Given the nature of our hectic lives, shopping apps have the potential to make the traditional high street rush a lot calmer. The ideas behind them are simple, often clever, and indeed in some cases, useful. Check them out.

Amazon Shopping App
The Amazon Shopping App is as you have probably deduced is Amazon.co.uk on your phone. Compatible with all phones that have a WAP browser, the app incorporates all the better qualities of the website, namely trustworthy reviews and wishlists. In addition you can place orders (naturally) and cancel them if you change your mind(handy). iPhone and iPod users receive an additional benefit via the product matching service: Take a picture of something you want to buy and the app will try to match the product with something for sale on Amazon.co.uk(Nice).

Red Laser for iPhone
Red Laser is not just a weapon used in Star Trek, but is also a useful shopping App. It is in essence a barcode reader, and though making the lives of Tesco’s staff easier does not seem like a huge benefit to the average shopper as discovering prices in most shops is straight forward, comparing the price to other retailers both on and offline is invaluable to see if you are getting the best price. This App is a bargain hunters dream. See the video.

Frugalytics for Blackberry
The idea behind this app, is that you search for a product and find the best price. Not as sophisticated as Red Laser as you select the product from drop down lists, it does sneak into the usefulness category however, as you do not have to have the product in front of you to use it.

Ebay App
If you are worried that you may miss the chance to outbid your arch enemy for that trinket then worry no more. The ebay app for smartphones can help you stay at the head of your game by allowing mobile bidding and searching. The chances are that what you are buying is cheaper elsewhere but we both know that winning the bid is the important factor, and nothing else matters. Available for most smartphones. Video clip:

Happy shopping everyone, especially at Christmas!

Retro will have to raise its head in computer design at some point, so let’s have a look at the iMacs and netbooks of the future.

Computer manufacturers are always finding new ways to make things smaller, sleeker and more minimal. However, take a look at history in automobile design, fashion and, er, lots of other areas and you’ll see that retro always overtakes the efforts of designers to produce fresh ideas.

So stop looking at all those fancy ultra-thin laptops for sale now in order to predict the future of computer design. Let’s have a look at what our grandkids’ computers will really look like. The retro backlash starts here…

Dirty Mac

Look at this for old Apple design! That mouse is cuter than Mickey and Jerry put together and those mushy, grubby keys just look so inviting.

Twiki’s Mom

Forget the swanky desktops of today, this ADM 3A, first seen in 1975, is just lovely. I don’t think Pininfarina was involved in the design process but he’d have been pleased with those curves.

Dial Me In

Buttons that look like sweets, flip switches and twitching needle dials will all feature highly in the future.

A Lot of Brass

OK maybe we’ve gone too far back here but you still want it in your house, right?

Sesame Tweet

Laptops should be too embarrassing to take down to Starbucks for a coffee. This one screams, “leave me at home! Go talk to real people!”

Rise of the Machines

It’s healthy for a computer to look like it hates you and wants to chase you, firing laser guns and billowing noxious smoke from huge vents.

Terminal Velocity

Yes, a computer should also look part furniture, part gymnastic bench. All future designs will be in teak condition!

Clam Hell

Still serviceable, but this is where things started to go wrong: Slim, portable and getting a little too trendy.

Picture sources: Flickr 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Thanks to you all!

Here is a collection of cool quotes, they are from a range of famous people you may know including those in the industry, authors, inventors and scientists. Hope you enjoy them! Many will provide you with those ‘hmmmm’ moments.

• Modern technology. Owes ecology. An apology. – Alan M Eddison
• The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people. – Karl Marx
• Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant. – Mitchell Kapor
• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. – Arthur C Clarke
• Men have become the tools of their tools. – Henry David Thoreau
• It is appallingly obvious our technology has exceeded our humanity. – Albert Einstein
• The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers. – Sydney J Harris
• The science of today is the technology of tomorrow. – Edward Teller
• Five years ago, we thought of the Web as a new medium, not a new economy. – Clement Mok
• The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. – Freeman Dyson

We think these are some of the best quotes out their on this topic. But if you have more that you like then you are welcome to put them below in the comments section.

Drinking and driving may not go together, but scientists in (where else?) Scotland believe they have come up with a way of using alcohol for the fuel tank.

Researchers from Edinburgh Napier University’s Biofuel Research Centre say they have successfully come up with a next-generation butanol biofuel made from whisky by-products, called biobutanol.

If you have a passion for fine bourbon or Scotch, though, don’t worry – this new biofuel is made not from the drink itself but from its by-products, so no drinkable spirits are wasted.

The researchers’ formula mixes pot ale, a liquid which comes from the copper stills used in distilleries, with ‘draff’, the grains left over from whisky production. Every year the whisky distilling industry creates 1,600 million litres of pot ale and nearly 190,000 tonnes of draff.

The two-year, £260,000 project received funding from Scottish Enterprise. For its research, the centre received samples of whisky distilling by-products from Edinburgh-based Diageo’s Glenkinchie Distillery.

Butanol fuels are reported to be up to 25 per cent more efficient than their better-known ethanol cousins. And, unlike ethanol, cars could use biobutanol in their fuel tanks in place of ordinary petrol.

The university’s Professor Martin Tangney commented: “While some companies are growing crops to generate biofuel, we are investigating excess materials such as whisky by-products to develop them.”

The EU has said that biofuels should make up 10% of total fuel sales by 2020. Napier University is now working on bringing its new product to the fuel pumps.

Source used: picnook. Image from sxc, owned by ‘peterfeije’.