Zoe Breen

Producer, Media Literacy

Thanks,

The WebWise Team

Another network to launch recently is the picture-based Pinterest. So is this going to be the next Facebook or is it more likely to finish like last year's launch of the specialist 'question and answer' service Quora - a whole load of fuss followed by, well, not much?

This article isn't an attempt to say who the winners will be in the social media race (if indeed there is an end point). Rather it will explain some of these new networks and offer tips on what to look for when you evaluate a new network and decide whether it's going to be useful to you.

Why is it special?

Obviously the first thing to check is whether a new network fulfils an actual need. Take Quora for instance, in which members ask questions and other people answer them. There was a lot of interest initially and indeed it's still going - but you have to ask, what does it do that Twitter doesn't? You can already ask a question in plenty of other places.

This doesn't always hold true. YouTube is widely known as a place that offers the chance to share videos. So was MySpace, which got there first - but its grip on the market was softening as YouTube launched. The quieter design also appealed to a wider audience.

This is where Pinterest, which enables people to highlight interesting images they've seen - with a link straight back to where they found them, comes in. This isn't, therefore, just a photo site but a links site as well. Yes, you can share visual links on Facebook in the same way but it's not as exclusively visual. Whether the market will take hold of this longer-term is uncertain but at least the market has something to accept or reject.

Search engine optimisation

Another important element of social links, at least from the point of view of commercial companies linking their goods and services, is that external links coming into your site push you further up the search engines. This is part of a process known as 'search engine optimisation' (SEO), which does what it says on the tin - it makes a website search engine friendly.

An extension of this happens on Google+, Google's new(ish) network. Businesses can add a 'Plus One' button to their sites or to individual products or services they are offering, and people with a Google+ account can tap this in the same way as they would a Facebook 'Like' button.

So far this all looks like a bit of fun - except it's owned by Google, which also owns the biggest search engine on the internet. Google takes the 'Plus One' buttons quite seriously: the more +1s your service gets, the better the placing when people search on Google. For this reason Google+ is likely to be around for a while, although a lot of research shows people aren't conversing on it a great deal.

Which is right for you?

Deciding whether to join a particular network is an individual decision. There are a few questions you can usefully ask yourself before joining one, though:

• Does it do anything new? Earlier in this article I asked whether Pinterest was going to be the new Facebook - it's not, there is currently no vacancy for someone wanting to be a new Facebook. New networks really need to offer something different.
• If it does something different, does it appeal to you? If you don't have a particularly visual sensibility and don't take many pictures, do you really need a channel on Flickr, for example?
• Is anyone else about to do the same thing better?
• Do you actually have the time to do anything with yet another social network..?

Learn how to use Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites with the WebWise online guides.

Guy Clapperton is a journalist specialising in writing about technology as well as small business for several major broadsheets. He broadcasts occasionally on BBC Radio stations and reviews the newspapers on the BBC News Channel.

At the SXSW festival a few weeks ago, rock legend Bruce Springsteen gave a keynote speech in which he admitted to "getting inspiration", shall we say, from the work of other artists. He demonstrated by segueing neatly from The Animals' version of 'Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood' into his own song, 'Badlands'. "It's the same riff, man!" he said. "Listen up, youngsters, this is how successful theft is accomplished."

It's rare for musicians to be so brazen about it, but Springsteen was acknowledging an undeniable fact: that new creative ideas generally evolve from old ones. Borrowing, refining and rehashing have been rife for centuries, a magpie-like swiping of melodies, pictures, chords and textures. It grew more noticeably in the 1970s and 1980s; twin record decks allowed early hip hop DJs to mix tracks together and create their own sound collages, bands like the Art Of Noise started using digital audio in legally questionable ways, and when samplers became affordable the Beastie Boys cut-up techniques inspired a generation.

The copyright position

Copyright owners fought back hard in the 1990s, and those early records probably couldn't be made today; licensing the samples would be too expensive. But computers and more latterly the internet have heralded a new era of creative expression, where an almost limitless supply of pictures and sound can be easily appropriated and changed.

