Latest Gadgets, Tablets and Smartphones
Its exactly as the title suggests… If it’s not Sony’s, it could explode. This is regarding Sony’s press release about counterfeit playstation controllers.
Sony have stated that a number of controllers, that “identical in appearance to genuine PlayStation 3 wireless controllers,” have begun to sprout around the market. The company have also said that the “quality, reliability, and safety of counterfeit products is uncertain.”
Two weeks ago, we wrote about YouTube Instant.
YouTube Instant was created by Feross Aboukhadijeh who is a Stanford computer science student. Shortly after creating the YouTube Instant service, Chad Hurley of YouTube sent him a tweet offering him a job. He has now accepted. [Read more…]
Yesterday, Facebook went down for 2.5 hours. Normally this kind of news wouldn’t be covered here as it’s not that interesting. However, as it’s Facebook that has a good number of servers and infrastructure handling the millions/billions of requests per day we thought we’d mention what actually happened.
When a website goes down, like gadgetvenue for example, you just restart a service, quickly find out what happened, fix a script and off it goes again.
When Facebook went down, it was because of a problem with a script. Basically the problem was described as “an unfortunate handling of an error condition. An automated system for verifying configuration values ended up causing much more damage than it fixed.” [Read more…]
Hidden amongst the news of the Kindle Android app update earlier today, was some more news that Amazon now has over 700,000 books available for Kindle in the US.
Three weeks ago that number was 670,000 which is a nice increase of 10,000 per week if you spread it out evenly. A look back to April this year shows that 500,000 books were available.
Looking at the competition, it appears that Barnes & Noble is still ahead with a claim of 1 million titles that can be downloaded electronically. Either way, both sets of numbers are impressive. [Read more…]
For a while now, Microsoft has held firm to the belief that its not all about Blu-ray but rather digital downloads instead and would rather leave the HD format all to Sony.
Yahoo Mail just went through an update to bring the interface and its built in features more up todate with how the web runs today.
The new Yahoo Mail web interface will be smoother and more sleeker than previous versions allowing it to run quicker. A number of social elements are also being built in to the service which includes integration with Flicr and YouTube allowing embedded content to be accessed more easily. [Read more…]
Google [GOOG] is introducing a second level of security to its Gmail services. Right now, you only need a password and email address to log in to the service. The second layer will add a PIN code to the login process.
The service is only available to Google Apps Premier, Education, and Government Editions of the Gmail service at the moment and is not enabled by default. If you are a company admin looking after Gmail for the company you work for, you can enable the services through the admin interface. [Read more…]
Microsoft [MSFT] over the years has branched out down a number of avenues such as creating the Xbox, smartphones and various other bits of hardware.
One thing that it does well is software. As Microsoft hasn’t had success in some areas, think of the Kin, the company is shifting its main focus back to software.
In an interview with the WSJ the following was said…
“We are in the software business and that is where our business will be focused,” he said. That means no follow-ups to the Kin social media smartphone, definitely; no resuscitation of the Courier e-reader/tablet project, probably; and a new focus on making apps for other platforms, quite possibly.
We posted earlier that IE 9 would not be running on Windows with XP and it looks as though 2 million people aren’t too worried about that either especially as those 2 million downloads were all with in IE 9’s first 48 hours.
Its now, finally official. Its now time for the UK to get Microsoft Zune. Usually you’d have to be in the USA or happy to import the various gadgets over to the United Kingdom. This is to coincide around the same time as the release of Microsoft’s Windows 7 phone asit will come with the ability to sync itself with your Zune device.
Good news for those waiting for Facebook Places to activate in the UK. A quick check earlier today on my iPhone 4 shows that it is now active.
The Facebook Places service is said to be similar to apps like Foursquare. The app basically tracks where you are and publishes it on your feed in Facebook. Essentially, you just check in when you arrive at a location and it lets your friends see where you are so they can join you if they wish.
The downsides of Facebook Places is that it’s first off, enabled by default and allows your friends to check you in by default. Secondly, we have seen a number of reports on Facebook of people simply saying it’s not as good as Foursquare. [Read more…]
Its been reported that the 29th of September is to be the release date for Logitechs new Google TV box. A good few weeks earlier than at first rumored. So those pining after this may be more than satisfied.
Its been named as the Logitech Revue, though with a fairly hefty price tag of $299, will the Google box still attract the consumer to investing their hard-earned cash especially when Apple will have their own version for only $99? Will this phase Google? [Read more…]
