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 Google TV and YouView. Both are platforms for watching stuff on your TV and will cost £250 and £299 respectively for all the relevant gubbins.
Beware telephoning cold-callers who claim your PC is infected with a virus that only they can fix. They are scamming scum and deserve only your scorn.
Before the Internet came along people with nothing better to do ‘pottered’. Old fogies who either weren’t interested or couldn’t be bothered spent their days doing mindless domestic chores. Many still do. ‘Surfing the Web’ sounds ever so swish but is it really any different from pottering? How much of what we do online is wasting time?
In which smartphone cameras out-muscle dedicated snappers, the Internet gets busy, BT Vision coughs up for Premier League footie, YouTubers rake it in and B&O pretends to launch entry-level audio-visual toys.
In which Apple takes the piss out of its retail workers, Amazon and Google underwhelm TF with some new e-reader touchscreen tablet thingies, Ofcom talks tough on piracy, SurfEasy allows anonymous browsing, BT Vision disappoints and Samsung doesn’t get away with copying Apple’s iPad for about five minutes.
Even though you might actively want information about a product, by scanning the QR code you establish a two-way connection with a third party which could then result in you being deluged with garbage you don’t want.
Catastrophically late for the party yet again, Microsoft tries to muscle it’s way into the tablet market with Surface, a touchscreen with keyboard that is therefore, er, a laptop? Discuss.
In which streaming initiates disc death, shelves torment a Fogey, Thomas Pynchon goes digital, a Blu-ray player opens up myriad new vistas streaming with audiovisual guff, Tom Tom navigates around Google and into Apple and BlackBerry learns to spell.
With so many digital cameras on the market – from hybrids to compacts to DSLRs to superzooms – even the most equable snapper could get brain-ache deciding which to buy. Anyone who wants to be seen as though they know what they’re doing, though, will buy a DSLR. And this lot (apparently) are the best.
No one forces anyone to buy a book, whether it’s digitally rendered or paper and print. If Apple had set their prices too high, a lack of sales would have suggested their error. And there are always alternatives for the consumer such as libraries and those dusty repositories known as ‘book shops’
This isn’t so much built in obsolescence we’re talking about here, rather a deliberate and unnecessary removal of functionality from an otherwise perfectly serviceable device. That we paid good money for. And is now worthless, in every sense.
This bit of kit is integrated into a skull cap (a headband version is in the works) and displays the force sustained by head impacts on an LED display that sits at the back of the neck.
That’s what happens when you eavesdrop on conversations about subjects of which you know nothing. You find that the person upon whose eaves you were dropping doesn’t know anything either.
At 4pm the seething hordes of the geek media were let in to swarm around buffet tables groaning with free food and bars serving equally free booze. Somewhere amidst the platters of shrimp and beef skewers there were selected brands showing their products at very many small stands.
CES is now a curious circus, notable as much for some of the biggest names in tech that choose to be absent: Apple, Google, Amazon.
Users of social networks reveal far more about themselves than they should or that they are aware of and that in doing so they put themselves where the law, which has been tortoise-slow to try and get to grips with the new electronic age, cannot help them.
There is plenty written about the digital world that is mildly diverting, in a ‘what will they think of next?’ kind of way, while being unlikely to impinge on the lives of thee and me. Such is Bitcoin.
The HP website assures us that Windows 7 is pre-loaded with the driver that will make it and the 7690 sing sweet printerly music together. They are lying. And that lie is compounded by the fact that the driver we need cannot be downloaded from the HP website.
If you don’t like what’s being done with your online burblings, go offline, go analogue. Or just shut up.
Links to articles we’ve read recently, two from the Independent on Saturday 19th January and two from the New York Times on Sunday 13th January. All are worth a look.
Here’s a fine feature by Sam Anderson from the New York Times Magazine about mindless video games. The sort of things (Angry Birds) that have replaced the fag-break in the nation’s use of snippets of down time. This Fogey has spent an inordinate amount of time on Angry Birds and so far no 3-star level […]
Jeffrey Steingarten is food critic for US Vogue. His writing is wonderful and, since he’s waxed lyrical often about kitchen gadgets and food and cooking technology, he’s a perfect fit for Tech Fogey.
David Pogue is a very funny man who knows what he’s talking about. A rare bird indeed.
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