I’m aware that this might sound like the ranting of a man approaching middle age, jaded by years of iPods and MP3 players and OS updates and finding the right app to record with, but the MiniDisc really was a great format. It didn’t have all of that baggage – it was literally a “press play and enjoy” device.

There are an awful lot of guides out there listing the so-called best feeds to follow on Twitter. Narrowing down a list of the ten best feeds can be tricky. There are so many users, so many fascinating topics – presenting only ten is barely scratching the surface of Twitter utopia. So my approach has been this – I like MakeUseOf, you like MakeUseOf – so there is a very good chance that you’ll like some or all of these Twitter feeds.

In the corner of my room, collecting dust, sits the component pieces of my Xbox 360. Purchased as a Christmas present for me and my better half in mid-2007, it has been in a state of disrepair since Christmas 2011 when it decided that – for one reason or another – it didn’t want to play anymore. As most of you reading this will know, most Xbox 360s from that era came with certain… “issues”.

Updating a Windows Phone should be a pretty straightforward process. Sadly, however, the process doesn’t always work as intended; updates can fail. In most cases when an update fails and with no usable data on the device, your phone will be more or less bricked.
Fortunately, there is a way around this problem.

Have you ever run into problems using iTunes or any other podcast-downloading app, concerned that they either do too much or seem to take a while to load up? Perhaps you use Windows Media Player or a different desktop application and have been looking for an alternative? You might even be using a Windows Phone and are already familiar with using Zune. But did you know that Zune can also be used for managing podcasts?

Windows Phone users had a surprise last week when a silent update to the Zune client resulted in the removal of the ability to browse the Marketplace. Zune might have had its critics, but as a media player and sync tool it was far superior to Windows Media Player and ActiveSync/Windows Mobile Device Manager. So what can Windows Phone users do?

As slick, smooth and functional as webOS is on the HP TouchPad, and wherever the future of the platform may lie, there remains a problem – the shortage of apps. The fact remains that there are a whole host of application types and games that could run on the HP TouchPad, if only the developers had a mind to do so. HP TouchPad owners (and there are a lot of us!) have one alternative…..

Reading novels and manuals on your favourite eBook reader is a great way to relax – but what if you need something with an empathising quality that can help you to get out of a rut? Inspirational and motivational books have been big business since the 1960s, illustrating to readers how to take control of the lives in various ways from sexuality and self-sufficiency to getting ahead of the 9-5 pack and weight loss.

One of the most frustrating things for users of the Windows Phone platform upon its first release was the inability to set custom ringtones. Fortunately this is one of the areas in which the Mango update (officially known as Windows Phone 7.5) was able to improve the operating system, and as a result it is now possible to add ringtones for incoming calls. There are several ways of doing this.

One of the benefits of using operating systems from the same company is that they have a certain level of compatibility. What this means is that it should be an easy task to connect to a Windows server with a Windows computer and check what is going on, using Terminal Services or its successor Remote Desktop. This compatibility goes beyond desktop devices however.