Look at the chart above and you'll see two things happening. First, Apple has overtaken Symbian to become the top smartphone platform in the UK (with a 27 percent market share). And secondly, Android has grown 634 percent year-over-year to shoot into second place, with less than half a percentage point keeping it from the top spot (other reports already place it ahead).
As you might expect, much of that growth isn't coming from folks switching from one smartphone to the other, but from new smartphone users -- Comscore found that 42 percent of all mobile users in the UK used a smartphone in May of this year, compared to just 27 percent a year ago. Of course, that also means that 58 percent of UK cellphone users are still potential smartphone users (to say nothing of those that still don't have a cellphone at all), so there's certainly still plenty up for grabs for all involved.
Today's Google Doodle is a mesmerizing geometric mobile that slowly spins above the search box. The Doodle commemorates the 113th birthday of Alexander Calder, an American artist and sculptor famous for inventing the mobile sculptures.
Calder was a life-long artist who studied in New York and Paris. As his artistic talent flourished in the early 1930s, he became interested in wire sculpture and kinetic art. These two interests merged to create what would be called "mobiles," a French term that refers to both "motion" and "motive."
Originally these kinetic structures were moved by cranks and pulleys, but Calder developed a delicate touch and harnessed the natural air flow of a room to spin his creations. Calder's largest moving sculpture, a 76-foot-long mobile, hangs from the ceiling of the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
Calder continued to develop sculptures both large and small, mobile and stationary until his death in 1976 at the age of 78.
Google+ is hot, hot, hot. The social network has pulled in 20 million unique visitors in a mere three weeks. Leading the way is the US with 5 million and India with 2.8 million uniques.
It'll be interesting to see if Google can expand the service fast enough to keep up this momentum. I like chatting it up in 140 characters or more and Google+ is just so light, fresh and fun. It's like Happy Hour all day long.
Watches are one accessory that's crying out for some green love. They're worn daily, changed often and killed frequently with an accidental bump. Sprout understands and has developed a line of fashionable timepieces that can be tossed away without remorse.
These watches are great. They are good-looking, colorful and 80-93% biodegradable. They are made of wonderful materials such as bamboo, organic cotton, mineral crystal lenses, and mercury-free batteries. Sprout has even managed to sell them at a reasonable price. The entry-level model starts at $30, while the top-of-line model climbs to a pricey, but not exorbitant $75.
My eyes love the geometric nature of the Elecom Orime mouse. Something tells me my hands would not. Complete with five buttons (concealed by the mouse's design) and laser tracking, this RF wireless mouse is available for $85.
Sure, these days nearly all digital cameras can shoot video, but only a small handful give you the power to manually select aperture and shutter speed while doing so. The Lumix FZ47 is Panasonic's latest high-end point-and-shoot to sport this functionality, providing full control over both video and still photo capture with its Creative Control mode. The 12.1-megapixel superzoom can shoot 1080i HD at 30 fps, though it's notably lacking in the 1080p department.
There's also a 3-inch LCD, 24x Leica zoom lens with a 25mm wide-angle focal length, and an option to shoot 3.5-megapixel stills while recording video. For photographers wiling to settle for a good deal less power, Panasonic also just announced its entry-level Lumix LS5, which includes a 14.1-megapixel sensor, optical image stabilization, and 720p video, all powered by a pair of AA batteries. The $400 FZ47 will ship next month, while the LS5 hits stores in November.
Bill Gates, nowadays basking in the accolades his philanthropy provides, noticed that toilets kind of suck in the developing world. Wanting to help stop the spread of communicable diseases, he's ready to put down $41.5 million for potty advancements.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is prepared to give that huge sum of money to universities that push poor nations' toilets into the modern era. They don't have to have ambient lights or mini-tablets. Rather, they should reinvent the concept by being sustainable, not relying on a sewer connection or electricity. Proposals have drawn up toilets powered by heat, microwaves, or solar panels, all to help prevent bacterial and parasitic infections.
I can't imagine what a microwave powered toilet would even look like, but any idea that shields you from diarrhea is a good one.
How do you build a mouse that can run six-times farther than its average bretheren? Take away all its fast-twitch muscle fiber, along with its ability to contract its muscles.
According to ScienceNow, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found the gene receptor that controls the protein responsible for muscle contraction. When they engineered mice to lack that protein, all the muscle in their body converted any fast twitch muscle (which is more powerful, but fatigues quicker) to slow twitch muscle fiber, which provided endurance gains.
But these behavioral quirks weren't quite enough to convince Khurana of the effect on muscles. Lack of the IL-15Rα gene could just be making the mice jittery or giving them extra energy. So the researchers dissected muscles from the longer-running mice. The muscles sported increased numbers of energy-generating mitochondria and more muscle fibers, indicating that they tired less easily. And when the researchers stimulated them with electricity, the muscles continued to contract for longer than normal, taking longer to use up their energy stores, the team reports in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
The discovery of this gene could explain why some people are better endurance runners than others, and if discovered in humans (or any other animal, for that matter), could be used to create a human that could run and run and run and run. Although, the absence of speed and power might not be worth it.
They say Apple updates its products like clockwork, releasing something new at the same time in the same place every year. Not so with MacBook Airs anyway. The outfit's gone and freshened up its 13-inch and 11-inch ultraportables -- the second such update in nine months. Although the industrial design hasn't changed much since the last generation, both models step up to Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7 processors, Thunderbolt ports, backlit keyboards, and, of course, OS X Lion.
