Features

If you have adopted JPG-type photos many years ago and have made it your standard way of taking, scanning, viewing, saving and exchanging photos, you may want to keep an eye on the newcomer to the image compression market. It’s referred to as BPG that stands for Better Portable Graphics. It has been recently announced as a standard that is able to generate pictures twice as small as JPG, and with comparable if not superior quality.

The question is do we need a new image compression system? And if yes why?

Ever since German company Fraunhofer Gesellschaft introduced their now famous MP3 audio compression system, circa 1995, the compression of digital audiovisual material has been making the headlines and capturing the consumers’ interest. Be it for photos, videos or sound, the compression of digital audiovisual contents is everywhere and is definitely a must.

By any standard, digital compression is a big thing, overall.

By making digital contents smaller you do not only save storage space and consequently can squeeze more on a given media, you also and more importantly save Internet bandwidth and cut transmission time when sending and receiving the files. It is actually this second advantage that matters most today, now that storage is inexpensively available and in mammoth size — terabyte large disks having become common staple amongst consumers or even in the cloud.

Will BPG become a widely used standard, supplanting the ubiquitous JPG? It is much too early to say. Promising smaller file size is important but is in no way the only aspect to take into consideration when going for a new standard.

Take JPG for example. It has a major flaw that many consumers are not aware of, or in the best case are willing to live with. Each time you open a JPG photo with an image processing application, apply some settings and changes, and save the photo, you reduce its quality a little more. Do it six to eight times and the degradation becomes noticeable — and unpleasant to see. And sadly, it’s irreversible. Which is why professionals prefer to stay with uncompressed photos (Raw, Nef, Tiff, and so forth), to avoid such issues.

Will BPG exhibit the same “weakness”? We are anxious to find. It would also be interesting to see if saving a photo as BPG, or simply opening it for viewing, will be as fast as saving it or opening it as JPG.

JPG is not the only image compression standard used today but it is certainly the most widely used. To its credit is the fact that virtually all devices support it, from TVs, digital cameras, computers and smartphones. All software applications today are able to display or process JPG. How long will it take till BPG becomes as versatile and universal as JPG has become? How fast can the industry adapt and make the change to host and to process BPG?

Most of us already have hundreds when not thousands of photos in JPG format. Are we going to convert them all to BPG? Well, for a start it would not make much sense for, as said above, any “additional” conversion of already compressed files will inexorably result in a loss of quality. So whatever we have as JPG should stay as such. Using and adopting BPG will — maybe — make sense only for new image material that will be started as BPG, without going through any other intermediate compression scheme.

Some innovations make the big time while others don’t. Google glasses for example seem on the road to oblivion, before they even went global. Let’s see this year what BPG will bring us. At least it’s one innovation to watch. For now it presents at least one plus — that is in addition to its twice better compression capability. A comparison of JPG and BPG photos on the web, at the same level of compression, give a slight advantage to BPG in terms of image clarity, sharpness and resolution.

PARIS — Better techniques and policies have given children born from artificial fertilisation a much better chance of survival and good health, a Scandinavian study said Wednesday.

Doctors looked at data from 1988 to 2007 from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden for more than 92,000 children born through assisted reproduction technology (ART), the term for in-vitro and other methods.

Of them, more than 62,000 were single births, also called singletons, and more than 29,000 were twins.

The health of the babies at birth and in their first year of life was compared to that of children conceived without ART.

“We observed a remarkable decline in the risk of being born pre-term or very preterm,” said Anna-Karina Aaris Henningsen at the University of Copenhagen.

“The proportion of single ART babies born with a low or very low birth weight — less than 2,500 grammes or 1,500g respectively — also decreased.

“The rates for stillbirths and death during the first year declined among both singletons and twins, and fewer ART twins were stillborn or died during the first year compared with spontaneously conceived twins,” Henningsen said.

In the period 1988-1992, the rate of pre-term singletons born from ART was 13 per cent, compared to 5 per cent among babies that had been spontaneously conceived.

But by 2007, this had fallen to 8 per cent in the ART group, while the non-ART group stayed at 5 per cent.

Henningsen said several factors contributed to the improvement.

