Yep; once again week eighteen was a victim of what the late, great Steve Gerber called the Dreaded Deadline Doom. Here’s what I’ve been very busy doing.
At the ABC, I delved into the world of Ultra HD TV, and the kinds of tax brackets you’d need to be in to be able to afford one:
The future of TVs: Higher resolutions, higher prices: “I recently checked into a remarkably inexpensive (which is to say that I could afford it on a freelance journalist’s salary) hotel on the New South Wales north coast, only to be told that I was “in the room with the big telly”…”
At Geekspeak, an examination of computer form factors:
Desktop, Laptop Or Tablet: Which one is right for you?
The always-necessary-but-rarely-thrilling issue of backup:
Have you backed up your photos?
And of mobile device tracking:
How closely do you track your tech?
The June issue of TechLife is out (yes, I know, it’s not June yet… it’s a magazine thing. Bear with me), and within its pages, I’ve run through GoatUp 2 (might need some methodone after testing that one), Pressure, Alien Spidy and Star Wars Pinball. The force is… yeah, you saw that one coming, right?
I then put on my small business hat, writing a bevy of stories for BIT
4 heavy-duty covers that stop your phone getting smashed and scratched
Attacks against small businesses tripled in 2012, according to Symantec
Business cards, web pages, now freelance designers will transform your Facebook page
Optus socal media “warning” to Australian business
ABC show searches for “the most expensive Wi-Fi”
Who’s nervous about cloud computing?
Buying a laptop? Here is Toshiba’s new Portégé Z10t laptop/tablet
CeBIT Australia is coming up, but is it worth going if you run a small business?
The 2012 IT Journo Awards (informally “The Lizzies) went past. I was up in three categories; Best Reviewer, Best Consumer Technology Journalist and best video program. I went in happy to be a finalist… and that’s as far as I got. I won’t lie and say that I’m not at least a little bit disappointed, especially in the best reviewer category. I’m confident that I’ve got more “finalist” certificates for Lizzies in reviewing than any working journo today. Sigh. Always the bridesmaid, and all that, although I can take solace in the fact that I was involved as a contributor to the best Audio program (Download This Show), also as a contributor to the best personal technology coverage winner (Lifehacker) and as the editor for fully half of 2012 to the best Web Site, Gizmodo.
And hey, 30 Seconds of Tech got mentioned in the same breath as, say, Good Game, Good Game SP and the eventual video winner, the SMH’s Digital Dreamers. That has to count for something… albeit not that much, given that all video entrants ended up as finalists. But I’ll take the glory where I can get it.
Then there’s 30 Seconds Of Tech. Quite a bit of 30 Seconds Of Tech, as it happens, including THE LONGEST 30s OF TECH IN HISTORY. Bolding intentional there, and if it wasn’t an evil thing to do, I’d reintroduce the blink tag, just because.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/bZUzT7b3mwE[/youtube]
[youtube]http://youtu.be/dIiNVWgGi0M[/youtube]
[youtube]http://youtu.be/-OLDIHG0oKA[/youtube]
[youtube]http://youtu.be/LvZdeBBk8wY[/youtube]
[youtube]http://youtu.be/HC2W9g4YVtE[/youtube]
[youtube]http://youtu.be/xKREQGGeRhg[/youtube]
[youtube]http://youtu.be/ApZYLLuaRQw[/youtube]
Yeah, that last one is rather long.
There’s a reason behind all this video goodness, though, and it’s because I’ve formally launched Fat Duck Tech.
What is Fat Duck Tech, I hear you ask?
(I have microphones everywhere)
Well, I wrote about that first up:
Fat Duck Tech is live! (Everybody party!)
And then a bevy of articles. Ideally, I want you to go there RIGHT NOW (and while you’re at it, the Twitter account is here and Facebook page here), but here’s a sample of some of the content that Fat Duck Tech served up in just its first week.
Samsung Galaxy S4′s S-Translate: One part brilliant, one part ****house.
Social media can be decidedly anti-social, but is software the answer?
Samsung Chromebook Review
Honest Star Trek trailer is brutally funny… but not quite honest.
The dark side of retro gaming
Doctor Who pop-up store pops up in Sydney
(penned by Fat Duck Tech’s resident Wumpus. Not, as some have guessed, me.)
Why does Samsung have “no comment” on Australian Galaxy ROM problems?
Do DSLRs make sense for everyday photographers?
RIP Ray Harryhausen
Toshiba: Foldable PCs and Smart Paper soon, but for now there’s luxury notebooks
Opinion: Two and a half things that annoyed me about this morning’s NBN gab-fest
Smartphones of 2013: Blackberry Z10
Telstra, Optus and TPG splash nearly $2 billion on spectrum [Updated]
Star Command Review
Image: janetbeasley