Perhaps not quite in the Tech category but I would say its still relevant. Halo 3, probably the most overrated game ever to be released. I do have to say I have been enjoying this game online recently but in no way does it compare to Call of Duty 4. The thing with Halo 3 is that it was simply Halo 2 with better graphics. With a storyline which I couldn’t get into, simply because I didn’t care about it. Every mission felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again with different scenery. On a more general point. You rarely hear anyone say, “Wow, the storyline for that game was incredible”. Usually it’s “Wow those graphics are amazing” Companies which sacrifice a fantastic plot for graphics frustrate me, I refuse to complete a game with a storyline which is too complex or stupid even if the graphics are amazing, some games have managed to achieve graphics and storyline very well such as Bioshock and Call of Duty 4.

4. Alienware Computers

Alienware has been known in the past and possibly the present for its terrible customer support. But more importantly known for its beautiful cases, I admit it. They are incredible but this isnt the point, I am here to criticise. Alienware provides high performance personal computers at a very high cost even though a similar computer with similar specs could most likely be built from scratch for half the price. You have to give it to them that their advertising is fantastic but at the end of the day you are paying for the brand and not so much the product itself. I find it quite amusing how Dell has recently purchased Alienware. Dell is a company that in my mind also heavily overprices its products just because of their looks. A few years ago customers loved the whole black pc, black keyboard, black monitor etc and would pay big amounts of money for it, Dell certainly took advantage of this.

3. Macbook Air

I’m so pleased I get to include this in my list. Where can I start? Anyone who is going to pay $1799 for a piece of hardware which is realistically worth a maximum of half of that must have some sort of Issues right? No ethernet port means limited connectivity, no DVD drive means you have to spend another $99 and then another $50 for a bag which holds it all. You don’t need that extra one inch shaved off a laptop, It will still fit in your bag, It will still slide under the giant stone door in the Temple of Doom seconds before it crushes you, and that’s what matters. The multi(overrated)touch trackpad almost got to be number 2, but I thought No, that would be too unfair. But really, could It get anymore overrated. Lets look at what it does, it zooms into photos.. wait for it.. and it zooms out of photos. “GTFO” you say. “ITS TRUE” I say.

2. The Millennium Bug

Also known as the Year 2000 Problem. Companies spent what was probably millions on trying to fix the problem that supposedly and in simple terms all computers would die because they for some reason would be incapable of changing 1999 to 2000. This ofcourse, like most things, was squeezed alive by the press and so heavily made a fuss of, that practically everyone had heard of it. Countries such as South Korea which didn’t really tackle the problem atall had just as few problems as the UK and USA who spent alot more to tackle to apparent problem.

1. Yahoo!

Were you expecting it? Probably not, but then again you’ve probably never thought about it. Yahoo is the number one most visited website in the entire world according to Alexa. Yet Yahoo! only really owns 2 decent companies which they just bought out, ofcourse I am talking about: Flickr and del.icio.us. Sure, Yahoo! Mail and Geocities may have been all the rage 6/7 years ago but now I dont know of anyone who actually uses it with Google offering Gmail these days. With a cluttered homepage Yahoo! should probably rethink their strategy a little because with what they’re currently offering I can’t understand how they are managing to stay at Number 1. My only explanation is that people who use the internet once a week to “check their emails” use Yahoo! Mail. Perhaps Yahoo! was made for the generation who don’t really know how to use the internet and really do just check their email once a week.

If you live in the UK and are unfortunate to be a customer of Orange, you will have seen pretty much every carrier introduce unlimited data bundles apart from Orange. They seem unwilling to accept that anyone on their network may want to do anything other than make phone calls or send text messages.

I hope device manufacturers (namely HTC) don’t touch Orange, not even with an extremely long orange barge pole. Infact, I hope everyone who reads this leaves Orange as a matter of protest.

Today I accidentally Sent/Received email today on my SPV e650 without WiFi turned on, a novelty that no doubt lead to me being charged a ‘flat fee’ of £1 - AWESOME. If I did that every day, it would be £31 a month.. How much is unlimited (or reasonably limited) data on O2? £5 a month.

In Orange’s defense, you can get a 30mb bundle for £8 a month - that’s all the data anyone will ever need.. You could also choose to pay £5 a month for ‘unlimited’ evening and weekend browsing, great for keeping on top of work during normal business hours.

In a world where every other mobile device promotes mobile internet, Orange really is running a risk. It seems like the whole world is moving forward and Orange is just standing still.

I have just witnessed what may have been one of the greatest videos so far this year. Ill get straight to it. What could be more insanely awesome than a gigantic boulder, even if it wasn’t made out of 5 million LEGO bricks as originally thought, rolling down a hill in San Fransisco chasing a guy dressed as Indiana Jones. Not much, I know. Unless there were 2 gigantic LEGO boulders chasing a guy dressed as Indiana Jones down a hill in San Fransisco, but thats just being silly.

And in true Microsoft style, Ballmer took it like a man cowered like a little girl behind his desk after an onslaught of lets face it - balls of protein - were chucked at him.

You could see a combination of looks on his face when he realized what was happening, looks that will be familar to any Microsoft board members around Ballmer when it was announced he wouldn’t be getting a box full of Yahoo by next day delivery.

At least he recovered - which was more than can be said for Mr. Gates, although at one point in the video he looks ready to break into his infamous “Developers, developers, developers, developers” speech from the Windows 95 launch - something from which, 13 years on, he probably wouldn’t recover from. It seems that when times get tough, its just automatic for Ballmer to sweat enough water to fill small borehole and instantly form 5 stress induced stomach ulcers by pacing backwards and forwards on stage.

