You might not get an iPad, but there are other cool things to be found!

If you are looking to enhance your business productivity one thing you may consider is how technological advances, or software downloads, can help you to streamline your daily business tasks. Of course, these often come with a high price tag which is why small business owners often shy away from upgrading or updating their systems with useful tools.

The good news is that sometimes you can get the technology that you want at a much lower price if you simply know where to look for them, making it more affordable to upgrade. The first place you should start when looking for items for free is the online classifieds, since this can help you streamline your business without any investment.

The online classifieds are a great place to find technological tools that others no longer need and will gladly give away if you are willing to take them. Depending on how long it has been since your last upgrade sometimes picking up an item that is only a year or two old may make a huge difference in the way you run your business.

Another place that you should check out is open source forums and download websites, given the fact that you can score great software for free on these websites. Often there are open source options that are just as good, if not better, than the full versions that would normally cost you hundreds of pounds to buy.

Therefore, if you want to update your systems without spending a large chunk of your operating budget you will be better off looking for open source software and second hand technological items from the online classifieds. This way you can both have your cake and eat it too.

Nokia has become a stale name in the mobile market as smartphones have dominated the market with their variety of functions, however, the Nokia Lumia 800 aims to change the brands image as this smartphone makes full use of the Windows Phone OS and actually is one of the best new Windows 7.5 mobiles out on the market. Plus, making it even more enticing is the fact that the mobile will not cost you your firstborn, so with a low price tag and high power it’s hard to deny that Nokia has finally got a winner back on the market.

One of the nice free perks of the Nokia Lumia is that it offers a few sat nav service so that you can get where you want without paying for a subscription each month. Its music system is also a nice little perk since you can get several dedicated stations all the time also without paying any more for the service. Although these perks are small, they are basic features you would have to pay to use on pretty much any other mobile.

In terms of design the OLED ClearBlack screen is top of the line with a display that sits under curved glass, allowing for crystal clear clarity even while outside in the daylight. The curved chassis of the design is also quite stunning and since it’s made out of polycarbonate it is very light and it’s fairly hard to actually cause any damage to it, making it an even more appealing choice.

The first gem of information about the iPhone 5.1 is out now, and the next version of the smartphone is being referred to as the 5.1 internally by those responsible for creating the device. This is important due to the fact that another 4. something model would mean that there were simply going to be some minor changes internally and externally but not any significant changes.  For example, between the 1.1 and the 1.2 there was nothing done in terms of performance and internal speed just the addition of GPS and 3G.

The news come right after the identifier for the iPhone 4.1, which is destined to be called the iPhone 4S. The jump means that most likely there will be a new processor in the iPhone 5/6 which analysts are already guessing might be an A6, given it’s the most logical processor for the iPhone to go with. Other rumours that are already circulating about the phone are a new type of aluminum casing for the mobile and a four inch display.

Of course, the iPhone 4S just came out this October so it’s not likely that the new iPhone 5 will be out any time soon. More rumours suggest that it will be out by next summer or possibly in October again of next year, but since there is already a reference on the mobile it is likely that some of these rumours just might be true and the iPhone 5 will be out sooner rather than later.

If you are an ISA trader, you will already know how vital it is that you have instant and easy access to your portfolios so you can trade, manage your investments, and spot both potential risks as well as opportunities. To make this even easier and to ensure that you have all the information to hand wherever you are, there is a whole new breed of ISA trading apps available online that can be downloaded in an instant to your tablet or smartphone.

Trading on the move used to be the stuff that only dreams were made of, now thanks to these mobile apps no trader will ever miss out on a deal by being out of the office or at lunch. You can find the best trading apps simply by entering the term trading ISA apps online into any of the search engines and having a look through the results.

TD trading apps offer a wide range of apps depending on whether you trade in ISA’s or any other commodities; other sites worth looking at are speakstocks, stocktradingonline, gnutrade and etrade. If you want an unbiased opinion of the trading apps available a great site to check out is online-stock-trading-review, as they assess all the top apps and highlight the benefits of each to help you make an informed decision.

With the current economic climate making the right investments at the right time has never been more vital, and trading on the move is a necessary step that needs to be taken. The value of your investments can rise or fall in minutes, so having your finger on the pulse at all times and being able to by or sell instantly is an advantage that no business can afford to be without in these difficult times.

The BBC has launched a new version of its iPlayer for the Sony PlayStation 3 gaming console in an attempt to hook television viewers and open up their potential to a new audience. Those who have gotten used to watching shows such as Doctor Who on their mobile phones of iPad will enjoy the easy ability to simply watch, but as the iPlayer market continues to grow most analysts predict that people will want to watch the same shows on their television as well and not just their mobile devices which is where the iPlayer will play a large role.

Also launching outside of the PS3 app will be a new iPlayer version formatted for specific use with most television in an effort to get older viewers to take a look at what the software has to offer. The app will have a browser based version of the app that is completely fresh and new and will allow viewers to make recommendations to their friends or those within their networks. It will also offer recommendations based on viewing history and contain easy access to all of the top shows on television in Britain at the moment.

