Amazon Fire Phone Gets Another Fire Sale: $199 Unlocked

Amazon has already admitted that it priced its Fire Phone much higher than consumers anticipated, and now it’s making a significant adjustment to the device’s price tag: A fully unlocked Fire Phone now retails for $199.00, instead of $449.00. The GSM device is still U.S.-only, which means it’ll work with AT&T and T-Mobile, though not Verizon and Sprint.

The $250 price drop puts the Fire Phone into a price range that might be more in line with what consumers were expecting to pay – Amazon’s decision to release a full-priced device, especially when paired with some of its less-than-stellar specs and odd 3D head tracking visual effects, clearly didn’t do a great job of attracting buyers.

This is actually the second fire sale for the fire phone, after Amazon reduced the price of the on-contract, AT&T exclusive version to just $0.99 with a two-year agreement. Originally, the retail cost was $199 on a contract, which is ironically now the price for a fully free and clear contract-free piece of hardware, just about four months into its lifetime.

No matter how you look at it, this is a sure sign that the Fire phone flopped in a very big way for Amazon. The high price tag at launch likely reflects Amazon trying to recoup the huge amount of R&D spend it put into developing the phone’s glasses-free 3D interface effects, but the fact is that what customers expected from an Amazon device was something cheap and basic, much like its Kindle Fire line of tablets.

Even at $199, reviewers found a lot of basic problems with the device that might make other options, like the Moto G or even some of last year’s flagship hardware discounted a better option, but it will be interesting to see if this helps Amazon move some inventory during the holidays.

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Razer Nabu set to release on December 2 in US

Just in time for the holidays

Announced on Thanksgiving, Razer revealed the release date for its Razer Nabu, the company's first wearable in the form of a fitness tracker.

The Nabu will be available in North America on December 2 for $99.99 (about £63.97, AU$117.50) and globally some time afterwards.

Like most other fitness trackers, the Nabu will be able to notify you of emails, calls, texts and app alerts from your smartphone. It also logs activity data and has band-to-band capabilities for social discovery, multiplayer gaming and more.

The Razer Nabu will be available in two sizes: small-medium and medium-large. Black will be the first color to launch with three other colors - green, white and orange - following later.

The band is made from certified hypo-allergenic materials, is water resistant and has a battery life that can last between five to seven days on a full charge.

The Razer Nabu is compatible with iPhone 5, 5S, 5C, 6 and Android 4.3 and up smartphones, paired via Bluetooth Low Energy.

For those die-hard Razer fans that kept up with Nabu news from the beginning, Razer will be shipping 5000 wearables early via pre-orders through its new community platform "Insider" at a discounted price of $79.99 (about 51.18, AU$94.00).

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Will Windows 10 mean the end of malware?

You'll see new Windows 10 security features in a preview update next year

Think Windows 8 was a big step forward in security? So did Microsoft – at the time. Looking back though, Chris Hallum, who manages the security features in Windows and Windows Phone, now thinks it had incremental improvements tackling a subset of the problem.

That's not helped by the fact that PC makers didn't start putting the same kind of touch sensor fingerprint readers as seen on the iPhone on their devices the way he'd hoped they would.

He's still hoping to see fingerprint sensors become common, but he's also bullish about what's coming next. "In Windows 10," he says confidently, "you'll see we actually decisively address entire classifications of issues with solutions that maybe in some ways can eradicate the issue in its entirely."

The first issue to tackle is passwords. "We're no longer thinking about passwords as a problem," he admits freely. "Passwords are actually a real-time crisis. You have to move to something better."

And that would be the 'next-generation credential'. It's going to use two-factor authentication, with the second factor being either the Trusted Platform Module security chip which is in many modern PCs and will be in every single Windows device in 2015, or your phone (where the equivalent of the TPM is "pretty close to pervasive") – or, he suggests mysteriously, "devices we're not talking about yet".

When you first make your account, your PC will create a key that's stored in a secure container, protected by the TPM – you might have one key for your personal account, another for your online bank and another for your work account that has a longer PIN.

"The user unlocks their Windows container with an unlock gesture, which could be a PIN or a password or biometrics, and they get access to it," says Hallum. That PIN isn't the usual four digits – it can be up to 20 characters long and it can include numbers, symbols, spaces and upper and lower case letters.

Or you could use a fingerprint. Hallum expects readers that can tell whether your finger is a real finger and whether it's still alive, looking not just at the pattern but "the 3D image with the peaks and valleys" which flatten out on dead fingers and fake fingerprints.

He'd like to see a 9mm sensor that doesn't have a big chrome border around it so you can just press your whole fingertip on it once instead of multiple times like the iPhone, but OEMs may pick smaller, cheaper sensors. "We're going to get the cost down to where it can go mainstream," he says with cautious optimism. "We have an OEM signalling – not committing but signalling – that they may put it across their entire consumer range. Although I hope I don't get burned again because I talked about this for Windows 8…"

With or without fingerprint readers, the new password-replacing credentials are coming – not just from Microsoft but from fellow FIDO Alliance members like Google. Google's similar secure key proposal has already been ratified and Hallum says Microsoft is committed to getting its own system ratified by FIDO too.

Hallum believes the flexibility of the Windows 10 credential is an advantage. "The differentiator for us is you will be able to use existing devices to authenticate for this; you can use your PC or your phone.

"That means your phone – including Windows Phone, Android, an iPhone with its fingerprint reader and maybe one day a BlackBerry – could store your credentials and pair to your PC via Bluetooth to sign you in. That means two-factor authentication will become ubiquitous, without people needing multiple fobs and physical tokens."

He's confident the credentials will be adopted by a range of services, and says Microsoft is evangelising it to both business and consumer services. "This is going to succeed. You're going to see a lot of consumer services like Netflix. They see how important this is for banking, for content, for consumer services." Business apps that you log into with a Windows username and password today will just work with them too. "Every app should be able to take advantage of it, unless you've done something that is not best practice."

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Pebble watches can finally see all the notifications from your Android phone

Pebble has some pretty attractive watches on the market
Among all the pros and cons of a Pebble smartwatch has until now remained one glaring flaw: they couldn't get all the notifications from your Android phone.
Thankfully the latest Pebble Android companion app update has finally fixed that.
Prior to version 2.1 Pebble watches could only display notifications from select Android apps, including Gmail and others.
But now if your Android phone is trying to tell you something, your Pebble watch will display it, no matter what app it's coming from. You can adjust these settings in the app itself.
That's if you're using a smartwatch like the Pebble Steel with Android 4.3 or higher, while support for Android 4.0 and up will arrive later.
Pebble hasn't released a new watch in a while, but with the new apps and price drop its existing offerings just got now is a good time to pick one up.
Via PC World

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Updated: Apple Watch release date, news and features

