The church's standing is falling to new lows among believers in its European heartland. Sensing the growing public alarm, some within the clergy are pushing for profound institutional changes, including an end to celibacy.

Nokia may still not have brought turn-by-turn navigation to Maemo with its own Ovi Maps, but N900 users can now get their fix courtesy of Sygic, which has just released a version of its Mobile Maps app for the device. Available only in Europe to start with, the app costs €60, and includes maps of both eastern and western Europe, along with the usual "millions" of points-of-interest, speed camera locations and speed limit warnings, and plenty of customization options (including support for multiple languages). No firm word on availability outside of Europe just yet, but Sygic does say that additional regions will be announced "gradually." Head on past the break for a quick demo video.

[Thanks, Brad C]

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Former ministers said to have been caught on camera by journalists

A group of MPs, including former ministers, have been targeted in an elaborate sting operation in which journalists set up a bogus lobbying company and offered to pay them in return for political influence.

Among the politicians approached was Stephen Byers, the former cabinet minister and arch-Blairite, who was filmed describing himself as a "bit like a sort of cab for hire". He offered to trade Westminster contacts for £3,000 to £5,000 a day.

Others who were targeted in the undercover operation included former cabinet ministers Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt. Margaret Moran, the Labour MP for Luton, was also involved.

The party tried to limit the damage last night by saying some MPs were "mortified" by how stupid they had been. However, nothing illegal has been alleged.

Twenty MPs were invited to attend meetings to discuss joining an advisory board and 10 turned up. The meetings were mainly held at offices in London's St James's Square. An undercover Sunday Times journalist asked them how the company could go about influencing policy and how it could improve its chances of winning a government contract.

Byers told her he had saved hundreds of millions of pounds for National Express through his contact with Lord Adonis, the transport minister, and had influenced food labelling proposals for Tesco after phoning Lord Mandelson, the business secretary. The MP said that his friendship with Mandelson was one of his "trump cards".

However, the next day he wrote an email to the meeting's organisers saying he had "overstated" the part he had played in trying to secure changes to the way in which the government deals with issues. "This means that I have not spoken to Andrew Adonis... or Peter Mandelson about the matters I mentioned," he wrote.

Byers issued a statement last night saying that at an informal meeting about a potential job opportunity he had made some "exaggerated" claims. "Having reflected on my comments I knew that I should immediately put the record straight. I did so the following morning by making it clear that I have never lobbied ministers on behalf of commercial interests. I later withdrew my name for consideration. I have always fully disclosed my outside interests," he said. Byers described the set-up as a "massive deception".

The operation is reported to feature in a Dispatches programme to be aired tomorrow on Channel 4.

The journalists set up a lobbying company known as Anderson Perry Associates, supposedly based in the US. Its website described it as a "bespoke consultancy that helps organisations and individuals maximise and exceed expectation". It claimed to have 120 clients in Europe, the Middle East and the US, operating in the health and defence industries.

The exposé is likely to thrust the issue of standards back to the heart of the election campaign as party leaders battle to show they will clean up parliament. The operation, which targeted MPs who are standing down from parliament, also targeted the Lords, with Baroness Sally Morgan, a former aide to Tony Blair, reported to have been approached.

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Lunch-hour cosmetic surgery – 45-minute boob jabs, nonsurgical rhinoplasty – is booming in the UK. But nightmare stories are also on the rise. So are the treatments safe? We speak to doctors to find out, and take a front-row seat at a no-frills nose job

Cosmetic surgery is changing. One advancement is the use of twilight surgery, where they send you only half to sleep. Clinics are alive with dazed facelift patients, who keep their eyes open, frowning and smiling on demand, who come to after the sedation's worn off, their skin tight but bruised, able to remember nothing of the knife at all. There are other patients who trip in off the street for a half-hour boob job under local anaesthetic, and still more who book a session of Botox in their lunch-breaks. The current excitement, in plastics, is not in the perfection of a newly sculpted nose but in the speed at which patients can recover, and the market for these fast, temporary procedures is growing wildly.

The Knightsbridge Laser Clinic is one of many that has recently started promising lunch-hour transformations, offering laser lipolysis to eliminate fat, the G-spot injection to enhance sexual stimulation, Macrolane breast injections, nonsurgical rhinoplasty and Botox fillers to remove wrinkles. A block away from Harrods, I climb their carpeted stairs to the waiting room as the lunch-time rush subsides. Outside a light rain is falling, and the smell of a wet fur coat, woody and dead, hangs in the air of the clinic's small landing. Its owner brushes past me, straight into one of three white and well-lit offices. In a corner room, beside a sheeted bed, I soon take my seat, an audience of one at a 15-minute nose job.

The patient, a young, elegant woman with jewelled shoes, had rhinoplasty in Harley Street as a teenager but now wants it still straighter. Her first operation, which cost £8,000 and required a week in hospital, had left her with a smaller nose, she says, but slightly wonky nostrils. "You might not notice it," she says apologetically, "but I do."

The doctor, Salinda Johnson, a slight and surgically tweaked woman who studied cosmetic dermatology in Thailand, warns of the possible side-effects of today's procedure as she applies a numbing cream to the patient's face. "Soreness, redness, bruising," she chants, "which will settle down within two weeks and break down completely within a year." Johnson rereads the patient's notes and holds up a pink-nailed hand. "There is a problem – we can't do the procedure on a pregnant woman." Her nose glossy with anaesthetising cream, the patient exchanges hurried words with the doctor, and I look pointedly out of the window. An unwanted pregnancy. A sense that the risk is welcome. Minutes later, she is gone.

"Don't worry!" the doctor chirps. "We'll show you the procedure on our receptionist!" Diane has worked at the clinic for four months and, at 23, has already had Botox to fill in a frown line between her brows. Her nose is small and straight, but she has self-diagnosed – she feels there's a dent. She asks the doctor if she thinks rhinoplasty's necessary. "Nothing is necessary," Johnson says, applying the numbing cream. "So can you do my lips, too?" Diane asks, pouting. Johnson shows me the syringe, prefilled with a mixture of anaesthetic and Restylane filler, a hyaluronic acid. The needle is long, and she pushes it firmly into Diane's nose before using both hands to massage the filler into place. The air-conditioning system screams on, and dies just as quickly – the only sounds are Johnson's gloves, baggy on her tiny hands, squeaking.

I gather myself. Does it hurt, I ask Diane, who's breathing calmly, her fingers gently worrying the sleeve of her sweater. "No, I can't feel anything. I can just smell the rubber gloves." Were you interested in getting cosmetic surgery before coming to work here? "No!" she says, through the doctor's fingers, her nose changing shape, delicately, before my squinting eyes. "But I see so many people coming in at lunch time and leaving looking... fresher, and you can't even tell what they've had done. So I had laser hair removal, which feels like being slapped, and Botox, which was really nothing, and then I saw that you could make your lips look more defined with filler, so I've been pestering Salinda to do me."

Dr Johnson wipes around Diane's mouth with a small antiseptic cloth, and warns her that, on a pain scale, this will hurt a seven. She injects Restylane into the lips, and Diane's eyes flicker backwards. With her fingers, Johnson pushes the filler into a cupid's bow – the effect is that of a mother wiping chocolate smears off a child's mouth.

The Harley Medical Group, the UK's largest cosmetic surgery provider, published figures in January revealing the nonsurgical cosmetic surgery market (which includes the Macrolane boob jab, an injection that increases your bust size, and Restylane rhinoplasty, the injection that straightens your nose) saw continued growth in 2009, with dermal fillers and chemical peels driving the increase by 26% and 306% respectively. Last year also saw a continued rise in the number of male patients (up 5%), with "Boytox" (male Botox) and "Sweatox" (anti-sweat Botox) both contributing to the leap.

"Minimally invasive procedures rule today – and this is what consumers, and especially men, want most," says Wendy Lewis, independent cosmetic surgery consultant and author of Plastic Makes Perfect. "The benefits for consumers are: subtle improvements over time; nothing radical; less risky; definitely cheaper than big surgeries; no need for anaesthetic or going to hospital and catching MRSA; and no scars."

"There are many reasons why day surgery is becoming more and more popular," Dr Johnson tells me after Diane has floated back to her desk, swollen but smiling. "People who thought they didn't want to get surgery because they were not brave enough, or not rich enough, are interested in these temporary and non-expensive procedures – our nonsurgical rhinoplasty starts at £350. And it's so quick! The talking takes longer than the treatment. We have a lot of clients who work at Harrods and really do just pop in on their lunch breaks."

The market continues to swell, imperceptibly smoothing the faces of colleagues, relatives, local hairdressers. A study carried out for the Girl Guides last November found almost half of secondary school girls said they planned to have plastic surgery. "Girls and young women are telling us that they are finding it quite hard to accept their appearance, and it is starting at a much earlier age than we had previously thought," says Nicola Grinstead, a trustee of Girlguiding UK. "The survey shows girls as young as 11 are dissatisfied with how they look and are prepared to use surgery to make a change."

