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.

Streaming media has become big business in the past few years, with YouTube, Hulu and BBC iPlayer all great examples of how the web has changed the way we enjoy music, TV and film. Many of these new companies have rode the back of the founders of the Internet age, companies such as AOL, Microsoft and Apple. But where does this leave Microsoft?

Over the past year or so, rumours have continued to surface concerning the idea of a Facebook phone, a portable handset that will give the user direct mobile access to the popular social network. The idea is simple – from the comfort of your Facebook phone you’ll be able to upload photos, send messages, and even play games.

Skype is a great way to communicate with friends, family and colleagues across the Internet using its text, voice and webcam chat features. But it can all get a little bit dull, using it in the same way, day after day. But Skype is thankfully equipped with all of the necessary hooks for third party apps to customize and improve the experience.

Have you ever had your computer hacked, or wondered if some off mouse movement was down to an online intruder? The threat remains a potent one, but with adequate security software installed on your computer you should find that your data remains intact and private.

Following the success of books such as The Time Traveller’s Wife (later adapted into a movie) the sci-fi romance genre has been booming, with many authors releasing works concerning time travel, aliens, space operas and futuristic habitats – all featuring romances.

In 2011 I wrote an op-ed piece (for a different website…!) about how I felt that Microsoft had moved away from being the many-tentacled corporate beast with no interest in providing a solid, working operating system and every interest in raping dollars out of customers. I argued that after the failure of Windows Vista, Microsoft had emerged as a company in touch with its user base, listening and almost caring.

If, like me, you have a vast collection of music stored across antiquated formats, you might be wondering exactly what you can do to save space and get rid of these recordings. In the case of cassette and vinyl, it is relatively simple to record the albums with your computer, enabling you to either place [...]

One of the more popular open source audio applications, Audacity, has recently upgraded to version 2.0 and is now no longer in Beta. Audacity has some great tools and effects that can be used to deliver great results. However, despite the facility to save your audio in a number of different formats, Audacity doesn’t natively allow you to export data as MP3.

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?