It’s my party and I’ll talk if I wanna!
We stumbled across an interesting article by Matthew Ingram the other day, lamenting the loss of the old ‘blogosphere‘. What made it especially poignant was the fact that it was posted on one of the prime examples of the new corporatized ‘blog’, Gigaom, which many years ago transitioned from small and friendly to big and rich. It’s progress.
Finnish designer and creative director of 3D systems, Janne Kyttanen, has recently posted a video outlining a possible future where 3D printing is embedded in our lives in a completely new way. He asks us to imagine a world where everything we own – in this case specifically our vacation luggage – is stored as nothing but computer code. Instead of carrying our belongings with us on holiday, the idea is we print it all out at our destination on…
In case you missed it, there’s been a massive flaw found in one of the most widely used technologies on the Web, called OpenSSL. The problem is that this encryption, which is supposed to protect our passwords and private details when we log in to website services like stores and banks, had a gaping hole in it, through which a villainous crew could have driven a 10 tonne truck and accompanying convoy in the right circumstances.
This is a still image grabbed directly from a YouTube video showing off the 4K resolution of the new Sony A7s DSLR camera which was announced yesterday in the US. In case you’re not sure what 4K is, it’s simply a higher resolution than the typical 1080p HD (and 2K) we have now. We’re starting to feel a little sorry for the mainstream camera companies (and tech firms in general), because it’s clear they’re beginning to run out of headroom…
Dr Nafeez Ahmed yesterday posted what I think is one of the most reasonable overviews of the current global socio-economic situation I’ve yet seen. In this writer’s humble and inexpert opinion his article – The Global Transition tipping point has arrived – outlines the reality of our position in terms of economic, political and resource options that make a lot of sense. And it’s not doom and gloom.
What happens when some clever coders from South America sit down and manage to work out how to combine the back end power of BitTorrent with the user friendly slickness of Netflix? Well they produce a product which delivers free movies to the world in an instant, and to top it off they open source the code to make it unstoppable.
The other day I received a notification that our energy supplier EDF, had created a smartphone app. Not just a basic one though. This one lets you submit a meter reading with your camera, change your monthly amounts and even send an alert if you’re moving out. The point is, suddenly, I was given the power of doing a lot of stuff that other admin people used to do for me.
Twenty five years ago this month, Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist at CERN in Europe came up with a new way of storing and retrieving information using the then fledgling Internet network of computers. His idea of a ‘worldwideweb‘ [sic] took off slowly, but by the end of 1990 the first web site was up and running. Today there are estimated to be around 2.5 billion users of the system, with 1 billion of those based in Asia alone. One…
Today Nokia announced the biggest kept non-secret in the phone world, the company’s first Android handset, the Nokia X. Alongside that announcement was another equally as important, which signals that the beleaguered giant could actually be setting out to fight back properly in the mobile phone wars.
The global web industry constantly slaps itself on the back for being jolly clever with all these new apps and services, and every time a new startup picks up a big dollop of VC money it’s splashed all over the likes of Techcrunch and Hacker News. But what doesn’t make news a lot of the time is what happens when the startup falls apart, either through lack of ‘traction’ or a basic cashflow problem.
![Groupspaces – how to screw over your userbase even while you still earn thousands a month [Startup Fail]](https://i0.wp.com/www.redferret.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/groupspaces.jpg?fit=600%2C409&ssl=1)
You may think you’re safe eating your oat flakes this sunny morning, but in fact there are people who have plans for you. More specifically, these marketing folk are aiming to work out how you think and feel about their products, but not just by taking stodgy surveys, oh no. Instead these guys are rolling out technology that might make your hair curl.
How on earth are we supposed to pick a supplier, manufacturer or service nowadays, when everywhere you look there are conflicting user reviews, which both praise and condemn at the same time? It’s a minefield of truth, misinformation and downright lies, right? Well not quite. If you know what you’re doing you can definitely make great purchases you’ll be happy with for a long time. We thought we’d offer our own short guide to making a sensible and informed buying…
The Yezz Andy A5 Android smartphone was released earlier this year, and we recently got a chance to go hands-on. If you aren’t familiar with Yezz (as I wasn’t), it’s a smartphone handset supplier that specializes in budget devices, including smartphones and tablets. Their devices work on most GSM networks (including T-Mobile and AT&T in the US), and they all ship unlocked, so all you have to do is pop in a SIM card and you are set to go….
![Yezz Andy A5 – a budget Android smartphone? I’ll stick with my iPhone for now, thanks… [Hands-on]](https://i0.wp.com/www.redferret.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/yezzandya5cover4.jpg?fit=557%2C484&ssl=1)
Well the silly season is almost on us. That time when we all run around like headless chickens desperately looking for stuff to buy for people who don’t really need more stuff. It’s like some sort of insane rain dance. I swear if aliens landed tomorrow they’d die of laughter, not bacteria. We spend all that money for *what…*?
Amazon has today launched a new service to rival Paypal, called Login & Pay With Amazon, maybe not the snappiest name they could have chosen, but a fundamental game changer nonetheless. The idea is to let people pay for their online shopping *on any store* using their existing Amazon account. The idea is simple and logical, and yet so much more than the sum of its parts.
