Introduction

Exploring new places can often seem straightforward, but in practice it can be time consuming and daunting.

Whether you're visiting a brand new city and want to get off the tourist-beaten track or you want to get off the routine-beaten track you've created at home, it can be hard to know where to start.

Fortunately, like seemingly everything else in life, there's an app to help you, and these are some of the best.

Like a Local

Like a Local for iOS and Android helps you "skip the tourist traps" by collating insider tips from locals in over 324 cities. Contributors can offer suggestions for places to eat, drink, and see as well as recommend tours and activities.

Destinations can be saved to a list for viewing in offline mode at a later time so you don't have to worry about your phone dying when you're straying from the tourist path.

If you're looking for something more specific like the quietest time of day to visit that popular café, there's also a section for asking those sorts of questions.

Sidekix

Live in more than 50 cities, Sidekix aims to help you find new places whilst you're going from A to B.

Simply enter your destination, what kinds of places you'd like to discover, and the app will generate a route that highlights points of interest along the way. Sidekix also has an option for when you're walking at night that offers the best-lit routes.

It's only on iOS at the moment, with plans for an Android version later in the year.

Pokémon Go

One of Pokémon Go's main aims has been to encourage iOS and Android players to explore the world around them using the incentives of catching Pokémon and visiting PokéStops.

Playing the game won't quite lead to a Kanto-level adventure but it's shown that something as simple as altering your usual route to lunch could lead you to discover new and interesting things in otherwise familiar places.

Trip4Real

Trip4Real connects travellers with locals offering tours and activities that are something mercifully different from two hours aboard an open-top bus wearing terrible headphones.

There are more than 4000 experiences across London, Lisbon, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Athens, Budapest, Dublin and throughout Spain, from sailing with the captain of a yacht in Barcelona to discovering the best street art in London with a local graffiti artist.

Each activity is listed with a detailed description, estimated duration, a minimum and maximum number of participants, and a public meeting point. The locals usually offer their activity frequently and there's a review system to help you pick the best one.

EatWith

You could search through endless restaurant reviews looking for somewhere new to eat or you could have a home-cooked meal. Live in over 150 cities, EatWith connects people looking for a good meal with those willing to cook them one in the local area.

When booking you can choose to fly solo at a communal table or bring a group of friends along. Charges for the food can range from £20 to £60 but it's easy to tell whether you're getting value for money since hosts often post a menu with their listing.

EatWith vets the cleanliness and skills of hosts before they're allowed to accept guests which, in conjunction with the service's guest review system, should offer assurance that you're getting a good meal.

Bike Citizens

Bike Citizens is an app for exploratory cyclists. Using the knowledge of local couriers, Bike Citizens shows the best cycling routes in your city, offering a choice between the fastest route or the easiest one (unfortunately they're rarely the same).

Once you've selected your route, the app will highlight points of interest along the way such as cafes, cash points, and museums with voice guidance to keep your eyes on the road and an offline mode to save battery. Bike Citizens is active in over 330 cities across Europe and works on both iOS and Android devices.

Gogobot

If you love adventure of the organised kind, Gogobot for iOS and Android is absolutely for you. It recommends hotels, attractions, restaurants, and guides which you can filter according to your interests , your budget, who you are, or who you're with.

Citymapper

If uncertainty around public transport prevents you exploring, you definitely want to take a look at Citymapper for iOS and Android. Type in where you are, where you want to go and how you want to get there – whether that's by bus, train, tube, taxi, a ferry, or using your own two feet – and Citymapper will give you the best route, live times, journey lengths.

It'll even identify the best tube carriage and most convenient exit for your destination. Citymapper is less about showing you places off the beaten track than most of these other apps on this list, but it's the one that will give you the most confidence to leave it.

Spotted by Locals

Spotted by Locals is a series of frequently updated city guides which contain exploring tips provided by residents. The locals that contribute to the service reveal their favourite bars, restaurants, and sights as well as insider information on local traditions and tips for travelling around.

