The app, which comes just after LinkedIn was released on iPad, is free to download for all and includes all of the features that you’d expect. You can browse through job listings, see updates from your connections in real time, view group information and updates, as well as sharing updates yourself.

The app fits perfectly into the Metro guidelines, and may perhaps be the most nicely designed Windows Phone apps I’ve ever seen, allowing for all of the same functionality as the iOS and Android versions but in an instantly recognisable Windows Phone format. It also has a few special features just on Windows Phone, including Live Tile notifications for incoming messages and invitations. There’s also the ability to create a secondary Live Tile for group updates.

It’s definitely an impressive showing for a first release and is already the equal of its brethren on other platforms. Everything runs smoothly and efficiently as should be the case for the Lumia 900 and the five start reviews keep piling in, so get downloading now!

The HTC One X is the most powerful and desirable Android phone ever to be released – it’s got a beautiful 4.7″ Super LCD display running at 720p, a powerful quad-core Tegra 3 processor and 32 GB of internal storage space. All this runs the very latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich as well as the brilliant Sense user interface. Normally you’d have to spend £480 or take out a £35 / month, 2 year contract to get your hands on one, but we’re giving it away for free!

In order to be in with a shot, you just have to visit the giveaway page and sign up via Facebook or your email address (which we’ll only use to let you know if you win.)

You can enhance your chances of winning by getting your friends to sign up and sharing the giveaway on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. For each step you take, you’ll earn more entries and get a better chance of taking home the prize.

The very best thing you can do to maximise your chances is to get your friends to sign up via your own referral link. For each friend that visits the giveaway through your link, you’ll get one entry – if they then enter the competition, you’ll get a massive five entries! Not bad for a quick Tweet :)

To get started just check out the giveaway page. Do let us know if you run into any trouble. You can reach us via the comments here on the site, or social media places like Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

The 4.3” handset is an upsized variant of the Nokia Lumia 800, which has only a 3.7” screen. The handset also includes a new front-facing camera not found on the 800 and, in the US, has LTE capabilities. It runs Windows Phone 7.5 and is powered by a 1.4 GHz single core CPU, 512 MB of RAM and a Carl Zeiss rear camera.

It’s unknown whether we’ll see the same Nokia Lumia 900 accessories as we did with the US release – there, it was generally available in a pack which included premium headphones for customers that pre-ordered, as well as a USB charger, wall adapter and a silicone Nokia Lumia 900 case.

It’s also unknown how much the phone will cost at retail, with the US release including a low $99 surcharge on contract. The sim-free price is expected to be approximately £480, standard for an upper-range handset but much more than any other Windows Phone on the market.

Lumia will certainly be looking to make a splash with their flagship tablet, but will the UK market be as enthusiast as the American one? Only time will tell.

5. Train Tickets

If you’re traveling in the UK, chances are your best bet is often to go by rail. Train stations have become a lot easier to master than they used to be, but if you arrive late it’s often invaluable to have the train timetable on your phone instead of on a board somewhere. Train Tickets from Crosscountry Trains is one of a few different apps that offer this service, with live train time boards for stations across the UK. You’re able to see which platform a departing or arriving train will be stopping at, as well if it’s been delayed and where it was last spotted. The app, as the name suggests, also allows you to book train tickets quickly and easily – although some functionality, including seat picking is missing. Some alternative apps are Trainline Tickets and National Rail’s Rail Planner Live.

4. Trip Journal

This is a great one for creative types who like to keep a record of what they’ve done and where they’ve gone when travelling. Trip Journal essentially works by linking journal entries, whether they be text notes, photos or videos, to GPS locations. Whenever you travel to a new destination (whether that be a famous landmark, a nice restaurant or even a Hadrian’s Wall cottage in Cumbria, if you’re me). You open the app, note down that you’re there and add in whatever notes or media you want. When you get back, you’ve got a nice interactive journal.

3. TripIt

TripIt is a rather clever app that automatically generates a schedule for you based on the emails you get sent whenever you book a bus, rail or plane trip. It’ll spit out a nicely generated and locally stored schedule within a few seconds, and will also add local weather, maps and other relevant information. It can occasionally backfire though, with mangled itineraries, so it’s definitely worth checking the results before you step out the door – I once was on my way to this aforementioned Cumbria bed and breakfast and only noticed that the app had failed when I arrived at the train station on the wrong day! Usually though, TripIt is pure gold.

2. Flight Track

Another specific one this time – Flight Track is the best app I’ve found for booking and tracking flights on Android. As well as allowing you to track flights as they come in, including a nice map overlay, you’re also able to see ‘delay forecasts’ based on past events and see which seats are best via an automatic link to the plane on SeatGuru, something that’s essential when you’re making your booking.