All the women I talk to in the clinic's waiting room flicking through OK! magazines agree that today Botox, and increasingly cosmetic surgery, really is "no big deal". They nod, eyes wide, and reel off names like a BBC3 news bulletin. Last year Kylie Minogue, Geri Halliwell, Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox all gave interviews about their Botox use, while a film critic compared Nicole Kidman's facial skin to melamine. This month Cheryl Cole was photographed walking through a London airport with lips like salted slugs, and reality star Heidi Montag, 23, underwent 10 procedures in one day and ended up looking just like lingerie model Caprice, who is 38.

In a culture that celebrates youth, the appeal of an injection that appears to shave a little time off your age is clear, especially for the famous and often-photographed. As the demand for surgery has grown, academics have increasingly discussed the democratisation of beauty. If everybody could, in the space of a lunch hour, become symmetrical and clear-skinned, would the power of prettiness be weakened? If we accept that we will be judged on our appearance, is the fact that we can control it almost liberating?

Two years ago, Observer beauty journalist Alice Hart-Davis was one of the first women in the country to try the Macrolane breast enhancement jab. "I had never seriously considered having a proper breast enhancement. I don't feel surgery is something to be undertaken lightly," she tells me. "But I've always wished there was something I could do to boost my bust just a bit that didn't involve surgery."

Macrolane, which arrived in the UK in 2008, is a gel filler which is injected into the breast with a long blunt needle. It increases the bust by one cup size, lasts a year and costs around £2,000. "The procedure was amazing," says Hart-Davis, "an instant result. I was beyond thrilled with it." Though clinics advertise boob jabs in their list of lunch-time treatments, and the injections are over in 10 minutes, she warns: "It's by no means a 'lunch-hour lift' type procedure; it doesn't take long, but I reacted strongly to the local anaesthetic: it didn't hurt, but I could hardly speak straight for the rest of the day. And your body and brain go into a kind of post-traumatic shock after any procedure like this. You need to take it quietly afterwards."

Three months after her injections, one breast deflated – she settled for stuffing her bra with a sock – and the other went rock hard. Her surgeon broke up the gel under anaesthetic, then injected more to balance her bra. A few weeks later, she felt a lump in her right breast. She panicked and returned to the doctor, who reassured her that it was nothing to worry about – just a lump of hardened gel. "That experience," she concludes, "alongside discovering that the research conducted on the product was not half as extensive as I'd been led to believe, and talking to several surgeons who strongly disapprove of the procedure, has put me off trying it again."

One such surgeon is Mr Charles Nduka, who runs the not-for-profit patient information website safercosmeticsurgery.co.uk. "There's so much misleading information being published about 'lunch-time' procedures," he says, "leading, at best, to unrealistic expectations and disappointment and, at worst, complications. Facial procedures such as Botox may leave localised swelling, redness and in some cases bruising, even in the best hands. This means that if you wanted to keep your treatment secret, lunch time may not be the best time.

"A major issue in the UK," he continues, "is that because fillers are classified as medical devices – the same as implants – rather than drugs, the regulations about who can administer them are among the most lax in the developed world. The recently introduced guidance from the Ihas [Independent Healthcare Advisory Services] is a mockery. It's a system of self-regulation which means that the very practitioners who should be regulated will not sign up. There have been more than 100 fillers introduced in the UK and in many cases they were withdrawn due to side-effects. Essentially the UK becomes a testing ground for new products."

So would he recommend traditional plastic surgery over the lunch-hour treatments? "Few people have social lives so hectic that they cannot give themselves the luxury of having a treatment in an unrushed fashion," Mr Nduka says, "without the anxiety that swelling might show."

Dr Mike Cummins, a GP and cosmetic surgeon who, after requests from patients, agreed to carry out group treatments at Botox parties, agrees that the "lunch-time" label can be misleading, but says that as doctors' experience of anaesthetics increases, "there continue to be more and more advantages to daycare procedures, both for the patient and the client. Laser-assisted liposuction is getting to the point where it's more than reasonable to do it under twilight sedation and cosmetic surgeons are all working to get the least trauma to tissue under local anaesthetic as possible."

In Jeanette Winterson's novel The Stone Gods, published in 2008 but set in a futuristic dystopia, people alter their genes to preserve their youth and get plastic surgery to amplify what's left. Only the protagonist, Billie, chooses to age naturally, wrinkling slowly among the smooth foreheads and perky breasts. Winterson worries about the normalisation of cosmetic surgery. "What really bothers me," she says, "is that women used to be made to believe that their minds were inadequate, but we were allowed our bodies. Now that we can't be told our minds aren't up to it, our bodies are paraded as defective. It is the same old control. It is not just an assault on women – it is a war on feminism."

She emails me later that day. "I find 'lunch-hour surgery' savage and cynical. An insecure woman is a woman who will pay to feel better about herself. Disguising insecurity and feelings of inadequacy as empowerment is part of the usual twisted message of consumer advertising, but where women are concerned the strategy asks us to fund our own oppression. We pay to feel better instead of asking why we are made to feel defective in the first place... We need to understand that what is happening to women now is part of a disturbing bigger picture and not just a question of: 'Does madam fancy a nose job?'"

How does Winterson see society progressing in this era of perfectibility? Does she predict new lows, new depths? "We'll all get fixed eventually. Parents will do it to their kids. It will become routine. The Stepford Wives world of the 1950s was made impossible by feminism. We are heading back that way by another route. Women made in the image of men."

After Diane's 15-minute nose job, I take a walk through Harrods' beauty hall. I feel a little drunk. I had gone into the clinic expecting gore, or at least tears, but I left shocked only at the dry eyes, lack of fuss, the ease, the speed and gentle effectiveness. The women in Harrods testing the perfumes are largely blondes, largely wrinkleless, and largely slim. I see three people who look like Caprice, but as reflected in varying fairground mirrors. I watch a mother pick out scented candles for her granddaughter's wedding reception, and admire her shiny still forehead as she quietly exclaims over jasmine perfumes. I'm suddenly aware, looking discreetly from face to face, of all the "work" done and all the work yet to be done. It is an awakening of sorts. A half-awakening, maybe, to an odd new twilight world.

QUICK FIXES The most popular nonsurgical procedures

MACROLANE: BOOB JAB Created by Q-Med, the Swedish company behind the wrinkle-filler Restylane, Macrolane was launched in Europe as a correctional filler for body indentations. It wasn't until it was used in Japan in 2004 that it took off as an alternative for breast implants – by January 2008, when it launched in the UK, about 30,000 Japanese women had had the boob jab. The procedure, which takes 45 minutes, involves a gel filler made of hyaluronic acid being pumped into the breast through a flexible knitting needle-sized canula. PRICES from £1,800

RESTYLANE: NOSE JOB Restylane, a water-based filler, is a synthetic reproduction of hyaluronic acid, a substance found in living organisms. Until recently its main use has been to plump lips and fill crow's feet, but the new procedure involves injecting the bridge of the nose to fill in dents, and the tip, so it appears perkier. Effects wear off within 18 months. PRICES from £350

BOTOX An injection of Botulinum toxin A (a diluted and purified form of the bacteria which causes botulism) softens and prevents frown lines. The jab, 22 years old this spring, changed the face of cosmetic surgery, with celebrities including Simon Cowell admitting to relying on it to look younger. Each year it is estimated to make its manufacturers around £800m from more than 60,000 injections. PRICES £230 to £390

JUVEDERM: LIP ENHANCEMENT A series of injections of Juvederm filler around the mouth can make the lips fuller and reshape ageing pouts. Juvederm contains hyaluronic acid which, by attracting water, plumps up the skin. Results last for up to a year. PRICES from £250 

• Women
• Plastic surgery
• Social trends
• Health

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Protest groups that were targeted by infiltrators plan legal action to obtain access to police files after disclosures by Officer A

Political activists have reacted with anger to revelations in last week's Observer that their organisations were infiltrated by an elite undercover unit of the Metropolitan police.

Members of one of the groups demanded a public inquiry after the Observer disclosed that a former member of Special Branch, known as Officer A, had infiltrated far-left organisations in the mid-1990s to gather intelligence about potentially violent demonstrators. He was regularly involved in brutal confrontations with uniformed police officers and activists from the extreme right. On numerous occasions he engaged in violent acts to maintain his cover.

Many activists suspected they were being infiltrated by the state at the time, but it is only now that their suspicions have been confirmed. One target of Officer A, a former student union leader who has asked not to be identified, told the Observer: "I suspected that my phone might have been tapped. I believed that there might have been some police spies at the demonstrations that I attended. But however paranoid I was, I never imagined they would go so far as to invest the level of resources needed to give someone a completely new identity for five years and have them spy on someone like me. It really is astonishing."

