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January 2010

01/29/2010

Personalising your laptop

How unique is your laptop? Back in the day, they all looked broadly the same .You could get any colour that you wanted, as long as it was black. Or maybe silver, or grey, if you were lucky. Personality-wise, the laptop was the equivalent of your monosyllabic cousin - you know, the one with the social anxiety problem - at a funeral.

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01/28/2010

Adding some spark to fashion

Is that a battery in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me? Oh, your whole pocket is actually a battery? Well, maybe not yet, but clothes that function as capacitors might be on the horizon.

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01/27/2010

What's missing from the iPad

Well, it wasn't quite the 'second coming'-level of event that we might have hoped for. After months of speculation, rumour, and geek salivating, Apple finally launched its tablet device. Called the iPad, (and leading many to wonder if Apple actually had any females on its marketing team at all), the device leaves technology pundits with many questions.

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01/26/2010

Resurrecting our old movies - in 3D

So, it looks as if Avatar is now set to be the highest-grossing film of all time. According to the Hollywood Reporter, it fell just $2m shy of Titanic's $1.843 billion record after this weekend, guaranteeing it place in the history books. The biggest news, of course, is that Avatar is a 3D movie.

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01/25/2010

How many Facebook friends is too many?

Apparently, your brain simply isn't up to Facebook. At least, it isn't if you have more than 150 online friends. Oxford University professor Robin Dunbar (who would, you'd think, be used to keeping lots of things in his head at once) says that we're generally only capable of managing 150 friendships at a time. He teaches evolutionary anthropology at the esteemed university, and came up with that figure, calling it "Dunbar's number". Our neocortexes (the bits of our brains that manage conscious thought) are apparently incapable of handling any greater number.

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01/22/2010

Does security technology make you feel secure?

Is flying - especially to the US - becoming too intrusive? Quite apart from the body scanners, there's the laptop searches to contend with. And neither of them make me feel particularly secure.

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01/21/2010

Microsoft makes Bing more private

Microsoft made an interesting move in the search engine privacy wars this week. The company announced significant changes to the way that it handles the data that it logs about its users. It could make all the difference to privacy-conscious users, and puts Google on the back foot.

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01/20/2010

Could Apple and Google be splitting?

Could the happy marriage between Apple and Google be at an end? A report in BusinessWeek suggests that it might. The rumour is that Apple is negotiating with Microsoft to replace Google with Microsoft's Bing as the default search engine on the iPhone.

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01/19/2010

When smilies turn sarcastic

Are you the type of person who uses smilies? Those three short characters -- the colon, the hyphen, and the right-hand bracket -- have changed the way that we talk to each other online. And of course, there are almost endless variations on the theme. As a writer, I tried to convince myself that words should be enough to communicate what I'm trying to say, but it's hard to avoid the temptation. And now, a company has invented yet another symbol to help you sum up your feelings online. Sarcasm, Inc has invented the SarcMark.

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01/16/2010

Licenced to do anything we darn well please

Down in Missouri, a certain web user is not happy. Victoria Major, who used a contractor provided by contracting services exchange ServiceMagic, had been trying to sue both the contractor (whose work she was unhappy with) and ServiceMagic (who hooked them up). The judge dismissed the suit, on the basis that ServiceMagic's terms and conditions said that any lawsuit had to be filed in Denver, Colorado. The clause was hidden in the T&Cs, which users don't technically have to read to use the service.

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Danny BradburyDanny Bradbury

Danny Bradbury is a technology journalist with 20 years' experience. He writes regularly for publications including the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Financial Post, and Backbone magazine. Danny also writes and directs documentaries.

Maurice CachoMaurice Cacho

Maurice Cacho is a Toronto-based journalist mixing his love for tech with a passion for news. He's also CP24's Web Journalist and appears daily on CP24 Breakfast and weekly on the channel's tech show, Webnation, discussing tech news and trends.

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