Mashups have become endemic, practiced openly by millions, seemingly in violation of copyright law. But are we wilfully engaging in criminal activity by modifying and then sharing other people's work? Or has the law simply failed to catch up with the way we use technology?

In the USA the constitution enshrines the concept of "fair use" - the right to use someone's work for the purposes of satire or parody. The vast majority of mashup culture could be considered parody; from the Photoshop contests on websites such as B3TA, to videos by Cassetteboy or Swede Mason, to songs like 'Newport State Of Mind' that satirised the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys hit 'Empire State of Mind' a couple of years ago.

But while the law is, at least in theory, on the side of the mashup in America, that's not the case in Britain. Copyright holders can still scare the wits out of people doing the satirising; 'Newport State Of Mind', for example, was ordered to be taken down shortly after it became a viral hit. Two reviews into copyright law in the past few years have recommended that "fair use" be introduced, and politicians such as Vince Cable have backed the measure. But it's still currently illegal. As is ripping a CD to your computer - and the majority of us see nothing wrong in doing that.

The future of mashups

The impossibility of fighting mashup culture seems to be leading to a shift in attitudes. Many people are choosing to make their work available under one of several "Creative Commons" licenses, which may permit downloading and tampering. Corporate attitudes are changing, too; last month saw Getty launch a competition called Mishmash that offered free access to the film libraries of Universal and Warner and Getty's own picture library, with a $5,000 prize given to the best creation.

Those being lampooned are also realising that the publicity resulting from successful mashups may not be such a bad thing. The famous Cassetteboy video of 'The Apprentice' won the approval of Lord Sugar, while the creator of Garfield, Jim Davis, gave permission for the book 'Garfield Minus Garfield', which features Garfield cartoons that have had Garfield removed.

Mashup culture is, by and large, a bedroom hobby, a labour of love, where no-one is really seeking to make money. Millions of people are engaged in it, so copyright owners have to pick their battles – and, unsurprisingly, it's the people who find themselves with a viral hit on their hands who are most likely to hear the knock of the legal profession. It's a strange irony. One day the law may change, but for now, perhaps the best advice to mashup artists is: "Make sure you're not any good at it".

Follow the WebWise guides and make the most of your music.

Read more from Rhodri about music and the internet.

Rhodri Marsden is a writer and musician who regularly details his fascination and exasperation with modern technology and the internet for both The Independent and BBC 6Music.

In this film, as part of a series of web exclusives, Bang Goes the Theory's resident chin scratcher, Dr Yan Wong explores how 'Public Key Encryption' changed the way we share sensitive information online.

If this whets your appetite and you want to get 'hands on' with science, why not join the team at a Bang LIVE roadshow? Watch the presenters as they test, stretch and explode science in the action packed live stage show, and take part in experiments and pick up science tricks in the Bang interactive area.

For more details and to find out where Bang are going to be in 2012 go to the Bang site.

Learn more about internet security and how you can protect yourself online with our WebWise guides.

Brett is a Content Producer for BBC WebWise, and has been creating web content for the BBC for ten years. He loves fine ale and vintage wine, cathedrals, music of all genres and classic British comedy, and has a huge collection of rare vinyl records

For this reason, photo sharing on the internet is increasingly big business - a fact demonstrated this week when social media giant Facebook snapped up picture sharing outfit Instagram.

Instagram produces an 'app' (or application) for smartphones that lets users take pictures with their phone's camera, apply a series of arty 'filters' on the image that can change the tone and colours of the picture - often mimicking old Polaroid pictures - and then lets the user send their picture to a variety of social networking services, including Instagram's own.

What's really got tongues wagging though is the price of this acquisition: a cool $1 billion. Rather a lot for a company with only 13 employees, and which has yet to make a single dollar of profit (the app is given away for free). It seems that Facebook was attracted by Instagram's quick accumulation of 30 million users in just two years, and the notoriously fashionable makeup of those users.

And it's not just Facebook trying to snap up the photo-sharing market. In 2005 the struggling search-engine company Yahoo! bought the popular service Flickr just a year after it had started.

