Daily Archives: October 30, 2012

Hurricane Sandy drives social media traffic

October 30, 2012 7:44 pm by April Dembosky

Flooding in New York

A monumental presidential election in 2008, social revolutions in the Middle East last year, and now Hurricane Sandy.

Photos of water lapping at the base of the Brooklyn carousel and spindly trees crashed upon car roofs have, er, flooded social media channels.

Just as Facebook burst into the mainstream during Barack Obama’s first presidential election campaign, today Instagram, the photo-sharing app now owned by Facebook, is finding widespread use as the preferred storytelling medium of the biggest storm in decades to hit the east coast. Read more

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Posted in Mobile, Social |

Asus stands out from the PC crowd with its hybrids

October 30, 2012 3:40 pm by Sarah Mishkin

Asus sales rise to $3.8bn

Asustek’s latest results confirm that the Taiwan-based company has some reason to feel as optimistic as it does. Its tablet sales, both of the Nexus 7 and its other convertible tabs, are already doing well, and, looking forward, reviewers and analysts have been relative positive on the new Windows 8 devices it launched this week.

A few weeks ago, its competitor Acer reported an 11 per cent fall in revenue, and global PC shipments are down more than 8 per cent this quarter. For the third-quarter, however, Taiwan-based Asus said its sales were up 9.2 per cent year-on-year to NT$111bn ($3.8bn), slightly more than analysts had been expecting. Read more

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Posted in Asia, Hardware, Tech |

Chris Nuttall Slingbox 500′s HD step-up, easier setup

October 30, 2012 5:46 am by Chris Nuttall

The Slingbox 500 costs $300

When Dish Network bought Sling Media five years ago, I feared the worst for Slingbox, a remote TV viewing device on which I had come to depend.

I saw the technology being incorporated into the satellite TV service’s DVRs, which has happened to some extent, while the standalone boxes would slowly be allowed to fade away.

The signs have not been good in recent years, with no new consumer hardware since the Pro HD in 2008 and I’ve found little improvement in the video streaming software, with services such as HBOGo, WatchESPN and the BBC iPlayer offering me better quality video of late than my Slingbox’s relaying of my TV source at home. Read more

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Posted in Digital media, Personal technology |

Richard Waters So many screens, so little time

October 30, 2012 3:36 am by Richard Waters

If it’s Monday, it must be Windows Phone 8. Not to mention Google’s Nexus range. Would you prefer that in four, seven or ten inches?

At this time of year, the flow of new smartphones, tablets and things that defy categorisation becomes a flood. But the message left by the latest deluge of hardware (which includes a new iPad mini last week) is a somewhat paradoxical one: with the number and type of screens proliferating, the real key now lies in integration between machines, not in the devices themselves. Read more

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Posted in Mobile, Personal technology, Smartphones |