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Category: Technology

  • TechCon 2016 – The Return

    One of the casualties of the changes surrounding the Radio Academy was that TechCon, the one day conference about radio and audio technology, fell by the wayside. Fortunately, it was gamely picked up by Ann Charles, Aradhna Tayal and Andy Buckingham, who took the conference independent. Running a conference is not for the faint-hearted, with…

  • Getting Rid of Preinstalled Apps on an HTC 10

    This is really just a short blog to explain one of the most annoying things on my otherwise excellent HTC 10. The phone comes with a number of preinstalled apps, whether you want them or not. That’s not unusual for Android phones. Aside from Google’s own devices, it’s as common as the crapware you get…

  • HTC 10 – Initial Thoughts

    This is my fifth HTC device, although it has been a while since my last. That was an HTC One X, which was pretty decent in its day, although the camera was fairly average. Sometime before that, I also owned an HTC Desire, Orange SPV 500 (aka the HTC Typhoon) and an Orange SPV M500…

  • Euro 2016 – Staying on TV

    As Euro 2016 kicks off in France tonight, my inbox has become flooded with nonsense PR stories. My email address has recently been sold to a number of PR agencies and I get a wide variety of emails asking me if I’m interested in writing about things I’m not interested in writing about. I silently…

  • Unconvinced by Virtual Reality

    Last week Oculus Rift finally started shipping consumer units, two and a half years after it first appeared on Kickstarter. This week the HTC Vive has been launched, part of a system that includes motion tracking. Sony is readying a VR PlayStation add-on for imminent release. And then we’ve had both Google Cardboard and iterations…

  • Capturing MiniDV Tapes

    Time flies in technology, and “old” formats get left behind frighteningly quickly. Here’s my problem. I have a box of perhaps 100 Mini DV video tapes. They were shot with a camera that still works, and I want to capture the files into a digital format for preservation (I will hang onto the tapes as…

  • Data Protection

    It’s a truth that however careful we are with our own data, some company, organisation or government body will probably be hacked and “give away” our data. Case in point – Carphone Warehouse. Now I’ve never bought a phone at the Carphone Warehouse. I might have bought the odd accessory, but that’s about it. However…

  • Following the Tour de France

    And by that, I mean “following it from afar” not being at the race itself. The Tour de France takes place over three weeks, including four weekends. That equates to 21 stages and two rest days. If you’re not on a roadside somewhere watching the race, then you’re going to be following the race remotely.…

  • Thoughts on Tidal and Streaming Music Services

    I’m still not really clear about Tidal – the music streaming service. There was some kind of hideous press conference with lots of very successful – i.e. rich – artists talking banalities earlier this week in New York. But at this stage, a streaming music service really needs to have a point of difference compared…

  • Streaming TV Boxes

    So here’s a question. You live in the UK, and you want to buy a cheap streaming box to pop under your TV and get all the main channels. Perhaps you don’t have a smart TV, or it’s not smart enough and doesn’t have the features you really want. There’s a plethora of devices hitting…

  • Watching HD TV

    At home, I have two ways to watch broadcast HD television. I can either watch via Freeview or Sky HD (Strictly speaking, my TV also has Freesat built in, but I’ve never enabled it). In a Freeview world, should I chose to watch one of the biggest channels: BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4 or C5 I…

  • Trademark Issues Ahead?

    Mobile operator Orange – now EE – has recently ended its sponsorship of UK cinemas’ “Orange Wednesdays” which for ten years got you 2 for 1 cinema tickets every Wednesday – a day which is traditionally a quiet day with new releases coming just ahead. So it was interesting to read that the replacement is…

  • A Portable Music Player

    When I was thinking about my future options for a home for my digital music library once I’ve breached Google’s 20,000 song limit, I also mentioned in passing the sad death of the iPod Classic – i.e. the iPod. If reports are to be believed, the remaining iPod Classics in the retail system were swiftly…