Zath - UK Tech Blog - Technology, Gadgets & Gaming Reviews & How-To's

The Commerce Exchange Review (York eCommerce Conference 2015)

10th Apr 2015 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 2nd Dec 2018

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. Clearly, 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 ChargeKey & ChargeCard Review – USB Phone-Charging Adapters

20th May 2014 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 2nd Dec 2018

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 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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Ken Levine’s BAFTA Q&A Session (2013)

23rd Feb 2014 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 19th Oct 2018

Given the recent news about Irrational Games closing down, going back and watching this BAFTA Q&A with Ken Levine (from around the launch of Bioshock Infinite back in 2013) is perhaps even more interesting now.

He talks about his history, general game design principles, Bioshock Infinite and hints of what his future might have been even back then.

Definitely worth a watch if you’re a fan of his work or even just interested in game design in general.

Gaming Path of Zath #2 – XCOM, Perfect Board Game, Iron Man, Minecraft, Monkey Island

19th Apr 2013 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 29th Oct 2018

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…Successfully Funded!

25th Mar 2013 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 4th Oct 2018

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 Mar 2013 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 7th Nov 2018

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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RBS 6 Nations Live Challenge App Review (iOS & Android)

12th Feb 2013 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 24th Oct 2018

rbs-6-nations-logo The RBS 6 Nations Rugby Championship is now well and truly underway and now thanks to their collection of apps for various platforms, you can keep up-to-date with the very latest team news and live scores whichever of the popular smartphones or tablets you might have. For the purposes of this review, I’ve been testing out different versions of the app, iOS (on iPad) and Android (on Samsung Galaxy S3).

However, in addition to just doing the usual job of providing live game information and news between games with their standard app, the RBS 6 Nations Live Challenge App takes watching the live game on TV to a whole more interactive experience!
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The Path of Zath: Technology Roundup #1

27th Jan 2013 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 26th Sep 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 Jan 2013 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 26th Sep 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 Dec 2012 by Adam Vjestica - Last Updated: 26th Sep 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!
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