Update: We tested Apple Watch here and have more insight into its release date, apps, price and other features below.
It's been two and a half months since Apple CEO Tim Cook's "one more thing" announcement was literally up his sleeve: a sapphire-coated smartwatch dubbed the Apple Watch, not the fabled iWatch.
This iPhone-compatible watch was unveiled alongside the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, fulfilling the Cupertino company's "new product categories" promise for 2014.
It's not a circular smartwatch like its fashionable rival, Moto 360, but it still features a premium rectangular design with rounded-off corners and works seamlessly with iOS 8 devices.
Here's what we know.
Cut to the chase
What is it? An iOS 8-friendly watch that plays nice with your iPhone
When is it out? Spring 2015 release date
What will it cost? Starts at $349 (likely north of £223, AU$403)
Apple's first wearable gadget beams messages, Facebook updates and simplified apps to our wrists, eliminating the all-too-common need to take out our devices to constantly check notifications.
There are more than a dozen ways to interact with the watch, from receiving glanceable notifications, to feeling "taptic" feedback, to summoning Siri, according to the newly released developer WatchKit software.
It's going to become especially
convenient to pocket the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and even bigger 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus in your jeans, or to always stow the newly released 9.7-inch iPad Air 2 in a bag.
It is a telemarketer not worth your time or an emergency from a loved one? Apple Watch makes mundane notifications easy to dismiss while keeping you in the loop on life's most important alerts.
A handful of the Apple Watch apps being demoed
Other apps seen in the Apple Watch video include iMessages, Health, Calendar, Weather, Mail, Photos, Camera's shutter button, Passbook that now includes Apple Pay and even Apple Maps for navigation.
Developers are now readying more Apple Watch apps thanks to the WatchKit SDK launch. They're being given a headstart with the software and it could bring a whole new section to the iTunes App Store.
The smartwatch also takes cues from the Nike FuelBand SE and other fitness trackers with health sensors and nutrition apps, a must for any serious wearable gadget these days.
Sure there are fitness apps on your smartphone, but you're not always carrying your iPhone while tracking your steps and activity. Apple Watch is better suited for your everyday workout.
The final Apple Watch design isn't too far from the made-up renders that we've seen in recent weeks. It draws inspiration from iPod Nano with a rectangular-shaped screen plus one knob and a single button.
Apple Watch is more than iPod Nano meets the iPhone, though. The smartwatch display comes in two sizes measured by height: 38mm (1.5in) and 42mm (1.65in). Both are slightly smaller than the entire Pebble Steel watch height, which measures 46mm (1.8in).
Apple Watch comes in two sizes and two screen resolutions
We also now know the resolution of each screen. It'll come in two sizes: the 38mm Apple Watch will have a resolution of 272 x 340, while a 42mm version will have a 312 x 390 display.
Apple has only revealed the height of its new smartwatch screen, so we can't properly calculate the pixels per inch, and anyone who does it just guessing. But it'll likely rival the 300ppi of the Samsung Gear S.
Here's the Apple Watch design from all angles
Apple Watch's screen is surrounded by casing made of custom alloys of stainless steel and aluminum that, according to the company, stand up to the physical demands of daily wear and another BendGate.
Beyond the "Apple Watch" and "Apple Watch Sport" versions, a special "Apple Watch Edition" mixes in 18-karat yellow or rose gold for a premium look. It goes well with that gold iPhone 5S for sure.
Three Apple Watch 'collections,' each with two sizes
That brings the metal colors to six: stainless steel, silver aluminum, space black stainless steel, space gray aluminum, 18-karat yellow gold and 18-karat rose gold.
Apple Watch doesn't have a unique round display like Moto 360, but the casing does feature a circular knob known as the "digital crown."
This input is unique among smartwatches, but a true classic derived from traditional watches. Apple has of course put a modern-day twist on its twist functionality.
Apple invents a new control scheme using a classic input
The Apple Watch digital crown replaces the pinch-to-zoom touchscreen mechanic used on everything from iPhones to MacBooks. It's too impractical on such a small display, according to Apple.
Rotating it allows you to zoom into your app selection, your location on Apple Maps and a photo from a gallery. Scrolling through dates and stopwatch times is handled by this knob too.
The digital crown also acts as the Apple Watch home button. There's no Touch ID sensor here, but Apple Watch is smartly tied to your wristwatch with an anti-theft passcode required whenever it's taken off.
The button below the digital crown allows you to start a conversation with friends. Pushing it brings up a their contact info photos and zooming into a specific person with the digital crown gets things started.
Beyond calling and messaging Apple Watch wearing friends, you can get their attention with a gentle tap. It vibrates the "taptic" feedback on their smartwatch.
Communicate with simple vibrating taps or sketches
What's intriguing about this taptic feedback system is that it's said to be more precise and subtle than a vibration everyone can hear. Want to ditch a party? Your friends' secret sign may be three taps on the Apple Watch before bailing. It's an interesting way to get someone's attention.
Apple Watch goes all Drawesome on us with a bizarre sketch function for light messaging on the wrist. Snapchat became big, why not Swipechat? You can also share your heartbeat with someone in real time.
The variety of Apple Watch bands played better than U2 at the press conference, giving consumers a way to personalize their smartwatch.
Standard straps include Leather Loop that conceals magnets for easy fastening, the leather Modern Buckle and the leather Classic Buckle. There's also a gym-friendly elastomer Sport Band.
Apple Watch straps are easy to swap out
Higher-end metal straps include the Milanese Loop with flexible magnetic stainless steel mesh and the stainless steel Link Bracelet.
The ability to swap the straps without having to use tooling or visit or jeweler is one of our favorite features in the Apple Watch vs Moto 360 comparison.
Apple is promising customizable watch faces with "millions of different appearances." It brings everything to its timepieces, from time lapse backgrounds to classic Mickey Mouse arms as dials.
The first six Apple watch faces
However, just to be clear, the smartwatch comes with a base of 11 watch faces, according to the official Apple Watch press release. Most allow you to change the colors, design elements and add functionality.
The Apple Watch face gallery shows off an Astronomy design with an interactive, real-time 3D model of the earth, moon and planets. Likewise, the Solar acts as a contemporary sundial.
I can finally get myself the Mickey Mouse watch I always wanted when I was six
If you want a moving background, there's the Motion watch face, or a still image, there's the Photo face. Utility, Chronograph, Color, Modular and Simple exhibit more contemporary designs.
Tim Cook didn't go into great detail about the Apple Watch battery life, but he did hint that the smartwatch is designed to be "worn all day" and is "simple to charge at night."
"We think people are going to use it so much you will wind up charging it daily," Cook later reiterated at a conference in late October.
That had led us to believe that the Apple Watch battery life will be approximately one day, sort of like the Moto 360, LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live we've reviewed.
An Apple spokesperson backs up our theory, more or less confirming that the smartwatch requires a daily charge. The person also reportedly said Apple is working on modifications to eek out more battery life.
Easy to connect like a MagSafe power adapter
Previously, when it was known as the Apple iWatch, it was rumored to have a 400mAh battery, but Cook is saving that announcement for a later date.
He did, however, call attention to the unique recharging method. The Apple Watch's back crystal houses a magnetic inductive wireless charging solution similar to the MagSafe design. Again, it looks as if Apple bucks another trend - this time it's the popular Qi wireless charging method - in favor of its own standard.
For a gadget that supposedly keeps the time, the Apple Watch release date speculation has been all over the place. It highlighted the fact that no one outside of Apple had the full scoop until September 9.
Just don't expect that to be the iPhone-compatible watch's release date this year. Apple's official line is that it won't deliver the the Apple Watch until early 2015.
Sure, reports in the Taiwanese media have placed the release date as sometime in February, but newer remarks attributed to Apple executives give it a later, less precise and far more likely spring 2015 window.
"We're going into the holidays, we'll go into Chinese New Year, and then we've got a new watch launch coming in the spring," read an alleged internal memo by Apple Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores Angela Arendts.
Apple is said to be constrained by the amount of sapphire that it's able to produce thanks to its main, now-bankrupt supplier GTAT, but it's determined to launch its smartwatch with the scratch-resistant material.
This could mean that when the Apple Watch does arrive, there could be less than the targeted 10 million smartwatches the company may want for the launch window. Although it's important to bear in mind that Apple's entry-level model, the Apple Watch Sport, doesn't include a sapphire display.
This may mean that while numbers of the Apple Watch and Apple Watch Edition versions are less than expected, the company can still produce enough Apple Watch Sport models.
Don't expect to see it alongside the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus this month
Why so long between the Apple Watch unveiling and actual launch? Google. It's first smartwatches have just released care of Samsung Gear Live, LG G Watch and Moto 360. None work with iPhones.
A sneak peek at the iPhone 6 event made the watch right on time, enough to distract people from even prettier Android Wear watches hitting stores now, including the LG G Watch R.
Apple will be working hard to avoid the same kind of limited supply problems it faced when introducing the hot, but hard-to-find gold iPhone 5S last year.
An even trickier question than "when will it come out?" has been "how much will the Apple Watch cost?" There's really no precedent for a premium smartwatch price just yet.
The answer: More than we were hoping to pay, even though its specs may be on par with Android Wear.
It's classy, but the starting price is out of some peoples' budgets
That notorious Apple tax pushes the pricetag to $349 given components involved. That's £223 in the UK and AU$403 in Australia, but expect those prices to be even higher, above the straight dollar conversion.
It's true that Apple has recruited high-profile people throughout the watch and biometrics industries who have wound up on its Apple Watch team. That talent comes at a price.
Then there's a hidden cost. While a subsidized iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are cheaper upfront in the US, stores make up the difference with contract kickbacks. Not so with a smartwatch. Stores need a cut too.
Apple Watch cost way more than your average fitness tracker. Are you willing to pay?
For the sake of comparison, Android Wear's cheaper options are the Samsung Gear Live at $200 (£170, AU$250) and LG G Watch at $230 (£160, AU$250).
But Apple's biggest and most stylish competition is from Motorola, and the Moto 360 price is $249 (£199, likely AU$275 given its rivals' prices).
Apple is aiming for luxury given the sapphire glass-protected display, an imposing digital crown, two sizes and even the 18k gold colored edition. Expect prices for that version to climb even higher.
Apple Watch won't be an impulse buy for most consumers. That's why we'll continue to update this page to see whether or not the iPhone-compatible smartwatch is a fit for you. Stay tuned.

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Analysis: Xbox One: 12 months on, has the third Xbox recovered from its shaky start?

Xbox One turns one year old today, and what a frustrating, fascinating year it's been for fans of Master Chief and chums.

Microsoft entered the listings on an all-time high, having comfortably overturned Sony's market dominance with the Xbox 360.

PS3 has now drawn level in terms of boxes shifted, but Xbox had the edge for much of the battle, while Sony struggled to overcome the fallout from a tardy debut and mountainous production costs.

Nintendo's Wii may have beaten both consoles to the hundred million mark, but if you were a serious enthusiast, Microsoft's was the machine to own – cheap, relatively easy to develop for and joined at the hip to Xbox Live, the only online multiplayer and distribution platform worth speaking of.