The 11.6-inch flavor starts at $999 with 64GB of solid-state storage, 2GB of memory and a 1.6GHz Core i5 processor. The higher-end of the two configurations costs $1,199, with the extra two hundred dollars doubling your RAM and storage. The 13-inch Air, meanwhile, starts at $1,299, with a 128GB SSD, 4GB of RAM, and a 1.7GHz Core i5 CPU. Step up to the $1,599 model and you'll get a 256GB SSD instead. Regardless, you're looking at Intel HD 3000 graphics across the board, along with FaceTime webcams, and two USB ports (plus an SD slot on the 13-inch version). The two differ when it comes to resolution and battery life: the 11-incher has a 1366 x 768 panel and is rated for up to five hours of battery life, whereas the 13-inch model has a 1440 x 900 screen and promises up to seven hours of juice. As for that 1.8GHz Core i7 CPU, it'll set you back an extra $100, and is only available on the higher-end 11-inch and 13-inch configurations.
Well it looks like the cat's finally out of the bag virtual box. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer just confirmed that Mac OS 10.7 is due to hit the Mac App Store tomorrow, making Lion available as a 4GB download for $30.
The new operating system packs 250 new features, including an iOS-like app launcher, multi-touch gestures, AirDrop for direct file sharing, and system-wide Resume. More enhancements that will feel particularly familiar to iOS users include a new version of Mail with conversation view, and reverse touchpad scrolling.
Google promised that iPhone users would soon be getting a Google+ app of their own, and it's now here. Not surprisingly, it looks a lot like the Android app, including views of your main stream and nearby users, sharing via Circles, and support for the Huddle group messaging feature. It's not a universal app, though, so iPad users are still left out for the time being, as are those with an iPod touch.
For frequent business travelers, the days of carrying around a Swiss Army knife on your keychain were gone even before the TSA was born. Well, that familiar pocket multi-tool is back, in the form of Victorinox's Swiss Army Slim and Slim Duo. Both products pack a tool that many of us use far more often than scissors and knives: the USB flash drive.
The colorful, waterproof storage devices are finally shipping, in capacities that range from 4GB ($40) all the way up to 128GB ($350) with the Slim Duo (which, as its name implies, includes a pair of 64GB drives). Both flavors are designed to let you file photos and presentations, not your fingernails -- but if you're looking to do both, Vic's got you covered there, too.
Intent on buying a new Acer laptop but not satisfied with the just-announced TravelMate 8481 thin-and-light? Then perhaps you'll find the company's new and slightly larger Aspire 5755 model more to your taste. This one packs a 15.6-inch display with a rather lowly 1366 x 768 resolution, but it at least boasts some built-in WiDi so you can easily view movies (or anything else) on a larger display without the need for any pesky cables.
Otherwise, you'll get your choice of Intel Core processors (up to a Core i7-2820QM), up to 8GB of RAM and a maximum 1TB of storage, NVIDIA's Optimus-enabled GeForce GT 540M graphics, and either a Blu-ray or basic DVD drive -- all for a starting price of £899 (or roughly $1,440).
Danish audio purveyors AIAIAI have made some good products in the past: look no further than the TMA-1 headphones. Now they've teamed up with Teenage Engineering to deliver these lovely PX-0 earbuds, they also have an inline mic/remote, which make them just as useful when paired with a compatible smartphone or MP3 player. They're currently selling in Europe for €60.
You'll find a devilishly thin (3-inches) table, complete with 55-inches of 1080p gorgeousness, a 5,000,000:1 contrast ratio, 178-degree viewing angle and support for a 64-bit copy of Windows 7 Professional. The internal computer includes a dual-core Core i5 CPU (2.66GHz), 8GB of memory and a 128GB SSD; you'll also find WiFi, Bluetooth and a slew of "hidden ports."
The entire thing is constructed from aircraft-grade aluminum, and it supports a total of 32 touch points. If you've got the $17,950 to take one home, have fun!
Just when you were thoroughly bored of the ever-cute Nyan Cat, Ben Stone has only gone and made a custom Nyan Cat progress bar, which works on Windows 7 machines. It's a free download, so nyan nyan nyan on over. Get it here.
Big news for Big Red-eyed fans -- the Droid 3's finally made its dual-core, qHD, global 3G surfin' ways official at the carrier's retail outlets. You can pick this QWERTY slider up now for $199 on a two-year contract, or just go whole-hog and pay $459 with no strings attached. It's not the operator's top of the line offering, nor is it the increasingly mythical Bionic, but it should satisfy your Android needs.
While they don't come with gills, these goggles are good enough for any trip to the beach. Because they're made out of actual fish scales. Unique! Designed byErik de Laurens, they're part of a project he calls Fish Feast.
Here's an interesting titbit: HP's TouchPad has already begun to ship to speciality shops in the land of untamed energy usage and a holier-than-thou attitude, but for the pernickety among us, you may know that the company's first webOS slate hasn't actually hit the streets of Londontown.
Until now, the 16GB WiFi model is going for £399, while a doubling of capacity will tack on a few extra quid.
There's a new dual-screen beast in town, and it's not settling for second best. The first run of SpaceBooks is now up for pre-order, with each one offering a pair of 17.3-inch displays that boast a 1920 x 1080 screen resolution. Each panel slides out horizontally (think wings, but on a laptop), and creates quite the spacious area for creative professionals to immerse themselves in.
The entry-level piece is being hawked for $2,395, which nets you a 2.66GHz Core i5-560M CPU, 4GB of DDR3 memory, NVIDIA's GeForce GTS 250M (1GB), a 500GB HDD, DVD burner and a magnesium alloy frame. The pricier sibling is marked at $2,795, with that premium grabbing you a 1.73GHz Core i7-740QM, double the RAM and quadruple the bragging rights. There's no exact word on when these will ship out, but you'll need th in-between time just to wrap your mind around the object you're certainly still peering at above.
