The Gadget Helpline are proud to announce that they are working in partnership with the newly unveiled Times Online website to offer its readers free help and advice live from Gadget Helpline’s team of experts on Friday afternoons at 4pm.

Customers can log on and sign up to take part in the Live chat with the Gadget Helpline team via the Times website and will be able to ask all those nagging technical questions putting them directly to a team of dedicated tech heads.

The Times Online is one of the UK’s premier newspapers and along with its sister publication the Sunday Times is one of the longest standing publications in Britain.

Last week the Times and the Sunday Times launched a new paywall subscription service to the Times Online websites, which will charge readers to access the new websites for a small fee of £1 per day or £2 for a full week’s subscription.

For now, customers can sign up for a free trial period to test out the Times Online service and can use this to take part in the Times and Gadget Helpline’s Gadget clinic tomorrow completely free of charge. The trial period will allow user’s full access to the Times and the Sunday Times for the coming weeks so users can check out the some of the exciting new features for themselves.

Click the image to register for the Gadget Clinic

The Gadget Helpline is seeing a constant growth in its customer base and is really proving that users want jargon free and comprehensive technical support for all their household gadgets. The Gadget Helpline’s CEO, Crispin Thomas, stated: “I am delighted to be working with a brand such as the Times and am looking forward to assisting it’s readers with their Gadget related queries” and he added: “we are excited about new media initiatives such as the Gadget Clinic and are looking forward to introducing the Times customers to our growing gadget club of satisfied customers”

So if your mobile’s had a meltdown, PC is paralysed, or you just want basic advice, join us on the Times online website on Friday at 4pm for the Live Gadget Clinic.

To visit the Times Technology section and to register for the Gadget Helpline’s Gadget Clinic sign up click here or to watch last weeks Gadget Clinic click here.

Click the image below to visit Mobile News’s online website:

Click to Visit the Gadget App article

To view and download any of the Gadget Helpline Apps search for “Gadget Help” in Apple iTunes or the Android Market.

We’re Writing About E3…

Oh yes, we are writing about E3. This week’s blog will show off some of the highlights of this year’s show, and bring to the attention of the huge fan base gaming commands some of the latest and greatest new innovations, new consoles and games from E3 2010.

Check out a few of these big time announcements:

• Sony confirms Playstation Move release date along with a selection of compatible games
• Nintendo 3DS breaks into our dimension
• E3 2010: Nintendo Wii returns to gaming
• The Slim Xbox 360 is official!
• Project Natal is dead, Long live Microsoft Kinect

Reaching new Highs

Reach: The Beta Was Only the Beginning (Duh…)

Yo Dawg, I heard you like videogames, so we put a Reach Beta in your ODST so you can play games while you play games.

Anyway, the long and short of this meme influenced opening is that when the literally hundreds of thousands of players logged into the Reach beta… they were being hugely distracted. While we all were going mad for the beta, Bungie were working on an even greater multiplayer feature.

So, ODSTs Firefight mode is dropping back into the next Halo, and boy does it look like it’ll blow multiplayer out of the water in terms of flexibility. In classic Halo style, Firefight is now THE most customisable ‘enemy defence mode’ we’ve ever seen, with Bungie rolling out multiple features for customisation.

You, yes, YOU, can freely fiddle with to your heart’s content:

• The length of the game
• The number of waves
• The number of rounds
• Equipment and item spawnings.
• What enemies appear during a wave
• The enemies in the boss wave
• Active skulls.
• Creation of custom skulls that affect player or enemy abilities, including appearance, shields, health or immunities
• The ability to pick weapons
• Generator locations for special generator defence games

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg… a lot more customisation options will be available on release. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, in Generator Defence, which you may remember from the Beta, you must defend your generators from waves of enemy covenant, making sure none are destroyed, and you can use a 30 second lockdown ability to defend them, similar to the Spartan armour lock ability.

So basically, as well as the predictable team deathmatch/free for all fun, there is the titanically customisable Firefight, and what’s more, using the miracle that is Bungie file share, you can seed your favourite game modes to the internet’s! What you can create is up to you… we came up with.