Officer A was part of a secret unit of the Met known as the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), which since 1968 had 10 full-time undercover operatives inside so-called "subversive" organisations to disrupt their ability to create disorder on the streets of London.

While Officer A targeted the far left, other SDS members were simultaneously infiltrating the far right. By the end of his four-year deployment he had become a branch secretary of a leading anti-racist organisation, Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE). He used this position to assist in making contact with smaller groups that had a reputation for being involved in violence.

Hannah Sell, national secretary of the YRE at the time of Officer A's deployment, remembers him well but is furious at the implication that the group was involved in violence. "We organised mass peaceful protests against racism and the BNP. In doing so we often faced violence from the far right and the police."

The Observer understands that many of the tactics now used by police in public order situations were developed in response to SDS intelligence about the best way to control potential troublemakers. This includes the controversial tactic known as "kettling", in which protesters are hemmed in on all sides by police, a technique many believe only heightens tensions.

Lois Austin, YRE chair at the time of Officer A's infiltration, told the Observer: "We believe there should be a public inquiry into police tactics at demonstrations. It should be independent, not one where the police investigate themselves. We want to know about their use of spies and whether this unit is still operational."

The calls for an inquiry come amid fresh criticism of heavy-handed police tactics at the G20 protest in London last April, when newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson died of a heart attack soon after being struck by a police baton and pushed to the ground. It has emerged that plainclothes officers from City of London police mingled with the crowd to gather intelligence. Many former activists who believe they were SDS targets intend to take legal action in an attempt to obtain any police intelligence files about their activities.

• Police

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Nationwide protests sparked by falling living standards and demanding the prime minister's resignation have taken Kremlin by surprise

Thousands of people across Russia took to the streets yesterday demanding the resignation of Vladimir Putin, in the largest show of discontent since he came to power more than a decade ago.

Opposition movements called the nationwide "Day of Wrath" to express growing discontent at falling living standards following years of oil-fuelled growth. The protests followed weeks of sustained demonstrations across Russia that have riled a leadership that does not forgive displays of unrest.

Cries of "Freedom" and "Putin resign" filled the main square in Kaliningrad, where up to 5,000 people gathered in pouring rain. The Baltic territory, which is nestled between Poland and Lithuania and separated from the Russian mainland, has been the site of some of the largest protests to date.

"We want the government to start treating us like people, not like slaves," said Kirill, a 22-year-old student. Protesters called for free elections and complained about widespread corruption, high unemployment and rising prices.

Russia's first major anti-Putin demonstration was held in Kaliningrad on 30 January, drawing 12,000 people and shocking local leaders and the Kremlin. "It really surprised us," said Konstantin Polyakov, deputy head of the regional parliament, or Duma, and member of the ruling United Russia party. "We didn't think so many people would turn out, to be honest." The Kremlin was obviously shaken, dispatching a high-level delegation to the Baltic exclave and firing its Kaliningrad adviser, Oleg Matveichev.

Saturday's protest had been banned, and opposition leaders withdrew calls for an organised demonstration, fearing violence. Yet several thousand showed up anyway, organising through the internet and word of mouth.

"The general public in the regions is beginning to recognise that it is Putin who is actually to blame for various troubles they have – increased cost of living, communal tariffs, taxes and no growth in real wages," said Vladimir Milov, a co-leader of Solidarity, an umbrella opposition movement.

Regional and local elections held on 14 March appear to support that theory. United Russia, the party created with the sole purpose of supporting Putin's rule – he is currently prime minister – garnered unprecedentedly low results, losing its majority in four of eight regions and giving up the mayorship of Irkutsk, Siberia's largest city, to a Communist candidate who took 62% of the vote.

In Kaliningrad, protesters wore badges criticising United Russia and held aloft mandarins, the fruit that has come to symbolise the region's unpopular governor, Georgy Boos, a Muscovite appointed by Putin.

Few, even those in opposition, believe the Putin government will fall. "It will take time," Milov said. "But just two years ago it would have been impossible to imagine mass demonstrations making political demands like the resignation of Putin's government."

A poll this month by Russia's Public Opinion Foundation found that 29% of Russians were ready to take part in protests, up from 21% in February.

More than 1,000 people turned out on Saturday in the port of Vladivostok, where discontent has steadily grown since the government imposed a tax on imported cars. About 500 people rallied in Irkutsk and St Petersburg. Riot police broke up an unsanctioned rally in Moscow violently and arrested 50 activists. Authorities also shut down a website set up for the "Day of Wrath", www.20marta.ru, and in the northern city of Arkhangelsk an opposition leader was arrested and charged with theft.

In Kaliningrad, on the border with the European Union and far from the seat of power, the police presence was minimal, although agents in plain clothes roamed through the crowd.

"Our population is different from Russia," said Polyakov, sitting in his office adorned with photos of Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev, in what is, technically, Russia. "Our people, especially the youth, travel more to Europe than to Russia. There's no reason to go there."

In an implicit criticism of Moscow politics, he added: "We're more European – more relaxed, less eastern. And we're more democratic." Despite the protesters' rhetoric, Polyakov argued that Putin's popularity in the region remains high. His wife, Lyudmila, was born here and visits regularly.

But local authorities, acting in concert with Moscow, reacted with unusual harshness to Kaliningrad's wave of protests. They banned a rally in the city centre, saying protesters could gather in a stadium on the outskirts instead.

In an ironic twist, the government has been forced to give in to opponents of liberal market reforms. Following the Kaliningrad protest, it has promised to slow the post-Soviet desubsidisation of utilities like heat and water. That will only widen a budget deficit expected to exceed 6% of GDP this year.

"The leadership is scared," said Solomon Ginzburg, an independent deputy in the regional Duma. "I have been saying the Kaliningrad region is an indicator – in nine months, it will be all over Russia."

• Vladimir Putin
• Russia

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TV historian Niall Ferguson says that teaching should focus on chronology and the ascent of Europe

A leading British historian has called for a Jamie Oliver-style campaign to purge schools of what he calls "junk history".

Niall Ferguson, who teaches at Harvard and presented a Channel 4 series on the world's financial history, has launched a polemical attack on the subject's "decline in British schools", arguing that the discipline is badly taught and undervalued. He says standards are at an all-time low in the classroom and the subject should be compulsory at GCSE.

Ferguson makes the comments in an essay to be released this week. It begins: "History matters. Many schoolchildren doubt this. But they are wrong, and they need to be persuaded they are wrong."

He points to the popularity of TV series and books by celebrity historians such as Simon Schama, David Starkey, Peter Snow and Andrew Marr. "History, it might be said, has never been more popular. Yet there is a painful paradox. At the very same time, it has never been less popular in British schools," writes Ferguson.

History is compulsory up to the age of 14 but not to 16 in Britain, in contrast to most other European countries. In 2009, 220,000 candidates sat GCSE history in England and Wales – fewer than the number taking design and technology. At A-level the subject lags behind psychology.

"Numbers, however, fail to tell the true story of history's decline in British schools. When you consider the content of what is taught to teenagers, you begin to realise that the really surprising thing is how many, not how few, volunteer for the experience of studying the subject," says Ferguson.

He argues that there is far too much emphasis on teaching pupils about Nazi Germany (studied by half of those at GCSE and eight out of 10 at A-level) and complains that pupils are asked to choose "a smorgasbord of unrelated topics". The form of selection, he adds, "explains why, when I asked them recently, all three of my children had heard of the Reverend Martin Luther King, but none could tell me anything about Martin Luther."

Instead, Ferguson says history should have a "mandatory chronological framework" throughout secondary school and on to A-level. He also calls for more emphasis on western ascendancy, not in "an attempt to turn the clock back" but because understanding why the world became more Eurocentric after 1500 is the "modern historian's biggest challenge". He suggests a focus on why the scientific revolution did not take place outside Europe and how democracy emerged first in the west.

"We have recently witnessed a successful campaign to improve the quality of food served for lunch in British schools. It is time for an equivalent campaign against junk history," concludes Ferguson, whose argument will be published next month in Liberating Learning: Widening Participation, a collection of essays in which teachers, historians, philosophers and businessmen argue education has been impoverished by a narrow curriculum. It has been edited by Patrick Derham, the head of Rugby school, and Michael Worton, vice-provost at University College London.

Professor Colin Jones, president of the Royal Historical Society, said he applauded some of Ferguson's ideas, such as teaching history in longer, chronological blocks. But Ferguson's language was condescending and the argument ideological, he added.

"To change things we should work with teachers and other bodies and not just dismiss what is going on as 'junk history'. It is demeaning, unpleasant and untrue," said Jones, who warned against Ferguson's emphasis on western ascendancy.