Spotted by Locals covers cities across North America, Europe, and the Middle East with 66 locations in total. The guides are available on iOS, Android, or in PDF format and all work offline.

Lonely Planet

If you'd rather get advice from travel experts rather than the locals, the Lonely Planet guides for iOS and Android are what you're looking for. There are more than 38 cities to choose from, with more to be added through the year.

Each city has over 1,000 points of interest for you to explore and offline maps to help you do so. The recommendations aren't always hidden gems but they're reliable, easy to filter, and come from travel experts who have lived and breathed the city you're in.

It isn't just young people who are spending their evenings wistfully swiping left and right on and endless stream of faces – older folks are doing it too, according to new research.

TechCrunch has picked upon a new survey of 2,000 people from Pew Research in the US, which reportedly shows that not only have online dating services grown more popular with 18 to 24-year-olds, but there has been a relatively big spike in the older crowd, too.

An impressive (or worrying) 12% of 55 to 64-year-olds in 2015 reported that they have participated in online dating – way up from just 6% in 2013.

Overall, 15% of American adults now say they have used such services – up from 11% in 2013. There's also been a big increase on mobile online dating – which is now used by 9% of adults, up from 3% just two years prior.

It should be safe to say that we can thank the meteoric growth of Tinder and its imitators for this.

OKStupid?

Of the online daters, 80% apparently agree that it is a good way to meet people – though, 45% also think it is a more dangerous way of meeting people. This figure is, unsurprisingly, polarized by gender: 53% of the women surveyed think online dating is more dangerous, versus just 38% of men.

What will no doubt prove to intrigue sociologists is that there appears to be an education divide.

A majority (58% of those surveyed) of college graduates know someone who dates online, with 46% saying they know someone who has entered a long-term relationship as a result. This compares to just 25% of high school-educated people knowing someone who uses these services, with only 18% knowing someone who has found a long-term relationship in this way.

That would explain why so many post-college transplants in cities like New York and San Francisco turn to apps to navigate a dating world far out of their comfort zone. When you come back home, just be sure to set your filters correctly to avoid seeing mom or dad's profile.

• Did you know OKCupid is experimenting on you?

There's been a shake-up today in the never ending saga of comparing Apples to Android, as Alphabet, has topped the iPhone-maker as the world's most valuable company.

That's right, even though Apple just made more money than it ever has, Google's new parent company now has a larger market cap on Wall Street after reporting its fourth quarter earnings.

Alphabet is worth $570 billion (about £399b, AU$805b), with much of the profits owed to Google search and Android. Apple is worth about $539 (about £377b, AU$761b) right now in after hours trading.

These numbers can fluctuate, but it's still significant because this is the first time that the two tech giants have swapped places since 2010, according to CNBC. Back then, they worth a measly $200 billion (about £140b, AU$283b).

Google and Apple earnings explored

Alphabet has been propelled to "world's most valuable company" status thanks to profit of $23.42 billion (about £16.39b, AU$33.07b) in 2015, after a revenue of $74.54 billion (about £52.18b, AU$105.3b).

It made more money in the latest quarter than Apple, but the bigger difference that investors have seen Apple as heavily reliant on iPhone sales, whereas Alphabet is a bit more diversified.

Google's reliance on search, Android, YouTube and the cloud offset some of the wilder revenue sinkholes of Alphabet. Moonshots, listed as "other bets" lost it $3.56 billion (about £2.49b, AU$5.02b)

Apple, meanwhile, only saw a modest growth in its cash cow, iPhone sales, with revenue up a meager 1% year-over-year, even with 74.4 million iPhones sold in the latest quarter.

Expect to see Apple branch out into other areas, and not just with safe bets like the Apple Watch. All the more reason to think Rumors of an Apple VR, an Apple Car and a redesigned iPhone 7 are true.

