Author: Toby Leftly

The war between Apple and, well, everyone else is raging, and Boy Genius Report is currently the front line fighter. For those who don’t know, Boy Genius Report posted a story on July 1 about an email exchange between Steve Jobs and an irate customer not happy with the reception on his shiny new iPhone 4. The email exchange caused some backlash, mostly because Jobs’ alleged response, telling the customer to “calm down” was considered by most to be arrogant. But the next day, Apple PR issued a statement declaring that the conversation was fake, that Steve Jobs had not written the emails. Well, Boy Genius…

The news has been chock full this year about how China hates Google and Google hates China, but how does the largest country in the world feel about the rest of the internet? Well, not so hot either, in fact China has banned its soldiers from tweeting, blogging and online dating. Apparently, China is concerned that soldiers will be easier to compromise if they are overly available via the internet. “Soldiers should not take part in any Internet interaction, even if they try to cover up their military identities, because they cannot ensure they will not be revealing any information relating to…

This is both inspiring and terrifying. The National Federation of the Blind has been working diligently on creating a car that can be driven by blind people. Using a clever system involving vibrating gloves and puffs of air, the specialized car provides a way for the driver to interact with the car’s surroundings in a non-visual way. Currently the car is being tested and will debut as part of the pre-race activities at the 2011 Rolex 24 at Daytona. The innovation doesn’t stop there though. The team plans to take their car on the road, literally. The street-ready version, a Ford Escape Hybrid, comes…

Apple today released an announcement regarding the iPhone 4 reception issue, and guess what – it’s not their fault, and there isn’t really an issue at all. Apple’s PR department spoke out about the issue that has become a major concern among early adopters, although it seems only a small minority of people are actually seeing the issue. Apple reports that the problem is “both simple and surprising”. The method used by phone manufacturers to calculate the available signal has been updated recently, and the iPhone 4 uses the old way. Apple is essentially saying that the drop in signal isn’t actual,…

A while back someone found this quirky page on the Apple website showing one possible use for an iPad. Apple was extremely careful to note right on the page that “tweeting from the street” is possible but not necessarily advised, and should be done at users’ own risk. Well, you ain’t seen risk yet. With new Apple mobile devices gaining accelerometers, GPS and now gyroscopes, they’re practically born to fly, but iCub plans to go one step further. With a range of small bush planes priced between $75,000 and $100,000, iCub provides iPads with each purchase, fully loaded with a number of applications….

As if Facebook wasn’t surrounded by enough privacy concerns already, new facial recognition technology is being added to ease the task of tagging people in images. After its purchase of Divvyshot two months ago, Facebook is focusing more of photos and photo uploading. Apparently, more than 100 million photos are uploaded to the giant social service every day, and they see a potential to invade more people’s privacy on an even larger scale than previously. Divvyshot was a tiny photo startup which aimed to make sharing photos easier. After only a year in business, the service was snapped up by Facebook…

Microsoft’s MIX online lab actually contains some pretty cool stuff. Take The Archivist, for example. Microsoft’s newest MIX online project is still in alpha, but shows immense promise. The Archivist is, at it’s most simplest, a tool for searching Twitter. Enter a word or term or either including a Twitter operator and The Archivist will return a load of useful information including tweet volume over time, users with the most relevant tweets and most relevant URL. Tweets are by definition tiny pieces of information, but combine them and throw in some visualization and it’s a powerful mix. Because…

Microsoft has been bragging recently, but deep down its still hurt and offended that some of you prefer Apple toys. Some leaked documents provide some insight into Windows 8 and the thinking behind it, and apparently Microsoft wants its users to think of its products just like they do Apple’s. A minor service pack for Windows 7 is due shortly, but will consist mostly of bugfixes, with no significant feature additions. The slides mention Apple by name, noting its high quality, uncomplicated user experience, closing with the statement “This is something people will pay for!”. The release appears…

Playlistify is one of those unfortunately rare products that does exactly what the name suggests. That’s right, Playlistify “playlistifies” your playlists. As creator Roeland Landegent explains in the video above, Playlistify allows you to take lists of songs from anywhere – iTunes, Winamp, Last.fm, any XML-based songlist and convert it to a playable list of songs. The website, playlistify.org simply processes the songs, and passes the list to Spotify, so unfortunately this means that Playlistify is essentially useless in the US and Canada. Spotify is available in Finland, Norway, France,…

For those of you following the Google Vs. China melodrama, you know the internet giant is doing its best to walk a fine line between revolutionizing search in China and getting kicked out. So far, Google’s tactic has been to redirect users from its google.cn page to google.com.hk, effectively providing uncensored search. But now Google’s Internet Content Provider license is up for renewal, and if the license is not renewed then Google’s entire presence in China will disappear. In an attempt to appease the government, Google has slightly modified the way users are sent to Google’s Hong Kong search…