> The latest tech news of today:
How to get to the top 25 in the App store
What do you need to be really popular on Apple’s App store and to get into the overall "top free 25," list?The answer is in the US, you need to have at least 38,400 free daily downloads, or 3,530 paid downloads, according to some ball park** figures released by app analysts Distimo.
News in Brief: One More Thing: Woz goes to the movies
Woz Woz Ere – Sony has hired Steve ‘The Wozinator’ Wozniak to act as an advisor on its upcoming Sorkin-penned Steve Jobs: The Movie. So who will he be pitching to play him? We can’t think of anyone. Woz is inimitable. He’ll just have to play himself. [Gizmodo UK]
Explained: Honda UNI-CUB: what is it and why would you want one?
If you’ve ever thought "wouldn’t it be great if I could move around the place merely by twitching my buttocks?" then we’ve got good news for you: the Honda UNI-CUB could well be the answer to your lazy prayers. It’s a "personal mobility device" that enables you to scoot about the place like something out of WALL-E. So what is it, and why has Honda built it?
Business App of the week – Telmap Navigator for Blackberry
Telmap Navigator has been around for a long time as a standalone application – we reviewed it back in 2007 – but now it’s free and it’s available as a dedicated Blackberry app.
Inflatable Lake Slide
I don’t suppose you own a lake, but if you do and you absolutely loathe fishing, then you ought to seriously consider getting the $499.95 Inflatable Lake Slide from Hammacher. After all, this inflatable slide will usher in a summer of fun, considering how it can be quickly attached to a lakeside dock or landing in order to deliver exhilarating descents of hyperactive kids and adults right into the water. Using reinforced PVC as the material of choice, it is capable of handling plenty of wear and tear, defying abrasions in the process, while being specially coated for UV protection so that it does not deteriorate even when placed under the sun for long periods of time.
Hands-on review: Leica M Monochrom
Although it is based on the Leica M9, the Leica M Monochrom has no colour filter array, so it can only record black and white images.
How to use Google Docs in your business
Does your business really need a copy of Microsoft’s Office? Google Docs could deliver the office suite your enterprise needs and all for free
For decades Microsoft’s Office Suite reigned supreme. Every business uses a word processor and spreadsheet, and with few alternatives, Office had become the default choice. However, as the Internet – and the business services it could deliver – expanded, many began to question whether an installed application like Microsoft Word was able to deliver the services businesses today need.
Review: Sony KDL-46HX853
Introduction
With the latest TV ranges from Samsung and LG already out and attracting mostly positive critical notices, the pressure on Sony’s debut TV for 2012 really couldn’t be any greater. Especially with Sony’s TV business contributing spectacularly to the brand’s latest round of cataclysmic operating losses.
Week in Tech: Texting while walking, Samsung and stalking
Week in tech
There’s been so much happening this week that we’ve been moved to rhyme. We discovered that the Galaxy S3 is perfect for stalking, New Jersey’s banned people texting while walking, we’ve seen new phones from ZTE and LG and the Beeb says we’ll all get Olympics in HD.
Review: Toshiba BDX5300
Introduction
Ease of use increasingly makes or breaks electronic products, but with the Toshiba BDX5300 Blu-ray player, Toshiba is hoping there are shoppers out there who still put core features and a low price at the top of their wish lists.
Review: Toshiba BDX3300
Introduction
Aside from the odd show-off product, such as the Toshiba Excite 13, Toshiba is a brand that’s largely been focused on good value rather than breaking new ground, and the Toshiba BDX3300 Blu-ray player is a spectacular example of its signature ‘everyman’ efforts.
Should businesses bother with Facebook advertising?
The Facebook floatation today is set to make founder Mark Zuckerberg one of the wealthiest men on the planet, and give Facebook a war chest big enough to enable Facebook to buy any company they want. However a survey by Greenlight shows that Facebook may have some work to do in persuading advertisers that the site is a credible alternative to other forms of internet advertising.
Review: Asus EA-N66 Ethernet Adaptor
We expect wireless access everywhere, and the Asus EA-N66 Ethernet Adaptor promises just that. Despite all the advances of wireless 802.11n, walls and distance still conspire to kill your router’s reception dead.
Are you ready for iTV-Commerce?
One in four people will regularly use interactive TV – something we’re dubbing iTV-Commerce – to shop by the end of 2014, generating direct sales worth nearly £750m.
The rise of the Internet connected TV will make it the most influential of five emerging new technologies identified in an eBay-commissioned study carried out by retail experts Conlumino.
Small firms in the UK buck the recession
Despite the worst recession in 60 years, and Greece almost bringing the downfall of the Euro, there are currently 4000 businesses demonstrating high levels of growth across the UK, according to the government-backed Business Growth Fund (BGF)
Review: Fatman Mi-Tube
Ever since the Fatman brand was founded in 2006, its mission has been to marry upstart digital devices such as the iPod and iPhone with vacuum tube amplifying technology, bringing both a much-needed boost in perceived audio quality to the former and some street cred to the latter – as we saw with the Fatman Mi-Tube’s sibling the iTube 452.
