Nokia Lumia 800

The first phone to come from the Nokia/Microsoft tie-in that was announced back in February 2011 is the Nokia Lumia 800 Windows handset. This handset is a big deal in the smartphone market as it is the first to run on the Windows phone OS that Nokia will be using from now on in all their high end devices. The lovely people from the Amazing Collective at Nokia were kind enough to provide me a Lumia 800 handset back in November 2011 to test out and enjoy, so thanks a lot to them for making it happen.

After being knocked off the top of the mobile phone ladder, Nokia have been trying for a while to bring out a phone that would see them re-establish themselves as worthy contenders to the crown currently held by the iPhone as the number one smartphone. Being a Windows OS device, the Android HTC’s are their first obvious target, and the Lumia 800 is the phone they are hoping will propel them back up there amongst the best.

So to the Lumia 800, aesthetically, the curved chassis of the design is very pleasing, and it feels light and comfortable in your hand, while at the same time having a sturdiness that gives the impression it can withstand a knock or three. It stands out from the current crop of smartphones by a country mile, and if it was a beauty contest, the Lumia 800 would be the runaway winner. Looking very similar to the much less hyped Nokia N9, the Lumia 800 is a slick and stylish smartphone that does have a slightly smaller AMOLED display than the N9 at 3.7” to conform to the specs of a Windows phone.

Nokia Lumia 800

The Nokia Lumia 800 has a clearBlack OLED screen, which is absolutely stunning. The edge to edge display sits beneath Gorilla glass and it certainly looks the part. The video display is impeccable, as is the gameplay and variety of games available thanks to XboxLive. It is particularly impressive when you use it in bright daylight, previously the curse of mobile phone users, with the Lumia 800 you can still see everything perfectly and it completely eliminates the act of prodding the screen and hoping for the best.

Whilst Windows OS is coming on in leaps and bounds, it has still to reach the performance levels of the latest Android or iOS, but it is certainly a worthy competitor and looks set to equal them sooner rather than later. The live tiles on the main screen are fast and effective, as is the feature that enables you to link together your contacts. As you would expect from the inclusion of the slick Windows 7.5 software, the social media integration with the likes of Twitter and Facebook is second to none. While the mix radio streaming isn’t exactly revolutionary the fact that it is completely free and has a very good selection of playlists and tunes makes it a very welcome bonus. Another great feature is the fact that the official version of Office is installed, meaning that you can edit and create files for programs such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel on the go.

Users will love the interface as it’s fast and easy to use, and anyone who has previously shied away from a touchscreen smartphone will fall in love with the Lumia 800 and happily flick between the lives tiles and the apps with consummate ease. The column of live tiles on the home screen update dynamically to make sure your finger is always on the pulse and to ensure you never miss out on any information. You have to be quite precise with the navigation when scrolling up and down the screen as it can be quite easy to inadvertently select a program or file when you actually just want to keep scrolling.  The people hub is another great inclusion and allows you to easily flick through photos and the like as well as having tiles for messages and emails that show you instantly that you have new ones. The camera gives clear and sharp images and while it lacks a bit of speed, the Windows 7.5 Mango has made great strides forward in the photography sector.

One of the most asked questions has been how does it compare with an iPhone, and the answer has to be very favourably. It is a bit slower and doesn’t have iTunes or the App store, but it is lighter, has a larger display, and it now has an ever increasing number of high quality apps on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The latest figure I believe is close to 80,000 apps, a considerable increase from the initial 7,000 or so first announced when Nokia and Microsoft first teamed up.

Fancy an all expenses trip to New Zealand and taking three of your best friends with you? Then read on, as this is the competition you have been waiting for. At the heart of the Tourism New Zealand campaign is the premise that experiences are more valuable that material items, and by swapping something that is valuable to you and telling the story behind it you can earn the chance to take the trip of a lifetime.

So what are you prepared to give up for a unique experience that will never be repeated? Is that battered old computer worth giving up for VIP tickets to the phenomenal Queenstown Winter Festival that the Winter Highlife trip happens to coincide with? New Zealand has some of the best skiing in the world and you can be knee deep in the white stuff with your friends if you are prepared to part with a treasured personal item.

To enter is simple; make a video of yourself with what you are prepared to give up and explain the reasons why. Upload it to YouTube then submit the URL to the Stories Beat Stuff website. That’s it, nothing difficult or complicated, just you in front of a camera with your possession telling everyone why a life experience such as the Natural Goodness trip is more important to you than the material item you have with you.

New Zealand in the winter time is a veritable winter wonderland, and now you know how you can be a part of it. The trip includes all flights and accommodation, a rental car so you can see the best of the two islands that make up this fascinating country. Lift passes, transfers, rental of gear and, if you need them, lessons are all included too.

If flying down the slopes isn’t enough of a thrill for you, there is also skydiving, bungee jumping and rides in jet boats awaiting you. However you get your adrenaline rush, you will find it in New Zealand, so get your entry in now.
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Media, that all encompassing term that covers press, television, the internet and virtually everything else that involves getting things out there to the public. For decades now the media centre of the UK has been London, which is a perfectly obvious choice seeing as it is the capital and essential hub of the country. Times they are a-changing however, and Manchester has become one of the fastest growing media centres in the UK.

