James Farrell

James Farrell is the former editor-in-chief of Chiang Mai CityNews, where he wrote and managed daily news, features, op-eds and blogs on a diverse range of topics. Prior to this, in the same city of Northern Thailand where he lives, he was the longstanding deputy editor of the monthly magazine Citylife. He has written on culture, politics, travel, tech, business, human rights, for local, national, and international news services and magazines. He has a keen interest in the role technology is playing in the transformation of society, culture and politics, especially in developing nations. This is reflected in his not-so-successful first novel.

Latest from James Farrell

Trying to fix Microsoft’s new Surface Book will add years to your life

Microsoft’s ‘ultimate laptop’, the Surface Book, is going to be a handful if you attempt to repair it yourself, reports reveal. Touted by most critics as a supreme device leading an evolution of laptops, it also just received a rather embarrassing score of 1/10 by ifixit.com concerning how it might be put back together if ...

Microsoft shrinks OneDrive over abuse issues, but how did Redmond think ‘unlimited’ would be understood?

Do you remember close to this time last year when we were chirping about Microsoft’s magnanimity  in giving unlimited storage space in OneDrive (at least to Office 365 users)? Well, it seems Microsoft has turned heel on us, and is now backing down on that promise – not to mention a few others. In October last ...

Film Self/Less: After comparing Steve Jobs to Einstein it became pointless

Just out on DVD Tarsem Singh’s (Immortals) sci-fi Self/Less could be said to fall into the category of interesting premise, but poorly executed film. Similar to the 1997 film Face/Off, in story and in title, we see the mind of one individual transferred to another body/face. Ben Kingsley (Damian) plays a wealthy, shrewd business exec who, ...

Microsoft’s new Windows 10 preview build has some nice surprises including media casting

As well as giving us a beta version of Windows 10 for mobile (Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview Build 10581) this week, Microsoft has also just released a new build for Windows 10 on PC (Preview Build 10576) for Windows Insiders on the Fast Ring. Besides fixing a load of bugs and attending to a ...

Microsoft updates Outlook for iOS and Android and says it’s goodnight to Sunrise

In February this year Microsoft acquired calendar app Sunrise for a rumored $100 million, with a view to reinvent the way people use calendars on mobile devices. The app integrated all your calendars into one easily manageable calendar. Microsoft has just revealed that Sunrise will now become part Outlook, and once the integration is complete ...

Microsoft exec and son die in Canadian boating disaster

A Microsoft UK manager, David Thomas, and his 18 year old son died on October 26th when a whale watching boat, the 65ft Leviathan II, capsized close to Vancouver Island. Three more victims were identified by the British Columbia Coroners Service, and a further 22 people were rescued. Thomas, described by colleagues as a tech ...

The Surface Mini: Microsoft discusses the dream device that never was

“It was like a Moleskine… it was awesome,” Microsoft’s Corporate VP for devices, Panos Panay, told Wired in a recent interview about a device that never became available for public consumption. According to the interview, prior to Panay and his team working towards making the ultimate laptop, which is the recently released Surface Book, the Surface Mini ...

5 alternative tech movies that you may not have seen

Last week there must have been 101 memes featured on your daily scroll down Facebook relating to the date (October 21, 2015) Back to the Future II took us to in 1989. ‘So, this is how we are meant to look in 2015’ was the implied joke in most of those memes. The film, however, made ...

What to expect in Microsoft’s first major Windows 10 update

Microsoft is set to update its new operating system sometime at the beginning of November. The update, codenamed Threshold 2, will be available to users running Windows 10 RTM. For those running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 you can get the Fall update as an upgrade without the need to install previous updates. It’s reported ...

What the world’s critics are saying about Microsoft’s Surface Book

Microsoft’s dream machine, the Surface Book, has only been out of the gates a couple of weeks but that’s long enough for many of the world’s tech critics to have given the new laptop hybrid a test run. The results are in, and for the most part Microsoft will be pleased with what people have ...