I aired this thought online this morning thinking it was innocent enough and that most people would agree with the fact that on Windows 8, it’s pretty hard to see notifications that have happened in the past.

I was wrong. It seems the common feeling of most out there right now is that ‘Live Tiles’ on Windows 8 are enough, and that they provide enough information at a glance to quickly be informed on what’s going on, but I disagree. They have a number of large flaws that are being overlooked.

Live tiles are a great system in many ways, and Windows Phone has been extremely effective at demonstrating this, but they have major issues with scaling, both in their sheer numbers and when a large number of notifications come in.

I found this particularly frustrating when Windows Phone first launched. I would often find that when a deluge of information is sent to the phone – such as a...

I’ve always been a fan of the physical keyboard, and have long been a sceptic of whether the coming tablet deluge would be able to move me (and the consumer market) away from physical keys, or just end up being another companion device until serious input is required, at which time the keyboard comes back out again.

Until July, I had not owned a tablet PC and had held off getting one for a while since I didn’t see the purpose of one in my life. The laptop was enough, I figured, and continued to lug it around. I’d always thought that if I were to get a tablet, I’d have to get an external keyboard for it, since on screen keyboards weren’t enough considering how much typing I do.

I have a laptop, why do I need one?

While I was overseas in the US, I had my Chromebook with me (since it’s the lightest laptop I have) and was a little tired of having to carry it around. In San Francisco, I...

I guess this is the universe’s way of working things out for saying bad things about HTC.

I was reading through this fascinating article about former Facebook employee, Katherine Losses’ disillusion with Facebook and how she moved away from the company.

As part of the customer service team, she was supposedly given a ‘master password’ (we knew this existed) that gives access to any Facebook data. Apparently, this includes passwords;

“She could go into pages to fix technical problems and police content. Losse recounted sparring with a user who created a succession of pages devoted to anti-gay messages and imagery. In one exchange, she noticed the man’s password, “Ilovejason,” and was startled by the painful irony.”

Seriously? Facebook doesn’t encrypt their users’ passwords, and their staff can just access them? What is going on here? The password should be hashed, both in the database and in transit, so how was she able to access it? This is absolutely unacceptable, and...

Windows 8 exposes the great danger of Microsoft’s vision: a software environment that forces you to go “PC” when all you want is the “Plus” bit. If the iPad has taught us anything at all, it’s that there’s a lot of people out there who are happy with pure tablets, and actively desire pure tablets.

This is exactly what makes me wonder if Microsoft may have shipwrecked themselves with Windows 8. I’ve always stood by the thought that people want an iPad, not another PC.

“Windows 8 gets a lot right, but its PC side is still there, and it’s inescapable.”

The PC is associated in the mentality of most users with a special kind of hell that includes viruses, tune ups and other things that users hate doing. Viruses almost non-existent today, but users still don’t seem to understand that a banner online offering free smilies isn’t legit and could change the way their computer operates.

An...

HTC released their forecast for Q3 2012 today, and it’s not looking good.

“HTC saw profit more than halve in the second quarter after European sales disappointed and phones destined for the U.S. market were held up by customs inspections.”

I have to be honest, I think I can see why. The One Series line up has been somewhat of a botched release, not only do there seem to be widespread QA issues, the One series was released around the same time that the Galaxy SIII was. They’ve pitched it against a phone that’s gained almost ‘holy grail’ status in the Android world, and haven’t bothered to price it competitively to it.

I wrote a glowing review on the HTC One X a few months back, and even jumped ship from iOS and donated my iPhone to my girlfriend. It was a great device, initially. After a few months of owning one, though, I am left wanting something more and regretting my initial...

BT is the “official communications services provider” for the Olympics and has 1500 Wi-Fi hotspots at Olympic sites, with prices starting from £5.99 (NZ$11.40) for 90 minutes.

Where exactly is the line between protecting your brand and being an asshole? I seriously couldn’t even believe this when I read it. It’s even worse than the last asshole move I can think of in the world of spot where the IRB fined Samoan rugby players $10K for wearing incorrect mouth-guards.

Not only are ‘real’ hotspots banned, so are those generated by smartphones.

Want to create a wireless hotspot on your smartphone so you can get online on your laptop or tablet in between matches? That’s prohibited, as are portable Wi-Fi hotspot devices.

Holy shit. Is this even legal? Banning folks from using their own data plans? Can people actually be thrown out of Olympic venues for this? It’s officially banned by the...

This week has a been a bit of a whirlwind as I continue to travel across the USA, and the thing that has been on everyone’s mind this week has been the shooting of innocent movie goers in Denver, Colorado. If you’ve been living under a rock, The Dark Knight premiered on Friday last week and many people rushed to the theater to see it. In this instance, part way through the film, a man threw open the emergency exit and began randomly shooting into the audience at the theater, ultimately injuring over 50 people and killing 12 others.

There are more details on what actually transpired here, but for some reason this really hit home to me. Death can strike anytime, anywhere, and not how you really want it to happen. Don’t we all dream of growing old, falling in love and having a family? I know I do. But for those involved at this shooting (and many others before it), they may not have had...

Well, this is interesting. Facebook doesn’t want people using their brand as a verb such as “I Facebooked her,” according to their brand guidelines;

“Do not use Facebook, or any other of our trademarks, as a verb. And don’t pluralise them either. Trademarks may not be modified in that manner.”

Also, you know those screenshots you see online of Facebook with the users’ identities obscured? Facebook says you should be getting their permission to share the screenshot, and then not obscuring it, or you probably shouldn’t be sharing it at all.

“Screenshots must be unaltered, meaning they cannot be annotated or modified in any way from their appearance on Facebook.

Screenshots with personally identifiable information (including photos, names, etc of actual users) require written consent from the individual(s) before they can be published.

Screenshots of any Facebook profile will need...