I realize the irony of publishing this in the week that Intel announced it was pulling the plug on its smart glasses project Vaunt (pictured) but I think that the smartphone’s days are numbered, and smart glasses are going to be the thing that kills it. 

If you’re anything like me, you break out in a cold sweat whenever your phone’s battery drops below 10%. The idea of going without a phone would feel like losing a limb. An invisible digital limb, but still, a limb.

So the idea of not having a phone anymore seems like a totally alien concept, but I’ve seen some emerging technology recently that’s convinced me that we’re only a few years away from the end of the smartphone. 

Now I don’t mean that in five years time the smartphone will be gone completely, that is madness. I just mean that the technology that is going to kill it is here already and in five years we’ll have heard the first death knoll. Let me explain.

Getting to where we are now

It was 2007 when Steve Jobs first walked out on stage in his black roll-neck, comfortable trainers, iPhone 1st gen in his hand (albeit not a fully functioning one) and changed the industry. That’s just over ten years ago. To put it another way, that’s the year Pixar’s Ratatouille came out.

And 2007 wasn’t even when it went mainstream; ‘You don’t need a smartphone,’ I thought, ‘a phone only really needs to be able to make calls, send texts, and play these sweet sweet polyphonic ringtones.’

And so, clutching on to my Nokia 3510 (yes, I know, it could access the internet, but this was back in the days that internet on a phone cost four million pounds a minute) and my strongly held beliefs, I stared down the oncoming wave of smartphone adoption and dug in my heels.

Little did I know that in a few short years, everything I’d known about phones, about connecting to the internet, about socializing, and most importantly about ringtones would be totally changed.

Over those years, phone screens have got bigger and bigger, taking up more and more of the real estate on the handset, until we reached the point where we are now, that manufacturers are creating a ‘notch’ to house essential components rather than have a thin bezel. 

Where we’re going

The only reasonable way to go from here is a screen beyond a screen. Where there is no physical object creating a confine for the visual platform. And the easiest way of achieving that is by having the screen closer to your eye, creating the illusion of size. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking: ‘Andrew, we already have smart glasses. And they’re not good.’ 

And you’d be right, mostly. I’m not some loon that thinks everyone should be wearing Google Glass, or Hololens (don’t even get me started on Snapchat Specs), I think they’re just early versions. 

The AR glasses that we’ve had so far have undoubtedly proved useful (admittedly more on the business than consumer side of things) and have taken the bold first steps. The first ever smartphone wasn’t widely adopted either. 

But the building blocks are there, and not just in terms of the display. We’ve got bone-conduction audio being included in running headphones that allow you to listen to music while clearly hearing the world around you, and EEG headsets that could allow you to control your smart glasses using just your brain.

Now, EEG control is the bit of the equation that is the furthest away from a technology that we’re used to using, but that doesn’t mean it’s a long way from being a commercially available product.

I was recently in Dubai for the GESF education conference where I flew a drone with my brain using a commercially available EEG headset. A version of this headset was used to control a Formula One car, so the idea of controlling an electronic device that plays Spotify and makes calls really isn’t that far-fetched. 

And this ties into a current wave that we’re experiencing in electronics; the move away from the unnatural method with which we interact with our phones. Tapping, swiping and typing may feel natural, but so does driving stick if you’re used to it, and there’s nothing more unnatural (and 20th Century) than pulling levers, pushing pedals and twisting wheels just to make a machine work. 

There’s a reason that talking to a voice assistant is more satisfying than tapping on a screen (when it works), as it’s a more natural process.

Imagine if the next step of that was just thinking what you want to happen and it happens. A notification pops up in the corner of your field of vision and you’re able to ‘think’ it away. It sounds sci-fi, but the truth is, we’re really not that far away. 

Emotiv, the makers of the drone-brain EEG headset mentioned above are currently working on a version of the headset that could well take the form of glasses. 

“The research headset, it’s not the most convenient thing to put on your head. But there are a couple of things that people don’t mind putting on their head. And it’s going to come out soon.”

Just a little Moore of Moore’s law

While the last few years have seen people claiming we’ve seen the end of Moore’s law (that the number of transistors per square inch on a circuit doubles every two years), we are undoubtedly still seeing rapid development in technology, while phone improvements seem, well, iterative.

It’s been years since a phone came out that was a genuine game-changer, and that doesn’t match up with the progress of technology. The rate of technological development we’re currently experiencing means the gap between the laughable and the commonplace is shrinking. 

The difference between ten years ago and tomorrow is the same as the difference between tomorrow and three years from now. Then that gap again will basically be a year. Then a few months. 

