Alternative finance -- New ways to spend your money
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.
New battery tech can charge your smartphone in just 30 seconds
Fancy fully charging your phone up in just half a minute? Even with modern smartphones, a full charge from close to zero can take a good long wait and a major inconvenience, particularly when you’re having to plug the thing into a power outlet if you don’t have a handset with wireless charging.
While there are already "turbo charger" systems from, for example, Motorola, which can juice up a phone in just 15 minutes, an Israeli firm reckons it has a system which can charge a handset with a full day’s worth of power in just 30 seconds.
How content providers can take on piracy in emerging markets -- and win
The recent news that musicians in Europe are making more from Spotify royalties than via iTunes is a big deal for all content producers. It may be a defining moment in the ongoing competition between subscription services and pay-as-you go digital downloads in the West.
The same struggle is going on right across the film, TV, music and eBook industries. However, in emerging markets, subscription-based services are having a much tougher time.
BitTorrent users more likely to pay for content, according to survey
One of the arguments often put forward in favor of online piracy is that those who illegally download content are more likely to purchase that content at a later date. Well now BitTorrent has some figures to back-up that assertion.
Following a survey of 2,500 of its users, the peer-to-peer network found that file-sharers are more engaged than the average consumer.
3 billion people will be online by 2015
More than three billion people will have Internet access by next year, according to a new study.
Estimates by eMarketer indicate that 42.4 percent of the global population will be online in 2015, an increase of 6.2 percent compared with this year.
Slow devices are causing billions of lost hours a year
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.
Blinkbox now offers offline TV and movie viewing on iPad
The online streaming service Blinkbox now allows customers to download films and TV shows to watch offline.
Currently, the service is only available to iPad owners running iOS 6 or later, but it is expected to come to Android devices at a later date.
Global monthly smartphone data traffic to hit 17 exabytes by 2020
Smartphone data usage will increase eightfold over the next six years as consumers continue to take advantage of the increasingly fast speeds on offer from mobile operators.
Global data produced as part of the latest Ericsson Mobility Report showed that traffic would grow from the 2.1 exabytes used per month in 2014 to approximately 17 exabytes by 2020.
Personalized marketing is the key to consumer's wallets
Sending out generic marketing emails and scatter-gun coupon offers is no longer enough to attract the attention of consumers and can in fact have the opposite effect.
Predictive marketing company AgilOne has released the results of a survey which shows that online shoppers appreciate personalized communication -- as long as it's done right.
Microsoft reveals its Black Friday deals -- snap up a Surface Pro 3 bargain
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.
UK mobile broadband to get faster and cheaper thanks to moves by Ofcom
Ofcom has announced it will soon make more frequencies available to mobile broadband, resulting in increased speeds and a cheaper service.
By using the 700MHz frequency band, currently in use by wireless microphones and digital terrestrial TV broadcasts, consumers in rural areas should also receive improved coverage.
Celebrating 60 years of software
There's an old computing joke that says the difference between software and hardware is that hardware is the bit you can kick.
To celebrate software's 60th birthday business package selection specialist Capterra has produced an infographic charting the history of the bit you can't kick. It'll provide a trip down memory lane for anyone involved in computing.
Stick your tablet on the railroad tracks with the Griffin and Rail Yard Studios tablet stands
As a child, I was obsessed with the railroad tracks. We lived very close to them, so it was a great place to hang around with friends and pass the time. One of our favorite things was to put pennies on the tracks so they would get flattened. Sure, it was a silly thing, but to a kid, it is the coolest thing ever.
Now that I am an adult, hanging out on the tracks would be weird, as that is mostly reserved for grown-ups that are up to no good. Luckily, thanks to Griffin, I can now relive my youth with the all-new Rail Yard Studios tablet stands. You see, these are made from actual decommissioned railroad steel!
Build your own 3D printer in 90 weekly parts
We've all seen those adverts for partworks allowing you to build a scale model of the Titanic at a cost not far off that of raising the real thing.
Now though UK publisher Eaglemoss Collections is producing a partwork that allows you to produce something a bit more useful. In 90 weekly parts it lets you make your own working 3D printer.
Wearhaus unveils 'social headphones'
If you’ve ever been to a silent disco, you’ll know that listening to music through a pair of headphones doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to shut out everyone around you.
Sharing music with friends that all wear headphones has traditionally been reserved for these kinds of parties, which is something the boys and girls from Wearhaus are trying to change.
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