Miniblog 
14/06/13
Just a few weeks after Microsoft released an ad giving lack of PowerPoint on iPad as one of the reasons you should get a Windows 8 tablet, Microsoft has released an Office 365 app for iOS, including PowerPoint. Great marketing strategy. The app isn't available in the UK store at the moment, and requires a subscription to Office 365.
09/04/13
EE has announced plans to double 4G LTE data speeds by June, to a maximum of 80Mbps and an average of 20Mbps. The UK's 4G market is finally heating up as other networks are preparing to roll out their own 4G services, which is great! Data limits and prices will stay the same.
13/03/13
Google has announced that it is shutting down Google Reader - a product I use every day - as part of 'spring cleaning'. It will officially be retired on July 1st and users have 4 months to export their data using Google Takeout. In the meantime, I'm going to have to find a decent alternative. EDIT: If you care about this too, sign this petition.
09/03/13
TVCatchup, the free service that rebroadcasts live UK television channels has been found guilty of breaching copyright laws by the European Court of Justice, and will therefore have to receive permission from the channel before broadcasting their content. To me, this seems stupid. The service can only be accessed from within the UK and a TV Licence is required to watch it - so its essentially the same as receiving the channels over-the-air. To me, it's certainly less controversial than PVR boxes as the service doesn't allow you to skip adverts. Silly decision.
23/02/13
Newsify, my favourite iOS RSS reader app, is free for a limited time! The app integrates with Google Reader and has a great user interface that allows me to read through my subscriptions quickly. Unfortunately, it's currently iOS only - no plans for an Android or OS X version. Go and get the app over at the App Store, or you can try the limited and ad-supported...
22/02/13
The Verge's Editor-In-Chief Joshua Topolsky has had a hands-on with Google Glass - the wonderful augmented reality wearable device. A few pieces of news have come to light from this:
- The device will come in several colours - grey, orange, black, white and light blue
- Glass has in-built WiFi or can be tethered to an iOS or Android device to connect to the internet
- The interface will be very much like the demo video Google published recently - commands can be initialised by saying 'OK Glass' or raising the head
- The
21/02/13
After several leaks, Google has officially announced the Chromebook Pixel - a high-end premium notebook running Chrome OS. The laptop features a 2560x1700 touchscreen display, which, at 239 ppi, is packed with more pixels than the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. It has a dual-core 1.8GHz Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 32GB SSD in the WiFi model or 64GB SSD in the Verizon 4G LTE model (US only), with 1TB of Google Drive storage for 3 years thrown in! The WiFi model is available in the UK and US from today on Google Play for...
20/02/13
Ofcom's auction for 4G spectrum in the UK is over and managed to pull in £2.3 billion. EE, O2, 3, Vodafone and BT all managed to get a chunk of spectrum. Full 4G should be rolling out pretty soon in the UK - so look forward to fast speeds at competitive prices!
15/02/13
Sir Jony Ive, Apple's SVP of Industrial Design has been awarded the highly coveted gold Blue Peter badge. On the show, he reviewed some children's designs and even made a large Blue Peter badge from a solid block of aluminium using one of Apple's CNC machines.
14/02/13
A flaw has been found in iOS 6.1 that allows people to bypass the lock screen password and get into the Phone app, similar to the flaw found back in 4.1. The complicated process involves pretending to turn the phone off and making and quickly cancelling emergency calls. Watch this video for full instructions. I imagine that Apple will be quick to fix this in a future OS update.
13/02/13
Shortly after Tim Cook announced that they are 'making moves to make things more affordable', Apple has lowered the price of its 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display. The 128GB model now costs £1249 and the 256GB model costs £1449 and has had a slight processor bump to 2.6GHz dual-core. The 15-inch model has also been given an upgraded processor to 2.4GHz quad-core or 2.7GHz quad-core with 16GB RAM for the top-of-the-range model. The 256GB 13-inch MacBook Air has also had a price drop to £1199....
08/02/13
Apparently the BBC is trialling streaming shows on iPlayer before their actual broadcast time - awesome!
