Cord Cutting in the UK

cord-cutting-cableIf you Google a definition of ‘Cord Cutting’ you get –

the practice of cancelling or forgoing a pay television subscription or landline phone connection in favour of an alternative Internet-based or wireless service.

If you’re in touch with tech goings on in the world, you will likely have heard this being talked about, but mainly by Americans.

As we were moving house last summer, we thought we’d try and forgoe the massive £109 Virgin Media bill and see how we got on.

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Tuff-Luv E-volve Expedition Camera Backpack Review

IMG_6966.JPGAs I’ve mentioned, this year I’m looking to get more into photography, so I was over joyed when my good friends at Love-Cases offered me a camera backpack to try.

Ideally what I’d like is something I could use when on my motorbike that allows me to have storage space for cloths, gadgets, snacks and drinks as well as compartments for my camera equipment.  I didn’t realise such a thing existed, but this Tuff Luv E-Volve backpack is exactly what I was looking for! Lets take a closer look.

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Google, privacy and future tech

Last week saw Google host their annual Google IO developer conference in California.  Over the past few years they’ve given away some great devices to developers attending, starting back in 2010 with a Google Nexus One, then  Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1’s on 2011, this year they gave away a Nexus 7 (tablet with the next version of Android, Jelly Bean) a Nexus Q (Google’s answer to Sonos) and a Galaxy Nexus (which will be receiving Jelly Bean very soon).

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Ice Cream Sandwich & Androids Progression

I’ve not posted about the state of Android for over a year.  In my last post I see we were on the verge of Gingerbread and I was using a Desire HD, well, much has changed since then!

Shortly after that I moved on to a Samsung Nexus S, which lasted me around 3 or 4 months until I moved on to my first dual core CPU phone, the Samsung Galaxy SII. Continue reading Ice Cream Sandwich & Androids Progression

New Computer Time!

I’ve been toying with the idea of building a new PC all through the year, mainly based on the Blue Screens of Death I’ve experienced on my old machine, mainly when playing Bad Company 2.  Mid way into summer I found the crashes to be down to a dodgy stick of RAM, which I replaced, but still I had an itching to upgrade.

I was rather surprised when I discovered it was actually a month off of two years since I built the machine I was using right now.  With the Beta of Battlefield 3 on our doorstep and Star Wars: The Old Republic due in the next couple of months, I thought maybe I should get it over with and build myself something new.

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Goodbye Orange!

I’ve been with Orange for what must be in the region of 16 years.  In fact, I’ve been with Orange since before they were Orange, back when they were Rabbit.

Recently I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed by how poor their data connection is.  At home, we pay a lot of money for the best possible connection we can have (50meg cable from Virgin Media) so why do I put up with such a poor connection from Orange? Continue reading Goodbye Orange!

Google Plus Arrives

Well, it kinda arrives…  it’s in it’s beta, invite only stage right now.  For some time now, I’ve not been a fan of Facebook.  I’ve moved them into a similar category as Apple in that I just see them as a little bit evil.  Some people worry about Google knowing so much about them, but as I see it, they only want this information so they can show you ads of things you might want to buy.  Surely those are the best adverts to see?  Facebook wants information on you to sell to other people, who knows what they’ll do with the info.  They will gather this info in sneaky ways too, so even if you’ve reasonable privacy settings, if you’re friends don’t, and they can see your info, it can be sold.  They also have a history of changing their minds of devs and then introducing something similar themselves.

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The Tablet For Me

I can’t be denied that the iPad brought tablets very much into the spotlight.  They still have a huge share of the market (up over 90% at the moment I believe) but of course, the iPad’s not for me.

Last year I started the exploration for a decent Android tablet when I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab, the first main stream Android tablet on the market, but at only 7 inches I found it too small.  It was very portable, sliding easily into the inside pocket of my coat, it took it’s own SIM card meaning you didn’t actually need a phone with it, but it was too close to a phone in size, meaning there wasn’t enough to differentiate it and make it worth while.

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Professional Writers!

For some months now, Robert has been writing a book and is now in negotiations to write a second.  Well it would appear he’s not the only one in demand!

I started Hemorrdroids.net with a couple of Android loving friends at work around 9 months ago and we’ve built and built on it, becoming more known in the genre.  My hardware reviews have apparently caught the eye of some people as just before Christmas I was contacted by someone from TechRadar, the UK’s biggest tech website, asking if I might be interested in writing reviews for them.

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