Recent Blog Posts

Let’s be honest, the Inspect-a-Gadget elves have huge ears, it’s what makes us elves… but that doesn’t stop us from testing out human earphones, earbuds and (for that matter) earrings are ear ...

If you had to take a random stab at naming the types of products we get to see in the Computer Weekly Inspect-a-Gadget test lab, you’d probably come up a list that includes most of the usual ...

When a digitally-heavy business takes on new distribution channels (and let’s remember that ‘channel’ in the modern sense means everything from retail shops to the web and then onwards to mobile, ...

With a name like Skyflow, an organisation or brand could be loft window specialist, a plumbing contractor or a premier service for executives to buy unlimited ‘bottomless up’ drink services when ...

The Computer Weekly Developer Network team likes to dig deep and we’re not afraid of a meaty download when it comes to software product and developer professionals expressing their views. Looking ...

The Computer Weekly Developer Network newsdesk is used to seeing newsfeed stories with dateline and locations such as London, San Francisco, San Jose and New York… we’re even used to seeing ...

Video and web conference ability prowess (VAWCAP) is now a thing; we’re all working in the ‘new normal’ of Zoom-type remote dial-in experiences, brought about - obviously - as a result of the ...

There’s that moment of doom when you’re on a pre-call prep-call for a professional video job and the ‘producer’ gets to speak to you about your lighting. These people live in a world of rigs, boom ...

This is a guest post for Computer Weekly Open Source Insider written by Vibhav Sreekanti, VP Engineering at Stackrox -- a company known for its Kubernetes-native security capabilities, which it now ...

The Computer Weekly Inspect-a-Gadget elves have gotten past their initial ‘oh, look, it’s a terabyte drive' excitement factor. We’ve seen a whole raft of these units come through the testing lab ...

Exercise ropes have some different interpretations. In American English, we say ‘jump rope’, whereas the British English expression refers to ‘skipping rope’... but whether it’s a jump or a skip, ...

Inspect-a-Gadget has a confession to make - we have been shouting at our laptop.  Okay if not quite shouting, we have certainly been ‘projecting’ at the built-in microphone during Zoom calls, ...

Kids love electronic devices, but not every family is going to be comfortable with starting their offspring off on a smartphone and smartwatch during their pre-teen years, or indeed while they are ...

Lockdown happened - and, consequently, a lot of people looked into the idea of finding a place to stay that would allow them some disconnection from the world and a place where they could work and ...

Twenty years in the making, Lisbon, Portugal-founded OutSystems has (arguably) been working hard to position the breadth of its total technology proposition as rather more than any single low-code ...

Nobody can fit a square peg into a round hole, obviously. We can though, perhaps paradoxically, rely on a squarely-named company to provide software-centric solutions for a round, circular, ...

With only a proportion of developers classified as key workers (where their responsibilities perhaps included the operations-side of keeping mission-critical and life-critical systems up and ...

With only a proportion of developers classified as key workers (where their responsibilities perhaps included the operations-side of keeping mission-critical and life-critical systems up and ...

Here’s the thing about Honor keyboards… at first you don’t think you like them; the keypads on these machines are such a light-touch chicklet design and feel that you almost thing there’s not ...

With only a proportion of developers classified as key workers (where their responsibilities perhaps included the operations-side of keeping mission-critical and life-critical systems up and ...

With only a proportion of developers classified as key workers (where their responsibilities perhaps included the operations-side of keeping mission-critical and life-critical systems up and ...

With only a proportion of developers classified as key workers (where their responsibilities perhaps included the operations-side of keeping mission-critical and life-critical systems up and ...

With only a proportion of developers classified as key workers (where their responsibilities perhaps included the operations-side of keeping mission-critical and life-critical systems up and ...

In terms of so-called first world problems, we all have them from time to time. I can’t make spaghetti bolognese tonight as I only have linguine or pappardelle. My Internet access at home is ...

The Computer Weekly Developer Network examines the impact of Covid-19 on the software application development community. With only a proportion of developers classified as key workers (where their ...

The Computer Weekly Developer Network examines the impact of Covid-19 (Coronavirus) on the software application development community. With only a proportion of developers classified as key workers ...

The Inspect-a-Gadget elves are well-versed in all manner of shiny devices, hard lumps of computing power and even the occasionally frivolous technology gadget (the clue’s in the name, right ...

The Computer Weekly Developer Network examines the impact of Covid-19 on the software application development community. With only a proportion of developers classified as key workers (where their ...

Like everybody else, the Inspect-a-Gadget elves have been in lockdown. But, normally, the elves like to get out on the road, attend a few technology conferences and stay in a few cheap motels rooms ...