05/02/13
Instagram has launched a web feed, so you can now browse your Instagram on any device with a web connection. For me, the website is too inspired by the app for full screens so looks a bit empty on a larger screen but it's certainly better than nothing and I can see myself using this!
04/01/13
Three has announced that it will not charge extra for access to its 4G network after it launches later this year. A lot better than EE's high prices!
01/02/13
Ofcom is considering relaxing the restrictions on licences to the UK mobile spectrum, so that networks will be able to deploy 4G LTE service on their existing 2G and 3G networks. Great - time to give EE some competition!
31/01/13
Canadian electronics manufacturer Research In Motion, king of smartphones before the iPhone and Android came along, had a big announcement today. This may be RIM's last chance to save its struggling business. First off, the company will now be known as Blackberry, which is how most people already thought of them anyway. In my opinion, this is a great decision. Blackberry has announced two new phones, Q10 and Z10. The Q10 has a QWERTY keyboard, 3.1-inch 720x720 display, 2GB RAM, 1.5 GHz dual-core CPU and is 10.3mm thick and we...
25/01/13
I've just stumbled across Tracour, a website that tracks the accuracy of technology news websites and journalists. I think this is a great idea, given the way that almost every site regurgitates rumours without trying to confirm their accuracy. Hopefully the site (and their database) will grow as, unfortunately, they don't seem to have loads of information so far - most authors on the leaderboard have fewer than 10 rumours tracked. Great concept! I heard about this on the Windows Weekly podcast from Twit.tv.
24/01/13
Mobile carrier Safaricom has released Africa's first smartphone. It features Android Ice Cream Sandwich, the Intel Lexington Atom chip, a 3.5-inch screen, 1.2GHz processor, 320x240 display and support for dual-SIMs. Its name? The Yolo. You can't make this up.
18/01/13
Google is investing £650 million to consolidate its UK operations to a new headquarters in Central London, pretty cool!
17/01/13
EE has announced it is going to close 78 of its retail stores. Orange and T-Mobile stores have been converted to EE stores, and this has left stores in close proximity to each other. I have even seen two stores right next door to each other. The employees will be moved to other stores, so it's all good!
15/01/13
Facebook's 'see what we're building' event just finished. Zuckerberg and team announced, not the long-rumoured Facebook smartphone, but Graph Search, a new Facebook feature that will allow users to intelligently search through the mind-blowingly massive amount of data Facebook has, and show the data in a way that makes sense - "a completely new way for people to find information on Facebook." Users will only be able to see information that has been shared with them, controlled via the privacy settings. Zuck said "To give you a sense of how much work this is, already today across all of our data centers 10 percent...
10/01/13
Google is rolling out the ability for app developers to respond to user comments in the Android Play Store - awesome news! The inability to comment has hurt both developers and users alike, as developers have no way to respond to criticism and users may struggle to get support.
21/12/12
Facebook has launched its own Snapchat ripoff. Their app, cleverly named Poke, has pretty much the same features as Snapchat - including screenshot detection (although you can grab the file without alerting the sender) - but has the advantage (or maybe disadvantage) of integration with your Facebook account.
13/12/12
Google has released their Google Maps app for iOS. It took them 6 months to release it after Apple announced that the native app wouldn't use Google data, but I guess that iOS isn't the Android manufacturer's highest priority. This vector-based app features turn-by-turn navigation, transit and Street View. Google also released a Google Maps SDK for iOS alongside...
04/12/12
An update to the official YouTube iOS App has just hit the App Store. Apple removed the native YouTube app in iOS 6, and, although superior in some ways, Google's replacement app hasn't had the same polished experience. Today's update brings optimisation for iPhone 5 (full-screen video now looks wonderful) and iPad, which must be the most requested features. It also contains support for AirPlay streaming. Go and update now!
30/11/12
UI UX designer Stephen Levinson has created a cool concept for a redesigned Instagram interface. His concept design uses the screen space more effectively by utilising gestures for navigation, meaning there is more room for the main app functionality. UI design for smaller screens is clearly a big issue that is still being figured out. To me, this design looks a lot better and I think it goes a long way to improving the Instagram app. However, users unfamiliar with the gestural navigation may struggle to use the app.
