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Roger started life as an electrical engineer, then became a journalist. He then spent the next twelve years his work life being terribly nice to people as he was paid to. That stopped. Now he's paid to be unrelentingly honest. Luckily, all those years in PR taught him how to spot weasely product descriptions at 1,000 yards. He still builds electronics stuff, because it's fun.

• Beige boxes: cheap, cheerful and changing the face of smartphones

  Beggars can’t be choosers. Sometimes, you have to make do with what you can afford. And if what you can afford is not an iPhone, or the new BlackBerry, or a Galaxy, it may be a Beige Box phone. “A beige box phone?”, you ask, “I’ve never heard of that brand.” Yep, you haven’t.Cast your mind back 20 years (if you can). For a very long time in the 90s, only the affluent, the snotty and the pecuniously profligate banks ...

• Shox Spin review: budget Bluetooth speakers

  You know the Shox mini speaker. A golfball-sized speaker that pops open to make sweet ball-shaped music. You’d not use it at as a ball, but it lets you get a bit more volume from your mp3 player or phone when out. It's so small you can carry it anywhere. It's the road warrior's best musical friend. So now there's a new twist on the idea... the Shox Twist. It's a foot long rectanguloid with a half twist in it. ...

• Bowers & Wilkins C5: best in-ear phones for gym ever?

  This is the one article you can safely ignore Betteridge’s Law of Headlines. The answer in this case is, yes. Or mostly yes. But first I have to come clean.I have a shameful secret. I have a kink. It’s not just a kink, it’s an aural kink. I’m not proud of it, that’s just how I'm made. I don’t judge other’s kinks, I’d ask you’re GGG in turn. Since I was a baby I've had this kink, and it’s not ...

• 6 Reasons your PC is not going anywhere

  Memeburn recently featured a story explaining why your PC is dead. It made some interesting points. It made some valid points. Cloud. Virtualisation. Abstraction of application and data from device. But it missed the point.Sure, smartphones and tablets will take over from PCs for many. The PC will return to its place as a powerful tool for those that know how to use it. Those that used it at the start: the geeks, the nerds, the hobbyists, the musicians, the ...

• Not free, not open: The Memeburn interview with WhatsApp’s Brian Acton

  In one of only a handful of public interviews ever given by WhatsApp, co-founder Brian Acton talks exclusively to Memeburn about simplicity, speed and simplicity, and what it takes to make some cash.The fact that WhatsApp is so popular is no surprise, and yet to become the number one smartphone messaging app in a sea of same-same services is mysterious. Sure, people like to communicate, and will latch onto a service that lets them do it easily and cheaply. ...

• Not a Review: Verbatim Netbook USB drive so small it’s almost not even there

  Not a cricket chirped. Not a tumbleweed rustled in the chill wind. I sat contemplating the tiny little Verbatim Netbook USB solid state drive squatting on the mound of the fleshy part of my thumb. It sure is tiny — imagine you take the metal bit of a USB plug in hand, and with a sharp lightsaber cut off everything but a little plastic nubbin to grab hold of, and you would have the Netbook USB drive.I looked up, bemused. ...

• Hi-Tech personalities: The winners and losers of 2011

  We’ve reached the end of 2011 – and it’s time to look back on the winners and losers of the year. Those who made our gadget life more awesome, and those that ruined it for everyone. Those that rock, and those that suck. So, without further ado, Gearburn’s Geared and Burned personalities of 2011. BurnedLeo Apotheker of HP He was bounced out of HP in disgrace, consoled only by the $25-million payout he trousered for less than a year’s work (a healthy ...

• Gearburn Award: Best Innovation in Hardware 2011

  Being a gadget site we’re not looking at core hardware innovations that shake the world, we’re looking at the awesome innovations that knocked our socks off – or will soon. 2011 was largely a year of incremental improvements – but often the impact of radical innovations don’t become apparent for a few years. Accurate, reliable capacitive touch-screens, for example. So we’re reaching a bit, but these are the innovations we think you’ll look back on in a year and say, ...

• Review: Gobii HD Action Cam – at least it’s not expensive

  When we first pulled the Gobii HD Action Camera from its box, there was a lot of mirth in the Gearburn office. Mocking, unfriendly derision. And then we played with it for a while, and even the flinty hearts of Gearburn melted a little. It’s a weird shape, and the plastic feels cracktastic, but it is quite functional and IP68 sealed: no dust, complete, immersion in water. How deep? No idea, they don’t say.The outright urge to Burn it faded ...

• Witchdoctors go online and get Social Media-tastic

  If there's one thing scamsters love, it's a new way to hawk their tawdry wares. While it’s not nearly as ancient and powerful as black magic and voodoo, the internet has a powerful juju. And Google AdWords. Welcome to online witchdocters.If you live in a developing country (and who knows, maybe even in some neighbourhoods in the developed world) you occasionally find flyers stuffed under your windscreen wipers offering the services of "traditional healers", witchdoctors and suchlike. They’re normally cheesy ...

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