Today, at two parallel press events in London and New York, HTC announced its new flagship smartphone, the new HTC One - formerly known as the HTC M7. Crafted with a distinct zero-gap aluminum unibody, the new HTC One introduces several new HTC technologies and services, namely HTC BlinkFeed, HTC Zoe and HTC BoomSound as well as HTC Sense 5. Running on Android 4.1, the One is powered by a Qualcomm quad-core Snapdragon 600 CPU at 1.7 GHz, the HTC One supports quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE, dualband UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA and triband LTE at 800/1800/2600 MHz. Also on board are NFC, Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX and WiFi a/ac/b/g/n. The One comes in two version, one with 32 GB and one with 64 GB (carrier and country dependent) but both versions feature 2 GB of DDR2 RAM.

Sonos today introduced the Sonos Playbar, the soundbar for music lovers. Playbar brings immersive HiFi sound to the TV and, being a typical Sonos full Wireless HiFi System, streams all the music on earth through one easy-to-use player. The sophisticated all-in-one design of Playbar combines exposed aluminum with high performance speaker fabric for a look that's timeless, understated and because it does not require a subwoofer or speaker wire, easily fits into any room and setup. Its built-in sensors help Playbar automatically adjust EQ and channel orientation so it can lie flat on the TV stand or rotate for low profile wall-mounting above or below the TV.

News came in yesterday that Microsoft and Huawei unveiled a new Windows Phone designed specifically for Africa, one of the most rapidly-growing technology markets in the world. The phone, which is called the Huawei 4Afrika, is said to be the first in a series of smart devices being custom developed for the continent and released as part of Microsoft's sweeping new 4Afrika Initiative, which also kicked off yesterday. Designed specifically as an affordable option for students, small businesses, developers, and first-time smartphone owners, the Huawei 4Afrika with Windows Phone 8 will make its debut later this month in seven countries including Angola, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa.

Everybody - hopefully - loves the Slingbox and everybody - hopefully - loves Windows RT and the RT powered Microsoft Surface but how do both play together well? While Sling Media offers a couple of pretty good clients for different platforms, namely Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS and Windows Phone, there's yet no client available for Windows RT. And while Windows RT comes with Microsoft's Internet Explorer 10, Sling Media's web player is also not an option because it requires an ActiveX plug-in which can't be installed on ARM powered Windows RT devices. The only chance is to access your compatible Slingbox through Facebook but who wants to watch TV via Facebook?

Yesterday Microsoft announced the official roll-out of its Windows Phone 7.8 upgrade for the first generation Windows Phones. As Microsoft unveiled earlier, Windows Phone 7 devices won't receive Windows Phone 8 but 7.8 instead, which at least mimics some Windows Phone 8 elements and also introducing further enhancements. Just to recap: The focus of the 7.8 upgrade is pretty much the new Home screen screen which adds the ability to create live tiles in three different sizes. Furthermore, 7.8 brings ten new accent colors for the surface and the daily Bing image can be used to add more individuality to the lock screen.