You couldn't have asked for a better platform to start to a new generation. And yet, here we are 12 months later with Xbox One trailing Sony's triumphant PS4 by millions of sales. How did that rallying cry to "jump ahead" become such a massive step back?

"Here we are 12 months later and the Xbox One trails Sony's PS4 console by millions of sales"

We looked on, aghast, as a firm often portrayed as the original "Evil Empire" cheerily unveiled a console that imposed limits on your ability to sell back games to retailers.

We watched in baffled horror as, at the height of the Edward Snowden leaks, Microsoft began singing the virtues of mandatory internet check-ins and the Kinect camera's ability to match faces to names and online records – a combination seemingly dreamt up by a National Security Agency spook in a fit of silliness.

And we marvelled as Microsoft somehow managed to engineer the worst possible at-a-glance hardware proposition in recent history – a console that employs less powerful RAM than its biggest competitor, cue sub-1080p resolutions for the Xbox One versions of major multiplatform games in a console that somehow cost significantly more.

The "power of the cloud" was invoked early on as a solution to the RAM shortfall, but some admittedly very creative uses of remote processing have so far failed to justify that particular buzz.

It was a dismal debut that Microsoft has yet to fully recover from, though not for want of trying. The surgery was savage and laudably swift: within months of Xbox One's announcement, the manufacturer had axed the online requirement and reduced Kinect to an optional extra.

Nowadays, the latter isn't even bundled with every edition of the console.

Sadly, the immediate consequence of this was a console that went to launch without some of its most touted features, such as the ability to share digital libraries with family members.

Xbox One's trumpeted TV applications also proved a struggle – key elements, such as the OneGuide channel menu, didn't show up in territories outside the US till well after launch.

Territories like Japan, meanwhile, were obliged to do without the Xbox One full stop till just recently, as Microsoft battled to localise Kinect's voice control features and sign up appropriate media providers in time.

The Xbox One is making a comeback...

"Providing games are kept firmly to the fore, Microsoft's console may yet come out on top"

It's a shame, because the ingredients for a success story were there – and lately, they've begun to tell.

First of all, the Xbox One's ultra-flexible operating system design has paid dividends in the form of substantial monthly refreshes, adding fan-requested features such as custom dashboard backgrounds, while restoring those that were bizarrely omitted at launch, such as a front-end Friends section.

These monthly updates have also allowed Microsoft to show its human face after some disastrously out-of-touch statements last year.

Top execs like director of product management Albert Penello and new Xbox head Phil Spencer now chat to fans regularly on Twitter about the console's current capabilities and forthcoming reveals.

Spencer in particular has been a god-send for Microsoft's image – affable, knowledgeable about new and old games, and able to discuss Xbox One's failings without sounding prickly.

The further we get from Xbox One's launch, moreover, the harder it is to ignore the sheer scale of Microsoft's investment in exclusive or timed exclusive games.

Whether it be a genre-bending third-party offering, such as Titanfall, a preposterous value for money package, such as this month's Halo: The Master Chief Collection, or a quirky indie like Capybara's upcoming Below.

You can argue the toss about which console will ultimately have the most attractive exclusives - Sony perhaps commands more raw talent, and has the deeper pool of IPs to dip into - but at the time of writing and for the immediate future, Xbox One has a more robust and diverse games slate than any other new generation console.

It's a shame this level of quality doesn't extend to the free Games with Gold service – a somewhat half-hearted response to Sony's PlayStation Plus giveaway service, which has proven instrumental in establishing the latter's network as a creditable alternative to Xbox Live.

Microsoft's game portfolio isn't quite a critical advantage just yet. Sony, after all, can simply claim that it offers the "definitive" 60 frames a second and 1080p version of every major multiplatform release, with the promise of a new Uncharted down the road serving as a pill-sweetener.

But it could be the start of a full reversal of fortunes for Xbox One, especially now that the manufacturer has whittled away the price gap. Providing games are kept firmly to the fore, Microsoft's third console may yet come out on top.

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Amazon's free streaming service reportedly a go, for real this time

Will Amazon undercut its own Prime video service?
Amazon was said back in March to be working on a free streaming service, though the bookseller staunchly denied it at the time.
Now those rumors have been reignited thanks to a new report from the New York Post.
The site says Amazon will launch a free, ad-supported video streaming service early in 2015.
The service will reportedly be completely separate from Amazon Prime.
The Post spoke with "ad sources" who are allegedly in talks with Amazon about the service, one of whom said it will be designed to ultimately "lure" users into paying for Prime subscriptions.
And unlike when Amazon was reportedly considering this move in March, it's now "a definite go," the site says.
For now Amazon is remaining mum on this one, so it sounds like we'll probably have to wait until next year to find out for sure.

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In depth: Wet Wet Wet: The best ways to listen to music in your bathroom

The ablutions that begin each day are dull and lifeless, while bathing in silence is one of life's little missed opportunities.

What about that album you downloaded and haven't listened to yet? Or that podcast that could change your life?

Since few want to take their precious smartphone anywhere near the moist confines of a bathroom, let alone a bath, we've put together some options for tunes on the toilet and songs in the shower.

While novelties like the iDuck Wireless Waterproof Speaker will suit some, there are some serious waterproof Bluetooth speakers available that offer stunning audio quality as well as versatility.

Perhaps the finest is the splash-proof Braven BRV-1, which can't be dunked under water, but it can take a splash or two. Completely weather-proof, the 890g BRV-1's subwoofers offer the kind of bass you'll never hear from a smartphone's speakers, and it comes with a 3.5mm stereo jack and a built-in mic for hands-free calls, too. The BRV-1's battery charges via microUSB and keeps on going for around 12 hours.

Close competitor the Grace Digital ECOXBT Waterproof Speaker gives 10 hours of music and adds grab handles on each side.

The ECOXBT is a waterproof wireless wonder

Another option is the Sonixx BeachBox Wireless Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker, which comes with a rugged, rubberised shockproof and splash-proof design. Though best left on a shelf rather than taken into the shower cubicle itself, the BeachBox is big on sound quality thanks to its compatibility with APT-X lossless Bluetooth streaming. It includes an aux-in for hooking-up a smartphone and, for owners of flashy Android devices, the BeachBox also includes NFC for one-touch tap pairing.

For only £5.96 (about US$9, AU$11) you can get a the tiny 6 x 6 x 5cm TechCode Mini Ultra Portable Waterproof Bluetooth Wireless Stereo, which sticks to the wall and offers six hours of music when paired to a smartphone left outside of shower.

Savvy smartphone owners with waterproof phones won't need any of these gadgets, though such handsets are still relatively rare. However, phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S5, Sony Xperia Z3 and Sony Xperia M2 Aqua can all happily be dunked in the bath/shower and survive.

The Galaxy S5 boasts IP67 rating (dunk it a metre underwater for 30 minutes) while the Xperia Z3 reaches IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes) and the Xperia M2 Aqua also has a rating of IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes).

Sony's Xperia phones have been waterproof for a few years

Crucially, the speakers on flagship smartphones like the Galaxy S5 and Xperia Z3 are a cut above, too.

There are other smartphones that can be used in the bathroom, too, including a range of handsets from niche manufacturer Kyocera (such as the Kyocera Hydro Elite and the Kyocera Hydro Life) and both the Motorola Moto G and HTC One M8, both of which can happily sit on a shelf in a misty bathroom, they just can't join you in the shower.

There are a plethora of splash-proof AM/FM radios that will give you some aquatic entertainment. A cheap option is Sony's ICF-S79W AM/FM/Weather Band Digital Tuner Shower Radio, which boasts a great reception.

Waterproof radios are usually cheap AM/FM affairs

There's also the Abco Tech Waterproof Wireless Bluetooth Shower Speaker & Handsfree Speakerphone, which has a sucker to fix onto a tiled wall or shower enclosure. The battery last for up to 15 hours, and it pairs automatically to your phone after the initial set-up.

There's a pricier version that adds an FM radio, too and the equally diminutive Aquabourne FM Bath/Beach/Shower radio adds an aux-in for attaching a smartphone.

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Roundup: Updated: We played with the worst apps in the world, so you don't have to

There are now over 1,300,000 apps on the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store is home to around the same number of Android apps right now. What we're trying to say is - there are a lot of apps out there, and unsurprisingly, a lot of them are crap.

We're sure you've stumbled on some stinkers yourself, but we hope you've not come across any as bad of these. You see, at TechRadar we're making it our mission to scour the underbelly of both app stores to find the truly terrible, the truly disgusting, and the truly WTF, all in the name of technology.

Each week we'll be nominating an app that deserves the crown of "worst of the worst", with an aim to complete a list of the ten truly most terrible apps we've ever seen.

So let us begin our dangerous journey through the bowels of humanity's ideas. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

Platform: iOS
Price: Free

"The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand." - Vince Lombardi

The price of success in 2014 is jack all. All you need is an iPhone and a sense of deep, penetrating loneliness.

I Am Important is a fake diary organiser designed to make you look like, in the words of the app itself, a "top-flying shaker". For example, it'll generate made-up contacts in the app and put them in your address book. Those contacts aren't just low-life nobodies though - they're "highly important and highly paid business people". You know, better people.

