Senior Associate Editor
Chris Southcott is a Senior Associate Editor for TechGeek, based in Wollongong. Chris is a long-time contributor to the site, usually writing about gaming, gadgets, Kanye West, and the issue of censorship.
It’s been just over a day since the end credits of Twitch Plays Pokémon Red, and now chapter two begins. With the countdown reaching zero just a few minutes ago, the Australian developer behind the social experiment, where players control an emulator via Twitch.tv live chat, has decided upon Pokémon Crystal as the sequal of choice. Originally released in 2001 on the Game Boy Color, Crystal was the seventh game in the [...]
According to Apple, every colour has a story. Or at least, that’s what they want to tell potential young customers using microblogging site Tumblr. While it isn’t out of the ordinary for a company like Apple to flaunt their latest devices in an expensive marketing blitz, their latest attempt to sell the iPhone 5c is a little out of the ordinary. Generally limiting themselves to more traditional advertisements, users of [...]
If I could describe tonight’s victory in just one word, that word would be bittersweet. If you haven’t heard of Twitch Plays Pokémon until now, then I’m afraid you’ve missed one of the most interesting, and simultaneously entertaining, social experiments of our time. Seriously. And that experiment ended tonight, with players reaching the end credits for the game. It was an insane idea. A cumulative 1 million people playing one game, [...]
Microsoft is slowly walking away from the touchscreen future of Windows, today announcing an update that backtracks on their initial vision of the new OS. In a significant update for Windows 8.1, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore today announced at Mobile World Congress that “some of those touch affordances weren’t really tuned as well as we could do for those mouse and keyboard users.” The update will introduce a title bar at the top of [...]
Image: Alex Holyoake/Flickr (Creative Commons) After months of rumours and leaks, Microsoft have today announced a few features from their next version of Windows Phone, which rumours had labelled Windows Phone 8.1. And I must stress the ‘few’. Joe Belfiore took the stage at Mobile World Congress to announce that the new update will ”technically” support any Windows Phone 8 device. The new version will also make a lot of changes in [...]
In October of 2013 we wrote about the latest fitness tracking device from Fitbit, the Force, which was similar to their previous Flex tracker, but instead had an improved, OLED display and an altimeter. However, despite launching in the US at that time, and promises to ship down under in early 2014, the company has today announced that they are recalling all Fitbit Force devices due to reports of rashes caused [...]
Image: Jan Persiel/Flickr (Creative Commons) Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has just announced that popular cross-platform mobile messaging app, WhatsApp, will become a part of the Facebook in a sale worth US$16 billion in cash and stock. The service, which is used by 450 million people every month, will remain separate from Facebook Messenger, with continued operations of the company to be independent. While this doesn’t rule out future integration with Messenger, [...]
With increased competition from Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, Beats Music and plenty of other streaming music services, Apple took a step away from its subscription-free iTunes Store and launched iTunes Radio in September of last year. But, as usual, it was originally only available for US listeners. Or at least until now. iTunes Radio is a free, ad-supported recommmendation-engine, similar to Pandora. Unlike Spotify or other subscription-services, you won’t be able [...]
For the past few years Australian Game Of Thrones fans have been almost lucky when it comes to legally accessing the show. While, like in the US, the show was broadcast on Pay TV first, it also, uniquely, came to iTunes the day later in Australia. So instead of requiring a hefty monthly fee, the show was basically available without any other subscription, just through a per-episode price on a [...]
With Google’s new Motorola division losing millions each quarter, it’s no surprise that the company, and its investors, want change. Today, that change has arrived, with Google selling Motorola Mobility, the mobile device division of Motorola, to Lenovo for US$2.91 billion, giving Lenovo a major US presence for the price of just 2.91 Instagram’s. Their total losses aren’t as damaging as it may look Selling for a fraction of the original [...]
No, the company hasn’t bought Fifty-Three, creators of the iPad drawing app Paper. This is something completely different. And it’s out today, if you have a US iTunes account, right here. Facebook has hinted at a less integrated Facebook app for some time now. With so many features, plenty misguided, resulting in a cluttered Facebook app for mobile devices, while the competition brought innovation through single-use apps like Instagram and [...]
Despite significant changes to the company, BlackBerry haven’t stopped working on updates to their BlackBerry 10 OS, today releasing 10.2.1. While the version-number may say otherwise, the new update, rolling out worldwide from today, has some interesting features for owners of the new BlackBerry 10 lineup. Update on Australian rollout below. The biggest change is the new ability to install Android apps from the device, without messing around with desktop [...]
Qualcomm has just announced that the company will be acquiring 1400 patents from HP’s smartphone business. While this sale bundles together everything mobile from HP, including iPAQ and Bitfone intellectual property, the most notable inclusion is the patent portfolio associated with the now long-gone Palm, the company behind webOS. The sale includes 1400 patents from the United States, including patent applications, as well as 1000 international patents and patent applications. [...]
Image: TechCrunch/Flickr (Creative Commons) In August 2011, Facebook released Facebook Messenger for iOS and Android, a standalone application that simply allowed users to access the Facebook Messenger component of Facebook, treating it almost like an SMS app. In the past few months, though, this app has changed from a simple side-project, which is where other Facebook standalone apps have grown stale, into a beautiful, fully featured app which truly takes [...]
Not one to let a lack of content get in the way of a movement, Kogan is currently showing off the first sub-$1000 4K TV available to Australian consumers at CES. With an 55″ LED display, 3840×2160 resolution, 4 HDMI ports, micro-SD card slot, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet, it sounds great on paper. And not one to miss a trend, the TV also is technically a “Smart TV”, running Android 4.2, with Google [...]