What is Facebook Home? Seeing as its Android only, you may have skipped over the numerous stories of the last couple of weeks about Facebook’s new move into mobile software that goes beyond just being an ‘app’. Basically, rather than just being an app you launch when you have a Facebook itch to scratch, FB Home takes over the lock-screen and home-screen of Android devices and displays a slideshow of your timeline rather than whatever else was there before. You can just leave it on display and glance at different posts as they drift by, or swipe to manually flick through them. Beyond this, most ...

(Macro Cell lens image)


It’s well known that as far back as the days of the 3G model, the iPhone had ascended to being among the world’s most popular cameras (or the most popular in terms of Flickr stats). This happened not just because as the truism states, ‘the best camera is the one you have with you’, but because with the iPhone, you also have not one, but thousands of photo editing studios and plugins with you. What once required desktop software costing hundreds of dollars to do such ...

Imagine if the streaming music app Pandora was the education system. How would that change things?



Part 1. The obligatory history lesson:
It happened to the record industry first. Rock n roll/ Pop music was growing up for many teenagers. Your identity, your dose of rebellion. And you payed for it, and the music industry that arose with the ability to sell ‘albums’ on mass in the 70’s when distributable media and players first became widely available paid very little back to artists. And you paid for it again for a piece of magnetized ribbon encased in plastic that required skilled pencil-winding ...

Oh Pebble, Pebble, Pebble. How much ink and pixels have been spent on you so far? From the initial crowd-funding effort that saw you zoom 100 times past your goal to reach $10 million and become the most-backed Kickstarter ever, to the long-delayed shipping date that came from having to make 85,000 Pebbles, to the deluge of articles about ‘smart watches’ that you've inspired since deliveries finally started. Funny thing is, Pebble themselves have never directly called it a smart watch, just a 'customisable' watch. So what is really going on, and what is the truth ...

You all may have seen the adverts - ‘Save $X of dollars off your power bill just by installing this gadget’. Some of them have even been government initiatives that at least make it look like they are doing something about the ‘rising cost of living’. I’ve never had one or thought that the upfront cost balanced well enough against the potential savings. But then someone mentioned ‘iPhone-compatibility’, and like the app-addict that I am, I suddenly became ...

I have to admit, the topic for this article is a little, shall we say, esoteric. I mean, can computing, which once generally meant some combination of processors, screens and keyboards, seriously be associated with the word 'perceptual', ie. "the ability to become aware of something through the senses", as the iOS dictionary defines it?


We're definitely not talking about Cyborgs or Replicants here - this article is meant to be about where we are at now on the ...

In 2008 I completed a masters thesis thats been viewed 7.8K times. Doesn't that just speak to the very different world we live in tech-wise when even stodgy once-paper-only things like a thesis can even have 'views'? Titled 'The Dawn of uLearning', it examined where computing technology was then up to on its journey from stand alone mainframes to becoming embedded, ubiquitous, invisible 'Everyware', and what this meant for Education.


With the release of the iPhone in 2007, it was becoming ...

So, are we ready for tech predictions for 2013? My biggest one is: the Leap and its gestural controls will do for desktops and laptops what the touch screen did for mobile devices. I pre-ordered one a while back so plan to report first-hand when it ships - reportedly fairly soon (the promised date is early 2013).


Because I can't write too much on the Leap now, I'll list a second prediction also: iOS Accessories (and Appcessories) will become the new Apps - or at least start to become as vital to the platform as Apps did in 2008 when the AppStore first debuted. If you apply the 'dock test' next time you visit JB HIFI you'll see what I mean - how many of the docks and speakers cater for Android devices? (Hint: even Googles own Nexus7 dock isn't available yet many months after its release).


The sheer ...

Dilemma: If the recommended standard for under 2’s is no TV, does this also apply to apps? And should toddlers even be playing with iPhones?
NB. these questions will not be answered in this article. I’m just going to assume if you’re reading this, own an iPhone and have a toddler, they are probably moot anyway, even if its just because, well, toddlers are curious and want to try out anything that they see mumma or dadda doing (and because you’ve already established a good minimum screen time routine already, right?).
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