Video Chat

David Briddock tracks the beginnings of video communication

As the telephone network grew to touch every corner of the globe, our planet seemed a smaller place. Despite this, many people still missed face-to-face contact with family, friends and work colleagues. Spotting this opportunity, telecom companies began to divert profits into video telephony technology research.

World Of Tanks Blitz (Android)

Wargaming.net's armoured fist punches the Android OS

Previously I was a keen fan of World Of Tanks, until I realised that at a certain level it became an exceptionally tedious grind.

But when the developer launched World of Tanks Blitz on Android, I was curious enough to load the title up and see how the original game translates to tablets and phone hardware.

What is something of a shock is how similar this game is to World Of Tanks on the PC, because while it's somewhat cut down, the basic mechanics of armoured combat against online adversaries remains intact.

Has Google+ Succeeded?

No, James Hunt hasn’t had a bit too much cheer over new year. Hear the man out...

When Google announced the launch of its own social network, Google+ (Google Plus), it's fair to say that it was treated with some suspicion. Sprung on a largely unsuspecting public in 2011, on the surface it appeared to be a late-in-the-day attempt to create a Facebook-esque social network from a standing start - something that’d be a tall order for any company, regardless of whether they're one of the biggest online brands around or not.

Jony Ive's Design Secrets

David Briddock examines the secrets behind Apple’s product design

Industrial design (ID) is a blend of art, science and engineering, which has been successfully applied to furniture, buildings, automotive products and packaging, to name just a few. At its best it enhances a product’s aesthetics, ergonomics and usability. However, in the early days of the personal computing revolution, industrial design didn't really feature. For years, and regardless of brand, PCs were housed in square beige-coloured boxes, with beige-coloured keyboards and monitors.

Lara Croft And The Temple Of Osiris

Hokey supernatural silliness is undeniably a key part of Tomb Raider's DNA. Just as nobody dare question the science in things like Indiana Jones or Big Trouble In Little China. Lara's games have a way of presenting impossible situations without feeling the need to justify or explain them. It's what allows the games to introduce dinosaurs without needing to go into how or why they have miraculously survived until now only to be shot in the face, or what lets magic and alchemy masquerade as real things without having to get bogged down in logic and other such boring stuff and nonsense. There's certainly an argument to be made though, that Lara's latest outing might take things a step or ten too far - it's one thing to allude to myths and legends to make artefacts and lore cooler than they actually are, but it’s quite another to bring them to life and offer two playable Ancient Egyptian deities who run around with machine guns, endlessly pushing blocks and balls into the correct places because videogames.