Dyson’s steering mechanism on its vacuum cleaners was patented in 2009, but now media friendly inventor James Dyson is looking closely at Samsung’s Motion Sync vacuum cleaners, which debuted at the recent IFA tech show (along with the Samsung Galaxy Gear watch). It looks spookily family to Dyson.

Samsung has many patent lawyers so I find it hard not to believe that this is a deliberate or utterly reckless infringement of our patent. We have been forced to issue proceedings in the English High Court, but I would much rather invest in research to develop new technology than have to sue.

Isn’t it amazing how many patent holders end up suing Samsung…

When you are a BBC reporter, and you’re writing a story about a campaign to reopen up Ashaig Airfield on Skye, you need an angle. But will anyone notice your angle is to talk to the star about your favourite film as a child?

The crisp fresh air and the unending green rolling hills is something I always think of. In all of my global travels, I have never seen that particular shade of green It’s a one-of-a-kind place in colour and character.”

Yes, the Airfield should reopen because Flash Gordon thinks it would be a good idea.

Will there be another Samsung Windows Phone handset? Yes. Will it feel a little bit ‘meh’ when compared to the latest handsets from Nokia Microsoft? More than likely. Will it feel like Samsung isn’t putting an effort into getting consumers to buy the handset? Yes. But then, that’s not why Samsung is involved with Windows Phone.

Samsung is part of Windows Phone 8, they have handsets, and very little marketing but they are there (and outselling HTC into the bargain). In my opinion, they’re not there for consumers, but to gather information and keep a check on Microsoft’s mobile plans, while Galaxy/Android continues to rule.

Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia’s Devices and Services division probably means a little more Windows Phone involvement from the South Korean company. More thoughts by myself over on All About Windows Phone.

Almost, but not quite, a bingo card for the Tim Cook show on Tuesday, over on Forbes.

Tuesday’s iPhone Will Be Brought To You By The Number 5 And The Letters S and C.

Everyone is confidently expecting two new iPhone models, the 5S and the 5C. The 5S is expected to be an iterative release, building on the iPhone 5. Given the majority of iPhone 4S owners are on two year contracts which are coming to an end, the 5S will be coming along at the right time for them to sign on and stay in the Apple ecosystem. What will the 5S bring along that keeps Apple’s offering as fresh as possible against handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S4.

…and eight more.

I might have hinted at this near the end of my thoughts looking back at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe podcast. I had a blast doing the show, which this year was recorded and broadcast live on Castle FM as well as going out as a podcast through the usual RSS powered sources.

When the Fringe was over, the time-slot on the FM dial was still open, so it felt natural to keep the one hour format of music and intervews going, but with some tweaks to fit the landscape in Edinburgh for the other 11 months of the year. So it’s a weekly one-hour show, 3pm-4pm every Friday, with guests from comedy, theatre, music, and the occasional special event, mixed in with bands playing in the local clubs, and a little quiz element called ‘Twenty Questions Wrong‘ (more on that in my next blog post, I think).

As I’m writing this after the event, you can listen to the show right now. I promise I’ll give you a bit more heads up next week so those of you outside Edinburgh can listen to the live stream from Castle FM. Truth is with the move to Castle FM’s Studio One I wanted to get all the buttons and sliders in the right place before the internet audience arrived!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

With Keith Jack, Leah Bonnema, Penny Black, Tom Diben’s theatre preview, and music from Sienna, The Gorms, Sham 69, and Matt Gloss and the Emulsions.
MP3 File – Show Notes – Podcast RSS Feed

I’ve done some speculation over on Forbes:

It’s a long road for Jolla, but if they can make a success of their first handset during the first half of 2014, and work on a second handset for late 2015, then the boutique smartphone manufacturer will become a very attractive property either for an IPO or a buy-out by a larger company who wants to get into the smartphone game.

Or a company that wants to return to the smartphone game.

At this point this is nothing more than speculation, but it’s speculation that many people are quietly making. Nokia’s Board has agreed a deal that could see them legitimately return to the smartphone world in just over two years, and many of the engineers who worked on the Nokia N9 are working on its spiritual successor in Helsinki, just a stone’s throw away from Nokia’s head office in Espoo.

Here’s a fun game to play over the next few days. Watch the news websites and tech blogs and see how many articles about the Samsung Galaxy Gear are posted. Looking at web traffic numbers on some stories in the first 24 hours, it doesn’t look like the announcement of the Galaxy Gear has created any significant public enthusiasm. If it has, websites are going to keep finding angles to write about the watch.

Right now? It’s a sea of ‘Samsung were too early’, ‘This looks silly’, ‘They really want to lock-in users’, and ‘Why?’ stories. That’s fine for today, because journalists who penciled in ‘launch’ and ‘follow up’ articles in their diary need to find something. But when an Apple device launches, there’s always a good few days of productive page views to chase. I don’t see the same lust for the Galaxy Gear in the log files.

Which is not a good sign if you are Samsung.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The AAWP podcast spent all of yesterday’s show talking over the Microsoft/Nokia deal in some detail, with Rafe lending a lot of detail, numbers, and insight, while I focussed on the conspiracy theories, mad plans, and a bit of Shakespeare.

As if the world of smartphones wasn’t satisfied with Microsoft buying Nokia, Google have announced the new version of Android (v4.4) will be called…

Kit-kat.