"It is more ideological than he claims and the danger is it will be taught in a way in which the answer is known in advance and it is 'west is best'."

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said that suggestions to cut the amount of teaching on the world wars had always been opposed. "History is compulsory until 14 and remains one of the most popular subjects at GCSE and A-level," he said. "The new secondary curriculum, which started in September 2008, is clear that teaching must give children a chronological understanding of history using precise dates. Children must study a wide range of areas, including the development of British political power from the middle ages to the 20th century."

• History and history of art
• Teaching
• Schools
• GCSEs

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Charles Arthur investigates how the ways in which we watch sport, read magazines and do business with each other could change for ever

Don't act too surprised if, some time in the next year, you meet someone who explains that their business card isn't just a card; it's an augmented reality business card. You can see a collection and, at visualcard.me, you can even design your own, by adding a special marker to your card, which, once put in front of a webcam linked to the internet, will show not only your contact details but also a video or sound clip. Or pretty much anything you want.

It's not just business cards. London Fashion Week has tried them out too: little symbols that look like barcodes printed onto shirts, which, when viewed through a webcam, come to life. Benetton is using augmented reality for a campaign that kicked off last month, in which it is trying to find models from among the general population.

Augmented reality – AR, as it has quickly become known – has only recently become a phrase that trips easily off technologists' lips; yet we've been seeing versions of it for quite some time. The idea is straightforward enough: take a real-life scene, or (better) a video of a scene, and add some sort of explanatory data to it so that you can better understand what's going on, or who the people in the scene are, or how to get to where you want to go.

Sports coverage on TV has been doing it for years: slow-motion could be described as a form of augmented reality, since it gives you the chance to examine what happened in a situation more carefully. More recently cricket, tennis, rugby, football and golf have all started to overlay analytic information on top of standard-speed replays – would that ball have hit the stumps, the progress of a rally, the movement of the backs or wingers, the relative flights of shots – to tell you more about what's going on. Probably the most common use is in American football where the "first down" line – the distance the team has to cover to continue its offence – is superimposed on the picture for viewers.

But those required huge systems. AR took its first lumbering steps into the public arena eight years ago: all that you needed to do was strap on 10kg of computing power – laptop, camera, vision processor – and you could get an idea of what was feasible. The American Popular Science magazine wrote about the idea in 2002 – but the idea of being permanently connected to the internet hadn't quite jelled at that point.

"AR has been around for ages," says Andy Cameron, executive director of Fabrica, an interactive design studio which works with Benetton, "maybe going back as far as the 1970s and art installations that overlaid real spaces with something virtual." He mentions in particular the work of pioneering computer artist Myron Krueger.

What's changed in the past year is that AR has come within reach of all sorts of developers – and the technology powerful enough to make use of it is owned by millions of people, often in the palms of their hands.

The arrival of powerful smartphones and computers with built-in video capabilities means that you don't have to wait for the AR effects as you do with TV. They can simply be overlaid onto real life. Step forward Apple's iPhone, and phones using Google's Android operating system, both of which are capable of overlaying information on top of a picture or video.

Within the small world of AR, one of the best-known apps is that built by Layar, which – given a location, and using the iPhone 3GS's inbuilt compass to work out the direction you're pointing the phone – can give you a "radar map" of details such as Wikipedia information, Flickr photos, Google searches and YouTube videos superimposed onto a picture you've taken of the scene. For Americans, it will also pull in details from the government's economic Recovery Act – so that if you're on Wall Street and want to see how many billions went into which building, it will show you.

Or, more usefully, Yelp offers an augmented reality application that will show you ratings and reviews for a restaurant before you walk in – the sort of thing that could make restaurants quiver with delight, or shudder in horror.

Or maybe it wouldn't need to know where it is; only who it's looking at. A prototype application demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February took things a little further again. Point the phone at a person and if it can find their details, it will pull them off the web and attach details – their Twitter username, Facebook page and other facts – and stick them, rather weirdly, into the air around their head (viewed through your phone, of course). "It's taking social networking to the next level," says Dan Gärdenfors, head of user experience research at The Astonishing Tribe, a Swedish mobile software company.

And there are fabulously useful applications: at Columbia University, computer science professor Steve Feiner and PhD candidate Steve Henderson have created their Augmented Reality for Maintenance and Repair (Armar) project. It combines sensors, head-up displays, and instructions to tackle the military's maintenance needs: start working on a piece of kit, and the details about it pop up in front of you. Imagine if you could put on a pair of special goggles when you needed to investigate your car's engine, or a computer's innards, and the detail would pop up. That's the sort of idea that Armar is trying to implement, though for the military at first..

Yet it's fashion which seems to have leapt quickest into this technology. The T-shirt with AR in London Fashion Week was developed by Cassette Playa, a label that has been worn by Lily Allen, Rihanna and Kanye West. Carri Munden, who designed it with the Fashion Digital Studio at the London College of Fashion, described it as "mixing reality and fantasy". Adidas, too, has launched trainers with AR symbols in the tongues: hold them to a webcam and you are taken to interactive games on the Adidas site.

The process by which the strange symbols get translated into images is simple enough: the website takes the feed from your webcam (you have to explicitly allow it to do so, so there are no security worries) and analyses it for the particular set of symbols that the program is looking for. (Some easy calculations mean the symbols can be detected whichever way up you hold the item.) Videos and pictures are then sent back to you.

Andy Cameron says that the arrival of an open-source, hence free, AR tool kit has let companies build their own AR applications, using Flash – the pervasive animation and video technology used for many online ads and YouTube's videos – "which immediately meant you had huge penetration, because Flash is everywhere". (Something like 98% of all computers are reckoned to have Adobe's Flash Player installed.)

"If you build your AR application with Flash, then you can get it out to everybody in the world with a computer with a webcam," says Cameron.

Benetton is using AR in its latest campaign, called "It's My Time" which aims to get members of the public to put themselves forward as potential models, and uses AR to show more details about existing models. But its first most visible use of AR was last year in issue 76 of Benetton's Colors magazine, a quarterly fashion product. Dozens of pages have AR symbols: hold the page up to a webcam, and you see film and more photos of the person on the page. "The Colors editor and the creative director of Fabrica got very excited about it," says Cameron.

Cameron can see huge potential which could even revive the fortunes of print advertising. "Think of a commercial page, an advert, in a fashion magazine. It's pretty expensive. With this – and this is the way that the more hard-nosed people in Benetton saw the advantage – it means that you can get more products on the page." Print an AR code, get people to come to the site, and you can show them so much more, while measuring the return from your effort.

The technical cost is a tiny part of the overall effort. "The printing and photography cost [of the advert] is the same. And the development cost is pretty small."

And of course where advertisers go, the publications that house them are sure to go as well. Esquire magazine in the US and Wallpaper* in Europe have done "augmented reality" editions, with Robert Downey Jr coming to life on the cover of the former, and AR text providing videos and animation in the latter. But there are more possibilities for journalism using AR: for example if you "geotag" newspaper articles (so that you say that an item relates to a particular place) then someone visiting a site could learn about events relevant to the area via their smartphone.

Book publishers too are leaping in: Carlton Publishing will release an AR book in May, featuring dinosaurs that pop out of the pages when viewed, yes, through a webcam. Future releases include war, sport and arts titles which will also have extra AR elements.

Yet in media it's the advertisers who are most excited. The possibilities of geotagged, targeted adverts – which in effect hang in the air until someone comes along to find them with a smartphone – or of AR adverts which open up a whole new world of opportunities (and perhaps discounts or loyalty bonuses) when you follow them through – are yet another glimpse of the holy grail ofads that know exactly who and where you are.

Is there a risk that we'll all become AR'd out – that it will become boring as advert after advert invites us to hold it up to a webcam? "What's hot today is ancient history tomorrow," says Cameron. "There have been a lot of bad uses of this technology with a rush to use it. We have had the chance to reflect on what it means and how to use it. The key is that it should be an enhancement of the stuff on the printed page."

Even so we're still in the early stages, he argues. "It's very primitive – having to use a webcam, holding a magazine up to it. Obviously we're really interested in the opportunities with handheld devices. It's very frustrating that the iPhone doesn't allow access to the live video stream." (Nor does it run Flash, another problem for would-be AR designers.) "People in design are very annoyed with Steve Jobs," he observes. "We don't really understand why Apple won't allow that."

Given that access, he says, "you could hold your iPhone up to a billboard and get something amazing right there". What about the alternative, such as Google's Android-based Nexus phone? "It looks like you could do it on that," he says. But of course the iPhone is a target market. "Maybe Apple wants to keep that for itself," Cameron says. "Maybe they're lodging patents. Or maybe the processor on the iPhone isn't fast enough."

