Steve Litchfield

We've been hearing about the phone world 'plateauing' for years. I've been the one proclaiming the concept, since about 2020 - and I'm absolutely right. But 'plateau' is perhaps not what you thought it was. After all, a true plateau is just that - flat, whereas the meaning in the phone world is subtly different. What is DOES mean is that the days of significant year on year advances in phone technology are long gone.  Any phone from 2020 will work just fine today, whether iOS or Android-based. Its performance will be 'fine', its camera putting out photos that are 'fine', its speakers and microphones 'fine', its battery life 'fine'. And so forth. Whereas once (pre-2015, say), there would be compelling reasons to trade your phone in after even less than a year, in order to get the shiny new model that was evidently better at something important, in 2025 there's almost no reason. In fact, we've reached the point where it...

It remains a mystery to me to this day. Why don't other phone manufacturers and their cameras use the tricks that Google pulls off? An issue of patents perhaps? Or just lack of software expertise? Regardless, the two 'tricks' demonstrated here are Sensor Fusion and Super Res Zoom. You'll find them on any Pixel in various combinations. On the Pixel 7 and 8 Pro and on the Pixel Fold (below) you'll find both techniques employed. And yes, I already said that most people don't need to zoom more than 3x in normal life , but hey - this is for when zoom is needed. Perhaps at a sporting event or trying to spot rare wildlife. To demonstrate both tricks, let's take a standard landscape shot - with an interesting central subject: So far so good, and any camera phone could take this shot. Here scaled for the web, but don't worry, I'll show off some crops below too. Now we try zooming at 2x: In the case of my Pixel Fold, the main sensor is 48MP, so a 2x zoom smart...

It's pretty awesome what Google manage to get done sometimes. Even if in this case it's limited to a few dozen US cities, check out how they've integrated Google Maps and its direction finding with their Street View project. This sort of integration is truly eye-opening. And it's here now. If you live in the right parts of the US, anyway! Enjoy.

We all know and love Google. But how exactly do they handle so many billions of users, so much data, without ever losing anything? I was interested to come across this video talking about their infrastructure and philosophy, which explains how things hang together reliably. Worth 10 minutes of your time to watch!

Wow. A reported $44 BILLION ?? How on earth do companies a) come up with these valuations and b) afford the price in the first place. I knew Microsoft were rich, but this sort of price is insane. And for what? Surely they already have everything that Yahoo has got in their tech-bank, and more? Well, maybe not Flickr, surely the best purchase Yahoo! ever made.... But even so.... This won't get them level with Google, it will simply cheese off existing Yahoo! users, who will then defect to Google and make the situation even worse for Microsoft. My advice: don't do it. Don't even think about it.

From 2005 to 2007, I've been a very happy bunny. Putting Google Adsense adverts in the margins in my various web sites has resulting in some significant pocket money that I've err.... put to good use. And declared to the tax man, by the way. But all the time, I wondered. How long before people have seen the same adverts time and again on many different web sites and stop clicking on them out of curiosity? For specialist sites and adverts I guess there's still a place, but I'm pessimistic about the online advertising world generally, looking into 2008. Certainly my own Adsense income has been falling by 10% a month for the best part of a year now - how do you view the archetypal Google ads on almost all web sites? Do you ignore them? Consciously, or unconsciously? Comments welcome!

Great to see Google release the third component of their free online Office Suite - try it here . In my test, it opened a large test Powerpoint presentation perfectly: With Google also giving away StarOffice, and with OpenOffice itself, all free, who on earth wants to pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars/pounds any longer for their bloated Office suite?