Even more deplorably, the app will create fake events and insert them into your calendar. This is "to make you look busy and important as important people are involved in many events", as the app helpfully informs us. These important people sound really busy and interesting.

But of course, none of this is any good if no one is checking your phone, and as you're so "unimportant", chances are that they won't be. That's why the app lets you post your "success" to Facebook to make your friends green with envy. That's assuming you have any friends, which is unlikely if it's reached this point.

Don't you feel important just reading about this app? We do

"Sometimes, when you feel like nobody cares, I Am Important will ask you about your day and what happened that day," notes the app description. Sure enough, there's a box at the bottom for you to write how you're feeling. Appropriately, ours suggested "self-condemning".

That last part might not quite match the criteria of the app's mission statement: "I Am Important does two things: 1. Shows the world how important you are. 2. Makes you feel more important."

But here's the best bit: you can pay to remove the app's adverts using a three-tier pricing system dependant on how "Important" you think you are. By clicking "Kind of important" and paying a minimal 69p, you'll get the ads removed but nothing else, while paying more will earn you bonus features, such as a colourful background. And if you fancy coughing up £6.99 for "Head of State/CEO" - importance then: "You're important - big time. You need a crazy, moving background to show everyone that your level of importance is [something undisclosed]."

There's a scene in the The Office (US version) where boss Michael Scott finds a video-recorded TV appearance from when he was a child. In it, a cat puppet asks Michael what he wants to be when he grows up. Michael replies: "I want to be married and have 100 kids so I can have 100 friends. And no one can say no to being my friend." It's a surprisingly sad moment in an otherwise funny scene.

I Am Important is that moment embodied in an app. In a word: tragic.

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Buying Guide: Smartwatch deals: how to save big on smartwatches this holiday season

Tick tock, time to beat the clock! Black Friday is fast approaching and if you plan on taking advantage of the deals on deeply discounted smartwatches, you'll need a solid plan of attack.

But that's too much work after the madness of Thanksgiving, so we've compiled a list of links below for the LG G Watch R, Moto 360, Pebble Steel (with more to come) so you can ease out of your food coma with one less thing to worry about.

Keep checking back as we'll continue to add all the top smartwatch deals we can find. In the meantime, check out these other pages for deals on everything else tech.

The latest LG smartwatch is available for $370 on Amazon.

Currently, the LG G Watch R is out of stock in the Google Play Store but you we've included it to keep tabs on it.

You can also head to AT&T for an LG G Watch R at $299.

If you prefer the original square shaped LG G Watch, check out Best Buy where it's priced between $211-$299 or Amazon for $184.99.

The Moto 360 has been out of stock in a ton of places which should tell you just how popular this lovely timepiece is.

You can find a Moto 360s on Amazon for $310 plus $4.99 for shipping.

There's also a few of Motorola's watches available at Best Buy for $249.99.

The actual Motorola store seems to also be in stock (for the time being) and is selling them for $299.99.

The price for the Pebble and Pebble Steel have gone down significantly over the year. They're also easily the most widely available smartwatches on the market.

Right now you find the Pebble on Amazon for $99 and the Steel for $199.99.

The Pebble is also $99 from Best Buy and Pebble Steel is $199.

There are original Pebble from Target for $99 but you can't get the premium looking Steel.

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Week in Gaming: GTA V hits the next-gen, PS4's Vue and Nvidia Grid is locked on

Steam - coming to the boil?

Week in gaming is not normally one for talking about Christmas in November, but just like Ebeneezer Scrooge at some point you just have to give in and embrace the mistletoe*.

Because the last seven days have provided us not only with the ghost of Christmas past - in the shape of the next-gen consoles' first years - but also the ghost of Christmas present in the form of the launch of Grand Theft Auto 5 for PS4 and Xbox One and even a little spectre of the future with the talk about streaming services and more information about the arrival of Steam Machines.

Not even a particularly misanthropic curmudgeon could deny the lovely people at Sony an extended moment's glory as we continue to celebrate the first birthday for the PS4, a console that has flourished since its arrival.

Given that the campaign for Xbox One spent the first six months of focusing its laser sights very accurately at its own big toe, it's fair to say that the competition is now finally hotting up, and we're very much looking forward to the console war escalating to the levels where the next-gen consoles start to feel a bit more thrilling.

This weekend, the Xbox One turns, erm, one so keep an eye out for a whole host of great features on Microsoft's comeback kid.

A big part of the second year push for Sony is the PlayStation Vue service so we wondered if the TV service could be yet another major factor in deciding whether to go with Microsoft or the Japanese gaming leviathan.

PlayStation Vue

The arrival of the much-heralded GTA V for this particular generation is definitely a step in the right direction. We celebrated the launch of the new version by asking for a few words from gaming gods Matt Hill and Dan Dawkins and, typically, they refused to boil things down at all and gave us the kind of scintillating and well thought out insight that makes WiG wonder if it's one word review of the game ("Woo!") seem somewhat skimpy.

"If you'd shown me a world that looks like this back when I first got into games, in the 'glory' days of the ZX Spectrum, I'd have considered it indistinguishable from magic," said Dawkins - simultaneously filling us with glee and that horrible realisation that the Spectrum is now so old that most people won't even understand the joke we were going to make about rubber keys and cassettes.

So instead we'll talk about the future and the Steam Machines that, whisper it, could potentially re-ignite not only a new gaming war, but also make PC gaming hip, cool, rad, awesome and potentially even spiffing all over again.

The sad news is that the TechRadarians flocking to CES in droves will sadly not be seeing Valve's take on its own PC-project, but the good news is, that as we revealed this week, the droves of TechRadisters flocking to GDC 2015 will see it instead. We could not be more excited.

At this juncture we'll move from Steam to stream - and talk about the Nvidia Grid Gaming service, which despite some fairly hefty flaws right now (not least the fact it needs a special modem and an internet connection more robust than superman) is definitely a fascinating glimpse into the future.

"Imagine if Grid came to every desktop or laptop running an Nvidia graphics card. It'd be more robust than OnLive and backed by a company deeply entrenched in the industry," posited our very own Nick Pino. "I'm not saying Nvidia's infallible, but there's real potential to grow in this space. The developers haven't ruled that out. The Shield products, they say, are a testbed for the platform."

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A Chromebook for the holidays comes with 1TB of Google Drive storage

Not a bad stocking stuffer

Google is offering a pretty good deal to anyone who buys or receives a new Chromebook for the holidays: a whole terabyte of free Google Drive cloud storage.

Just get a new Chromebook and register for the offer before January 1 and you'll get 1TB of Google Drive storage for free, Google Group Product Manager Alex Vogenthaler said on the Drive blog.

The offer lasts a full two years, after which point you'll have to start paying for it - but still, that's a $240 (about £150, AU$280) value.

Google says only some Chromebooks will be eligible, so make sure you're getting one that is if you plan on taking advantage of this.

And check out TechRadar's list of the best Chromebooks if you need inspiration.

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Fire TV Stick Review: A Great Streamer For An Amazon Household

 

The Fire TV Stick works. That’s about all there is to it. It streams videos from Amazon, Netflix and more. It plays simple games and streams from local network shares. But it’s not for everyone. There are better products on the market for some users. That said, the Fire TV Stick is well worth its $40 price tag.

Pros
The price is right at $40
Access to Amazon Instant Video, Netflix, Hulu Plus and others
A clean and logical interface

Cons
Slightly laggy interface
Voice search is not available through the remote, only the app (which is out for Android, iOS is coming soon)

 

This is the Fire TV Stick, not to be confused with the Fire TV. It’s $40 and another device in Amazon’s growing stable of Trojan horses. While appearing innocent and offering a bevy of 3rd party streaming apps like Netflix and ESPNgo, the Fire TV Stick is just another device to sell Amazon content. But a damn good one, too.

The Fire TV Stick is the little brother to the Fire TV. Where the latter is a full-fledged streaming device complete with optical output and a quad-core CPU, the Fire TV Stick takes a decidedly more casual approach. As the name suggests, it’s just a stick like Google’s Chromecast or the Roku Streaming Stick. It plugs into an HDMI port and is powered by microUSB.

The device works as advertised. There’s not much to say besides that. Plug it into an HDMI port and it powers up. After sitting through a 5 minute video explaining the ins-and-outs of the system, the Fire TV Stick is ready to go. Click a movie or TV show and it starts streaming. Select an app and it works.

Sadly, it doesn’t work as well as the big brother, though. There’s a bit of lag and hesitation while navigating items on the Fire TV stick. The navigation is smooth enough, but not silky smooth like on the full fledged Fire TV. The lack of the quad-core CPU will be noticeable to users of the Fire TV. The Stick also lacks the Ethernet port, optical output and the ability to search by voice from the remote (although Amazon will happily sell Stick owners the voice remote).