Of course, even now, Instagram isn't the hottest photo-sharing service around. Pinterest started in 2010, and is already the third biggest social network in the world. How long until someone cracks open the chequebook for them?

Find out how to use a digital camera and share your photos online with our WebWise guides.
Read more from the WebWise blog about photography.

Alex Duin has spent his whole life wading through technology and the media, and in the process has worked and written all over the place, including for Channel 4, and Digital Unite. He divides his time between London and Manchester.

This will almost certainly be a massive selling point for any new phone or tablet that emerges this year. The clever bit is that in the UK at least, it won't work - we have no widely-available 4G network yet.

What is 4G?

Currently the fastest commonly-available form of mobile internet is of course Wi-Fi. You connect your tablet, laptop or smartphone to a Wi-Fi network and you have 'proper' broadband. The difficulty is that when people are on the move they may not have access to a Wi-Fi network. This is where you may have to take pot luck and see what your device can find. There are various symbols you'll find when it's detecting a mobile signal; E, O, GPRS and 3G. Of these, 3G is the fastest - third generation internet, replacing 2G as it did. If you're out of range of 3G then it defaults to one of the slower ones.

You don't have to be a great detective, then, to work out that 4G is the next iteration of mobile internet. You may also see it referred to as LTE, which stands for 'Long Term Evolution' (although what they'll call 5G having already called 4G long term is anybody's guess).

The advantages of 4G, when they arrive properly in the UK, will be many. Instant email and a mobile service as quick as your home or office internet is one of them. In practical terms this will mean things like watching video streamed from the internet rather than stored on your device - so you'll be able to 'hire' a movie and watch it instantly when you're on the road; catch-up TV services in high definition with no picture judder or dropout, and if you're in business it will be easier to send and receive very large files without snarling up your email or that of your recipient.

Where we are now

The UK is slightly behind the curve when it comes to adopting 4G as you might gather from the fact that products are already supporting it in the US, as well as in some Far Eastern countries. Part of the reason is that the UK was already using some of the frequencies needed for 4G for analogue television signals, which are in the process of being phased out.

Ofcom have confirmed proposals that it would be authorizing a minimum of four companies to provide 4G services and that it hoped this would cover 95% of the UK's population, which will do something to help some of the remote areas still currently not covered by broadband. The government has put in £150m to help the process, so hopefully the auction process that pushed the price of 3G services up when they launched will not be repeated and cause another hike in costs.

Caveats

Two things are worth bearing in mind if you're considering being among the first to go for 4G when it is formally offered. The first is that a number of companies are offering what they're calling 4G, but which isn't actually the version of 4G ratified by Ofcom. This may matter to you for the second reason. In Australia there have been a number of complaints about the aforementioned iPad because it doesn't appear to work with 'their' version of 4G. These are among the reasons I won't be rushing to be the first to use 4G, and will only take it up once it's affordable and once the technology has settled. Meanwhile I, and many others, are finding 3G and Wi-Fi just fine when we need them.

Get regular technology updates with the WebWise weekly newsletter. 

Guy Clapperton is a journalist specialising in writing about technology as well as small business for several major broadsheets. He broadcasts occasionally on BBC Radio stations and reviews the newspapers on the BBC News Channel.

BBC News has reported that the coalition government are proposing that existing laws requiring internet service providers to log communications be extended and that GCHQ (the UK listening intelligence agency) should be able to monitor internet use in 'real-time',  ie at the same time it's being used and without a warrant.

The new law's supporters say that this expansion is necessary to catch up with rogue elements who increasingly turn to digital technology to organise themselves. In The Sun, Home Secretary Theresa May said that "there are no plans for any big government database. No one is going to be looking through ordinary people's emails or Facebook posts. Only suspected terrorists, paedophiles or serious criminals will be investigated."

The law is receiving heavy criticism however, even from within the government's own Conservative members. In that same Sun article, former candidate for the Tory leadership David Davis retorted that "whenever a government announces plans to snoop on British citizens, the argument is always the same - it needs the new law to stop terrorists. But we already have a law that lets the secret services eavesdrop on suspected criminals and terrorists."

If it goes ahead, the new law is expected to be announced at this year's Queen's Speech.

