According to Ofcom, more than a quarter of five to ten year olds either own, or have access to, smart phones or their parent’s devices. A whole range of ‘free’ apps have been developed for children, featuring popular cartoon and film characters such as The Simpsons, The Smurfs and Playmobil.

“We are concerned that children and their parents could be subject to unfair pressure to purchase when they are playing games they thought were free, but which can actually run up substantial costs,” said Cavendish Elithorn, the OFT’s senior director for goods and consumer.

The Office of Fair Trading is therefore asking for parents to contact with information of “misleading, commercially aggressive or otherwise unfair” practices in relation to these games.

Reports of accidental purchases by children are becoming increasingly common. In March of this year, five-year-old Danny Kitchen, from Bristol, racked up a bill of £1,700, whilst playing Zombies versus Ninjas on his parent’s iPad.

In January, regulator PhonePayPlus revealed a 300% increase in consumer complaints in regards to bills generated when purchasing game add-ons. Founder and CEO of the parenting website Mumsnet, Justine Roberts, also mentions parents complaints over phone bills; “It’s all too easy for children to get sucked into games and before you know it they’ve racked up huge costs buying coins, berries and doughnuts.”

The investigation will also consider whether the full cost of these games is made clear during the initial download, which may potentially lead to parents and children making decisions without important information, something that could have been avoided if the hidden charges were more clearly advertised. In The Simpsons: Tapped Out for example, a Boat Load of doughnuts costs £69.99.

The OFT’s initial investigation will focus on whether the apps breach consumer law, and in particular on “whether these games include ‘direct exhortations’ to children – a strong encouragement to make a purchase, or to do something that will necessitate making a purchase, or to persuade their parents or other adults to make a purchase for them”.

Cavendish Elithorn states that ‘The OFT is not seeking to ban in-game purchases, but the games industry must ensure it is complying with the relevant regulations so that children are protected. We are speaking to the industry and will take enforcement action if necessary.’

The next steps of the OFT investigation are to be published by October 2013.

From your iPhone or Android Smartphone device Photoshop Touch means you are now able to effectively and professionally manipulate images before taking them further on a PC or Mac or sharing them instantly over social media.

Photoshop Touch boasts impressive effects and settings such as striking filters, image layering and special effects. Possibly most excitingly however is the ability the App gives the user to automatically sync projects between devices over Adobe’s free Creative Cloud service.

Photoshop Touch is impressive, quick and easy to use without losing any of the powerful functionality that came with a larger screen. Significantly reworking their interface, Adobe has obviously worked hard to ensure that the quality of their app has not decreased with the size of screen it is used on.

Many thanks to:

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The Raspberry Pi is a credit card sized computer board with sockets for a keyboard, monitor and Ethernet cable. It can be used for a variety of things that a desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word processor and plays high definition videos, although it is primarily used to teach students the joy of coding.

The foundation aims build the cheapest possible computer that provides basic level of functionality. You need to supply the keyboard, mouse and screen yourself, however, the truly revolutionary thing is the price. You are now able to order one for just £22.

Raspberry Pi Specifications

The Raspberry Pi comes in two configurations (Model A and Model B).

Raspberry Pi Software

In the cost saving approach, the Raspberry Pi computer will initially use the open source Linux software, which will have to be stored on the SD card. The Raspberry Pi Foundation have recommended the Fedora distribution of Linux for users initially, but other versions of Linux will also be supported, including Debian and ArchLinux.
ARM based hardware of the Pi traces it heritage back to the BBC Micro in the 1980s.

Raspberry Pi Users

The Raspberry Pi was developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to help students learn computer programming.
Although the Pi was originally designed for students it attracted more interest in developers and computer enthusiasts.

Google Partnership

Funded by Google, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is giving UK schools around 15,000 free microcomputers with a view to creating a new generation of computer scientists. Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton said:

“We hope that our new partnership with Google will be a significant moment in the development of computing education in the UK, We believe that this can turn around the year on year decline in the numbers and skill sets of students applying to read computer science at university.”

