Archive for October, 2011
Why the Lytro could mean farewell to the fine art of focusing
“From today painting is dead” is an aphorism often attributed to Paul Delaroche, a 19th-century French painter, upon seeing the first daguerreotypes (though Wikipedia maintains there is no compelling evidence that he actually said it). In a way, it was a misjudgment on the same epic scale as Thomas Watson’s celebrated observation that the total [...]
Read moreCharlie Higson asks: will computer games kill off the novel?
The rock’n’roll generation’s era lasted from Heartbreak Hotel to the death of Steve Jobs (an ex-counterculture dropout whose whole ethos was informed by rock’n’roll, and a love of Dylan and the Beatles, among others). Music was important to us, it was how we defined ourselves and it was what made us different to our parents, [...]
Read moreSamsung Galaxy S II and Vlingo’s Voice Talk: a match made in customer hell
In theory: you and Vlingo’s voice control and Samsung’s Galaxy, happily coexisting “Unexpectedly easy,” boasts the expensive-looking ad for Vlingo voice talk on Samsung‘s flagship Galaxy SII smartphone. Now you can text your friends hands free, using only your badly-dubbed Hollywood voice. How easy is that? Er, not so fast. Here’s the problem: Samsung and [...]
Read moreFarewell to the fine art of focusing
“From today painting is dead” is an aphorism often attributed to Paul Delaroche, a 19th-century French painter, upon seeing the first daguerreotypes (though Wikipedia maintains there is no compelling evidence that he actually said it). In a way, it was a misjudgment on the same epic scale as Thomas Watson’s celebrated observation that the total [...]
Read moreThe tyranny of Twitter: when 140 characters don’t add up to enough
David Aaronovitch, lately of the Indy, Observer and Guardian, gathered a fresh garland the other day. The Times columnist is now also Twitter Commentator of the Year (as selected by Editorial Intelligence). Many congratulations in under 140 characters – but pinch yourself before you tweet. What’s serious here, and what’s blathering hype? Julian Glover, once [...]
Read moreWill computer games kill off the novel?
The rock’n’roll generation’s era lasted from Heartbreak Hotel to the death of Steve Jobs (an ex-counterculture dropout whose whole ethos was informed by rock’n’roll, and a love of Dylan and the Beatles, among others). Music was important to us, it was how we defined ourselves and it was what made us different to our parents, [...]
Read moreNokia takes on Apple with Windows phones
Nokia is taking the smartphone battle to Android with the launch of a new handset in a collaboration with Microsoft that represents a last-ditch bid to shape computing’s new frontier. With Apple and Google’s Android now dominating the smartphone market, the world’s largest phone maker is pinning its hopes of a business turnaround on the [...]
Read moreBlackBerry outage: RIM faces US class action
Consumers in the US and Canada have sued Research In Motion for a three-day service outage on BlackBerry devices that rippled across the world earlier this month. The system-wide failure of the service left tens of millions of frustrated BlackBerry users on five continents without email, instant messaging and browsing. Research In Motion’s co-chief executives [...]
Read moreiPhone 4S battery life problems: bug in location services suspected
A flaw in Apple‘s location services system in its new iOS 5 software is increasingly suspected of being the cause of rapid battery drain for some owners of the iPhone 4S. A growing number of people have found that the “Setting Time Zone” element of the Systems Services within the broader Location Services product seems [...]
Read moreOlly: the web-connected robot that converts pings to odors
What if there were a way to add smells to the things you see every single day on the internet? To some, just the thought of that there scenario would induce nausea. To others — primarily those who spend their days Googling various rose gardens around the globe — it just might be the extra [...]
Read more