What Comes After the Yottabyte?

December 21st, 2012Tech News No Comments

And you thought your mp3 collection was impressive. It’s generally agreed that the world’s data is growing quickly, perhaps even exponentially. But as we grow technologically as a species, we need to develop new ways of quantifying our evolution, e.g. what comes after the yottabyte?

1 Yottabyte = 1 quadrillion gigabytes

Below it we have the zettabyte, exabyte, petabyte, terabyte, gigabyte, megabyte and kilobyte.

According to our good old pals over at Wikipedia, to date no storage network has exceed 1/1000th of a yottabye. Websites like Facebook currently work in petabytes at the most. In 2009, it was estimated the internet contained 500 exabytes. So it looks like we’re pretty safe, for now. But what comes next?

UK gadget website, Money4Machines, say an ongoing campaign to name the next big thing (in numbers) after the slang word for ‘many’ – ‘hella’ – would sit well with scientists and internet fans alike.

“Our customers aren’t dealing in hypothetical hellabytes when they visit us to sell iPad tablets or get cash for games consoles, but it’s not difficult for the layman to understand that quantifying data is a huge part of internet development. We recently read a few suggestions made online by supporters of the ‘hellabyte’, our favourite being the ‘lolabyte’!”

New measurement terminology can only be approved by the International Committee for Weights and Measures.

Twitter Rolls Out Photo Filters Post-Instagram Split

December 20th, 2012Curious Stuff No Comments

 

In a handbags at dawn style battle between the two internet giants, Twitter seems to have dealt the final blow to Instagram by launching a photo filter feature that enables users to take a photo, crop it, apply a filter from the catalogue and post the picture without leaving the cosiness of the app.

Like a messy divorce, Twitter and Instagram have been battling it out for the past year, with Instagram finally severing links by removing the feature that allowed Instagram users to embed shots of their breakfast/cats/shoes/beautiful plastic bag/ Christmas tree/lunch/old cassette mix tape from 1991/frost/sunglasses/dinner/duck face/eye make-up/etc. On their Twitter feed.

But just how much difference is it really going to make to Instagram/Twitter fans? UK gadget company, Money4Machines, said it’s unlikely the most will do much aside from annoying users and fans on both sides.

“When people sell mobile phones and other smart devices to us, Instagram and Twitter tend to go hand in hand. Let’s say you sell your iPhone to us, you want to know all your favourite images and words are safe, and Twitter/Instagram is a great way to do that to some degree. People want to Tweet their words and publish their pics, and they love being able to blend platforms.

Both are very strong presences online, and both play to their strengths superbly. But Twitter is not an image-based platform, and Instagram is not a word-based one, so all this severing of tie is likely to do is irritate fans of the two platforms’ previous easy integration.”

EE Fixes Connectivity Issues for 4G Users

November 14th, 2012Tech News No Comments

It was one of the most anticipated new services to arrive on UK shores since 3G. And understandably, consumers couldn’t wait to see what 4G was capable of. But the UK’s only 4G service provider, Everything Everywhere (EE) has been plagued with customer complaints since the super-fast broadband network went live on 30th October.

The main problems reported by users include inability to connect to specific sites like Twitter, total inability to connect to the 4G network and issues getting hold of the correct SIM card. Numerous bloggers documented their attempts to access the 4G network, sometimes having to wait more than an hour to finally connect, if at all.

UK gadget website, Money4Machines, said folks have been looking to sell iPhone 4S devices to upgrade to the iPhone 5 and access 4G for weeks.

“People visit our site to sell mobile phones and tablets, usually to upgrade to the latest handset, laptop etc. We’ve had loads of folks looking to sell Samsung, HTC, Nokia and Apple devices specifically because they wanted a 4G capable device before 30th October.

Amid the 4G connectivity issues we’ve seen over the past week or so, it was clear EE needed to give their back-end systems a bit of attention, which they say they’ve now done. If they’ve really sorted everything out, they can certainly be forgiven for a few initial glitches!”

A statement released by EE on 6th November read,

“In a small number of instances in week one, a gap in a process on SIM distribution has delayed customers in accessing the EE network. We have now identified the teething problem in this process and a dedicated team has resolved all issues it created on a customer-by-customer basis.’

Smart Devices Add 1.2 Hours to Your Work Day

November 12th, 2012Tech News No Comments

 

 

There are rarely enough hours in the day, particularly if you’re on the commute for what seems like long enough to actually witness new grey hairs grow in. But hey, it’s okay, you’ve got your smartphone or tablet to entertain you on the way! Oh wait, there’s an email from the boss, and some client brief to look over, and some more emails…

According to research carried out by Pixmania, smart devices may be great for checking our emails, finding the nearest Italian restaurant and keeping in touch with each other, but they’re also terrible for eating into our free time an average of 1.2 hours every day (460 hours per year).

