Join PC Pro at Byte Night 2011

Friday, July 29th, 2011

“You’ll enjoy it!” said Eleanor, in her bouncy, enthusiastic way. I had, and still have, my doubts. The idea of sleeping under the London sky on an October night isn’t my normal recipe for a fun evening, which generally involves good company, even better beer and a nice warm bed to collapse into afterwards.

But Eleanor, the London rep for Byte Night, has her way of winning arguments. The concept of the night, she explained, was to raise awareness of the thousands of young people who sleep rough each night.

Click on this link to sponsor PC Pro at Byte Night 2011

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Binatone Android home phone and £99 tablet review: first looks

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

Binatone is a name usually associated with landline phones but, with that market dwindling, the firm has decided Android is the way forward.

Of three new Android products shown off at a launch event, the most intriguing is its iHomePhone 2 – an Android device that, as the name suggests, replaces your landline handset. It’s an unusual idea, but one Binatone is confident can work, with the £99 inc VAT gadget ambitiously aimed at both techies and novices.

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“Obscene” Whitehall IT spending or sloppy journalism?

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

Given our ongoing wrestling match with the Cabinet Office over Sir Philip Green’s report into Government IT spending, a story in today’s Daily Mail caught my eye (or more precisely, the eye of Sky News reporter Roddy Mansfield, who alerted me to it).

“Whitehall is wasting an ‘obscene’ amount of public money on IT systems, a report by MPs admits,” the Daily Mail writes.

“The report cites some Whitehall departments who blow an average of £3,500 on a desktop computer, while they can be bought for as little as £250 on the High Street, 14 times cheaper.”

A scandal, I’m sure you’ll agree. Until you do what the Daily Mail’s journalist should have done in the first place, and examine the figures.

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Just how popular is Google+?

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

We keep getting told that Google+ is Facebook’s biggest threat, that it’s on the rise faster than a 1990s house price and the only way is up. We’re told it already has 10 million profiles – or is it 20 million?

But is Google+ really catching on? I mean really, as in outside this little tech industry bubble we love to confine ourselves to? (more…)

Google+: big companies can cause big problems

Monday, July 25th, 2011

In its first three weeks of availability, Google+ reportedly attracted 20 million users. That’s a pretty impressive launch – especially since it’s been accompanied by what can only be described as a negative marketing campaign. Even as millions of users have poured onto the service, Google has insisted on calling it a “limited field trial”. At this rate, by the time they officially make it available to the public, everyone will already be on it.

Everyone, that is, except for Mr Matthew Brock of Swiss Cottage. I have it on good authority that the gentleman in question, an old friend of mine, is giving Google+ a miss. (more…)

Google Chromebook and Office 2010? Thanks a bundle, Currys

Monday, July 25th, 2011

Have you seen those new Google Chromebooks? You know, the ones with the cloud-based Chrome OS operating system, where all your apps are run over the internet? It seems some people just can’t get their head around the concept. Including high-street retailer and Chromebook seller, Currys.

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Dell claims its customer support has improved by 90% – do you agree?

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

Customer support is about as sexy as cauliflower cheese, but anyone who’s suffered a bad experience will know just how infuriating it can be. What’s even worse is when it appears that companies just don’t care, which is why my hellishly early interview with Tim Griffin this morning – who has overall responsibility for Dell’s global customer support – was so welcome.

For a start, it’s refreshing that Dell is so open to the fact that its support hasn’t always been great. “We’ve obviously not fared too well in your own surveys over the past couple of years,” Griffin said, referring to PC Pro’s annual reliability and service survey, “and it’s something we’re very cognisant of.”

(I’ll interrupt myself here to say that if you haven’t already taken part – and we do rely on a huge number of responses to make our results significant – then you have just over a week to do so. And you’ll be in with a chance of winning one of our £4,500-worth of prizes too.) (more…)

How phone-hacking feds have been fooled by the cloud

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

I was in a meeting last week where both of the staff from my client had a strong affinity for the word “layman”. Whenever I strayed into territory they preferred to find too technical, they would say “well, I’m just a layman…”. I’m thinking of a particular conversation about their server hard disk running out of space. “What” they asked “you mean the memory? We bought some more of that, didn’t we?”

I despair of the whole concept of the “layman”  - they seem to stop being laymen and turn into the copyright-smashers from hell when it comes to downloading the illegal copies of movies that make up the bulk of the space consumed on their file server, after all.

Now, I’m sure we all have our stories about wilful ignorance in pursuit of a bit of nerd-baiting, but this particular BBC article caught my eye, because it implies that the “layman” state of mind is doing a good deal more damage.

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How a spell checker can boost your web profits

Monday, July 18th, 2011

It must be summer because the stories about how moronic our offspring are and how much better things were in the age of steam are surfacing. Indeed spelling mistakes could apparently cost companies “millions of pounds”.

Whilst you might imagine such hyperbole coming from one of the beleaguered red tops, in fact this is a claim made by an online entrepreneur. With a keen eye for a marketing opportunity, the Confederation of British Industry has swooped in to link these spelling mistakes to the lack of skills of school leavers.

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How developers game search results in the Android Market

Friday, July 15th, 2011

Android’s Market is one of the most open and accessible software stores around. While that sounds great on paper, this unregulated approach inevitably comes with its own pros and cons.

In some instances, con is the right word. Take Spider Wars, an unremarkable game that’s getting a leg up the Market’s search results by piggy-backing on a host of other popular titles and companies.

The scam – if it can even be called that – is simple keyword stuffing. Head to the game’s page and, after a description of its mechanics, there’s a list of words. A lot of them are familiar: the first block lists top games and franchises such as Star Wars (itself, evidently, a great inspiration for the game), Worms, Minesweeper and Dune.

The second block is potentially more useful to developer No Sushi Prod, and starts with a who’s who of top Android and iOS titles: Gameloft, Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, Cut the Rope, Tiny Wings, Polarbit and Kairosoft, with the latter the search term that brought Spider Wars to my attention.

There’s also a list of popular social networks and services, including Twitter, Facebook and Gmail. (more…)