The Fire TV Stick shares an operating system and user interface with the Fire TV. It’s logical and easy to jump right in — if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber. The Fire TVs are foremost a way to watch content from Amazon Instant Video. All the content displayed throughout the main menu is from Amazon. The search function only returns results from Amazon as well. If you want to watch or search within Netflix, the app has to be running.

Only having access to Amazon Instant Video from the homescreen isn’t a big deal, really. The library is comparable to Netflix and now has HBO’s back catalog. And Netflix and others are just a click away.

Have a Fire TV in the living room and a Fire TV Stick in the bedroom on the same account? They will share a watch history and watchlist as long as their on the same Amazon Prime account. Start a video in the livingroom and you’ll be able to finish it in the bedroom.

 

Amazon packaged a basic remote with the Fire TV Stick (right). It sports the necessities such as navigation and media playback buttons. A dedicated voice search button is absent, but will be available on the upcoming Fire TV companion app. During my testing, I found the lack of the voice search startling. Having used a Fire TV since its release, I never knew how much I leaned on that function. It’s still possible to search on the Fire TV Stick, but only with a clunky on-screen keyboard.

The Fire TV Stick is directly competing with the Roku Streaming Stick and Google’s Chromecast. But they’re for different people. Chromecast is great for the mobile aficionado — someone who lives on their mobile device. It’s not ideal for a multi-person environment with children where a dedicated remote and an interface on a TV is just easier to navigate.

The Roku Streaming Stick stick is a great alternative to the Fire TV Stick. It offers more streaming stations than Amazon’s device. If a person just has Netflix or Hulu Plus, the Roku is the best bet. But if a person also has Amazon, the Fire TV Stick simply has a better interface for viewing Amazon’s selection and the rest of the apps are available like on a Roku device.

At $40 the Fire TV Stick is a great buy for an Amazon household. The library selection rivals Netlfix. It’s true, the $100 Fire TV is a better device, but for $60 less, a person gains access to the same content and experience. And I can deal with a touch of lag if I’m saving $60.

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Looks like Google's Glass Basecamp stores might be closing their doors

But where will we try on different Google Glass colors?

The past couple of weeks have not been great for Google Glass users, and now to top it off it looks like Glass Basecamp locations in the US may be shutting down.

Google Glass Basecamps are the pop-ups in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles where Glass users could get technical support, try out different colors and accessories and more.

But according to Phandroid these stores are no longer taking new appointments, indicating they may be shutting down.

The Google Glass Basecamps were likely always meant to be temporary, but with the consumer version of Glass likely pushed into 2015 it probably isn't a good sign if they're closing already.

Then again this could just be a natural part of Google's transition into the consumer Glass launch or into purely online sales on Google Play for its existing and future Glass headsets.

We've asked Google to confirm whether the Basecamps are closing and what that means for Google Glass, and we'll update if we hear back.

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Don’t Expect Urban Drone Delivery Soon

 

Amazon and Google might be chest-thumping about their respective drone delivery programs but the technology is still years out from being feasible in dense urban environments. Dr Mirko Kovac, director of Imperial College London‘s current aerial robotics lab, suggests it could be as far out as a decade.

“Drone delivery in cities is still something that it’s not sure how feasible it is in a big city like London for example,” he said in an interview with TechCrunch, noting that safety remains the key challenge for Amazon et al operating drones in urban areas.

“Flying close to humans, flying close to buildings, flying close to other flying vehicles, and legislation, insurance, air traffic control, all this needs to be sorted before something like this can be demonstrated,” he added. “So central London might not be the best first step… It’s difficult to put a number on it but maybe in a decade we will have commercial drone delivery in cities. That’s maybe reasonable.”

Kovac added that drone delivery will likely arrive sooner in other types of environments – principally where there’s more room for manoeuvre and fewer obstacles for drones to worry about. “Drone delivery in other areas such as in developing countries, such as Africa or Asia for example, there I think it’s much closer because there there is vast spaces and it could be much more feasible to test and implement something there.”

Nearer-term commercial applications for drones will focus on rather more mundane tasks — at least from a consumer’s eye view — such as inspection and repair of structures, he added.

“That is much more close,” said Kovac. “Already you can do 3D mapping of the environment [with drones], with something that is already on the market now — but the next step is the interaction with an environment. So anything that interacts with an environment, like sampling and flight in more constrained environments, like indoors, inside of mines, for examples, making 3D map of the mine structure, or making 3D map of buildings in different ways for the construction industry. These areas are much more close.”

Imperial’s incoming drone research lab

Earlier this month Imperial announced it will be building a shiny new drones research facility — due to open in 2017. Costing £1.25 million to build, the glassy structure will sit atop an existing building on its South Kensington campus so that students and others can peer up at drones being put through their paces and be inspired by the potential of the tech and the research being conducted. The drone lab’s visibility is absolutely intentional, says Kovac.

“The flight lab will be a very good nurturing ground for actually developing the flying robots. We do that already but it will leverage the capabilities we have already now. What it will be also providing us with is a very high exposure — so it will be a very visible VIP type facility that will be very visible and good for visitors and also to see how the research is done.”

 

Image credit: Imperial College London and Rob Sidall

The facility will include a glass-walled flight arena for testing drones in the air, a pool where amphibious drones can take a dip, 3D printing facilities to produce rapid prototypes, and an outdoor platform where prototype drones can take to the skies. There will also be 16 high speed cameras in the facility to enable 3D tracking of the drones in flight.

“It’s a new space that is tailored even more to this type of research,” added Kovac, explaining what’s new with the incoming lab vs the university’s current drone research facilities.

Imperial is not the only university to zero in on drones. There are dedicated drone research facilities at several others, including MIT, Harvard and UZH in Zurich, but Kovac said the Imperial lab will offer something different. Specifically hybrid drone research.

“What’s novel about ours is it allows us to work on hybrids — so multimodal mobilities. So robots that can move in air, on ground, in water, in complex environments, in forests. This is something we are focusing on,” he told TechCrunch. “It’s the next step for flying robots.”

A hybrid teaching and research model is also part of the plan, with “integrated teaching and research” planned — so “you can actually educate the next generation of aeronautics engineers that we know how to operate and have the skillset to work in this unmanned aerial vehicles space”.

Given his long view on drone delivery, it’s no surprise that Imperial’s lab will be focusing its research on other areas. Specifically the aforementioned “aerial construction” inspection and repair tasks, and also on environmental monitoring use-cases such as pollution tracking.

“Currently often samples are taken manually with people in the rainforest or in the sea or on ground so this can be automated,” said Kovac. “This is something we are working on — how to do that in an automated way using swarms of flying robots. This should then make it much cheaper for the operators or the industry to do, and it’s a very convenient and safe and quick way to do it.”

Power and battery life remain key challenges for improving the performance of aerial robotics so the lab will also be researching new concepts for propulsion systems, energy storage, low power computation and high efficiency flight.

“There are developments in fuel cells and different types of battery technology that have huge potential. The approach we take is that we optimize the aerodynamics of the platform so we use less energy for flight and like this we increase the range and flight direction,” he added. “It’s an alternative approach. We don’t work on battery technology ourself.”

Drone flight inspired by nature

It will look at ways to improve drone aerodynamics by studying biology — so looking to flying creatures such as birds and insects for inspiration. “We can look at how nature solves some of those challenges. We can look at flying animals, birds, insects, and we can extract the key design principles that they use and apply them to robots to make much better drones,” added Kovac.

“We’ve done this successfully in the past and I think this is one of the main pathways — how we’re going to make new flying robots very good.”

Kovac said Imperial is looking for commercial partners for the lab as a way to accelerate marketplace applications of the research — and is “open for collaboration”, as he put it. The facility is also taking in funding from research councils, and applying for grants – with Kovac noting the U.K. government is recognizing drone tech as “an important area to invest in”.

“We have a lot of interest from industry. How we do that is we use the London Robotics Network. It is a network that I co-founded with an industrial partner — which is Shadow Robotics — and Kings College London. We came up with this idea to create a network where these kind of collaborations and synergies can be built and executed,” he added. “We are now really looking for ways how to bring this technology to the market together with industrial partners.”

Kovac said Amazon could “potentially” be one such partner — given the company is ramping up its Prime Air drone delivery program in Cambridge — but added that he has not personally worked with them.

“Drones are still very much perceived as being a military technology and only now they start to move into the civil space. And there many big companies are now really interested in that and they’re investing and exploring, prototyping, starting to adopt the technology slowly. But this is really just happening now. It’s not something that is very established already. The potential is now really being only discovered,” he added.

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Europe's parliament wants to split Google up

Google might be in trouble in Europe

European regulators have had Google in their crosshairs for years now over various antitrust concerns, and according to one report they might finally do something about it.

Europe's parliament is considering proposing that Google separate its search service from the rest of its commercial enterprises, reports Reuters.

The site claims to have seen a draft of this proposal that, although it didn't refer to Google by name, was clear in its intent.

The motion reportedly "calls on the Commission to consider proposals with the aim of unbundling search engines from other commercial services as one potential long-term solution."

