Author: Toby Leftly

It’s well known that Facebook and Google are in a war to see who invade their users privacy to the greatest degree. With the internet as the battleground, the battle is unsurprisingly pretty high tech, but Google just raised the stakes. They’ve just bought themselves an unmanned microdrone at a cost of around $60,000. Are they fed up of people chasing the Google Street View cars down the street? Maybe, or perhaps they’re just frustrated that the Street View car can only see through first floor windows. Either way, this seems like a pricey, if not awesomely cool way to invade users privacy and turn…

Microsoft used to be a pretty solid company, but these days they’re as shaken up as Justin Bieber’s hair. In the 80s and 90s Microsoft made money from enterprise, with a few small interests elsewhere. Since 2000, Microsoft has been torn between making money in their traditional area of expertise and invading almost every other tech market out there. The Xbox is considered one of Microsoft’s most successful products, despite the fact that the Xbox division consistently loses money. But nothing is guaranteed to make the hairs on the back of Steve Ballmer’s neck stand up like casually dropping into…

Microsoft has announced pricing and release dates for Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. After the preview a few weeks ago, Microsoft has announced that it’s Office for Mac software will be available for consumers in October. Pricing is predictably middle of the road, with the Home and Student version available for $119 and Office for Home and Business for $199 or $279 for two installs. An academic version is available for $99, including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and Messenger. Office for Mac 2011 is the first Mac version of Office to ship with Outlook rather than Entourage for email since…

No matter how much you use Google search, or how much of an internetz pro you think you are, there’s always more to learn. This Google cheat sheet is surprisingly useful for those looking to harness the power of Google’s intelligent search options. For example, most people know you can use the words OR and AND to refine your search. But did you know you can place a + symbol in front of a word to search for only that word, not its plural or past or future tense? As a web guy, I frequently harness the power of Google’s additional search options, but there are a few in here I wasn’t aware of, so I’m sure there’s something…

I’ve always found SteamPunk a little bit of an enigma. Who are these people combining antique items and old world look and feel with cutting edge technology? Is it art or science? Do I need to follow the Antiques Roadshow to understand the whole thing? Either way, it’s awesome to see some of the contraptions, particularly when it’s not just contemporary computer equipment dressed up in a corset. This thingamajig actually works and actually combines old world and new world. The video shows the work so far, which is basically a globe tied into Google Earth using RFID tags. The man responsible for this…

This is plain silly, and not entirely relevant to, well, anything. But it’s fun to see people destroy expensive things for little or no good reason. The washing machine was apparently faulty and beyond repair, but after many years of loyal service surely our electronic devices deserve a more dignified end than this. Faulty or not, when the dullard throws the brick in and the machine goes haywire, it’s almost as if a million washing machines cried out in pain and were immediately silenced. Or slowly and agonizingly silenced….

Mobile carriers really do have their hands full. They hold the future of pretty much all of our communications in their hands, and while Verizon customers seem pretty satisfied, AT&T is famous for disappointing customers, particularly those fickle iPhone users. While incompetence and high charges are the norm, the carriers are planning to take over other profitable sectors. Mobile payment systems are commonplace in the Scandinavian countries and Japan, but have been slow to take off in North America. The basic functionality would be that stores, vending machines and even two mobile…

It was only a matter of time before one of those hacker types released a jailbreak for the iPhone 4, but this time they’re really rubbing Apple’s nose in it. Since the US Library of Congress established a week ago that jailbreaking your iPhone is legal, it’s now simpler than ever – simply browse to www.jailbreakme.com on your iPod touch, iPhone or iPad, and follow the simple instructions. The jailbreak even states on the screen “jailbreak to get tweaks and apps Apple won’t allow in the App Store. Free, legal, safe”. The hack comes courtesy of Comex and his group. Some issues are being reported by early…

Nobody likes the companies the RIAA and MPAA are using to chase Peer-To-Peer file sharers, but I was particularly tickled to see this pop up in my RSS feed. The US Copyright Group has filed more than 14,000 lawsuits against P2P users, but apparently they’re not above a little copyright infringement themselves. Their own website is shown to be a rip off of a competitor’s website, Copyright Settlements. TorrentFreak details the story, no doubt rubbing their hands together with glee at the same time. So what does all this mean? Well, obviously the organizations suing consumers on behalf of the RIAA…

Thanks to a leaked screenshot from a Chromium bug report, we might be seeing an update to Google’s email service look and feel in the near future. The changes are subtle, but they do show some hope for Google’s awful aesthetic approach to designing web apps. As you can see, the ‘compose mail’ button is now a dedicated button rather than a text link. Shocking! Also, the buttons along the top of the email viewer have been simplified, with a drop down option being added for controlling multiple selected items. Scandalous! FInally, and most provocatively, you can see a ‘call phone’ button has been added…