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 the rebirth of MySpace, remember them?  The Barnes  and Noble Nook coming to the UK, Twitter, Kellogg’s, Kellogg’s? Kellogg’s and much more….

Technology

Barnes and Noble, the US bookseller, is going to release two of its Nook tablets into the UK in time for Christmas. The Nook HD has a 7.7” screen and is £159 for the 8GB model and £189 for the 16GB version. There is also a Nook HD+ which has a 9.5” screen and packs a 1.5GHz processor which is slightly faster than the 1.3GHz processor of the Nook HD. The HD+ is more expensive, but does have more memory, with a 32GB unit setting you back £229 and the 64GB version costing £269. Barnes and Noble have definitely got the Amazon Kindle HD and the Google Nexus 7 firmly in their sights with a £159 price point and it may well come down to which company has the best distribution deals that will decide who will reign supreme in the budget tablet market this Christmas.

If you are in the market for a new mobile then you might want to give the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 a whirl. Th, so called phablet , will be released in the UK on Monday. It has a huge 5.5” Super Amoled screen as well as very fast 1.6GHz quad core processor, an 8 Megapixel rear facing camera and a front facing 1.9 megapixel camera and will run Jellybean, the latest version of the Android operating system. It is definitely worth checking out especially if you want a big screen on your phone.

Internet

Myspace is going to relaunch itself with a beautiful new interface that many web pundits are simply drooling over. The social network that was once king of the pile in social media terms has dropped off the radar of most people but with this new version it may become relevant again. It is being aimed at the creative community and musicians in particular providing them not only with a way to share their music with their fans but to also get some very nifty analytics on their followers behaviour. No date has yet been set for the relaunch, so I guess we will all just have to watch this Myspace.

Are you a former user of Apple’s MobileMe? No doubt you found that when you were forced to start using iCloud last year that the fact you were to get a whopping 20GB of storage put a smile on your face. Now Apple is reducing the free quota down to 5GB. Users have reported receiving emails from Apple advising them that from 30 September 2012 their free quota will be reduced and those that are using more than 5GB have two options, delete some of their data or pay for the excess storage that they are using. Have you been affected by this, drop me a line and let me know.

Search Engines

First Apple dropped Google maps from iOS6, now it seems that Google are sinking. Not in a financial sense, Google launched a new service on Tuesday that takes Google’s Street View technology underwater and allows you to explore six of the world’s most beautiful coral reefs. No doubt Germany will raise privacy issues and insist that all sea life is pixelated out of the images.

News International, the company headed up by Rupert Murdoch, blocked search engines from indexing its sites back in 2010 claiming that it was stopping people gaining free access to its content. The group have now reversed this decision… partially. The first two sentences of an article will visible to search engines and will allow them to index each story. The hope is that by doing this News International will be able to pick up new subscribers to the content that it charges for. My initial thought is that they are going to have to start writing copy that is search engine friendly in those first two sentences and that search engine friendly copy is not always user friendly copy. We will have to wait and see…

Social Media

Twitter has launched a new feature that allows its users to add a header image to their profile. It is similar to the cover photo’s that are ubiquitous on Facebook now. The image can be up to 1200×600 pixels in size and, unlike with Facebook, can contain text with calls to action and web addresses in the image. One thing to note is that your profile pic, bio, location and website address are overlaid onto the centre of the image so be careful with the positioning of any text that you might like to add to your image. You can get step by step instructions on how to add a header image to your Twitter profile on my blog.

And finally, Kelloggs, the breakfast cereal manufacturer, has opened a very special shop in Soho, London. The shop stocks one of their new products, Special K Cracker Crisps, and you can get a bag for free in return for re4 tweeting out about the product. They have called the property “The Tweet Shop”, but if you want a pack you’d better be quick the offer is only on until Friday 28/09/12.