The Computer Weekly Developer Network examines the impact of Covid-19 on the software application development community. With only a proportion of developers classified as key workers (where their ...

Inspect-a-Gadget is of course a real person.  He/she/it is gender-neutral, but the elves that work for Inspect-a-Gadget are very much of this Earth and composed of a pound (or more) of flesh, just ...

The Computer Weekly Developer Network examines the impact of Covid-19 on the software application development community. With only a proportion of developers classified as key workers (where their ...

Just in case you spent 2020 on a different planet, the world has been living through an unimaginable pandemic in the shape of the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) contagion. As well the tragic loss of life ...

For a lot of people, the first reaction experienced when exposed to the term ‘hyperautomation’ is the groaning sense of marketingspeak overload. It’s almost as if the marcoms people get a sense of ...

Camera-envy used to be that ‘thing’ that long-lens-toting tourists would exhibit when parading around beauty spots, well-known tourist locations and perhaps even Disneyland. That time has passed. ...

The is a guest piece written for Computer Weekly Open Source Insider by Ruby Raley in her position as VP of healthcare at Axway, a company known for its ‘full lifecycle’ API management ...

The Kyvol Cybovac S31 Robot Vacuum sucks - and we mean that. But here’s the thing, we mean it in a good way. One might argue that robot vacuums have been brought to market before their time i.e. ...

Appian is a patient company. Despite the fact that the whole tech industry is falling over itself to tell us that it now offers low-code software automation advantages, the arguably more pure-play ...

Question: what’s better than project management? Answer: Invisible real-time data-driven project management, that’s what. Holy Land and US-based LinearB plays in this arena and the company insists ...

This is a guest post for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by Dr. Jon Sneyers in his capacity as senior image researcher, Cloudinary. Dr. Sneyers is the co-chair of JPEG XL adhoc ...

The Inspect-a-Gadget lab elves had some slightly unusual moments testing out the Razer Kaira Pro headset designed for Xbox, in a good way. Where’s the dongle?  We were sure there must have been a ...

Deep in the Inspect-a-Gadget lab, our elves don’t always get out and see the light of day that much; they’re quiet reflective characters who sometimes prefer the dim light of the backlit keyboard ...

The stuff of legends? The original Ali Baba for sure, but the tech firm Alibaba is also hoping to go down in the history books. TechTarget’s Aaron Tang has already detailed some of the firm’s most ...

All laptops are pretty much the same today, right?  Open the packaging and you get your basic clamshell unit, a power cable and adapter, a little warranty leaflet that you leave in the back of the ...

Let’s go back to basics and step back in time. When you’ve had a pair of (now considered ‘retro’) Sennheiser headphones in your teens (example shown here) the experience tends to leave you with a ...

The Inspect-a-Gadget team elves are a confirmed bunch of gamers.  Having started gaming life with TV Pong games back in the late 1970s and then graduating to the Atari 2600 in the 1980s, we’ve also ...

A new Huawei smartphone is always a bit of an occasion - and it’s usually an occasion that comes with the top brass from HQ flying into town to book out London’s ExCeL centre with an accompanying ...

Are you a so-called ‘urban adventurer’ at heart? That’s what Huawei sub-brand company Honor wants you to be with its latest smartwatch.  Actually, you could be an office-based user (oh okay, it’s ...

The lion’s share of the product analysis carried out by Inspect-a-Gadget is typically hardware-based. They’re things, devices, tools, machines and extensions i.e. the focus here is gadgets - that’s ...

The Computer Weekly Developer Network has been running a series of guest posts from technical authors who understand the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) not ...

The more complex and high-end a product, the more complex, convoluted and potentially cumbersome the install and usage experience. That would be the general summation of many of the devices we’ve ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

We’re conscientious souls here in the Inspect-A-Gadget lab i.e. we like to back-up.  With a couple of aging PCs that have been put through their paces (and ejected from a couple of airport scanner ...

This is part one of a two-part contributed piece for Computer Weekly Open Source Insider with part two linked here. This analysis of the role of open source in APIs is written by Postman CEO ...

This is part two of a two-part contributed piece for Computer Weekly Open Source Insider with part one linked here. This analysis of the role of open source in APIs is written by Postman CEO ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

The trouble with smartphones - apart from the fact that some people drop them and break the screen, lose them in taxi cabs or generally misplace them throughout day-to-day life - is that they’re ...

