Author: Navneet Alang

It’s that time of the year again, folks! No no – not the new iPhone. It’s time for E3, gaming’s most important conference, where Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony announce their latest hardware, games and services. Fanboy battles will rage, marketing execs will boast – but if all goes according to plan, gamers will find out what will dominate their time over the next few months. Microsoft What We Know: Expect Microsoft’s big push to be about Natal. Everything we’ve heard from the Redmond-based company so far has suggested that this isn’t just another peripheral – it’s essentially a console relaunch….

Earlier this week, the New York Times company forced the iPad Pulse News Reader app to be pulled from the App Store. The reason? It took the Times’ RSS feed and put it inside its own app. To be clear, the RSS feed in question was a headline, a one-sentence introduction and a link to the full story on the NYT site. That’s it. Worse? Steve Jobs highlighted the app earlier during his WWDC keynote – and the NYT itself wrote a glowing review of the app just a few days before. As mystifying as the move seems from the outside, it’s yet another sign that established old media entities are still really struggling to…

Given that today’s announcement of iPhone 4 contained almost nothing surprising, you’d think everything that needed to be said has already been uttered. You’d be wrong. In fact, the most important part of Jobs’ keynote today was not the the arrival of a phone we all knew was coming. No, it was a slide near the end that Apple have shown before that stated that Apple exists at the intersection of technology and ‘the liberal arts’. Here’s what Jobs said about it: I put up this slide earlier this year, and to me it represents what Apple is all about. It’s not just a technology company, even though we have…

Though it may now be hard to remember, there was a time that Sony was the company that led the tech world. Sony, after all, were the people who helped bring us the Walkman and the CD player. For years, the Sony brand was synonymous with cutting edge technology and sophisticated design. But while Sony are still a powerhouse in the world of tech, it’s now common knowledge they are no longer its leaders. We all know why: their commitment to closed, proprietary technology hurt them immensely in the internet age and now, other more web-savvy companies dominate our  new media world. Apple are now the go-to…

When Twitter finally hit the mainstream press in 2009, you could essentially predict the comments on every fluff piece put out by a magazine or newspaper: Twitter is stupid, it’s “for twits” and “my God, I can’t believe anyone would be so stupid as to use this idiotic service”. As it turned out, those people were, well, completely and utterly wrong; Twitter unarguably has its uses, and has been a boon to millions everywhere. Yet these days, there is a lot of chatter – much of it on Twitter, no less – that new location apps like Foursquare or Foodspotting are stupid, pointless and “my God, I can’t believe…

Despite the breathless pace of change and innovation in the tech world, when you think about it, a lot of how we interact with technology has stayed pretty much the same for years. After all, if the numbers are anything to go by, it’s quite likely that many of you are reading this very post on a computer with a regular keyboard and either a mouse or a trackpad. When you go home and watch TV, it will be with a remote control, the design of which hasn’t changed for a few decades. And it’s been this way for a long time now. But you gotta wonder: where is the future of interfaces? Weren’t we supposed to be controlling…

After a slew of loud criticism, Facebook have rolled out new, more understandable privacy controls. At the core of the changes is what Facebook calls a more simple approach to privacy and a universal setting that will control access to data across the platform. Now, change your settings to ‘friends of friends’ and it will apply to all your interactions with Facebook. Also, applications and external websites will now have to ask permission for access to any sort of private data. The only problem? It won’t matter. Your Data Is Like Crack To Facebook Facebook makes the bulk of its money in much the same…

Over the past couple of days, it feels like half the web is chatting about the finale of Lost. But whether you think the surprising ending or the show itself was worthy of all the hype, one thing is clear: people are heading to the internet to talk about it. But giving people a chance to talk about TV isn’t the only way the web helps our affection for the boob tube. Here are 5 ways the internet is making TV better: 1. The Real-Time Water-cooler Okay, hands up: how many of you watched Lost or other popular shows with smartphone in hand, tweeting your reactions? And it was awesome, right? While luddites whine…

Ah, Summer! It’s the time of the year that even the most stereotypical geek who spends his time coding in a basement can’t wait to get out into the warm sun and fresh air. But just because you’re heading out, doesn’t mean it’s time to let go of your precious technology. Far from it: summer is often the best time to make use of all the incredible tech we’re lucky enough to have access to. Here are some essentials for enjoying summer – while still continuing to geek out. eReader/iPad Few things are more summer-y than sitting under the shade of a tree and kicking back reading a book, newspaper or magazine. But…

Every once in a while, the tech world undergoes something like a defining moment. The Apple-Gizmodo saga was one of those. It has been chatted about so much online that to try and recap the entire kerfuffle would be pointless. Yet, at the same time, less attention has been paid to that always-difficult question of ‘what it all means’. After all, what happened was that the mentality one of the biggest tech blogs around ran smack into the mindset of one of the biggest tech companies. On Gizmodo’s side were the ideals of journalism; on Apple’s the notions of law and order and corporate secrecy. For weeks…