Category: Technology
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HTC One X – Some Initial Thoughts
I’ve finally upgraded my by now venerable HTC Desire. In choosing a new phone, I knew it had to do a number of things. It was almost certainly going to be an Android device. It was certainly not going to be an iOs device (If I buy a computer, I get to choose what I…
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Games on the High Street
Now I’m not much of a gamer these days. I take a broad interest in the industry and perhaps buy one – maybe two – games a year. I have an Xbox 360, but my Wii hasn’t been switched on in many months. Anyway, I say this as I’m vaguely aware that Mass Effects 3…
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Promise TV
[I wrote this on Google+, but decided it should probably exist, in a revised version, here too] I remember hearing about Promise TV several years ago at Open Tech 2005, so it’s nice to see that there’s a real product now available to buy. In essence they’ve built a Freeview recorder that records every programme…
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Apple and its Suppliers
Apple has just announced some staggering profits. $13bn in the last three months alone. Once again, it’s close to being the most valuable company on the planet. Earlier this week, the New York Times published this devastating report on Apple’s suppliers, including Foxconn, and the pressures it puts to bear on its employees. Then there’s…
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Two Screen TV
At the end of Sherlock on Sunday I picked up my phone and pulled up Twitter to see what everyone had been saying about it. Since I’d watched it live, there was a lot of #sherlock activity. Amongst people I follow it was very popular. That’s not surprising – it’s excellent! But then I started…
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Google Reader
I’ve been shut away at the Radio Festival for the last few days (more about that soon), and since I was largely using a tablet computer there, I hadn’t yet properly used the new “improved” Google Reader until today. I’m late to the party, although it seems that basically nobody who actually uses Google Reader,…
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New Amazon Kindles and Pricing
So Amazon, as widely expected, has announced details of its new range of Kindles. There are four of them: Kindle at $79 Kindle Touch (WiFi) at $99 Kindle Touch (WiFi + 3G) at $149 Kindle Fire (their colour tablet) at $199 Woohoo. Let me order one immediately. Ah. But they’re mostly only available in the…
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A Plea To Android App Developers
I own an HTC Desire. It was one of the earlier Android phones, and was the top of the range phone from HTC at the time. Overall I love the phone. I still love it. I’ve managed – touch wood – not to crack the screen, unlike so many of my iPhone owning friends. HTC…
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All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
I am very excited about this: It starts on Monday 23rd May at 9pm on BBC2.
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What Do I Do With My Music?
I’m facing a dilemma. I’m wondering whether I should ditch Apple for my music needs… Here’s where I am, as Duncan Bannatyne might say: I use iTunes to manage my music and audio. I have over 160GB of music/audio. Partly because I have a “reasonable” amount of music; partly because I rip that music at…
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The Dangers of the Cloud
Putting all your worldly goods into the “cloud” is brilliant isn’t it? You simply upload, documents, music, files, pictures, movies, whatever… onto one of the many cloud based hosting sites. After all, it’s fiddly, time-consuming, and often expensive to sort out your own hosting solutions. And putting your documents in the cloud brings with it…
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Kindle Pricing
Interesting news emerges from the US, where Amazon has decided to release a lower priced Kindle. The base model wi-fi only Kindle was $139, but Amazon is now retailing a $114 version which comes “with Special Offers”. That effectively means GroupOn style one-off discounts and other advertising messages. A couple of things occur to me:…
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Serendipity Redux
No, not a very poor film in John Cusack’s ouevre. noun the occurance and development of events by chance in a happy and beneficial way I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. This is something that sadly the internet is not able to deal with effectively in certain areas. I’m going to talk…