Archive for the ‘web 2.0’ Category

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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Cloud computing is definitely here to stay. As web accesibility improves on a nearly daily basis so too does the potential for cloud computing concepts to be applied to more areas of corporate IT and provide new business solutions. As companies rush to capitalise on the new options available to them, the question is; what can cloud computing do for small business? And what does the longer term picture look like?

(Broadly speaking, the term refers to the transfer of application running and data storage processes away from individually owned client computers to centrally run and maintained systems, which are then accessed by users/clients/businesses on a pay-per-use basis via the web. For a more detailed description see the Wikipedia link at the…

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Ted.com is the website of the long-running Technology, Entertainment & Design conference which since 1984 has brought together many of the world’s leading thinkers and intellectuals, and challenged them to give the talk of their lives in just under 20 minutes…

For many years the conference was an invite only affair, and even then tickets cost around $6,000, meaning that the general public had very little benefit from this remarkable series of talks and presentations.

However in 2006 the website started featuring videos of some of the mini-lectures delivered at TED each year, and has continued to add both new and archive videos since then. The site now resembles a much smaller, Youtube-style, content database, containing nearly 300 20-minute videos of some of…

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We have long been aware of the potentially Orwellian threats to individual privacy that come with new developments in technology. Often the trade off is inevitable: technology permits a modern soceity to meet the needs of its members, but in return heightens the level of technological dependence to which we are subject.

How many times have we heard someone speculate about a return to the world of fifteen years ago in which mobile phones were entirely unused and unnecessary? In only one decade such technology has become so deeply entrenched in modern life that such a return to a previous state seems about as possible as reversing the movement of tectonic plates or the erosion of mountains.

There is no doubt that…

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