In a move to make its products more accessible to the public, Sony has moved to reduce the price of it PlayStation 3 down to just £199 which is a large cut from the original £250 price tag that has already been altered on the market. The large gaming giant is also planning to release a reduced version of its popular handheld gaming console with a price that will be set somewhere around £99 straight from the retailer. Since 2006 the PS3 gaming unit has already seen more than 50m in sales, with sales rising a great deal since a cheaper model was introduced in 2009.

Although retail price will be set by Sony at £199, it is predicted that many of the large retails will further cut the price down to £180 making it more affordable to the general public. Sony choose to release the news of the lower cost model at the Cologne GamesCom event along with the announcement that the mogul will also be releasing several new games such as DanceStar Party, Resistance: Burning Skies, and a few others. The cheaper version of the PSP will not have Wi-Fi which is part of the reason for the reduced price.

Vince Cable, the business secretary, claims that site blocking is too large of a task for the government and not entirely effective making it a very inefficient way to prevent file sharing. Due to this fact, the government has decided that its plans to block illegal filesharing websites is not viable and that there are better alternatives that are less costly and less time consuming. He added that the government is still however working on some type of plan that will tackle the problem of piracy.

Cable reported in a consultation document that ministers are still considering how they can best stop copyright infringement and music piracy online which is starting to leak over into other entertainment sectors such as film and television. He added that people will still be able to make their own copies of digital use which confirms the alteration of a law that makes it illegal to place a CD onto a digital device. Cable stated that it is only common sense to allow music to be used by personal owners in a manner of their own choosing, but that there still needs a way to make sure that piracy is contained.

The world of CFD, or Contracts For Difference, has been revolutionised in recent years by the inception of online trading platforms. Whilst many have welcomed the ease in which a CFD trading platform system in the UK has got so much easier, it has also led to many rookie traders getting in over their heads and making mistakes that have led to serious financial problems, and no-one should ever start dealing without speaking to an advisor.

The choice of CFD trading platforms is vast and varied, thanks to the online platforms and the downloadable apps for smartphones which literally allow you to trade as you walk the dog or sit on the bus. No longer do you have to trail down to the stock exchange in person, or give your broker on the phone, a few clicks here, a touch of the screen there and you are trading.

These platforms also give you the access to a vast range of shares that are available to you by only laying out the margin money, normally a percentage of approximately 10-15%. In fact, everything involved with CFD trading can be done on these platforms, and many carry informative tutorials for beginners to give them a better idea of what CFD trading actually is, and how it differs from traditional trading using cash.

The big advantage of CFD trading is that you can trade up to 15-20 times the amount of capital you actually have, and if the market moves in your favour there can be huge gains, but real care is till required.

Smartphones available today

When smartphones first came out they were identified as phones that could access the internet and offer you a small keypad that made multi-variable use of the internet possible. Then quickly came functions that not only allowed you to surf the web via wireless, but also download functions to play games, listen to music, learn facts, read magazines, and pretty much every other small thing you could think of.

However, while people are discovering new apps every day they did not know they needed such as Shazam, a great deal of people wonder if it’s possible for the phones to get any smarter.

In one word the answer is yes, and pretty soon the public is going to get its first taste of the smarter smartphone as the new RFID enabled mobiles start to hit the market. These smartphones will allow you to leave your wallet at home because instead of scanning a travel pass or your debit card you can simply scan your mobile device screen. Yes, there will soon be an app for that too, and with the possibilities of theft and identify fraud already large, you better make sure you have an iron lock on that phone any time you leave the house.

Despite the fact that many rioters seemed out of control in London and various UK towns over the past week of events, police were actually able to thwart a great deal of additional attacks by using the mobile phones of those they arrested to garner information about planned illegal action. Multiple attacks were prevented across London by Scotland Yard after investigators were able to get into social networking websites to read details of the attacks by using the mobiles of those heavily involved in the riots.

Included attacks that were discovered on the BlackBerry Messenger service were several stores on Oxford circus, attacks on the Olympics site, and attacks on both Westfield shopping centres. The mobile phones allowed them to access messages that listed details of the riots and of subsequent looting activities that were being tossed around the BBM service. Monitoring of the phones also allowed the Met to gain access to Twitter accounts that were involved in the riots so that they could prevent additional planned riots from occurring as well as to keep pace with where activity may be developing around Britain. Police remarked later that at one point they even considered shutting down Twitter and BBM use briefly during the riot crisis.

First we had desktop computers, which took up the space of a small pony, then we moved to laptops and the latest inception is the tablet, small, convenient, extremely portable and becoming more and more popular all the time. These tablets take using the internet to a whole new level, and the convenience of browsing, networking and shopping on the move is appreciated by thousands.