Before you know it we’ve had generations of industry-changing technology in five years. My numbers are rough, but you get the point.

With rumors that Apple is working on smart glasses, Facebook confirming it’s thinking about using EEG control to send messages, and Microsoft filing patents for a mind-controlled Windows app, it’s entirely possible that the next big leap in this tech is only a couple of years away. 

Current EEG allows you to control a cursor with your brain, which would make for a pretty laborious texting process, especially if you’re just wanting to fire off some swift banter, but a research headset recently created by MIT could fix that problem by monitoring ‘subvocalizations’ – the imperceptible muscle signals made from your brain to your mouth when you speak in your head.

I’m aware these technologies aren’t ready yet, but let’s not forget, neither was the iPhone. I’m certainly excited about the possibility of a new game-changing technology, especially with all the advancements being made in computer vision, meaning smart glasses could be able to identify what you’re looking at, and turn you into a real-life RoboCop.

http://www.techradar.com/news/smart-glasses-could-kill-smartphones-in-the-next-five-years

While everyone knows that most Linux distributions (distros) are free to download, not everybody is aware that you also have access to thousands of cost-free applications through your operating system’s package manager. 

Many of the more user-friendly distros will come with a selection of software preinstalled to help you get started, but there are many more apps out in the wild, under continuous development.

In this guide we’ll highlight 10 of the best desktop applications for Linux. All of these programs can be installed either via the command line or by using a graphical frontend to your package manager – such as Synaptic, which we’ll cover in the very next slide.

1. Synaptic

While some Linux distros like Ubuntu come with their own flashy app stores, none are as quick and easy to use as Synaptic, which simply serves as a graphical frontend for the ‘apt-get’ command line utility. You can install it on any Debian-based Linux distro such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint.

Browse categories of apps such as ‘Games and Amusement’ using the pane on the left-hand side. Click the box next to an app name to mark it for installation (or uninstallation) then click the Apply button at the top to affect your changes. All the programs covered in this feature can be installed via Synaptic.

2. VLC Media Player

VLC is most commonly known for being a media player, although it does much more. When installed, it downloads codecs for virtually every kind of audio or video file, meaning you’re unlikely to ever have playback issues again. The software can also play DVDs. 

You can use VLC to clip video files and even convert them from one format to another – from AVI to MP4, for example. See our guide on this here. The media player client can also act as a server, allowing you to stream media from one device to another (handily, we’ve also got a guide on how to do this).

3. Mozilla Firefox

Firefox is the default web browser for a number of Linux distros such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint. The browser’s simple and fluid interface is one of its many attractions. Firefox will play YouTube videos right off the bat, and can download plugins to play other formats for you. The browser also updates itself from the get-go, meaning you always have the latest version.

Firefox supports a number of extensions to enhance your web experience, and you can customise the browser further via the Mozilla add-ons page, where it is possible to install a colourful theme.

4. GIMP

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free image editor. It can be used to edit and retouch images by resizing, adding layers and other special effects. You can access these via the handy toolbox or dropdown menus. See our guide on how to use GIMP here. The GIMP website itself also has a great selection of tutorials. 

If you’re accustomed to Adobe Photoshop, it may take some time for you to adjust to GIMP’s interface, but it can do almost everything professional image editors are capable of. You can even add certain Photoshop plugins to GIMP.

By default the program takes up less than 100MB of space, which is another considerable benefit, particularly for those short on storage.

5. Deluge

While many Linux distributions already come with a BitTorrent client, Deluge stands out as a lightweight yet fully-featured app for downloading your files.

The interface is extremely easy to master and can be enhanced by a number of excellent community supported plugins which do things such as shut down your machine when a download completes.

You can even set up Deluge so that it can be accessed via a web interface from other devices, allowing you to download files to your home computer when you’re away.

6. Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a free and powerful email client. The setup wizard guides you gently through the process of either creating a new email address or setting up your existing one. Thunderbird’s database contains email settings for all common providers, and you can add as many email accounts as you wish. 

Like Firefox, Thunderbird can be enhanced by add-ons, such as themes to make it more colourful, or better ways to sort your Mail folders. The most useful of these is undoubtedly the Lightning extension which adds a fully functioning Calendar to the email client. We’ve got an in-depth review of Thunderbird right here.

7. LibreOffice

LibreOffice is nothing less than a full-blown office suite, on a par with commercial alternatives like Microsoft Office. While the interface may look rather basic, this product has some extremely advanced features.