As Reuters notes the European Parliament doesn't have the authority to force Google to split its search business off into a separate company.

But this proposal could potentially put pressure on the European Commission, which apparently does have that authority.

Meanwhile the US is losing this same battle, with a California court deciding in November that Google can re-order its search results as it sees fit under first amendment protections, despite the possibility that it might use that power to curtail competition.

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Dyson Invests $2.35B In R&D, Aims To Launch 100 New Products Over The Next Four Years

Dyson is spending big on new products and product categories, the company announced today. The maker of vacuums, fans, heaters, hand dryers, robots and more announced today that it would be spending a total of $2.35 billion across a UK tech campus, expansion of its manufacturing efforts, investment in British universities to foster talent, and $1.56 billion in new specific tech development projects.

The British company wants to roll out no fewer than 100 new products, across four new tech portfolios over just the next four years – we’ve already seen it introduce the 360 Eye robot vacuum cleaner this year, as well as announce its entry into the humidifier market, with a device that simultaneously filters bacteria out of the air while it works. In past interviews, founder and CEO James Dyson has hinted that the company might be interested in applying the work it has done in battery tech to other areas, too, and continuing to advance the field of domestic robotics.

Dyson says it folds a full one-third of its total profits back into R&D, and notes that 2,000 of its roughly 4,500 employees worldwide are engineers, and 1,000 of those have come on board in the last four years alone. Its partnerships with academic institutions also help it funnel new talent into the company, as well as work out outside research projects.

With this investment, Dyson is signalling a shift that could mean we no longer see it primarily as a vacuum company in four years’ time. Could it instead become synonymous with domestic robotics? Early yet to tell, since the Dyson 360 Eye has yet to even go on sale, but should arrive this coming spring beginning in Japan.

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Updated: Nexus 6 being recalled from AT&T stores due to Motorola error

The Nexus 6 is a gorgeous flagship, but it has its share of issues

Update: A Motorola spokesperson confirmed that "a small number" of Nexus 6 handsets sent to AT&T have the wrong software installed, sending TechRadar the following statement:

"We delivered a small number of Nexus 6 smartphones with incorrect software to AT&T customers who pre-ordered. The incorrect software prevents the phone from starting up properly. We will provide replacements for consumers whose phones are affected. The problem has been corrected and the phones currently shipping are fine."

The spokesperson said any Nexus 6 users who are able to see the "welcome" screen when they boot their phones up don't have to worry. For anyone who is affected the spokesperson said to call Motorola's customer support line.

original story follows…

This is odd, but the Nexus 6 is reportedly suffering from a crippling bug that only affects the first batch of handsets sent out on AT&T.

That's according to Droid Life, which spoke with "multiple sources" about the issue.

The bug apparently causes the Google flagship's display to go black and prevents it from connecting to AT&T's service, "essentially leaving the device useless," the site says.

As a result AT&T stores are allegedly being told to send back the Nexus 6 handsets they've received so far, causing stock shortages until they can get more in. AT&T's website lists the Nexus 6 as "out of stock" as well.

There hasn't been any major hubbub online about the bug, which suggests it hasn't affected many Nexus 6 handsets.

On the other, that may be exactly what AT&T is hoping to avoid with this alleged recall.

If you currently have an AT&T-branded Nexus 6 you might want to go into one of the carrier's stores and see if you can get it replaced, whether you've seen this issue yet or not.

We've asked AT&T and Motorola to confirm these details and what they recommend their customers do if they've already purchased the Nexus 6 from the carrier, and we'll update here if we hear back.

Luckily there are plenty of other places to get the Nexus 6 in the meantime.

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Moleskine Smart Notebook Turns Your Sketches Into Adobe-Friendly Vector Files

Digital tools may one day replace traditional creative media altogether, but we’re definitely not there yet, and Moleskine is doing a good job of straddling the old and the new with its software tie-ins. A new partnership today brings its sketchbooks support for Adobe creative software, letting you turn your sketches into fully manipulable vectors via the Moleskine Smart Notebook app and Adobe Creative Cloud.

Notebooks that work with the service include special alignment indicators printed on the corners of the pages to help the app better translate the sketches into usable vectors, without distortion or skewed angles regardless of whether or not you can get a perfectly head-on capture with your iPhone’s camera. The resulting vectors will provide both .jpg and .svg output, for use in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator.

It’s true that there are a lot of different options for sketching digitally these days, including smartphones like the Galaxy Note 4 that sport their own stylus, and stylus accessories like the Bamboo line from Wacom that work with iPhones and iPads. But a Moleskine notebook has significant advantages – besides just offering artists a great tactile experience. It doesn’t require battery power, for instance, or a data connection, or an investment greater than $33.

 

Speaking as someone who likes to sketch, this looks like a great tool, and one of those things that has long seemed a distant dream. If the app can produce really good .svg files, it could amount to a genuinely indispensable tool for the modern artist or designer.

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Review: Brother MFC-L2740DW Mono Laser All-In-One

Brother has introduced a range of new laser printers for the SOHO market promising "affordable, compact and reliable" printing. The range includes standalone printers and all-in-ones, with RRPs ranging from just £90 to £251 including VAT. The MFC-L2740DW is the flagship of the range, and its low RRP is already being undercut: at the time of writing it's available online for £207 including VAT. That's very little money for an awful lot of features.

The MFC-L2740DW can print, copy, scan and fax, offers double-sided printing, connects via USB, Ethernet or WLAN, and has 64MB of on-board memory. It delivers speeds of up to 30 ppm (pages per minute), has a 250-sheet paper tray, a 35-sheet automatic document feeder and a single-sheet media tray. It also supports GDI emulation, PCL6 and BR Script 3 and is operated by a 6.8cm touchscreen.

The device looks really ugly in photographs – if Darth Vader had laser printers on the Death Star, we suspect they'd look rather like the MFC-L2740DW – but it's less frightening in the flesh, although it's never going to win a beauty pageant. Then again, you don't buy business printers on the basis of their looks.

The touchscreen is rather fiddly to use

Controls are kept to a minimum: in addition to the touchscreen there's a power button and hidden illuminated Home and Back buttons.

Once installed the driver gives you a range of print options including toner save mode, the ability to reduce paper curl, and to select the print output quality (600dpi is the default but you can choose 300dpi or the HQ1200 mode, which delivers up to 2,400 x 600 dpi). There's also the option of printing double-sided. The printer provides PIN-protected Secure Print as well, which won't produce the document without the PIN you specify.

Setting up the printer's wireless functions is simple enough, if a bit fiddly on the touchscreen – it's just a matter of choosing the network and entering the password, or using Wi-Fi direct.

The Web section enables you to use one or more cloud services including OneNote, OneDrive, Brother's own BR-Docs, Box, Google Drive, Evernote, Dropbox, Facebook, Picasa and Flickr. Enabling these services requires a trip to the Brother website to use the Brother Web Connect service, which provides a temporary (24-hour) 11-digit ID that you enter in the printer to access your chosen cloud service. It's fiddly unless you have small fingers, but it isn't as fiddly as trying to enter normal usernames and passwords would be. You can also PIN-protect cloud access on a per-service basis.

The innards of the MFC-L2740DW

Once you've connected the appropriate cloud service you can both upload (by scanning) and download (by printing). We successfully printed Office documents, PDFs and images with no problems.

The MFC-L2740DW takes a while to get going – on a wireless connection sending a single page letter took 13 seconds from hitting print to seeing it in the out tray – but once it's running it chomps through print jobs at a claimed 30 ppm. In our tests we achieved 29 ppm, which is close enough. Scanning and copying are quick too: an A4 scan took seven seconds from start to finish.

Like the other printers in the range, the MFC-L2740DW produces crisp, sharp text, images without obvious banding and decent blacks, although if you opt for the toner saving mode the output may seem a little light. Printing and scanning are reasonably quiet, and aggressive energy saving cuts the power after a short idle, resuming instantly when you send a print job.

Fortunately the MFC-L2740DW is much smaller than it looks in pictures

Like its smaller, cheaper siblings the MFC-L2740DW can use Brother's high capacity TN-2320 toner cartridge, which delivers 2,600 pages at the standard 5% coverage. Prices vary widely: at the time of writing the cheapest genuine Brother cartridges we could find were £47 and the most expensive £79. That works out at 1.7p per page and 3.0p per page respectively. The printer can also use low capacity TN-2310 cartridges, which average £35 for 1,200 pages (2.9p per page). Don't forget the double-sided printing capability too – if you set that as a default it should cut your paper bills considerably.

The printer's drum unit (DR-2300) has an expected lifespan of 12,000 pages and an average price of £52, which works out at 0.4p per page.

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Jumpy Is An Open-Platform Smartwatch Just For Kids

 

Smartwatches for children hold a lot of allure and at least one analysis firm believes they will help drive the smartwatch market to 373 million devices shipped in 2020, up from 15 million this year. Kids get a shiny new gadget, while anxious parents get location trackers and activity monitors to keep tabs on their offspring. Children’s smartwatches, however, suffer from the same problem that other toys do: the very short attention spans of their target market.