To find out more about some of these issues, why not check out the WebWise guide to the UK's internet laws?

Alex Duin has spent his whole life wading through technology and the media, and in the process has worked and written all over the place, including for Channel 4, and Digital Unite. He divides his time between London and Manchester.

Without search engines the web would be a much less useful place.

But are you making the most of what search engines have to offer? They tend to have quite sophisticated tools you can use to narrow down searches and make sure the results they produce really are close to what you need. It's not difficult to use these tools - but you do need to know that they exist and how to get to them.

Pictures

For starters, did you know that many major search engines can be used to look for images just by clicking a link on the screen?

Go to a search engine like Bing, Ask or Google, type in something you'd like to see pictures of, and click the 'images' link on screen. Try the same search in all three engines and it is likely you'll get a huge range of different images.

It goes further, though. You can refine an image search, narrowing the selections down by criteria like colour, type of image (face, photo, clip art etc), image size and so on. In a similar way you can search for videos rather than images.

News

How about if you are a news junkie, or you want to look at one particular news story in depth?

There are special areas of search engines which stick to news stories. Bing can refine news into categories (political, sport, World, and UK), while Google can range stories by date - even including a custom date range.

If you go to Google News you can get rolling headlines from a huge range of sources, and can personalise how much of different categories such as sports, science and health hit the feed, as well as choosing your preferred sources - including the BBC and a range of national newspapers.

Digging deeper

When it comes to general searching, many of us rely on typing words into the main page of a search engine and then looking through the results. While this often works, it doesn't make the most of what the engine has to offer.

Look for the advanced search option on the Ask home page or go to the advanced area in Google and you will see that there's a lot more on offer.

Suppose, for example, you are interested in gardens open to the public that are not owned by the National Trust. You can specifically exclude the National Trust from your search results by using this page.

You don't need to use the advanced search page to get sophisticated with search, though. You can also use special terms in the main search engine box.

Search terms

Try putting a phrase into quotation marks - that will ensure the search engine looks for exact matches of what's inside the quotation marks. This can be helpful when you are searching for something specific using a multi-word phrase. As is the case with a single word search, this collection of words in called a search term.

Use a minus sign to exclude particular terms, for example a search on 'red, green -blue' will return results that mention red and green but not blue.

Not all search engines offer the same advanced tools, so it is worth looking at the advanced search tips to see what tools are on offer and how best to make use of them.

While many of us can get along quite well simply by typing words into a search engine and looking through the results, this technique doesn't always deliver what we want. It can take some trawling through search results before the gems are found, so there are times when these more advanced search techniques come into their own - the trick is knowing when to deploy the tools, and which ones to use.

Learn more from WebWise about how you can improve your internet searches.

Hajar Javaheri explores the history of search engines.

Try the advanced features on these search engines:
Bing
Ask
Google

The investment was initially announced in the chancellor's Autumn Statement and by 2015, speeds of up to 100mpbs will be delivered to 1.7 million households and 200,000 business across the cities of Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, London, Manchester and Newcastle.

A further £50m was also pledged to help smaller cities improve their broadband speeds.

Superfast (around 40-50mpbs) and ultrafast broadband are currently only available to certain parts of the country through fibre optic cables, but with the government's help, it's expected that more people could benefit from it.

But with a recent study finding that half UK households have broadband speeds under 6.7mpbs there's concern that too much is being done to connect the already well-connected, while others still struggle to get a basic service.

Shadow culture secretary Harriet Harman has said that rather than bring the UK up to speed, the ten super-connected cities will actually help create a 'digital underclass' where rural areas, the unemployed and elderly will be left behind. In the House of Commons this week she reiterated Labour's initiative to guarantee the whole country speeds of 2mbps.

Hoping to make the UK "Europe's technology centre", the government will also provide tax relief to video games, animation and high-end television industries. Supporters say that these measures will create jobs and boost the UK economy, addressing recent fears that we're falling behind in the global gaming market. Others however, believe it will do little to fully address the country's tech industry needs.

For the full report, see the BBC News article, and to find out how to get yourself hooked up to broadband in the first place, try the WebWise guide.

