Those of you who have been around computers for a few years may well remember the Fruit Wars of the early 1980s, indeed one of the very first home computers I wrote about was the Tangerine, back in the late 1970’s. In fact it was little more than a very large printed circuit board, smothered in logic chips, and you had to add your own keyboard and light bulbs, but it was a start… Anyway, soon afterwards we had more useable machines from the likes of Apple, and Apricot, not to mention quite a few lemons, though to be fair I don’t remember anyone actually using that name. But the rest, as they say is history, with only one fruity PC maker managing to survive.
Anyway, this preamble is by way of reintroducing the Apricot brand, last owned by Mitsubishi though by the late 1990s it had all but disappeared. Read the rest of this entry »
Visitors to Russia should be on the alert for cheap iPhones, according to an item on Englishrussia.com. The scam is simple; someone comes up to you in the street, apparently in distress because they don’t have enough money for a train or plane ticket. You look like a helpful sort of person and they offer to sell you their iPhone for a bargain price, so they can get home. It looks just like the real deal, and the seller offers to show you it is working, he (or she) switches it on and the Apple logo appears on the screen, but it quickly disappears; the battery is dead they explain, but it will be okay when you charge it up. Having parted with your money you hook said iPhone up to a charger, only to find that it’s a clever fake. What you have bought is a very convincing iPhone case, with a simple backlit screen with the Apple logo illuminated a small battery powered light bulb. Oh yes, and you get a small chunk of metal, to give it the right weight.
In a piece of news that might or might not be Digg-worthy, the mobile version of the popular social networking website has gone through a reconditioning process and is now said to be better than ever. Which means that you can digg and/or bury articles from your handset more efficiently (if there’s any efficiency in “dugging” at all).
However, the refreshed Digg Website is not targeted for all the mobile diggers out there, but only for those who own handsets supporting a “full web browsing experience”. You know, the likes of BlackBerry, Palm Treo (or even Centro), Samsung Omnia, HTC Touch Diamond, Apple’s new iPhone 3G and so on. Read the rest of this entry »
To compete with Apple’s successful iPhone and iPod App Store, Microsoft announced today that Windows Live will have free games for its PC users. What used to be only available to Xbox users is now available across the entire Windows platform.
Microsoft’s press release states “the launch of Games for Windows LIVE marks a major expansion of the Xbox LIVE service across multiple platforms, uniting gamers with a single identity, a single gamertag, a single friends list and a single list of achievements attainable on the Xbox 360 and a Windows-based PC.” Read the rest of this entry »
Windows application launchers come and go, and I must have used scores of them in my time, but this one, called Stick, is one of the best, and certainly one of the easiest to use. Basically it puts a series of tabs along the top of the screen and when you click or hover on it, it opens the chosen program, folder or applet. It’s highly configurable, easily customisable and you can also access tabs using Hot Keys. Needless to say it’s free, and it works on both XP and Vista. Give it a try; you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it…