• Vehicle-only combat, with tanks-on-tank battles galore.
• A single-generator generator defence mode, with abundant long-range and defensive weapons for a long, drawn out siege against hunters and enemy snipers.
• A game mode that limits the amount of weapons and ammunition players carry, making sure players use accurate weapons to make every shot count against waves of unshielded foes for bullet-saving one-hit-kill headshots.
• Infinite ammo magnums only, against competent sword-wielding ultra Elites for a frenzied, desperate defence, with bullets blasting everywhere.

Crysis 2

Crysis 2 Takes the Fight Into the Next Generation

The phenomenal graphics and gameplay exhibited in Crytek’s product lineup, even as far back as the original Far Cry, have always been a talking point among gamers. The common consensus is that these days, Crysis, the most graphically advanced game ever to challenge our GPUs on the PC, is the benchmark for high performance PCs to run.

This reign has lasted ever since Crysis came out, but now it seems the games successor, Crysis 2, is set to topple the game’s graphical superiority and also increase the tactical decision-based gaming that the franchise offers. This time around, Crytek has us using our brains even more than our trigger fingers, and an example of this is the way the game is presented. In order to help gamers understand how their gameplay style is affected, we have prepared a short explanation on how the player must use their sense of strategy right up until they pull the trigger.

Okay, so the first thing that strikes you about Crysis 2 is the way Crytek has designed the level itself. You are presented with an open level, with your objective at one end and your starting point at another. However, if you hearken back to older, more dated titles such as Halo 3, levels would place your player on a path which you literally HAVE to go by, triggering comments from gamers re-playing the campaign such as “Oh, I remember this.” and a similar reaction to the level every time, prompting not much thought with regards to strategy.

In Crysis 2, there are 2, 3, or even multiple ways of getting from A to B. They may be remembered by the player on another playthrough, but what distinguishes Crysis 2 from other titles is the ability for a player to say “No, let’s not go that way. Let’s see what’s down here and go from there.”, meaning a player can add strategy to his approach to a problem, and, coupled with the adaptive suit abilities of the famous Nanosuit Crysis is known for, his approach can be augmented with helpful features. Combine the excellent cloaking, strength, speed and armour of the Nanosuit with the ability to choose your own route, and many fantastic opportunities for a player to approach a problem come up.

For example, as a player rounds a corner and comes up upon a gigantic robotic Pinger or similar foe, he can stop, think and make a decision based on the abilities he has and the environment he is in. If the foe is too difficult, cloak and find another route. If the foe is on his own and easily killed, cloak and stealthily assassinate. If there are many foes, use armour and speed to rush them or strength to jump great heights and drop on them from above. The possibilities are endless… and even more numerous than what we’ve only touched on here.

Due to the sandbox approach of Crytek’s burnt-out New York, everything you could play with, you can play with. Found a taxi? Rig it to blow with C4 and a detonator, shoot it in the window to create a loud noise, and wait for enemies to investigate… then explode them. Or just rig it to blow, drive it at some enemies, ram them, leap out Niko Bellic style and press the beeper. Boom, problem solved.

Using your brain, it is quite possible to excel at Crysis 2 while only using a fairly small amount of ammo or equipment. Even in the demo we saw you can drop a chandelier on your enemy’s heads with a quick bullet.

So, using the environment around you, your suit’s abilities, your own brain and a some guns, Crysis 2 will entertain at every turn, and stay fresh even through multiple play throughs. Oh and it’s got 3D too, with glasses, on Xbox, PC and PS3. Only one question remains: why are you still playing COD?

Playstation Live

PSN + XBL = Playstation Plus?

Oh Playstation, we bet you are rueing the day you announced to the world that your online gaming platform PlayStation Network (or PSN) would be totally free! Yes you are and now we have proof as Sony have now announced a brand new Premium PSN service called Playstation plus.