1. TripAdvisor

Our last (and possibly best) app for travel is the legendary TripAdvisor. This Android app allows you to find all manner of useful information about your next destination – everything from places to eat, hotels, flights to things to do. This latter section is particularly useful as even the most remote destinations have several suggestions, ordered by visitor ratings, and gives you a good grasp of what’s actually worth seeing and what’s overblown. You’re also able to see hundreds or thousands of photos, which is brilliant if you’re looking to take some pictures of your own or just looking to see what the place is like on the ground.

Conclusion

So that’s it then – a nice breakdown of the five travel apps I’ve found the most useful in my own experiences. Of course, there are loads more useful travel apps than what I’ve listed here… what are your favourites? Let us know via the comments below, and be sure to include real-life examples of when they’ve come in handy!

The tablet is called the Asus Eee Pad MeMO ME370, and it is powered by the same powerful quad-core Tegra 3 as the Transformer Prime. It also features the same resolution as the original Prime, at 1280 x 800 pixels. The Memo will also ship with Ice Cream Sandwich, which hit the Transformer Prime earlier this week and is coming to the original Transformer in February.

Its other specifications are quite standard – it’ll be available in 16 GB or 32 GB variations, expandable via microSD, and also comes with the standard wireless connectivity suite (GPS, Bluetooth, Wireless). There’s also a five megapixel rear camera on the back, and a 1.2 megapixel front-facer. The battery life is only 8.5 hours.

One thing it doesn’t share is the price – the Memo is just $249, a fraction of the $499 Prime and $599 Prime HD. That’s putting it in Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire territory – it looks like the tablet price fall that the HP Touchpad fire sale kicked off is truly in effect.

The Asus Eee Pad Memo will be released in Q2 this year, meaning it might be released near the rumoured Kindle Fire 2 and the iPad 3. Even so, this looks to be a top-notch tablet for the price.

This article was written by William Judd. William writes for Mobile Fun, the UK’s leading online retailer of Jawbone accessories and sim free phones.

Apple practically created the modern tablet market with the iPad, and appropriately until very recently they have been enjoying almost complete dominance. With the release of competitive Android tablets such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Asus Transformer though, Apple’s market share has slipped from 82% in 2010 (just after the launch of the iPad 2) to 65% in 2011, according to numbers from Canaccord Genuity.

That’s projected to fall to 57% in 2012, as more competitive Android tablets continue to be released. It seems likely that Apple will eventually be overcome by the glut of lower-priced Android tablets in every niche, much as they did in the smartphone market. They’re not giving up though — the next iteration of the iPad line, the iPad 3, is expected to be a strong contender for ‘best tablet yet.’

We already know from many component suppliers that Apple has been buying up a large stock of high resolution 10″ displays for use in the next generation iPad. This has been confirmed by recent findings in iOS 5 to references to a new iPad, with a listed resolution of 2048 x 1536.

This would be double the pixel density of the current generation iPad, which sits at 1024 x 768. It’s roughly equivalent to the Retina display of the iPhone 4 and 4S, which comes in at 326 pixels per inch.

The new iPad is also rumoured to come with an upgraded processor. As the iPhone 4S made the jump from single core to dual core, the iPad 3 will make the jump from dual core to quad core.

According to eminent Japanese newspaper Nikkei, Samsung has been asked to produce ever increasing numbers of the new quad core A6 chips. Whilst Samsung and Apple have been at each other’s throats in the courts, they still hold a strong relationship, with Apple being Samsung’s largest client.

So like I mentioned earlier — this new iPad 3 is looking quite scary. While Apple’s quad-core processor has already been already equalled or surpassed by Nvidia’s Tegra 3, the better-than-HD screen will be more of an issue. If suppliers really have sold all of their stock to Apple, then it may be some time before an Android tablet with a comparable pixel density can be launched, and that could hurt Android’s market share until the problem is rectified.

One option available to Android tablet-makers is the possibility of screens of different dimensions. Whilst 10″ has become a popular standard thanks to the iPad, slightly larger or smaller screens could be equally appealing. It’s for this reason that some suppliers are beginning to push 8.9″ screens, as a compromise between full size 10″ displays and smaller 7″ screens.

On the computing power front, it’s a closer battle. Tegra 3, the new quad-core chipset from Nvidia, includes a number of interesting features which could give it the edge over Apple’s A6.

Perhaps the most interesting is the companion core, an energy efficient but slow processor core that automatically takes over during low-intensity operations like watching a video or listening to music. This unique arrangement could allow Tegra-3-powered Android tablets gain a battery life on Apple, which typically leads in this area.

Nvidia’s Tegra 3 has already been used to great effect in the Asus Transformer Prime, which is seeing excellent reviews from major tech sites. The quad-core system-on-chip is also expected to be used in tablets from Acer and Lenovo, and likely quite a few others.

The final piece of the Android argument is the new version 4 of the Android operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich. The tasty snack combines the phone-centric Gingerbread and Tablet-centric Honeycomb into a single unified OS, and has already proven very popular in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the first ICS phone.