A Taipei-based hardware startup called JoyRay wants to create a smartwatch for kids that won’t end up abandoned like the Velveteen Rabbit. Founder and CEO Jerry Chang, who was division head of Foxconn’s smartphone business before leaving last December, believes the key to creating a kids’ smartwatch with enduring appeal is to provide an open SDK and release new apps by JoyRay and third-party developers every month. Called Jumpy, JoyRay’s smartwatch is designed for kids aged five to eight and Android and iOS compatible. It has a host of features software developers can play with, including a detachable watch head, gyroscope, gesture and voice recognition, and Bluetooth connectivity.

 

Jumpy is currently on Kickstarter, where it has raised about half of the $100,000 it wants to reach by December 18. The smartwatch’s Kickstarter price is $99 and it is scheduled to ship in March, a goal Chang is confident it can reach because Jumpy has a working prototype (which I saw demoed at JoyRay’s office) and a manufacturing partnership with Foxconn.

One of the reasons I like Jumpy is because its creators are eager to make sure children use the smartwatch to interact with their parents and the world around them, instead of just staring at its screen. For example, JoyRay is currently working on an app that will allow kids to control Sphero, a Bluetooth-connected ball, by waving their hands around. The smartwatch will be shipped with an activity monitor app that features a cartoon dog named Chubby who reminds kids to move around and drink enough water.

While at Foxconn, Chang, who has two young children, brought home one of the original equipment manufacturing giant’s smartwatch prototypes. His son was enthralled and wanted to bring it to school to show off to his classmates.

“I had to tell him, sorry, this is just for adults, not kids, but it made me realize how much smartwatches resonate with children,” says Chang.

JoyRay’s team includes co-founder and developer David Liu, who is in charge of overseeing the apps Jumpy will come preloaded with, as well as its future releases. Liu’s own startup, LND Games, created Color Band, a nifty motion-sensor based iOS app that teaches children about color and music theory. Color Band was profiled by TechCrunch last year and later featured by the App Store.

Jumpy features a larger screen (1.6-inches square) than most of its competitors and the watch head can detach from its silicon band. This allows it to be used as a controller in other games or attached to other devices. In the works is an educational app for tablets that is like an updated version of Operation. The app features a drawing of a human body that reveals organs and bones when Jumpy’s watch head is passed over it like an X-ray.

Jumpy’s watch head can also be incorporated into other devices. As a stretch goal for its Kickstarter campaign, JoyRay is currently working on a charger that is shaped like a robot or dog. When inserted, Jumpy’s watch head becomes the toy’s face, giving kids yet another way to interact with it.

Chang says he learned from the relatively limited functionality of competing products like Leapband, an activity monitor for children.

“It’s supposed to encourage them to be more active, but if you read reviews on Amazon and other sites, you see parents saying that while their kids were really excited at first, they were bored by it within a couple of weeks. So when we started developing Jumpy, we wanted it to be open platform. We have our own team of app developers and are also partnering with third-party developers to focus on educational, exercise, and entertainment apps.”

When Jumpy ships, it will come with about eight to 10 apps, including games, an exercise reminder and monitor, a location tracker, and a messaging app that sends emojis or voice messages to smartphones and other Jumpys. Data is uploaded through wifi to the cloud so parents can monitor their kids’ activities on an iPad app.

After that, JoyRay plans to release new apps on a monthly basis, including gesture-based games, storytelling apps, and language-learning tools. It also plans to integrate Jumpy with connected toys, like Sphero, that have open SDKs.

“As we talk to consumers, we will keep adding new functions and games. We believe that Jumpy has a lot more possibilities beyond other kids’ smartwatches,” says Chang. While Jumpy’s competitors already include Filip, Kidizoom, the aforementioned Leapband, as well as a host of GPS and activity trackers, Chang believes Jumpy’s open platform, larger screen, and detachable watch head will allow it to stand out in what is sure to be an increasingly crowded market.

For more information about Jumpy, check out its Kickstarter page.

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The biggest threats to the internet

Page 1 of 2Introduction, routers and government censorship Are data centres safe? (Image: Wikimedia)

With over seven billion people on the planet and approximately 40% of them online, the internet is one of the most important resources to protect, but is it completely protected? We've all heard about bugs like Shellshock and the 512k router problem, but are there other menaces that could bring down the worldwide web?

"While there are extreme scenarios like natural disasters and terrorist attacks that can cause disruption to the web, it is actually far more commonplace to see the internet fall foul due to shortcomings with routine maintenance and operations, such as hardware upgrades," says Mike Palladino, director of IP infrastructure and operations at internet hosting company Internap in Atlanta, US. Palladino is talking about widely-deployed, older routers hitting their default 512k routing table limit, a problem that has this year seen websites and networks knocked down.

It's time to move to IPv6

At around 500,000 routes – a figure that's increasing by around 1,000 routes per week – the growth of the global internet routing table shows no signs of slowing. "It's putting many organisations on a collision course with network instability over the coming months and years as millions of legacy routers hit their physical limits," thinks Palladino. "What makes the problem even more challenging is that companies don't want the headache of fully migrating to IPv6, so they are trying to squeeze as much IPv4 out of the remaining allocations as possible, which is only adding to the inflation of the routing table."

Many companies are getting caught off guard, Palladino believes, and smaller enterprises in particular could learn some very painful lessons.

This is the real baddie. "Some of the largest instances of internet outages weren't caused by natural disasters or terrorist attacks, but rather government censorship," says Brian Chappell, Director, Technical Services EMEAI & APAC at the Leeds office of BeyondTrust.

There are theoretical threats – such as the Kremlin's plans to take control of the .ru domain and take Russia off the global internet during an 'emergency' – and there are real problems caused by governments, such as the 'great firewall' in China. The latter's latest effort is Green Dam, a piece of web censorship software that will soon be pre-installed inside every computer sold in China.

The NSA might be monitoring, but other governments actively switch off the internet

That, and Edward Snowden's NSA online surveillance revelations, are mere asides in the fight against governments who think it is their right to switch the internet on and off. Censorship by the Chinese government was thought to be behind an internet outage in January that severed access to the web for hundreds of millions of people, while governments in both Libya and Egypt effectively banned the internet during the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011.

And who can forget the almost comical stance of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who called social media "the worst menace to society" before banning it in April? Luckily, the country's constitutional court overturned the ban after two weeks. However, the ban had an unexpected consequence. "When the Turkish prime minister banned Twitter, tweets about the ban and from Turkey increased significantly," says Dinah Alobeid at the New York office of analyst company Brandwatch.

It might be interrupted by earthquakes, hurricanes, ageing hardware or banned by power-crazy governments, but the internet consistently does one thing very well – it always fights back.

Page 1 of 2Introduction, routers and government censorship

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GoPro Craters 9.3% After Pricing Its Secondary Offering At A Discount

 

GoPro fell more than 9 percent today, after it priced its secondary offering at $75 per share, a discount to its market price. The company ended regular trading today at $71.74 per share, or a several dollar negative delta to the proposed price.

The company will sell 1,287,533 itself, while prior shareholders will sell 9,072,967. Underwriters of the sale may purchase 1,554,075 shares as well inside of a 30 day period. So, dilution to GoPro investors won’t be too heavy, but certainly seeing current shareholders get rid of more than 9 million shares worth — at the proposed $75 price — $680,472,525, doesn’t inspire confidence.

In fact, you almost wonder why the company is raising new capital for itself at all. GoPro ended its last quarter with $237.7 million in cash and equivalents. The proposed sale of new equity would add just under $100 million to its accounts.

GoPro has had a wild ride in the public markets since its debut. Priced at $24 per share, the company has traded as high as $98.47. You can see the spikes and declines here:

 

I called the company’s listed contact concerning the secondary offering, and left a message asking about potential pricing changes for the secondary offering, given the company’s steep slip in value over the past few days.

IMAGE BY FLICKR USER PETE PRODOEHL CC BY 2.0 LICENSE (IMAGE HAS BEEN MODIFIED)

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Industry voice: Slow computer? Your troubleshooting is misguided (and costing you)

Kicki Lindahl-Crozier, Crucial.com

Even the most savvy DIY computer fixers among us make mistakes when it comes to diagnosing their computer troubles. If you’ve ever made an incorrect assessment about solutions to your slow computer issues, you’re not alone.

Most American computer owners know enough to try pressing restart and installing new updates, but when we have to dive in and get our hands dirty, do we opt for the right solutions? My company, Crucial.com, recently asked 1,000 Americans just how much they know about fixing their computers, and the results were surprising.

Although almost half of the men surveyed said they feel confident when it comes to fixing computers, a large majority underestimated the best solutions to their most common computer problems. While slow computer problems can be attributed to insufficient computer memory, or RAM, less than 10% of men identified adding memory to their PCs as one of the most likely ways to help things run faster. When given five classic symptoms of stalling computers, men were most likely to identify component failure as the most likely cause instead.

