In a month which saw PCWorld celebrate 50 Million visitors, Apple finally revealed their tablet device putting an end to the endless rumour mill. During January I wrote about a retro LG CRT TV, Google’s Nexus One phone, CES rumours and of course the iPad. Check out my posts for the month of January below:

• iPad: IPS Screen Technology Explained
• Oops! McGraw-Hill CEO Lets Apple Tablet Confirmation Slip
• LG Goes Retro, Introduces New CRT TV
• Corsair’s New Dominator XMP RAM Is World’s Fastest
• Dell’s Mini 5 To Be Powered By 1GHz Snapdragon CPU
• Fox News ‘Confirms’ Apple Tablet, iLife 2010, and Next iPhone OS
• Nokia Shares A Glimpse At Symbian 4
• Samsung’s New 64GB Flash Chip Is Ideal for Mobile Devices
• Want 12 Hours of Battery Life from a High-End Laptop? ASUS Can Help
• Google’s Nexus One Torn Apart In iFixit Teardown
• Rumor: MSI To Show Dual-Screen E-Reader & 3D Laptop At CES

The GeekTech blog is also now on Facebook, so be sure to fan the team up over there!

December has passed us by and a new year is with us, so as ever, it’s time to look back over my posts from PCWorld for the last month. Below is just a selection of some of my posts made, including details on Dell’s rumoured upcoming Android-based tablet, and a feature detailing five alternative operating systems to Google’s upcoming Chrome OS. You can find more of my posts from PCWorld on the GeekTech blog or directly via this link.

• PQI Bring The Speed With 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drives
• Panasonic’s New Battery Designed with Safety in Mind
• Need a 24GB Memory Kit? That’ll Be $1300, Please
• Toshiba Announces 64GB Flash Memory; Perfect For Next iPhone
• Five Web-Centric Alternatives to Google Chrome OS
• Dell To Reveal Android Tablet At CES?

If you want to read more from GeekTech then be sure to follow the blog’s Twitter account, and of course don’t forget to follow me up on Twitter too! Be sure to check back next month for more posts.

I just wanted to make a short blog post wishing all my readers and subscribers a Happy New Year. May 2010 bring you everything you hope for.

What are your plans for the year, have you made a list of goals for the the next 12 months? If so be sure to link to your blog post in the comments, or just tell us your plans directly here.

Yes, it is the second of January, I’m a day late I know, but it doesn’t matter, my kind warm message still rings true. Have a great 2010!

(Photo by Rob Dray)

With Christmas now here, I figured now is the perfect time to wish you all a Merry Christmas. I hope you are all having a great day!

Image Via Zellaby on Flickr

I finally joined the masses and grabbed myself a 32GB iPhone about two weeks ago. Ever since then I have been hunting around for the best apps and downloading a fair few, especially game and utility apps.  I will probably do a round-up post detailing the apps I have soon, offering my recommendations.

However, this blog post is to ask the question - Is there a way of running a diagnostic on my iPhone while at home? The reason I’m asking such a question is due to a recent problem I had with my new phone:

I recently took the phone out of my pocket only to find the device was turned off. This struck me as odd, as not only does the iPhone require a button hold in addition to an on-screen action in order to turn it off, but the battery was also showing a 60% charge around two hours prior to this happening.

After several failed attempts to power up the device I was somewhat concerned. Luckily, I was in Liverpool for the weekend visiting family, and an Apple store was close by. I popped in to seek advice and was told by the stores staff that the new phone “looked fine” and that I should try plugging the device into one of the many charging stations in-store. Having done this, and failing an Apple employee repeated the process in another charger, this time to some success. The device powered up, however it took over 3 minutes to reach the home screen, it had worryingly also lost around 30% of it’s charge.

The helpful Apple staff at the Liverpool One branch suggested that a rogue-app may have been the cause of the problem, adding that if this (currently isolated) issue was to happen again that I come in to have the iPhone checked.

So do any of you guys know of a way to run a diagnostic check on the iPhone, at home? I would like to see if any of my apps are sapping away my battery or causing my phone to crash. Any comments or emails on the issue would be highly appreciated.

