Apple's owning its own retail stores is often pointed to as the key differentiator over the competition. It's this end-to-end retail relationship with its customers that has seen Apple being propelled from a position to the market leader that it is today. It's a relationship that has seen that competition only dream of having the same relationship with its customers, with Microsoft seeking to emulate it with little success.
Following on from a report yesterday, in which Destructoid offered a supposed first look at what it claimed was the controller for Sony's PlayStation 4, a second photo has today emerged depicting the same peripheral. Today's image is a lot closer, and taken at a different angle - one which also reveals a 3.5mm jack on the underside of the controller, and from this perspective, the handles also look a certain degree longer.
“What’s the weather like today?” “Is it raining next weekend?”, these questions have been at the center of everyday lifestyle for centuries, recently boosted in a massive way by weather apps on smartphones. Haze is a new minimalistic app for iOS that makes the simple task of checking the current weather, as well as weather forecasts, actually simple.
If you have been a loyal user of Skype, you have likely run into the hurdle of reaching a user when they are offline. While sending SMS messages often does the trick, sometimes a video message is just more convenient. The good news is that Skype has begun rolling out this feature in the form of an update for its Mac, iPhone and Android client, with support for other platforms such as Windows coming very soon.
HTC has been working its level best to generate some hype prior to the launch event of its new flagship 'One' device next week on February 19th, and among a flurry of leaks and sightings of the device, a couple of intriguing looking high-resolution images have also emerged. We've seen the HTC One in white a million times, but the new leak also depicts an accompanying black version, and although it's hard to make a judgment based on these shots alone, it certainly looks promising.
Bump, the sharing app for Android and iOS, has been updated on each platform, with the takeaway feature being the ability to 'bump' files to a computer. It is often the case with the more popular apps that both the Android and iOS versions are given updates at around the same time, and while the iteration for Google's platform now stands at 3.4.9, the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch incarnation of the app has been, erm.. bumped to version 3.5.6.
For avid smartphone users, these aren’t just devices for fun and entertainment. While smartphones are great at serving multiple purposes for making our lives generally easier, a lot of users opt for productivity apps designed for specific purposes. One of the most popular category in this genre are note-taking apps. Since all of use continuously have so much to remember – when to make a call, sending out that high-priority email, shopping lists, daily tasks and so much more – notes are a great way to keep track of what you’ve done, and what remains to be tended to.
What with it still being very early in the year, lots of rumors continue to be frivolously thrown about as excited tech fans sink their teeth into the prospect of some landmark releases this year. The console wars are set for a step up, with both Sony and Microsoft releasing their respective next-gen offerings, and if it's the unofficially-dubbed PlayStation 4 you're waiting patiently for, it looks as though the controller for the upcoming entertainment system may have been leaked. Well, a picture of it, at least.
The latest speculation from the tech world suggests that Apple have a dedicated team of over 100 people working on the design, development and marketing of their purported iWatch. Backers are starting to receive the first shipments of the fantastic Pebble smart watch that managed to attract over $10 million worth of funding through the Kickstarter initiative. It seems that intelligent watches are all the rage at the minute, which is why it is quite staggering that we are set to see the world's first independent smart watch introduced in mid-April. And boy does it pack a punch.
Many of us like to, or are often forced through work commitments, to travel around on a frequent basis. As a hardcore geek, blogger, and general Internet obsessive, I take my MacBook Air pretty much everywhere I go, but as any seasoned journeyman would vouch, plugging in for a charge at any given location can be a trying task. With so many variants of the two-pin plug aiming to make life as difficult for somebody like myself, who has only ever used the three-pin here in the UK, it winds up being another annoying thing to tick off the list of pre-travelling to-dos.

