Posts by Category: Reviews

In-depth reviews with video and intelligent comment
cool tech January 17, 2008 posted by
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Best of Make – fun geek things to do with your massive spare time

The Best of Make book is out and it’s a fun read. If you’re an obsessive geek head with a compulsion to create useful artifacts which wobble, vibrate, glow and…well…geek at you all day long. Many of the 75 projects may not be that useful, but they’re definitely F.U.N. and they’ll earn you credit down at the next LAN party all right, no question. You’ll need a good understanding of electronics to cope with the more advanced projects, so be…


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Awesome January 7, 2008 posted by
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Drobo – hands-on with the world’s first data storage robot

Drobo Storage Robot. There’s one immutable truth in technology, you can never have enough data storage space. No matter how big that mega hard disk you bought this afternoon, sometime soon you’re going to need to delete stuff to free up space. It’s like death and taxes, right? The problem is getting worse too, as we take advantage of the net to download more music, more video, and take more photos with ever growing megapixel file sizes. If you’re like…


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ferret exclusive December 14, 2007 posted by
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Brennan JB7 Micro Jukebox – at home with the CD rip and play machine

So I’ve been playing around with a Brennan JB7 Micro Jukebox for a few days, and I’m torn, really torn. A good chunk of me enjoys the simplicity and ease of use of this rip and play micro Hi-Fi system, while the other bit is quietly wondering whether there’s a market for it out in the big, bad iPod dominated music world? Does this do anything that a dock enabled MP3 player won’t? Does it matter that it’s not portable? How useful is it…


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Gadgets December 11, 2007 posted by
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Hands on with the Invisio G5 – trying not to lose the smallest Bluetooth headset in the world

They sent me a new Invisio G5 Bluetooth Headset to look at a week or so back and I’ve been stuffing it in my ear ever since. It’s billed as the smallest and lightest headset in the world, and at 3.3cm long and a trifling 6 grams, who’s going to argue. I have a bit of a long standing ‘thing’ with the Nextlink folk, ever since two of their supposedly awesome Bluespoon headsets failed to work for me out of…


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Bookmark This! December 3, 2007 posted by
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Omgili Product Reviews – suddenly product reviews get people powered

The new Omgili Product Reviews service searches the web for product reviews and user opinions from catalogue pages such as Amazon reviews, bulletin boards, forums and other conversation sources. We covered Omgili fleetingly but favourably back in August last year, so it’s good to see this web forum search engine roll out something so cool. The good points include the excellent ratings graphic (miserable to excellent) which gives a super fast overview of a product’s review position. This really makes it easy to…


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Awesome October 30, 2007 posted by
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Musicshake – more music fun than a tub full of honey with sugar sprinkles

MusicShake is being marketed as ‘the easiest way to make music in the world’  and they’ve got a point. What they should also say is that it’s as addictive as…well the most addictive thing on your list of addictive things. There’s lots of music making sites and programs out there, and on the face of it this one is no different. You create tunes by arranging blocks of instrument and vocal samples on a timeline. So far so normal. What…


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cool tech October 11, 2007 posted by
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Nimbuzz – super slick do-it-all chat and VoIP program for mobile and PC

Nimbuzz. I’ve been playing around with this new Dutch chat and VoIP freeware for a few days now and it’s pretty cool. What’s extra special goody gumdrops neat is a) the fact that it’s a Java app, so runs on just about every handset out there and b) the wide range of services it copes with. You can chat with your Skype, MSN, Yahoo!, AIM and Google Talk buddies on your mobile phone and make voice calls to MSN and Google…


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Bookmark This! September 25, 2007 posted by
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Longjump – DIY business applications for small and medium sized companies

I’ve been playing with the new Longjump business application service over the past couple of days and I like it. Think Ning meets Salesforce meets DabbleDB. What makes it stand out for me is the fact that you can easily work out how to get the system up and running in a matter of moments, since all the heavy lifting database work is hidden behind a very user friendly interface. With a potentially powerful application like this, it’s important not to…


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Mobile Tech August 31, 2007 posted by
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Nokia 6110 Navigator – new GPS phone oozes class and features

The new Nokia 6110 Navigator is the first in a new line of ‘Navigator’ handsets which feature on-board GPS for navigation, and it’s a lovely piece of work. I’ve been playing with one for a few days and I’ve got to say I’ve fallen in love. Let’s be clear, this is not a pretty phone by any means. If the iPhone is Miss South Carolina, then the 6110 Navigator is her distant cousin with the slightly crooked teeth. But with a feature set…


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Awesome August 27, 2007 posted by
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Broadband in the park – or how mobile broadband snuck up on us when we weren’t looking

It’s 2.00pm on a hot sunny afternoon and I’m blogging this from a deckchair in our local park using the new T-Mobile WebnWalk HSDPA USB Modem…and I’m gobsmacked. Long time readers of The Ferret will know that we’ve been looking forward to the arrival of mobile (i.e. cellular) broadband for ever, although we always figured it would need some fancy new techs to do it. Well we’ve got news for you….high speed mobile broadband is here, it’s affordable and it’s…


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Reviews July 30, 2007 posted by
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BBC iPlayer quick review – C for effort

I’ve been invited onto the BBC iPlayer beta test, so here’s a quick review piece on the latest Internet media player to hit the market. Click on thumbnails for larger image. First impressions – front end has a snazzy Web 2.0 interface. Lots of shaded icons, big text and images, Ajax timer symbols et al. Internet Explorer sucks. OK, I know I should leave it alone because it’s over done to death, but having no Linux, Mac, Vista or Firefox version is…


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Reviews June 13, 2007 posted by
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A surprising day spent using the HTC Touch…

So I’ve just had a pretty typical working day with the HTC Touch handset, and thought you might like some initial impressions. First off, it was in use from 5am in the morning (catching an early flight) until 10.00 pm at night (long day!). Battery life remaining at the end of the day = Around 25%. Applications used = Mobile Word, Destinator 6.0 GPS navigation software, default MP3 music player, phone (3 calls + SMS), camera (one shot), WiFi (failed),…


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Gadgets June 6, 2007 posted by
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HTC Touch – iPhone spoiler arrives?

So I went to the HTC Touch mobile phone launch yesterday. Mmm… Question: what are the odds that two companies separated by thousands of miles come up with an incredibly similar navigation interface which works by stroking the screen with a finger? 10 to 1? 1000 to 1? More? Well you’re wrong. It’s a total coincidence, at least that’s what HTC CEO Peter Chou told me when I asked him directly. His version of events is that none of his team have…


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Free Software March 23, 2007 posted by
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Thunderbird – an email client triumph

So I’ve just taken the plunge and installed the Open Source Thunderbird email client as a replacement for my Outlook Express program. Before you snigger, I’ve stayed with OE for this long because I have a whole email process built up around it. Over 12,000 messages, stored in a huge number of folders and sub-folders, all linked together to improve my working day. So why the move? Because I was hit by a virus the other day (and no I…


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nice idea... March 16, 2007 posted by
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Microlending review – Kiva wins

Slate has just done a review of microlending services – that provide small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries – and Kiva has come out top. I’m glad about that, because I actually lent some money to the scheme after we featured it on the Ferret a while back (see, we do eat our own dogfood so to speak) and thought it was a great idea and superbly done. Already the entrepreneurs I lent to have started to pay back the…


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