Gadgets
Top ten tech records
In the 15 years since genial trumpeter Roy Castle went to the great Book of Records in the sky, technology has moved faster than his tap-dancing toes. The majority of the biggest, fastest and most powerful tech mentioned here wasn't even dreamed of back in 1994, which makes us wonder what futuristic world records are yet to be set. Strongest prosthetic exoskeleton? Fastest sub-orbital ramjet? Deadliest virtual-reality mind virus? Here's our current cutting-edge top ten tech records... Continue reading...
The future is now: Sci-fi films in real locations
The modern science-fiction film is synonymous with CGI wizardry, clever gadgets and elaborate sets. While those are some of our favourite things, it's all too easy to lose sight of the human story in among the whooshing, 'sploding and transforming. One way to focus on the people is to place them in an all-too-familiar future that looks a lot like now. There's a fascinating strand of sci-fi cinema that does just that, with auteurs such as Traffaut, Godard and Kubrick creating the future by filming in real locations. We highlight seven films that use real-world places to creepy effect... Continue reading...
The greatest CNET features you've never seen
Over the last few years, we've tickled your funniest of bones, expanded your brains to hitherto unthinkable widths, and wasted enormous amounts of your free time. We thought we'd spend a happy afternoon splashing through our extensive archive of features and pick out the ones we think are important, and the ones you've told us you love the most.
Many of you may not have visited CNET UK two years ago when we published our ultimate list of the world's greatest off switches -- yes, off switches. Or last year, when we spent three months defining the 50 most significant moments of Internet history from the last four decades. Continue reading...
How heavy is the Internet?
Using publicly available information, for the first time in the world, we have precisely and scientifically calculated the weight of the Internet. Obviously this information is only really useful to someone attempting to work out the cost of posting the Internet somewhere, perhaps to North Korea. Still, the casual reader -- hi there! -- may still enjoy learning just how damn heavy the thing is. Continue reading...
Top ten funniest tech videos ever made
Every minute, 10 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. This means that by 2015, Google's servers will contain over 5,000 years of footage -- handy if you have the entire span of human history to kill, but tricky to browse in your lunch hour. Fear not. CNET UK has scanned aeons of audiovisual entertainment, discarded everything related to pet cats, Miley Cyrus and the US healthcare debate, and selected ten bite-sized, tech-related clips that genuinely made us LOL. Or at least SSA (snigger semi-audibly).
Mactini -- The Peter Serafinowicz Show
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USBulous, darling! The most fashionable USB sticks from CNET Towers 
The life of a technology journalist is an endless whirlwind of cocktail receptions, champagne launches and debauched parties, as manufacturers and PR types try to butter us up for their latest products. It never works, of course: we're as neutral as a beige pashmina. But we still wake up the next morning bleary-eyed and hurty-headed, our pockets full of half-chewed canapés, mystery ladygirls' phone numbers and odd little bits of plastic: the ubiquitous press release on a USB stick. It's high time we celebrated these mini-megabyte marvels, so we called in CNET UK's Fashion and Stylish Storage Editor, Gok Wanhundredandtwentyeightmeg... Continue reading...
Sleeper successes: Tech that's taken its time
For every overnight digital success such as Twitter, there's a technology that came up the hard way, clawing every point of market share from bitter rivals and struggling to win over a disinterested public. But quality triumphs in the end. Here are ten sleeper technologies whose day came at last.
We Live in Public: Crave reviews the dotcom documentary
If you think Twitter exposes you to the world, how about broadcasting video of your every moment to the Internet's gaze? That was the vision of Josh Harris, self-destructed dotcom millionaire and "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of". He's the subject of We Live in Public, Ondi Timoner's documentary that won the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Award for its discussion of Harris' fifteen gigabytes of fame.
Timoner, director of rockumentary DiG!, was there when Harris made -- and lost -- a fortune in the first dotcom bubble. He was so far ahead of the curve with video Web site Pseudo.com that he lost sight of the curve and then fell off the curve completely, blowing his fortune on Quiet: We Live in Public. Quiet was a demented performance art take on the concept of Big Brother that self-destructed under the weight of the end of the century. Continue reading...
The eight most brainless tech rumours ever
To work at CNET UK, you have to take the managing director out on a date and make her laugh. The rule is simple: if she don't laugh, you ain't staff.
There. That was a rumour we just started. See how easy it is? The great thing about rumours is they only need the tiniest speck of something that sounds like truth to be credible, and if they're proven wrong -- hey, there'll be another one along in a minute.
We've picked eight stonkers from tech history that teased and twisted the minutest grains of plausibility into epic tales of technological wonder and horror. We begin with a story that proves that there are limits to the pestering power of children. Continue reading...
Top ten most remote tech locations on Earth
There's scarcely a nook or cranny of our planet that isn't home to some flavour of computerised gizmo. Far from the fragile, built-in-obsolescence of consumer tech, intrepid gadgets are helping humans to do their job, have a good time or just plain survive. Here's our guide to the IT at the edges of the world.
