London-based journalist, occasional artist.
Tech Editor at HuffPost UK
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Contact details, CV & other whatnot below.
Technology Editor of the Huffington Post UK.
Former Assistant News & Politics editor at HuffPost, former editor of the UK's top men's blog, Asylum.co.uk, former reporter for Metro New York and graduate of NYU (MA Journalism) and Cambridge University.
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In 2006, after studying history at the University of Cambridge and completing an internship at the BBC, Michael moved to New York City to read for an MA in journalism.
While in New York he worked full-time as a reporter for Metro New York newspaper, covering crime, transportation and the 2008 election. He also freelanced for several other publications, most notably The Brooklyn Rail.
In 2008 Michael joined AOL as an assistant editor for Asylum, a new men’s online magazine. Four months later, with the site now the leader in its category and having graduated from NYU, he moved back to London to become Asylum’s UK editor. When he left Asylum in 2011 the site had more than a million visitors a month.
In 2011 Michael joined The Huffington Post as UK Assistant News & Politics Editor, and in June 2012 was promoted to Technology Editor.
Overall editorial responsibility for HuffPost UK's technology content and website.
News writing and editing, homepage editor shifts, long form features and social media.
Editor of Asylum, AOL's website for men. Role involves directing an international team of editors and bloggers, executive management of content and responsibility for growth and business development at asylum.co.uk and other men's media sites.
UK editor of Asylum. Management of all daily news and features content plus direction of online promotion and strategy.
Writing and multi-media production plus viral marketing.
Breaking news stories (politics, crime and social issues) and features, plus copy editing, photography and web development.
The Cambridge Independent Podcast was one of the UK's first major music podcasts, with more than 15,000 listeners per show. It was highlighted by the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4664065.stm) and USA Today, among others, for its technical innovation and excellent content.
Produced content for the web, television and mobile services as part of BBC's work experience program.
"We've all seen the film 'Back to the Future' it prompts fond childhood memories of how exciting it was going to be living in the future. Flying cars, robots to do the housework and most importantly the hoverboard so that we'd never have to walk again."
"The date in the back to the future film is fast approaching and we are an embarrassing million miles away from introducing the hoverboard to everyday life.
"This petition calls on the government to increase funding into hoverboard research so that we can have the hoverboard in widespread use across the globe by October 21st 2015, the date depicted in film."
Lego and Superman are natural partners - more so than any of the Danish brick maker's other DC or Marvel superhero franchises.
That's because Superman can have a playtime role in virtually any product Lego has made. He can save planes, help the police, go back in time to battle pirates and travel to space. He can survive underwater, battle alongside Batman and probably even turn up in Minecraft, if you like.
So his addition to Lego's line-up alongside the new Man of Steel movie is certainly a welcome one for the toys as a whole.
Let's be clear - we love Lego Superman. And the MiniFig itself - with either regular Clark eyes or red Heat Vision eyes, its little cowlick hair and beautifully classic outfit - is brilliant.
It's a slight shame, though, that the three sets we got to try - Black Zero Escape (£19.99), Battle of Smallville (£39.99) and Metropolis Showdown (£11.99) - don't quite do the Man of Tomorrow justice, at least from an adult collector's perspective. Each has its strong points, but doesn't quite embrace the wider mythology of Superman, instead sticking a bit too rigidly to the upcoming film.
The best of the lot is the most expensive. Battle of Smallville comes with three Kryptonian Warriors, Superman and an army guy (who we suspect features in the film), alongside an impressively large, detailed and tactile spaceship and a Jeep. The set is an interesting build and the spaceship is generic enough for kids to play with in a vague, pow-pow sort of way while looking good on a manchild Lego fan's work desk.
But while you can ignore his presence in this set, the addition of the army guy ('Colonel Hardy') flags up a problem with the other two boxes in the range: they don't really make sense without the movie.
In the little Metropolis Showdown set, for instance, you get Superman, General Zod and a pretty inexplicable racing car that you can flip over with an articulated plank. Why? We're not sure.
Likewise, the Black Zero Escape set is clearly based on a scene from the movie, with Lois trapped in a spaceship pod and Superman tasked with rescuing her. But the scenery is hard to decipher, since it's meant to be part of a larger ship, and the possibilities for play seem a bit stale.