Women did not fare much better: More than 90% of female respondents failed to identify memory upgrades as the most likely culprit. Not only are Americans misinformed about what’s causing their computers to slow down, but they don’t know what to do to fix the problem.

In essence, the research shows today’s consumers are connecting slow computer troubles to all the wrong issues. More than 90% of survey respondents overlooked low memory as a contributor to computer speed problems.

We often get frustrated when our devices slow down, but we don’t know how to make them run faster, often going overboard and purchasing an entirely new computer that will cost hundreds (and in some cases thousands) of dollars. This expense can be spared with a bit of research into the causes of the problem.

Most survey participants were quick to guess that a failed component inside the computer was causing their machines to stall. While this is a common response, it can be a pricey fix. And it could even be costlier for those that assume the only way out of the situation is to replace their computers entirely: 52% of survey respondents said they would replace their PC altogether if it exhibited unacceptable performance by being slow, broken or out-of-date. That’s a large price to pay if the problem was misidentified in the first place.

Not only do Americans struggle with identifying the sources of their computer problems, but they also have delusions when it comes to finding a correct price mark. Almost three in four of the survey’s respondents said they are highly concerned with saving money, and yet 41% said they would be willing to invest more than $100 to repair or replace an ailing computer.

Who among us would deny an interest in saving money? While the data shows undeniably that Americans prioritize money saving, the impulse to simply scrap a slow computer in exchange for a brand new, expensive one is one that consumers must work to suppress. Consumers who do even a modest amount of legwork to explore cost-effective solutions like upgrading memory stand to solve their slow computer woes.

Kicki Lindahl-Crozier is a Tech Support Guru for Crucial.com

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Mikme Is A Portable, Multitrack Recording Rig For Your Cool Band

 

If you got your first real six string at the Five and Dime and you and you and some guys from school got together to record some songs primarily during and around the summer of 1969, you probably could have used the Mikme. The Mikme is a box-shaped microphone that can sit anywhere in the room and record, the creator claims, audiophile-quality sound wirelessly. It connects to a phone or tablet and streams the audio to a recording app live.

The creator, Philipp Sonnleitner, is an electric engineer with six years experience at AKG. He is building the Mikme in Munich and will be shipping in May.

“I am a musician,” said Sonnleitner. “I was frustrated by how long it took me to get something recorded. I wanted to have fun while making music and not time wasting setup stuff up. And all microphones looked boring and old fashioned. I wanted something which looks nice beneath my stuff.”

The microphone itself has a 1-inch gold-plated condensor that converts 96kHz at 24 bits. It has a cardioid polar pattern and is good for recording voice or instruments – even a whole band, if aimed correctly.

“Microphones are pretty old fashioned. They look, feel and behave like the ones 30 years ago. We are concentrating and focusing on the creative workflow, meaning artists should be able to focus on writing songs and being creative. Right now setting up a microphone takes too long. Even if it is a USB microphone you still need a cable, setting up a software, making updates, setting gains manually, selecting inputs and drivers… and then your inspiration has gone,” said Sonnleitner.

He is looking to raise $217,000 – a pretty hard-core amount – and he’s selling the units for $179 for early birds. The device has 8GB on board and can record directly to the on-board memory or an 8 track recorder. Who knows? Maybe you can stand with it on your momma’s porch and sing about how the summer feels like it could last forever (the summer of ’69, that is).

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Buying Guide: TV deals: how to save big on TVs this holiday season

TechRadar has your holiday TV deals covered

Where does the year go? One minute you're spending your vacation on the beach, the next, you're stuck indoors watching the clock count down to to the New Year.

Well, being stuck inside doesn't have to be so bad. All you need is an image of a beautiful sunset on a 55-inch LED TV to shake off the seasonal depression. Thankfully, we've got you covered. This is the place for all the best TV deals during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, hand-selected by our home entertainment editor.

If you're looking for other amazing deals on everything from cameras to consoles, printers to phones, and tablets to smartwatches, you won't have to look far. TechRadar is the best when it comes to tech and our expert editors are always on-hand to help you out in a jam.

If you're looking to go big this holiday season, go to Walmart. There you'll find a 65-inch Vizio 1080p, 120Hz LED TV for only $648. If that's a bit too big for your home, Walmart's also got a 50-inch 1080p, 60Hz LED TV on sale for $218. The only catch is you won't know which brand you're getting until the day of.

Best Buy has a pretty killer deal on a 40-inch Sony 1080p, 60Hz LED TV for $299.

Last but not least, Target has two great deals, one on a 50-inch Samsung and one on a 39-inch Vizio. The 50-inch Samsung 1080p, 60Hz LED TV is $477.99 and comes with a $30 gift card, while the 39-inch Vizio LED TV is just $219.99 at Target.

If you're really looking for an amazing deal, Best Buy's going to have a 4K TV priced to move at $900. The 55-inch Samsung 4K LED Smart TV Black Friday deal goes live at 6 p.m. Thursday evening and should persist through the day on Friday.

But what would a Black Friday list be without Amazon? The ecommerce giant is cleaning up any remaining dollars we would've saved for the new year by offering $1,500 off of the 55-inch Samsung UN55HU9000 Curved 4K UHD TV. Or, if that's a bit out of your price range, there's an equally-impressive-for-its-size 39-inch TV from LG for $339.

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Beats Solo2 Wireless Review: Bluetooth Adds Considerably To The Solo Appeal

 

Beats is taking its Solo line wireless, with a new set of Bluetooth cans that match the wired Solo2 almost exactly in terms of external design. Surprisingly, they also match their wired counterpart in terms of sound, both when used with the included aux cable with inline remote, and when they’re used with the Bluetooth wireless connection. And after Beats took its sound engineering back to the drawing board for the Beats Solo2, that means they sound surprisingly good.

30 foot range12-hour internal rechargeable battery3.5mm able with inline remote included215gMSRP: $299.95Product info page

Pros

Good sound, wired or wirelessComfortable and light

Cons

The Beats Solo2 Wireless comes as close to replicating the Solo2 signature design as possible, with just a few fractions of a millimeter different in dimensions due to the need for a battery within the case. The mirroring of the design of the two products was intentional, and a desired goal from the start, because Beats wanted these headphones to share all the same traits, except of the addition of wireless functionality in these new Bluetooth versions.

The retention of the same design is smart not only to unify the Solo product line, but also because they have really top-notch fit and finish to begin with. The new design is a lot more visually appealing than the previous Solo, with fewer line breaks and softer angles. They’re still plastic, and contain little in the way of metal surfaces, but the high-gloss look works well with Beats’ bold colors (red, black, white and blue are options for the Wireless model at launch).

Solo2 Wireless packs padded cups and headband, and both are soft and comfortable for all-day use. They’re lighter than the Studio version of Beats’ headphones, and the on-ear design will probably be preferable for some. They fold up into a decently portable package, and will stow in the included soft case when you want to take them travelling. The soft case itself also contains padding, so you can throw them in a bag without much concern about their overall safety.

Beats has gone from a brand whose headphones I’d never recommend, let alone own myself, to one that is right up there with some of the better general consumer market audio companies in terms of audio quality. For them to have accomplished that between a single generation of hardware is impressive. What’s more impressive is that the Beats Solo2 wireless headphones deliver sound that is consistent regardless of whether you use them wired or wireless, and that in both cases, there’s a warmth out of the box that you don’t generally get from audio equipment without a decent break-in period.

There’s no active noise cancellation here, but he ear cups do offers a certain amount of passive filtering out of surrounding sound, which is plenty for most use cases. The audio also doesn’t suffer from any kind of inherent background hiss or static, again regardless of whether you’re using either wireless or wired connection.

The Beats Solo2 Wireless is rated at 12 hours of use on a single charge, and in practice I did get a good amount of listening out of them – definitely enough for a long day at the office, and for most flights you’ll ever have to take. Plus, they work with the included remote cable whenever you do run out of juice, so you won’t be left in the lurch.

For a wireless pair of headphones, 12 hours of continuous use is a very respectable duration, and Beats has also included its LED light indicator to tell you how much batter you have remaining. And if you’re using them with an iPhone or iPad, there’s also a battery indicator icon that will show up in your status bar once you’ve paired them with your device.

The Beats Solo2 Wireless Headphones are the first new hardware from Beats to arrive post-Apple acquisition, but they’ve been in development long before the deal came together, and they shared a development cycle with the wired version which debuted earlier this year. Beats staggered their launch to make sure the wired version got its own spotlight, and to refine the additional engineering required to make sure the wireless version had identical sound, without any kind of artificial enhancement or EQ trickery.

Overall, the company accomplished what it set out to do with the Beats2 Wireless – these feel like they should become the new default option for customers shopping for a pair of on-ear wireless headphones. Price is still an issue, as it’s a 50% premium over the wired version, but there’s a lot more engineering involved, too. And thanks to that work, these don’t feel overpriced, per se – the added convenience of wireless features is hard to quantify, but if you’re concerned about budget, check out Solo2 or other wired option first.

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