Yes one of the biggest wins in any nerds Xbox 360 vs. Playstation 3 arguments normally comes when a PS3 fan will blurt out “At least I don’t have to pay to play online”, which in itself is actually quite true, but finer points aside it is generally agreed that Microsoft’s Xbox Live service is a better performing gaming platform and is generally well worth the payment.

So during Sony’s E3 2010 press conference, the company finally announced what many people had expected, a premium chargeable service called PlayStation Plus. Sony did however promise that the existing PSN network will not change at all, it will still get the same level of content and usability and most importantly will remain free.

However new customers who sign up for Playstation Plus will get a host of new features, exclusive content and special discounts at the PlayStation Store which include “frequent discounts on PlayStation Store content, free and exclusive access to select games, full game trials, early invitations to select betas of popular games, and new functionality such as content downloads and updates which will automatically be ‘pushed’ to the PS3 system even when consumers are not using their system.”

And Sony aren’t lying as with the first batch of free games for new PS+ users will be titles including WipEout HD, Minis and PS one classics such as Fieldrunners, Age of Zombies and Rally Cross, a full game trial of inFAMOUS, and discounts on downloadable content such as Fat Princess and all of these will be accessible throughout your subscription period and new content will be added periodically.

Sony has already revealed the pricing details for the UK: The service launches on June 29th 2010 and comes with a free three-month subscription period if you subscribe for one year. The cost in the UK for a 12-month subscription will be £39.99, or you can get a 3-month subscription for £11.99.

Sony will be releasing a PlayStation Plus update that will be wrapped in the Firmware 3.40 update, which is also to be released on June 29th.

E3 2010?

E3 2010: was it a Success or a Blowout

As the final day of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or E3) 2010 finally is upon us all that is left for people gracing the event in Los Angeles is to visit some of the games booths, try out and see future games for themselves. As all of the big announcements have been made and there should be no more shocks around the corner, we ask the Question: Was E3 any good this year?

Well to answer that we need to look at the two distinct areas of the Gaming Expo: Hardware and Games.

Hardware:  We already Knew that at E3 this year we would get a big hardware announcement from each of the big developers, Nintendo had the 3DS, Sony had the Move and Microsoft had Project Natal (now the Microsoft Kinect), so no surprises there when each one was respectively riolled out and had its standard run-through.

The only real surprise was Microsoft announcing the new Xbox 360 (slim) console which was basically a Wi-Fi enabled smaller update to the now 5 year old gaming console.

Kinect and Move both did exactly what we expected them to do. Which was Family games with the promise of “Hardcore” games coming soon, but no actual visualisation of this promise instead we get a myriad of Wii game rip offs (Kinect Sports and Move Sports Champions) and a few action demos of platformer’s using the technology. To say the official announcements were underwhelming is a bit of an overstatement… it then took the original gaming innovator to step things up.

Nintendo needed to hit E3 big this year, as both Microsoft and Sony were trying to break into Nintendo’s almost exclusive motion controlled Family Friendly market, Nintendo needed to go a little bit further and offer something a little bit new, In comes the Nintendo 3DS!

The 3DS was announced earlier this year in a generic press conference by Nintendo and since then we have all been waiting with our fingers crossed that Nintey can actually do produce something groundbreaking. Well they did, the 3DS was a wild success with its relevant links into the past with a console that looks similar to the current DS handsets, updated graphics,  glasses free 3D, 3D movie playback and even a built in 3D camera.

The console looks amazing and once again sets Nintendo apart from the rest of the pack with its innovation… but with all good consoles you need GREAT games to make them sell.

Games: The games areas… now this was a bit hit and miss, as we currently live in an age when information is so freely available its hard to keep secrets (see Apple iPhone 4 saga) and it’s even harder to keep interest in the vast periods of time between game releases, and due to this Games and there sequels get announced a very long time before games are A) released and sometimes B) nowhere near completion.

And due to this many of the games that were officially announced and Demo’d  had already been announced (Gears of War 3) or had a lot of media attached to them beforehand (Little Big Planet 2, Halo: Reach) so little of the “announcements” were shockers or something we didn’t already know.

