Technology that's totally impossible 
Many things keep us awake at night. Simon Cowell's hair is one. The implausible success of anyone who appears in Big Brother is another. But the thing that really keeps us staring into the darkness is technology. How the hell does it work? Simple gadgets like TVs and mice leave us unperturbed. But there are some things that are just beyond reasoning.
Science-fiction writer and all-round genius Arthur C Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." On this one issue, we think he might have been wrong -- because it's quite obvious to us that some technology is magic. Or if not magic, at least utterly impossible and somehow a massive confidence trick. Continue reading...
Man arrested for not tweeting to teeming tween tumult
A record-company executive has been arrested and charged for refusing to tweet. James A Roppo, pictured right, was asked to post a message to Twitter to calm unruly fans of Canadian dream tween Justin Bieber, pictured left, oh hang on. We hadn't heard of him either, but clearly the kids love him. Not so much the cops. Is this pointing to a new zero-tolerance approach to social media?
The 15-year-old from Ontario, Canada, released his first album this week. The pint-sized popster, who plays at Wembley Arena tonight with something called a Taylor Swift, was due to make an appearance at Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City, Long Island, New York. Three thousand people turned up, mostly pre-adolescent girls, and you know what they're like. Continue reading...
Carphone Warehouse stops selling faulty Sony Ericsson Satio
Carphone Warehouse has kicked the Sony Ericsson Satio out of its shops, after too many customers reported software problems with the smart phone, Reuters reports.
You can still find the Satio on Carphone's Web site, but no tariffs are available to buy. The Warehouse said, in a statement, that the Satio had "issues" which may "result in a customer experience that is below our usually high standards." Continue reading...
Modern Tech versus The Past
Most of us assume modern life is the peak of human achievement, but is it really? We decided to take a look at the major technologies of the modern world and compare them to their closest equivalent of pre-digital mankind. The results are surprising. Continue reading...
HTC HD2 on in O2 stores today: We say don't buy just yet!
There's never been a higher-rated Windows Mobile phone on CNET UK. It's the first Windows Mobile phone to have a capacitive touchscreen. It's the HTC HD2 and today it launched on O2.
Normally this kind of story gets filed under 'slow news day', cross-referenced with 'bending over for public relations staff', but we have some advice to give you. Although today the phone goes on sale in O2 stores, note that it's only on sale in O2 stores -- not online. And it's online you should be looking to buy this bad boy from. Continue reading...
The best of Photosynth
Photosynth blew our minds from day one, and now the 3D image technology has matured to the point where there's even an iPhone app.
You can look at popular synths on the site, but we've dived deeper into the archives to find synths that do clever things with the technology, allow you to swoop around geek landmarks, and generally boggle our brains. These are our favourites, divided into two pages -- interesting places and other innovative uses for the technology. When you're done swooshing and whooshing, we'll show you how to create your own synth.
To view synths, first you'll need to install Silverlight, Microsoft's framework for running Web applications. Just click the link in Photosynth, save and run the installer, and you're good to go. Now -- on with the show... Continue reading...
Seesmic Desktop for Windows: Better for Twitter than TweetDeck?
As good as the Twitter Web site is for updating everyone about the various happenings in your life, it's certainly not as handy as having some sort of application to do it for you. After all, we can access email in our Web browser, but having a desktop app is still a more streamlined experience. At the moment, the majority of decent Twitter apps are written for Adobe Air. But now, Seesmic has launched an early release of its new native Windows application.
Seesmic Desktop has two versions -- the older Air application was, without wishing to appear rude, horrific. Seesmic is also the company behind Twhirl, which is a much better application, but more useful if you only have a single account to manage and aren't bothered about seeing all your messages and @replies on a single screen. Continue reading...
Microsoft and Murdoch ganging up on Google?
Microsoft is planning to pay Rupert Murdoch to pull his content from Google. The software behemoth is reported to be in high-level talks over a connivance with News Corp that could fragment the Internet.
The Financial Times reports that News Corp is driving the high-level talks with Microsoft. Murdoch wants to withdraw News Corp stories from Google News, which he views as stealing his content. Microsoft clearly sniffs an opportunity to leverage its own search engine Bing, and has approached other major content providers with similar plans. Continue reading...
Palm Pre gets new webOS version 1.3.1
Palm Pre owners woke up this morning to find a present on their curvy little buddy -- Palm rolled out an operating system upgrade all over Europe last night at midnight.
With webOS version 1.3.1, your contacts and calendars from LinkedIn and Yahoo join your Facebook friends and your Google contacts in the Pre's Synergy address book and calendar. Continue reading...
Confirmed: Dell Studio 17 multi-touch laptop to launch in UK this year 
Dell unveiled its first multi-touch laptop late last week -- the mid-range Studio 17. And we're pretty excited to be able to confirm it'll launch in the UK "before the end of the year", according to a Dell spokesperson we tortured for info quizzed this morning.
This is a 17-inch machine with an LED-backlit display running at 1,440x900-pixels. Plus it runs Windows 7, which was built to natively support multi-touch technologies. You can touch the start menu to fire up programs, pinch to zoom in on photos and all that jazz. Continue reading...
