There's an old saying: "if you're in a hole, stop digging". Amazon's Jeff Bezos clearly hasn't heard it, because he plans to follow the Fire phone fiasco by making more Fire phones. This week we also heard about the decidedly different Yotaphone, caught rumblings of an HTC One M9, noted Acer getting hardcore, met a time-travelling PS4 and caught news of what we really hope is the death of those dreaded Captcha boxes on websites. It's the week in tech!
Hugh's invisible balls
What's white and invisible? That ball! But it's no joke for Hugh Langley, who's been playing catch with an invisible ball. No, he hasn't eaten too much blue cheese. He's been testing the Glove1, a wearable designed to provide haptic feedback in games and which looks like some kind of cybernetic Michael Jackson accessory. "Combine this with an Oculus Rift and we may have already solved virtual reality's input problem," Langley says.
Ready, Fire, aim!
Remember the Amazon Fire Phone, Amazon's smartphone with a whizzy 3D display and absolutely terrible reviews? Amazon boss Jeff Bezos admits that it's been a disaster, but that eventually it'll be good. It's nice to see Bezos agreeing with our very own Max Slater-Robins, who wrote that "Amazon strayed from what it knows… phones [are] communications devices, and this is an area of which Amazon has very little knowledge."
Specs appeal
Google Glass was the head-mounted computer that we were told would change the world and stuff. Well it didn't change the world and we all forgot about it for a bit, but now it's back! Back! BACK! Or at least, it's nearly back. 2015 will bring a new, improved, Intel-powered Glass, and it's getting a new look too. It's still dorkier than Dorky Dave of Dork Street, Dorktown, but it's sleeker than before and should deliver better performance and battery life as you flee from muggers trying to steal it from your face.
HTC's M9 is looking mighty fine
The successor to the excellent HTC One M8 is coming, with the innovative name One M9 - or maybe it'll be called the Hima, because a device with that very name has just leaked all over the internet. "If the specifications are true," Matt Hanson says, "then HTC's next flagship smartphone could be a doozy." How does an octa-core 64-bit Snapdragon, 20.7MP camera and Cat 6 LTE grab you?
A phone with two fronts
In years to come people may look back on us and say "imagine! Their phones only had one front!" That's what the newly launched Yotaphone 2 might mean, anyway: it has not one but two touchscreens, one on each side. One's an AMOLED and the other is E-ink, and it goes on sale this week. You just know Samsung's planning one with 3 screens now.
Acer gets hardcore
It turns out that Acer has "internal hordes of hardcore gamers" and the firm is picking their brains to help it design the next generation of hardcore gaming products. Speaking to TechRadar, CEO Jason Chen said that the firm was talking to gamers within and without the firm to better understand gamers' requirements ranging from turbo modes to case illumination.
20 years of awesome
Can you believe the PlayStation is 20? It is, and to celebrate Sony has made a version of the PS4 in the same colours as the original. We're gutted - we've just bought a black one. The retro model will be a limited edition, and it should be out in time for Christmas.
Only Google can save mankind
Bad news for robots and good news for people: Google has found a better way to combat bots than the hated Captcha boxes that infest the internet. All you need to do is click on a checkbox that says "I'm not a robot". You're probably wondering how that'll stop real robots, and the answer is that the box is upstairs and robots can't climb stairs and… actually that's Daleks. The truth is that Google uses "a whole bag of cues" including how you use the cursor, what your IP address is, and what your innermost thoughts are. Er, probably.