• Next Androids: Samsung Galaxy S7 and LG G5

This week the world was filled with wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments as Twitter packed up – but thankfully it got going again before humanity reverted to cannibalism and worshiping false idols, which would have happened after an hour or so. But Twitter had it easy compared to other social media services, one of which shut its doors completely this week. Elsewhere we used Uber to catch a copter, took the brave and potentially foolish step of trying new music apps from Apple, and seriously suggested melting roads and hiring some mimes. It's Week in Tech!

Ends Reunited

Remember Friends Reunited? For many Britons was the first taste of social networking, but now you can forget about it again: after more than 15 years reminding people of how horrible their school peers still are, it's closing its doors. Friends Reunited may have predated Facebook, but Facebook did the social networking thing better and on a much bigger scale. The only surprise about Friends Reunited's demise was that it was still going.

Uber über alles

Hailing an Uber cab is so last year. This year all the cool people will be hailing… helicopters! It's a – yes! – pilot project right now, but Uber really is offering an on-demand service for people who need to hire helicopters, albeit only in and around the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. It's not the only non-car Uber service: in Istanbul, Uber users can hail boats. One thing's for sure: the cost of an Uber copter will make even the most expensive Uber cab seem cheap.

Who's making the next Nexus?

Good news for anybody investing in beleaguered smartphone maker HTC: it looks like HTC will be making the next Nexuses, the replacements for the recently launched Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X. The launch is ages away but details are already beginning to leak, and it's possible that the next Nexuses may take a step backwards in terms of their size: at 5.7 inches the Nexus 6P is a big big phone unless you're a giant or have freakishly large hands. There's still plenty of time for Google to change its mind, but for now it looks like your next Nexus will be an HTC handset, not Huawei as previously rumoured.

Apple updates music apps, not many dead

Apple has made some new music apps – and unlike Apple Music, they're not bottomless pits of suck with user interfaces so unintuitive you'll want to hurl your iPhone against a wall. There's a new app, Music Memos, for easy recording and development of song ideas, and a big update to Garageband that adds the excellent Drummer and a new feature, Live Loops, that makes Garageband a pretty good DJing device too. It's amazing to see what Garageband is capable of on an iPhone, especially if you've been around long enough to remember four-track tape decks.

The best Star Wars game you'll never play

Forget EA's Battlefront: the best Star Wars game of all time may just be one you can't play. A leaked alpha of Star Wars Battlefront 3 shows what Free Radical Design was working on before EA snapped up the rights to the Star Wars brand, and even if you can track it down you won't be able to play it without an Xbox 360 development kit. That's a shame, Hugh Langley says: "Obviously it looks quite dated now and the build is still quite sketchy, but everything we've seen so far points to a more well-rounded game… Battlefront 3 looks like the game that fans have really been clamouring for."

NX Appeal

More rumours about the imminent arrival of the Nintendo NX, the next generation of Nintendo gaming: according to a new survey from one of Nintendo's marketing partners, it'll be capable of playing games at 60fps, offer 900p gameplay, and stream 4K video. Details of what the NX actually is are still rather sketchy, however, and while we know that it's in development there's very little hard information available as Nintendo enforces Apple-style levels of secrecy. You can find everything we do know –and a lot of things the rumour mill is predicting – in our round-up of NX leaks and rumours.

Netflix: no news is good news

We've seen lots of news from Netflix this week but it's unlikely to delight Netflix addicts: if you've been benefiting from "grandfathered" prices, where your sub fees didn't increase for HD because you were already a subscriber, that deal is coming to an end. Not only that, but the long-rumoured war on VPNs has begun: Australian residents are the first group to find themselves banned from Netflix's US service, but they won't be the last.

Today's password is password

It's that time of year again: not the Oscars, but the awards for worst passwords of the year. And the winner for 2015? "123456," followed by "password," "12345678," and "qwerty." Meanwhile some people attempted to be clever, but turned out not to be: as Parker Wilhelm explains, "Other common passwords seem strong at first glance, but are based on simple, easily guessable patterns. '1qaz2wsx' and 'qwertyuiop,' both ranked on the Worst Passwords list, seem hard to guess at first until you realize they are just the first two columns and first row of letters on a standard keyboard, respectively."

