Tickbox confusion

In the good, old fashioned world of high street shopping, I can be pretty sure that I’ve bought a hedge trimmer, a cinema ticket or groceries without having given the retailer permission to hound me on the phone or post a brochure through my door on a daily basis. But is the same true in the world of digital sales and goods? Sadly not. and it all comes down to the tricky tickbox.

You’ll find it lurking somewhere on the checkout page. Sometimes it says something simple: ‘tick here if you want to receive further offers by email’. At other times, though, it says ‘tick here to opt out of’ the same. To make it worse, you might get one box saying ‘tick here to opt out of receiving further offers from carefully selected partners’, followed by another that says ‘tick here to receive further offers from us'.

Get the fastest internet on your street

Is your broadband slower than your neighbours? Jonathan Parkyn reveals how to keep up with the Jones's internet speeds - without paying extra

Have you ever had the sneaking suspicion that your friends and neighbours all have faster broadband than you? You may even worry that other people on your street are slowing down your broadband by leeching (stealing) your Wi-Fi.

If so, you’ll be pleased to hear there are quick and easy ways to find out how your internet speeds compare with your neighbours’, and how to get an extra speed boost if you're stuck in the slow lane - without spending any extra cash.

Seagate Wireless Mobile Storage

A wireless hard drive for movie-watching travellers

Having to cherry pick which TV shows and movies to store on your low capacity smartphone or tablet can be a pain, especially if you’re about to embark on a long journey. Seagate's Wireless Mobile Storage is an elegant solution to this problem. Multiple users can wirelessly stream files stored on this portable 500GB hard drive and it can run on battery power for up to six hours.

Finlux 48FT3E242S-T

A big TV at a surprisingly low price

Finlux, a Turkish company previously owned by Nokia, have been making HD TVs since 2006, and its 48FT3E242S-T is the biggest and most attractive smart TV we’ve seen for less than £400. The borders around the screen are narrower than we’d expect at this price, while its sleek metal stand is a welcome change from the usual chunky plastic ones. The 48in screen is the only available size, but this shouldn’t be a problem unless you have a very cramped living room.

Can the Apple Watch be a gaming device?

We haven’t played wrist-mounted games since the days when we were wearing digital watches and velcro trainers. They were pretty simple devices, fiddly and inconvenient, but we can’t deny there was something a little magical about them. Being able to carry a game around with you on such a discreet device without anyone being the wiser (as far as you were concerned) had a certain thrill to it. A thrill perhaps usurped in modern times by the existence of the smartphone, a device that can carry tens of games around in your pocket, played by four-year-olds to 84-year-olds the world over. The smartphone, and at its spearhead the iPhone, has made us all gamers, but what might Apple's Watch add to gaming culture?

Call Of Duty: Black Ops III

Black to the future

The way we play FPS games has changed. No more hammering away with just an assault rifle and grenades; no, now it's about movement, escaping, jumping, running... It's about the fluid and skilful exploitation of your environment. With this trend of attaching a thruster to every feasible place (Titanfall, Killzone, Advanced Warfare et al), we’ve all become used to moving geometrically. Imagine a heat map of your favourite recent online shooter - the trajectory of your movements would likely form an impressionist graph, etched in blood. The thing is, since the saturation of these boost jumps, mathematical 90-degree turns and U-tums. and verticality being the new buzzword in FPS games, we’ve gotten bored. It's time for a change.