Laboratories became more skilled at culturing fertilised eggs before returning them to the uterus, and hormonal drugs to stimulate ovaries for egg harvesting were milder than before.

The biggest gain, though, was in a policy change to encourage a single embryo implant at a time, not several.

Multiple embryos boost the chance of a live birth, but also raise the odds of having twins or triplets, which can result in lower birth weight and health complications.

From 1989 to 2002, the proportion of ART twins in the four Scandinavian countries was stable at about 23 per cent of births, but then began to decline. By 2007, it had halved to 11.6 per cent.

The study appears in the journal Human Reproduction.

REDMOND, United States — Microsoft pulled back the curtain Wednesday on the upcoming Windows 10 operating system focused on bringing harmony to the diverse array of Internet gadgets in people’s lives.

As it previewed the new operating system, Microsoft also unexpectedly added to the roster of modern gadgets with the unveiling of headgear that overlays holograms on the real world and lets wearers use their hands to interact with virtual objects.

By allowing users to work seamlessly over devices such as computers, tablets and smartphones, Microsoft hopes Windows 10 will renew its relevance in an age of mobile computing dominated by Apple and Google-backed Android software.

And in order to boost its takeup by the approximately 1.5 billion people around the world who use Windows-powered computers, in a change of policy Microsoft will allow free upgrades.

Microsoft also hopes to lure users with stunning new technology.

Chief executive Satya Nadella touted HoloLens capabilities that will debut with Windows 10 later this year as the next generation of computing.

The US technology titan is also trying to make it more natural to interact with devices, such as conversational-style speaking with the company’s virtual assistant Cortana.

“The number of devices is just exploding around us,” Microsoft’s Terry Myerson said during a presentation to press and analysts at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

“It should be easy to put one device down and pick up another where you left off; technology needs to get out of the way.”

HoloLens was touted as an entry to “the world’s first holographic computing platform” which enables users to place three-dimensional holograms in the physical world.

“Until now, we’ve immersed ourselves in the world of technology,” Microsoft’s Alex Kipman said while introducing HoloLens.

“But, what if we could take technology and immerse it in our world?”

Walking on Mars

Windows Holographic creates three-dimensional images in the real world, then lets people wearing the headgear reach out and manipulate virtual objects.

Examples shown during the event ranged from someone getting visual prompts during a routine home plumbing repair to being able to virtually walk on Mars and control a rover lander actually on that planet’s surface.

Kipman said he invited virtual reality innovators, including Facebook-owned Oculus VR, to explore adapting different applications for the goggles.

“Holograms can become part of our everyday life,” he said.

Nadella called HoloLens and Windows 10 a “mind-blowing” experience that will open a new type of computing.

“Today is a big day for Windows,” Nadella said as Microsoft provided a look at its latest operating system at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

“We want to move from people needing Windows, to choosing Windows, to loving Windows; that is our bold goal for Windows.”

Windows 10 is being designed with feedback from millions of “insiders” testing early versions of the operating system, Myerson said.

IE cedes to Spartan

Microsoft is so intent on distancing Windows 10 from its predecessors that it skipped directly from Windows 8, which failed to deliver on its promise as a platform for a variety of devices.

The Windows 10 design creates a foundation on which developers can build applications for smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers, and Xbox One video game consoles, he said.

During the first year after the release of Windows 10, the operating system will be available as a free upgrade for computers running prior generation Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 software.

Microsoft said it will also keep Windows 10 upgraded during the lifetime of devices.

Personalised virtual assistant Cortana, and its touted ability to answer questions conversationally, will be now available on personal computers. Cortana made her debut on Windows-powered mobile devices.

Microsoft also unveiled a new Web browser code-named Spartan, which will have Cortana built in and ready to chime in at presumably helpful moments.

Spartan is poised to be the successor to Internet Explorer.

“Project Spartan is a new browsing experience tuned for being mobile and working across this family of devices,” said Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore.

Windows 10 is also designed to hook gamers, according to Xbox team leader Phil Spencer.

Along with modifications that allow for more sophisticated play on smartphones, an application for Xbox will let people use Windows 10-powered computers or tablets at home to play games with or against friends using one of the Microsoft consoles, Spencer demonstrated.

