January sucks. It's cold, foggy and dark. The Christmas lights are gone. No one has any money. No one wants to do anything. The gyms are packed and the roads are busy. And if you don't have Covid it's because you have a cold instead.
Nothing good ever happens in January. That is, until Talkback Comms breathes life into the despondent souls of it's customers with the most maddest of tech deals.
Refurbished Apple iPad Pro 10.5 64GB, 4G: £299.00. A great value tablet; powerful and slim; this will serve as your loyal companion for many years.
Griffin Survivor Case, for iPhone 6, 7, 8, X and XS: £12.00 (RRP £20.00). Quality, hard-wearing cases that have been drop tested. A case like this will pay for itself 10 times over.
3 Metre USB Cables: £3.00. Because incompetent electrical engineers have made it so that you can't always be within 1 metre of an unoccupied wall socket, and if your phone dies, well, so do you.
Beneath them, many popular networks such as Tesco Mobile. These are mobile virtual network operators. These companies do not own or operate their own network infrastructure, so they use the infrastructure from one of these four companies. This is often referred to as "piggybacking". If you use Tesco Mobile, your cellular signal and mobile data is transmitted by O2's masts.
Some networks are subsidiaries, owned by their holding companies. These companies operate independently as brands, and aim to target a different market. BT own EE. Virgin and O2 have merged, and own giffgaff. Vodafone own VOXI and Talkmobile. 3 own Smarty.
EE have the best nationwide coverage, followed by O2, 3, then Vodafone. However, Vodafone have the best coverage in Bristol and surrounding towns. It's not yet clear which network has the best 5G coverage locally, but we suspect that it's EE.
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Canadian tech company BlackBerry have now ceased supporting all of their old devices. Everything, from calls and messaging to internet and apps will no longer function on legacy devices running BlackBerry OS. Newer BlackBerry devices run on Android, and will continue to be supported.
BlackBerry has all but abandoned the mobile phone industry in recent years. The company struggled to adapt and keep up with iOS and Android. The hard QWERTY keyboards, instant messaging and professional branding made them very popular in the 2000's. Unfortunately the Company failed to recognise the importance of touch screens and apps until it was too late, and continued to double-down on the corporate device for the business user.
This is a good business move, as it will allow the Company to drop what's not working, and focus on their core business; where they have a strong foothold; and provide a valuable service - security and encryption; in vehicles, devices and AI. Blackberry have outstanding security software and services. The company currently provides cybersecurity tools to large organisations, including Amazon and the US government! They BlackBerry IVY is a new system installed in cars and autonomous vehicles that can analyse driver patterns and behaviour, access routes and weather in real-time, and provide information and alternative routes based on traffic and weather.
BlackBerry were the first to properly integrate mobile phones into the business world by enabling users to work and use email efficiently from their phone; with a quality, tactile keyboard. The ultra secure instant messaging was one of several BlackBerry innovations that advanced the mobile phone industry. And they've always been renowned for their security.
Whether you had a Bold or a Curve with a multi-colour LED light for notifications, you'll have fond memories of asking friends for their BBM Pin, playing Brick Breaker on the bus, and blowing people's minds with the fact that you could respond to an email on your phone.
Fun Fact: The name "BlackBerry" came from the look and feel of the keyboard, with the buttons reminiscent of the drupes of a blackberry.
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Apple reached $1 trillion in 2018 42 years after the company started. They reached $2 trillion just two years later, then $3 in less than 17 months. $4 trillion is just around the corner.
Apple's shares have increased in value by 5,800% since the first iPhone was released in 2007. Would have been (still is) a wise investment.
The largest companies after this are Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Saudi Aramco (Oil), Amazon, Tesla, Facebook, Nvidia (Computer Processors) and Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffet).
For now, Apple are winning quite comfortably.
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As you can see in the graph, people are most likely to lie over video chat and phone call, and least likely by email. This could be because video chat and phone calls make deception feel easier or less costly, as it's not in-person, but is fairly spur of the moment - we don't have to organise and review our thoughts like when we are writing. It could also be that email is more formal, and more likely to be used in a professional/work context.
But the differences are pretty small. It turns out that differences among participants were more predictive of deception rates than differences among media. A person that lies in one context is more likely to lie in another.
You can make the case that our social interactions are higher in quantity but lower in quality in the digital age. But that doesn't necessarily mean that people are becoming more dishonest.
Perhaps though, we should be more cognizant and concerned with how technology has made it easier and less consequential for business and political organizations to manipulate people at scale. Then, the fact that lies can spread more quickly, freely and widely than ever before. It's a complex issue.
As always is our conclusion. Technology for the individual is not to be feared or avoided, but better understood and more mindfully utilised.
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