Hajar is a regular contributor to the WebWise blog and has also made award-winning programmes for BBC Radio. In her spare time she loves reading, writing and singing.

Newspaper websites often have online travel sections featuring first-hand accounts of their writers’ travels. An example is the Telegraph’s travel section, which includes this guide to saving money while on a city break. The Guardian’s travel section is also full of informative and entertaining travel articles, and helpfully allows you to explore travel options by place or by the type of trip you want to go on.

Once you have an idea of where you’d like to go, why not check out the area via online maps? Typing the name of a potential destination to Google Maps could help you see how far your potential hotel might be from the city centre, for example. For an alternative overview of countries around the world, you could also visit Worldmapper, which shows you “the world as you’ve never seen it before,” with maps that are adjusted to show you factors such as population, land mass and internet usage.

If you really want to take a look at a place before you visit, the internet makes it very easy to look at live webcams around major cities and towns. EarthCam is a live network of webcams, featuring live streams of streets and landmarks around the world, including Niagara Falls and  the Eiffel Tower. It even has a live video of the Abbey Road pedestrian crossing in London, made famous by The Beatles.

One important factor to consider before you travel is safety. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a page on their website which enables you to check on travel advice by country. It gives you an idea of when hazardous weather conditions could occur, how safe the country is and even the threat of terrorism. There’s also a site from Directgov about protecting yourself from medical bills when you’re away, through travel insurance and when you’re holidaying in Europe, through the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC).

If you have a disability, Disabled Travel Advice has lots of useful advice articles divided into categories such as Activity Holidays and Air Travel. Meanwhile, Tourism For All is a charity site that features advice for disabled travellers, a forum and regular news items.

These are just a few of the sites I found that will help you plan that well-earned break. Happy exploring, and above all, enjoy your travels!

Charlie is a journalist and scriptwriter specialising in articles and films featuring deaf culture and sign language. He has written for the Guardian online and has contributed to programmes for Radio 4, while his films have won international awards. He also works in the arts, helping to make theatre accessible for deaf people.

A report by researchers Boston Consulting Group found that out of the G20 nations, the internet accounted for 8.3% of the UK economy – almost double the average of the other countries surveyed. The UK's 'internet economy' was £121bn in 2010, said BCG and is predicted to rise to £216bn in 2016. 

Online retail was a big contributing factor to the figures, with web transactions accounting for 13.5% of all UK purchases in 2010.

Could the findings reflect a surge in British web-buying confidence? Consumers are covered by a range of guarantees thanks to rules on distance-selling and increasing regulation by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). Barely a week goes by without one website or other making the news following warnings and recommendations from the body to ensure buyers aren’t being mis-sold.

Such measures – and the publicity they generate – may help foster a sense of trust in online retail, so that we Brits are happy to click 'Confirm Order', knowing that if something goes wrong, there are rules to protect us.

But is this increasing reliance on web-shopping a sign that we’re becoming more lazy and antisocial or is it just a matter of convenience and penny-pinching, that’s not only good for the UK economy but our own wallets?

Many online sellers offer free delivery and free returns if customers aren’t happy with a product, saving money on fuel as well as avoiding the hassle of a trip out on a busy Saturday and queuing at a till. For working parents wanting to spend quality time with their children, it might make sense to order your groceries online – often paying little more than the cost of petrol for delivery – rather than spending a sunny afternoon in a supermarket being tempted by treats that might push the weekly food bill over budget.

Traditionalists might argue that the web is drawing us away from people and social interaction, but shopping smart online has never been easier, and as nice as many sales assistants are, isn't spending time with friends and family more important?

Even though there are lots of laws to protect us, take the WebWise course on shopping online to help you buy with confidence.

Read the full BBC News story on Britain's internet economy.

Hajar is a regular contributor to the WebWise blog and has also made award-winning programmes for BBC Radio. In her spare time she loves reading, writing and singing.

Forlorn and covered in dust, this was part of television history. It was the set used for early experiments in HDTV, which Kingswood began nearly thirty years ago. Graham Thomas, who showed me around, explained it took six men with two poles to lift. Which presumably explains why it's still sat there, silently watching its flat screen progeny.