All that said, the sets are made with Lego's usual eye for detail and quality. It's just hard to imagine that kids won't eventually lose everything except the Superman MiniFig. They'll undoubtedly find ways to use the Man of Steel in adventures of their own imagination, but whether or not that's value for money for parents is a bit up in the air.
Think our spring weather is bad?
Nasa says it's also spring on Saturn's moon Titan - and by comparison a bit of hail and drizzle is nothing.
The seasons take about seven years to change on Saturn's largest moon. The strange alien world was dark when Nasa's Cassini spacecraft arrived in 2004, but the sun has now crossed Titan's equatorial plane at equinox, and the northern hemisphere of the moon is starting to warm up.
Above: Ligeia Mare, shown here in data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, is the second largest known body of liquid on Saturn's moon Titan.
The result? Hurricanes, waves on lakes of liquid hydrocarbons and other tremendously intense things which are very interesting as long as you're not actually on Titan.
The space agency is predicting the Spring could bring increased winds, causing waves that will ripple across the moon's lakes of liquid hydrocarbons.
If conditions are right, and there is the right mixture of methane in the lakes, tropical storms or cyclones could also develop, with winds up to 70 km/hour.
Which would probably mess up any plans you had to fly over the world's surface - which due to the low gravity and thick atmosphere, you could actually do.
Above: light glinting off a lake on the surface of Titan
That's added to the normal frigid temperatures of the surface, which are usually as low as minus 179 degrees C.
Scientists think that in some respects, conditions on Titan are similar to those of the early Earth, albeit much colder since it is so far from the Sun. The planet is covered in dunes made of hydrocarbons, rocks and ice of frozen water and clouds of methane, which occasionally burst into rain.
The ageing Mars rover Opportunity has found evidence that the conditions for ancient life once existed on the Red planet.
The six-wheeled robot has been on Mars since 2004, but it is still producing useful science.
Its remarkable longevity has astounded and delighted Nasa officials, who initially expected that it would last for just 90 Martian days.
Instead it is continuing to roll along the surface, 37 times longer than anybody thought it would.
Its latest discovery is one of its most exciting, Nasa officials said: an area of rock which was clearly weathered by large amounts of water, indicating that the conditions for life once existed on the planet.
Above: Preliminary interpretation points to clay mineral content due to intensive alteration by water.
No, it's not quite a skeleton of a Martian buffalo. But the rock ("Esperance") is unlike any the rover has previously found, fractured and weathered by conditions that were "possibly favorable for life", Nasa said.
The new pictures were taken at Cape York, an area on the rim of the massive Endeavour crater.
"What's so special about Esperance is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions, so that Opportunity can clearly see the alteration," said Scott McLennan of the State University of New York.
Astronomers have pictured a "missing link" galaxy collision in deep space which might explain what happened in the first few billion years of the universe.
The picture shows a ridiculously massive collision between two galaxies, which formed together into a single mass more than 10 times the size of the Milky Way 11 billion years ago.
Inside the furnace of this galaxy pair - known as HXMM01 - stars form at a rate of more than 2,000 suns a year.
But the picture is not just beautiful - it's an important step to understanding how our universe developed in the initial three to four billion years after the big bang.
The European Space Agency's Herschel space telescope has recently exhausted its supplies of liquid helium coolant, which allowed it to observe the "cool" universe in infra-red for more than three years.
But data from the telescope is still leading to new discoveries, including how early "elliptical" galaxies formed, and how they grew so large in a relatively short space of time.
The galaxy merger pictured by Herschel, and reported in Nature by UC Irvine's Hai Fu, shows what was happening three billion years after the big bang. The collision was sudden - taking only 200 million years to run.
"It's like a train wreck," Fu told the LA Times.
It was once thought that elliptical galaxies formed by the slow gathering of small dwarf galaxies, but the picture suggests this could have happened more quickly by larger galaxies smashing into each other, sparking a sudden - and finite - explosion in the number of new stars formed.
Physicists say there is now good evidence that a legion of floating space brains are not spontaneously bursting into existence throughout the universe.
For about a decade there has been a theory (really a thought experiment) that so-called Boltzmann brains - self-aware conscious entities with no external physical presence - might exist in space.