What you've gotta do for a free OnePlus 2

If you live in London, OnePlus is so sure that it can deliver your new phone within an hour that if it isn't, your phone is free. And that got us thinking. How hard could it be to ensure the delivery can't make it in time? James Peckham has the answers, and they involve, er, knocking out GPS, hiring mimes and melting the roads. It all makes sense in the article. Honest.

Fed up with adverts when all you want to do is watch Right Said Fred videos? Then this is the week for you: YouTube has unveiled YouTube Red, an ad-free service with lots of goodies for a relatively low monthly sub. And that's not all. This week we saw a new HTC flagship, spotted a really big Samsung tablet, discovered the death of the Hudl, and were the only people in the world to realise that this week included Back to the Future day. It's a faintly sarcastic time-travelling week in tech!

YouTube goes ad-free – for a price

What costs money and sounds a bit like a naughty website? Yep, YouTube Red, the new, ad-free version of YouTube that costs $9.99 per month. Cameron Faulkner has the deets: "paying for access to the world's largest collection of user-submitted videos also grants you access to one of the world's largest music collections: Google Play Music. This makes YouTube Red one of the better deals around if you're a fan of both music and video. (In case you're curious, current Google Play Music subscribers will automatically have access to YouTube Red.)" The US launch is next week; global launch dates and prices haven't been announced just yet.

HTC's A9 is no iPhoney

What looks like an iPhone but isn't? No, not pretty much every smartphone out there: we're talking about the brand new HTC One A9, which really really really really looks like an iPhone. It's one of the first handsets to launch with Android 6, aka Android Marshmallow, and its design distracts from what's a really impressive device. As phone supremo Gareth Beavis says, "To compare this too much to an iPhone would be unfair to the genuinely impressive power under the hood – but it's curious that HTC has decided on this design path." Want one? Here's how to get your own HTC One A9.

Samsung's big ideas

Have you ever looked at your tablet and thought "hmm, wouldn't it be great if it was much, much bigger and heavier and more expensive"? Then have we got Views for you: the Samsung Galaxy View has a massive 18.4-inch display, although with a resolution of 1,080 x 1,920 that means everything's going to look like it's been made in Minecraft. Details are still sketchy, but as the leaked images are promo pics an official launch can't be far off.

Samsung's also working on the successor to the Galaxy S6, the cunningly named Galaxy S7. Rumours are already flying, and one of the most interesting ones suggests that the S7 could be specced for some of the best audio around thanks to a high quality, 32-bit mobile DAC. Sounds good to us.

Why the Swiss are cheesed off about Apple

Is the Apple watch harming sales of pricey Swiss watches? It certainly appears to be: as Hugh Langley reports: "The numbers are in and it's not great news for the Swiss watch industry. The Q3 figures, published by the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, reveal an 9.9% drop in watch exports for September, leading to an 8.5% slide for the quarter overall… watches residing in the low to mid segment, the domain where the Apple Watch Sport currently competes, were hit the hardest."

Hudl owners need a cudl

Bad news for Hudl fans: despite making one of the best budget tablets around, Tesco has decided to end the line: when it sells its current stock of Hudl 2 tablets, it won't be making any more. As James Rogerson put it: the Hudl 3 is not to be. Don't worry, though: there are plenty of other slate bargains to be had, and we've put together a list of the very best budget tablets.

Pro 4, ma!

Has Microsoft perfected the lablet/tabtop/whatever we're supposed to call tablety laptopy things? Joe Osborne says it might just have. He's been running his fingers across the Surface Pro 4, and he likes the way it feels: "Almost every change about the Surface Pro 4 seems to subtly improve upon the existing blueprint. It's iterative design executed flawlessly," he says. Our review unit was a pre-production model with a few rough edges, but the Pro 4 is "Microsoft's most refined piece of hardware yet."