Once again it came down to Nintendo to do something special…..

But they didn’t, now this may cause a lot of controversy but Nintendo had the biggest console announcement at E3, and they have obviously taken a big standpoint with the Nintendo Wii to start to focus on games again for core gamers not families and casual gamers. This is shown by the sheer amount of Games Nintendo announced, but my issue with the games announced is this: Nintendo just seem to be remaking old games and past glories.

Yes I’m excited about a remake of GoldenEye for the Wii and a new Donkey Kong games is great plus any Zelda game is welcome anytime…. but it’s all just rehashes of the same old formula, we get a new Party games, New Dancing games, new sports games, new side scrolling platformer’s and the occasional 3D platformer, so there is no innovation in the games and one of the Nintendo’s biggest selling points is Originality.

Altogether I feel E3 this year was a good show and a steady show, it’s always good to get a decent hardware announcement and for Microsoft and Sony levelling the playing field with motion controllers, it can only be good for the game. But still I felt there wasn’t a WOW factor this year… lets all hope for E3 2011.

The Gadget Helpline are proud to announce that they are working in partnership with the newly unveiled Times Online website to offer its readers free help and advice live from Gadget Helpline’s team of experts on Friday afternoons at 4pm.

Customers can log on and sign up to take part in the Live chat with the Gadget Helpline team via the Times website and will be able to ask all those nagging technical questions putting them directly to a team of dedicated tech heads.

The Times Online is one of the UK’s premier newspapers and along with its sister publication the Sunday Times is one of the longest standing publications in Britain.

Last week the Times and the Sunday Times launched a new paywall subscription service to the Times Online websites, which will charge readers to access the new websites for a small fee of £1 per day or £2 for a full week’s subscription.

For now, customers can sign up for a free trial period to test out the Times Online service and can use this to take part in the Times and Gadget Helpline’s Gadget clinic tomorrow completely free of charge. The trial period will allow user’s full access to the Times and the Sunday Times for the coming weeks so users can check out the some of the exciting new features for themselves.

Click the image to register for the Gadget Clinic

The Gadget Helpline is seeing a constant growth in its customer base and is really proving that users want jargon free and comprehensive technical support for all their household gadgets. The Gadget Helpline’s CEO, Crispin Thomas, stated: “I am delighted to be working with a brand such as the Times and am looking forward to assisting it’s readers with their Gadget related queries” and he added: “we are excited about new media initiatives such as the Gadget Clinic and are looking forward to introducing the Times customers to our growing gadget club of satisfied customers”

So if your mobile’s had a meltdown, PC is paralysed, or you just want basic advice, join us on the Times online website on Friday at 4pm for the Live Gadget Clinic.

To visit the Times Technology section and to register for the Gadget Helpline’s Gadget Clinic sign up click Here.

There are so many web browsers to choose from on the Internet, most of them free to download, easy to use and quick to load pages. But the real challenge is finding the one that shines above them all, the best cross-platform browser there is.

Meaning we won’t review Internet Explorer… because it’ll only work on Microsoft operating systems. This is for CROSS-PLATFORM browsers, meaning the ones that run on most current operating systems. The difference between these browsers and Internet Explorer is that they are usually…

• Free
• Based on open source software (Meaning that users are allowed to modify or create their own browser based on the program’s code.)
• Updated regularly
• Customisable with plugins or add-ons
• And in some cases a lot faster

So, let’s begin the reviewing.

Opera 10 – Opera Software ASA

Released in early September 2009, Opera 10 is the latest update of the long-established underdog web browser. Opera has been around since the mid nineties, where Telenor, one of the largest Swedish telecoms companies at the time built it as a research project.

A year later, Opera branched out from Telenor, becoming Opera Software ASA. The company designed the browser to be accessible for everyone, users with visual or motor impairments. As such, the entire program can be controlled via the keyboard, and there are also some nifty mouse gestures, such as the ability to go back a page by holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse to the left, right, and opening a new tab by moving the mouse backward.

