pair of headphones that come with an L-shaped jack. A single power/keylock button sits at the top of the Vivaz.

The right side of the phone is where you’ll find all the camera controls when holding the device in landscape mode. The Vivaz’s main draw is its 8-megapixel camera, so we’ll discuss that and its controls in more detail later.

The Vivaz has no lack of connectivity features. It comes with HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS for satellite navigation.

On the software end of things, the custom S60 5th Edition interface is similar to the Satio’s. This means you get a tabbed home screen which gives you quick access to items such as favourite contacts, internet bookmarks and even Twitter updates. And like the Satio, there are quirks, too. Swipe scrolling is implemented in some lists, but not in others like the menu screen - an annoying issue.

For memory expansion, a microSD card slot is found behind the back battery cover. The device itself has 75MB built-in, which is pathetic. So having an expansion card is critical, especially if you are using the phone as a music player. If you get tired of your own music library, the Vivaz also has an FM tuner for listening to live radio.

By far the most outstanding feature of the Vivaz is its 8-megapixel camera capable of capturing 720p videos. Even though what we have is a prototype unit, we were quite impressed with the shooting capabilities of this smartphone.

Controlling the camera is done using the touchscreen and buttons on the right side. It is meant to be held horizontally like a compact digicam with your right index finger on the dedicated shutter button. Right beside the shutter button for still shots is one just for recording video, which further goes to show how important the imaging features are on the Vivaz.

The speed of the camera is commendable. It starts up in about three seconds and shutter lag measured just 0.3 seconds in our tests. There are many shooting options, including face detection, “touch to focus” and even one to geotag images using the built-in GPS. Videos can be shot at 720p, VGA, QVGA and a lower-quality mode for MMS use.

Outlook

As mentioned earlier, what we have is a pre-production unit so we won’t attempt to assess the quality of images and videos. What we have seen so far is encouraging, and we can’t wait to see the final commercial product.

The Vivaz should be available this quarter, but we don’t know at what price yet. Hopefully, it won’t be too expensive as that would hurt its competitiveness compared with the Samsung i8910 HD which shares very similar features.

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The full HD Blu-ray player features built-in 3D playback, plus it includes Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity to access Samsung’s Internet@TV IPTV portal. It also supports 7.1 channel HD surround sound. Samsung has cut its disk load and boot up times - long the bane of many Blu-ray players - to 15 seconds.

3D content is, as yet, very scarce (Avatar is rumoured to be coming to 3D Blu-ray in November). Samsung does have a partnership with Dreamworks Animation in place, so most 3D products it initially introduces will come bundled with a copy of Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D.

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In a first for ABC TV, the new series of Doctor Who will launch on the iView online video platform two days before it airs on ABC1, and just under two weeks after its UK debut on the BBC.

From midnight Friday, April 16, Australian fans can stream the first episode at abc.net.au/iview, ahead of its TV broadcast at 7:30pm Sunday, April 18 on ABC1.

However, the remaining episodes will only be on iView after they air on TV, where they will be available for two weeks. ABC plans to fast track the series, with weekly episodes continuing to air two weeks after their UK showing.

The titles of the first six episodes have also been revealed:

Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour

Episode 2: The Beast Below

Episode 3: Victory of the Daleks

Episode 4: The Time of Angels

Episode 5: Flesh and Stone

Episode 6: Vampires of Venice

Kim Dalton, director of Television at the ABC, says: “iView is a fantastic offering, an additional way for Australian audiences to watch ABC TV’s content - generally after, but in this special case before, its television broadcast.

“We hope the lure of Doctor Who - and what a fun and exciting lure it is - will provide incentive for more viewers to discover iView, and experience how convenient and easy to use it is.”

Matt Smith (Party Animals) who plays the 11th Doctor in the new series, was introduced in the final episode of the last series “The End Of Time: Part Two”, which wrapped up David Tennant’s role as the 10th Doctor.

Karen Gillan also joins the cast as the Doctor’s companion, Amy Pond, though she previously appeared on the show as a soothsayer in the fourth episode “The Fires of Pompeii”.

Award-winning writer Steven Moffat (Coupling, Jekyll) will replace Russell T. Davies as lead writer and executive producer.

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