Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Category: Technology

Shiny gadgets and clever computers

  • In which I compare Internet Explorer to Sugababes

    Oh yes.

    On the face of it, Internet Explorer doesn’t have much in common with Sugababes: IE isn’t beautiful, doesn’t sing and isn’t likely to dress in a primary-coloured PVC dominatrix outfit to perform at G-A-Y.

    However, they’re not as different as you might think.

  • 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.

  • How to sell a tablet

    “Gary Marshall,” writes Amazon.com, “are you looking for something in our Tablets department? If so, you might be interested in these items.”

    It’s almost as if Amazon wants you to look at one tablet in particular, isn’t it?

  • 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!

     

  • “Here’s to the crazy ones”

    I hadn’t seen this before: the famous “here’s to the crazy ones” Apple ad with a different voiceover artist. The version that aired was narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, but this version was voiced by Steve Jobs. Naturally it’s all the more poignant now.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • A tentative review of the Sony Cyber-Shot HX9V compact digital camera

    I’ve got two cameras, a wee Sony Cyber-Shot and a big Sony DSLR. The former’s a great wee camera but a bit rubbish in low light, especially as I have RSI-induced shaky hands, while the latter’s far too big and bulky for casual use. Could a single camera ever offer the best of both worlds?

    It turns out that the answer is yes, sort of.

    The Sony Cyber-Shot HX9V comes with the usual blah about sensors and intelligent this and that, but it boils down to this: it’s good in low light and it’s good if you have shaky hands.

    Here’s a marketing pic:

    I’ve only been playing with it for a couple of days, but so far I’ve discovered that it’s really good in Intelligent Auto mode and its image stabilisation is really, really good – it’s got an enormous zoom lens but the stabiliser does a superb job of keeping things steady. If it can do that with my shaky hands, it can cope with anything. Its HD video recording is pretty impressive, easily as good as my dedicated HD camcorder, and like other Sonys it has a very clever panorama mode that works flawlessly.

    The bad? It’s pricey – about £299, although Currys is currently doing £30 off compact cameras and Sony’s offering £40 cashback on this one until the end of October – and some features can be slow, with a noticeable delay between pressing buttons and anything happening. It has some gimmicky stuff (3D, despite only having one lens; really annoying beeps that, thankfully, you can turn off), the pop-up flash is in a really weird place and it’s big and heavy in compact camera terms. But so far, so good.

    I’ll do some proper shooting with it when I get the chance and report back.иконииконопис

  • Steve Jobs steps down as Apple CEO

    We’ll miss him.

    They reckon that we’ll never have another Beatles or another Rolling Stones: the world is too different, too fragmented, and the perfect storm that created them will not happen again. Jobs and Bill Gates are tech’s Beatles and Stones. I’ll let you decide which one’s which.