“I think there are lots of developers who want to bring their experiences to the Xbox,” Spencer said.

Every period seems like an age of innocence when viewed in retrospect. This is being increasingly brought home to me these last few days as Shahrukh Khan, the incredibly popular Bollywood actor that most Jordanians can relate to via the Arabic dubbed movies, recently celebrated 20 years of his first blockbuster film. 

The remarkable thing about this picture is that it is still running in an outdated cinema hall in India, uninterrupted for the last 1,000 weeks! It has been playing at its usual matinee time slot of 11:30 in the morning ever since it was first screened there in October 1995. 

Called “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge”, which translates into “Brave-heart will win the bride”, it had one of the longest titles that anybody had ever heard of. No wonder it immediately got shortened to DDLJ within the first few days of its release. 

Starring Kajol as the demure Simran, opposite the flamboyant Raj, played by Shahrukh, it was a simple love story, set partly in Europe and UK, and after the intermission, in India. The young couple was both modern as well as traditional and did not want to get married without the permission and blessings of their parents. The girl was engaged to somebody else, who was chosen by her father, so the boy had to somehow convince the patriarch, that he was the right one for her. 

Now that I think about it, there was nothing particularly unusual about the storyline. Scores of films, both before and after, were made on a similar theme. But, unpredictably it struck a chord with the viewing public. The freshness was in the manner in which this old subject was approached, and then presented. The phenomenal on-screen chemistry that the innocent looking lead actors shared, helped. Everything about the film appealed to the audience. The casting was flawless and everybody played his or her part to perfection. The songs, which are an integral part of any Indian movie, were sensational. The comedy, the tragedy, the dance steps, the action scenes and some particular dialogues too, became instant hits. People could not stop seeing this picture. Over and over again! 

I was living in Dubai those days and the theatre in which the film was playing, was located in the downtown. To make matters worse, there was a traffic signal just before the turning to the entrance, which was mostly malfunctioning. However hard I tried to synchronise the entire outing: from hurrying back from work, feeding the baby, organising a babysitter, rustling up dinner, we would invariably get stuck at that red light. By the time we bought the tickets and sprinted into the darkened hall, we would catch the tail end of the opening sequence, where the girl’s father is feeding the pigeons on Trafalgar Square. 

My spouse would throw a tantrum and refuse to see the rest of the film and a scene within a scene would be created instantly in the aisle, much to the amusement of the other onlookers. 

Watching the 20-year milestone celebrations of the film, these memories from two decades ago, rushed back. 

“How much you fought with me over this movie,” I reminisced. 

“Correction! You stamped my foot,” my husband said. 

“Because you wanted to consult a divorce lawyer,” I reminded. 

“And you rushed to buy a shotgun,” he recalled. 

“Did I? Where is it?” I asked.

“You should have bought it,” he grinned. 

“And shot the lawyer,” I agreed.

NEW YORK — Many a musician has addressed the raw emotions of emotional breakup. For Bjork, the occasion is not one for maudlin pop but instead for an intricate, experimental album that explores the very nature of heartbreak.

The Icelandic pop singer turned avant-garde composer released her first album in three years, “Vulnicura”, unexpectedly late Tuesday as she became the latest artist to be caught off-guard as online leaks pre-empted her music’s months  long rollout.

Unlike Madonna, who was livid when her unfinished songs found their way onto the Internet last month, Bjork — in public, at least — took the leaks in stride as she put “Vulnicura” on sale online and thanked fans for their interest.

With lush strings over a haunting electronic backdrop, “Vulnicura” is, in Bjork’s description, a “complete heartbreak album” in which she documented a “pretty much accurate emotional chronology” of her breakup.

“First I was worried it would be too self-indulgent, but then I felt it might make it even more universal,” Bjork wrote on Facebook and Twitter.

“And hopefully the songs could be a help, a crutch to others and prove how biological this process is: the wound and the healing of the wound — psychologically and physically. It has a stubborn clock attached to it,” she wrote.

Bjork has generally been private about her personal life but Icelandic media reported in 2013 that she split from her longtime partner Matthew Barney, the avant-garde New York filmmaker and sculptor with whom she has a daughter.

