Simon Perry

  • Zattoo Hit By Hollywood Studio Legal Action In Germany

    Zattoo Hit By Hollywood Studio Legal Action In GermanyDisappointing to see that two Hollywood studios, Universal and Warner Bros, have taken legal action against Zattoo, a service that streams live TV to computer screens.

    Zattoo isn’t a fly-by-night operation and has legal agreements with the TV channels that it shows over its service.

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  • Twitter Smarten Its Follow Email – To Become Twimailer look-a-like

    Twitter Smarten Its Follow Email - To Become Twimailer look-a-likeTwitter have smartened their new Follow email, borrowing heavily from Twimailer.

    We’ve been users of Twimailer since it first launched.

    It’s Web service that sends you an email alerting you when someone new follows you on Twitter – but with loads of extra info on it and laid out in an attractive manner.

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  • Macbook Air Sucks! Video: Knifing or Conniving? Real Or Advertising?

    Macbook Air Sucks! Video: Knifing or Conniving? Real Or Advertising?You can’t have failed to have noticed that ‘social advertising,’ is the flavour of the month year.

    You know the type of thing – ‘edgy’ videos made to look like that they’ve been shot by an amateur on a wobbly handy cam, like Samsung did with their LED sheep video (which possibily was shot by farmers) and Samsung kind of did with their HD Phone.

    Macbook air sucks! video
    Today we saw a Tweet (Thx @iowaug) pointing us to a video …
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  • Poken Review: Nice Legs, Shame About The Face (18%)

    Poken Review: Nice Legs, Shame About The Face (1/10)What’s a Poken you may ask? On the other hand you may say “Who cares?”

    For those interested, a Poken is a little device – a sort of character which is made up of a hand (which has a USB connector) which slots into the character part of the unit. The hand is a sort of RFID device (it actually uses magnetic induction) and when touched on to another Poken, they swap Poken IDs and it glows green to show that it’s working.

    An interesting concept.

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  • Google Video: Turn Out The Lights: New Feature

    Google Video: Turn Out The LightsLooking at videos on YouTube recently we noticed a light bulb sitting on the top right of the video playing back.

    As it was the first time we’d used it, we felt duty bound to give it a try.

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  • Detect Language Option In Google Translate: Brilliant

    Detect Language Option In Google TranslateGoogle Translate has long taken over from the BabelFish translator that Alta Vista had way-back in the dim, distant past.

    We use it whenever we can’t make sense of block of foreign text – nothing new in that.

    Presented with a language we weren’t sure of recently, we selected Swedish as a guess, but the translation didn’t make sense to us.

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  • Non-iPhone AudioBoo In Beta

    AudioBoo: G20 Boost Take UpFollowing the piece we wrote on AudioBoo, there’s been a development.

    Mark Rock, CEO of Best Before, told us that they have a new service in Beta that lets any phone – not just iPhones, as is currently the case – call in to leave a Boo. They’re playing with the name PhoneBoo to describe it.

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  • Samsung HD Phone Attempts Viral Video

    Samsung HD Phone Attempts Viral VideoIt’s hard getting attention for you new cameraphone in these days of many phones with 8Mpx, even if yours does shoot HD video.

    Samsung has taken the approach of commissioning a video that they hope will go viral.

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  • Google Android Upgrade (1.5) Floated: SDK Released

    Google Android Upgrade (1.5) Floated: SDK ReleasedGoogle’s mobile phone operating system, Android, is about to launch its next release – version 1.5.

    Details are emerging as to what will be included. Users of current release Android phones will be pleased to hear that there’s a number of improvements including – the Web Browser has been improved; video recording, playback and upload to YouTube; the whole interface (IU) has been given a polish. Here’s the full list of features

    Google has just released the Software Development Kit (SDK) to give developers an early glimpse and get their software ready in advance of the general public having it on their phones.

    Android 1.5 SDK

  • Google Reveal Some Server Secrets

    Google Reveal Some Server SecretsGoogle has, for most of its life, been obsessed with keeping details of its server secret.

    Their long-fabled server design, seen by many as one of the central reasons for the success, certainly wasn’t ever detailed.

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