Hands-on review: Sony Vaio T13
Sony announced its debut Intel Ultrabook earlier this month – the Sony Vaio T13 – and we got up close and personal with the new machine at an event in London.
Review: PS Vita Starter Kit
If you’ve already dropped something in the region of £200 on Sony’s PS Vita, it might make sense to consider spending a few units more on some accessories.
The PS Vita Starter Kit includes a wrist strap, a cleaning cloth, a soft carry pouch, a travel case, a memory card case and a protective screen cover. This is the kind of stuff that you would probably have liked to see include with the console, but at £15 we reckon it’s pretty good value.
Businesses face Olympic disruption
The Olympic flame is on its way to the UK, and so starts the countdown to several months’ worth of travel disruption throughout the UK. So why not practice for the disruption during tomorrows National Work from Home day, and to help things along Citrix are offering 90 day free trials to its online collaboration software.
Review: Panasonic TX-L42DT50B
Introduction
Did someone at Panasonic just get a degree in design? After spending most of the last 15 years concentrating primarily on plasma TV tech, but also on producing arguably the most consistent picture quality across the board, the Japanese brand has suddenly gone all arty on us.
News in Brief: One More Thing: Incredible robotic arm reads minds
BrainGate – Cathy Hutchinson’s arms and legs have been paralysed for over 15 years but this incredible brain-machine interface allows her to control a robotic arm by thought alone. There’s a sensor in the motor cortex part of her brain that picks up nerve signals when Cathy thinks about moving her own limbs and a decoder then translates the signals into commands that the robotic arm carries out. Now that’s what we call technology. Amazing. [Reuters]
Marshall Headphones Pitch Black hits the market
Headphones are an extremely personal piece of gaming equipment, so each brand has their very own loyal following, and the same can also be said of the Marshall Headphones Pitch Black that have just been introduced to the mass market. I know that Jim Marshall has recently passed on, and the Marshall Headphones Pitch Black, on paper, does not seem to sully his legendary name, but rather enhances it further.
Exclusive: PayPal ‘flattered’ by arrival of O2 Wallet and Pingit
PayPal has told TechRadar that it is "flattered" that the likes of Barclay’s Pingit and the O2 Wallet have arrived as competitors to an app that it launched in 2008.
ROCCAT Savu hybrid gaming mouse
The release of Diablo 3 just a few days ago would definitely have seen an uptick in sales of gaming peripherals, including gaming mice and keyboards, as geeks everywhere unit to click their way to victory, killing off a far more feminine looking Diablo (although he does seem to be more powerful – you know what they say about hell having no fury like that of a woman scorned). I am not quite sure just how many other mice actually bit the dust during the recent Diablo 3 release, but if you are in the market to pick up a new gaming mouse just for the occasion, then you might want to consider the mid-sized ROCCAT Savu hybrid gaming mouse.
Limited Edition P-body Portal Gun Replica
Fans of video games, comics and movies tend to have one thing in common, especially the hard core ones, as they have a slew of collectibles to pick up assuming some manufacturer somewhere in China wants to take up the task. Here is the $139.99 Limited Edition P-body Portal Gun Replica that says it all – it is an exact 1:1 scale replica of the P-Body’s Handheld Portal Device, and you need not use your imagination and waste your saliva in making sounds as you fire it, since it will feature red and orange LEDs alongside the ability to emit firing sounds.
Review: Toshiba 55ZL2
Introduction
Well here’s something you don’t see every day. A TV that not only enables you to watch 3D without any glasses on, but also sports a native Quad HD or 4K resolution.
Inflatable iMusic Chair
There is nothing quite like the feeling of sinking down on your favorite chair at the end of a hard day’s work, sipping on a cup of your favorite beverage while you are at it. Instead of forking out plenty of money for a La-Z-Boy chair as well as a Bang & Olufsen sound system, you might want to play around with your budget a little bit with the $39.99 Inflatable iMusic Chair. Yes sir, not only does this piece of furniture save space whenever you are not using it (it is inflatable, after all, and can be deflated for easy storage), it is also highly affordable and will be compatible with most smartphones, portable media players and MP3 players, as long as they work with the 3.5mm jack.
Budget Mifi coming soon to Three
Three, have announced they’re to launch a new value model MiFi, that will offer wireless internet access for multiple devices at a much more small business friendly price point.
The new device will have the same functionality as the award-winning Huawei E586, which Three currently sells for £49.95 on a one month contract, or free on a 18-month, £10.87 per month, 1Gb contract.
Consumers dump slow websites
Almost four out of five web users were annoyed as a result of a slow or unreliable website, and over two out five men and one in three women decided not to use a company again as a result of an overly slow website.