A gentle despair

“Vulnicura” is Bjork’s first work since 2011’s “Biophilia”, a wildly ambitious album that used smartphone apps to explore the interconnections between music, technology and nature.

Bjork teamed up on the latest album with Arca, the Venezuelan DJ known for his work with the rapper Kanye West and the rising trip-hop star FKA twigs.

The collaboration led to some speculation that Bjork was returning to her pop roots. Instead, Bjork goes in an even more abstract direction than on her previous work, with Arca crafting electronic beats that gently complement rather than dominate Bjork’s distinctive voice and her string arrangements recorded in Iceland.

“History of Touches”, an account of the lonely contemplation of love that has ended, echoes the themes of Bjork’s classic 1996 song of despair “Hyperballad” — only that the thoughts this time are much sweeter.

“I wake you up in the night, feeling this is our last time together,” Bjork sings over an eerie keyboard backdrop, imagining her lovemaking “in a wondrous time lapse.”

On “Lionsong”, Bjork — the mournful strings tracing the longing in her voice — sings, “Maybe someday he will come out of this.”

“Once it was simple/One feeling at a time/It reached its peak, then transformed,” Bjork sings, with a hint of the Bollywood-inspired orchestration from her track “Venus As a Boy” off her 1993 “Debut”.

Bjork refuses to give in to songwriting conventions on “Vulnicura”. On “Black Lake”, which runs over 10 minutes long, she asks, “Did I love you too much?” The answer, expressed not in words but in the music, lies in silence and fermata stretches of the strings.

Arca, whom Bjork described as her best-ever collaborator, shows his influence most clearly on the closing track “Quicksand” as the electronica finally takes centre stage and the album ends with a sense both of energy and surprise.

Album leaks have become increasingly common in an era when copying music requires little technical skill and pirate sites have eager audiences.

Bjork, who is also planning CD and vinyl sales of “Vulnicura”, had hoped to roll out the album in March when she will play several intimate concerts in New York including at Carnegie Hall, one of the world’s most prestigious classical venues.

Bjork, who turns 50 later this year, will also be the subject of a retrospective exhibit in March at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

LONDON — Helping patients with chronic fatigue syndrome to overcome their fears that exercise or activity will make their symptoms worse is one of the most important factors behind therapies that can make them better, scientists recently said.

Presenting an analysis on a trial showing how cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and graded exercise therapy (GET) help reduce fatigue and improve physical function in people with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), the researchers said misguided but understandable fears about being active were key.

“You’re not going to ask somebody who hasn’t been going out or engaging in any exercise for several years to suddenly get on their bike — you would want to do these things very gradually and carefully,” Trudie Chalder of King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry told a briefing.

“[But] our results suggest that fearful beliefs can be changed by directly challenging such beliefs, or by simple behaviour change with a graded approach.”

CFS, sometimes called myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME, is a debilitating condition characterised by disabling physical and mental fatigue, poor concentration and memory, disturbed sleep and muscle and joint pain.

There is no cure and scientists don’t know what causes it, but it affects around 17 million people worldwide.

Many sufferers say they think their illness started after a viral infection. But suggested links to a virus known as XMRV were shown in a scientific paper in 2010 to have been based on contaminated samples in a lab.

Calder worked on a 2011 study called the PACE trial. It found that CBT, where a health professional helps patients understand and change the way they respond to symptoms, and GET, a personalised, gradually increasing exercise programme, helped around 60 per cent of CFS patients improve.

In this latest study, Calder’s team sought to find out how the treatments worked for some patients, with a view to allowing therapies to be improved or adapted to help more.

Of all the mediating factors analysed, the researchers found the strongest — accounting for up to 60 per cent of the effect — was reducing fears that exercise would make symptoms worse, something they described as “an understandable reaction to having CFS”.

Professor Peter White of Queen Mary, University of London, who worked on Calder’s team, stressed that neither this nor the original PACE study was able to find the root causes of CFS, but only to analyse how therapies can improve symptoms.

PARIS — His hand is steady and sure as it delicately traces the contours of the biggest names in the world of style: the celebrities, the magazine editors, the clients. 

