Not Nokia-ing on Heaven’s door

Nokia’s keynote this morning wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. 

“Our ambition is to surprise you at every turn,” said Kevin Shields, a man whose job title – senior vice president of program and product management for the smart device – is longer than many people’s lives.

And then he started shouting.

“It looks AWESOME!” he bellowed, channelling his inner Ballmer and scaring the hell out of the first six rows. “It feels GREAT in your hand!” he added, frightening everybody again. “It SCREAMS premium!” he screamed.

The iPhone 4S: “the best thing Apple has ever made”

My friends at Techradar like the iPhone 4S, it seems, and they’ve put together a typically exhaustive review.

Executive summary: if you have an iPhone 4, there’s no real need to upgrade once you’ve installed iOS. If you’ve got an older iPhone, however, the 4GS is a huge upgrade.

I’d like to get my hands on one to play with the Siri voice recognition and see how it copes with my accent, but my car needs an MOT and service. Damn you, reality!

Bye, Steve

Steve Jobs’ obituary on Techradar. I was getting a bit teary as I was writing the end of it. We’ve lost a giant.

The next iPhone needn’t be fancy

Me, at Techradar:

It’s Apple’s new iPhone event tomorrow, and we know what that means: most of the internet is publishing “ten things Apple will announce tomorrow” articles, most of them split into eleventy-nine pages to rip off advertisers.

Kindles and iPads are the Tescos of tech

A wee Techradar piece about something that’s been nagging at me for a while:

As a gadget fan, I’m well aware that closed ecosystems such as iOS or the Kindle deliver the best possible end user experience. But I can’t shift the nagging feeling that when we welcome our new retail overlords we’re buying into something we might later regret.

I’m not sure I’ve quite nailed what I wanted to say here, but it’s close enough.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire is going to burn Android

Me, on Techradar:

In times of great excitement, I like to paraphrase Noddy Holder – and today is one of those times. Ready?

So here it is, Merry Christmas

Everybody’s Having Fun

Apart from all the Android firms

Who are probably chucking themselves off bridges right now

“Self-doubt convinces us that our own failure is inevitable, an unavoidable recourse based on our own screaming lack of talent.”

Chuck Wendig wrote this post for writers, but I think it’s relevant to any kind of creative activity:

Suddenly Old Mister Doubt is jabbering in your ear.

You’re not good enough.

You’ll never make it, you know.

Everyone’s disappointed in you.

Where are your pants? Normal people wear pants.

…self-doubt is the enemy of the writer. It is one of many: laziness, fear, ego, porn, Doritos. But it is most certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, in the writer’s rogue gallery of nemeses.

78% of burglars are not using Twitter and Google Street View to plan crimes

There’s a news story doing the rounds today: in the words of Metro, “A massive 78 per cent of ex-burglars” believe that other burglars are using social media and Google Street View to commit crimes.

I’ve nothing against advising people to be careful – the survey’s part of a national crime awareness week – but the survey that’s being reported here (and by Sky, and by others) simply found that 39 of 50 ex-burglars interviewed “believe” that other burglars probably use social media to identify targets. Three-quarters of the ex-burglars also think it’s “likely” that the baddies use Google Street View too.

What people believe and what is actually true aren’t necessarily the same thing.

R Kelly believes he can fly. He’s wrong.

The A to Z of ebook publishing

I thought it might be an idea to do a huge ebook-advice post based on the various discussions we’ve had here and on other sites, so that’s what I’ve done: an enormous A to Z of ebook publishing aimed at would-be ebook publishers. If there’s anything I’ve missed or got hopelessly wrong, I’m sure you’ll let me know in the comments.

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It’s not child labour if you don’t pay them

Unbelievable. AOL’s Huffington Post and Patch are recruiting unpaid bloggers as young as 13.

 ikoni