You're old, you're old, you're old

Did you see Back to the Future 2 when it came out in the cinema? Then you're ancient: this week is the week Marty McFly travelled to in the film's vision of a high-tech future. Some of the tech has become real – Nike has made the film's self-lacing trainers – but in many ways today's tech is even more exciting than the movie's best ideas. And BttF wasn't the only film to make predictions about life in 2015: apparently we were supposed to have human pets by now.

Siri isn't safe behind the wheel

Do you talk to Siri in the car? Then you could be a dangerous driver: researchers tested Siri, Cortana and Google Now in cars and discover that at 25mph, drivers were distracted for 27 seconds after talking to their intelligent digital assistants. According to study author David Strayer: "Just because these systems are in the car doesn't mean it's a good idea to use them while you are driving. They are very distracting, very error prone and very frustrating to use. Far too many people are dying because of distraction on the roadway, and putting another source of distraction at the fingertips of drivers is not a good idea. It's better not to use them when you are driving." Be careful out there.

Twitter has always had a problem with bullying and hasn't often been seen to act quickly on the issues.

That's all set to change after Chief executive Dick Costolo pledged back in April to crack down on abuse on the platform, and now the company has announced its first step: shared block lists.

You'll soon be able to select a 'block all' list where users submit people who have abused in the past to be blacklisted.

Once you've selected it they'll be blocked from your feed as well. It all sounds well and good so long as it's moderated and not abused.

Trollin' dirty

The aim is to block users who take part in sustained attacks all at once on certain users - not for specific, personal bullies.

Twitter user safety engineer Xiaoyun Zhang said in a blog post, "This feature is yet another step towards making Twitter safer for everyone and will be available to some of our users starting today and all users in the coming week."

Keep an eye out on your feed for the feature to go live shortly.

• Twitter spotted 2014's ebola outbreak three days before the authorities

This week everything's gone Googly: we've seen a host of announcements from Google on Android M, Android Pay, virtual reality and Google Maps too. There's even a search algorithm that can detect accents and change search results accordingly. But while Google hogged most of the headlines this week, we also saw some interesting moves at Apple, and tech provided FIFA with its only good press this week.

Google IO: all about Android M

Google IO is the search and software giant's annual event for developers, and it's where Google sets out its stall for the year ahead. This year that stall includes a new version of Android, Android M, which is going to fix all the bugs and power issues that affect existing versions of Google's mobile OS.

Apps will no longer demand all the possible permissions when you install them, Android devices will support USB-C for super-speedy charging, and the new Now On Tap feature will bring relevant information up whenever you need it. The developer preview of Android M is out now but it won't make its way to Nexus devices until later this year. The rollout for other firms' kit is likely to be even later.

Maps, apps and VR video

Google IO wasn't all about dull but useful OS updates, though. There were vastly improved Google Maps with proper offline operation, Google Cardboard for iOS, and a new project to make VR videos. And there was money news too. Remember Google Wallet, the easy electronic payment system that didn't really change the world? You can forget about it, because it's dead and Android Pay is taking its place. Android Pay will work at 700,000 stores from day one (in the US), and you'll be able to use your fingerprint to approve purchases.

Google photos: unlimited and free forever

One of the most useful things we saw at Google I/O was the new Google Photos service, which offers free, unlimited photo storage that makes Apple's iCloud pricing look ridiculous. Google Photos was already in Google+, which means only three people knew about it. By spinning it out as a separate product Google hopes to win over people who wanted to upload photos but didn't fancy storing them in a social network. From Google's point of view it gets stacks of photos to train its image recognition bots.

Google Brillo at Google IO

It looks like Google doesn't just name its products after confectionery brands: it's moving into kitchen products too. The finest minds on the planet have decided that the best name for their internet of things operating system is, er, Brillo. In the UK, that's a soap-filled steel wool pad that you use to clean pots. We can't wait to see what Google Cif, Google Cillit Bang and Google Mr Muscle turn out to be.

