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This week marks the 2013 edition of the London Coffee Festival . Coinciding with National Coffee Week, London Coffee Festival will be held once again at the Old Truman Brewery near Brick Lane in Shoreditch, London. For three days, coffee snobs from around the world will be descending to sample coffee, attend or watch the UK Barista Championship, learn the art of brewing artisan coffee and take part in many other caffeine related fun. Inside, the festival will be divided into zones, including a pop up coffee shop in 'Soho', a food court in 'Shoreditch' and picnic area in 'Hyde Park'. Tickets for each session costs from £12.50 on the door with discounts for online booking. Best of all, while you learn to appreciate specialty coffee, 50% of ticket sales will go towards Project Waterfall, a charity which aims to provide safe drinking water and sanitation in coffee producing counties in Africa. * picture from The Attendant coffee shop in London

Sony officially launched the Android-powered Xperia Z on Tuesday at a launch event in Victoria House, London. The event was designed to showcase the Xperia Z's unique feature, and included a ball pit where guests could jump into. Guests can then use the Xperia Z to test out its burst mode ability, which can capture up to 999 9MP image in just over a minute. Impressive? I thought so. If you have an active kid, or an active lifestyle, this may just be the phone for you. In addition to the Xperia Z, guests were also shown the new Xperia SP, L and Tablet Z, which I had a brief hands-on with. The highlight of the evening were the combination of an art/tech installation and music performance by French DJ Madeon (who at 18 years old, is probably just about legal enough to attend himself!). As if to highlight their Skynet ambition, Sony had two robotic arms installed and made to pour paint over an installation. Combined with a brilliant lighting and laser effects, I thought it was a rath...

Yesterday evening Nokia hosted a Lumia #Switch Party at the Flat Iron Square in Southwark. The event celebrated the launch of the Lumia 920 and 820 Windows Phone 8 smartphones, and is a sequal to last year's mind blowing '4D' projection performance at the Millbank Tower in London. That one So how could Nokia and deadmau5 top last year's crazy display? Well they didn't, but then again, they didn't exactly have to. As this year's performance location was kept secret (the event was exclusive to Nokia staffs, competition winners and a few guests), it was billed as a more intimate event. The rather heavy handed approach by security did annoy us a little bit (the event was oversubscribed) and  it didn't help that no one knew exactly where they should be facing so everyone just pushed forward towards the Shard. Sure, the effects did not blow our mind like last year's, but the music at least did. Using the surrounding buildings around Flat Iron Square as pro...