Last week I was challenged to install Android Ice Cream Sandwich on the HTC HD2 in as little time as possible. The reason? It was my client’s lunch hour; she was sick of Windows Mobile and she wanted to play Angry Birds. The request came as no surprise; the setup and installation time for Android on the HP TouchPad is easily inside 30 minutes, so I happily accepted the challenge.

HP TouchPad users have a number of cloud options (whether using webOS or Android), enabling them to ensure that data remains safe on a remote server that can be accessed from a different computer in the event of mobile device failure.

While webOS has a slick and pleasing user interface, the platform is sadly lacking in applications. As time progresses, developments to the drivers for these devices will result in a fully functioning Ice Cream Sandwich for the HP TouchPad; but how can you easily upgrade your existing Android installation?

Costing just a few dollars each, garden solar lamps are a low-cost solution to night-time illumination – and they might just give you a useful piece of equipment for completing a tech project. Whether you’re looking for a rechargeable battery, an LED or even the solar panel itself, these devices contain a wealth of components that can be repurposed.

Can you imagine life without cameras, with no way to record memories of faces and places? Modern photography has been with us since 1839, and in that time has become increasingly sophisticated, moving away from special chemicals and paper in favour of digital technology. We no longer need to carry around Polaroid instant cameras, yet we still try to recreate the look and feel of these images using filter tools for desktop and mobile apps.

In the early days of Google, the vast amount of storage that was required to analyse the structure of the World Wide Web was stored in a custom PC case made from Lego! It’s been 16 years since that device was in use, yet PC builders still throw money at new cases when it is pretty [...]

Have you ever tried to take a photo of a document with your smartphone camera, hoping to convert it using OCR software into a PDF or Word document later on? Perhaps you’ve attempted to take a photo of an existing photograph, only to find your angle was slightly out. No matter how hard we try, it seems you can never take the perfectly-aligned photograph with a smartphone.

The standard method of installing a Windows Phone app is currently threefold – the Marketplace via your phone or browser, or via the Zune desktop client. But what if the type of app you’re looking for doesn’t exist? The answer, then, is to look for homebrew apps, software developed by Windows Phone enthusiasts.

Thanks to the Internet, voice artistry is one of those roles that have taken on a whole new shape, with many thousands of voices now available for use in games, on websites, as voice-overs in corporate videos and much more. You can start your voice-over career on a very low budget, too!

Like any Android-based tablet, the Amazon Kindle Fire can be rooted. This in turn offers several advantages to the user, such as an increase in functionality via previously restricted apps. Unfortunately, the process of rooting isn’t as simple as it is with other Android devices. While apps such as Z4root can be used with phones and some tablets, the process involved in rooting a Kindle Fire at is a little more complicated.

Although the Nokia Lumia devices running Windows Phone have an advantage over other handsets (in the shape of the Carl Zeiss optics) the process of taking a photo on this platform is pretty much identical across all phones. What you do with the photos after this, however, is another matter entirely.

For Nokia Lumia users, there are various issues with the initial release of the Lumia 710 and 800 phones that have waited several months for resolution. Most notorious of these is the continued lack of Wi-Fi tethering, available in other Windows Phones (including the Nokia Lumia 900) and the “screen blackout” which occurs during phone calls.

Every four years a group of athletes convenes in a pre-selected country to engage in thrilling bouts of physical exertion, a display of skill that is rarely seen elsewhere, all in the name of being crowned champions. Of course, 2012 might be an Olympic year but it is also the year of the UEFA European Football Championship, a football (soccer) competition in which 16 teams compete for a rare attempt at an international trophy.

There are a multitude of video formats currently in use, both online and in digital cameras and mobile phones. The sheer number of these means that anyone hoping to convert, edit, share online (or all three) any footage recorded in one of the various non-standard video formats has to scrabble around the World Wide Web looking for a suitable converter. MTS is no different.

One of the things that becomes increasingly apparent the more you use an HP TouchPad (or any tablet computer) is that a software keyboard is only good for so much writing. After a while, you need a hardware keyboard to take the strain – many errors can be made with a software keyboard, regardless of how good your multi-touch display might be.