Seriously was?Google so annoyed that nobody had written about Android for eight hours that they just rolled out the wackiest, craziest, idea possible? With Kit-kat advertised on every Android handset, and Nexus handsets advertised on ever Nestl? chocolate wafer bar for the next few weeks, it reminds me of the sort of crazy moves Google used to pull on April Fools Day in the past.

I’ll be interested to see how the Nestle boycott around baby milk (babymilkaction.org) will impact on Android.

Some hopefully rational thinking by myself over on All About Windows Phone, given the news today of Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia’s Devices and Services division:

The 2014 Eurovision Song Contest will be held in a MacGyvered hall, which is part of a refurbished shipyard, on an island just off the coast of Denmark, relativly near to Copenhagen

Honestly, the jokes write themselves.?What will the Eurovision circus do when trapped on our own Charlie Brooker-esque Daily Mail Island?

Daily Mail Island, a reality TV show where several normal people are deposited on an island and not allowed access to any media other than the strongly right-wing and conservative Daily Mail newspaper, leading to them becoming progressively more irrational and brutal as the series progresses – for example, tying teenage lovers together with sacks on their heads and beating them, or sealing a teenager caught masturbating into a coffin filled with broken glass and dog faeces and throwing it over a cliff and their language devolving into rhetorical questions and sarcastic snorts

Morgan Stanley are ‘holding off’ on a move to BB10 (as a company they are heavy BB7 users). The reason of course is the long0term support of the platform, which is tied up in the long-term survival of BlackBerry as a company. Developers are hesitant to switch fully to BB10, relying on cross-platform tools such as Unity in the meantime; business clients are hesitant to sign up lengthy support contracts that will impact on their IT department for years; and the high street seems to be turning away from the physical keyboard on the Q10 and Q5.

BlackBerry’s quarterly result (due out September 27th) are going to need to be stellar. If not, there will be more hesitation, more people thinking they should look at other options, and the slide will continue.

And by this point I would expect Microsoft and Nokia to have sent in their A-List marketing teams to Morgan Stanley to pitch?hard for Windows Phone to take over.

It might be a derivate of the regular Galaxy S4, but the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini is a nice size in my hand, does all the basic smartphoen tasks well, and burns through the battery far too quickly.

A few extra millimetres of depth would not have spoiled the lines of the S4 Mini, but would have allowed a larger battery compartment to be placed into the design. FInding another 200-300mAh with slightly more volume would have made the S4 Mini a handset that can get through the day without the user having to make any compromises in how they use the handset.

Samsung’s designers had it easy with the S4 – they just threw everything into the chassis, and made it as big as it needed to be. The S4 Mini needed a bit more style, a bit more love, and some rational decisions. This smartphone is quite simply, a fantastic idea that needed more focus on it’s own achievable goals from Samsung. And it didn’t get it.

My full review is over on Forbes.

Probably the nicest, most accurate, and totaly honest preview you’ll find of this year’s ‘The X-Factor’ is by Daniel Gould, over on SofaBet:

…it should be worth looking out for producers’ usual tropes. As has been hotly debated in our comments section in the past, comparing contestants across years is something that has to be done with caution. Nonetheless, we do consistently see producers setting up certain tried-and-trusted trajectories.

Take one example: the divisive/pantomime act, performed with aplomb by Rylan Clark last year. While there are salient differences between Rylan and those who have previously fulfilled a similar function – Katie Waissel, Wagner, Jedward, Chico et al ? there are also some commonalities. Broadly, the set-up is for a transition from love-to-hate to love-to-watch… ?So don’t dismiss the possibility of an apparently poor and controversial auditionee evolving into a major plank of the series ? a narrative arc usually involving a bottom two appearance and controversial rescue, and leading ultimately to redemption.

And that, as they say, was the Fringe. Everyone is going over their August performances, from the Fringe office to the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. Let’s do the same with the Edinburgh Fringe podcast. This was the ninth year of the daily podcast from the Capital, with music, guests, and Fringe news, bringing as many different facets of the Fringe as possible to the show. Not just the comedy, or the theatre, but the whole smash.

In short, if you were at the Fringe, it was a backstage pass. If you weren’t, my goal was to make you as jealous as possible.

This year saw one of the biggest changes to the show since it launched. Working with Castle FM, the show was broadcast live on Castle FM’s live stream, before being rebroadcast across Edinburgh on 98.8 FM, and then available as the regular Edinburgh Fringe podcast from the usual sites and RSS feeds.

This meant a slight change in format. The guests remained, but I was able to bring in a lot more music from many of the acts performing at the Fringe, as well as committing to four interviews in each weekday podcast. And while some of the interviews were pre-recorded in town, the vast majority of them were done in the studio, live, with no safety net.

It needed a bit more organising, and of course the interviewees had to be in the studio, ready to go, when the faders came up on the microphone. For that effort, I think it added a lot of energy to the show.?As to the audience reaction, the quickest check was through iTunes, and the podcast charts. The Fringe podcast reached #2 in the Performing Arts chart (beaten only by the Radio 4 Play For The Day, I finally overtook The Archers); #3 in the Arts chart; and peaked at number #51 in the overall chart. I’d call that a success.

The question is, what happens next?

Answer number one is Fringe 2014. It would be the tenth year of the podcast, and that’s a pretty important number for me (and for podcasting). But that’s not until August next year, which is eleven months away. I still think there’s a gap in the market for a podcast that brings good chat, great music, and brings the best of Edinburgh to listeners in the capital (and further afield) all year round…

There’s an idea.