One question that has been raised regarding the latest tablets in about the anti-virus protection they offer. To be honest, when you are queuing up to get your hands on the latest tablet that does everything but sing and dance and bring you a coffee in the morning, anti-virus will not be at the front of your mind.

Some would argue that you wouldn’t dream of using your PC or laptop without anti-virus such as Norton Antivirus, and when you think of how much more personal a tablet is than a PC and the sensitivity of the data you may have stored there, it makes sense to ensure there is protection in place. However, the majority of people think that tablets aren’t as vulnerable as PC’s, and this is true to a certain extent.

Mobile operating systems work in a different way to broadband, and therefore are more immune to the common virus patterns; hence the manufacturers see no need to include anti-virus protection. The lack of built in anti-virus programmes in the new tablets has caused the main companies offering protection to create special anti-virus programmes designed specifically for use on tablets.

At the end of the day it is purely a matter of personal choice. Some will feel they have no need for anti-virus protection on their tablets, while others will clamour for it. At present the operating systems are nearly immune to viruses, and let’s hope with the constant improvements in technology it stays that way.

Blackberry Playbook

RIM’s management is taking some heat in the press as well as its poor Playbook performance as BlackBerry announces that it will soon launch seven new smartphones. Co-chief executive Jim Balsillie announced this week that the company will offer seven new mobiles over the next few months all with the new operating system but told shareholders that admittedly RIM has some challenges to face as it attempts to hit its sales target for the remainder of the year. He added that there have been some delays with the new OS, but that the mobiles will help the company reach its financial goals by the close of 2011.

Analysts are not quite as sure as Balsillie that this is even possible after seeing a large decrease in profits over the second quarter, and the fall of the market share of RIM by almost half this year does not offer much more hope. In fact, the company holds a market value of only $13.6bn which is quite low when compared to its high in 2008 of $75.2bn. However, according to other co-CEO, Mike Lazaridis said that the delays are only to make sure that the smartphones will hit the market with a storm so that the Bold can finally jump back to the top of the mobile pack.

Not everyone has a job that involves racing around a track at top speeds on a lightweight bike, but that does not mean that you cannot pretend to have an exciting job if you have the Samsung Galaxy Tab in your hands. In fact, according to some videos on Samsung’s World of Tab YouTube Channel even motorbike enthusiasts Hopper and JK enjoy taking some time off the track to play virtual racing on their tabs which you can see for yourself.

In the short video clip posted on the World of Tab you can watch the bikers face off playing a virtual game which looks like it thrills them as much as the real thing.  Of course, this is great fun, which is why you will want to take some time to watch the clip while you are on the Samsung channel because here you get a real glimpse of racing from the boys as well as a real look at the excellent performance of the Galaxy Tab.

This is due to the fact that when the boys are not playing around on the Tab, they use it to track their races so that they learn how to get through the course in the least amount of time. Watching them map out their path and then race it in real life is thrilling, and only possible due to the sheer brilliance of the new Samsung Galaxy Tab.

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When it comes to purchasing a smartphone there are plenty of options as almost every mobile on the market is a smartphone. However, 2011 has seen a great deal of innovation and it is likely that the choices will only get better, but if you need a mobile now here is what you should check out.

The Motorola Atrix is first up on the list as it is packed with power and easily earns its billing as the fastest smartphone on the market right now. Sporting fingerprint recognition and 48GB of memory, it is hard not to look at the rest of the specs and feel awed. The ultra fast processor means that the use of media like multimedia ring back features can be viewed and integrated seamlessly like never before.

On the other hand, those who prefer a phone that embraces social networking will want to check out the HTC Salsa as it offers a great Facebook widget and some excellent design.  It comes with a large list of impressive specs, but the megapixel camera and proximity sensor stand out as unique.

Finally, while Nokia may get a lot of flak for its phones, its N9 is worth a second look given the fact that it offers the Symbian OS, 512MB of RAM, the near field technology, Wi-Fi, HDMI outlets, and the 12 megapixel camera.

Google created Google+ as its final solid attempt to make a go of social networking and keep Facebook ranked the second most popular website protecting their own reign at the top, so the news that the most popular person is Mark Zuckerberg the Facebook creator hast o be a bit of a slap on the face. On Tuesday of this week, the Facebook head had about 30,000 followers, and the number continues to grow proving that it is hard to beat the king of social networking at his own game, as he obviously understands the perks of social media use.

That beats Google’s CEO Larry Page by about 33% on Tuesday who no doubt he could be the ‘Tom’ of Google+ easily given its his company’s creation.  Outside of these two, the rest of the top ten is made up of Google staffers and the prominent tech journalists Gina Trapani, Leo Laporte, Robert Scoble, and MG Siegler. Also on the list of top followed pages are web publications that are listed on Google+ including The Next Web and Mashable.  However, as Google+ continues to open up it’s a good guess that celebrities will soon overtake the top ten.