Another month has passed by so it’s time to update you all with the blog posts I made over at PC World this month:

• Dell Offers Custom Chromium OS Download For Mini 10V
• Buffalo Brings SuperSpeed To Blu-ray With New External Drive
• Ostendo’s 43-Inch Curved Monitor: The Ultimate Gaming Display?
• Intel Core i9: Six Cores Of Speed
• 1TB SSD Drive Available Now; A Steal At Just Over $3,000
• Google Chrome OS Source Code Now Available For Download
• Google Chrome OS: Rounding Up The Rumors
• Rumor: Four Arrandale CPUs Coming In January
• Motorola Droid Laid Bare, Reveals All In Teardown
• OpenOffice Introduces Multi-Button Confusion With New Mouse
• Green Computing: The Good And The Bad
• Intel Promises SSD Firmware Fix
• Windows 7: First Service Pack Details Emerge

I have neglected my blog a fair bit this past month, so I figured I ought to update it with what I’m up to at least. So below is a list of my recent posts over at the Geek Tech blog on PCWorld:

• American USB 3.0 HDD Debut To Come Courtesy Of Dane-Elec
• Firefox 3.6 Beta ‘Test Build’ Available For Download
• First Look At Google’s Chrome Browser Within The Chrome OS
• Future Versions Of Firefox To Detect Screen Orientation
• Microsoft Planning 128-Bit Version Of Windows 8?
• Buffalo Shipping External USB 3.0 Hard Drives This Month
• Active Media Launching USB 3.0 External SSDs This Year
• Dell Offers Free Windows 7 Upgrade To Vista PC Buyers
• Eleven Years Of Google: A Look Back

The above is just a selection of what I have written for the Geek Tech blog this month, you can find more of my articles on the site. I intend to update my blog, in a similar fashion to Daniel Ionescu, with a summary of my posts on a regular basis, so be sure to keep checking back.

Earlier this month I landed a writing position over at PCWorld.com. I was reccomended for a position at the sites Geek Tech blog by fellow writer and friend Daniel Ionescu.

Below is a small handful of articles I have wrote for the site since my first article went live, be sure to check them out, and leave your thoughts:

• Unseen Apple Mac Prototypes from Harmut Esslinger
• Bill Gates Leaves Facebook, Says Its To Much Hassle
• iPhone App Helps Drunks Walk The Line
• First USB 3.0 Motherboard On The Way
• Awesome Wall Chart Turns PC Parts into Geek Porn

These are just a few of what I have wrote so far, no doubt I will keep this blog updated with my postings over at Geek Tech. You can follow Geek Tech on Twitter.

A few weeks back, my partner and I (along with her family) went away for a week. We went to a scenic area in Northumberland on the coast, and also traveled to Edinburgh, my first time visiting Scotland. A selection of the pictures I took during the trip can be found on my Flickr page.

Within the set of images on Flickr are two images I took which can be used as a texture when creating your designs, the two dark wooden textures can be downloaded here and here.

• Time for Sunday dinner. Note to self: Backup Macbook when I get home. #
• VidZone for the PS3, interesting. Hope it has a nice selection of videos on offer. We shall see. #
• My Time Machine Hard Drive is full, it’s now deleting old backups. I’m in dire need of more storage space. #
• Job hunting online at 3am. Fun! #
• Finally updating Safari to version 4. Annoying tabs ahoy? #
• Listening to all four parts of Planisphère by Justice. Love it. #
• Not sure which @woothemes to pick, I can choose any one for free due to their T-Shirt giveaway: http://is.gd/F8SA Decisions, decisions… #
• Watching @dabookerman doing some 3D work for @gamebrit. Nifty. #
• Just got feedback from some Uni work. Higher mark than I was expecting. It will do. #
• RT @gamebrit New GTA IV DLC announced: The Ballad of Gay Tony, also coming to retail: http://is.gd/FCKH #
• Just gave inFamous a go, need to give it some more time later, seems fun so far. #
• RT @TheNextWeb The most geeky tattoo, ever. – The Next Web http://bit.ly/h7yq9 (via @tweetmeme) #
• Listening to the Jaguar Skills Gaming Mix: http://is.gd/I6Da #
• And I’m already impressed, Justice and Daft Punk. #
• Is it just me who has troubles with Safari and the Wordpress backend? #
• Nice hypothetical Olympic 2012 posters: http://is.gd/Ibb9 Love how he hasn’t used the official logo! (via @mikekus) #
• Checking out the Google Wave video: http://wave.google.com/ #
• RT @dysonism Toy Story 3 trailer! Wooo http://bit.ly/9io2F #
• RT @abduzeedo #fridaygiveaway: Got a Pixelmator license http://bit.ly/J5uZi to give away, just RT this to participate! #
• After a few days using Safari, I am back on Firefox. #
• RT @gamebrit Want to know when the big three press conferences are on this year at E3? UK times (GMT) can be found here: http://is.gd/JT9h #
• The weather is lovely again today. Sitting down in the sun preparing some stuff for @gamebrit’s E3 coverage. #