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 from Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and even the British Government are getting in on the act so stay tuned…

Technology

The big news this week was the announcement of not one but two new iPads. As had widely been expected there was a new iPad Mini with a 7.9” screen. Many feel that at £269 for a 16Gb model it is not competitively priced for what you get, aq 1024×768 display, the same A5 chip that is in the iPad2 and there is a potential issue with its 4G connectivity. That issue is that the bandwidth that the iPad Mini uses to access 4G is only in use by Everything Everywhere so you will have to use their network to gain superfast broadband sppeds.

Amazon have finally launched their two tablets, the Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD in the UK. The higher specced Kindle Fire HD is £159 for the 16Gb version but is wi-fi only and there is no 3G option for either device. Amazon say that they are selling them at cost and are relying on sales of apps and other services to make profit.

So which tablet would you prefer to get this holiday season, the iPad Mini, Kindle Fire HD or a Nexus 7, leave me a comment and let me know.

Internet

A British government official has caused controversy by saying that people should provide social networks with fake details to help protect themselves online. Andy Smith, internet security chief at the Cabinet Office, suggested that users should only give correct details to trusted sites such as government sites. This would of course contravene the terms of services of such sites and is it really a good thing to have people pretending to be somebody that they’re not online? Surely fake people are one of the biggest problems with the internet?

BBC has released a new version of its popular iPlayer for Android that allows users to be able to watch catch up TV and it is compatible with Jelly Bean devices. The app has also been renamed and is now the BBC Media Player.

Search Engines

The Google Penguin update that took place a few months ago penalised sites that had duplicate content on them and this has led to a lot of concern from digital media managers as to how to protect their sites from being penalised. Matt Cutts, Google’s official spokesperson has revealed in a video this week that it is OK to quote other articles as long as you post a link back to the original site, use block quotes and do not lift entire articles. You can read more about this on my blog.

If you are a Microsoft X Box owner then you are probably already aware of the voice search function that is available to search for content on the console but now Microsoft have announced that it can also be used to search the web via its Bing search engine.

Social Media

LinkedIn have launched video ads. The videos can be up to 30 seconds in length and are 350×250 in size. The user who has clicked on the ad will be taken to a landing page when the ad has finished. The system uses the same targeting mechanism as existing LinkedIn ads and LinkedIn claim that a video ad is clicked on three times as often as the traditional text ads.

According to a new OFCOM report 12-15 year old Facebook users have never met a quarter of their friends on the social network. This shows a real generation gap as I would never accept a friend request on Facebook from somebody I did not already know in real life. I guess I’m just getting old.

And finally I read this week about a gadget that can measure your pulse during exercise and selects music from your playlist that matches your heart rate. I admit that there is nothing more irritating than trying to change the tune I’m listening to as I jog. I’m a man and anything that means I don’t have to multitask while running is surely a good thing.