Alphabet: the new Google

Google forms new holding company, Alphabet

Monday, August 10 has gained a huge significance in the long history of Google, the world’s most successful, wealthy, and simultaneously admired and criticized web search company. That’s because, on that day, in what must have initially seemed a rather inconspicuous blog post that was published just after closure of the stock markets, Larry Page, one of the company’s co-founders, announced that Google will soon be no more. A whole new company, called Alphabet, will be taking its place.

Chillblast Fusion Centurion

A fast desktop PC with the latest Intel processor

Before we get to the review, we need to talk about processors. They’re at the heart of every PC in the central processing unit, or CPU. You can’t see the CPU, unless you have a scanning electron microscope or X-ray vision, because it’s a bunch of tiny slivers of silicon encased in plastic, behind a metal cover under a heat sink. But you’ll see the results of its efforts every time you click.

Have smartphones ruined our manners?

As phone use hits a record high, is public politeness at an all-time low?

If you’ve ever thought that smartphones play too big a part in people’s lives, here’s a statistic that lends weight to your suspicion. A third of adults now check their phone within five minutes of waking. Before they have a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast and probably even say ‘Good morning’ to their loved one, these phone addicts make a beeline to check the latest posts from their Facebook friends.

Jawbone Up3

Multi-function fitness sensor band

Before the Apple Watch and its fancy health apps came along, lots of people were already wearing futuristic gadgets around their wrists. The Jawbone Up dates back to 2011, and this latest model doesn’t run apps or tell you the time, but does measure your skin temperature, respiration, heart rate, movements and heat flux – or how fast you’re losing energy (perhaps a polite way of saying how much you’re sweating).

Drones

Just when I thought the selfie stick was the worst gizmo of our time, I’ve been proven spectacularly wrong. Several weeks ago, my wife, our daughter and I were sitting on the decking in our back garden having dinner. There we were, relaxing, eating pizza, when a loud buzzing hit my ears. For a minute or two I couldn’t work out what it was. It sounded like a garden house strimmer, but I could swear it was coming from above. Then I saw the offending object: a drone.

Fast Fixes Gmail

Make garbled messages readable, speed up Gmail and stop it logging you out

Emails contain gibberish

Unreadable message text is usually the result of mismatched language-encoding settings. Your sender’s encoding settings are different to those of your browser. Gmail is usually good at rectifying this automatically, but it can miss the odd one – and that’s when you see gibberish.

If this happens, click the little down arrow at the top-right of the email (next to the Reply arrow) and choose ‘Message text garbled?’. This may fix it automatically.