Facebook is ‘facing’ looming legal action in Germany due to its facial recognition software as many critics in the country believe that it violates their data and privacy laws. According to officials, Facebook will have to stop the process of automatic tagging and delete all stored data that they have for various users or face fines that could exceed as high as 300,000 euro, although for Facebook the fine seems a bit paltry given the worth of the company in total.

The app itself allows photos to be uploaded quickly onto the website and then tagged using a programme that identifies facial features of friends and automatically tags those it recognizes. Although there was worldwide criticism when it was first released, users do have the option of opting out of the automatic tagging function. Hamburg’s data protection department however has written to Facebook to ask the company to stop running the programme for any German users claiming that it does not comply with privacy laws in the country and that it does not actively seek out consent from all potential users that have their electronic data stored.

A ring back tone is the audible sound we hear when we call somebody and the phone is ringing at the other end. The ring back tone platform is the system that determines what we hear and how long we hear it for. Whilst many of us still hear the traditional brr brr when waiting for the phone to be answered, more and more individuals and companies are choosing to put different tones or songs in place and advertising is also becoming more widespread.

By subscribing to a specialist service, you can effectively add any audio to your ring back platform, with the aim of making waiting for the call to be answered more pleasurable for the caller. These can be personalised with any kind of audio content including the spoken word, top tunes, just about anything in fact, as long as it is clean and inoffensive.

Waiting for a phone to be answered is the ideal time to advertise as you effectively have a captive audience and companies have been quick to recognise this and advertising ring backs are becoming more and more popular. These can be constant or on a rotational basis and also seasonal to tie in with specific products and services.

Personal ring back tones have been around for quite a while on mobile phones, and it was only a matter of time before landlines caught on too. There are many companies offering this kind of Interactive Voice Response subscription service and a quick search online brings up a whole host of providers so you can peruse the options before deciding which one best suits your needs.

As personalised ring back tones are definitely here to stay, the traditional tones are definitely becoming a thing of the past, but will no doubt make a comeback sometime in the future under the ‘retro’ banner.

Liverpool will be the first stop for Google in its new plan to roadshow a UK city in order to get more entrepreneurs online to check out their various options. While the details of all that Google may be up to while they are in town are still a bit sketchy, there are some ideas floating around. One of them is for a Google juice bar in which digital health checks are given to those that are not optimizing the web to its full potential that it could be used for their businesses.

Liverpool does not have the same strong sense of cyber-business that other nearby towns do although it does have close networks among local small business owners and a great sense of community which makes it a prime target. Therefore, it’s a great place to start since these players simply need to learn how to translate their local community into an online community that allows them to reach millions of new customers instead of just the local consumers, and with the help of Google on the go it just may be possible after all to teach an old dog new tricks.

In one of the biggest buyouts in Google’s short history they have decided to purchase Motorola Mobility for a massive 12.5 billion. It may seem like a great buy, but the little known fact remains that Google paid a 62% higher price than necessary.

The reasoning behind Google’s unreasonably high pay-out is to take full control of the Android phone sales and manufacturing. This may be one of Google’s best purchases or worst washouts. Android is the main competitor for the iPhone, without the Android the smartphone market would be nearly completely dominated by the Apple made iPhone, which is set to release its new iPhone 5 sometime this year.

This acquisition has brought Google from being just another search engine to a full out cellphone designer and manufacturer. Google is no dummy though this outlandishly high price seems fool-hearty to the untrained eye.

Smartphone sales are predicted to jump from 100 million a year to nearly a billion by the end of 2020, making the smartphone industry the largest single industry on the planet. Considering this little piece of info, Perhaps Motorola Mobility should have  held out for a higher price.

While the price is questionable, it’s clear what the next big step is for the Google stockholders, a patent fight. With the purchase Motorola handed over 17,000 patents and cell designs, some of which may yet to be seen. While Google figures out who to go after first, you can bet Apple and Microsoft will be holding their breathe until Google makes their next big move, the first Google designed smartphone, at this point we can only imagine the panic in those two boardrooms!

The HP Touchpad comes with a 9.7″ screen, which is almost as big as some laptops. The prices range in the US from $499.99 to $599.99, and the main difference being the available memory in the Palm tablet.

The HP Touchpad weighs in at a light 1.7 pounds and is as glossy as a nearly finished grand piano. It’s great to pick up and look at, but once you start tapping away at the features, functions and apps the screen easily becomes fuddled with fingerprints, so be sure to buy a screen cleaner when you pick up your HP Touchpad. The back of the Touchpad is built to be concave so that even users with bigger hands feel comfortable holding the device without smothering in with our larger than normal fingers.

The tablet comes with logo or brand depicting which way the tablet should be held. The surest way to know what side goes which way is to look for the chrome colored “On” button on the upper right corner, then just around the edge from that is the volume control and a SIM card slot for later use and information storage.

The downsides are that the power up is 3 times slower than the iPad or galaxy it’s trying to compete with, which is not a good way to win a costumer over, by being slow right out of the box , The battery life is roughly 9 hours with constant video. That sounds good, but is still lacking when compared to the iPad or Galaxy. if this is the best HP can offer in today’s “I want it now” society they need to go back to the drawing board.