And it’s not just the workaholics and tech fans who are glued to their smart devices. The Pixmania study found smartphone and tablet users are considered fair game during their free time when it comes to work commitments, meaning you probably spend about 1.2 hours each day outside working hours checking work-related emails, solving work problems and researching professional issues on your own time.

UK gadget website, Money4Machines, say it’s important make an effort to separate work hours from free time.

“People want to sell laptop computers and smart devices to us 24/7, and we make it part of our working ethos to be available 7 days a week. But we also know our employees need free time. Smartphones make is too easy to be professionally on-call 24/7. We buy used handsets from business customers, and often the ones with the best managed lives have one device for personal use and one for business use.”

Pixmania also found we check emails on smart devices around 20 times per day and check work emails on holiday every day.

Cloud Storage Versus External Hard Drives: What’s the Best Way to Store My Media Collection?

October 25th, 2012Tech News No Comments

Over the years, we’ve all picked up a pretty impressive collection of ripped CDs, images and video files. But as cloud companies scramble for your custom with promises of convenience and security, are we really nearing the end of the local storage era?

Local Storage

  • It’s at your fingertips regardless of whether the Wi-Fi is working, and that’s got to be a huge pro for most people.
  • Financial outlay on something like a 1TB external hard drive is typically better value than the current 100GB limit enforced by Apple’s Dropbox. There are no bandwidth fees or limits associated with an external hard drive, whereas cloud storage will typically see recurring costs.
  • In terms of security, someone would need physical access to your hard drive to steal or alter data.

Cloud Services

  • Most of us spread our data across multiple devices – e.g. when I sell my Samsung Galaxy Note to upgrade, I’ll need to transfer all the data to another data storage device and then again to the new handset – but cloud storage combines data to give you a virtual library of information that’s accessible from anywhere.
  • Backing-up is a huge part of sensible data management, and cloud storage works as pretty much the ideal counterpart to storing information on your computer. It gives you the flexibility to access information via a web browser from any device – ideal if you work across multiple machines.

UK gadget company, Money4Machines, specialise in buying second-hand mobile phones, tablets, laptops and various other bits of tech. According to their spokesperson, heaps of customers are concerned about two things – data protection and data storage.

“When people want to sell laptops or their old iPod or whatever, they want to know that a) their data will be fully erased 100%, and b) the data they want to keep can be saved. Even though cloud storage and local drives are nothing new, we still come across lots of folks who are a little foggy on how to use each to the best means.”

BusinessInsider.com recently ran an article about how cloud services are best used in partnership with local storage to make sure you can access data easily, safely and efficiently via the most common devices and protocols of your unique habits.

Amazon Barely Breaks Even on Kindle Sales, Looks to eBook Sales for Profit

October 17th, 2012Tech News No Comments

Amazon has confirmed it doesn’t make money on the e-reader devices it sells. Both the traditional Kindle handset and Kindle Fire tablets fail to add revenue for the e-book giant, barely breaking even.

Jeff Bezos, Chief Executive of Amazon, told the BBC,

“We sell the hardware at our cost, so it is break-even on the hardware. We want to make money when people use our devices, not when people buy our devices. What we find is that when people buy a Kindle they read four times as much as they did before they bought the Kindle. But they don’t stop buying paper books. Kindle owners read four times as much, but they continue to buy both types of books.”

So where do Amazon’s mammoth profits come from? Predominantly via the sales of e-books, films and music. In what seems a strange tack when compared to the aggressive prices and revenue drives of the likes of Apple (which runs iTunes just above break even and makes profit from device sales), Amazon seems almost benign, more like a lending library than a global company.

The latest range of e-reader devices from Amazon, including the Paperwhite device, have been designed to work alongside a book lending scheme – the Kindle Owners Lending Library.

With Christmas on the way, Amazon is hoping users will consider upgrading or investing in a new device during the busiest consumer time of the year. The new tablets and e-readers are being released in October, giving fans plenty of time to use their favorite sell for cash website to sell tablets and offload old devices to fund an upgrade.

UK gadget company, Money4Machines, said,

“Kindle e-readers are always popular. They’re durable, simple and always desirable, even dated models. We buy first generation Kindles right through to the latest devices, and their popularity looks set to grow with the development of schemes like Amazon’s £49.00 annual subscription lending library.”

 

BBC Player Starts Mobile Downloads

September 8th, 2012Tech News No Comments

We’re big fans of New Tricks. In fact, we love the BBC and all it’s brilliant programming! We’re always felt that a real shortcoming that you couldn’t download old shows onto your old iPad or smartphone, and it seems the mind readers at the BBC have been watching our dreams because they announced a few days ago that all your favourite BBC shows will be available for download to mobile devices pretty soon.

According to the BBC, there were 30 million requests for a mobile iPlayer download service. It’s a great step in the direction of uber-mobile viewing, but don’t think you can watch shows indefinitely. You’ll be able to store a downloads for up to thirty days, but once you hit play you’ll only have a week to watch before the whole self-destruct thing kicks in (no fireballs though – boooo!)