The idea roughly goes - and we'd suggest further reading - that given a suitably dramatic timescale, energy and matter, it's possible that a consciousness could form into a working mind, of its own accord, in space.
Consciousness is commonly thought by scientists to be essentially an illusion, created by the interaction of a vast number of simple 'actors'. In the human brain these are neurons, of which we each have about 86 billion.
Just as a computer is able to use simple calculations to build up complex systems, so too our brains build memories and actions by the interaction of neurons. And so the fanciful idea of a Boltzmann brain is that the same thing might be possible by chance. The idea is really more of a thought experiment, designed to question our assumptions about the organisation of the universe. And like most experiments that involve the vast infinity of space, if such a thing were possible then it's almost certainly happening all the time, everywhere.
For if the universe is as massive as we think it is, and Boltzmann brains are real, then they're forming at such a rate they will eventually - depending on the fate of the universe - outnumber every human being who has ever lived.
A similar, arguably testable hypothesis suggests that the universe is probably a computer simulation - since if such a simulation is possible then every civilisation formed within one will eventually end up creating its own simulation. (It's turtles all the way down, for computer models.)
If the maths pointed to Boltzmann brains outnumbering humans, our theories of space and time could be compromised. That's because we would no longer be 'typical' observers, and might not have the ability to see reality from the 'correct' perspective. But according to a new report by New Scientist, new understandings of string theory and the theory of multiple universes might just give us an escape clause.
Physicists Claire Zukowski and Raphael Buosso at Berkely say that the key to this balance (of us, versus the superbrains) is whether or not universes expand forever and linger - full of Boltzmann brains - for much longer than creatures like humans would be able to survive.
But according to New Scientist, their work suggests this won't be the case after all. A new mathematical analysis says that by comparing two models of the universe - an older one proposed by Stephen Hawking and James Hartle, and one based on new models of string theory - it now seems less likely that reality as we know it is dominated by space superbrains.
It's worth reading the full report at New Scientist - or tackling the real report itself, if you fancy a challenge.
But don't get too cocky even if you understand it all. Chances are a space brain has got there first.
You can now talk to Google.
An upgrade to Google Chrome was announced last week which would allow you to carry on a conversation (albeit a fairly one-sided and demanding one) with your desktop search box.
Unveiling the idea at its annual I/O press conference, the search giant demoed how you would soon be able to ask a question with your voice - say, "who is David Cameron?" and then go on to ask "how tall is he?" without repeating the subject. A whole string of these 'natural' search terms can be used in a row without having to repeat yourself.
And now it's live.
In a new update to Google's Chrome browser (version 27) the new conversational tool has been finally switched on for desktop users.
To get it you just have to restart Chrome - it should handle the upgrade automatically.
Then head to Google.com, click the microphone in the search box and start chatting away.
Unfortunately the service seems a bit spotty at the moment - launch jitters, we gather. But as long as you work alone (or can take the mockery of your co-workers or family) then it should prove a welcome new way to check how tall the members of the Coalition cabinet really are.
Amazon has proposed a new headquarters building for downtown Seattle - and it's pretty astounding.
The new design features three geodesic-style domes, which look like giant greenhouses.
Together with a pair of mirrored towers, the new HQ would total 3.3 million square feet of office space.
The designs are the work of NBBJ, and are intended to create a "natural parklike setting" for its employees in the centre of Seattle:
"The generative idea is that a plant-rich environment has many positive qualities that are not often found in a typical office setting. While the form of the building will be visually reminiscent of a greenhouse or conservatory, plant material will be selected for its ability to co-exist in a microclimate that also suits people."
Gamers have been left confused - though optimistic - after Microsoft announced it will be possible to play second-hand games on the Xbox One console. They just won't say how.
The new machine will introduce new forms of digital rights management, which tie games to user accounts and also allow you to play different titles without swapping the disc.
But while that move comes with some benefits, it also raises questions about how the system will let users swap, trade or sell games - either with their friends or a used games store.
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"The bits that are on the disc, I can give to anybody else, but if we both want to play it at the same time, we both have to own it. That's no different to how discs operate today."
The creator of the animated GIF has shocked the internet by declaring that it's pronounced... "jif".
