Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Microsoft’s recent high-profile ad campaign featuring the American comic Jerry Seinfeld was not the success the company had hoped it would be. Responses were lukewarm at best, with most finding the ad to be slightly laboured and quite unfunny, like some awkward middle-aged attempt at quirky offbeat cool (read the original relevant blog post in our archive).

Anyway Valleywag has confirmed that as of tomorrow Microsoft will officially announce the termination of the working relationship with Jerry Seinfeld, stating that it had always planned only a brief working connection, and instead now focus on the new ad campaign, unveiled last week. Question is: is it any better than the old one? Or does the change of tact simply smack of panic and…

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When it comes to open source content management systems Wordpress is doing pretty well for itself. Last week saw the release of another update (to v2.6.2) which contains a few bug fixes and promises to resolve some recently discovered security loopholes. The update should go some way to silencing Wordpress’s detractors who criticise its fundamental architecture in relation to security. For the rest of us however the release marks yet another success for one of web 2.0’s biggest rising stars…

With such high profile users as Techcrunch, Reuters, The New York Times and CNN to name a few, Wordpress is doing extremely well in what is a fairly crowded field (see Wikipedia for a full list of current CMS options). With a…

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Microsoft’s latest tv ad is possibly one of their most high profile ones to date. It features American comedian Jerry Seinfeld randomly encountering Bill Gates in a shoe shop at the mall, after which a brief and slightly bizarre dialogue ensues. The ad is fairly significant in its signalling of a slight rebranding strategy from Microsoft - but does it succeed where others failed? Can it make Microsoft cool?

First things first; the ad is certainly a little puzzling. After all, it is clear from the first few seconds (once Bill Gates is introduced) that we are watching a Microsoft ad and yet, despite this, no further real brand message is either introduced or developed. Instead, for pretty much another whole…

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Last week Google finally made their bid for a share of the web browser market with their newly launched Chrome browser, leaving web developers a little exasperated about the prospect of additional browser compatibility testing work. However, for the rest of us the question is; can Google’s latest effort really offer anything new that Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and others don’t? And if so, can it really go a step further and take users off Internet Explorer or will it simply be the preserve of a small web-savvy minority?

(N.B. the current available Chrome version is a beta one, free to download, but limited only to Windows XP and Vista users)

Starting first with the actual features of the browser, it has to be said that it doesn’t attempt to…

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Ten years since the introduction of Bluetooth the vastly successful technology is set to get a significant birthday upgrade, with its standard range increasing from roughly 10 to 100m. With new uses being developed on a nearly daily basis things are looking promising for gadget lovers and technophiles who should see the fruits of this upgrade in the coming months.

Bluetooth already boasts a myriad of uses and applications, particularly in relation to handheld devices, enabling everything from free filesharing between mobile phones (or laptops) to cordless photo printing with Polaroid’s PoGo printer, to name but a few. Now that range is set to increase on such a significant scale here is a little personal wish list of potential future Bluetooth applications:

1.…

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