Where previous Android iterations felt a bit stale compared to the svelte look and feel of iOS, Ice Cream Sandwich represents a genuine competitor for the first time. It offers an equally stylish look and a comparably easy to use user experience, on top of Android’s traditional strength in functionality and customisability. Once more applications have been updated to take advantage of the OS, including platform mainstay Flash, Ice Cream Sandwich will be a key weapon in the fight against Apple.

And what a war it will be — if the iPad 3 launches in late Q1 or early Q2 as expected, it will arrive right in the midst of the first quad-core devices from the big Android manufacturers.

Who will win? It’s impossible to know, but my vote goes towards the consumer. With the advancements in tablet technology and increased price pressure from low-cost tablets like the Kindle Fire and HP Touchpad, 2012 is sure to be an excellent time to pick up a new tablet.

Well, it works because Microsoft have set up a web-based emulator for the OS, which you can find on their official website. You can check out the Messaging, People, Local Scout, Outlook, Calendar, Family and Phone apps, which gives a pretty good preview of the way that everything is laid out.

Sadly, it doesn’t interface with your existing phone — so you can’t really accomplish anything other than swiping around the menus. Still, it’s an interesting concept and one that you should definitely have a go at if you haven’t used a Windows Phone before.

The Metro stylings of Windows Phone are also coming to Windows 8, so this might be a good way to see what you’ll be getting into — of course another way is to download and install the Windows 8 developer preview, but that’s a little too hardcore for most.

Windows Phone 7 is definitely a nicer OS than it gets credit for, and this is a cool way that Microsoft can show off their work.

Check Out the Windows Phone 7 Emulator Here!

This article was sponsored by Mobile Fun, the UK’s leading online retailer of  the official Kindle cover, other Kindle covers, and even a Panasonic Lumix case line.

The bug, called the ‘SAV Ghost’, has been reportedly fixed by independent developer Paul O’Brien. His fix rolls out today as a new custom ROM, available in both ‘stock’ and ‘enhanced’ flavours. The enhanced version includes faster rotation and alternative UI options, so if you’re feeling adventurous go for that one.

Of course, to install the new ROM you’ll need to flash your device. This isn’t an entirely risk-free undertaking, so make sure you follow the directions and proceed with caution. It requires a rooted Galaxy Nexus with ClockworkMod Recovery installed (directions for that are here). Here are the directions for the ‘enhanced’ variant, copied from this thread.

1. Download the zip file of your choice and copy it to /sdcard/ on the Galaxy Nexus.
2. Turn off, then start the Nexus in recovery mode (hold Volume Up, Volume Down and Power).
3. Perform a NANDROID backup from the menu
4. Select the option to apply an update .zip, then select the .zip file you copied to /sdcard/.

So it’s a fairly simple operation; the same principles as flashing any custom ROM. Of course, Google are reportedly working to release a fix themselves, so if you’d prefer to err on the side of caution then it’d be better to wait.

Even if you don’t take the plunge yourself, the release does prove that the bug can be fixed (or at least controlled) via software, and is probably the major reason that sim-free shipments of the phone were delayed until the 1st of December in the UK. Good news all around then!

This article was written by William Judd. William writes for Mobile Fun, the UK’s leading online retailer of the official Kindle cover and third party Kindle covers.

That monitor is one of the best 3D monitors available, scoring 4 / 5 stars on CNET and other top publications. The monitor’s just £180 on Amazon as well, so it’s quite a bargain.

LG are really pushing their 3D technology to gamers, and have already sponsored multiple seasons and tournaments for StarCraft 2 in South Korea, including the excellent LG Cinema 3D Special League won by DRG.

It’s worth noting that the sequel to Brotherhood, Revelations, will be hitting PC soon as well, on December 2nd worldwide. Let’s hope they update the offer with the latest title once it’s available!

The full press release follows below.

The face of the Angry Birds series, the Red Bird, is the first speaker we offer. It comes with a clever stand that’s perfect for an iPhone or other smartphone in landscape mode. It uses a 3.5 mm jack, making it compatible with all kinds of smartphones and MP3 players, as well as tablets, laptops and PCs. The speaker produces strong, room filling sound.

Personally, my favourite Angry Bird is the Black Bird, the bomb that eliminates fortifications so joyously. This dock and speaker combo is compatible with iPhones, iPods and iPads. The dock also comes with a handy remote control, so that you can adjust the volume from a distance.

If you prefer a ponderous porcine to an aggravated avian, then the Helmet Pig Speaker for Apple Devices is the one for you. The dock is compatible with any iPhone or iPod with a 30 pin connector, and comes with a remote control.

For more Angry Birds merchandise, including iPhone cases and iPad 2 cases, check out the special Angry Birds accessories section at Mobile Fun.