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Saturday 30 June 2012

Users reporting BBM down, joins Instagram in being less social

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/30/users-reporting-bbm-down/

Friday 29 June 2012

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean vs Windows Phone 8 Apollo - The Inquirer

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean vs Windows Phone 8 Apollo - The Inquirer

Google Chrome for iPhone hands-on

Better than Safari in terms of actually having all the settings within the app!
http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/28/chrome-for-ios-hands-on/

Google Drive for iOS hands-on

Talk about good timing having just come from a XOOM tablet to an iPad...

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/28/google-drive-for-ios-hands-on/

Griffin Wins Best UK ISP at Comms Business Awards 2012

Hmmm I always found their support to be decent but they didn't have much competition from the looks of the other contenders (Not a fan of Daisy). Zen are brilliant and would have edged it in my opinion if they were a bit more price competitive.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/06/griffin-wins-best-uk-isp-comms-business-awards-2012.html

BT Preps New UK Superfast Broadband Cabinets for Exchange Only Lines

ISPreview: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/06/bt-preps-new-uk-superfast-broadband-cabinets-for-exchange-only-lines.html

Tuesday 26 June 2012

Measuring IPv6 - Country by Country

CircleID: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20120625_measuring_ipv6_country_by_country/

Facebook changing your displayed E-mail

Beware that a recent change on Facebook is putting your @facebook.com e-mail address as the displayed default instead of your original one.

There is reason for this in that if they keep traffic within the Facebook ecosystem and more people use the @facebook.com e-mail addresses then Facebook increase their marketing value even further.

For people like me with their own custom domain (alpagot.co.uk among lots of others), i'm sure they won't be happy that there was not a more 'in your face' warning. It's easy to go into your settings and 'reveal' your current normal email address again.

It seems the media outlets have picked this up as well and comparing it to what Google did with their Buzz service which failed horribly.

Check out this Kindle book.

Bit of promotion for my computer games lecturer from what I was studying at Essex Uni. 

He has a Kindle book out (well it's been out a while) which I just finished, it's a really good short read and cheap at 77p! It's called Lizzie Lot's Sovereign.


Here is the blurb:
Set in Victorian England on the eve of the Franco-Prussian war, 14-year-old Lizzie Lott is rescued from a life of grinding poverty by a stranger with unbelievably fast reactions who spins a story about a shadowy group of individuals with equally unusual gifts -- the Knights of Saint Judas. He drops Lizzie out of her depth into a world of espionage, excitement and intrigue -- all because she possesses an unnatural physical strength. Can she unravel a dastardly French plot before it destroys the monarchy?

Join Lizzie in her opening adventure, as she strives to become a Knight of Saint Judas herself.

'Twisted light' carries 2.5 terabits of data per second

BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18551284

Tuesday 19 June 2012

Microsoft Unveils Touchscreen Tablet



Source (Sky News): http://news.sky.com/home/technology/article/16249251

Spotify brings radio feature to iOS, offers streaming to non-premium users

Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/19/spotify-brings-radio-feature-to-ios-offers-streaming-to-non-pre/

Finally...

After a lot of hassle I now have my 64Gb 4G iPad thanks to UPS. As far as I can guess it was city link who 'lost' it. Still .....doesn't top the time Parcel Force managed to lose a set of speakers I ordered (the box was MASSIVE).

Anyway i'm on holiday this week so my collating of internet news is a bit behind....
Also, I have made a few minor adjustments to the site. Namely I've removed the twitter feed as mine is restricted to followers (@alpagot) and added some affiliate logos down the side.

Thursday 14 June 2012

Skype drops its BETA, Goes straight to version 4

Highlights from the Skype blog post released yesterday:
  • Four major changes in this release:
  • We have a new Conversations View where users can easily track all of their chats in a unified window.
  • Those users who prefer the old view can disable this in the Chat options;
  • We have a brand new Call View.
  • Call quality has never been better thanks to several investments we made in improving audio quality.
  • We've worked on improving video call quality and have also extended support for more cameras.

  • Improved chat synchronization.
  • New presence and emoticon icons.
  • The ability to store and view phone numbers in a Skype contact's profile.
  • Much lower chance Skype for Linux will crash or freeze.
  • Chat history loading is now much faster.
  • Support for two new languages: Czech (flag:cz) and Norwegian (flag:no).

 
http://blogs.skype.com/linux/2012/06/skype_40_for_linux.html

Ubuntu Alpha1 - Quantal Quetzal is out! 12.10

What a crazy name!

Well it's out for the curious and experimental, I've started waiting for the beta's more recently and I think with this, that'll be no different as I don't really contribute.

The big changes are:
Linux kernel 3.4
GCC 4.7
Python 3.0
Link: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuantalQuetzal/TechnicalOverview/Alpha1

Sophos - Revealed! The top five Android malware detected in the wild

With mobile devices rivalling desktop PC's from only a few years gone by it's a wonder that they haven't started shipping with 30 day AV trials like desktops often do!

With that said, Sophos has a great blog article over at the link below regarding malware on the Android platform.

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/06/14/top-five-android-malware/

Apple MacBook Pro - opinion

I really like the look of the new Mac book pro, especially the cooling system, the display and the SSD design.

Although an optical drive is not included I'm still baffled that Apple refuse to throw in some major Blu-ray support anywhere, it'd be a dream in conjunction with the Thunderbold I/O

I would actually spend that amount on one as well (see pricing, expect it to be over £2k) because the design is truly intuitive and the specs are impressive. I would love to give the battery a run for it's money as well, 7 hours seems quite optimistic even with a lot of power saving involved at those specs. The graphics core would be working hard at those 'retina' resolutions!

See below for the video:

http://www.apple.com/uk/macbook-pro/#macbookpro


New improvements for Kindle on Android tablets today.

Now able to view two pages side by side with a few other tweaks.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.kindle

Ripe link added to my broadband support page.

Bit surprised I left this one out to be honest!

Link: https://www.ripe.net/data-tools/db

Now on my support page: http://www.alpagot.co.uk/p/broadband-support.html

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Wednesday 6 June 2012

World IPv6 day.

So some major sites are going IPv6 operational on a permanent basis from today.

Check out the video:


Tuesday 5 June 2012

DayZ - This game mod is causing a bit of a wave at the moment.

I posted about ARMA 2: Combined Operations being dirt cheap a while back. Well there is an awesome game mod you should check out for it as well:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/dayz/news/dayz-v1601-released

E3: Xbox SmartGlass links Microsoft's console to tablets

I must admit I do sometime sit there with the tablet viewing achievement guides while playing games such as Dragon Age 2. One game i'm starting to hate for how many missable achievements there are!

Source, BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18325815