Yet there are some who think that AR has already had its brief time in the sun. At the Like Minds conference in Exeter at the beginning of March, Joanne Jacobs, a social media consultant, described an AR application that demanded you buy a T-shirt and then go and sit in front of your webcam – so you could play Rock, Paper, Scissors. By yourself.

"It's hopeless," Jacobs said.

Cameron admits to some uncertainty about AR's measurable impact. "I don't know if it sells more things, but it seems clearly a good thing if we can get people who may be customers to participate in the adverts." But, he adds: "If people start to play with the adverts in a way that exposes them to more products, that's got to help bring a commercial return."

• Augmented reality
• iPhone
• Social networking
• Advertising

Charles Arthurguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

At TheServerSide Java Symposium in Europe this week, ThoughtWorks architect and popular speaker Neal Ford spoke of how a static reliance on specific skills almost guarantees obsolescence within a few years. He spoke of the 19th century blacksmith, who...

Filed under: Motorsports, Acura, Audi, BMW, Porsche, Racing

The Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) held a press conference Friday morning before qualifying for this weekend's 12 Hours of Sebring to announce an expansion of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup. When it was first announced late in 2009, the three-race championship was only going to apply to the top LMP1 class. The new championship will now apply to all four main classes: LMP1, LMP2, GT1 and GT2.

The cup will be based on results from Le Mans series races in Europe, the United States and Asia. The European and American rounds will be the Silverstone and Petit Le Mans races, with the Asian event likely to be held in Shanghai. For each of the classes to be considered part of the cup, at least four cars will have to be entered. So far in P1, Audi and Drayson racing have committed. Peugeot has not yet decided whether to go to PLM or Asia.

After Le Mans, Peugeot plans to focus on development of its all-new 2011 car and may skip the remainder of the 2010 races. In spite of reduced restrictor sizes and boost, the Peugeots still managed to capture the top to starting positions for Saturday's race. The Highcroft Acura grabbed the LMP2 pole while Gunnar Jeannette got the LMP Challenge pole. In GT2, the Flying Lizard Porsche of Jörg Bergmeister had the fastest time after Dirk MÏ‹ller's was disallowed due to a problem with his BMW.

Gallery: 2010 Sebring Qualifying

[Source: American Le Mans Series]

Continue reading Intercontinental Le Mans Cup expanded to LMP2 and GT classes

Intercontinental Le Mans Cup expanded to LMP2 and GT classes originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 14:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Apple iPad is available for pre-order in the US, but for Europe there are still many open questions including pricing and carrier options. According to Heise, German newspaper Euro am Sonntag reports today that T-Mobile is preparing the iPad launch ...

Los MTV Europe Music Awards tendrán este año su sede en España. El evento, que goza de una gran fama desde 1994, es seguido por más de 590 millones de hogares a nivel global y este año estará organizado desde Madrid por Hamish Hamilton, realizador de la última ceremonia de los Oscars. Tras Barcelona en 2002, volvemos a hospedar los premios de la cadena musical más conocida del mundo, pese a haber tornado su parrilla en aras de una nueva cultura televisiva basada en lo teen, el pop y las celebrities.

Personalmente estoy bastante descontento con esta nueva política televisiva de MTV, pero de cualquier forma es una buena noticia que la cadena haya decidido celebrar aquí los EMA, aunque al parecer existen pequeños incentivos desde varias organizaciones de Madrid para que la ciudad patria haya sido elegida. Este tipo de eventos no sólo suelen ser únicos por distintos motivos y cosas que pasan durante las galas, sino que al generar tanta expectación, y esta vez a nivel europeo, muchos artistas internacionales se plantean seriamente asistir a un gran espectáculo.

Artistas en los que quizás España no estuviese en su plan de giras mundiales según cada caso, aunque esto no es un festival de música. Quizás lo más positivo de todo esto es que para nosotros y especialmente para Madrid, estos premios suponen una enorme campaña de promoción turística mundial, cuando todas las afiliadas a MTV y demás temáticos de Viacom comiencen con las autopromociones del evento.

Vía | El País
Más información | EMA ’09 Berlin

Sweden's PAIN OF SALVATION is tentatively scheduled to release its new album, "Road Salt - Ivory", in Europe on May 19 via Insideout Music.

Newly released for Apple Iphone

Golden Hour 1.0


Category: Photography
Price: $7.99 (iTunes)

Description:

The Golden Hour is a magical time of day for photography and now you can keep track of it wherever you are in the world with our comprehensive and easy to use iPhone and iPod touch application that finally consigns boring lists of sunrise and sunset times to the trash.

The web version of the Golden Hour was been voted cool site of the day by America's Digital Goddess and has been featured by Canon Europe, PC World and a host of forums and blogs around the world. Now available for the iPhone and more detailed than ever.

This application does not need access to the internet and is therefore great for iPod touch owners as well.

Features.

Our easy to use interface has 4 primary tabs putting the important information at your fingertips whether you are an architect needing to know where the sun will be on a given day or a professional photographer planning their next photo shoot.

World Sun Clock display showing more detail than a simple day-night terminator. We colour code regions for the golden hour, twilight and more. Tap the map to set a new location or double tap to bring up options.

Sun Azimuth and Elevation display, find exactly where the sun will be in the sky for any time of day. Double tap for optional current time reset.

Golden Hour display, the same great graph that our website users will be familiar with, this tab shows the altitude of the sun throughout the 24 hours of the current day with markers for Sunrise, Sunset and the Golden Hour. Explore any date of the year with the slider and nudge dates up or down simply by tapping to the left or right below the horizon line. Tap above the horizon to reveal comprehensive astronomical data including civil, nautical and astronomical twilight in addition to the core information relating to sunrise and sunset.

Our location finder allows you to drill down through our comprehensive database of over 47,000 carefully selected locations from every country in the world. Every country or territory has a full colour flag and a fully indexed and searchable list of locations. For each location we display the latitude and longitude plus other useful information such as approximate population and Olsen Timezone.

Fun Features

Features a complete years worth of the amazing NASA blue marble satellite images of earth - see how winter and summer transform our planet as the snow comes and goes as you change dates.
Ever wondered where "First Rock" is? Improve your geographic knowledge and have a laugh at the same time by trying to find the most improbably named places on earth. Our favourite so far is "Breakwind Ridge".

Calculations and Accuracy

For maximum accuracy and reliability, a tried and tested C++ library developed by astronomers performs the astronomical calculations. The library implements the high accuracy algorithms in the definitive reference book by Jan Meeus and has been in use for over 6 years. Due to atmospheric fluctuations, the sunrise and sunset times should be considered as accurate to within a minute for locations between +/- 72 degrees latitude, and within 10 minutes outside of those latitudes.


Golden Hour



More...

Avec ses gros coups de tatanes dans la gueule, ses tatouages expression d’une insolente virilité et sa consommation encouragée d’alcools forts aux propriétés roboratives (© Kendy), Yakuza 3 s’adresse aux gamers présentant une forte concentration de testostérone. Qu’on se le dise : à désormais quarante ans, le dragon de Dojima, désormais retiré du monde, a toujours de beaux restes… et sait encore montrer les crocs.

Yakuza fait partie de ces séries bénéficiant d’une curieuse aura de sympathie, bien que, sous nos contrées, peu de personnes, finalement, y ont vraiment joué. La faute a une plate-forme exclusive, la PlayStation (2 puis 3) et, surtout, un univers et une accessibilité un peu à part. Difficile, en effet, d’apprécier les Yakuza sans s’y plonger corps et âme, et prendre le temps de lire les tonnes de dialogues qui emmaillent chaque opus. À cet égard, le fait que Yakuza 2 n’ait pas été traduit en français — tout comme ce troisième épisode, qui ne propose que des sous-titres anglais — n’a évidemment pas arrangé les choses… Quoi qu’il en soit, on appréciera particulièrement, ici, la possibilité de regarder les résumés vidéo des deux premiers volets, véritables petits films de 15-20 minutes commentés par la voix chaude de Takaya Kuroda (Kiryu dans le jeu). Une manière pour certains de se rafraîchir la mémoire, et pour les autres de découvrir des scénarios (tordus) suintant l’énergie et la passion, entre trahisons, combats à mort et improbables coups de théâtre. Notons qu’à l’écrivain Hase Seishu, scénariste des deux premiers opus — et de l’épisode Kenzan — succède Masayoshi Yokoyama, un illustre inconnu qui a su heureusement respecter à la lettre l’esprit Ryû ga Gotoku, à quelques mièvreries près. L’indéboulonnable Toshihiro Nagoshi (qui a oeuvré notamment sur les Super Monkey Ball… et Shenmue !) reste le maître d’oeuvre, et partage avec Hideo Kojima, un vieux compagnon de troquet (véridique), un amour certain pour les cinématiques à rallonge, ici plus que jamais présentes.

