Articles about Tablet

Microsoft held an event in NYC to launch the Surface 2 and Brian was live-blogging. The full video of the launch is available to view online as are advertisements that show off the tablets' versatility. Microsoft is pinning a lot on the updated product after the first generation suffered from poor sales. There were no great new features, but there is a redesigned kickstand, a healthy speed boost, new dock and updated covers -- Brian was particularly impressed by the Blades.

Anyone buying a Surface 2 or Surface Pro 2 earns themselves a SkyDrive upgrade. Purchase a new device and your online storage gets upgraded to 200GB, but the same amount of space is available for $100 per year. Moving away from Surface-related news, Microsoft turned its guns on Google Docs, highlighting user complaints to demonstrate the superiority of Office 365.

Continue reading →

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is calling on the games industry to avoid pressuring children into making in-app purchases in games and potentially running up large bills. Back in April, an investigation began into the ways in which children are pressured into making in-app purchases. 38 web and app-based games thought to appeal to children were looked at, and the results of the investigation are available in the Children's Online Games report.

The OFT aimed to determine whether the way in-app purchases were presented could be considered "misleading, aggressive or otherwise unfair". As a result of the investigation, the OFT has drawn up a set of eight proposed principles that apps and games should follow. The principles include clearly and prominently informing app users about the potential for costs to be incurred through the app. It is suggested that users should be able to fully understand the current and future costs associated with any app they download.

Continue reading →

Twitter announces details of its new Twitter Alerts service which will make it possible to disseminate information when other methods fail or when large groups of people need to be notified about something. What does this mean? In times of national emergency, crisis or natural disaster, Twitter Alerts could be used to provide details about what is happening and what steps are being taken by authorities.

In times of emergency, it is very common for people to turn to the internet. But as we know all too well, the internet is home to a wealth of misinformation so this could end up to be less helpful than it should be. A number of international organizations have already signed up to be part of Twitter Alerts including the American Red Cross, FEMA, the World Health Organization, and various police and fire departments. Other interested organizations are invited to take part.

Continue reading →

Not to call out my parents, but neither is online -- they do not own a computer or tablet and, only last week, my mom was rather forcefully pushed into the smartphone world thanks to an aging flip phone. I can at least partially forgive them -- they are not young and these new-fangled gadgets lose them, though others in the same age bracket seem to have moved along with the times.

At any rate, the couple is not alone according to a new report announced by Pew Research. A full 15-percent of Americans are offline and, of those, 94-percent plan to stay that way.

Continue reading →

With the release of the Nexus 7, Tesco's Hudl and new Kindle Fire HD and HDX, there are certainly plenty of tablets to choose from with screens around the 7-inch mark. GOCLEVER is the latest contender to enter the ring, announcing the availability of the 7-inch Aries 70.

Although this is a tablet with a budget- to mid-range price tag (£159.99 or €189.99), there is still a quad-core processor lurking in the innards -- pegged at 1.2GHz. Integrated GPS is a useful feature and, coupled with the 3G connection, makes it ideal for popping on the dashboard and getting directions on the road. The preinstalled maps perhaps reveal the Aries 70's roots or target market -- if you need to find your way around Poland, the Czech Republic or Slovakia, you're good to go right out of the box!

Continue reading →

Now here's a blast from the past. RealNetworks (remember it?) is launching RealPlayer Cloud, a new service that aims to make it easier than ever to share videos between devices and across platforms. The service has been developed to help avoid the need to transfer videos from one device to another or upload them to an online storage repository ready to download elsewhere.

The idea is that users do not have to worry about the platform videos will be viewed on, or the format they are saved in. There are a huge number of video codecs in use, so the appeal of something that helps to overcome compatibility issues is understandable. There are plenty of services that already make it possible to stream video wirelessly from a PC to an iPad or other device. This is nothing new, nor is the ability to pick up from where you left off watching when you switch devices.

Continue reading →

Earlier today we reported on Amazon's launch of three all-new Kindle Fires. Thanks to the introduction of improved enterprise and productivity features in Fire OS 3.0, Amazon hopes to make the latest Fire HD and HDX more attractive to BYOD and business users.

"Kindle Fire is already the second most popular tablet at work in the US," says Raghu Murthi, Vice President of Enterprise and Education at Amazon. "As employees increasingly bring their own devices to work, the new Kindle Fire tablets can be easily integrated into the workplace with the new enterprise features, including encryption, secure Wi-Fi, a native VPN client, integration with leading MDM solutions, and Kerberos support for Intranet access".

Continue reading →

Twitter is in the process of rolling out a new notification system designed to help users find interesting people to follow. It is not an entirely new system -- the micro blogging site is basing the feature on its @MagicRecs account, which started off as an experiment earlier in the year, making "magic recommendations" about who Twitter users might like to follow.