Back in Black (Friday)

It's summertime and that can only mean one thing: it's time to think about Black Friday. The US's annual Thanksgiving shopping frenzy is becoming a big deal in the UK too, and we've discovered what went wrong with so many retailers last year and what gadget goodies you can expect this year.

Apple gets its ARs in gear

When Apple goes shopping the tech world pays attention, because it often gives a clue to Apple's future direction. So what should we make of its apparent purchase of Metaio, the VW spin-off that specialises in augmented reality and computer vision? When you consider that Apple has also purchased Kinect inventor PrimeSense, it looks like Apple is thinking of a keyboard-free future – something that's also evident in its plans for the Apple Watch, which will include proper third-party apps this year.

Ive got a new job

Is Apple also considering a Jonathan Ive-free future? The design chief has been given a new title, God of All Things. Sorry, we mean Chief Design Officer. That frees him up to "travel more" and to focus less on the day to day management of design things. Pundits are divided: some think the promotion essentially makes him the new Steve Jobs, the ultimate decision maker on everything Apple makes, but others think that the promotion is the beginning of the end of Ive's time at Apple. Expect the Apple Kremlinologists to be watching every beat of the WWDC keynote in just over a week's time.

FIFA good, fans bad

There's been a lot of FIFA news this week, leading to the inevitable 'shopped images of FIFA 16 boxes depicting Sepp Blatter behind bars. But there was a brief bit of FIFA sunshine amid the gloom this week when we discovered that FIFA 16 will include the top twelve women's teams: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and the USA. We say "brief" bit of sunshine because inevitably, some mouth-breathers turned to the internet to show that they have serious issues with women in their games. We could have stopped that sentence before "in their games". Or before "with".

Google's new plan: stereotype everybody

Google's got a new idea: voice searches that return different results according to your accent. There's a serious plan behind the daft-sounding idea: if people with particular accents prefer particular search results, then other people with the same accent might have similar preferences. So for example a search for "dinner" with a French accent might prioritise French restaurants, while the same search by a Glaswegian would presumably return Irn-Bru and deep-fried Mars Bars.

There are few hand gestures as nuanced and versatile as giving someone the middle finger. It's such a useful gesture in fact that it became an official emoji last year. Yet despite that Apple, Google and other tech companies have been resistant to it and so far neither iOS nor Android supports the gesture.

Microsoft has proven more enlightened though, as according to Emojipedia the tech giant has added support for the "reversed hand with middle finger extended" to Windows 10, allowing users to show friends, family, colleagues and strangers what they really think of them whether on mobile or a desktop computer. Convenient!

But don't worry, Microsoft doesn't want to offend anyone, so it's allowing users to send the middle finger in a range of different skin tones from pale through to black, as well as a race-neutral grey shade.

• Stop everything! There are Star Wars emojis.

It's been a funny old week. We've seen One Direction go in two directions, witnessed a global outcry because a man was disciplined for punching a co-worker in the face and seen the worst viral video of all time featuring Nick Clegg.

But while the world outside may be frightful, the world of tech is mainly delightful. This week we discover why Google Glass will make a comeback, how Facebook plans to claim your immortal soul and why this year's laptops will make you more excited than a Top Gear presenter in a Porsche. Guaranteed to be 1,000% more interesting than a star in a reasonably priced car, it's week in tech!

Facebook: one thing to rule them all

"Facebook wants to be everything to everybody", Gary Marshall says, and it "wants to replace the internet." He might be right. This week Facebook unveiled the latest steps in its world domination plan with apps to replace email, SMS and newspapers and what Marshall describes as "all of our messaging personal data and interpersonal interactions and shopping and health data and hopes and fears and dreams and darkest secrets."

