Lytro light-field camera: first look

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

The Lytro has been kicking around for a few months — we covered its launch in issue 207 of the magazine — and it picked up an award at CES last week, but the camera has yet to actually ship. However, the company had a few pre-production models to let us try out the intriguing new camera technology.

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CES: Why booth babes are bad marketing

Monday, January 16th, 2012

I spent last week in Las Vegas, which is always a bit strange for women, surrounded as you are by very pretty ladies, in very little — and often very sparkly — “clothes”. I’m speaking, of course, not of the casinos or bars, but of CES and its numerous “booth babes”.

The BBC did an excellent piece on the subject — if you haven’t seen it yet, the video is here, and it’s well worth watching — interviewing female tech journalists, marketing staff, booth babes and CES head honcho Gary Shapiro.

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How to get email without a computer

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

Here in Vegas, CES is overflowing with computing embedded in devices of every kind — cars, home appliances, booth girls (I’m assuming, anyway) — but one stand is touting a way to cut the computer out of your life, while still receiving email.

The Presto Printing Mailbox is the antithesis of Martha Lane Fox’s digital divide plans: it’s for people who simply can’t understand — or can’t be bothered to understand — how to get email off that infernal computing box.

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Windows 8 with eye-tracking: hands on

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

One of the major complaints my colleagues at PC Pro have had about Windows 8 is that the touch-focused OS is annoying to use with a non-touch enabled laptop.

Convertible laptops and touchscreen desktops could help get around the problem, but eye-tracking firm Tobii has come up with a better idea.

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Spotify apps review: first look

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Spotify this week unveiled apps that integrate directly into the music streaming service, but this isn’t quite FarmVille for music lovers. Instead, the apps are, for the most part, geared at helping listeners find music — the system offers 15 million tracks at last count, so figuring out which ones you want to actually hear can be a challenge.

At the moment, the 11 apps are all free, and available to those on free subscriptions, and it’s hard to see that changing any time soon. For the most part, the apps are generally reviews and playlists — hardly something many people will shell out for. Moving the service to handsets might make apps chargeable, but even then, these are little more than curated content.

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Black Friday tech deals in the UK

Friday, November 25th, 2011

Like Halloween and the NFL, Black Friday is the latest American import that the British love to moan about, but secretly actually quite like. And with good reason — tech retailers are offering some fantastic deals, whether you’re shopping for Christmas gifts or yourself.

Here’ are a few of the best deals. Drop a line in the comments if you’ve seen any other discounts worth sharing.

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Tech City: are there really 600 new tech firms?

Friday, November 11th, 2011

The Prime Minister has said Tech City is well and truly established in East London, with the Government claiming 400 new tech firms have set up in the so-called Silicon Roundabout area since last year, bringing the total to 600.

Now that would indeed be an accomplishment, if it were true. However, the new Tech City Map – launched to mark the one-year anniversary of the plan — doesn’t support that claim.

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No wonder people are confused by security…

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

The Met Police can feel justifiably proud of themselves, with an investigation leading to the jailing for many years of a pair of criminals who attacked computers with malware to steal £3 million from UK bank accounts.

Excellent news; high-fives to everyone involved. However, the force’s communications team slightly tarnished the win with some rather confusing advice on internet security.

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Google takes Chromebooks to the high street

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

As you may have heard, Google has its first shop-floor presence — not in California as you’d expect, but around the corner from PC Pro, inside PC World on Tottenham Court Road in London.

So this morning I wandered over to take a look and take some photos. Obtaining permission for this latter task from this particular branch of the PC World empire proved a challenge, but that left me lots of time to eavesdrop on customers trying out the web-only machines.

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Bartz wasn’t fired because she’s a woman

Friday, September 9th, 2011

When Carol Bartz was unceremoniously fired from Yahoo earlier this week, one thought popped into my head: please, don’t let people say it’s because she’s a woman.

Thanks at least in part to the intriguing details surrounding her departure — being fired over the phone, returning fire with some very unpolite four-letter words — the issue of her gender has been, thankfully, a non-issue.

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