Zath - UK Tech Blog - Technology Reviews + Features

A Family Games Day (& Night) With giffgaff

27th October 2019 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 29th October 2019

I was recently contacted by a representative of giffgaff, the mobile phone network provider. They offered me the chance to help in hosting a gaming lunch/day/night event for my friends or family as part of their #giffgaffgamers campaign. As a gamer at heart, both playing video games and board games from an early age, I leapt at the chance to host another games event!

giffgaff kindly sent over a couple of boxes of goodies as you can see from the photos above and below. One box contained a bunch of cool giffgaff and technology-related items, which obviously suited me well. Included was an Amazon Echo Dot, Go Pro Camera, Anker USB Power Bank, 2x giffgaff SIM cards, £50 Food Voucher and even a Winner’s Trophy!

In the other box, there were three awesome party games from the British indie gaming company; Big Potato Games. Specifically, Weird Things Humans Search For, Obama Llama 2 and Bucket of Doom. [Read more…]

Is The Tablet Era Over? Time For A Clean Slate?

19th September 2019 by Yasmita Kumar - Last Updated: 1st October 2019

Besides our smartphones, one of the most fascinating facets of technology has been the tablet device. Thanks to their unique blend of both power and portability, tablets give users more freedom and capability than smartphones and computers can offer. This is especially true when it comes to the size of their comparatively larger but much more portable displays. But are we now seeing the decline of the tablet device technology category?

In 2010 Apple released its first-generation iPad, which was the first tablet to achieve widespread mass-market popularity. In the years that followed, the market share for tablets increased. Many tech giants have developed their own competitors for the iPad, creating stiff competition for one another and offering consumers a more extensive choice. [Read more…]

The Commerce Exchange Review (York eCommerce Conference 2015)

10th April 2015 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 28th September 2019

The Commerce Exchange in York is the first specific eCommerce conference day-long event to be held in the city. Organised by Ryan Atkins, Director, and Co-Founder of The Distance, a creative digital agency located in Skeldergate, York. It took place on 8th April 2015, the day before another digital conference; DotYork was taking place. York’s becoming home to more and more technology-focused businesses.

Being such a local event and given that I’ve had some interest in learning about the topic of online retail for some time now, I thought I’d go along and see if I could pick up anything from the various sessions being held throughout the day. Here’s what I thought of it…
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Nomad USB ChargeKey & ChargeCard Review

20th May 2014 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 26th June 2019

I’ll start my Nomad ChargeKey & ChargeCard review with a quick, short story of an experience I had recently, to put into context why I wish I’d had one of these Nomad ChargeKey or ChargeCard USB phone-charging adapters sooner.

I was out for the day with some friends and I ended up staying overnight, we had some bacon for breakfast, it was all good. Except for one small problem. My poor iPhone 5S had long since gone to sleep and was unable to wake up again. As this was an unplanned stopover, I had no Lightning port charger with me. The latest Apple devices (iPhone 4s) they had in their home only had the old-style 30-pin connectors. Despite having lots of available USB ports on an assortment of laptops, computers and even TVs, I couldn’t use any of them!

Now, this hadn’t been an emergency situation, just a minor inconvenience while making my way home. But it did make me consider how best to avoid this happening in future. Now I think I have it sorted!
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Gaming Path of Zath #2 – XCOM, Perfect Board Game, Iron Man, Minecraft, Monkey Island

19th April 2013 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 2nd April 2019

XCOM Enemy Unknown: Engage Project X – I’ve been really enjoying the remake of XCOM since its release a few months back and one of the best parts is that you can customise and rename your squad of alien fighters….but sometimes that doesn’t always go that well, here’s a story of how to deal with the loss of an XCOM veteran.

How To Choose The Perfect Board Game – if like me you’re interested in getting into modern board games, but don’t know where to start, then this might help you make a decision based on who you are and what you like.