Nicolas Ouchenir is a calligrapher, a member of a rarified profession whose ink appears on the must-have invitations of Europe’s fashion shows.

He may not personally meet all the VIPs attending the catwalk parades. But his personalised flourish to them, deliberately evoking the elegance of times past is carried close in their hands, in handbags, in tailored breast pockets.

With Paris Fashion Week about to kick off on Wednesday, Ouchenir is being kept busy. The phone rings incessantly in his office with the fashion houses’ press and publicity people calling to reserve his service — most at the last minute.

“You have to react fast,” says the 36-year-old, who is dressed in jeans and a white shirt, and sat behind a desk upon which piles of invitations await. Next to them are pots filled with quill pens, pens of whittled reeds and calligraphers’ instruments, all of them on a stained leather desk pad.

He knows well the codes and hierarchies of the fashion world, having eased ink onto countless cards that serve as coveted entry passes to the biggest fashion events in the world.

He is especially versed in the seating plans for those invited. Codes often marked on the invites correspond to the spots where the guests are to sit — with the front row, just a stiletto’s slide away from the catwalk, reserved for the elite.

‘Fall asleep in the office’

“I have no fixed working hours,” Ouchenir says. He works out of an office on Paris’s chic-and-expensive rue Saint-Honore — shared with several other entrepreneurs working in different sectors. 

“Sometimes I work all night and fall asleep in my office and awake to find ink everywhere, or I spend whole nights waiting for a seating list in a PR’s office,” he says wryly, his humour serving him well in a business where “nervous breakdowns happen often”.

Ouchenir has been a professional calligrapher for 12 years.

He had an “obsession” with writing, he says, born from when he saw his childhood doctor in Paris scribbling out prescriptions with an old-fashioned quill.

There was no specialised course. He taught himself the craft after completing business studies. 

His career began when he started writing invitations for art show openings at the gallery where he was an assistant.

“I didn’t know that it was a profession. I just loved doing it... And it worked really well and people got used to seeing it. After a while, they only had to see the writing on the envelope and they almost didn’t have to open the invitation to know where it came from.”

Different writing styles 

But building an “exclusive” reputation was, he says, the real key to success. For each client he develops a tailored style of writing, “like a fingerprint”.

For the French fashion brand Berluti, known for its men’s luxury shoes and leatherware, the writing is “very masculine, very simple, straight-lined, very bespoke”, he says.

“Versace writing is more rococo, with very long upstrokes and downstrokes. Margiela writing, for haute couture, is John Galliano English-style, but for its pret-a-porter it’s more like a typewriter.”

Dior, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu, Gucci, Pucci, Missoni — Ouchenir has an enviable portfolio of clients including not only the biggest brands but also young names like jewellery designer Elie Top and Hugo Matha, who makes “pochette” bags. 

It’s not just the fashion world that he lends his talents to. 

He has also done illustrations in magazines, worked for the Venice Biennale art exhibition, provided lettering for carmakers and for Champagne houses, redone the logo for the Ritz Hotel in Paris, hired his hand to old aristocratic families — and even stylised designs for unique tattoos.

There have been requests for messages to be engraved on tombstones. Also contracts for couples enjoying sado-masochistic relations who want their “rules” spelled out in flourish and verse. 

Once, a Russian oligarch, he says, asked for wedding invitations to be drawn up — in blood. He complied, by seeking the ingredient at a butcher’s shop.

In his personal life, Ouchenir doesn’t entirely spurn e-mails and other digital correspondence, but he still sends letters and postcards, too.

Today, he muses, “so many people are afraid of writing and the pen”.

Calligraphy endures, he says, because “it has become rare — it’s like haute couture itself: the more exclusive it is, the more it is desired”.

By Patrick May
San Jose Mercury News (TNS)

SAN FRANCISCO — A beautiful French-speaking woman. A handsome English-speaking man. A quiet room in romantic San Francisco.

Let the magic begin, right?

Actually, there’s also an iPhone 6 between them on the table, which is where the magic really resides on this recent morning. The two Googlers — Parisian-born product manager Julie Cattiau and software engineer Otavio Good — are here to unveil the company’s latest Translate app, supercharged with what Google calls the biggest update in years.