That's right, while the online consensus has largely settled on the hard-G pronunciation ("gift" without the T) its inventor Steve Wilhite says we're all wrong.
Accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Webbys on Tuesday, Wilhite said that the Graphics Interchange Format was always meant to be said with a soft G.
"The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations," Wilhite said, according to the New York Times.
"They are wrong. It is a soft 'G,' pronounced 'jif.' End of story."
The GIF has been around since 1987, invented as one of the first ways to animate images with low file sizes.
Wilhite took about a month to develop the first prototype image of an aeroplane while working at CompuServe.
More than 26 years later the Gif is still one of the most popular formats online, responsible for thousands of memes, videos and dancing babies. It was even used by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to announce her company's $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr earlier this week.
But you're all pronouncing it wrong.
"The focus on live TV, voice and Skype clearly indicates that Microsoft's aiming to computerize your living room with its game console. Will the public shine to the computer-looking box with an always-on camera? That remains to be seen."
"Xbox One is "alive" they told us. It is a "lag-free, instant experience". It uses something called 'snap' that lets you watch TV and search the internet at the same time. An actual moment passed where an Xbox exec said that the high-end body-tracking Kinect functions were 'games and science stuff'. In the relatively dry run through some of the smart features, Xbox almost forgot to spell out its plan here."
"If Microsoft was pushing gaming to the back burner with its Xbox One announcement and potentially alienating the core audience that it's strung along for the last decade, Sony could boost its flagging image by making PS4 sound like a home for gamers who want their egos stroked."
"On the face of it, the new console looks pretty impressive. Response times and gesture control are very good indeed, the visuals are stunning, and Microsoft scored an instant win over rival Sony by actually having a working console to show off... The elephant in the room for Xbox One is price."
"The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 each represent a major leap over anything we've seen before from a home console in terms of hardware and software capabilities. With their latest and most groundbreaking products to date now unveiled, both Microsoft and Sony hope to redefine what a set-top box is capable of in the minds of consumers."
Heavy metal music has done much good for the world, introducing us to the talents of Bruce Dickinson on vocals, Jeff Hanneman on guitar, and the sartorial delights of a really close-cut stonewash jean.
Unfortunately, for fans of the genre it has also been responsible for much ill in the world too.
No, we don't mean the music (though much of the output between 1998 and 2004 is fairly questionable).
We're talking about the genre's ideas for robots.
While browsing our favourite music streaming service this week, we noticed an album which reminded us just how many terrible ideas for androids, cyborgs and mechanical humans metal bands have come up with over the years.
We've pulled some of our favourite examples below. Let us know if we've missed any. And in future if you see a long-haired Viking wandering around Maplin with a Flying V in one hand and a Raspberry Pi in the other, for the love of all humanity do everything you can to stop them.
Fresh from unveiling the $1.1 billion deal to buy Tumblr, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has made another huge announcement - the relaunch of Flickr.
The photo storage, presentation and sharing service was purchased by Yahoo back in 2005, but in recent years its fortunes have dimmed.
With a stagnating design heavy on white space and small thumbnails, the site had also been held back by restrictive storage and bandwidth limits.
Rivals were quick to fill in the gaps. On the app store Flickr has been overtaken by quicker, instant-sharing apps like Instagram, while Facebook has taken the crown for photo sharing among groups of friends. Meanwhile Google has recently launched its own fresh assault on the photo storage space with updates to Google+.
Now Yahoo is making a new push for Flickr to regain the lost ground. Alongside an all-new design, which focuses on larger images, improved search and fewer thumbnails, and freshly updated apps for iOS and Android, Yahoo also announced that users will get a massive terabyte of storage space - for free.
By comparison, that's 1,000 times as much space as Gmail gives away.
And you could take a photo every hour for 40 years without filling it.
Flickr said:
"At Flickr, we believe you should share all your images in full resolution, so life's moments can be relived in their original quality. No limited pixels, no cramped formats, no memories that fall flat. We're giving your photos room to breathe, and you the space to upload a dizzying number of photos and videos, for free. Just how big is a terabyte? Well, you could take a photo every hour for forty years without filling one."
"We hope you'll agree that we have made huge strides to make Flickr awesome again, and we want to know what you think and how to further improve! "
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