Okinawa way

Difficile, pour un fan de la première heure, de ne pas être immédiatement emballé par Yakuza 3. Enfin, la qualité de réalisation —certes imparfaite sur certains points — permet de faire honneur au sens du détail qui caractérise la série. Quant aux cinématiques, elles transcendent un character design d’une qualité et d’une variété étonnante, soutenu par des visages désormais presque photoréalistes. Le bonheur. À l’image d’un Kazuma Kiryu désormais retiré du monde et cherchant avant tout la paix, le début du jeu vous invite à découvrir l’île d’Okinawa, son temps superbe, ses touristes en chemises à fleurs… Une atmosphère idyllique entachée par une conspiration politico-mafieuse dont on conçoit peu à peu l’ampleur, tandis que l’on devine, évidemment, que la retraite de l’ex 4ème chef du clan Tôjô, qui administre désormais un orphelinat, ne peut être que de courte durée. Une parenthèse d’une dizaine d’heures avant l’inévitable retour à Kamurocho qui, toutefois, permet de se faire la main, et découvrir à peu près tous les aspects du titre entre mini-jeux (on va y revenir), intérieurs de magasins modélisés avec un soin maniaque, ambiance de foule plus vraie que nature (on regrette juste une atmosphère sonore un peu en deçà) et, il faut bien le dire, missions diverses pas toujours follement intéressantes. Entre livraisons de nouilles, recherche de gamine égarée, cache-cache et transport de glaces à six boules, on n’a en effet pas toujours franchement l’impression d’incarner le yakuza le plus classe du monde. Les petites frappes que vous croisez sans cesse et qui ne manquent jamais de vous provoquer — les inconscients — sont heureusement là pour arranger ça…

Mawashi-geri dans ta face

Coeur du gameplay, les combats dans Yakuza 3 se révèlent, sans surprise, d’une richesse ahurissante. Comme dans les précédents opus, c’est en gagnant des points d’expérience que vous pourrez améliorer certains de vos talents, et étendre votre palette de coups. Projections, esquives, contres, rétablissement sur chute, garde… Les possibilités offertes permettent de développer son propre art du combat, tandis que l’on privilégiera plutôt telle ou telle capacité (résistance, vitesse…), le tout en ayant la possibilité, évidemment, d’utiliser diverses armes blanches ou de poing, ces dernières étant de surcroît customisables. Surtout, le dynamisme des combats et la possibilité sans cesse renouvelée de découvrir de nouveaux finishing moves — différents en fonction de l’environnement immédiat, du type d’armes ou d’objets utilisés, de la partie du corps que vous attrapez, etc. — font qu’au final, chaque nouvelle échauffourée peut se révéler différente de la précédente. Évidemment, pour cela, il faut creuser au maximum le “fighting system”, comme dirait Van Damme, mais tous ceux qui se donneront cette peine prendront un pied monstrueux, vraiment, à démonter yak’ et wesh-wesh à tous les coins de rue. Cadeau Bonux : désormais, avec son téléphone portable, Kazuma peut “saisir” une scène qui l’interpelle dans la rue (première “révélation” : une petite vieille qui percute une voiture en scooter et fait un soleil…), et s’en inspirer pour mettre au point un coup spécial, le tout étant ensuite relaté, de façon assez drôle, sur un blog imaginaire ! Un principe complètement con… et absolument réjouissant.

Serial gamer

On trouve de tout dans Yakuza 3 : des bars et des restaurants à écumer, des salles clandestines proposant des jeux de cartes ou de dès exotiques (chô-han, koi-koi, oicho-kabu…), des tournois d’Ultimate Fighting underground, des courses-poursuites, des clés de consignes disséminées ici et là qui permettent de récupérer différents objets, du bowling, du golf, des jeux de fléchettes, des sessions de pêche à la ligne… Pas mal de choses déjà visibles dans les précédents épisodes, mais que l’on retrouve avec toujours autant de plaisir et qui bénéficient évidemment ici d’un soin particulier. Il faudra notamment gérer particulièrement bien les sticks analogiques pour certaines épreuves, comme le billard ou les fléchettes, qui réclament de la concentration et une vraie précision (ce qui en énervera plus d’un). On ne soulignera évidemment jamais assez à quel point Yakuza 3, à l’image là encore de ses illustres prédécesseurs, ne se prend pas au sérieux et s’autorise une constante autodérision. Tout est dans le détail : ennemi qui vous attaque avec un énorme thon congelé, finishing moves à la violence totalement démesurée, séances de karaoké durant lesquelles Kiryu aligne les paroles niaises et chante comme une casserole, salary man qui vous défie à un concours de biture et roule sous la table… L’ambiance légère du jeu, qui contraste sainement avec l’atmosphère plus sérieuse des cinématiques, fait que l’on parcourt le jeu avec un plaisir toujours renouvelé.

No woman, no cry

Sujet (évident) de discorde, “l’ablation” avérée des versions américaine et européenne du jeu, qui se voient amputées de la séquence des bars à hôtesses, notamment, a donné à certains gamers l’envie de couper la dernière phalange du petit doigt des responsables de cette décision a priori aberrante. Et fait naître des velléités de boycott. Bien que je n’excuse en aucun cas ce genre de procédés, il convient toutefois de ranger les canifs. Ne plus avoir l’occasion de draguer à loisir quantité de jeunes femmes aux coiffures improbables, trop heureuses de faire suer votre carte bleue, n’a finalement rien de dramatique. Surtout qu’il est toujours possible d’en rencontrer quelques-unes au hasard, dans la rue (et de profiter d’elles pour commander en une fois toute la carte d’un resto histoire d’accumuler les points d’expérience !). De plus, dans un effort louable, la version “premium” du jeu proposée en Europe contient différents bonus, entre B.O. d’une trentaine de titres, tableau “interactif” détaillé des relations entre personnages (dont on retrouve l’équivalent dans les menus du jeu) et DLC gratuitement téléchargeables (malheureusement très axés baston, et pas forcément inoubliables). Bref, un titre d’une richesse absolue, quoi qu’il en soit, et à la durée de vie impressionnante, de toute façon incontournable pour tous les amoureux de la série. Ceux-là pardonneront aisément les quelques dérives d’un titre ancré dans des mécanismes certes un peu old school, et apprécieront pleinement ce que Yakuza 3 sait proposer de mieux : une fantastique aventure humaine.

On peut reprocher à Yakuza 3 certaines choses : une maniabilité parfois un peu raide, une difficulté évidente à innover d’un épisode à l’autre, une durée de vie artificiellement augmentée par des missions pas toujours passionnantes, une atmosphère curieusement gnangnan sur toute la partie qui se déroule à Okinawa… Et pourtant, la magie, cette fois encore, fonctionne. Bénéficiant d’heures de cinématiques superbes, impressionnant de possibilités, et proposant un système de combat riche et soigné, ce nouvel opus ne peut être qu’accueilli à bras ouverts par les amoureux du Japon en général, et les habitués de la série en particulier. Quant aux quelques éléments malheureusement absents de cette version occidentale — le résultat de coûts de localisation trop élevés, dit-on officiellement chez Sega — il serait dommage qu’ils fassent oublier à certains la qualité globale du jeu, qui n’a, dans le fond, rien perdu de sa superbe.

Gameblog.fr est LE site internet de jeux vidéo français du moment, totalement incontournable et surtout indispensable. Accompagné de commentaires pertinents, et surtout poilants, vous y retrouverez toute l’actualité Jeux vidéo, les derniers tests en avant première, des reportages exclusifs, des interviews, des émissions vidéos, des chroniques, de superbes Podcast... Bref, le nirvana du Jeux Vidéo a la française!

Aujourd'hui, le monde du cinéma, la télévision et même les jeux vidéos se mettent à la 3D. Alors, Majesco annonce un jeu de tir exclusif à la Wii et le tout en 3D. Le titre fera évoluer le joueur au sein de 6 films de monstres, ainsi les ennemis seront de géantes bestioles issues des plus grands films de fiction. Attack of the Movies 3D sera livré avec 4 paires de lunettes 3D pour les parties multijoueurs. Aucune information concernant la date de sortie de l'opus en Europe.

Deuxième test pour le Scythe Yasya, tout juste annoncé en Europe, au tarif de 39.90€. Un radiateur au look innovant, qui introduit une nouvelle structure pour les ailettes, qui sera déclinée sur leur prochain modèle en topflow. Nouveau ventilateur aussi, qui dispose du PWM et d'une équerre PCI avec potentiomètre, afin de régler la plage de vitesse.

We've seen all sorts of ridiculous claims by performance rights collection societies trying to demand performance rights for things that clearly were not intended as "performances." There was the woman stocking shelves in a store who was singing without paying. There was the owner of a horse stable who played music to her horses. There was the attempt to say that your mobile phone ringing with a ringtone was a public performance. Basically, they're willing to claim just about any music playing is a public performance that requires yet another fee.