Raspberry Pi Competition

The Pi has some fierce competition from other super-cheap school-friendly computers:

• Omnima MiniEMBWiFi: uses Ralink RT305x wi-fi 320MHz system on a chip, and is ideal for robots etc where wi-fi connectivity required. Cost: £28.37 (excluding VAT)
• Beagleboard: uses ARM Cortex-A8 processor with 256KB L2 cache running at up to 600MHz. HD video capable. Price: £93 (inc VAT)
• 7in tablet PCs running Android with resistive or capacitive screen. Price: Approx £85 (inc VAT)

Raspberry Pi Reviews

PC World: A tasty confection for hobbyists and budding programmers

PCMAG: Amazingly inexpensive. Outstanding for educational purposes. Strong community support

BBC: A great step forward for education in the UK, extremely cheap and easy to use

Design

Sony has yet to unveil the design of the Playstation 4 but an aspect that has caught the eye of the PS4’s design is the redesigned controller.
The controller which has remained more or less unchanged through the PS2/3 generation has been revamped giving it a curvier shape, a touchpad and a blue reflector strip that interacts with a Playstation Eye camera to form a motion sensing system. It will connect with smartphones enabling users to chat with PS4 gamers and to control their PS4’s remotely.

Specifications and Features

Sony has described the PS4 as being like a “supercharged” PC.
It runs off an x86-based CPU (central processing unit) – similar architecture to that found in most computers and an enhanced PC GPU (graphics processing unit). It comes with the new DualShock 4 controller, which includes a touchpad, a “share button” and a lightbar, which allows a separate camera to track its movement.
PS4 is centre around a powerful custom chip that contains x86-64 cores and a state of the art graphics processor. The PS4 is also equipped with 8 GB of unified system memory, easing game creation and increasing the richness of content achievable on the platform.

Games

In term of games, the PS4 unveiled some of the games currently being worked on.
They include:

• Killzone Shadowfall – an addition to bestselling Killzone shooter series
• Driveclub – racing game
• Diablo 3 – superhero game
• Watch Dogs – action game
• New Final Fantasy announced for PS4

Competition

Due to hit the shelves Christmas 2013, the PS4 is competing against stiff competition in the gaming console market.
Microsoft is reported to be working on a new version of its Xbox console called the Xbox 720 and Nintendo’s Wii U, both expecting to hit the shelves align with the PS4.

Reaction to launch of PS4

After the launch of the PS4 was unveiled, the internet was flood with reactions to the new gaming console. Many were bemused by the lack of presence of the console and many were intrigued by Sony’s innovation.

Publications

The Verge: Sony’s decision to not announce the price or a firm shipping date for the PlayStation 4 will no doubt give the company room to manoeuvre should it need to respond to any gaming announcements from Microsoft

Spong: Most exciting is the share button. The PS4, we’re told, will sneakily and transparently monitor and buffer our last 15 minutes of gameplay. This will be a boon to all those who think there is not enough inane video drivel on YouTube.

New York Times: New features cannot hide the fact that PlayStation 4 is still a console, a way of playing games on compact discs that was cool when cellphones were not smart.

The new feature that will rival Google, allows users to search across the network and their friends’ information, potentially bringing new users to Facebook but more importantly meaning that current users, return to the social network more often and build their friends list further. The search specialises in people, places, photos and interests.

With Graph Search, Facebook is attempting to succeed where Google has so far failed. It is no secret that Google+ has not been the game changer it was supposed to be and Google knows this as is shown in a post accidently shared on Google+ from a Google employee.

Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product.

Google is putting all their efforts into competeing with Facebook as they understand the true value of social search. Relevancy is a word often spoken by Google and nothing is more relevant to a user than the opinions of people they trust such as family, friends, peers and aquaintences.

With more than a billion users of Facebook stretching across the globe, photos, places and things they ‘like’ will be turned into a searchable database. If, for example, you search for a “restaurant in Liverpool”, then relevant restaurants your friends have liked or interacted with will be recommended.

The search uses personal information such as hobbies, music you like and places you like to eat, to provide specific answers to people’s searches.

Graph Search will be introduced and built slowly over the next couple of years with its main aim to be able to take users to their exact search answer straight away. If searches come up with no answers, which may be a common occurrence in its infancy, then users will be directed to the search engine Bing that will then provide answers to the question asked.

With regards to privacy, Graph Search will use the same privacy settings already on profiles and you can only see what you could see on the site previously.