@MagicRecs monitors the activity of the people you follow and people in your network and sends out direct messages letting you know when several people you are connected to follow a particular user. The thinking is that if two or more people are interested in following someone else, there's a high chance that you will be too. In a blog post, Senior Software Engineer, Venu Satulur explains how the recommendation system has been tweaked and updated.

Continue reading →

It’s all about tablets this week as following on from Microsoft’s Surface reveal, Amazon today announces three new Kindle Fires -- the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD, and the Kindle Fire HDX, in 7 and 8.9-inch sizes. The new devices offer a slimmer design, better screens, faster hardware and an updated OS.

The $139 Kindle Fire HD has a high-definition display with 1280 by 800 resolution and 216ppi -- 66 percent more pixels than the previous generation Kindle Fire. It’s powered by a dual-core 1.5 GHz processor, and has dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus audio.

Continue reading →

If we are to believe all the comments posted on the Interwebs by Microsoft fanboys, then the Surface lineup should have delivered two of the most popular tablets on the market and Apple and Android OEMs should have gone out of business by now. But, once reality sets in and we overlook the silly one-sided comments, people just don't care enough about Microsoft's slates -- the 4.5 percent Windows market share, from IDC's Q2 2013 report, coupled with the $0.9 billion write-off speak for themselves.

Now there's a second-generation Surface lineup which was unveiled yesterday, comprised of Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2, that quietly wants to change people's perception about Windows-based slates and their preference towards Android tablets and iPads. On paper, the new Surfaces look great. Microsoft appears to have gotten the hint -- more power, more battery life, more versatile kickstand, more accessories. The new Surface lineup is simply "more" than its predecessor. Yet I don't think many people will notice that and rush to pre-order now or buy on sales day.

Continue reading →

Today Microsoft opens the pre-order books for its second-generation Surface lineup. The two slates, Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2, come with major under-the-hood and external changes, including beefed-up processors that are faster and help deliver better battery life and revisions to the built-in kickstand, as well as a slew of new accessories.

Surface 2 comes with the most noteworthy improvements of the two new slates. It now sports an Nvidia Tegra 4 processor which Microsoft says is up to four times faster than the Tegra 3 chip from the old generation, offers 25 percent more battery life, comes with a two-angle kickstand and features a full HD -- 1920 by 1080 resolution -- display which, again, is better than before (Surface RT's panel has a lower resolution of 1366 by 768). Pricing starts at $449 for the base 32 GB model. The 64 GB model costs $549.

Continue reading →

At an event in New York, Microsoft reveals the successor to the Surface RT and Surface Pro -- the predictably named Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 (interesting to note that the "RT" is gone from the former's name) -- and Brian Fagioli was live-blogging from the event. So what do we have to look forward to from the product refresh?

The first generation Surface tablets suffered poor sales and came in for criticism from many quarters, so there is certainly room for improvement.

Continue reading →

UK supermarket Tesco launches its own 7-inch tablet undercutting the price of just about everything else on the market. The Hudl may be cheap (just £119), but the specs are surprisingly high -- the budget price doesn’t seem to have meant having to make too many cutbacks. A 1.5GHz processor powers a 1440 by 900 display, and the 16GB of integrated storage can be expanded through the use of the microSD slot. The tablet runs Android 4.2.2 and Tesco wants it "to open up a world of entertainment and connectivity to all". It is priced well to compete with the likes of the Nexus 7.

Heading to the supermarket may not be where you'd first think to buy your next tablet, but Tesco's new Hudl is likely to change that. The tablet has been designed to be very family friendly; it looks approachable and has been configured so that parents are guided through the process of setting it up for use by children. The Hudl will be available in four colors -- red, blue, black and purple.

Continue reading →

Apple stole the limelight from just about everyone else this week. The big news was, of course, the release of the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s. Just about as soon as online orders opened up, delays in shipping started to lengthen; Joe was somewhat skeptical about the limited supplies.

Before the new hardware hit the stores, iOS 7 was released to mixed reviews -- I hated it, Wayne loved it. A couple of security holes were found in the operating system including one that allowed for Siri to be used to post messages and access phone details even on locked handsets. There was also a new iOS 7 inspired look for iCloud and the addition of a bookmark syncing option.

Continue reading →

The number of people who are running iOS 7, either by buying a new iPhone or by downloading the update from Apple, is high. Very high. But shortly after the excitement of the new operating system, a security flaw with Siri emerges -- and it's not one to be taken lightly. Security firm Cenzic reveals details of a vulnerability that enables anyone to bypass the lock screen of an iPhone using Siri.

The voice activated assistant is better known for providing answers to questions and allowing for hands-free operation of iPhones. But Cenzic researchers show that it can also be used for more sinister purposes. You would think that when your phone is locked it should not be possible to do anything, besides answering calls, until you unlock it.

Continue reading →