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Zath’s Technology & Gadget Roundup (20/02/2010)

It’s the end of another week in the online world of hi-tech gadgets and technology blogging and as usual there’s been a lot happening out there, so here’s a quick roundup of some of the stuff that we’ve found particularly interesting this week, let us know what you think to them too!

Linux Training Week on Zath – I’m sure we’ve all heard of Linux, but for me personally it’s not something I’ve ever seriously looked at because I always assumed it wasn’t worth the hassle of installation for something that wasn’t that worthwhile, well clearly I was wrong on that one! As you can see from this useful series of articles about the Ubuntu distribution of Linux – it’s easy to setup Ubuntu, it’s an easy to use the Ubuntu interface and there’s lots of software available for Linux.

Heineken Beer-Serving Robot of the Future – oh yes that’s right, in the future we won’t need to get up from the comfort of the sofa, instead the robots will bring the beer to us! This particular robot makes for a great novelty, but it does make you wonder about the potential of robots in the future.

Buy Walkie Talkie Watches? – admittedly walkie talkies aren’t exactly hi-tech these days or even that wanted by people now we all have modern mobile phones such as the iPhone 3GS and Nexus One, but these particular ones can be strapped on your wrist and would make for great free-to-use communication devices if you like to be out in the great outdoors or perhaps having a multi-car roadtrip given they have a range of up to 5km. I just wish I had some of these back when I was a kid!

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Facebook For Microsoft Silverlight Beta Client Released

All the news this past week has been about the Apple iPad announcement, and the exclusion of Flash from the device. We all know that Flash is an integral part of browsing the web, but it faces more competition in the future, with the capabilities of HTML 5 threatening the main advantages of the platform and a certain Microsoft Silverlight, which may not make the news very often, but has certainly come on by leaps and bounds if their latest creation is anything to go by.

I’m an avid user of Facebook, but don’t always want to go to the full website to check the statuses of my friends or update my own. When I first tried out the beta of Silverlight’s Facebook client (currently in Beta), I was wowed by the stunning interface, even if there are some features that didn’t make the Beta.

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Twitter Joke About Airport Bomb Leads To Arrest

You may remember a few years back not that long after 9/11 a man was arrested for ‘quipping’ that there was a bomb in his luggage and since then successive arrests and police presence has saw the end to any kind of terrorist-related jokes (or in fact clothing!) within spitting distance of an airport, but not within the wider world. Until now!

Frustrated by the closure of the Doncaster based ‘Robin Hood’ airport a certain Paul Chambers posted on Twitter: “Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your s**t together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” He was shortly arrested by police under the Criminal Law act of 1977 (which presumably has something in it about threatening to blow up airports!).

In true fashion (when it comes to terrorist threats) it wasn’t just a matter of explaining the frustrated joke, following the arrest ensued six hours of questioning followed by the confiscation of both his PC and his iPhone to check whether or not there was any evidence of any plotting.

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Darlington (UK) Appoints The First Official Town Twitter Tweeter!

If there’s one thing that Twitter is good for (excluding wasting your time!) is the distribution of information with it sometimes giving better results than Google, and in fact we heard not long ago about plans for Twitter to link up with news corporations to provide a stream of the latest real-time news.

So the town of Darlington have taken the initiative and have decided to make the most of the internet craze by employing an official “Twitterer in Residence” whose job will be to make sure that people across the town are kept up to date with news and events both within and outside of the town via the social networking medium.

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Twitter Paid-For Business Account Benefits Coming In 2010

The question of how might Twitter actually make some money has been around for about as long as Twitter has been popular (you may we covered this back in March) but finally we have official confirmation of the business accounts that will provide Twitter with some revenue, and the businesses with “a special layer of access”.

But until now the definition of “a special layer of access” has been somewhat woolly, and whilst information is still far from clear cut we do now have a better idea of what will be offered to those willing to shell out that little more for the special accounts which will be available at the beginning of next year.

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How To Use Twitter’s New Retweet Button…& What’s Wrong With It!

Those Twitter guys have been busy recently, hot on the heels of the recent Twitter Lists feature, we’ve now got a Twitter Retweet Button being rolled out. Ever since the user-led inception of retweeting (reposting other people’s tweets) on Twitter, there has been a call for a designated button to avoid the hassle of copy and pasting every time you wanted to share something interesting. Finally, that call has been answered, well, kind of.

A couple of days ago, Twitter started to roll out an automated retweet (RT) button across some accounts. It’s still in beta so you might not be able to see it yet, but tweeters who can have mixed feelings. One one hand, it does make the retweeting process a lot easier, on the other there are some disadvantages to it which I’ll discuss later. First here’s an overview.

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Google Wave: How To Add Extensions (Gadgets & Robots)

Google Wave works well as standalone system for chat, file sharing and so on. However, it also gives you the option to add extensions which enhance your experience and the range of functions it can perform. Extensions can be thought of as similar to Facebook applications; just as you can install apps to customise the way you use Facebook, you can add extensions to personalise the way you use Google Wave.

Extensions come in two varieties: gadgets and robots. Gadgets are the most similar to Facebook apps, you install them and they run as part of a wave (thread). To give an example: you can install the Sudoku gadget, and use it to play against a group of friends. Robots are more similar to the bots you see on Twitter, but far more sophisticated because they behave as kind of artificially intelligent participant in a wave. The best example is the Twitter robot, Tweety, which can be used to update your Twitter status and also to follow tweets from other users.

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Google Wave: How To Create, Send, Reply & Add Video

You’ve signed up with Google Wave, logged in and suddenly you’re faced with an interface that isn’t particularly intuitive. The features are quite simple to use, but do require a bit of a learning curve. So, if you’re scratching your head trying to figure out how to send your first wave (message), here’s how, and to make it even more useful, I’ll also tell you how to embed a YouTube video into it.

How To Create A New Wave

At the top of the centre panel you’ll see a button marked ‘New Wave’. (There’s is also a link in the panel on the right but that will only be visible if you don’t have any waves open.) Click the button and an input box will open up on the right.

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The Google Wave Rave – A Glorified Chat Client?

A few months back, Zath brought you news of Google’s new communication toy, Google Wave. I was lucky enough to be sent an invite to get a chance to play with it and it definitely is a fun toy to play with. It sure does invite a brand new way of communicating with the masses and looks like it should do well when released and all your friends have it too. But, how useful is it really?

Well, let’s take a look.

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LG GW520 Review

About a week we gave you a quick preview of the LG GW520, and now after a few days of testing we’re back with a full review of the phone that promised to offer both the ease of use of the touchscreen, and the functionality of a QWERTY keyboard in a neat looking affordable phone. Well did it succeed? Let’s find out!

Firstly let me take something that I implied in the preview, and that was that this phone could either be a big success or a complete failure as LG either mastered or messed up the integration of both QWERTY and touchscreen. The first thing to know is that the LG GW520 is very much a phone of two halves – sometimes you’ll wonder if this will challenge the big players and others you’ll despair at LG’s failures in this phone. But anyway, on with the review…

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