Google Buzz – Do We Need Another Social Network?
February 21, 2010
Well Google recently released Buzz (didn’t Yahoo do that a few years back?) upon GMail users and anyone else who wants to sign up for a Google account, but the question is will it be the thing to beat Facebook and Twitter? I’m sure Google now hopes so, but I’m yet to be convinced.
Besides, I already use Twitter and Facebook, do I really need another social network? Don’t know what I’m talking about? You can read all about it in this Google Buzz features review.
I’m really not sure about Google Buzz, it seems strange for a company who keeps services in beta for years upon end (like they did with having Google Mail in beta for around 5 years), to release a previously unheard of product onto the world…and one that seemed to care little about your privacy of the contacts that you email regularly, but that perhaps just says more about a bunch of engineers creating and testing Google Buzz and their naivety over how it could be used for more malicious activities, take a look at our most recent technology roundup for more information on that.
Continue reading »Top 10 Free Android Apps For Your Mobile Phone
February 20, 2010
My first Android powered mobile phone was the T-Mobile G1. Gosh I loved it. With its love or hate plastic build, easy to use functional QWERTY keyboard and all the social networking tools I could shake a stick at Android powered phones were definitely for me. Moving over from the likes of the iPhone 3GS, I jumped at the opportunity to go with an OS which was to me, for the customisation alone, better.
I now have a HTC Hero running Android 2.1 and love it – HTC Sense is no longer there, but some of the perks do remain. I can also cross use my apps which I love so much, that if they were to self delete themselves, I would cry – because quite simply I need them all. And so after testing out apps, Android powered phones and the whole shebang, I have drawn up a list of the top ten free Android apps you should have.
Therefore, if you’ve got an Android mobile phone such as the Nexus One, here are the all important apps you should take a look at…
Continue reading »Sony Ericsson Vivaz Mobile Phone Announced
January 26, 2010
Following the recent release on the Sony Ericsson Satio which we had the pleasure of testing here at Zath, they have announced the second instalment of their new family of ‘communication entertainment’ phones which promises to not only match, but exceed the standard set by its predecessor: the Sony Ericsson Vivaz.
Even if you didn’t know beforehand that the two mobile phones were ‘related’ just looking at the two next to each other kind of gives it away as the Vivaz looks remarkably like a slimmed down, brighter version of the comparatively blocky Satio.
This isn’t all that surprising as ‘looks’ seem to be one of the main two selling points of the Vivaz, and despite the fact that really it looks nothing like the shape of ‘the human body’ (which is what the publicity excitedly claims) the new design philosophy of ‘delivering beauty inside and out’ has succeeded as it really does look quite nice!
Continue reading »TasteKid Review (How To Find Similar Music, Movies & Books)
January 20, 2010
Tastekid.com is a great website for anyone who is a love of music, movies and/or books and wishes to expand their library or collection with more similar artists, films or authors. I stumbled upon it whilst looking for a site that did exactly this and it was the first hit. To be honest, I have come to trust any site that hits the top of the prestigious Google rankings.
For instance in the case of music, the site is a database of all artists that are similar to the artist you enter in the search box at the top. Anyone who is a user of sites such as eBay or Amazon will know that they regularly suggest items similar to ones you have purchased before. Tastekid works in a similar fashion to this, only with music, movies and books.
Continue reading »Twitter Joke About Airport Bomb Leads To Arrest
January 18, 2010
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.
Continue reading »New Sony Bravia HD & 3D TV Range Announced (CES 2010)
January 7, 2010
As we predicted television manufacturers have already started building up the 3DTV market, as well as broadcasters such as Sky launching 3D TV services in 2010 and it is only likely to continue throughout this year and decade. Sony are no different. With their new range of Bravia TV’s announced at CES 2010 which continue their long tradition of combining style and elegance with functionality and quality.
The first enhancement they have made is with the Sony Monolithic Design Concept that is featured across the new BRAVIA range of products. It is minimalistic as well as practical. You can recline the TV to alter the viewing angle by up to 6 degrees. The screen surface is flush and it looks spectacular in my opinion as always with Sony products. What they like to call ‘monolithic design’ has been deployed throughout their new range of Bravia TV’s, Blu-Ray players and home cinema systems. Which going by the look of these new TV’s is not a bad thing at all. They’re curvaceous, spacious and absolutely stunning.
Continue reading »Technology Of The Noughties: Cloud Computing
December 31, 2009
Cast your minds back to the beginning of the decade… Broadband was making its first appearance in the technology world and all our applications were installed locally on a hard drive in our computer. Fast forward nine years, and we still have a lot of local applications, but with fast internet connections, having your local applications with you all the time is no longer a necessity, in fact the vast majority of applications on your hard drive right now probably have some sort of cloud equivalent…
In my opinion Google has, and continues to, make major breakthroughs in cloud computing. If you were working on a presentation or important document on your computer ten years ago but forgot to take it with you to work on the crucial day, there wouldn’t be a lot you could do about it…
Continue reading »Darlington (UK) Appoints The First Official Town Twitter Tweeter!
December 1, 2009
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.
Continue reading »Twitter Paid-For Business Account Benefits Coming In 2010
November 24, 2009
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.
Continue reading »How To Use Twitter’s New Retweet Button…& What’s Wrong With It!
November 12, 2009
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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