Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer who started his career on PC World and has written for dozens of computer and technology magazines, as well as numerous national newspapers, business and in-flight magazines. He has also written two novels.
He thinks wires are evil and had a custom desk made to hide them, known as the OC Desk for obvious reasons.
He considers 1000 miles a good distance for a cycle ride, and Chernobyl a suitable tourist destination. What can we say, he’s that kind of chap.
He speaks fluent English but only broken American, so please forgive any Anglicised spelling in his posts.
In what may be the most bizarre launch so far this year, Walmart has launched a premium shopping service using an unlikely mix of old and new technology …
Tech research firm eMarketer is predicting dramatic growth in the US smart speaker market, anticipating that it will overtake wearables like smart watches at some point this year …
Anyone wanting a similar look to Apple’s iPhone X in an Android phone didn’t have long to wait thanks to the Leagoo S9. The phone copied both the rounded corners and notch on the front of the device, along with the vertical camera bump on the rear.
And today a more familiar brand has done the same with Xiaomi’s Mi 8 …
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has continued to defend the unpopular redesign of the Snapchat app, despite the billion dollars it wiped off the company’s market value.
He has also taken the opportunity of speaking at Re/code’s Code conference to take a couple of digs at Facebook …
Uber hasn’t always had the best reputation when it comes to safety. In the UK, the company was threatened with being banned after concerns about poor driver vetting and handling of serious complaints, and there have even been reports of drivers assaulting passengers …
Europe’s tough new privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), came into force today. It provides the strongest protections the world has ever seen for customer and user data.
Google is already being accused of breaking the law by one privacy campaign group, and being hit with the €3.7B ($4.32B) lawsuit …
With the European Parliament having passed some extremely tough privacy legislation, and many members being well-versed in the issues as they relate to tech companies, there were high hopes for yesterday’s grilling of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Tough and pertinent questions were indeed asked, far more so than in Congress – but Zuckerberg failed to answer more than 40 of them …
If you enjoyed watching Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg squirming while being asked difficult questions and trying to keep a straight face while being asked stupid ones during his testimony to Congress, you might want to tune in to the sequel today …
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress was the video stream that launched a thousand memes – and now meme creators will get another opportunity. The European Parliament has announced that its meeting with Zuckerberg tomorrow will also be livestreamed …
There are a few benefits to getting older. After T-Mobile last year launched a new unlimited plan for customers aged 55+, Sprint has now done the same …
Twitter currently uses a combination of human review and AI to identify problematic tweets. Where a tweet violates the company’s policies, it is removed.
But the company is now aiming to use an innovative approach to dealing with tweets which don’t technically break the rules but are ‘unhealthy’ or detract from the conversation …
If you suspect you may be spending a little too much time using Instagram, you may soon be able to check out the total time you’ve spent using the app …
We learned back in January that the Vivo X20 Plus UD had won the race to be the world’s first smartphone with a fingerprint reader embedded into the display.
We discovered later that it still works fine with a few scratches, but a tech reviewer has now put it through a far more extensive set of tests …
Facebook has suspended around 200 apps as part of the internal investigation prompted by data misuse by Cambridge Analytica …
Google has revealed the steps it is taking to comply with new European privacy regulations, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
As part of this, Google is making it easier to see the search, browsing and YouTube viewing history it keeps on you, to delete any items you don’t want included, and to stop the company from logging your activity in future …
A group of students from Berkeley have demonstrated how malicious commands to Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri can be hidden in recorded music or innocuous-sounding speech.
Niantic CEO John Hanke said that Pokémon GO players will help create a 3D map of the world that can be used to enhance the game and assist in the development of new augmented reality apps …
Twitter appears to be working on supporting encrypted direct messages, with a feature currently labelled Secret Conversations. A computer science student spotted code which supports the use of end-to-end encryption …
You might have thought net neutrality was dead – at least, outside of a few states defying the FCC to pass their own laws or rules. But one senator believes that there is still a chance to save it, using an arcane congressional procedure …
Smartphone market leader Samsung saw its market share fall 2.4% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, reports IDC, despite launching its flagship S9 and S9+ handsets earlier than usual.
IDC does, however, note that the bulk of S9/S9+ sales will fall into Q2 …
Facebook may have taken a huge PR hit from allowing personal data to be misused by Cambridge Analytica, but the impact on the political consultancy itself appears to have been more significant. The firm says that it has ceased most operations, and is filing for bankruptcy …
Facebook came under massive fire for first allowing Cambridge Analytica to hoover up user data from the platform, and second keeping quiet when it found out about it. But it turns out that Twitter has directly sold data to the company …
Snap’s first attempt at Spectacles were rather an, uh, spectacular failure. The company lost $40M after ending up with hundreds of thousands of unsold units.
An FCC filing earlier this month showed that the company wasn’t giving up, however, with the company’s CEO confirming yesterday that it would be releasing a new model this week. That model has launched today with a number of enhancements …
