Alan Martin

Cannes, Toronto, Venice… Mitcham? Despite being a happy resident of three years, I can’t pretend that Mitcham is a fashionable part of London. And its film scene is minimal unless you count the screens dedicated to horse racing in its many local…

It may seem like an age since you decided to test the waters with a Tinder account in 2012, but in the great scheme of human evolution, the app – and indeed, every other dating app – is embryonic. And while profiles may have evolved from long,…

The day before the election, I had a look to see if Google Trends data provided any opportunities to beat the bookies… or at least skip the need to stay awake past the exit poll. While certain things were quite telling – search on the parties and…

The election is now just one day away and while pollsters have been trying hard to fix the problems that failed to spot the winners in 2015, 2016 and 2017, the companies involved reckon they have it licked this time. But have they? There’s one place…

If you’re still packing an iPhone 4S, a Windows Phone or a potentially explosive Galaxy Note 7, your next phone upgrade is going to feel transformational. But thousands of years in the future when archeologists pull what remains of your cold dead…

Last year, I wasted three hours of my life watching a teleshopping channel try to shift a middle-of-the-road budget smartphone as if it were the second coming of Jesus. Somehow ‘not watching teleshopping channels’ didn’t manage to make my list of New…

Back in 2016 I attended the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 in London. I remember it because I was pulled out of the queue, frisked and had my bag searched. It’s something of an irony that while there were no explosives about my person, there…

I think it was around the two-hour mark where I lost the will to live. I’d set out to find out how people are selling smartphones on shopping channels in an era where internet shopping is everywhere, and what had started as a fun idea turned into…

Like it or not, in 2018 very few sports can be described as truly pure and technology free. On the surface, that feels like a fairly innocuous statement, given every one of us carries a powerful computer in our pockets, but people can get a bit funny…

If you’ve ever witnessed innocent digital thrill seekers thrown off a poorly-conceived ride on RollerCoaster Tycoon, you’ll know that the design of thrill rides is best left to the professionals. Brendan Walker is one such professional, and at New…

“I sound like I don’t like technology, but I actually do, sorry,” Professor Noel Sharkey laughs. “But this just really upsets me.” Sharkey is just getting into the swing of his 20-minute lecture: a talk at FutureFest entitled “Sex, race and gender in…

If a gentleman makes his own luck, then I’m no gentleman. Just a month ago, I draw Germany in a World Cup sweepstake only to cheer on a team that would rather roll over to South Korea than give me the satisfaction of winning £70. It’s only money…