“I’d like a cup of coffee without milk or sugar,” Good says in English into the phone, which almost immediately repeats his words in French.

“I’ll bring you that right now,” Cattiau replies in French, her response rendered aloud in English.

Get ready: Your own personal interpreter is coming soon. As it gains quickly in sophistication, machine-assisted translation promises to connect the world by bridging scores of languages while giving high-school Spanish teachers a run for their money. Google’s free app, which was officially launched to the world, is an advanced mobile-translating tool, recognising more than three dozen languages. But it’s part of a much bigger trend, with services like Microsoft’s Skype Translator instantly turning video-chats into real-time multilingual conversations. Twitter has used the tech giant’s Bing translation technology to instantly translate tweets, while Facebook pursues its own translation efforts.

“I’m passionate about translation,” says 26-year-old Cattiau, who has worked at Google the past three-and-a-half years. “With our new app, we’re able to detect the languages being spoken so you don’t even have to press the translate button on the phone each time you talk. It’s now so much more natural.”

While reviewers and users have not had a chance to use the new app, the previous version was largely praised, with CNET calling it “feature-packed” and “extremely versatile”.

Good, whose Word Lens technology was integrated into the updated app after Google bought his company last May, stands up with the phone to show off the app’s other key feature: the ability to point the camera at foreign-language text, whether it’s a street sign or a restaurant menu, and have an English translation appear like magic on the smartphone or tablet screen.

“Let’s say you’re in Moscow and you point the camera at a sign in the subway,” says the soft-spoken engineer, adding that this feature works without an Internet or data connection. He aims his phone at one of the demo signs on the wall at Google’s San Francisco headquarters. Instantly, an image of that same sign appears on the screen, but with “Access to City” replacing the Russian text.

Good does the same with a sign in Italian that warns beachgoers to stay out of the water. Unlike the communication app, the text feature works without needing a Wi-Fi connection, which makes it a handy tool when visiting unfamiliar cities overseas. And while it currently can translate seven languages, developers hope to add more soon, thus unlocking the world for tourists and business people alike. Cattiau points the camera at a recipe for Ricetta per fusille, and the ingredients show up in English.

“Often the hardest part of travelling is navigating the local language,” Google developers say in a blog post about the new app. “If you’ve ever asked for ‘pain’ in Paris and gotten funny looks, confused ‘embarazada’ (pregnant) with ‘embarrassed’ in Mexico, or stumbled over pronunciation pretty much anywhere, you know the feeling.”

Good says translation technology has come a long way in recent years. While there have been products introduced in the past at events like the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas “where the technology could recognise symbols”, says Good, “achieving a robust recognition of text has required a lot of work”.

He says Google’s purchase of his company last May has put things on the fast track.

Translate, which first launched in 2001, saw a huge spike in its linguistic oomph in 2006 when developers began using “statistical machine translation”, essentially mapping languages across the Internet. As Google’s algorithms learn to pair up, say, “maison” in French with “house” in English, the computers gradually build a dynamic translator, word by word.

“We base translation on machine learning, by looking at billions of web pages that have been translated into other languages,” says Cattiau. “We find ‘dog’ has been translated millions of times into ‘chien’, for example, so the computer now knows the two mean the same thing.”

The app’s conversation feature can handle 38 languages, and is now available for the first time on iOS. That number of languages, too, is expected to grow. Cattiau says a “translation community” of Google users lend a hand, helping to translate obscure languages to assist Google’s robots. “Users can rate a translation, improve or submit a new one. Users in Kazakhstan, for example, helped us so much with translating their language so that Kazakh on our app is now almost 100 per cent based on the community’s assistance.”

The first in its compact executive saloon segment to offer optional air suspension, the new Mercedes-Benz C-Class is a more technologically advanced and well-kitted successor model with a distinctly more luxury-oriented approach than its predecessor. 

Designed with familial resemblance to Mercedes’ full-size S Class luxury saloon, and with the recently launched and smaller CLA Class being more overtly sporty, the C Class embraces Mercedes’ elegantly luxurious brand characteristics to a greater extent than its predecessor.

Larger and roomier than before, the new C Class’ greater content lightweight aluminium also improves its efficiency, while its two-litre turbocharged engine offers frugal fuel consumption, brisk performance and a light and agile front end.