Our Experts said:
“We were quite sure we knew this was a fake after we saw someone using an ANUS product. This was confirmed when we then saw a similar photo of someone using an MSI product.”

After the quite embarassing news that ASUS and MSI are using the same photo because they can’t afford a digital camera to take their own photos. Our experts decided to take a closer look at the photographs. After a somewhat.. close analysis of the photo we were horrified to discover that ASUS appears to have added make up to the small child as if to get him bullied more at school, even more than he does for wearing that ridiculous orange hat and being friends with a kid who wears a reflective jacket to school.

The long awaited Amazon Kindle is back in stock after it quickly sold out the first time, with the price tag still being $399 its hard to say will it be as popular with more competition around? Find it here.

Source: GizmoScene

We recently covered how T-Mobile Germany dropped their iPhone prices and as predicted O2 followed shortly afterwards by also lowering their iPhone prices. In a seemingly desperate attempt to clear out stocks. But why is the iPhone a total disaster in the UK?

Number 1.
Here in the UK, (Im not totally sure about other countries such as the USA) we tend to get our new phones for free when we sign up to a new contract, a ton of minutes and a ton of texts, especially for £35 ($70) a month. Maybe this is a little odd, but I guess we can shed out a bit of cash for a new piece of technology, right?

Number 2.
Restricted to O2? Or any other specific carrier in other Countries. Nobody wants restrictions, we want competition, lower prices, I dont want to change my Network and neither does anyone else. Its quite clear that Apple sold the iPhone to the largest companies around, O2 and AT&T, a smart move perhaps? Not really. By restricting networks you miss out on everyone else, they may have a smaller market share but it sure as hell adds up.

Number 3.
They havn’t done anything about it. Apple know that their sales are poor, they know that O2 are overflowing with iPhones that no one wants. Yet still Apple have made no changes to their business plan.. All we can hope is this will all change in the near future.

I can honestly say, this brings a smile to my face, knowing that even a fantastic piece of technology, that the iPhone is. Was a complete failiure. Its good to know that people are still willing to miss out on the things they want when there are restrictions in place and the price isnt right. Now Apple has no choice but to try something else with the 3G iPhone in the UK otherwise they will regret it.

Yahoo today responded to yesterday’s letter from Microsoft inviting Yahoo to join the boys up in Redmond. The letter rejects Microsoft’s offer for the web services giant unless more money is offered.

In a summary of their response Yahoo said:

We are open to all alternatives that maximize stockholder value. To be clear, this includes a transaction with Microsoft if it represents a price that fully recognizes the value of Yahoo! on a standalone basis and to Microsoft, is superior to our other alternatives, and provides certainty of value and certainty of closing. Lastly, we are steadfast in our commitment to choosing a path that maximizes stockholder value and we will not allow you or anyone else to acquire the company for anything less than its full value.

The key phrase in this summary is “includes a transaction.. if it represents a price that fully recognizes the value of Yahoo!”. So come on Microsoft, more money please..

Thats right. CHAINSAWS. I thought Cuts would be a little too light of a word to use in this case. The price of the iPhone has been dramatically reduced to €99, down from €399. This sudden price cut which sparked rumours of more confirmation that the 3G iPhone was definately coming, was infact in order to “boost sales”. This price cut has only affected the 8GB model, the 16GB model remains the same price.

As usual, customers will be strapped down and forced to sign a T-Mobile contract. Unless they are able to “hack” their iPhones like the other 1.5 million users of the popular device.

Personally we dont think that T-Mobiles plan will massively increase iPhone sales, keeping in mind that the total fee is still €960 over the 18 month contract. Although if this does lead to an increase in sales there is a chance that iPhone prices may drop closer to home, a spokeswoman from O2 (the UK Carrier for the iPhone), said that although the company has no similar plans they will monitor developments and react to customer demand. In simple terms, lots of sales with low iPhone prices in Germany means it’ll probably drop over in the UK aswell.

“The Grid” which is remensicent to the network that founded the internet half a century ago (ARPANET) - The Grid has been designed to be a network of supercomputers collaborating processing power to analyse the results of CERN research.

The Grid will ‘revolutionize’ the internet because its network is solely fibre optic and this will eliminate the slow downs in our current internet caused by copper cabling. But isn’t this network occurring already? Telecommunications networks across the globe are being upgraded to fibre optics which makes The Grid a mere example of why we need to convert all networks to fibre optics.

So in response to The Times - No, The Grid won’t make the internet obsolete, it will only drive mass upgrade of copper cable to fibre optics - and that won’t be pervasive for at least the next decade and even then there will always be weak links in the network, when you deal with a network as big as the internet, it becomes impossible to ensure uniform bandwidth.

Whether The Grid is over-hyped or not, it is certainly a necessary kick that telecommunication providers need to get their networks upgraded.

According to BusinessWeek there appears to be a very limited supply of iPhones in the US but no shortage in Europe. Making the chance of a new iPhone 80% likely to happen soon in the US. Apple wouldn’t allow a top selling product start becoming out of stock in over 20 stores unless they have something new planned, that just wouldn’t make sense. Most people assumed that the 3G iPhone would take around a year to get out in the open, due to the lack of 3G from the original phone so 60 days seems about right to us. The original iPhone was launched in the US in June 2007, meaning that if 60 days is roughly correct the 3G iPhone should be hitting us around early June, a year after the original iPhones release.

Due to European stores being overstocked on the iPhone we can say that the new iPhone will most likely hit the US before it hits Europe (suprise suprise). Following a similar timeframe to the original iPhone, the 3G iPhone should be released in Europe around early September.

We’re certainly excited about this, especially if Kevin Rose’s iPhone Rumours are correct, we could be video chatting with our friends very soon. Now all we have to do is play the waiting game.