High definition, as the name implies, allows you to see images in greater detail than standard definition sets. Thanks to those experiments we can now watch Barcelona play Madrid off the pitch, sink into the sofa to watch the latest Blu-Ray release or play immersive video games, all in up to five times more detail.

The first HD sets which came to market and which are often labelled 'HD Ready' or 'HD Ready720' have twice as many pixels (720 lines of 1080 pixels) as standard definition sets. Most larger screens sold today are branded 'Full HD' or 'HD Ready1080' and have five times the number (1080 lines of 1920 pixels).

You're likely to pick up a HD Ready720 set for less money and they’re worth considering if you only want a smaller screen size, where the advantage of having more pixels may be lost.

If you're buying a larger set and want to enjoy movies at their most impressive, then investing in Full HD means more pixels - and smaller pixels, at that - delivering better image quality.

Where you see 1080p or 1080i, the letters refers to the way the image is built on the screen, whether it's an 'interlaced' or 'progressive' system.

When images change on screen, the whole picture doesn't change instantaneously. In interlaced systems, odd numbered lines change first, then even numbers, so it takes two scans to change the picture. It happens in a millisecond, faster than can normally be detected by the human eye. With 'progressive' systems the picture change is achieved in one scan which sweeps from top to bottom.

Interlaced scan is usally better for watching sport, as it can display quick movements more easily. But for something slightly more sedate, such as a drama, progressive scan will deliver a clearer picture.

But don't just rely on the numbers. A 720 line set with excellent picture processing could out-perform a 1080 line TV with poor picture processing. So when buying a set check the screen quality. One tip is to ask retailers to play a movie by carrying the same player to different sets. You might not be the most popular person on a busy Saturday morning but it will give you a chance compare like with like.

To see those pictures you'll need more than a HD television, you'll also need some kind of HD video source. Unless the set has a built in HD tuner, you'll need to buy additional equipment or subscribe to a service provider.

The basic choice is between a subscription or non-subscription route. You can buy Freesat or FreeView HD kit outright or take out a subscription package with Sky or Virgin Media. Obviously, there are different costs and it all depends on what you want to watch.

Although not all TV programmes are available in HD, there's plenty of content to enjoy, like a wide choice of Blu-ray movies and video games.

The BBC have two HD channels: The BBC HD channel, which showcases the best HD programmes from across all BBC channels, from Wimbledon to Wonders of the Universe and the more recent BBC One HD channel which simulcasts a network version of the BBC One schedule, showing the majority of peak time programmes in HD.

Broadcasters are still learning how exploit the full creative potential of HD. Danielle Nagler, Head of BBC HD, says one of the biggest challenges has been encouraging producers not simply to make the same programme in HD, but to use it to make even better programmes.

In drama, this means being more filmic, with more close-ups. In natural history, perhaps including spectacular detailed helicopter shots. But there's a downside - Danielle says, 'HD can break the illusion, so it's vital to remember scratches or screws on sets become visible and artificial flowers or even some wigs that work in SD may not be convincing in HD'.

Danielle adds that HD is more precise and less forgiving. and imperfect technique can impinge on the whole work. 'In many ways HD has reminded people of the craft of filming'.

It might not surprise you to learn that the advent of HD transmission meant the installation of two and a half kilometres of cable and a hundred and eighty five separate pieces of equipment in the BBC apparatus room. It's worth watching this video Danielle made when BBC One HD launched explaining just how the channel gets to air. https://nontonwae.pages.dev/bbchd/faqs.shtml#clip

Meanwhile one former Tomorrow's World producer feels vindicated. Saul Nasse remembers filming a piece about widescreen television with Kate Bellingham at the French Open in 1991, where both HD-MAC (the high definition standard) and D-MAC (the widescreen standard) were being used.

'We'd been talking about high def on TW for years,' he says, 'and even though the pictures were brilliant, we made the point in my story that viewers were all likely to see widescreen standard definition sets in their homes long before high definition, which would probably have to wait for fully digital television. We weren't always right with our predictions on Tomorrow's World, but this time we were spot on!'

