Wayne Williams

It’s no secret that the Raspberry Pi has its roots in the microcomputers of the 1980s. And one device in particular inspired the creation of the massively popular barebones system -- the BBC Micro. Auntie Beeb’s computer was available in two models -- A, and B -- as is the Raspberry Pi.

Interestingly, while the BBC Micro inspired the Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi has now inspired a new BBC Micro -- the Micro Bit.

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The annual SXSW Accelerator competition presented by Oracle is set to take place on Saturday, March 14 and Sunday, March 15 at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival.

I spoke to Chris Valentine, event producer for SXSW Accelerator and Startup Village, about the competition, and what innovations and trends we can expect to see emerging this year.

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I’m the target audience for the Apple Watch. I own an iPhone, and iPad, I’ve invested heavily in apps over the years, and I wear a watch so am used to glancing at my wrist when I want to see the time, rather than looking at my phone screen. The price doesn’t scare me off, either. Going into the Spring Forward event I was around 85 percent certain I would be buying an Apple Watch.

But now? Now I really don’t want one at all.

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The Apple 'Spring Forward' event is currently underway, and the first big announcement is that HBO NOW, the name of Home Box Office’s standalone premium streaming service, will be exclusive -- initially at least -- to Apple customers.

Similar to HBO GO, HBO NOW will offer more than 2,000 titles online and includes every episode of every season of its programming, including of course, Game of Thrones. It costs $14.99 a month and Apple customers who sign up in April can enjoy a 30-day free trial. It will be available to watch on iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, or directly on Apple TV.

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Whether you think the Apple Watch will revolutionize wearables, or be a rare misstep for Apple, we’re about to find out as the tech giant is all set to launch its latest new product at a 'Spring Forward' event which is being hosted today at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco.

While the Apple Watch will be the center of attention, it’s possible that Apple will have a few other products to show off too including maybe a Retina MacBook Air and Beats Music Service.

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My home broadband connection is a speedy (up to) 152Mbps, and when I’m downloading on a PC connected to the router, I get impressive speeds. But because the router is in the basement (where my home office is), accessing the internet in other rooms via Wi-Fi is often flaky and unreliable. At times I can’t connect at all.

I’ve boosted the connection with multiple TP-Link 300Mbps Universal Wi-Fi Range Extenders and while that’s helped, the truth is the end result is still far from great. ASUS’s RP-AC52, an 802.11ac concurrent dual-band wireless range extender, looks to be a suitable solution to my woes -- but is it?

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The Wearable Technology Show is nearly upon us. The event -- the largest such show in the world -- takes place on 10-11 March 2015 at ExCeL in London and will be a must-attend for anyone in the UK with an interest in wearables.

The show will feature over a hundred technology innovators from all over the world, with many launching new products, or introducing existing ones to new markets. Firms with new sports and fitness devices at the show include:

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A week ago we had our first look at Windows 10 Professional Technical Preview Build 10022 in the form of screenshots from renowned Russian Windows leaker Wzor. There was also some screens and release notes for build 10014.

As you might expect that was just the start of the leak, and more screenshots from Build 10022 have appeared on the web (again from Wzor), including ones showing off the desktop, Settings, Task View and more.

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Earlier I posted that Yahoo had lost market share in February, despite now being the default search engine in Firefox for US users. But boy do I feel churlish now as it turns out today is Yahoo’s birthday, and I’m sure with a bit of thought I could have come up with a better gift.

Yahoo is officially 20 years old, and while the company has certainly seen better days, it’s also survived through some turbulent times. In 2008 Microsoft tried to buy it for about $47.5bn, but Yahoo wanted to get more money, a move which backfired badly. Instead of a sale, the company ended up agreeing to outsource search to Bing, a move at the time my colleague Joe Wilcox described, rightly, as a "strange one". Microsoft, he said was "Dumb", and Yahoo was "Dumber".

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My colleague Brian Fagioli was right to reject Microsoft’s laughable claim that Windows Phone is experiencing 'impressive growth', and to also brand the tiled mobile OS as a failure. Android and iOS completely dominate the mobile space, and Microsoft -- which owns the desktop -- is nothing but a bit player.

If you ask anyone why Microsoft has failed to succeed they will probably say "apps". The Windows Store has a fraction of the apps found in the Apple App Store and Google Play (aside from the main names, few of the many apps I used regularly on my iPhone are available on Windows Phone) and there are dodgy clones and fakes to be found throughout the store. But while that is definitely a factor I think the real blame for Windows Phone’s failure lies elsewhere.

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Three months ago Mozilla made the surprising decision to make Yahoo the default search provider in the US version of Firefox, replacing Google, its long standing search partner. The switch had immediate benefits for Yahoo which saw sizable usage gains in the US, going from 8.6 percent share in November 2014 to 10.4 percent in December.

However, anyone who thought this would be the start of a search renaissance for Yahoo is going to be disappointed to hear that in February Marissa Mayer’s firm went into reverse and lost share.

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As you’ll already know, the 2015 Mobile World Congress (MWC) is going on right now, and most of the big players are announcing and launching new handsets. Samsung and HTC have announced new versions of popular phones, and Microsoft (in the form of Stephen Elop, Julia White and Neil Broadley) is set to take to the stage imminently.

Thanks to a premature news posting on Sunday we already know some of what to expect. A headline that made its way into feeds tells us the tech giant will be revealing the Lumia 640 and 640 XL, devices which, the company says, will keep "you prepared for anything".

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It’s fair to say, Windows 8.x has enjoyed something of a rollercoaster ride when it comes to usage share. While it’s never been a popular operating system (quite the opposite in fact), share has gone up and down, with gains one month being wiped out by losses the following month.

NetMarketShare’s monthly usage share figures provide a decent guide as to how Microsoft’s tiled OS is doing, and it’s usually pretty interesting, although February was a fairly unexciting month.

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Raspberry Pi celebrates its third birthday today. Well actually it doesn’t, as the super-affordable ARM GNU/Linux computer was launched on February 29 2012, in what was (obviously) a leap year, but it’s close enough.

In that time the Raspberry Pi has achieved staggering success. Two months ago it was revealed total sales had surpassed 5 million (and the Raspberry Pi Foundation says another half a million have been sold in this month alone), with new and updated models launched in the past year.

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It was big news last year when Microsoft announced that it would officially start selling the Xbox One in China. The original September launch date came and went ("Despite strong and steady progress, we are going to need a bit more time to deliver the best experiences possible for our fans in China"), but eventually the next gen console made it on sale.

Although China gave the green-light for the sale of 5 million Xbox units, actual sales have been way, way below that. Launch numbers (including pre-orders) were just 100,000 units, and the company responsible for Xbox One sales in China has posted huge losses.

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