In which I discuss Australia’s 4G scene, phones you can’t have and whether it’s possible to gnaw your own face off…
A phenomenally busy week, but then I’ve once more been back on the editorial duties at Allure, this time pitching in at Lifehacker while Chris Jager is away making babies… well, technically he did his bit nine months ago, but anyway…
As is always the case with Lifehacker, stories come thick and fast, but my picks of the week for my own output — especially relating to how well the audience took to them — would be:
How We Work: Alex Kidman’s Favourite Gear And Productivity Tricks
I think I know this guy… he definitely rings a bell. No, wait, that’s Quasimodo…
Telstra (And Possibly Optus) Will Sell Firefox OS Smartphones
I have a soft spot for Firefox, although it later transpired that Telstra’s merely “considering” FF phones.
Does It Really Matter If My Questions Ramble On And On And On?
Yes it most certainly does. But I didn’t write the core of this one; Neil Gaiman did.
Do ‘Amazon Beating’ Deals Save You Money?
Inspiration for this story provided by the lovely Di Kidman. Yeah, I’m biased. I’m meant to be.
How To Kill Vendor Supplied Smartphone Email Signatures
“Sent from my…” NO. BAD. WRONG. KILL IT WITH FIRE.
Turn A Data Disaster Into An Opportunity
I had more than my fair share of tech disasters this week, but this one had a small silver lining.
Does TV Piracy Harm Or Help?
Probably the most popular story I wrote all week; certainly the most contentious. I stand by the comment that the sense of entitlement is truly mind-boggling amongst certain people.
Ask LH: What Tablet Should I Buy For A Two Year-Old?
This one got people surprisingly angry, as though the message was “only feed your infant tablet pcs and ignore it in a filthy heap ha ha!” or something. Moderation, people. Moderation.
Use Humour To Combat Stress Overload
This week was quite stressful, but thankfully Gizmodo editor Luke Hopewell was there to show me how to chew off my own face.
Power or Battery: Lifehacker Tests The Asus VivoTab 810
You can have power… or battery life. Not quite both in this package.
Meanwhile, at the ABC’s Technology & Games portal, I was talking both technology and games. Games via the PS4, in a piece that was held over from last week:
Playstation 4: An introduction… or a blind date? “What Sony did instead was what its official release calls an “introduction”, although by not showing the console off, it feels more like a blind date…”
On the technology front, there’s 4G… or 4G LTE… or just LTE… or LTE-A… or a confusing mess that I tried to wrangle some sense out of:
Australia’s 4G future is fast: “The 4G landscape in Australia is accelerating at a rapid pace, with Telstra, Optus and Vodafone all making bold claims about their fast data products.”
At Hydrapinion, I was getting all excited about the shiny new tech on show at MWC, until my brain reminded me that we won’t see all of it anyway, and much that we do see will take its sweet time to appear:
Mobile World Congress Shows Us The Gadgets We Can’t Have: “As I write this, Mobile World Congress is in full swing, with announcements on new platforms, chipsets, smartphones, tablets and anything else that can reasonably be called “Mobile” coming through thick and fast.”
The March issue of APC is out now, and features my review of Zombi U; probably still the best reason to buy a Wii U (which in some ways is my plea for more Wii U games, if you don’t mind that is Mr-Games-Industry)
Finally, 30 Seconds Of Tech continues its dual mission of bringing tasty visual snippets of tech to you while at the same time completely alienating the wide (some might say massive) elephant audience:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/QFOyEW24Vjo[/youtube]
Image: MacJewell