Duncan Geere News Archive

Qualcomm planning smartbook assault

Qualcomm has been showing off a bevy of devices called Smartbooks that the company thinks could be poised to swallow up the netbook market by outmanoeuvring them in their core strengths - the small-and-light and always-on-connectivity arenas.

The model pictured...

Dell quietly introduces Studio 17 Touch

Dell has sneakily rolled out a new notebook in the States. The Studio 17 Touch, as it's called, has appeared on the company's US website and features a whopping great big 17-inch multitouch touchscreen.

It ships with a suite of touch-enabled applications, including...

OCZ introduces external USB 3.0 SSD

OCZ has unveiled an unnamed external SSD that it'll be showcasing at CES next year. It'll be the first to feature USB 3.0 connectivity, meaning that it should be able to theoretically reach 4.8Gb/s, though that'll sink to more like 1.6Gb/s in real-world situations.

The...

Qualcomm plans "Plaza" of white-label app stores

If you think the proliferation of app stores among device manufacturers, mobile networks and just about any other company in the world was getting a little silly, you'll likely be alarmed to hear that Qualcomm is launching an initiative that could see any company set...

VIDEO: Skifta offers media sharing app

A small startup from Poole has created an app that aims to make it easier to share your digital media collection between your various gadgets. It's called Skifta, and allows you to shift content between a number of devices with just one catch - they have to be DLNA enabled.

If...

Chrome OS source code available

Google's Chrome OS is about to be unveiled to the public, and the source code for the operating system has already made it out into the wilds of the Web.

At the moment, there's very little to show for it - just a login screen and one of the included wallpapers...

Xbox 360's Xtival weekend returns

Microsoft has announced that its Xbox festival - Xtival - will be returning in late November. Running across 27 to 29 November - Friday, Saturday, and Sunday - the festival is a celebration of gaming, movies and music that takes place on Xbox Live.

For the duration...

EU cars getting mandatory emergency system

From early in the next decade, it'll be mandatory for all cars in the EU to be fitted with a "black box" technology called eCall. This is an in-vehicle emergency call service which is used to contact the authorities in the case of an accident or other adverse situation.

The...

Mirasol shows off colour E-reader displays

Mirasol, the team at Qualcomm responsible for its e-reader division, has been showing off a new set of eBook readers that are built on "interferometric modulation" display technology. In slightly less geeky language, that means that they can do colour, and they can do...

Swallowable e-pill sensors coming soon

Swallowable pills that contain sensors could be just around the corner. A company called Proteus Biomedical is working with Qualcomm to build both pills and patches that can monitor your vital signs and send them to a mobile device.

The idea is that those with...

Mobile TV could be in UK in time for Olympics

MediaFLO television, which launched in the United States, could be coming to the UK in time for the 2012 Olympic Games. The company's head of business development EMEA, Chem Assayag, dropped several hints to Pocket-lint, saying that 2012 is an "important year", adding...

Ten reasons to try out Microsoft Office 2010

Microsoft Office 2010 has now entered its public beta phase, and it's already looking like a pretty substantial upgrade to the 2007 version, and a huge improvement on earlier editions of the omnipresent Office app suite. Here's ten reasons why you should give it a...

MS Office 2010 beta now available

Microsoft has revealed that the 2010 edition of its phenomenally successful Office suite has now entered beta. The software can be downloaded directly from Microsoft.com/office/2010.

The new version has a whole host of improvements, many of which will be familiar...

Spotify gets Pandora-style recommendations

You might be familiar, if you're a hardcore Spotify user, with @Spotibot - a Twitter bot that recommends bands that are similar to other bands, as well as the Better Spotify Links project. Well, the coder behind it - Andy Smith - has just completed his latest app - an...

Nokia to dump Symbian from N-series?

Nokia appears to be preparing to lose the Symbian operating system on its N-series range of top-end smartphones.  In its place will be Maemo - the Linux-based operating system that powers the forthcoming N900 handset.

The claim was made by Maemo's marketing team...

VIDEO: iPhone gets stethoscope adaptor

A startup called RidRx has created an adaptor that'll allow you to mod an old stethoscope into a fully-functioning iPhone or iPod touch-enabled version of the heartbeat detector. It comes with a phone dock/holder and an app that will record and analyse the audio you capture.

It's...

Ordnance Survey maps to be issued free

The government has said that it will "explore ways" of making the Ordnance Survey's maps of the UK freely available on the web from April 2010. Gordon Brown announced the change at an event also attended by web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee who is now the UK's information tsar,...

Microsoft's Azure cloud platform now available

Microsoft has finally launched its Azure cloud computing platform, more than a year after it was originally announced. The software, which promises an operating system in the cloud, will be a "community technical preview" until the end of the year, and then go live for...

Google lanches Image Swirl experiment

Google has launched a new product to its experimental "labs" offerings called Image Swirl. It's an interface for sifting through the piles of pictures that appear when you conduct an image search and aims to group similar pictures together.

Google says that Image...

Google's Chrome OS plans to be detailed

Further to reports that Chrome OS is close to launch, we now have more confirmation that the platform isn't too far off - Google is apparently going to hold an event on 19 November that will reveal all about current progress of the OS, a broad overview of its features,...

Personal data sold by T-Mobile

T-Mobile has admitted guilt in recent news that an unnamed mobile phone operator had been caught selling personal data about customers to competitors. 

Staff apparently passed on millions of records from thousands of customers to third party brokers, who then...

VIDEO: Left 4 Dead coming to the NES

An enterprising games programmer named Eric Ruth has built a NES-style 8-bit demake of last year's zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead. It's being announced on the same date as the official sequel to the title, but won't be available until 4 January 2010.

It runs...

Chrome extensions approach release

Google appears to be about to bring support for extensions into Chrome. In developer editions of the browser, there's a jigsaw puzzle area in the lower right corner of the new tab screen that links through to https://chrome.google.com/extensions - which isn't yet live.

That...

Pirate Bay tracker shuts down

The Pirate Bay has shut down its tracker in an unprecedented move that will see the filesharing network take a more decentralised stance. Despite the tracker closing, the site itself will stay online and active - using both trackerless solutions and the unaffiliated OpenBitTorrent...

VIDEO: Google Translate gets substantial update

Google has given its much-loved Translate service a lick of paint and a bucket of useful new features. The service can translate between 51 different languages - meaning 2550 language pairs - which Google claims represents over 98% of internet users in the world today.

There's...