Author: Ransler Dier

Skype has been building itself up to becoming the most respected and used Internet phone company on the net, in fact, you would be hard pressed to find any worthy competition at all. The best part? It’s still free when calling computer to computer. There is a price to be paid for this ‘free’ service though, and that is putting up with all the advertising. We see it (for the most part) as an irritant, but companies such as Skype see it as revenue. Skype has put out a warning that more advertising is coming. In an interview with The Telegraph, CEO Josh Silverman has said: “It’s challenging to get…

Andreas Hykade, the director of short films such as The Runt and Ring of Fire, has another film slated to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival this year. The film entitled Love & Theft marks a new direction for Hykade, this is a pure experimentation in animation and design as images loop and distort fluidly into each other. The whole film is set to a thumping, grinding soundtrack almost as hypnotic as the visuals. The film never stops moving as we are taken on a psychedelic journey through animation references and even other filmmakers make an appearance in the loops. It is one film that art and design…

Going green can be beautiful. By the time of the upcoming 2016 Olympics, being held in Rio de Janeiro, a man-made waterfall will be used to power the future Olympic village. The Swiss architectural office RAFAA is undergoing this unique project named the Solar City Tower. The artificial waterfall will flow down the side of a 105-meter high skyscraper doubling as a hydroelectric power plant for the games. It will house a small power plant that runs on solar energy in order to pump water to the 105-meter height. There will also be a observation deck located on the structure providing a variety of cafes…

The now Internet powerhouse Google used its blog today to call out Microsoft on its new open source 2010 Office suite. A day before Microsoft takes its Office 2010 suite out of beta; Matthew Glotzbach, Google Enterprise Product Management Director, has posted a blog entry urging Microsoft Office users to forget Office and use Google’s new upgrade, Google Docs. “If you choose this path, upgrade means what it’s supposed to mean: effortless, affordable, and delivering a remarkable increase in employee productivity,” writes Glozbach in his post earlier today. “This is a refreshing…

Google has topped the iPhone in the race to become the best-selling operating system in the U.S. consumer smartphone market in the first quarter. While BlackBerry devices still hold the number one spot, both the Google Android and Apple’s iPhone are not far behind. According to the research firm NDP Group, BlackBerry accounted for 36 per cent of the units sold to U.S. consumers with the Android following with 28 per cent of units sold. The iPhone, which had previously held the number two spot, fell to third place with 21 per cent. Apple fanatics do have a scapegoat to explain for this step back in…