According to research released today by web hosts 1&1 Internet, slow and unreliable websites are still a major gripe for UK users. With nearly three quarters (71 percent) of UK web users regularly inconvenienced by slow running websites.
Get your Facebook Page stats on iPhone
Facebook is testing a new Pages management app for the iPhone and iPad. The app, called Pages Manager, is available in New Zealand but could roll out more widely soon.
The official description of the app is; "A new app from Facebook to help you keep up with your Page and connect with your audience in one place."
Review: Gigabyte HD 7850 Overclock
The sub-£200 graphics market is where the bulk of most PC gamers’ cards come from. And the new Gigabyte Radeon HD 7850 OC just manages to sneak in under that all-important price.
Since the original AMD Radeon HD 7850 landed in March, we’ve seen it as an ideal card to drop into a very capable mid-range gaming machine. If you’re rocking a 1080p display, this card will happily dish up the frame rates to keep things silky smooth. It was also a very good overclocking GPU, and even with smaller, redesigned PCBs like the one supporting this Gigabyte chip, it has the chops to push the speeds up higher.
Hands-on review: Sony Alpha 37
Hands-on review: Sony NEX-F3
At first glance, the Sony NEX-F3 looks very similar to the Sony NEX-C3 that it replaces, but we discovered there are a few key differences when we used a pre-production sample.
Review: Plantronics BackBeat Go
Shopping for a stereo Bluetooth headset can be hit or miss. When looking for the best solution, do you choose a product made by a company known for their commitment and mastery of audio technology or one that is known for their Bluetooth technology?
Entrepreneurs think UK investors are scared of investing
Many UK entrepreneurs now believe that funding is more freely available in the US, from investors who are less risk-averse and more tuned-in to the industry.
Three out of five entrepreneurs believed that US investors are more ready and willing to embrace risk than their UK counterparts, and that negative attitudes to failure discourage entrepreneurship in the UK. In contrast, readiness to embrace failure was regarded as being especially strong in Silicon Valley.
iDermal – The Latest in High Tech Body Modification
Okay, so in case you missed it, I just did a post on wearable technology, but what if you didn’t want to wait till the end of this year, or simply didn’t want to shell out the big bucks to have a computer contained within your eyeglass lens, or neatly strapped to your wrist? Well, there is another option.
Website traffic from tablets will surpass smartphones
Tablets are transforming how consumers and brands interact on the web, offering an experience that’s more engaging than smartphones and competitive to desktop computers.
Adobe’s latest Digital Index Report has predicted a rosy future for the tablet market, as it predicts visits to websites by tablet owners will surpass smartphone visits by January 2013, and will account for 10% of website visits by early 2014.
Britain’s businesses are losing talent
A survey by Vodafone finds that UK businesses are gradually accepting that they need to plan for IT loss and failure, but are hopeless when it comes to losing staff.
Google’s Project Glass – Welcome to the Future
Imagine this if you will, you’re walking down the street engaged in a video chat with your friend, who is 6000 miles away, taking pictures and planning your day when you realize you don’t know where you are, as you look up and to the right a computer screen appears in your line of vision, and you ask it to find the nearest subway station, and it does. The coolest part of this story is that this technology is out on our streets, right now.
Review: Kodak ESP 3.2
Introduction
With a suggested retail price of £79 in the UK and $99.99 in the US, the Kodak ESP 3.2 finds itself joining the entry-level multi-function printer fight.
Taking on the likes of the ridiculously cheap HP Photosmart 5510 and the Canon Pixma MG3120, the Kodak ESP 3.2 offers a competitive set of features at an affordable initial cost.
Review: Kodak ESP 1.2
Introduction
Priced at £69 in the UK (about $110), there’s little to separate the Kodak ESP 1.2 all-in-one printer from its stablemate, the ESP 3.2, which costs £79 in the UK and $99.99 in the US.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is the lightest Ultrabook in the market
We all know that Ultrabooks came about as a response to the Apple MacBook Air, where the latter was amazingly thin, so much so that there were reports online that some people tossed out their MacBook Air alongside a stack of newspapers simply because it was too thin to be noticed. Well, Ultrabooks have come some way since it was introduced not too long ago, and the thin form factor remains a prevalent design theme that is set to stay. What needs to change, however, is the type of hardware that is stashed inside, and Lenovo has just offered the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, touting it to be the lightest Ultrabook in the market at press time.
LG Optimus 4X HD to arrive in Europe soon
LG has announced that its Optimus 4X HD, first revealed to the world at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, in February this year, is finally about to make its debut in the world markets – starting with Western Europe first. Just what kind of hardware does the LG Optimus 4X HD carry? Let us go through a little bit of a refresher here – you will, of course, get the uber speedy NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, not to mention the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system right out of the box so that you need not wait for any software update after that.