Niall.e points us to a legal issue in Europe, where the Irish High Court has asked the European Court of Justice to weigh in on a claim by the Irish collection society Phonographic Performance Ireland Ltd (PPI), which is claiming that music played in hotel rooms for guests requires a performance fee. Yes, you read that right. PPI is claiming that since the hotel provides radios and televisions in the guest rooms, they need to pay a performance right fee on the usage of those devices.

PPI can't honestly believe this is a public performance that deserves a performance right. This is just a blatant money grab to try to force someone else to pay up. What's next? Auto dealers will have to pay a performance fee for having radios installed in cars?

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Catherine Ashton, la ministre des affaires étrangères de l’Union, soucieuse de montrer qu’elle avait bien reçu le message des ministres de la Défense après avoir séché leur réunion informelle de Palma de Majorque, s’était ralliée à l’idée de créer un véritable conseil des ministres de la Défense. En effet, jusqu’à présent, ces derniers se réunissaient uniquement de temps à autre dans le cadre d’un Conseil des ministres des Affaires dit « jumbo » et n’avaient donc pas de véritable autonomie.

Il est désormais acquis que lors du prochain conseil « jumbo », le 26 avril à Luxembourg, les ministres des Affaires étrangères voteront (à la majorité qualifiée) la création d’une nouvelle formation du Conseil des ministres, le Conseil des ministres de la Défense, ce qui marque un progrès fondamental dans la mise en place d’une Europe de la défense. Pour mesurer le chemin parcouru, il faut rappeler que le 17 novembre dernier, Javier Solana, le prédécesseur de Lady Ashton, peu suspect d’euroscepticisme, avait jugé la création d’un tel Conseil « trop difficile »...

Autre point important : le nouvel « envoyé spécial » de l’Union en Afghanistan, l’ancien ministre des affaires étrangères lituanien, Vygaudas Usackas, va désormais cumuler sa fonction, celle d’ambassadeur de l’Union sur place (pour l’instant occupée par un fonctionnaire de la Commission, H. Krestschmer) et celle de représentant de la présidence tournante de l’Union... Cette triple casquette va clarifier les responsabilités européennes sur un théâtre d’opérations majeur.

During my recent trip to India, I flew down to Bangalore for one reason: To meet N.R. Narayana Murthy. Murthy is the co-founder, executive chairman and former CEO for 21 years of Infosys, the first Indian company to go public on Nasdaq and effectively the company that began the $30 billion Indian IT outsourcing market.

Murthy’s idea was so successful that it quickly became controversial—not only within the United States where some Americans feel Indians are “stealing jobs,” but also in India where many are concerned about a tech economy that doesn’t make anything. I wanted to meet with Murthy, because in many ways he’s the best person to address what Indians at home and abroad are facing and where Indian entrepreneurship goes from here.

Here are a few highlights from our meeting:

His Day Job. Murthy thought he was stepping down from Infosys back in 2002, but he couldn’t fully let go. As such, he still works pretty much full time for the company, traveling to meet with customers and running a lot of the company’s mentoring and training programs. The more surprising aspect of his job: He personally signs off on the architecture of every building on each one of Infosys’ campuses that employ some 17,000 people around the world. The one we were sitting in was spread of eight acres and had some remarkable buildings, including one that looked like the Luxor casino in Las Vegas.

I asked why this was a top priority—after all, many Valley campuses are plush but from an architecture standpoint look about the same. He said when GE and other American multinationals were starting to come into his business everyone thought Infosys would lose the local talent war. So Murthy studied why people want to work at a particular place. One of the results was the comfort and design of the facilities. That was in 1994 when Infosys was designing the very building we were sitting in as we had this conversation. “I’ve been in charge of every building since– all over the world,” he says.

Hurting or Helping Local Entrepreneurship? Given exactly how plush Murthy and his colleagues have worked to make Infosys, has he indirectly hurt Bangalore’s entrepreneurship scene by making the risk of leaving so daunting? He smiled when I asked this and said, “We may have unwittingly. But I do feel like the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and kicking in Bangalore.”

Further, I asked about Bangalore’s Zippo-flipping, free-spending generation of young techies who’ve graduated to a huge wave of multinational jobs that pay them far more than their parents ever made, in many cases more than the rest of their families combined. Murthy didn’t deny that that instant-gratification, “gimmie” contingent was strong in the city he helped build, economically speaking. But he blames the Internet and the mass-cross-pollination of Western pop culture, not the bigger paycheck from companies like his.

“We are moving towards a uniform, global culture with an intense competitive spirit and an intense desire for instant gratification,” he says. “But I have a firm belief that each generation is better than the previous one. The Indian entrepreneurs today are more daring than we were.” (This from a man who became a capitalist after after hitchhiking across communist Eastern Europe and getting thrown in jail for chatting up someone’s girlfriend on a train. “More daring” is a tall order, young Indian techies.)

Is India’s Tech Community Too Addicted to Services? Clearly, services has been a great business for Infosys and the hundreds of dollar-millionaires and even more rupee-millionaires that the company’s generous stock program has created. But a lot of Indian CEOs and investors complain that in most cases services-based tech businesses are a great way to get revenues quick, but not a way to build a huge, high-growth business. There’s a big question of whether India’s tech sector has a worrying lack of product-building know-how.

Murthy says it’s a progression. “India missed the industrial revolution, but Indians had intelligence,” he says. “We had to make do with pen and paper. We were always forced to look at the abstract. What is happening in India today is the creation of jobs. Let’s create jobs as long as they are legal and ethical, it doesn’t matter, as long as we make money. The time will come for creating products. I wouldn’t lose sleep over this. If we create enough jobs we’ll raise the confidence of the youngsters and they’ll create products.”

India’s Infrastructure. Here’s something it’s hard for even Murthy to be upbeat about: India’s shoddy physical infrastructure. Murthy has traveled the world and it’s frustrating that so much money has poured into the country he loves, and yet, the infrastructure is still so shockingly bad.

There is progress—Infosys for instance has benefited from a new overpass that cuts down on the drive to the campus by more than thirty minutes. (See!) But it’s not moving nearly fast enough, he says. “I don’t know if we will reach the level of the United States or China,” he adds.

Murthy gave a more nuanced explanation than the usual “it’s corruption” answer you get in India. He explained that 65% of India’s population lives in rural areas and 35% live in cities. And there’s such polarity between the quality of life that politicians have to appear to be doing more for the villages than the cities if they want to get re-elected. That leaves prosperous economic cities blighted by poor sewage systems, pollution spewing generators and beggars weaving through traffic tapping on car windows. “Different emerging nations take different paths,” he says. “In China, they chose to emphasize giving people economic freedom first and political freedom second. In India we chose the opposite path.”

Hurting or Helping US-based Indians? All you have to do is read the comments on one of Vivek Wadhwa’s posts to see the ugly, anti-immigrant, anti-Indian fervor that’s been whipped up in America, post-recession. A lot of it has to do with outsourcing. I asked Murthy if he felt his company and industry’s huge success has indirectly made life harder for Indian-Americans. He turned the blame on xenophobes like Lou Dobbs and grandstanding politicians who use the wedge issue to get viewers and votes.

But it’s an issue he has to address a lot. He answers it by saying every morning he gets up and gets a Pepsi out of his GE Fridge and drives his American car to work where he sits down at his Dell computer. India used to have companies that made soft drinks, refrigerators, cars and computers. But the American ones were better. Allowing them in hurt Indian workers in the short term, but provided a far better quality of life for a much bigger swath of Indians long term. He argues outsourcing has done the same thing for US companies. Greater efficiencies and cost-savings enables these companies to stay competitive and there’s no reason they can’t—in theory—plow those savings into better local jobs or job training.

This argument isn’t going to pacify hate-mongers, because nothing will. Murthy knows that too and while he regrets it, he seems to accept it as reality.

Advice for Entrepreneurs. Murthy has started a $170 million venture fund, so although he spends most of his time still at Infosys, he clearly cares about encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs. He had two big pieces of advice for them. One, be able to articulate what you do in one sentence. If you can’t, you don’t have a good idea. And two, make sure the market is ready. Businesses are killed, not congratulated, for being ahead of their time.

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the first beta release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) Desktop, Server, and Netbook editions and of Ubuntu 10.04 Server for Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) and Amazon’s EC2. Codenamed "Lucid Lynx", 10.04 LTS continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Desktop and Netbook Editions continue the trend of ever-faster boot speeds, with improved startup times and a streamlined, smoother boot experience.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server Edition provides even better integration of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, with its install-time cloud setup.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server for UEC and EC2 brings the power and stability of the Ubuntu Server Edition to cloud computing, whether you’re using Amazon EC2 or your own Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud.

The Ubuntu 10.04 family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Mythbuntu, also reach beta status today.