Modder Creates The World’s Coolest Iron Man Video Game (Inside Grand Theft Auto) – the Iron Man films are really cool, if ever a film deserved a decent video game, it was this franchise, but until then we’ll have to make do with this GTA 4 mod.
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Elysia Comic/Graphic Novel Kickstarter Project…Funded!

25th March 2013 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 28th July 2019

elysia-comic-graphic-novel-chapter-1-cover UPDATE: The Elysia comic got successfully funded through Kickstarter and the 1st chapter of this original urban fantasy graphic novel will now soon be released! 😀

If you missed out on the Kickstarter, you can head on over to the Elysia comic website and get your pre-order purchased, along with any of the Elysia merchandise (prints, T-shirts etc) you’ll have also missed out on.

In the past year or so, crowd-funding websites such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo have become a really popular way for individuals and companies to gain upfront funding/support for their projects from the people who would be interested in buying the end-product.

If successful, this method of funding means that these creative people can concentrate on producing their product rather than chasing around trying to gain funding from other sources such as banks and investors. Therefore we all get to see their cool end-products such as independent films, games, comics and board games much sooner than we might otherwise! Also, it’s worth bearing in mind, some may never see the light of day without this method of funding!
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Think Visibility 9 Review (Leeds Digital Marketing/SEO Conference 2013)

6th March 2013 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 1st June 2019

The Think Visibility conferences are all about helping you to “get more from your website”, no matter how you use it or what type of business you have.

Think Visibility 9 was the 5th anniversary of this impressive digital marketing, social media and SEO conference based in Leeds, West Yorkshire. I’ve personally attended all but one of these events for a variety of reasons including the quality of the speakers, the location, the other attendees that it attracts. But also for the fact that #ThinkVis isn’t like just any other conference, it’s well different…
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The Path of Zath: Technology Roundup #1

27th January 2013 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 26th September 2018

The Google+ Long Game Is Brilliant – could Google+ eventually win out over the social network competition? They do keep adding good new features such as Hangouts and Communities and I’d rather use it more than Facebook…if only we could all agree to just move over from Facebook!

How Google Author Rank could change content marketing and journalism – as much as I’m not a fan of some of Google’s algorithm changes over the past couple of years (one hurt Zath pretty badly), I do kind of like the idea of good authors getting deserved recognition in search results, obviously it’s just another ploy to make you use Google+ and get more social signals.

Wikipedia hoax about a war that never happened deleted after 5 years – it makes you wonder just what else might be up on Wikipedia that has no basis in fact?
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The Path of Zath: Gaming Roundup #1

7th January 2013 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 26th September 2018

The Best PC Games being released in 2013 – a great list of pc games due for release this year broken down by type of game, it looks like it’s going to be a great year for PC gaming! (UPDATE: PC Gamer have included updates of how the games turned out with quick summaries and links to their full reviews, quite cool to see how the year turned out!)

Amazing Chinese-style Assassin’s Creed artwork – I’m a real fan of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, while admittedly these are far from perfect yet, still very enjoyable and a great way to virtually experience some history from around the world. From looking at this artwork, I think Medieval Chinese assassin would definitely be an interesting setting for a future game.

This fantastic aerial photo of NYC turns Manhattan into ‘Sim City’ – I used to love the first two Sim City games back as a kid, so this view of New York looks amazing!
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Samsung Series 3 Chromebook Review

4th December 2012 by Adam Vjestica - Last Updated: 26th September 2018

samsung-series-3-chromebook-frontview In an age of smartphones, tablets, transformers, ultrabooks and retina displays, Google’s Chromebooks – a series of cloud-centric laptops – are probably the least appealing of the bunch. The common knowledge that you’ll be purchasing an underpowered machine that’s almost entirely dependent on the Internet is enough to ward off even the most open-minded of tech enthusiasts. Add in a high price tag, combined with other noticeable limitations of Google’s browser powered laptops and you’d be forgiven for thinking that Google’s genius had gone missing on this occasion. But actually, Chromebooks aren’t as bad as they sound – honestly!
[Read more…]

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