Wayne Williams

There are already Bing-powered apps for Windows 8, Windows Phone, and Xbox, and now Microsoft’s search platform has made some free apps for the software giant’s new Office 365 Home Premium suite (what, you thought Office 2013 was going to get some Bing love?)

At the moment there are five apps on offer -- Bing News Search for Office, Bing Finance (Beta) for Office, Bing Dictionary (English) for Office, Bing Maps for Office, and Bing Image Search for Office.

Google Maps and Street View provide detailed coverage of much of the world, and today the search giant is adding the Grand Canyon to its list of fully explorable locations.

Captured as part of Google’s Trekker project, the 9,500 interactive -- and at times frankly breathtaking -- panoramic images cover more than 75 miles of trails and surrounding roads. If you’ve always fancied hiking along the canyon but have never had the time, money or stamina, you can now do it from the comfort of your own home.

EE (formerly Everything Everywhere) was created by the merger of the T-Mobile and Orange businesses in 2010, becoming the UK’s largest mobile network operator in the process. It’s also currently the only provider offering 4G LTE connectivity in the UK, and has just expanded its 4G data service to cover an additional nine towns and cities.

This expansion means 4G EE is now available in a total 27 UK locations, making it -- according to EE at least -- accessible to nearly half of the UK’s population.

"As the first operator to bring 4G to the UK, it is important that we make it accessible to as much of the population as possible, as quickly as possible," Olaf Swantee, CEO of EE said, regarding the expansion. "To be ahead of schedule and covering approximately 45 percent of the population within just 90 days of the launch is a great achievement for our network team."

On 24 August 2012, after a thirteen day trial and three full days of deliberation, a California jury found Samsung guilty of infringing on several Apple patents and awarded the American company $1.05 billion in damages. The jury also found that Samsung had willfully stolen design elements from Apple, a damning finding which could have seen the amount of damages significantly increased.

Fortunately for Samsung, following post-trial hearings held over the past few months, US District Court Judge Lucy Koh last night issued a ruling overturning the jury’s willful infringement finding, a move which prevents Apple from being able to seek additional damages.

Although the Raspberry Pi was originally aimed at encouraging school children to learn to program as they did in 1980s and 90s, the affordable credit card-sized ARM GNU/Linux computer has actually ended up appealing to a broad range of ages.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has never lost sight of its initial purpose though, and thanks to the generosity of Google, it’s about to make some serious headway into British schools.

Apple attracts rumors like no other tech company. In the past week alone we’ve heard about what to expect from the iPad 5, suggestions that Apple is working on a budget iPhone that may or may not feature plenty of plastic in its design, and there’s even been talk of a larger capacity iPad 4.

It turns out this last rumor was right on the money, as Apple has just announced a 128GB version of the fourth generation iPad with Retina display.

Red seems to be the in color for mobile devices at the moment. First Verizon gave the world a red edition of Nokia's mid-range Lumia 822 smartphone, and now Samsung has introduced a Garnet Red version of its popular Galaxy Tab 2 slate. This isn't the first Samsung device to come in the bloody hue -- AT&T offered a Garnet Red edition of the Galaxy S III last summer.

Currently only available for the US market, the striking tablet comes with a matching case and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean onboard, in place of Ice Cream Sandwich. All the other specs remain the same, such as the 7 inch 1024 by 600 screen, 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, and 8GB of internal storage.

Gridlee for iOS is a fairly average arcade game, certainly nothing to get excited about. You wouldn’t want to play it more than once, and, to be honest, you probably wouldn’t want to download it in the first place, even though it’s free. Except there’s more to Gridlee than meets the eye.

The game, which was developed by Videa Inc. in 1982, isn’t a remake for iOS. It’s the actual original ROM image running on an up-to-date full version of the MAME4iOS Reloaded Project by Seleuco, an excellent arcade emulator banned by Apple. And if you know how, you can use Gridlee to play a wealth of classic arcade games on your iOS device for free. No jailbreak required.

Introduced in time for last year’s Olympics, Virgin Media’s free Wi-Fi service has proven to be a big hit with people travelling on the tube, but all good things come to an end, and this particular gravy train is about to terminate. Well, for some people at least.

Although Virgin will be ending its free-to-all Wi-Fi service from Tuesday (29 January), the good news is if you’re a Virgin Media broadband or mobile customer, or are with EE (Orange and T-Mobile), or Vodafone, you’ll be able to continue to use it for gratis. So that’s bad news for O2 and 3 subscribers in particular.

Valentine’s Day is coming and since nothing says "I love you" more than a Windows Phone, Verizon has decided to mark the occasion by debuting a red edition of Nokia's mid-range Lumia 822 smartphone. The choice of color will certainly help the handset stand out, seeing as the 822 is otherwise only available in sober shades -- black, white, and grey.

The small red is available to buy from Big Red now, either online, or from a Verizon Wireless retail store, and can be picked up for free on a new two-year contract.

The Windows Phone 8 model features 4G LTE connectivity, a 4.3-inch display with an 800 by 480 resolution, and a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. It also has an 8MP back-facing camera (capable of 1080p video recording at 30 frames per second) and a 1.2MP front-facing camera.

Apple used to be quite picky about what apps it let through into the App Store, but it’s relaxed the rules in recent times, and now we’ve reached the point where an app that lets you measure your member and see how you compare in the length and/or girth world rankings is perfectly fine.

Condom Size bills itself as an educational app designed to help users determine the proper condom size they need. It also includes educational tips, fun facts about condoms, and more.

The first video tweet using an app from Vine, the start-up Twitter acquired last year, has appeared on the micro-blogging site. Originally created and sent by Dom Hofmann, co-Founder and CEO of Vine, it was then posted by Twitter boss Dick Costolo and dutifully retweeted by a couple of hundred people.

The embedded video, like all clips sent using Vine, lasts six seconds, and shows the steak tartare creation process -- with optional sound -- in a loop. While this could prove rather maddening if you have lots of Vine clips visible in your stream, it’s easy enough to hide away.

Symantec might have reported quarterly earnings that beat expectations, but the firm accepts it needs to do something if it is going to continue to thrive in a changing marketplace. So new CEO Steve Bennett has announced a change of direction for the anti-virus firm.

No, the company’s not suddenly going to start making Angry Birds knock-offs, but what it does intend to do is shift its focus on to 10 key areas that will result in the combining of existing products and services and the creation of a range of new, more comprehensive alternatives. The ten areas it intends to work on are:

I remember clearly where I was the day Internet Explorer launched. It was 16 August 1995 and I was sitting in a room full of tech writers watching Bill Gates show off Microsoft’s new browser. And I recall thinking, "why would anyone want to use anything other than Netscape Navigator?"

I remember clearly, some years later, wondering why anyone would want to use a browser that wasn’t Internet Explorer when I first heard about Firebird (which later became Firefox), and then wondering a few years after that why anyone would want to use a browser that wasn’t Firefox when Chrome launched. Times, loyalties and browsers all change, and Microsoft is hoping to use nostalgia to persuade people who "grew up" with IE to give the browser another chance.

When Microsoft launched its portable music player Zune in 2006 few thought it would be a serious contender to Apple’s iPod. The fact that it was a US-only release spoke volumes. It was a product the firm simply didn’t have enough confidence in for a global launch.

And now we’re faced with a similar launch strategy for Microsoft Surface Windows 8 Pro. Yesterday the Redmond, Wash.-based corporation announced the delayed slate will be "available for purchase on Feb. 9, 2013, in the United States and Canada at all Microsoft retail stores, microsoftstore.com, Staples and Best Buy in the US, as well as from a number of locations in Canada". And the rest of the world? There’s no word.