I was just clearing out the spam inbox for my blog and it showed that I have already received 11,202 spam comments which thankfully never got posted.
How much spam do you receive on your email account(s)?
Reviews coming up next week – details
Just a quick heads up. 2 new reviews going live next week.
First the Netatmo Urban Weather Station. This works with all 3 operating systems. iOS. Android and Windows Phone.
Next to be reviewed is the Sony XBA-H1 hybrid in ear headphones. These are creating quite a storm.
Samsung’s offers 5 year hiatus against patent claims
Samsung some 20 months after the European Commission launched an investigation into its patent licensing practices, says it will not seek an injunction against any company, including Apple, wishing to license its patents for a period of five years. The company says it will also agree to a negotiation period of up to 12 months, after which it will rely on a court or arbitrator to draw up an agreement.
So is Samsung feeling the heat or showing good practise ?
iPhone 5S slo-mo video recording isn’t what you think
Apart from the difficulty of playing the slow motion video correctly on your PC, the actual quality of the slow motion videos recorded on the iPhone 5S are not at 720p. The resultant recording is upscaled afterwards at 720p.
It seems the 120 frames per second clips are actually recorded at 480p. Disaster no. But nonetheless rather disappointing.
Google Nexus 5 Official Specifications
Google is due to announce the Nexus 5. Below is a reminder of the specifications. So with android 4.4 and the below specs, are you going to buy one?
Google Nexus 5 (LG D821) Official Technical Specifications:
Display: 4.95-inch IPS LCD HD, 1920 X 1080 px
Processor: 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800
Ram: 2GB RAM
Camera: 8MP Rear with OIS (optical image stabalizer), 1.3MP Front
Storage: 16 and 32GB internal
Battery: 2,300mAh
Network: UMTS/GSM/CDMA/LTE (Micro SIM card slot)
Sensors: Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Compass, Pressure, Proximity, Ambient Light
Connectivity: HDMI via Slimport, NFC, Wireless charging, Bluetooth 4.0
Dimensions: 133.9 x 68.7 x 9.1 mm ? (Same as Nexus 4, which is not likely)
Weight: 139.5 g
Other: Notification light
Operating System: Android 4.4 KitKat
New iPhones now cost more in France
Apple has quietly bumped up its iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c prices in France less than four weeks after they first went on sale. Customers will now have to pay $10 more for the 16GB devices, and $12 more for the 32GB and 64GB devices.
Here’s how the prices have changed for each device:
iPhone 5c (16GB) — €599 → €609
iPhone 5c (32GB) — €699 → €711
iPhone 5s (16GB) — €699 → €709
iPhone 5s (32GB) — €799 → €811
iPhone 5s (64GB) — €899 → €911
Be warned. If your country has a weak exchange or currency you could see the same. So if you were thinking of getting one maybe time to act now.
Has HTC got a new revenue stream?
HTC financial fortunes may be about to take a turn for the better.
The Financial Times reported that an Amazon smartphone is on the way and is being manufactured by HTC. There is apparently 3 phones in development, one near completion. It also appears that the new phones will only be made available to Amazon Prime customers.
This could be a godsend for HTC and help fill its pockets with much needed revenue.
Google’s Q3 Earnings – full details
Google announced its Q3 earnings a few hours ago. Full details click here http://investor.google.com/earnings/2013/Q3_google_earnings.html
The highlights are –
Q3 Financial Highlights
Revenues and other information – On a consolidated basis, Google Inc. revenues for the quarter ended September 30, 2013 were $14.89 billion, an increase of 12% compared to the third quarter of 2012.
Google Segment Revenues – Google segment revenues were $13.77 billion, or 92% of consolidated revenues, in the third quarter of 2013, representing a 19% increase over third quarter 2012 Google segment revenues of $11.53 billion.
Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated segment revenues of $9.39 billion, or 68% of total Google segment revenues, in the third quarter of 2013. This represents a 22% increase over third quarter 2012 Google sites segment revenues of $7.73 billion.
Google Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites generated segment revenues of $3.15 billion, or 23% of total Google segment revenues, in the third quarter of 2013, compared to $3.13 billion of Google network segment revenues in the third quarter of 2012.
Other Google Revenues – Other revenues from the Google segment were $1.23 billion, or 9% of total Google segment revenues, in the third quarter of 2013. This represents an 85% increase over third quarter 2012 other Google segment revenues of $666 million.
According to Which UK the iPhone 5S is the fastest phone
Which recently conducted tests with a number of smartphones made by Apple, Samsung, HTC and LG.
Apple’s iPhone 5S came out on top while the HTC One Mini took last place. The
Samsung Galaxy S4 dropped from first to third behind the LG G2. The iPhone 5S was twice as fast as Samsung’s Galaxy S4 in certain tests. Apple’s new high-end handset was around 50 per cent faster overall.
As you can see the iPhone 5C didn’t feature as well.
The latest news regarding the iOS 7 update for Tweetbot
Tweetbot for iOS is one of the best twitter clients, along with the official Twitter app and Twitterific. Except that Tweetbot has still not been updated for iOS 7. Well good news. It has been submitted to Apple for approval.
Below is transcript from Tweetbot’s blog as why it has taken so long and the latest position –
“When the iPhone 5 was released a little over a year ago, our apps began to look a little…short. Most of our apps are designed specifically for the original iPhone size. Apps like Weightbot, Convertbot, and Calcbot needed to be completely re-thought and redesigned for the new aspect ratio. Pastebot is full of custom UI so while it would be easier to convert to the 4″ screen size than our other apps, it still needed lots of work. We made the smart business decision to keep our focus on Tweetbot for Mac. We haven’t abandoned our older apps, but we have to make tough decisions that keep our business running. We already have many great ideas for the updates to our older apps and are just waiting for the right time to implement.
Seven months ago, we started working on a big update for Calcbot. We were hoping to release it sometime in the summer. Two months in, Apple announced iOS7 at WWDC. We knew this was a huge change. It would make every single one of our apps look dated so we had to make sure our flagship app was ready for it. All of the design work that went into the Calcbot update was rendered obsolete in one keynote and so we focused our energy on updating Tweetbot for iPhone. Playing with the beta of iOS7 over the next few weeks brought us to the realization that this would not just be a “re-skin”. We really had to just start over with the new foundation and concepts of iOS7.
We were aiming for the iOS7 launch date, but unfortunately we didn’t make it. We’ve been working night and day for the last 4 months to re-design and develop an app that took over a year to build. The good news is that we are extremely happy with the results and can’t wait to share it with everyone.
Now that you know what we have been up to over the past months, here’s where we are today. We’ve just submitted Tweetbot for iPhone to the app store and are waiting for approval. We do not have a launch date yet because there are many other things that need to be in place and ready before we launch, but it will be soon. That is all that we can say at this point. We truly appreciate your patience and support on this and know that it will be worth the wait!”
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