When the BBC announced that they were moving some of their top shows to the new MediaCityUK complex in Salford, reactions were mixed. Many of their top stars and presenters refused to make the move north, and there were also a lot of murmurs about the potential demise due to the travel involved and the fact that the clarity of their guests would drop with having to travel to Manchester for a 5 minute slot.

Whilst MediaCityUK is still in its infancy, the fact that the BBC and ITV both now see this as home has given it a credibility that was lacking when its inception was first announced. Nobody should really be surprised that Manchester’s media culture has taken such a huge step forward, especially when you consider that Granada studios was one of the biggest in country and the where such classics as Coronation Street were filmed.

The press attention that MediaCityUK has received has made many sit up and take notice. In its prime location at Salford Quays, right on the banks of the historic shipping canal, this complex houses studios, retail space, news facilities, apartments, numerous feet of office space and the University of Salford’s digital learning, research and teaching centre.

This coming together of all things media related has had far reaching effects across the city, and employment in the sector is booming. Training and development courses for fields such as TV and film production have also flourished in  recent years as to ensure the right skills are there to meet the growing demand. Companies in the field of media are coming into the city from all over the country, only recently it was reported that a top visual effects company from Yorkshire had made the journey across the Pennines to set up an office in the city centre.

Overall, as far as the media sector goes, Manchester is definitely the place to be. It is no longer just a northern city but a media hub with its finger on the pulse of everything that is going on in this complex and often misconstrued sector. Anybody who is involved in media will be looking to make their presence felt, and currently there is no better place to do that than Manchester.

There are big profits to be made by shipping iPads into theFar East, but there is more danger in doing so as smugglers are now facing larger mail costs, harsher customs, and the global rollout that will make them a less in demand item overseas.

Demand for iPads in countries such as China has helped spawn the iPad black market overseas; which is slightly ironic given the device is actually manufactured there. However, one quick look at the profit and it is easy to see why. A 16GB iPad that is purchased for around $500 in San Francisco can be sold for more than a thousand dollars over in Shanghai the very next day allowing for a 100% profit for the lucky smuggler.

An unknown Apple employee stated that you can guess that the first iPad arrives in China on the first flight that leaves the US on launch day emphasizing that smuggling is a lucrative and common occurrence. Of course other cities have plenty of buyers that have ill intents as well, with London Evening Standard reporting that black market smuggles essentially hijacked the Westfield Apple Store launch by handing over new iPads directly to European men of eastern descent.

It is getting harder to smuggle the devices back over to China however as customs authority in the country has told many shipping agents in the US not to accept iPad orders and warned travellers that they must declare all gadgets when the y cross the border and be willing to pay a 10% duty on all electronics which cuts into the profits.

Megaupload operators are now facing more charges in the United States after the country’s Department of Justice filed a new indictment that will charge them with further counts of wire fraud and criminal copyright infringement. According to the new superseding indictment, the defendants reproduced materials that were posted on other websites such as YouTube and then made them available for access on Megaupload.

The defendants in the case against Megaupload include two companies and seven people of which there was originally a five count indictment served on January 5^th of this year.  The original charges included conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two different counts of copyright infringement.

Since the charges were first announced, law enforcement has arrested seven people that were served indictments and have seized assets valued at about £30m.  The seven people charged are Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann, Kim Dotcom, Andrus Nomm, Sven Echternach, Bram Van Der Kolk, and Julus Bencko.  Bail was denied for Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, at the beginning of February in New Zealand where he lives.

The new indictment also offers new information about a Megaupload super user known as W who uploaded about 17,000 files to the website and was the subject of many take down notices that concerned copyright infringement.  During the years of 2008 and 2009, W received about £2150 from Megaupload for his uploading. New assets will also be seized as a result of the superseding indictment including bank accounts, property, jewellery, watches, and jet skis.

Google has been accused, and later admitted, that they bypassed the security settings of many users that chose to use the Safari web browser.  The company used a loophole in the security setting to get around privacy settings that users thought would protect them from cookies.

Cookies are the small text files that browsers automatically store if the privacy settings are not on that record information about which sites are visited and in some cases are needed to access online services.  Although Google admitted that this happened, they say that the story manipulates the actual scenario quite a bit.

Advertisers often use cookies as a way to track browsers online activity so that they can target internet users with commercials and ads.  Due to this fact many believe that cookies are an invasion of online privacy and this coming May the EU will set laws in motion that will prevent advertisers from using cookies covertly.

Apple created the Safari browser that is found on the iPhone.  The browser is set up to only allow cookies to be stored from the web page that a user is actually on and not from advertisers or other third parties.

However, Jonathan Mayer, a Stanford University researcher, discovered that advertisers could store cookies via a loophole in the browser security settings. Google services often use cookies to help keep users signed in but more importantly to help them tailor their ads to meet a user’s interests.