29/11/12
After a month's delay, iTunes 11 was finally released today. Announced alongside the iPhone 5, the new iTunes sports a redesigned interface and improved functionality, including 'Up Next': which acts like a song queue, a new MiniPlayer and improved search. You can even redeem gift cards using your webcam! After trying it out, I am quite impressed. I like the new interface: it utilises the screen real estate more effectively by hiding the nav...
15/11/12
Spotify has started beta testing a web version. I think this will be really useful for Spotify users so that they can listen to music on computers that aren't their own more easily. Awesome! UPDATE: After trying it out, it seems pretty cool and I'll definitely be using it in the future. To get in on the beta, click this link while you're logged in to Facebook.
14/11/12
A security issue has been found in the Skype password recovery function that allows a password to be reset with just a Skype username and associated email address. Skype has suspended all password resets until this hole is fixed.
13/11/12
Steven Sinofsky, head of Windows at Microsoft, has left the company. Reportedly, it has nothing to do with the Windows 8 or Microsoft Surface launch and is because of personality clashes within the company.
07/11/12
Microsoft Office apps are coming to iOS, Android and Windows Phone early next year! Great news in the post-PC world. Unfortunately, you will need an Office 365 subscription to edit documents but you should be able to view documents for free!
29/10/12
Google announced an update to Android Jelly Bean - version 4.2. Updates include improved panoramic camera - Photo Sphere, lockscreen improvements, support for multiple users on tablets, improvements to Google Now and smarter keyboard with Gesture Typing.
16/10/12
Mark your calendars, invitations have been sent out for an Apple event in a week (October 23rd). We anticipate a smaller iPad Mini, maybe a 13-inch retina MacBook Pro and maybe even new mac desktops.
12/09/12
Apple had their big product announcement today - and I was impressed. Some of the things they announced were expected, some were unexpected. All were improvements and I was, overall, impressed. Without further ado, here are the announcements:
- 7 million Mountain Lion downloads. 17 million iPads sold during the last quarter. iPad has 68% market share and 91% web traffic share. There are 700,000 apps in the App Store, 250,000 of which are iPad apps.
- iPhone 5 - as expected, a new, 4G LTE, 4-inch i
11/09/12
Everything Everywhere has revealed its plans for its 4G network ahead of the anticipated 4G iPhone announcement taking place tomorrow. Its 4G network will be switched on today, initially in 4 cities. It should cover 16 cities, 20 million people, by Christmas, with plans to cover 98% of the population in 2014. The network will be super-fast - rivalling home broadband speed. Their new brand, EE, will replace the name Everything Everywhere as a new mobile network and business. Phones from...
06/09/12
Amazon today released an all-new Kindle model - the Kindle Paperwhite - so-called due to its improved display with higher pixel density (212 ppi) and improved contrast (black on white). It's completely touchscreen-controlled and has a new patented light guide technology to keep lighting even across the screen - and it doesn't affect battery life. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos described the new device as "thinner than a magazine, lighter than a paperback." The WiFi model will cost $119 and the 3G model will cost $1...
04/09/12
Invitations have been sent out for Apple's 'new iPhone' event, set for September 12th. The big number five in the invitation could suggest that the new iPhone will be named the iPhone 5, although this may not be the case given the the latest iPad model dropped the number from its name. I expected the invitations to drop tomorrow as Apple's invitations are typically sent out one week prior to the event and the news cycle is still catching up with the labour day news from yesterday. The new iPhone is expected to have a similar design to the 4 and 4S, although growing to a 16:9 aspect ratio, support 4G LTE network...
24/08/12
The jury has come to a verdict in the Apple v. Samsung trial. Judge Lucy Koh announced the decision - which came out massively in favour of Apple. Samsung was found to have willingly violated 5 of 7 of Apple's patents (including pinch-to-zoom and bounceback) and Samsung was found to have diluted Apple's trade dress. Apple was awarded $1,049,343,540 ($1.05 billion) in damages - a gigantic sum. Apple was found not to have violated Samsung's patents and Samsung was awarded $0 in damages. I don't know what...