We buy heaps of different devices from all sorts of manufacturers, so what do our customer think of the latest BBC offering? One of customers said she loved that she could top up her old iPad and smartphone with plenty of shows to watch on the go. It’s a really great move for folks with Wi-Fi-only devices who have to rely on being close to a connection to watch their favourite BBC shows using the iPlayer application.

Word on the TV game show block is that ITV are also planning a similar service.

When you sell cameras and laptops and lions and tiger and bears and… we’ve lost track… old Kindles and stuff, leave us feedback on all your favourite bits of tech news – you never know, we might turn them into blog entries!

 

What Does the Apple vs. Samsung Mean for You?

August 29th, 2012Electronics Industry Chatter, Tech News No Comments

The whole handbags-at-dawn bicker between Apple and Samsung has been a globally followed case. South Korea says they’re both at fault, the UK has put its fingers in its ears and chosen not to comment until October, and the US says Samsung is the devil and must pay Apple a Doctor Evil sanctioned amount of money for infringement of copyright on various devices and their evil lair.

But what does it mean for regular folks looking to iPad trade in, old Kindle updates and new devices?

Pros

Cons

The bottom line is that the biggest pro of the verdict has to be that it seriously encourages innovation. Apple have enjoyed a comfortable niche at the top of the market and clearly developed some of the most pioneering software and design staples of the age. The problem has clearly been mobile phone companies looking to capitalise on the success of each other with similar handsets that can be designed and manufactured quickly.

We’re pretty excited to see what’s going to be on offer from our buddies over at Samsung and Apple in the future, but for now we’re happy for you to sell consoles, London themed laptops, tablets, old Kindles and whatever other goodies are lurking in the cupboard!

Jaimie’s Giant Robot Update

August 25th, 2012Curious Stuff No Comments

We love Jaime Mantzel. And if you’ve got lots of time to be entertained and maybe a lax work internet connection that lets you hang around watching YouTube instead of doing actual work, you could love Jaimie too.

He’s not a cult leader or a celebrity of the reality TV show genre, but he’s arguably one of the funniest, weirdest, genuinely interesting people we’ve come across on our YouTube wanderings (between setting sell for cash rates and helping you lovely chaps sell laptops and consoles and old Kindles stuff!)

So what does Jaimie do? He builds things. Things like this, the Spidertank robot.

He lives out a fantasy that few ever achieve, living in the Vermont woods in a great weird shed/house thing he built himself. He’s also got a massive aircraft hanger-looking workshop where most of the magic happens. You read about Jaimie here in his own whimsical words (he has a very dated-looking website but the content is great!)

So, the giant robot. Back in 2007, Jaimie decided the world needed more giant robots. He designed massive robot bases on the Spidertank design and has been chipping away at it ever since. You can watch all 71 videos of his journey over the past few years on YouTube.

The robot’s not 100% complete yet, and even Jaimie says he’s a bit annoyed about falling behind schedule, but we selfishly hope he never quite finishes so we can always watch him toiling away!

Megaupload Case Still Buffering

August 16th, 2012Curious Stuff, Electronics Industry Chatter, Tech News No Comments

A New Zealand court has notified US prosecutors that they must produce clear evidence of internet piracy before any extradition proceedings decide whether or not to send our old mate, Kim Dotcom, to the US to face various charges relating to a pie we’ve – let’s be honest here – probably all had at least a little finger in at some point! The New Zealand judge ruled that the defence must be given full access to evidence and time to prepare their case for the extradition hearing in March 2013.

We may be experts when it comes to helping you sell iPads and old Kindles, but we’re also made up of that special kind of internet fan who aren’t going to spend £45.00 on a box set without reading every single review and catching a decent viewing of content quality. It’s just the kind of fussy folks we are. So we’re no strangers to the odd naughty bit of downloading. But Mr Dotcom’s empire was more than a little beyond our occasional sneaky episode of some US aired-only show.

January 2012 – Kim Dotcom’s mansion is raided and evidence seized by the FBI.

June 2012 – A judge ruled the original raid warrant and the way evidence was gathered were both illegal.

August 2012 – The extradition hearing is delayed.

March 2013 – The planned extradition hearing date.

The FBI claim Mr Dotcom is guilty of various copyright theft charges, money laundering and racketeering fraud. (Boardwalk Empire taught us that ‘racketeering’ is basically any form of organised crime or a scheme with criminal intentions).

We’re really interested in how cases like this pan out. With one judge already quitting after describing the US as “the enemy”, we reckon there are going to be plenty more tasty developments in what’s likely to become a wikileaks-style case of the baddies versus this guy.

And don’t forget, you can fund an upgrade to watch the drama unfold on a New iPad by using our sell for cash UK service to get lovely, lovely £££ for your unwanted devices!

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