One of the biggest stories is the news that Facebook Messenger will become a platform that third parties can use, so you'll see apps using Facebook to deliver their messages. There are already 40 apps for the platform, and they'll show up inside the Facebook app so you never have to leave its warm embrace.

That's not all. There's video embedding so you can put Facebook videos in non-Facebook places, a new phone app that enables you to make calls from inside Facebook, reports of newspaper and magazine deals so you can read their content from inside Facebook, an update to Messenger that enables you to pay people and buy things from inside Facebook, Facebook at Work so businesses can do business from inside Facebook and Oculus VR apps so that you can live your entire life inside Facebook. In short: Facebook Facebook Facebook Facebook Facebook.

Up periscope!

It seems that live video streaming is set to be the next big wave in "social media", with Meerkat debuting to a lot of buzz earlier this month. Periscope, the latest app of this ilk to get people talking, launched this week with one key differentiator: it's backed by Twitter. It also lets you archive clips for viewing later - something that Meerkat doesn't. We had a go at making our own Periscope stream on the day of launch, before putting it head to head with Meerkat.

Get your game on

We love PC gaming, and we've devoted an entire week to it: from the best PC Zombie shooters of all time to the power of Minecraft and the tech that's going to transform the way we play games, everything you need to know about gaming's past, present and future is right here.

Samsung banishes bloatware

Let's be honest. For all its joys, Android is often spoiled by manufacturers and carriers who insist on putting their own apps on your pristine new smartphone. Hurrah for Samsung, then, because it's decided that customers who buy the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge will be able to remove the pre-installed applications. That's going to make a lot of Samsung fans very happy.

The dark side of tech

Technology is a happy, sunny thing, except for when it isn't. Rene Millman has uncovered the tech sector's dirty laundry and shared some of the dark secrets of the industry. Those secrets include crazy cost-cutting, discrimination and disappearing kit.

Sticks and drones will come to homes

While Facebook tries to take over the virtual world, Amazon's continuing to annex more and more of the real one. Its latest wheezes include sticks and drones. The former is its Fire TV Stick, available for as little as £7 to new Prime subscribers and capable of turning even hotel TVs into Amazon Prime Instant Video viewers, and the latter is its ongoing investment in flying machines. While its drones are still grounded in the UK, the US has given Amazon the go-ahead to begin test flights for drone deliveries.

Why you'll love 2015's latest laptops

Rumours of the PC's death have been somewhat exaggerated, and we'll see lots of evidence of that this year: the laptops coming to a lap near you this year are going to be amazing. As Kevin Lee explains: "The year has started already kicked off with a massive bang… 2015 is shaping up to be one of the most exciting years for all computers, from Macs and desktop PCs to Windows laptops and Chromebooks alike."

Talkin' 'bout a revolution (in battery tech)

Open up a recent smartphone, tablet or laptop and you're likely to say "my god! It's full of battery!" It's safe to say that while the rest of technology continues to progress at amazing speeds, battery tech is lagging somewhat behind. Not for much longer. Next year will see batteries that don't just offer a little bit more power; they'll offer twice the power of current ones. That has major implications, especially for the burgeoning smartwatch category. James Rogerson has all the details here.

Google Glass: not pining for the fjords

Google Glass isn't dead, Eric Schmidt says. It's just resting. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, he said that Glass is "a big and very fundamental platform for Google." The end of the Glass Explorer programme doesn't mean the end of Glass. "It's like saying the self-driving car is a disappointment because it's not driving me around now," he said. "These things take time."

Google's Noddy cars: now with airbags on the outside

Last week Google told us that puny humans were too dim to drive cars. This week, it seems Google doesn't think much of our abilities on foot either. A newly unearthed patent shows that should you cause a collision with a Google-powered car – because of course Google's cars won't ever go wrong – Google is considering having a whole bunch of airbags explode to ensure that the only thing you hurt is your pride. They won't be normal airbags, though, as they'd probably fire you into space. Google's approach uses something more like memory foam so that being hit by a car is like falling onto a nice comfortable bed.