I’m not the biggest fan of Microsoft. I’ve made that pretty clear over the years. The company has spent a decade in various degrees of stagnation, largely thanks to keeping Uncle Fester’s evil twin as its CEO. It has made a string of expensive and stupid acquisitions
Browsing: Alistair Fairweather
Anyone with a laptop or a smartphone has a love-hate relationship with Wi-Fi. When it works it’s like magic, but too often you find yourself just out of range, or struggling to remember which password you used with this or that hotspot. But imagine
There’s something special about your favourite book shop. The smell of all those crisp pages, the comfy armchairs, those ranks of beautiful new covers. So I was sad to hear that Borders, a US book seller, has finally conceded defeat and gone into
It’s unusual for consumers to know the name of the CEO of the company whose products they buy. Few people can name the CEO of Toyota, or LG. But how many of us know who runs Apple? Most ordinary folks have no trouble naming him
For an industry focused on the future of information, the Internet is surprisingly prone to old fashioned maladies such as superstition, rumour and wild speculation. We’ve heard the latest doomsday prediction before — the World Wide Web
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. For months the tech press has swirled with persistent rumours that News Corp is selling MySpace. On Tuesday it emerged that serious bids for the ailing social network are now as low as US$30m
Few things incite as much passion among technophiles as their choice of smartphone. In the 1990s, phones were merely functional or fashionable. Now they have been elevated to a quasi-religious status. So the news that Android is “crushing”
It’s one of the most important pieces of technology in the modern world, a secure gateway to all the wonders and conveniences of the Internet. It’s a tool used every day by billions of people for everything from banking to learning to
What’s the new favourite sport of Silicon Valley billionaires? No, it’s not Segway polo (although that is still popular). Rather, it’s patent infringement lawsuits. Hardly a week goes by without a new one being announced. At last count Nokia is suing
If you’re one of the planet’s approximately 1,6bn Microsoft Windows users, then chances are you’re pretty used to viruses. They come at you from every angle — e-mail, websites, flash memory sticks — and if you’re sensible you have