Sony PS3

Sony PS3

Sony announces PS3 and PSP price reductionsIn a move to make its products more accessible to the public, Sony has moved to reduce the price of it PlayStation 3 down to just £199 which is a large cut from the original £250 price tag that has already been altered on the market. The large gaming giant is also planning to release a reduced version of its popular handheld gaming console with a price that will be set somewhere around £99 straight from the retailer. Since 2006 the PS3 gaming unit has already seen more than 50m in sales, with sales rising a great deal since a cheaper model was introduced in 2009.

Although retail price will be set by Sony at £199, it is predicted that many of the large retails will further cut the price down to £180 making it more affordable to the general public. Sony choose to release the news of the lower cost model at the Cologne GamesCom event along with the announcement that the mogul will also be releasing several new games such as DanceStar Party, Resistance: Burning Skies, and a few others. The cheaper version of the PSP will not have Wi-Fi which is part of the reason for the reduced price.

readme → Sony PS3

iPhone app

Tecnology   IPhone  Best 2011

A schoolboy from South London raised $1m, or £620,000, from investors in order to create his own iPhone app, and all before his 17th birthday. Nick D’Aloisio, who still lives in the family home and receives a monthly allowance, developed his app which he has named Summly while he was revising for his mock GCSE exams. Summly effectively condenses current news articles into 3 key paragraphs that fit onto the screen of an iPhone.

Users can then customise the categories the news falls into, and link them to the original article if they like the summary and want to read the full piece. A prototype that Nick produced attracted an investment of around $300,000 last November from Horizons Ventures, a private company owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing which invests in technology and is also a backer of Siri, Spotify and Facebook.

Nick heard about the investment on his 16th birthday, not only making it one of the best presents ever but also making him one of the youngest ever to attain venture capital funding. Other backers that he has also since acquired are celebrities Stephen Fry, Yoko Ono and Ashton Kutcher. The prototype was downloaded a staggering 150,000 times, and chosen by Apple as their App of the Week in many countries including the UK.

Nick says he created the app as he felt that his generation was no longer consuming traditional news and wanted to change that. A company has been formed behind the app, and Nick has teamed up with experts in London, as well as the Stanford Research Institute, to work on both the design and the technology. His mum, who is a lawyer, has become a director if the company and owns shares on his behalf due to his age.

readme → iPhone app

HTC Amaze 4G

HTC Amaze 4G

Some say HTC repackaged the MyTouch 4G Slide with an stronger cover and higher price tag. There's some truth to that, though the Amaze 4G packs some niftier features not found on the slide-out alternative. We're talking a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S3 dual-core that runs the show and faster 4G speeds peaking near 14Mbps throughout most of NYC. HTC bundles great photo editing software as new shooting modes like SweepShot and BurstShot let users snap panoramic shots or multiple images in quick fashion. Unlike its brother, the Amaze 4G brings more internal memory (12GB) and leaves room for additional storage via microSD card slot.

readme → HTC Amaze 4G

Samsung Focus Flash

Samsung Focus Flash

Last year's Samsung Focus ushered in the WP7 mobile platform and became its best-selling handset to date. Now Samsung is leading the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 brigadge with the speedy and inexpensive Focus Flash. You typically wouldn't expect much horsepower from a smartphone originally retailed at $50, but that's far from the case here as the Flash sports a strong 1.4GHz CPU. The manufacturer's beautiful Super AMOLED screen dishes out amazingly crisp visuals and plays 720p/1080p videos fluidly in full screen. Top it off with good voice quality and HSPA+ network support, the Focus Flash gives you near-premium specs at an incredible value.

readme → Samsung Focus Flash

T-Mobile G2x

T-Mobile G2x

T-Mobile's first dual-core smartphone demonstrated why NVIDIA's almighty chip is the most revered in the mobile game. Touchscreen commands and web browsing was swift. However, it was in the gaming realm where the G2x excelled, displaying beautifully rendered graphics and running smoothly on the phone's 4-inch WVGA touchscreen. It also plays and records full 1080p videos. LG laced its beauty with an opulent and solid build that outshined most of the carrier's roster prior to the summer, while providing great call quality and presenting multimedia perks like DLNA support for wireless media transfers and a micro-HDMI port. It's a shame T-Mobile made the G2x unavailable online and in retail stores during the summer stretch, but luckily its back on the market with the latest software updates.

