Head

This is a guest post by Tiffany Philippou who started the Secret London Facebook Group. Two weeks after launch the group had amassed over 180,000 members, propelling its 21 year old creator into her first startup – see our previous coverage. The website build weekend drew to a close two days ago and it is only beginning to dawn on me that we might just have achieved the impossible. Building a website for £3,000 and in only 48 hours.
» Read more

I don’t have an iPhone. And I’m happy with my other devices. But while I laugh at AT&T issues, mock iPhone users for lacking features I have on Android, and so on, there has always been one thing I’ve been desperately jealous of: the touchscreen. Now, I’ve had my share of touchscreens of all sizes and shapes. I’ve demoed phones and devices of varying quality for years. And somehow, Apple got themselves a better touchscreen in 2007 than any other company in the world has been able to buy or develop in the succeeding three years.
» Read more

Unlike most other smartphone platforms, Windows Mobile doesn’t come with a mapping application pre-installed by default. While this may very well change with the soon-to-be-announced Windows Mobile 7, it has thus far been up to the handset manufacturer to throw in a map app if they so choose. Later this week, messaging/location technology providers TCS will announce that Sony Ericsson has chosen their turn-by-turn application, Gokivo, to be pre-loaded onto future Sony Ericsson-made Windows Mobile handsets.
» Read more

If you can’t laugh at yourself… Robert Scoble insisted (insisted!) that we take these photos. Possibly to let the healing process begin after yesterday’s Google phone drama. And he isn’t the only one who wants to turn this into some kind of meme. I hope we call just let this go now, and move on with our lives. I promise to try to use a headset much more often while driving in those states that require it, and otherwise abide by the laws of the land.
» Read more

Ah, the college library photo. Look through any school’s brochure, and there’s a good chance you’ll see photos of an ethnically diverse group of students pouring over the same math problem together, all of of them inexplicably grinning ear to ear. It’s a nice thought, but unfortunately it doesn’t happen all that often — instead, many students wind up studying alone, and when they can’t figure something out, they’re out of luck.
» Read more

When you’re on your way out of a job, there’s a lot of fun ways to exit. Some choose to take all the staplers in the office, some show up to the last day in shorts, some pull a Jerry Maguire. And some tweet out a haiku. That’s exactly what Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz did tonight. Here’s his tweet: Today’s my last day at Sun. I’ll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku.
» Read more

As you’ve probably realized, local news is undergoing a massive transformation. The rapid demise of “old media” has resulted in fewer local publications, and it’s likely that in a few months your local paper may no longer exist. As “new media” takes over, users will be faced with a plethora of choices to consume local news. This is great news for most (no pun intended), but it comes at a price: the vast network of local blogs and news sites is difficult to navigate and peruse.
» Read more

Computer voice-to-text technology has come a long way, and every time it gets better, new applications open up. It is still not 100 percent accurate. Hell, it’s not even 90 percent accurate. But it is accurate enough for automated voicemail transcription services to become increasingly available and good enough not to have to listen through 15 voicemails to get the gist of what they are about.  Of course, voicemails are often translated incorrectly, sometimes to comic effect.
» Read more

When the iPhone first launched in 2007 I was sure I wasn’t going to buy one. Then I played with one. 15 minutes later I was $600 poorer. It was arguably the best tech purchase I’ve ever made. After the Apple event today, I got a chance to play with the new iPad for quite a bit of time. My takeaway? The thing is beautiful and fast. Really fast. If you’ll excuse my hyperbole, it felt like I was holding the future. But is it a must-have? That’s a complicated question. The quick and dirty answer is: for many people, right now, no.
» Read more

Here we are, on the eve of the Tablet’s unveiling, with only hours to go before we find out just how ambitious Apple’s latest creation is. Countless articles have been written about how the forthcoming Tablet could be the savior of old media. Supposedly, people will finally start paying for this content because it will be readily available at their fingertips. But the promise of the tablet does not lie in immediate access to content; the Internet can already do that, as can the Kindle, to some extent. The true revolution lies in the new medium the tablet will give us.
» Read more