Keane Ingram - Tech News and Views

There have been plenty of rumours that Amazon would be releasing a slightly larger Kindle Fire with an 8.9" screen in order to take on Samsung's Galaxy range. However, a source has indicated that the 8.9" model has been scrapped, and a new 10.1" model will be released towards the end of 2012.

Presumably the 10.1" model is an attempt to take on the iPad, but as this model hasn't been confirmed by Amazon yet it seems a bit daft to speculate just yet. Perhaps Amazon should concentrate on releasing the original Fire outside of the US? I'm certain they would sell a lot of Fires in the UK.

Virgin Media were the first big UK Internet Service Provider to prevent users accessing The Pirate Bay, after a High Court ruling that access to the site must be blocked. Virgin Media customers who attempt to access The Pirate Bay now get redirected to a page showing this message:

Whilst I agree that copyright infringement is wrong, this doesn't seem like a well thought out way to deal with it - anyone looking for torrents will just go to any of the other big torrent sites, or a tech-savvy user might just change their DNS settings to use OpenDNS or Google's Public DNS. This also prevents some of the legitimate uses of The Pirate Bay, such as music promotion or downloading of legal torrents like Linux ISOs.

The latest in the best-selling Call of Duty franchise has been announced. As suspected, Treyarch have been at work on a follow-up to Black Ops, and unsurprisingly it will go by the name of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. What is a surprise however is that the game is set in 2025. Check out the teaser video below!

My initial reaction was that the graphics are really starting to look dated now! It's good that the series is moving on from WW2 and past conflicts, but even taking the usual pinch of salt required when consuming these games, it really seems like Treyarch have gone a bit mad! There seem to be Metal Gear-type vehicles moving around, bikes, horses, planes and rockets, futuristic weaponry (well obviously as it is set in the future). Are Treyarch trying to combat the November release date of Halo 4 (which comes out the week before COD:BLOPS2)?

I'm sure this game will sell millions like the previous Call of Duty games, but personally I'm starting to tire of them - I still have Modern Warfare 3 sat downstairs unopened due to a lack of time, but even if I had the time I'd probably be finishing off other games first. I guess I'll have to wait and see what else will be on offer with Black Ops 2.

Samsung's next phone, believed to be the Galaxy S3, is being hyped and teased in a manner similar to how Apple markets the iPhone. The Next Galaxy (currently not loading due to demand) has a teaser trailer ahead of the unveiling of the phone at an event in London on 3rd May. Here is the teaser:

There is no concrete information in this trailer, the only thing of note is the dig at iPhone users (or sheep?) But interest in this phone is sky-high after the previous two Samsung Galaxy S phones sold so well. Will the S3 be the phone that takes Android ahead of iOS?

The latest in the series of pay-what-you-want Humble Bundles has been released, and the latest goes by the title of the Humble Botanicula Debut. Botanicula is a new adventure game from Amanita Design. The Bundle also features two other Amanita games, Machinarium and Samarost 2 (which have featured in previous Humble Bundles).

If you pay above the average price (currently $8.76) you get a couple of bonus items. One is a game called Windosill by Vectorpark, but the other bonus is a film called Kooky, which has art direction by one of the founders of Amanita Design.

The chosen charity is also different for this bundle. The chosen charity is the World Land Trust, which creates nature reserves. So far enough has been donated to preserve 544 acres!

The bundle is available for another 13 days so if you're interested buy it sooner rather than later - especially if you want the bonus items!

Pebble is a new project that has been listed on Kickstarter, and has already made well over it's initial $100,000 goal. The Pebble is an electronic paper watch which links to your iPhone or Android smartphone and allows you to view things such as music playing, fitness information and even just the time! Check out the video below:

This looks like a really useful device, I would love one to go on my bike, and I look forward to seeing these devices available for purchase!

It has been reported that Amazon are busy trying to tie up deals with content providers in the UK and Europe so that when the Kindle Fire is launched over here, UK and European customers will see the full benefit of owning the tablet.

Amazon already owns LoveFilm, so it seems logical that Kindle Fire owners will be able to stream all of LoveFilm's content on the tablet, but it will be interesting to see what else is available for UK owners when the tablet is finally released here.

The latest version of text editor Notepad++ is now available. Version 6 includes the following updates:

• Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) is now supported.
• You can now add a Document Map.
• Loading performance for large files has been ehanced.

Notepad++ is my text editor of choice when it comes to developing websites and coding, I can't recommend it highly enough.

The latest in Rovio's massively successful bird flinging series of games is now available for iOS, Android, PC and Mac. Angry Birds Space was released yesterday and no doubt has already been downloaded many, many times.

The game features new birds and concepts, the main concept being that the pigs are now on various planets which have gravitational fields - so you have to judge the flight of your birds taking gravity into account. This is made slightly easier as you are now shown the path your bird will take after release.

I recently took advantage of Netflix's generous free trial for a month to see how the service worked (the £15 cashback courtesy of Quidco was also most welcome!) Netflix offer streaming video to your computer, games console or mobile phone, allowing you to watch a variety of films and television programmes. You can watch as much as you like for £5.99 a month.

Technically, I thought Netflix was excellent. Everything I streamed worked perfectly, with no sound or video issues. I tried it on my PC, on my Android phone and on my Xbox 360 and had no problems. I was impressed by the way that if I stopped watching a video on one device, then started it again on another, it would restart from the place where I had stopped previously.

However, the main thing putting me off spending £5.99 a month is the lack of films available. There seems to be major gaps in which films are available. If a film was released in the last few years you can forget about it being on Netflix, but even very old films such as Seven Samurai and Ikiru aren't there, as well as other popular older films such as Star Wars, Goodfellas, Toy Story and The Matrix. The quality of childrens films was lacking, and the range of TV programmes was also limited - the original UK version of The Office wasn't on there, although the US version was. In the end we mostly used it to watch episodes of Doctor Who.

To persuade us to fork out for it, Netflix will have to increase the quantity of films and shows available - whilst the service is technically impressive, it's currently lacking in quality content.