23/08/12
Facebook updated its iOS app to version 5.0 today. The new version is greatly improved to use more native functions and, having tried it out, I can say that it is much, much faster. Go and get your update from the App Store now!
21/08/12
Ofcom has approved plans for Everything Everywhere to roll out 4G service using its 1800 MHz spectrum. Although this doesn't seem particularly fair to the other phone networks (Vodafone has said it is 'frankly shocked'), it will be good for me as an Orange customer! Hopefully the next iPhone will have 4G capability.
25/07/12
There's this really cool app called Chirp which allows you to transmit photos, notes and links by playing a birdsong sound, which nearby devices also running the app detect and download the associated content. It's not just a novel idea, it also has advantages over other methods of sending data, such as being able to transmit data to many users at once without needing to authenticate. It could even be broadcast over a speaker system or livestream to send data to people out of the device's speaker's range. The app was developed by Animal System...
28/06/12
Day 2 at Google I/O 2012 had news and announcements about Google Chrome, Google Drive, Google Chrome OS and more skydiving!: Google Chrome:
- 310 million people are now using Chrome, up from 160 million users last year
- Google Chrome app for iOS - universal app that works with iPad too, featuring Chrome Sync and incognito mode. Release
27/06/12
Google I/O 2012 started today at the Moscone Center and day 1 brought loads of announcements relating to Android, Google+ and Project Glass: Android 4.1 - Jelly Bean:
- Project Butter - making Android UI more responsive and smoother
- Improved alignment of widgets within homescreens
- Improved keyboard: word predictions, offline voice dictation (initially US English only) and more input languages
- Improved accessibility: gesture mode to help blind people, support for
24/06/12
Looks like Google will be bringing their own Google Maps app to iOS! This is something I expected after Apple announced they will be moving to their own mapping technology in iOS 6, but it's good that there will be some decent (and, presumably, free) competition to the native Maps app. Hopefully this will launch in time for iOS 6's release. I wonder if Google will have a trick up their sleeve - turn-by-turn directions perhaps? And will they update one of their existing apps (e.g. Go...
15/06/12
Reports are coming in that Apple will include a 'Podcasts' app in iOS 6 - where users can download and listen to podcasts. I'll admit, native podcast support in iOS 6 has been quite lacking to date, but I can't see why Apple would do this. On Windows and OS X, podcasts are managed within the iTunes app, as are music and videos. Why can't it be like this on iOS too? Apple could roll the Music, Videos and Podcasts apps into their iTunes app (and change the icon to the same as the desktop one) - simplifying the experience for the user. Make it have the same interface as the Music app. It already has a 'Store' but...
12/06/12
Apple's WWDC keynote was today and it sure did not disappoint! I'll write a blog post about it when I watch the video of the keynote (and I imagine it'll be a long blog post) but I wanted to say that the new MacBook Pro model looks awesome - it's exactly the machine I was hoping for!
01/06/12
Looks like Facebook integration may be coming in iOS 6 - which should be pretty awesome! Tim Cook hinted towards this recently, so this rumour appears to be quite credible. I imagine we'll find out at WWDC 2012 in a couple of weeks!
24/05/12
The mobile app Bump has been updated today to allow you to bump photos from your mobile device to your computer! It's an incredibly simple 3 step process:
- Go to bu.mp in your web browser on your computer (allowing it access to your location)
- Select the photos your want to send in the Bump app
- Tap space bar on your computer with your phone
18/05/12
My friend showed me this awesome game today. It's called Mari0 and it's a crossover of Super Mario Bros and Portal. It's super fun and available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. Download it here.
12/05/12
Dropbox's 2012 Dropquest is just about to kick off - go and take part and get yourself an extra GB space (or more) now!
22/03/12
Adobe Photoshop CS6 beta is now available for download. The new content aware move feature looks like it should be awesome but from my tests it hasn't worked properly as it always leaves a 'ghost' of what it is moving. Hopefully they'll be able to sort this out before the final release.
08/03/12
Orange has been suffering from outages today. I'm actually quite relieved, I was worried that iOS 5.1 (which came out yesterday!) might have some bugs breaking my data connection.