Today's phones store phone numbers, pictures, messages, video clips, downloaded apps, paid-for music, and, soon, digital money and payment receipts. What if your phone were lost, stolen, or dropped in the toilet? How would you get it all back?

Fortunately, backing up your phone isn't as difficult as you might think. Most phones – certainly all smartphones – come with software that allows you to take a copy of your phone's data. Many of the more thoughtfully designed smart phones come with a built-in backup routine that kicks in automatically and reminds you frequently.

Sometimes these can be too automated, so you're not sure what's being backed up or where the data is stored. But they come close to the ideal, which is that if something happens you can buy a new phone, connect it to your PC, and find everything present from the old phone. Many phones come with backup software; for those that don't a web search should find something that will work.

Backup for smart phones is often called "synchronisation". A backup just means taking a copy of your data, but syncing lets you use the data seamlessly on your main computer. Sync software typically has two components: software you install on your computer and an app or equivalent that runs on your phone. The phone app works in several stages. First it collects the data you want to back up. Then it connects to either your own computer or a remote one owned by a service provider in the cloud. Finally, it uploads the data to the location where the backup copy will be stored.

Where you'll store the data depends on the choices you make and the software you're using. Storing the data on your own computer is free, and also means you have complete control over what happens to it. Storing it in the cloud, on the other hand, means that you can restore the data onto your phone – or a replacement – from anywhere you happen to be.

There are two complications. One is that the backup routines that come with your phone may not include third-party apps you've downloaded and the data they create. If so, you'll need to search for something more comprehensive. The second is that phones may store data in more than one location: in the memory built into the phone itself, on the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card that communicates with the mobile network operator, and on any other memory cards you have installed.

Of those three, the memory cards are easiest: just plug them into a card reader, either built into your computer or an external one, and copy the files. For the SIM cards and memory, if backup software wasn't supplied and you can't find anything online, you will need instructions from the phone's manufacturer.

Wendy M. Grossman is a freelance technology writer and author living in London and is founder of The Skeptic magazine.

The main surprise was that the tablet would just be called the iPad, apparently removing the need for a number or letter after every new improvement.

New features include a sharper display, hi def video recording and a faster processing speed. The device will also be able to connect to faster 4G networks, but these won't be a reality in the UK until at least 2013.

It all sounds pretty cool, but rather than a revolutionary device we should all be rushing to buy this Friday, is it actually just a simple reminder that tweaks and improvements are constantly being made to products?

With a 62% market share, Apple doesn't need to play catch up with other brands by haphazardly throwing big and clever ideas at consumers. Instead it delivers changes people have come to expect. Products should be slicker, easier to use, faster and showcase new technologies rather than make big promises they can't necessarily keep.

Since the launch of the original iPad in 2010, competitor tablets like the Samsung Galaxy, Asus Eee Pad and BlackBerry PlayBook have hit the stores, in a bid to claim a share of the market.

Although we shouldn't be enticed by every new item we see, it's important to keep an eye on what's going on and see what companies are coming out with. This way, when we do need a new device, we can fully consider what's out there rather than just going for the least or most expensive item.

Such developments in screens, product weight and functionality are worth keeping abreast of as they help challenge our ideas of what we need certain items for. Figures indicate that the rise in tablet sales is linked to a decline in netbooks - i.e. small, cheap laptops - which suggests people are really thinking about how and why they use technology, and not just what cynics might imagine, to always have the latest gadget.

Two years ago I was convinced that I needed a netbook simply because I had the notion of a small laptop stuck in my head. I didn't consider just how lightweight a tablet would be, or any of its other uses because I hadn't fully considered how I would use a new device or what other features I could get for my money. In technology, it's tempting to stick to what you know but with everything that's out there it's well worth taking the time to learn about what you don't.

Read how tablets help Tara Palmer-Tomkinson get the most out of the web in her interview with BBC WebWise.

Hajar is a regular contributor to the WebWise blog and has also made award-winning programmes for BBC Radio. In her spare time she loves reading, writing and singing.