Although it contains some cool features, Opera is certainly not for the rookie user, and takes a bit of skill to use and understand many of it’s more advanced features properly.

Chrome 3.0 – Google Inc.

Google’s latest creation in their limitless-ambition fuelled project to topple Microsoft from the top of the software ladder, the Chrome browser boosts some of the easiest to use feature around.

As well as being an open-source production, Chrome includes many different functions and features, all aimed to improve security, speed, and stability when browsing the web, such as periodically downloading a ‘blacklist’ of sites that include phishing and malware, and displaying warnings before a user enters them.

Another security feature is that each open tab in Chrome is like it’s own little browser window, blocking malicious software running in one tab from seeing and entering another tab.

On the speed front, the new engine in Chrome is apparently three times faster than Firefox and Webkit competitors, but since then new engines by both developers have been released, both claiming to be faster then Chrome. In summary, Chrome is a decent browser for just using the Internet safely and quickly.

Safari 4.0 – Apple Inc.

Safari is the current default browser bundled with current generation Apple operating systems, but is also available for many other operating systems.

Safari includes all the regular things a web browser needs, such as tabs, popup blockers, etc. The program also contains some other, more uncommon features such as expandable text boxes, a top 24 section which listed the top 24 sites most visited by the user, a feature that changes the design of the browser to a Windows look rather than an Apple OS theme and an iTunes style cover flow listing recently visited sites.

Safari is fast, simple and pretty stable, includes interesting features and a well-designed look. In short, Safari is a basic, but useful fast browsing application.

Firefox 3.5 – Mozilla Corporation, Mozilla Foundation

Mozilla’s Firefox is an incredibly simple but user-friendly web-browsing environment, being that it is highly customisable and easy to use, compatible with almost every operating system and enjoys the top spot in terms of the most used browser independent of any one operating system.

Firefox’s systems are, while simplistic, amazingly useful, from the feature which lets a user drag and drop the icons on the customisable toolbar atop the window where they want and when they want to the innovative download manager tool which handles all internet downloads and displays their progress accurately.

Firefox also is a very secure browser, so secure in fact it is so popular that during a string of China-based cyber attacks earlier this year, both the French and German governments recommended the use of Firefox as a more secure browser alternative after the discovery of a security hole in Internet Explorer.

Firefox also includes an amazing armoury of add-ons ready to be raided by users, which include a multitude of functions and features to complement the browser. Ever since its release back in 2005, Firefox has soared ahead of its standalone browser competitors, grabbing a 25% market share globally and a 31% share in Europe. Firefox is easy to use, quick to download, unproblematic, lightweight and secure and, most importantly, free.

But ultimately its all about you. Try them and if you like, keep, if not then delete. Its your decision.

Ok, Yes we know that we are just shamelessly self promoting here but, in the recent tech news of Virgin starting up a new Virgin Digital Service similar to our GadgetHelpline service, we thought we would weigh in with our opinions….

Virgin Digital Help is too Expensive too Impersonal

Virgin has launched a digital help service for gadgets but it is expensive and in its basic form impersonal whereas we at the Gadget Helpline are a UK based impartial service with no corporate tie in. We won’t recommend Virgin Media to you unless it’s the best available service for your situation.

On Virgin Digital Help for £2.99 per month you get access to effectively a raft of digital handbooks. You could call the www.Gadgethelpline.com for a £2.99 per month fixed price and get all the bells and whistles on offer at Virgin and talk to a live operator. Gadget Helpline also offer a 30 day free trial to the service so that’s 30 days of free help on the full service. If you don’t like it then fine, its FREE!

Virgin Digital Help’s tech team are based in the Philippines

The free live service is based on a team of people giving advice in the Philippines, and Virgin Digital Help say that they shall only employ 10 people in the UK. Foreign call centres in the technology space have proven to be ineffective to the UK based consumer and there is a general re-focus on UK based technical call centres for the Consumer Electronics industry in the UK.

