Jamie Condliffe

Google News and Weather for Android is now searchable for stories has rather pretty forecasts. So now you might actually use it!

The Next James Bond Movie Is Called Spectre and Is Out 2015

In a live online announcement event, director Sam Mendes has revealed that the next James Bond move will be called Spectre and hit the screens in late 2015. And he has a new car, too. Mendes explained that Daniel Craig will still play Bond, and will be joined by Andrew Scott (Moriarty in BBC’s Sherlock,…

You Can Now Order Starbucks via Mobile (If You Live in Portland)

The long-rumored Starbucks app that lets your order and pay for coffee from the comfort of an app is finally real. If you live in Portland, Oregon. The new app lets you scroll through the coffee chain’s menu, choose what you want, select a store to pick it up from—not necessarily the closest one—and then…

These Silicon Strips Could Make Computers Way, Way Faster

It may not look much, but this tiny piece of etched silicon could make our computers way faster. Designed to split and direct light, it could allow computers to trade electrons for photons—and gain a jump in speed in the process. “Light can carry more data than a wire, and it takes less energy to…

Verizon Is Killing Off 3G Networks (to Make More Room For LTE)

The first Verizon LTE networks only opened for business in 2010, but already the carrier is shutting down its older, slower 3G siblings. The reason? To make space for more of the 4G that we all love. The network’s newest LTE networks, in Manhattan, won’t fill new chunks of spectrum. Instead, they seem to be…

Apple Deleted Competitors’ Songs From Your iPod

During a court hearing in Oakland, California, it’s come to light that, between 2007 and 2009, Apple deleted tracks downloaded from rival music services off of iPods. According to attorney Patrick Coughlin, users who downloaded music from other services and then tried to sync them to their iPod using iTunes would receive an error message.…

This Maglev Gearbox Doesn’t Need Teeth

The most inefficient part of a gearing system is also its most vital: the teeth. While they allow the systems to, y’know, work, they also introduce vast quantities of frictional losses and, in turn, mechanical wear—so this new system uses magnetic levitation to do away with them. Developed as part of a collaboration of seven…

HTC Is Planning a Second RE Action Camera

HTC’s attempt to take on GoPro with a, err, plastic periscopewasn’t its finest hour. But now, according to its North Asia president Jack Tong, it plans to give it a second try. Speaking to Focus Taiwan, Tong said that HTC will launch a new standalone camera next year. An attempt to grow its product range…

What If We Dressed Like Our Social Networks?

We all spend so much damn time looking at them; what if we started… being a bit like them, too? In this photo shoot, Viktorija Pashuta imagined a world where we started dressing like our social networks. The results are… slightly disturbing. From the retro styling of Instagram to the slick smartness of LinkedIn, they’re…

This Is the Largest Stone Block Ever Carved By Human Hands

This may look like a modern civil engineering marvel—but in fact you’re looking at the largest known stone block to be tirelessly carved by human hands. Discovered in a stone quarry in Baalbek, Lebanon, by German archaeologists, the perfectly hewn chunk of stone measures 64 feet by 19.6 feet and is 18 feet tall. It’s…

Tumblr, of all things, now has a Buy button. Post a link to a product on Etsy, Kickstarter, Artsy or DoSomething and Tumblr will try and peddle it.

This Is What a Volcanic Eruption Looks Like in Satellite Radar

Back on November 23rd, the Pico do Fogo volcano on Cape Verde’s Fogo island erupted. This image shows how that incident looked when it was captured by the Sentinel-1A satellite’s radar sensors. In fact, the European Space Agency satellite captured two images: one before the event on November 3rd and then another afterwards on the…

Report: Mozilla Will Get Firefox on iOS

For a long time, Apple hasn’t allowed Firefox to appear on iOS. Now, Mozilla wants to change that. According to TechCrunch Mozilla’s VP for Firefox Jonathan Nightingale explained: “We need to be where our users are. So we’re going to get Firefox on iOS.” It’s an overdue move, given how robust third-party browsers like Chrome,…

Gmail now allows you to to edit Microsoft Office documents sent as email attachments by simply clicking an “edit” button at the bottom of the message.

Kim Dotcom Is Bringing His Political Party to the US in 2015

Kim Dotcom may be down on his luck, be he’s certainly not out. The the German-Finnish Internet entrepreneur has now announced that he’s bringing his Internet Party to the US next year. While the political party failed to win a seat in New Zealand, he hopes that it will be “Hillary’s worst nightmare in 2016!”…

Ultrasound Can Let You Touch and Feel 3D Shapes in Thin Air

Touch feedback has been advancing rapidly of recent time, and now we’ve gotten to the stage where ultrasound can be used to create entire 3D shapes to touch and feel in thin air. We’ve seen 2D surfaces rendered in thin air using ultrasound before, but now researchers from the Bristol Interaction and Graphics group have…

Feeling intellectual? Then you’ll delight in the fact that Nature has made all of its archived scientific papers free to read—though sadly you can’t print them out.

What Actually Happens When You Click on a Link

You see a link, you click on it, and it takes you somewhere. Simple, right? But actually, that remarkably straightforward user experience has a fairly complex series of computational processes going on in the background. In this video, Dr Richard Mortier essentially explains the basics of how links work. He does a pretty great job…

This Year, Google’s Santa Tracker Gets Kids to Code

Santa is under surveillance—but not by the NSA. Instead, Google is helping children of all ages to to keep tabs on the jelly-bellied gift giver, and even learn some new technical skills along the way. This year, Google’s Santa Tracker—no longer in conjunction with NORAD since they defected to Microsoft—is set in an interactive town,…

The FBI Has Warned That ‘Destructive’ Malware Attacks Could Hit the U.S.

The FBI has issued a confidential report to businesses in the wake of the Sony Pictures hack which explains that U.S. businesses should remain vigilant against new malicious software that can be used to launch “destructive” cyberattacks. While the report doesn’t name the Sony incident, it describes an attack thatcybersecurity experts tell Reuters is large-scale…