Desktop features
————————

Social from the start: We now feature built-in integration with Twitter, identi.ca, Facebook, and other social networks with the MeMenu in the panel.

New Design: Cleaner and faster boot, new notification area, new themes, new icons, and new wallpaper bring a dramatically updated look and feel to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu One: Choose any folder in your home directory to sync, choose from millions of songs for purchase in the Ubuntu One Music store.

Please see http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/beta1 for details.

Server features
———————-

Cloud computing: The Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud installer has been vastly improved in order to support alternative installation topologies. UEC components are now automatically discovered and registered, even with complex topologies. Finally, UEC is now powered by Eucalyptus 1.6.2 codebase.

UEC and EC2: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS continues the tradition of official Ubuntu Server image releases for UEC and for Amazon’s EC2, giving you everything you need for rapid deployment of Ubuntu instances in a cloud computing environment. UEC images, and information on running Ubuntu 10.04 on EC2, are available at:

http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/10.04/beta1

Stability and security: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS brings many improvements over Ubuntu 8.04 LTS to keep your servers safe and secure for the next five years, including AppArmor profiles for many key services, kernel hardening, and an easy-to-configure firewall.

Ubuntu Netbook features
———————————-
Ubuntu Netbook Edition is optimised to run on Intel atom based netbooks. It includes a new consumer-friendly interface that allows users to quickly and easily get on-line and use their favourite applications. This interface is optimised for a retail sales environment.

It includes the same faster boot times and improved boot experience as Ubuntu desktop.

Kubuntu features
————————

Kubuntu 10.04 LTS will be the first LTS to feature KDE 4 Platform and Applications. KDE 4 has come a long way since its early releases and is now suitable for the high demands of LTS users. Being an LTS we have focused on bug fixing and stability for this release, but we did find time to add features such as touchpad configuration, Firefox KDE integration, Kubuntu notification improvements, and cross-desktop systray menu standardisation. Kubuntu features the Plasma Desktop while Kubuntu Netbook Remix comes out of preview status with the Plasma Netbook workspace.

See https://wiki.kubuntu.org/LucidLynx/Beta1/Kubuntu for more details.

Edubuntu features
————————-

Edubuntu in Lucid features a more complete live environment containing more software from universe and all existing language packs as well as our usual educational software in their current version. For Lucid the text installer has been removed and so is LTSP for the time being. We expect to have LTSP back on the DVD for the next beta. The DVD is then much smaller than it used to be but will still provide a complete education environment based on Ubuntu Lucid.

Also included on the Edubuntu DVD is a small repository containing the required packages to transform the regular Edubuntu desktop into a LTSP server or install the Netbook edition interface.

Mythbuntu features
—————————

Mythbuntu 10.04 introduces MythTV 0.23. This new version is significantly faster and should feel more responsive and stable than older versions. It also integrates better into the OS with better support for things like ConsoleKit and Upstart.

Please see http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Release_Notes_-_0.23 for more details about changes introduced in 0.23.

See http://mythbuntu.org/10.04/beta for information about the Mythbuntu beta release.

Other
——-

* On the Desktop: GNOME 2.30, KDE SC 4.4, XFCE 4.6.1, OpenOffice.org 3.2.0, X.Org server 1.7.5

* On the Server: Apache 2.2, PostgreSQL 8.4, PHP 5.3.1, LTSP 5.2

* "Under the hood": GCC 4.4.3, eglibc 2.11, Linux 2.6.32.9, Python 2.6.5

The full release notes can be found at
http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/beta1

About Ubuntu
——————

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, and servers, with a fast and easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.

Professional technical support is available from Canonical Limited and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information about support, visit http://www.ubuntu.com/support

To Get Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1
———————————————

To upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1 from Ubuntu 9.10 or Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, follow these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LucidUpgrades

Or, download Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1 here (choose the mirror closest to you):

Africa:

* http://ubuntu.saix.net/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (South Africa)

Asia:

* http://mirror.rootguide.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (China)
* http://ubuntutym2.u-toyama.ac.jp/ubuntu/10.04 (Japan)
* http://mirror.khlug.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Korea, Republic of)
* http://ubuntu.qualitynet.net/releases/10.04 (Kuwait)
* http://ftp.mtu.ru/pub/ubuntu/releases/10.04 (Russian Federation)
* http://tw.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Taiwan)
* http://ftp.linux.org.tr/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Turkey)

Europe:

* http://ubuntu.linuxbe.com/10.04 (Belgium)
* http://ubuntu.ipacct.com/releases/10.04 (Bulgaria)
* http://hr.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Croatia)
* http://releases.ubuntu.mirror.dkm.cz/releases/10.04 (Czech Republic)
* http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/ubuntu-cd/10.04 (Denmark)
* http://ftp.estpak.ee/pub/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Estonia)
* http://ubuntu.trumpetti.atm.tut.fi/releases/10.04 (Finland)
* http://ftp.oleane.net/ubuntu-cd/10.04 (France)
* http://ubuntu.mirror.tudos.de/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Germany)
* http://speglar.simnet.is/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Iceland)
* http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Ireland)
* http://releases.ubuntu.fastbull.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Italy)
* http://nl.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/10.04 (Netherlands)
* http://no.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Norway)
* http://cesium.di.uminho.pt/pub/ubuntu/10.04 (Portugal)
* http://rs.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Serbia)
* http://ubuntu.cica.es/releases/10.04 (Spain)
* http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Sweden)

North America:

* http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Canada)
* http://mirror.pnl.gov/releases/10.04 (United States)
* http://mirror.yellowfiber.net/ubuntu/10.04 (United States)
* http://mirrors.ccs.neu.edu/releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (United States)
* http://mirrors.gigenet.com/ubuntu/10.04 (United States)

South America:

* http://ubuntu-cd.innova-red.net/10.04 (Argentina)
* http://mirror.pop-sc.rnp.br/mirror/ubuntu/10.04 (Brazil)
* http://ubuntu.c3sl.ufpr.br/releases/10.04 (Brazil)

Rest of the world:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Great Britain)

Please download using Bittorrent if possible.

The final version of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is expected to be released in April 2010.

Feedback and Participation
—————————————

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help turn this Beta into the best release of Ubuntu ever. Please note that, where possible, we prefer that bugs be reported using the tools provided, rather than by visiting Launchpad directly. Instructions can be found at

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but are not sure, first try asking on the #ubuntu IRC channel on FreeNode, on the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the Ubuntu forums:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/

More Information
————————

You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this preview release on our website, IRC channel and wiki. If you are new to Ubuntu, please visit:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu’s very low volume announcement list at:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce

[Discuss Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1 on the Forum]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-announce mailing list by Steve Langasek on Fri Mar 19 16:32:05 GMT 2010

A Spanish tech news website, Clipset, is claiming, after getting some hands-on time with the HP Slate during a presentation, that the device will officially launch this June and be available in Europe for €400 by September. HP further confirmed that the Slate will run Windows 7, be powered by an Intel Atom processor, support [...]

The Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus already available in North America may soon finally be released in the UK through O2, according to an unofficial leak. The two handsets are rumored by TracyAndMatt to ship in April after the App Catalog is out of Beta stage in Europe. Pricing has not been revealed, but the devices should be GSM versions of the phones available at Verizon....

Bon, il semblerait que, contrairement à ce que je vous disais dans la précédente news (d'aujourd'hui, c'est encore plus drôle...), No More Heroes 2 ait décidé d'être galant et de laisser les monstres s'installer paisiblement en avril sur Wii puisque le retour de Travis Touchdown est désormais calé au 21 mai de la même année. Une bad news que l'on pense plus commerciale qu'autre chose, mais qui s'accompagne du trailer européen du jeu de Suda Goichi. Pleurez toutes les larmes de votre corps, rendez-vous à Lourdes, rendez Ingrid Betancourt au FARC, rien n'y fera, Travis prendra son temps, qu'on se le dise. 

SEGA Europe Ltd. today released screenshots showcasing just a small selection of the abundant costume choices available in its upcoming Japanese roleplaying game, Resonance of Fate.

D’ici à la fin de l’été, tous les modèles du constructeur, ou presque, pourront être équipés du Wi-Fi, une première en Europe. En avant-première, le calendrier, modèle par modèle.

Sega Europe lâche une série d'images afin de présenter l'étendue des possibilités de customisation de Resonance of Fate.

La crise financière que traverse la Grèce divise les pays européens sur l'opportunité d'aider ce pays et sur l'hypothèse d'un recours au FMI. La seconde option semble pourtant la plus probable. Au risque de décrédibiliser l'Europe.

La crise financière que traverse la Grèce divise les pays européens sur l'opportunité d'aider ce pays et sur l'hypothèse d'un recours au FMI. La seconde option semble pourtant la plus probable. Au risque de décrédibiliser l'Europe.