01/03/12
If you have 20 minutes, watch this fascinating interview with Megaupload's Kim Dotcom, it's definitely worthwhile
28/02/12
The iPad 3 announcement will be on March 7th, 8 days 45 minutes and counting... can't wait!
25/02/12
I've found this awesome website where you can take a free 'Computer Science 101' course that teaches you to create a Search Engine in Python. I'm doing it right now!
05/10/11
RIP Steve Jobs, you will be missed and you have changed the world. May your legacy live on.
04/10/11
Apple's 'Let's talk iPhone' announcement just finished.
- Apple will launch a new app called 'Find my Friends' which will show where your friends are on a map
- iOS 5 will launch on the 12th
- The iPod Touch now has a white model and has had a price drop
- The new iPhone is called the iPhone 4S. It has a 8MP camera, 1080p video with image stabilisation, a dual core A5 chip, and Siri - a new way to control your iPhone with your voice. There will be 16, 32 and 64GB models. Available for preorder on the 7th and ships on the 14th
28/09/11
Amazon has dominated the tech news today, announcing 3 new devices: a 7-inch tablet called the 'Kindle Fire' for $199, a touchscreen Kindle device called the Kindle Touch for $99 (3G model costs $149) and an all new Kindle for $79.
27/09/11
There will be an iPhone announcement in a week: next Tuesday (4/10/11), 10am PT (6pm BST) at Apple's Cupertino Campus. I love Apple's creative invitation, they managed to condense this information into 4 app icons. Can't wait!
15/09/11
After spending hours repartitioning, then fixing disk errors with chkdsk and SpinRite, I've almost got everything working. I have Windows 8 and Windows 7 dual booted successfully. The only thing that doesn't work is my iTunes library. It seems that when I launched iTunes before the disk errors were fixed, it saw my library wasn't reading and deleted it and replaced it with a new one. Hopefully restoring from backup will fix that. If that doesn't work, it will be a real pain. I'll lose everything on my devices. If you have any ideas, please contact me...
13/09/11
Windows 8 developer preview will be released later today (early tomorrow in the UK) from dev.windows.com! I can't wait to get my hands on it and give it a go
24/08/11
Steve Jobs has just resigned from his position as CEO of Apple. Steve, good luck with your health. You are a remarkable man who has managed to turn Apple around. I hope Tim Cook is able to do as good a job.
24/06/11
Use this website to find out whether your email address/password was leaked in a recent hack
09/06/11
People are really freaking out about Facebook enabling facial recognition to aid users to tag their friends in photos. They're saying it's a violation of privacy, and here's why I disagree:
- This functionality is already available - e.g. in iPhoto, Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery
- Th
05/06/11
By now you've probably heard about the MACDefender/MacGuard malware, but I just wanted to share my two cents. OS X has always been hailed as 'securer' than Windows due to its significantly smaller user-base. What's the point in targeting malware at such a small minority when Windows dominates the market? However, it is common knowledge that there are millions of Windows malware floating around the internet, so if you run Windows it is important to pro...
26/05/11
This website is pretty awesome. Sometimes I'm stuck using a computer that isn't my own and have the urge to write out some code. This is sure better than notepad!
25/05/11
LTE is finally coming to the UK! Look like it'll take a while to roll-out nation-wide though
20/05/11
Orange and Barclaycard are teaming together to bring NFC payments to the UK. Although I am on Orange, unfortunately I'm not a Barclaycard customer. Hopefully this'll become widely available
19/05/11
Gawker mobile sites received a much needed update today, and they are definitely improved. Give them a go! Gizmodo and Lifehacker
11/05/11
Day 2 at Google I/O is all about Chrome and the web:
- Lots of updates on Chrome's progress in the past year
- Google will take 5% of in-app purchases from the Chrome Web Store
- Angry Birds coming to the Web Store
- Chrome OS will be coming next month on "Chromebooks" from Samsung and Acer. There will also be a desktop version (Chromeboxes)
10/05/11
Loads of news out of Google I/O which started today:
- Google Music - pretty much like Amazon's Cloud Drive. It will allow you to upload 20,000 songs and stream them to your devices using Flash or an Android App
- Android 3.1 and Ice Cream Sandwich (version number hasn't been announced yet) will be awesome, allowing USB devices to interface direct with devices (think transferring pictures from your camera, playing games
06/05/11
This website is epic! My AS exams are pretty close now and this generated a revision timetable for me. Enter in when your exams are and when you're going to be busy, and this spits out a revision timetable!
