In 2006, Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of the US-edition of Wired magazine, wrote The Long Tail in which he showed how retail models would change for the digital age and why companies such as Amazon would make sooooo much money. Michael Prodger re-reads the book to see how prescient it really was.
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.
There are plenty of nervous drivers out there. Age is no barrier to being ditheringly hesitant. Equally there are plenty of self-righteous mummies who tear up suburban streets with their cargo of mewling brats utterly oblivious to the world outside their tinted windows
If the Internet has become a latter-day Wild West with spammers, hackers, privacy snoopers and virus designers circling the wagon train of ordinary users, it is not hard to see why. PCs and the web are still new technologies that betray their ramshackle origins.
The Velcro-shoe brigade will tell you that valve-based, analogue audio systems sound better than their digital counterparts. They certainly sound different.
TF has never been quite sure why so many desperate attention-seekers felt the need to share their sad little lives with the digital cosmos but now there’s cash to be made from a YouTube hit we totally understand.
If anyone out there who has the wherewithal to buy a new TV is still clinging to their old cathode ray tube (CRT) monstrosity out of some codgerish nostalgic whimsy, please stop it. Throw it away.
We, the consumers, are supposed to know what we want and how and where to find it online. We’ve supposedly demanded unlimited choice and so now we have to make our selections and pick out our personal nuggets from the colossal heap of audio-visual spoil.
Angry Birds fly into Windows and whether streaming music, movies and all that audio-visual fluff will really take over from physical media such as DVD, Blu-ray and CD.
A weekly round-up of stuff we’ve read in the papers and things we’ve done. This week; more on the latest iPad, Mashable, Raspberry Pi, Dell, Skype and homelessness
There are so many styles of headphone and so many price-points buying the right pair could induce a migraine. Unless you read this.
As manufacturers pack ever more features into their TVs, those sets that don’t have the spangly new additions are flogged off on the cheap. So for even the slightly tardy adopter there are some serious bargains to be had.
If you’ve managed to persuade yourself that a sat-nav is a better navigator than your brain and a map, here are some things to consider before you buy. ‘Try before you buy’ is useful with sat-nav. Even if you end up buying on-line, it’s worth going to a shop and bothering the sales assistant with […]
What to buy There’s more to printers these days than you might imagine. This Fogey still uses an HP Laserjet 6P from the mid-Nineties for printing black and white documents. It’s quick and effective and the single toner cartridge seems to last for ever. But he also has an HP Photosmart all-in-one for photos and […]
Before you buy a digital radio make sure you can receive digital broadcasts at www.getdigitalradio.com Then stick with your FM radio and all this DAB nonsense will go away. Unless over 50 percent of the populace take the digital option by 2015, FM will continue. See the Category Overview for why this will be a […]
When/how will you use your music player? If portability is paramount go for something small and light such as an iPod Shuffle (see pic above). The sound reproduction might be pants-to-purists and it might not hold that many tunes but through earphones even the crappiest sound quality is okay and how many tunes are you […]
What will you use your camera for? Some compacts are more compact than others. The Sony Cybershot DSC-T99 and Samsung ST100 are very slim, making them easy to carry in a pocket and less obvious to thieving bastards. Does your camera need to be rugged and/or waterproof? The Canon Powershot D10 and Casio EX-G1 are […]
