Welcome to the Weekly Tech Update with me, Mike Walmsley. It’s a look at everything that has happened in the world of technology, the Internet, Search Engines and social media over the last week. This week I have stories about Microsoft, LG, Apple, Facebook, Google, Remembrance Sunday and I’ve even got the most popular tweet in Twitters history…

Technology

If you are looking for a new TV then you might be interested in the new 84” Ultra High Definition TV from LG. It will be released here in the UK at the end of this month and has a resolution that is four times greater than a standard HD set. It also has 3D capability and comes with seven pairs of 3D glasses. It also comes with a £15 000 price tag that means you probably don’t have enough time to be good enough between now and Christmas for Santa Claus to leave one in your Christmas stocking.

If you have a small business but no fixed premises such as a mobile hairdresser or taxi driver then you may well struggle to take card payments from your customers. A new service has just been launched that may help you out. It’s called iZettle and for just £20 you can purchase a card reader that attaches to an iPhone, iPad or certain Android handsets and will enable you to take card payments. It’s a really simple system to use and can even email a receipt to the purchaser. At the moment it is being promoted by Everything Everywhere

Internet

Microsoft Office may very well be coming to an iOS or Android device near you in 2013. It is thought that users will initially be able to view documents on their smartphones but will also be able to buy a subscription to Office 365 that will then allow users to edit documents.

Here is a strange fact for you, iPad owners download five times as many apps as the owners of Android tablets while Android phone owners download far more apps than iPhone owners. Of course everybody downloads more apps than Blackberry owners.

Search Engines

The Panda is back! Google released another Panda update on November 5^th causing a few fireworks when site owners found that their rankings had dropped. Panda is a codename used by Google to a change in the algorithm that it uses to rank websites. The aim is to stop sites with low quality content from appearing high up in Google rankings. If you have found your rankings have suddenly dropped over the last few days then do get in touch with me as there are ways that you can reverse this fall.

You may have noticed some changes to the way Google displays its search results. They are rolling out a new user interface for desktops where the menu items that were formerly in a side bar now run across the page just above the search box, mirroring the version that mobile users see.  This is additional to the black bar that runs across the top of the page and also includes a new option to filter the results for applications. If you haven’t noticed the change yet you will do in the next few weeks.

Social Media

If you are an admin of a brand page on Facebook and you have an iPhone then you will be very pleased to hear that the latest update to the Facebook Pages app for iOS allows you to queue your messages for the first time rather than your updates having been posted immediately as previously happened. This sort of functionality has previously been available through services such as Hoot Suite or Tweet Deck and now Facebook has caught up and are providing a service that will be very useful to page owners.

The 11^th of November is a very poignant date marking the anniversary of the ending of the First World War in 1918. Since 1919 a two minute silence has been observed in the UK at 11 o clock, the time the guns fell silent as the armistice came into effect. People in the UK buy and wear red poppies as a mark of respect to those who have fallen in combat. The proceeds from the poppies are used by the Royal British Legion to help support the injured soldiers and the families of those British troops that have been killed in all conflicts since 1918. This year they are taking to social media in a big way and are using an app called Thunderclap to send a message out saying that users will be observing the two minute silence at 11 o clock this Sunday. The messages will go out at 9 am on the morning and will read “I’ll be remembering the fallen at 11 o’clock“ with the hashtags #2MinuteSilence and #LestWeForget. If you want to take part in this show of support then you will find a link to the page that allows you to sign up to this in the credits of todays show.

And finally, who would have thought that three words would be the most retweeted in Twiter history. Those romantics out there will be disappointed to find that the three words in question were not “I love you” but that it was “Four more years” tweeted by Barrack Obama’s official Twitter account when it became apparent that the US president had secured a second term in office on Tuesday night. The tweet has been retweeted over 700 000 times.