30/03/11
Some clever people hacked together the iPad's HDMI out and a wireless HDMI transmitter to get full 1080p video mirroring out of iPad. It's not pretty and it adds thickness to the iPad, but it sure is genius.
28/03/11
All the rumour sites are saying the next iPhone won't be announced at WWDC this year. I'm hoping this is just a rumour, but maybe a later release date means more fine-tuning and a better iPhone?
26/03/11
The iPad 2 launched in the UK yesterday and I've finally tried it out. I agree, it's more evolutionary than revolutionary, but still, it's awesome. Photobooth is such a cool demo that really shows off the new A5 chip, which makes everything more snappy
22/03/11
Firefox 4.0 was officially released today and I've been trying it out. Overall it seems quite fast and the new tab panorama feature is really cool. Give it a go yourself at the source link below.
17/03/11
A recent hobby of mine is the Rubik's Cube. I love it! I followed Dan Brown's wonderful series of video tutorials and I'm making good progress in improving my solve time. Today I made a utility to randomly generate an algorithm to scramble the cube after you solve it. Try it out!
07/03/11
This rock-paper-scissors game is actually really smart. It collates data from previous moves to predict your actions, and it's right more often than wrong!
02/03/11
The iPad 2 is here:
- New processor - dual core combined A5 CPU/GPU chip
- Front and back-facing cameras
- Gyroscope
- 33% thinner
- 0.2 pounds lighter
- White.. from day 1!
28/02/11
Could this be the start of Apple stealing* Android's features? * As in "Good artists copy; great artists steal."
21/02/11
This dad made his son an Angry Birds birthday cake for his 6th birthday. Wow, just wow. UPDATE: He has instructions on how to do it!
18/02/11
How did a company specialising in technology security manage to have such a lack of security? CMS SQL injection, unsalted hashing, weak passwords, reusing passwords, social engineering, unpatched systems. Seriously, these are supposed to be security experts and some pretty basic stuff allowed their site to be hacked. Don't mess with Anonymous
17/02/11
IBM's supercomputer - Watson - wins the Jeopardy game show, showing another advance in computing
16/02/11
Mozilla have a very informative article about why IE9 is not a modern browser in terms of HTML5 and CSS3 implementation
15/02/11
Apple's stopping jailbroken users from reading DRMed e-books. That's right, e-books that the user paid for, most likely from Apple's own iBookstore. This just gives people a reason to pirate e-books rather than buy them. How about you actually add the awesome features you can get from jailbreaking to iOS, so people won't jailbreak?
14/02/11
There's this rather awesome iPhone dock on Indiegogo called Satarii Star. It's already reached its $20,000 goal but you should watch the video and maybe donate, it's simple yet ingenuous. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!
11/02/11
AT&T is trying desperately to stop its customers flocking to Verizon. How about improving your network rather than offering useless deals? 1000 minutes are useless if you can't make a phonecall...
10/02/11
Microsoft's trying to guarantee Windows Phone 7's failure. They still haven't added basic functionality to their mobile OS. Come on, if you want to catch up to the competition, then innovate, quick.
09/02/11
The new Google Translate app is awesome. I can imagine using it abroad, conversing with someone without a mutual language.
08/02/11
BBC are finally bringing out an iPlayer app! It looks so awesome. Fingers crossed for an iPhone app and download functionality for offline/better watching
07/02/11
The Gawker websites have undergone a major redesign today and it really looks like they took advice from Digg. That's right, I hate the it. Hopefully they can fix the issues soon. Update: They've now fixed a lot of bugs and I can see how this will work better in the future. Wish they'd ironed out most of the bugs before shipping.