Automation is everywhere.  You can almost see it on the technology industry’s next batch of branded conference t-shirts… if, of course, we ever get to a point where we can start to re-engage at the ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

Here inside the (socially distanced) Inspect-a-Gadget test lab, we know Jabra for its high-usability form factor earphones and earbuds. But now, in 2020, we are indeed socially distanced, so Jabra ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

Applications used to just be applications. Now we have rapidly developed applications, cloud-native applications, composable highly componentised applications with synaptic connections to a host of ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

In case you’d missed it due to that cave you’re living in, we’re driving towards the post-Covid era of ‘new normal’ where the old way of life and the traditional way of things no longer happens the ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

Put yourself back somewhere in between punch cards (pre-dating the 1970s and earlier) and onward to the proliferation of the (8-inch) floppy-disk and subsequently the 3 1⁄2-inch floppy disks that ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

As all technically conversant people know, the combination of Developer interests when twinned with Operations (and vice versa) is known as DevOps. It’s a workable portmanteau that can even be ...

We users use Artificial Intelligence (AI) almost every day, often without even realising it i.e. a large amount of the apps and online services we all connect with have a degree of Machine Learning ...

There are use cases for technology that even the developers and manufacturers behind products probably never even think of. British ruggedised handheld and tablet specialist Conker may not have ...

There are only so many times users are going to pay for Microsoft Office 365 and shell out the annual subscription for a product that there are now alternatives for.   If we take e-mail clients out ...

Ape-named cloud connectivity company Kong has climbed a big gnarly branch upwards. The San Francisco headquartered firm has reached a ‘major’ release of its Kong Enterprise product, a software tool ...

Artificial Intelligence has changed. What started off somewhere around the 1970s or 1980s as an initial notion of human-like computer intelligence was almost before its time.  Hollywood may have ...

Pretty much everything to do with Razer is quite cool. The company refers to itself as the ‘lifestyle brand for gamers’ and often spells its name as RΛZΞR, with three nifty slashmarks instead of an ...

The jury is out on routers. In the world of technology, some people say router (rhymes with outer) and some people say router (rhymes with shooter) and many arguments have ensued in the space ...

If the global pandemic has taught us anything (apart from how important it is to be nice to people and how often we should wash our hands), then it is just how different our work lives can turn, ...

The world has gone continuous. Quite apart from the wider world itself going continuously 24x7 in the face of globalisation and ubiquitous interconnectivity, the software world has adopted more ...

The Prestigio Click&Touch keyboard from Clevetura is a clever and somewhat unusual piece of kit. Let’s just state this plain and simple: this is a Bluetooth keyboard that acts as keyboard, but ...

Like so many others, the OutSystems NextStep conference is now a virtual online-only event. Never knowingly under-conferenced, the Computer Weekly Developer Network lab team were keen not to let ...

This is a contributed piece for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by Andy Piper, VP of Engineering at Diffblue -- a company known for its technology which automatically generates tests ...

Jabra doesn’t call its Evolve2 85 product a set of headphones, the company calls it a Unified Communications headset. So is there more here than meets the eye? Sorry, ear. We tested the Jabra ...

We love Xbox One, but there’s one problem… it’s just too big of a box to think about taking away in your carry-on flight bag when you go away for a weekend or a little longer. Mobile gaming is ...

This is a guest post for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by Brad Robertson of Polyient Games.  Roberton launched Polyient Games, a spinoff of Polyient Labs, his early-stage ...

This is a guest post for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by Meera Rao in her capacity as senior director of product management for DevOps Solutions at Synopsys - the company is known ...

This Computer Weekly Developer Network series is devoted to examining the leading trends that go towards defining the shape of modern software application development.   As we have initially ...

This Computer Weekly Developer Network series is devoted to examining the leading trends that go towards defining the shape of modern software application development.  As we have initially ...

Among the arguably higher profile Virtual Private Network (VPN) brands out there this decade (so far) is NordVPN. What not every casual user might now is, this is a technology now built on open ...

This Computer Weekly Developer Network series is devoted to examining the leading trends that go towards defining the shape of modern software application development.  As we have initially ...

Every company is a software company. This central truism pervades throughout every layer of business and, specifically, throughout every layer of the technology industry itself. Even ...

This Computer Weekly Developer Network series is devoted to examining the leading trends that go towards defining the shape of modern software application development.  As we have initially ...

This Computer Weekly Developer Network series is devoted to examining the leading trends that go towards defining the shape of modern software application development.  As we have initially ...

This Computer Weekly Developer Network series is devoted to examining the leading trends that go towards defining the shape of modern software application development.   As we have initially ...

Matt Hancock’s latest app assignment has proven more of a head-scratcher than that one he released about himself, and as he dithers and delays at his desk over the release of anything serviceable ...