The iPad has reigned supreme for several years now in the tablet market. Many models have tried, and failed, to threaten the iPads dominance and carve themselves a nice niche in the market. There have been many reasons, or excuses, given for this, but the simple fact is that the iPad was the first of its kind; an innovative product with the huge marketing clout of Apple, the singularly best known brand in the world of technology. The story is similar with regard to the iPhone, despite a number of challengers, iPhone 4 deals continue to tempt the majority of people away from other smartphones in the market.

There are now murmurs, however, that only does the iPad have one worthy challenger to its title as king of the tablet, but three. Quite what Apple’s reaction is to having three challengers in the same year is anybody’s guess but thinking logically, it was really only a matter of time before an Android device, or three, was constructed with enough firepower to give the iPad a real run for its money.

So who are these new contenders and what do they have to offer that so many before them have been missing? First up we have the new Amazon Kindle Fire 2. Pencilled in for release at around the same time as the iPad 3, the sleek and stylish Kindle Fire 2 has certainly caused quite a buzz amongst those in the know, and as the price is rumoured to be much less than the new iPad, it will certainly win the price battle.

Acer’s Iconia tablet A200 is another Android device that must be giving some executives at Apple sleepless nights. Using the latest Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, this tablet certainly looks the part. It is thicker than some of its contemporaries due to the inclusion of a very useful USB 2.0 port and although it is missing some of the iPads features, this is reflected in the price and it is set to cause quite a stir.

The third contender is the Motorola Xoom 2. While its predecessor didn’t have the impact on the market that Motorola had hoped for, they have taken the criticism on board and come back with a very impressive Android tablet. Roughly the same size and weight as the iPad it is a good all rounder and makes you wonder if you actually need all the gadgetry packed into the iPad that greatly increases its price.

It looks like being a very interesting year in the tablet market, and it will be interesting to see if these latest devices will help Android finally overcome the Apple’s stronghold and take its place at the top of the tree.

ACD  features, or Automatic Call Distribution, is an every day part of the business world and does what it says on the tin by automatically distributing the incoming calls amongst the advisors in the contact or call centres who are sitting waiting for the calls and help or advise customers. Most of these systems are network based and there are various features that come with the ACD systems.

These are controlled by the call recipients to allow them to take calls, make themselves busy, take time out for breaks or give them the chance to update notes on accounts or make amendments that they have agreed with the customers. Having these features at their fingertips is essential to phone advisors to allow them to do these tasks which are expected of them without calls backing up in a queue waiting to get through to them.

Once an advisor logs into the network based ACD system, which can vary greatly in name and composition between customers but all serve the same basic purpose, they will click on a part of their screen that makes them available to take calls. Another feature is being able to put the caller on hold if they don’t have any necessary information to hand and have to make a secondary call without disconnecting the original caller.

Call transfers are another feature; they may have a direct line to another department whereas they will introduce the caller to the new receiver and pass them another. Another way is blind transferring, where they pop the caller into the call queue for the other department and they can wait their turn while listening to music.

A ‘busy’ feature stops calls trying to get through to that advisor and they are diverted elsewhere, this is a well used feature for catching up with notes or nipping to the toilet. Clicking on it again on their return makes them available to take calls once again.

There are a lot of people that think that the iPhone 4S is the best phone out there on the market, but of course that is true of just about every phone that comes out from Apple so what most people are wondering is just what is so special about this one. The truth it seems is in the software because while the appearance is not much different save a bit of width and weight, the software is still up ahead of its competitors including Android.

It’s also a very subtle phone as it is the first iPhone that offers software from post-PC companies such as iCloud and Siri. The phone looks just about the same, but it’s hard to reinvent a new smartphone design when everyone is getting used to the high technology look of top smartphones. However, it’s not the design that is so appealing; it’s what is hidden underneath the design that is appealing.

For instance, the camera finally received an overhaul that places it on par with its counterparts on the market with 30 frames per second HD video and 1080p. This time around the colours are a lot sharper and accurate and the phone does better in the dark.

The real astounding feature however is the speed featuring a dual core A5 chip that is undoubtedly faster than any of the other iPhone which should be good news for those who play a lot of games or use the multi-tasking features of the phone on a regular basis.

Facebook changed its format once again, and like other previous changes, with millions of active users there are plenty of people that are not happy about the changes. This time however the changes that many users are comparing to Google+ features have really angered its users as a blog survey conducted by Mashable found that three quarters of Facebook users ‘hate’ the new design of the social network. On another website a similar poll was conducted where 86% of users stated that they hated the new design.

One thing is for certain, with so many new scrolling features and enough privacy features to boggle your brain Facebook is certainly not the simple or easy to use social network that it was before, and new users may struggle to get the hang of the layout given the fact they do not have the advantage of slowly adapting to the new tools and features in the same way.

Among the new features that Facebook has added is a timeline that sits on the Profile page and scrolls across corner of the screen featuring events and phases of lives so that you can add or remove events as you like. Top stories is another feature in which Facebook picks out what it thinks you will like out of the last few days and then compiles them so if you have not logged on for a few days  you can just breeze through any news of status that the network thinks you will like based on your browsing history.