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.
Facebook continues to tighten security after the Cambridge Analytica saga. After recently explaining how it will comply with new privacy laws, it is now taking steps to stop apps posting to your profile …
Twitter took twelve years to finally make it into profit, but it seems the company is now on a roll. In a letter to shareholders today, the company said it was good news all round …
Six months ago, Amazon launched a new Amazon Key service to allow its delivery staff to unlock your front door and leave packages inside your home while you’re out. It’s today following that up with a variation that will allow access to the trunk of your parked car …
An audit of Facebook’s privacy protections conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) gave the company the all-clear despite the fact that Facebook was already aware of the Cambridge Analytica problem at the time …
Another reason to hold onto product boxes for your gadgets: not only do they tend to help items fetch a better price when you sell them, but listing an item on eBay can now be as simple as scanning its barcode …
The European Union’s new privacy regulations – the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – come into force next month, and Facebook has now provided details of how it will comply. This includes asking for permission to use face-recognition.
It reveals that those in Europe will get the earliest and strongest privacy protections, with a weaker version rolling out in the US and elsewhere at a later date …
Twitter is down for some users in the USA, Japan and a number of European countries, with a smaller number of reports from other parts of the world …
If you like Ikea furniture but are less keen on the DIY construction process, TaskRabbit is the company’s subsidiary that will find someone to build it for you. But if you’ve ever registered to use the service, you’ll want to change your password …
Part of the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal has been some people questioning Facebook’s entire business model, based on learning as much as possible about users in order to expose them to highly-targeted ads.
The alternative would be a paid subscription – something CEO Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t ruled out – but the costs might be significantly higher than some have suggested …
While investors may have been satisfied by the testimony given to Congress by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, not everyone was. Two senators – one Democrat, one Republican – plan to introduce a bipartisan bill to protect online privacy …
If you see something in Snapchat Discover you’d like to buy, doing so may soon be as simple as swiping up in the app.
The company is reportedly testing a new commerce feature which allows you to buy products from both Snap and third-party companies like Nike …
There were plenty of unanswered questions at the end of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s second day of testimony before Congress.
For many questions, Zuckerberg said he would need to consult with his team to provide answers – at times exhibiting a surprising lack of familiarity with the privacy debate that has sprung up around his company’s activities …
Spotify and Hulu teamed up last year to offer a discounted bundle to students, and they have now done it again for the rest of us – though with some caveats …
A number of commentators in posts about Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress have noted that Facebook has made campaign contributions to more than a few of those questioning him …
Our sister site 9to5Mac provided a roundup of some of the key take-outs from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress yesterday – including some of the things he didn’t say, thanks to a photograph of his briefing notes.
Reaction to Zuckerberg’s responses have been mixed, but investors seemed satisfied as Facebook stock closed 4.5% up on the day …
A new web standard being recommended for adoption would open the way for smartphone fingerprint readers to be used to login to websites. The same would be true of Chromebooks once models arrive with fingerprint sensors …
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has apologized to Congress in a written statement ahead of his testimony before two committee hearings today and tomorrow.
The statement suggests that the company didn’t do enough to prevent misuse because the company is ‘idealistic and optimistic’ but it now recognizes that it made a ‘big mistake’ in failing to put sufficient safeguards in place …
Snapchat’s big redesign earlier this year hasn’t gone over well with many users, with over a million of them petitioning for the company to revert to the original design. One high-profile objection even wiped more than a billion dollars off the company’s value …
Samsung has reported record profits in its preliminary results for Q1 2018. The company said that profits hit 15.6T won ($14.7B) on sales of 60T won ($56B).
While most of this is due to chip sales, some analysts believe that the company’s smartphone business has done better than expected …
There seems no end in sight to the Facebook privacy saga. Facebook first revealed that up to 87M people may have had their data harvested by Cambridge Analytica, 71M of them Americans.
The political consultancy denies this, TechCrunch reporting that it claims to have licensed data for up to 30M people, and saying that none of this data was used to help the Trump campaign …
Facebook continues to work on regaining the trust of users after the Cambridge Analytica revelations. After earlier pointing to instructions for removing permissions granted to apps running on the platform, the company has now streamlined the process to make it easier to do …
Facebook Messenger now lets you share 360-degree photos with your contacts. You upload them like any other photo, and the recipient can look around them simply by turning their mobile device from within the app …
Third-party apps which rely on pulling data from Instagram are falling over as the company has started imposing limits on how much information is shared …