Wayne Williams

If you want to teach children how to code, then buying them a product like the Raspberry Pi makes a lot of sense. It’s versatile, and cheap enough that if they break it, buying a replacement shouldn’t be too big a deal.

Not every child is going to want to learn how to program a Pi though -- the appeal of it won’t necessary be apparent to a kid who just wants to play. This is where SPRK+ comes in. The Sphero robot can be driven using an app, and then -- when the appeal of that wears off -- programmed in a choice of ways.

Amazon rolled out a selection of new Echo products a week ago, in a move designed to cement the company’s position as the leader of voice assistant technology.

At its hardware event today, Google announced its Echo Dot competitor, called the Home Mini. A companion to the Google Home, it will offer much the same functionality, but in a far smaller, cheaper package.

Google’s Pixel smartphones were among the best Android flagships released last year, and Google is expected to announce their successors today.

In addition to the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones, we’re also expecting the search giant to reveal other products, including a new Google Home, a new Daydream headset, and a new Chromebook.

LinkedIn is your number-one personal branding tool, and this friendly guide shows you how to harness it to build connections and relationships -- and stand out in the world's largest professional network.

LinkedIn For Dummies walks you step by step through creating an eye-catching profile and demonstrates how to successfully expand your reach by connecting with colleagues, customers, and like-minded individuals from around the globe.

No coding experience is required for Coding For Dummies, your one-stop guide to building a foundation of knowledge in writing computer code for web, application, and software development.

Using foundational web development languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, it explains in plain English how coding works and why it's needed.

If you’re a Kodi user then you’ll no doubt be familiar with TVAddons. The site hosts many of the best unofficial Kodi addons around and is a must-visit for many users.

TVAddons has had a lot of well-documented legal problems lately, but received an unexpected boost from digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which came out in support of the site a few days ago. But while TVAddons might have a lot of supporters, one organization definitely isn’t a fan -- Kodi itself.

With just a couple of weeks to go until the official launch of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Microsoft is hard at work squashing the main bugs and polishing the release.

Insiders on the Fast ring have had access to all of the new features and changes in the Fall Creators Update for a while, and it won’t now be long until non-Insiders finally get their hands on the full thing.

Each month, NetMarketShare reports on the state of the desktop operating system market. Its numbers are often interesting, and occasionally initially wrong (this month, for example, they showed a sizeable growth for Linux, before being corrected).

The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is due to begin rolling out this month (even though over a third of users still don’t have the Creators Update), and Microsoft will be hoping this big new feature release will give its operating system a major boost. But how is Windows 10 doing at the moment, and when will it finally overtake Windows 7?  Read on to find out.

The war against copyright infringement has always been a difficult one for rights holders. Aside from the scale of the problem, there are multiple platforms that make illegal downloads, streams, and sharing possible. For many years, the main target for anti-piracy bodies was BitTorrent, but in recent months a new number one enemy has surfaced in the form of Kodi, and in particular various companies and addons associated with the media center software.

While in Europe and the UK, sellers of "fully loaded" media center boxes seem to be the primary focus for Kodi-related lawsuits, in Canada and the US, it’s hosting site TVAddons and the ZemTV Kodi addon that are in the firing line. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was setup to "defend civil liberties in the digital world" and it has now weighed in on the Kodi situation, pointing out the shaky legal grounds these cases rest on.

With new preview builds for the Fall Creators Update focusing purely on fixing stability and performance issues as Microsoft rushes towards its release, it’s the Redstone 4 branch (aka Skip Ahead) where you’ll find new additions beginning to appear.

The latest release for this branch introduces a sizeable number of improvements, as well as a big leap forward in build numbers, jumping from 16362 to 17004.

Kodi is in the news a lot at the moment, and not for the best reasons. Although using the software itself isn’t illegal, third-party add-ons that make it possible to stream copyrighted content have caught the attention of anti-piracy groups, resulting in lawsuits.

Inevitably, the threat of legal action, and possibly jail time, has spooked a lot of third-party add-on creators, and we’ve seen many of these disappear in recent months.

The Windows Insider team have been busy this week at Microsoft Ignite, but that doesn’t mean that development on the forthcoming Fall Creators Update has slowed at all.

With just a matter of weeks to go until the rollout begins, Microsoft has yet another new build available for testers on the Fast ring (not Skip Ahead).

The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is set to begin its rollout in a matter of weeks, yet over a quarter (27.5 percent) of Windows 10 users still haven’t received the Creators Update.

According to the latest figures from AdDuplex, while the Creators Update found its way on to another 7.5 percent of computers this month to give it a 72.5 percent share, it’s still well short of the 91.2 percent that the Anniversary Update reached before the Creators Update was released. AdDuplex warns that as a result of slow rollouts like this, fragmentation will only increase in the future.

Dyson makes a lot of products -- ranging from hand and hair dryers, to fans and heaters -- but it’s still best known for its vacuum cleaners.

That might change in the future however, as the company has announced plans to create its own electric cars.

Ignite, Microsoft’s annual IT event, is currently underway in Orlando, Florida, and the software giant today revealed a range of new Windows 10 S devices from the likes of HP, Lenovo and Acer.

Windows 10 S is a cut down version of Windows 10 that only runs software from the Microsoft Store. It’s also faster and more secure, and when it launched it was aimed primarily at the education market -- a clear rival for devices running Google’s Chrome OS. Microsoft is now looking to expand Windows 10 S into other markets.