Now we at the GadgetHelpine pride ourselves in being a UK based company who employ people who love gadgets and offer a completely impartial advice.

Virgin Digital doesn’t cover AV and TV support.

Its a bit of a side note for Virgin Digital Help but we at the GadgetHelpline offer support on all household entertainment goods. In fact we love calls on TVs as we love TV, and who doesn’t like talking about something they love!

We cover MP3 players, flat screen TVs, DVD players, games consoles, satellite receivers, digital cameras, video cameras, mobile phones, Bluetooth headsets, computer printers and scanners, satellite navigation devices, fax machines, answering machines, home audio systems and PCs… phew! I’m out of breath just writing that.

Virgin digitals phone support is £6.99 a month, while home visits start from £90.

So that’s £6.99 just to speak to a real person instead of just using a computer service and its also a minimum contract of 3 months for the phone support. Whats more you get allocated a annual allowance of minutes that start at 20 minutes a month. Now we at the GadgetHelpline offer full one on one support with an agent and free callbacks for serious issues with no timescales and no annual allowance. We also offer free Tips, News and features on our blog.gadgethelpline.com website as well as interactive manuals and self help guides.

Recent statistics posted by the GadgetHelpline.com has pointed out that nearly 28% of people ranged 18-21 were spelling the word gadget without the “D” which has led to us registering in many variations on the GadgetHelpline.com website domain names.

Recent press focusing on these astounding facts have been featured in the Times UK newspaper and the Telegraph online and is highlighting the issues with the misspelling culture that is being erected around us.

We at the GadgetHelpline blame brands like Vodafone, Phones4U and Toys ‘’R’’ Us for encouraging the lack of spelling in big name brands but the with Noughties explosion of TXT and predictive text, topped with better and more efficient spell checking programs for PCs, illiteracy is bound to happen sooner or later.

To view the Telegraph article click here and  scroll down or to visit the Times article click here and scroll down .

Recently lately we at the GadgetHelpline.com have had to take the unusual step of registering incorrect spellings of its brand domain to counteract the problem the UK’s 18-21 age-group have with spelling the word ‘Gadget.’

Crispin Thomas, the GadgetHelpline founder which has over 100,000 members, had it pointed out to him by one of the senior members of staff that their statistics showed 28% of the age range 18-21 were spelling the word gadget without the ‘d.’ Whilst the primary users of the helpline aged 30 – 50 only had 3% misspell the word, they have had to take the unusual step of setting up www.gajithelpline.com and www.gagithelpline.com; www.gagethelpline.com to counter this potentially huge loss in revenue.

“We registered the misspelt domain names a fortnight ago and since then we’ve seen a 5.21 % increase in sign-ups compared with this time last year with 254 more new members than they were projecting which is fantastic news for the Gadget Helpline and the sign ups have been particularly within the 18-21 age demographic.”

“Although search engines do have a default alert which asks online users if they meant to spell a word in a particular way we were finding a huge ‘drop off’ amongst the younger users ,which we calculated could impact on our business annually to the tune of £150,000,” says Crispin Thomas. “According to our research 18-21 year olds misspelt ‘gadget’ 28% of the time; 21-30 year olds were better with around 15% misspelling the word, whilst the 30-50 year old age group relatively rarely misspelt the word with only 3% spelling it incorrectly. As a result we have decided to cater for these groupings by creating misspelt domain names and the results for our company have been fantastic and we highly recommend other businesses in the UK do the same.”

Clearly even when mistyping is taken into account there is a worrying spelling trend amongst the late teens and early twenties to misspell company names that could potentially cost the online economy millions of pounds at a conservative estimate – and with the economy of the UK attempting to crawl out of recession, businesses that trade online need to adapt their trading methods to counter educational shortcoming when it comes to spelling.

As the GadgetHelpline is gearing up for a busy Christmas, these interesting stats highlight the difference in support between the sexes  and means we can offer any support unbiased of gender.

Click the link below to vie the full BBC news article or to see the original GagdgetHelpline article click Here.

www.news.BBC.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8346810