A few things that have been going on lately. There’s more, obviously, but who has the time?

Facebook. Cutlery. Specs. Ad-buster. Suicide. Another week in the technosphere.

In which Kickstarter helps wannabes become bes, 4GLike 3GShort for 3rd Generation. Applies to mobile telephony and the bandwidth/frequencies said telephony occupies in the telecommunications spectrum. only faster. As of March 2012 the only 4G networks are in US and Canada. When it comes to the UK and Europe 4G will use a different wavelength and/or frequency to its US counterpart so devices designed to work in the US will not work with European 4G. They will still function, of course, but using the older, slower 3G protocols. Synergy and compatibility, don't you just love it? is shown to be fearfully costly to you dear punters and AppleFruit, record label, world dominator in the slick boy's toys department shrinks its Pad

In which Fogies of the world worship at the Jobs shrine

In which AppleFruit, record label, world dominator in the slick boy's toys department gets ready to tell us about some new toys, Amazon finally lets the UK have a colour Kindlee-reader developed by Amazon. The top-of-the-range Kindle Fire is a touchscreen tablet, not unlike an iPad, that costs significantly less than an iPad. Despite all the column inches devoted to e-readers and how they will take over the book business and destroy the demand for printed books, they are still nasty devices when compared with the aesthetic gorgeousness of a hardbacked book., dead men tell tales and Nokia shoots itself in the face

There was no Fogey Friday last week and this week’s is much diminished.  There is tech news but who cares when the Olympics is on and you can watch women boxers beating seven bells of shit out of each other and various thrusting young types working up a sweat?  If you have a gym membership [...]

In which Beats buys back some Beats, Tech Fogey ponders Showrooming, snoopers train their gaze on Skypers and Microsoft loses a bit of money

In which some people buy TVs that are ‘smart’ (again…) but see what that smartness will deliver into their living rooms and then don’t bother with any of it; shoppers use their smartphones to suss out bargains and good stuff while actually shopping in a shop; desperate lust-mongers increasingly buy Kindles to read ‘mommie porn’; TVs discover tumescence and TF blathers on again about the bandwidth squeeze.

There are only two significant stories this week: the respective launches of GoogleStarted life as a mere search engine; now hell bent on world domination. More PhDs work for Google than any other single organisation and they're determined to know everything about everyone. For some reason Google thinks this inside info will help them and their chums sell us more stuff. TV and YouView. Both are platforms for watching stuff on your TV and will cost £250 and £299 respectively for all the relevant gubbins.