Toned and elegant

Elegantly flowing with discretely sporting cues, the new C Class takes Mercedes’ S Class flagship as its design staring point and consolidates the brand’s classy characteristics in this segment. Featuring elegant curves, sporty proportions and smoothly toned body surfaces, the confident and classy C Class features a long wheel arch to A pillar distance, which conveys a distinctly luxurious aesthetic within a compact frame.

With a wide grille extending and subtly raised bonnet centre, the C Class’ fluid design includes a descending side crease that begins from the headlights’ LED strips. From rear view, a gently arced roofline and strong shoulders fluently converge to a tapered-in boot.

Driven in C250 AMG guise, the C Class smooth and flowing design is given a more sportingly assertive flavour, but does so without compromising the model’s uncomplicatedly elegant lines and compact dimensions. The AMG bodykit’s twin-slat grille and grille embedded tri-star combine with faux brake vents and wider intakes for a more urgent athletic and sense of dynamic tension.

Meanwhile, the new C Class uses 50 per cent aluminium body and frame construction — rather than its predecessor’s 10 per cent — which results in an overall 100kg weight loss, depending on model. Combined with low CD0.27 aerodynamics and efficient electric-assisted rack and pinion steering this allows for up to 20 per cent fuel consumption reductions.

Punchy and frugal

Powered by the most powerful version of Mercedes’ two-litre turbocharged direct injection four-cylinder engines available to the C Class, the C250 develops 208BHP at 5,500rpm and 258lb/ft throughout a broad 1,200-4,000rpm band. With its turbos spooling up quickly the C250 suffers little by way of low-end turbo lag, but with a muscular and wide peak torque band, can overtake with quick confidence.

Underwritten by a wide torque band, the C250’s power develops eagerly and offers top-end responsiveness. Weighing in at 1,480kg, the C250 accelerate from standstill to 100km/h in 6.6 seconds and onto a potential 250km/h top speed, and returns frugal 5.3l/100km fuel consumption and 123g/km carbon dioxide emissions on the combined cycle.

With smooth and responsive delivery, the C250’s two-litre turbocharged engine drives the rear wheels through a seven-speed automatic gearbox with a wide range of ratios for brisk performance and efficiency when cruising. Smooth and quick shifting, the C250 features several gearbox and throttle response settings.

Best driven in its sportier settings where concise gear shift points are at higher revs and while throttle inputs more deliberate. The C250 can also be driven in a manual sequential mode with steering-mounted paddle shifters. Located behind the paddle shifters, the C Class’ steering column mounted gear lever provides a luxury car-like ambiance and frees up space on the centre console.

Comfort and balance

Built using 50 per cent aluminium content, the C Class’ rigid and lightweight construction lends itself to handling, performance, refinement, fuel efficiency and crash safety benefits. A balanced front engine rear-drive platform with sophisticated all-round multi-link suspension is combined with optional air damping, which is usually reserved for range-topping luxury cars.

With a small and light engine in front and rear-drive, the C250 AMG is tidy turning-in, balanced, agile and composed through countryside switchbacks, while optional low profile 225/45R18 front and 245/40R18 rear tyres provides committed lateral grip. The C Class’ variable speed and assistance electromechanical steering is direct and firm on B-roads and manoeuvrability light in town.

With self-levelling air suspension the C250 is controlled on acceleration and braking, with squat, dive and cornering body lean kept well in check. Ride quality is smooth and comfortable over rough tarmac, settled on rebound from dips and crests, and reassuringly planted and refined at high speed motorways.

The C250’s actively variable air damping features four progressive suspension settings to allow one to choose how comfortably supple or firmly controlled it rides. In its element on a test drive on the French Riviera and adjacent country and mountain roads between Salon-de-Provence and Aix-en-Provence, the C250 AMG was manoeuvrable an busy Marseille and narrow village roads, and eager and composed through fast, narrow and tight lanes.

Classy and convenient

Lighter but larger than its predecessor, the contemporary C Class is 40mm wider and 80mm longer at the wheelbase for improved cabin space, while boot volume increases to 480 litres. Comfortable and quiet, the C Class’s well appointed and refined cabin features ergonomic and versatile seat and steering adjustability, and can easily accommodate drivers of wildly varying sizes and heights.