readme → T-Mobile G2x

Motorola Triumph

Motorola Triumph

Hold up: A hot pre-paid Android phone? Seriously? Yes, sir. Even with an obsolete 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor under the hood, Moto's little Android-that-could illustrated that you didn't need the latest dual-core to generate stellar results. The device ships without the manufacturer's MOTOBLUR skin, benefiting from a smoother and user-friendly UI. Another unexpected feature we found to be dope was the addition of a Micro-HDMI port to mirror mobile content onto any compatible HDTV. Motorola definitely blessed Virgin Mobile pre-payers with a handset they could proudly flaunt amongst the big carrier crowd.

readme → Motorola Triumph

HTC Vivid

HTC Vivid

In comparison to HTC's other enticing 2011 selections, the Vivid was clearly the unattractive fat chick at the Android ball. But under the generic appearance lies one of the most powerful pieces of mobile hardware on the market. With strong LTE coverage, a speedy 1.2GHz dual-core chip, and a sharp 4.5-inch Super qHD LCD capable of 520 X 960-pixel resolution, AT&T's handset is a mobile work mule. Software-wise, the HTCSense.com portal provides users the ability to utilize a number of remote features such as locking, locating, or wiping the phone data from a computer. The phone is also due for an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade in the near future. Guess beauty is skin deep after all.

readme → HTC Vivid

Motorola Atrix II

Motorola  Atrix  II

The original Atrix left us stunned for more than half the year. So when Moto announced a scion to Ma Bell's powerhouse, we had insurmountable expectations. Those words stood true as the Atrix II managed to deliver the same performance as the original, except at a huge discount. Don't be fooled into thinking both handsets are carbon copies, though, as Moto integrated cool new features into the latest version such as an in-pocket detection system and the cloud-based ZumoCast app to help differentiate the two. Other notable upgrades include a bigger and brighter 4.3-inch qHD display, stronger battery, and robust camera. And like big bro, there's a plethora of accessories (including Moto's infamous Lapdock) available to transform the Atrix 2 into a mobile computing goliath.

readme → Motorola Atrix II

HTC Radar 4G

 HTC Radar 4G

Our first taste of Windows Phone 7's Mango OS was delectable, as the revamped UI brought together stunning animations and enhanced productivity features like real-time updates. Microsoft gave its Bing search engine a facelift by including Voice Search, a Shazam-inspired music app, and search aggregation tool called Bing Vision that pulls info from an item at which the rear camera is pointed. The intuitive software provides a major boost in speed for the dated 1GHz Qualcomm CPU that places the WP7 device on the same performance level as many of the lower-tier dual-core chips out. And what better way to top off Microsoft's mobile delicacy than with a sexy veneer frosted in all-white and silver accents. Bon appétit!

readme → HTC Radar 4G

HTC EVO Shift 4G

 HTC EVO Shift 4G

The EVO 4G set the mold for one of the best-selling handset makers by incorporating dynamic hardware, 4G capability, and a ginormous, stunning display into one Android offering. Somehow HTC squeezed a majority of the dope elements from its forebear into the downsized Shift 4G, while making significant strides with the sturdy slide-out keyboard and vastly improved battery. Smaller is definitely better, as the 3.6-inch screen produces good picture quality and makes for a comfortable fit in pocket. One of the EVO 4G's major issues was its overexposed display, but HTC's heavy-duty construction protects the fragile exterior from any sudden impact. Say peace to one of the last great QWERTY smartphones of this Android generation.

readme → HTC EVO Shift 4G

MODERN ELECTRICAL CAR.

MODERN ELECTRICAL CAR.

Super green cars have well and truly arrived, having first taken off in a big way in the US, helped by the huge savings made in fuel prices and now having a vast range to choose from, but are they really worth the high prices?

First climbing into an electric vehicle is interesting, to say the least. Take the Vauxhall Ampera for example, you get in, hit the power on button and loads of lights on the dashboard spring into life. The car starts off in electric mode, in which it can travel a maximum of 50 miles, the extra 310 miles that Vauxhall have made such a fuss about are courtesy of a petrol engine.

The car drives like any other in its class, but the lack of engine noise is eerie at first, although you soon get used to it. The interior will seem small at first, but is something else you will quickly get used to. This car has been hailed as the first true ‘e-car’ that finally has the range to take you wherever you want to go.

Guardian Money has this week examined a host of super green cars that have hit showrooms in the UK over the past few months and made an unbiased assessment as to whether they really are a serious contender to our conventional vehicles, or whether they remain toys for the rich.

The petrol savings are certainly a big draw, as charging the Ampera to travel 50 miles will cost you approximately £2.50-£3.00, or will cost nothing if you have access to a local council installed charge point. There is no road tax or congestion charges payable, but it will set you back £30,000, and even though you will get a £5000 government grant towards it, it still costs twice as much as the cheapest in the Ford Focus range.

readme → MODERN ELECTRICAL CAR.