The LibreOffice word processor Writer, spreadsheet software Calc and presentation app Impress are preinstalled in Ubuntu and most of its derivatives. The suite also includes three less well-known apps – Draw, Math and Base – which are used for editing vector graphics, composing mathematical formulae and managing databases respectively. 

While LibreOffice uses the ODF (Open Document Format) by default it can open and save Microsoft Office compatible files too. Read our full review of LibreOffice here.

8. Pidgin

Pidgin is an instant messaging program which allows you to connect to multiple chat networks at once. At the time of writing these include AIM, Bonjour, IRC and Google Talk to name but a few. Sadly Facebook chat is no longer available since the social network dropped support for the open XMPP messaging protocol.

Pidgin can be enhanced by installing third-party plugins. Some of these allow you to connect to other chat networks such as Skype, while others can be used to protect your conversations, for example the OTR (Off the Record) messaging plugin.

9. ClamAV/ClamTk

Although Linux machines can’t be affected by viruses designed to infect Windows, your PC can accidentally forward harmful files to other computers, for example in an email attachment. And these days, there are even some incidences of malware aimed at Linux systems.

The antivirus scanner ClamAV provides some peace of mind, as it can detect many types of malware. It’s often used on mail servers but will run happily on your desktop system if you want to scan files or folders.

By default ClamAV can only be used from the command line, but you can use Synaptic to install ‘clamtk‘ and ‘clamtk-nautilus’ to allow you to scan your system and individual files with a few clicks of your mouse.

10. Audacity

Audacity is an editing program which allows you to record and tinker with audio. Not only can Audacity record audio simultaneously from various inputs (for example, a USB microphone or an electric guitar), it can also trim and edit clips. Furthermore, it supports multiple tracks, allowing you, for instance, to record lyrics and backing music separately.

The software also supports a number of audio effects such as noise reduction, as detailed in its extremely comprehensive manual which is both bundled with Audacity and available online. Audacity also supports VST (Virtual Studio Technology) plugins. Tracks can be exported in a number of popular sound formats such as WAV, OGG and MP3. If you want to know more about Audacity, then have a read of our full review here.

http://www.techradar.com/news/best-linux-apps

The surge of the adrenaline, the smell of the vaseline, the shine of the silver foil blanket. It must be London Marathon time! 26.2 gruelling miles around the streets of the United Kingdom’s capital city, it’s one of the world’s most famous long-distance road races. And the 2018 London Marathon is likely to be one of the most watched in recent years, thanks to the presence of one Sir Mo Farah.

Yep, Mo’s back. And having finished in eighth place last time he ran in 2014, he’ll be more determined than ever to be victorious this year and capture the long standing British record of two hours seven minutes and thirteen seconds. Will it be misery or the Mobot? Either way, TechRadar will tell you how to live stream all the Marathon action.

But the London Marathon isn’t just about the so-called elite runners. It’s the fun runners, wheelchair athletes and plethora of weird and wacky fancy-dress costumes that make the event so iconic. Around 40,000 people will be running today, the vast majority fulfilling long held dreams.

And the great news is that getting a live stream of the 2018 London Marathon is really easy, as the BBC has the rights to show it in all its glory – just as it has since the inaugural year in 1981. And even if you live outside the UK keep reading as we’ll show you how to stream the London Marathon 2018 from wherever you are in the world.

How to watch the London Marathon for free: UK stream

The BBC goes all out with its coverage of the national treasure that is the London Marathon. So if you’re in the UK and you have a TV license, then you can catch it on BBC One now all the way until 2pm as the last of the fun runners stumble past the finish line.

If you’re not in front of a television, then the iPlayer or BBC Sport app is the way to go for uninterrupted action and your pick of what to watch.

The other way to watch the BBC online is to go via TVPlayer.com, which doesn’t require any sign ins and hosts all of the UK’s free-to-air channels without having to worry about hopping around from site to site or app to app.

Stream the London Marathon anywhere else in the world for free 

If you don’t happen to live in the UK don’t worry as you can watch the London Marathon on the BBC from anywhere in the world. Simply download and install a VPN to change your IP address to one in the UK and head over to BBC iPlayer or TVPlayer.com. Great news if no local broadcaster is showing it or it is but you don’t fancy the annoyance of constant commercial breaks. Here’s how to stream the London Marathon with a VPN:

The running man of tech

TechRadar’s very own Gareth Beavis will be among the runners in this year’s London Marathon. He’s spent the lead up to the event documenting his training and how he has got in shape for the endurance race. You can read all about his efforts in his running man of tech blog, which includes:

Main image courtesy of the BBC. Other images of virginmoneylondonmarathon.com

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