Graph Search will also be available on mobiles in the future.

The bands were fantastic with 18 hours of programming a day meaning you had a lot of options. Chic on Friday night were brilliant and had everyone swinging their trousers to disco classics.

The festival is very ‘child friendly’ which dictates an older crowd and there were plenty of activities for the nippers including water zorbing. The ‘bearded kitten’ stage aimed at letting mums and dads participate in 15 or so tailor made games  helped keep the upbeat festival spirit. The Yorkshire pudding eating competition was adult only, but new games like ‘fish and chips’ where you simply have to race to wrap someone up like you were to be taken away and eaten, were hilarious. There was also the coal and spoon and sack races, the water slide and my favourite ‘cake face’ where you would decorate a partners face with chocolate sauce, sprinkles and sweets. Marks were given for artistic direction with the final marks given for cleanliness after the removal of decorations via a partners tongue!

The festival always had the option to put your feet up and chill out on the sofas/comfy chairs to lounge about on. Little touches like flags and bunting over the bridges, flowery gates to walk through, separate toilets for the kids, sofas in the beer tent, waste bins a plenty, hay bales to sit on, clean toilets with sanitizer and toilet rolls and a great choice of food added to a great weekend.

Arriving early was a bonus as the first 10000 people who made their way towards the stage received a wristband giving them access to the front pit, this was the difference between being able to watch the band on stage and having to look at the big screens. It also meant we were able to get to the bar and stock up on bottles before the masses came. We were told tails by people who had queued for up to an hour to get to the bar, as we stood nodding along drinking the warm beer which had been watered down by the rain we had bought hours earlier.

However it was the music we were most interested in, and from the opening chords of I Wanna Be Adored is was obvious this was going to be an “I was there” story in years to come, The Stone Roses were at the top of their game. Ian Brown was on form, aside from a couple of moments during Mersey Paradise his notoriously shaky voice held up, and he even had the confidence to throw in a rap at the end of Love Spreads.

The mix of the realisation that The Stone Roses were on stage, combined with Beady Eye finishing their set with a couple of Oasis tunes meant the first half of the set was a blur. It was sometime during the 10 minute rendition of Fools Gold that the dancing started and the concert hit top gear. The atmosphere built and the songs kept coming, all the way to the show stopping I Am The Resurrection. There was no encore, because there was no need for one, the firework display to the backdrop of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song was a fitting ending.

Set list:

• I Wanna Be Adored
• Mersey Paradise
• (Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister
• Sally Cinnamon
• Where Angels Play
• Shoot You Down
• Bye Bye Bad Man
• Ten Storey Love Song
• Standing Here
• Fools Gold
• Something’s Burning
• Waterfall
• Don’t Stop
• Love Spreads
• Made Of Stone
• This Is The One
• She Bangs The Drums
• Elizabeth My Dear
• I Am The Resurrection

The photo, taken by Silvano de Gennaro, was of an all female parody pop group who were based in Geneva at the CERN laboratory and was named Les Horribles Cernettes.

The first image to be uploaded to the web - touched up with Photoshop v1!

Gennaro was an IT developer at research institute CERN and passed the photo onto his colleague Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and a fan of the band. The purpose for the photo was a CD cover for the band however it reached an extremely small audience. De Gennaro stated, “I had many more people seeing that photo on the posters around CERN”. However despite the size of the audience the photo reached, the world changed and the internet had been revolutionized.

The photo was uploaded in a .GIF format and in spite of being the first photo to be uploaded the process was completed without difficulty. The image had an important significance in the shift in the purpose of the network. Before then the internet had been marketed a to a niche audience of mostly physic labs in order to allow scientists worldwide to collaborate.

This was the beginning of advertising and promotional use on the internet, which would later take up a huge proportion of it. Jean Francois Groff, who was a programmer on the web project was handed the file by Berners Lee and was happy to work with it. “Sex sells!” Groff said, “It’s media. You put a pretty girl in the media, people will notice the media.”

The image and its format, has of course been cast into history by the ever changing and revolutionising world of technology. Kelsey Leslie, Harvard photo historian says, “It’s interesting- particularly for those of us who are relative old timers – to realize that this technology, which still feels so new, already has its own kind of archaeology now”.