Wayne Williams

Many of us own multiple devices that charge or are powered via USB. Even though many PCs come with at least two or four USB ports these days, and USB charging adapters that plug into wall sockets are commonplace, that may not be enough. In other words, you may occasionally find yourself needing to charge something, without a spare USB port, or a cable for the task -- especially if you live in a house with teenagers. If all devices used Micro USB life would be simpler, but sadly, they do not.

This is where Hub It comes in. It's a powered sync and charging station that can power/charge up to seven items simultaneously, and includes connectors for all of your devices, including smartphones, tablets, iPhones and iPads, and digital cameras.

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It still has plenty of haters, but Windows 8.1 is finally finding an audience. It may not be anywhere near as sizable as the audience Windows 7 commands, but after losing usage share earlier in the year, the tiled OS is finally headed in the right direction, and at speed.

Earlier today I reported on NetMarketShare’s figures which show Windows 8.1 as having 12.10 percent of the desktop OS market, but now StatCounter has released its own figures which show Windows 8.1 as having just hit a pretty special milestone -- overtaking Windows XP for the first time.

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As 2015 draws ever closer, we’ll begin seeing retrospectives highlighting the most memorable moments of the past year.

With a month of 2014 still to go, Bing has jumped in first with its look back at the people, moments and events that have shaped the year. There are some interesting highlights but some even more curious omissions.

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Last month Windows 8.x's usage share did something very surprising -- it went up. Massively, according to figures from web analytics firm NetMarketShare. The tiled OS had been losing share for months, but in October it suddenly took off like a rocket, packing on 4.54 percentage points share in a single month, mostly at the expense of Windows XP.

It wouldn’t have been a total surprise to see Windows 8.x's growth stop, or go back into reverse gear in November, but actually, both Windows 8 and 8.1 showed positive gains once again.

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Although BitTorrent’s reputation is as a means to download music and movies illegally, the company is trying to change that by offering original, and legal content.

Two months ago, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke released a new album as a paid BitTorrent Bundle, and now the file sharing firm announces its first original TV series -- Children of the Machine.

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If you live in the UK it’s getting ever harder to access pirated music and movies on the web. After years of trying to defeat pirates in various ways, including suing downloaders, representatives of rights holders have found that the easiest and most effective solution is to take their complaints to the high court and ask for the infringing sites to be blocked.

The process, which started with the banning of The Pirate Bay in 2012, is now so straightforward for the likes of the Motion Picture Association and BPI (British Phonographic Industry), that whole batches of sites are getting outlawed at a time. Yesterday there were 40 copyright infringing sites blocked in the UK, today that number more than doubles to 93.

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There are plenty of bargains to be had before, during, and after Black Friday, and if you’re shopping for a battery back to charge your iPhone or Android device, hold off a few days and you’ll be able to pick up a steal of a deal on Cyber Monday.

PowerSkin, a leader in portable power solutions, sells PoP'n battery packs that cost $49.99, but on Monday the retailer will be offering them for just one penny (plus $7.99 shipping and handling).

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The days of paying for everything with cash are slowly drawing to a close, and if you borrow or pay back money, there’s a very good chance wads of notes won't be involved in the transaction. I personally do a lot of online shopping, pay for goods in real shops using contactless cards, and send money and pay bills via an app, and I imagine a lot of people do the same. I still carry a wallet, but it generally doesn’t have much, if any, actual money in it.

Foreign exchange marketplace CurrencyFair.com has put together a very detailed, and great looking infographic covering the many different and innovative ways you can now make payments and exchange currencies -- from crowdfunding, through peer-to-peer payments, to cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin.

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I’m pretty impatient when it comes to technology and I’ve often wondered just how much of my time is being wasted while I’m waiting for something to load, or download, or for tasks to complete. Memory expert Crucial.com has done a spot of surveying and discovered that slow tech is responsible for wasting billions of hours every year.

The company surveyed 1,148 Brits, aged 16-65, and found the average person wastes over 39 hours each year (or 6.5 minutes a day) waiting for slow technology to complete everyday tasks. It also found some people wasted as many as 121 hours a year. For the whole of the UK, this equates to a whopping 2.1 billion hours of wasted time per annum.

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4K displays are becoming much more common, giving buyers a far greater range of choices. The Samsung Series 5 UHD LED Monitor (U28D590D) does a good job of balancing quality with affordability -- just £419.99 from Ebuyer.com including VAT and delivery -- and takes seconds to setup.

The 28-inch LED edge-lit screen offers a native resolution of 3840×2160 pixels, and the monitor sports a black plastic casing with a glossy bezel and an aluminum T-shape stand. Putting it together is just a matter of screwing the neck to the stand (using two pre-installed screws) and then sliding the screen into the neck.

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You can’t have failed to have noticed that Black Friday is nearly upon us, with a wide range of deals being offered by pretty much every retailer and manufacturer.

It will come as no surprise then, that Microsoft is preparing its own raft of offers, covering everything from Surface Pro 3 and Surface 2, to Xbox One and Lumia 830. If you’ve had your eye on any of those products, now is the time to get your wallet out.

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Windows 10 Technical Preview is very much an early work in progress. Microsoft is releasing new builds on a fairly regular basis (although the next one isn’t expected until the New Year), and implementing changes based on user feedback. Personally I’m liking what I’m seeing so far.

Although Microsoft discusses the major new features and changes in each build, there’s still some hidden functionality that you may not be aware of. Case in point is the little known System Compression option tucked away in Disk Cleanup.

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After Nokia sold its Devices and Services division to Microsoft, you might not have expected to see any great new mobile products coming from the Finnish firm, but you’d be wrong.

Today at the Slush conference in Helsinki, Nokia took the wraps off a new Android tablet -- the N1.

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Three weeks ago, Energous announced a partnership with appliance manufacturer Haier Wireless, to add its WattUp wire-free charging transmitters to a wide range of home appliances. This will allow phones, tablets and other devices to charge over-the-air, just by being in range of an equipped appliance, such as a washer, microwave or fridge.

I spoke to Gordon Bell, Director of Marketing for Energous, to find out more about WattUp and the company's future plans.

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If you’re using/testing the preview version of Microsoft’s operating system as one of the million+ "Windows Insiders", get ready for a big update. Build 9879 is arriving today and will be with you shortly, if it isn’t already.

Microsoft's Gabe Aul has provided a handy run through detailing all of the major changes, but one of the big additions is the ability to hide the Search and Task View buttons on the taskbar. That will please my colleague Mark Wilson who hates them. You’ll be able to toggle those off just by right-clicking the taskbar and disabling them in the context menu.

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