A classier and more up-market C Class, the driven AMG trim version’s cabin appointments include good woods, textures and rich red leather upholstery on the specific demo car. Sportier touches include a chunky steering wheel, supportive seats, conical dials, and circular vents on an upright dashboard.

The latest C Class features an extensive list of standard and optional equipment covering a range of creature comforts and high-tech infotainment, driver assistance and semi-autonomous safety systems.

Such systems include cross-traffic sensing brake assistance, stop/start cruise control to facilitate smoother traffic flow and avoid low speed collisions, lane keeping assistance and a collision prevention system to prevent collision at up to 40km/h and mitigate collision severity up to 200km/h, and more nuanced airbag deployment for enhanced safety.

Also available are GPS-connected climate control, semi-autonomous parking, intelligent sign recognition and highbeam functions. A tablet-style infotainment touchscreen is Internet-enabled and — along with other vehicle functions — can be accessed through a centre console touchpad and rotary selector.

MELBOURNE, Australia — Rafael Nadal’s new high-tech tennis racquet looks and feels like his old one. Except for the on-off switch.

Call it a “smart racquet”, the latest advance in tennis technology tells you where you hit the ball — with the help of an app.

Sensors embedded in the handle of the racquet, made by Babolat, record technical data on every ball struck. At the end of a match or training session the data can be downloaded to a smart phone or computer and used to help analyse a player’s strengths and mistakes.

Aside from the sensors, the racquet is just a racquet. It’s the same size and weight as Nadal’s old-fashioned former racquet.

“I know to play well I need to play 70 per cent of forehands, 30 per cent of backhands,” Nadal said after racing through his first-round Australian Open match over Mikhail Youzhny, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 on Monday. “If I’m not doing that, I know I’m not doing the right thing on court.”

“This [racquet] is a way you can check these kinds of things,” added the 14-time Grand Slam winner, who was sidelined for much of last season from a wrist injury and an appendix operation.

The International Tennis Federation had previously outlawed what it calls “player analysis technology” during competition but adopted a new rule last January that allows players to wear or use “smart” equipment, like Nadal’s new racquet and devices like heart-rate monitors that record data about player performance in real time.

Babolat initially fitted the technology into its “Pure Drive” racquets, which are used by Karolina Pliskova, Julia Goerges and Yanina Wickmayer and then incorporated the sensors into a newly released racquet used by Nadal, Caroline Wozniacki and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Don’t expect to see players on their iPhones analysing their game mid-match. An ITF ban on coaching during matches prevents players from consulting the data on court.

The way it works is simple, says Thomas Otton, the company’s director of global communications.

There are two buttons on the bottom of the racquet’s handle.

“You press the ‘on’ button. A blue LED light appears. And, you play,” Otton said. When finished, a second button is pressed, activating Bluetooth which synchs the information with a smart phone or other device.

Otton called up Nadal’s data from his practice session on Friday that lasted 1 hour, 31 minutes. In that time, he hit 572 shots, or 22 per minute, which broke down to 156 backhands, 222 forehands, 118 serves and 76 smashes.

The data also gets more detailed and analyses, for example, how Nadal hit his forehands — 133 had topspin, 49 had slice and 40 were flat.

Swipe to the next screen and an image of a tennis racquet appears that shows where the ball is making impact. For Nadal’s practice, he hit 42 per cent of shots in the centre and 20 per cent on top of the racquet — the rest on the bottom and sides.

At a demonstration of the racquet before the tournament started, Wozniacki and Nadal joked about the pros and cons of knowing too much.

“Sometimes it’s not a good thing,” said Wozniacki. “Because you think you’re hitting it in the middle of the racquet, but really it shows you you’re not. And there’s no going around that.”

Nadal’s uncle and coach, Toni, joked that the racquet would give him an edge.

“Sometimes when I correct Rafa on how he’s hitting the ball, he doesn’t agree,” said Toni. “Now I have the data.”

Nadal retorted, without missing a beat, “Now he has the data to know that he was wrong.”