Tech Digest

Virgin Bites back with funky Wap service

Years after Vodafone live! and O2 Active British phone network Virgin Mobile has finally got round to launching its own WAP service.

Only unlike its rivals it has a funky feel and is targeted at the young.

Available to all Virgin customers with a GPRS handset Virgin Bites promises to banish the boredom by offering a cross between a celebrity magazine and an infotainment service on the phone.

Free to customers until January 2005 Virgin Bites includes a mix of celebrity news, games and gags, plus entertainment and sports.

The service is apparently highly interactive and offers customers the chance to publish their own contributions via text or picture message.

From now on all Virgin phone will feature a Bites button.

The service is supported by a free 28 page magazine that will be shipped monthly to all Virgin customers.

Celebrity: For the latest salacious gossip on the crazy world of celebs by the BITES gossip queen, need to know tittle-tattle and latest news on who’s hot and who’s doing what…with whom, as well as top celebrity screensavers and wallpaper

Laughs: Get your mates to have a giggle trying one of these:
How Bizarre! Man or woman? Celebrity or wannabe? Arse or elbow? Just take a guess. Play saucy `What is it?’ quiz and put your powers of observation to the test!
Beauty or Beast – This flirty interactive quiz gives you the chance to see a great looking girl or guy in various stages of undress.
Sin to Win - Got a confession to make? Then tell all! The best sin wins a top prize. And if you love secrets, you can have the juiciest ones sent straight to your phone.
Pulling Pal – On the pull? Get chat-up lines, icebreakers and flirt tips so good, the opposite sex will be powerless to resist your charms. And if you need rescuing - get a crafty excuse sent straight to your phone and leave!
Strange But True facts - Your encyclopaedia of trivia. Bring a little joy and happiness to everyone's day with a well-placed fascinating fact.

Music: Three hot channels dedicated to Urban, Dance & Indie. Find out the latest tracks, news and gossip, club and gig listings and recommendations, reviews, voting and competitions, and the latest ringtones.

News and Views: Includes tips on the next big thing in Most Wanted and weekly customer polls – Which trainers are funky? What’s the most popular colour this season?

Sport: A humorous take on the latest sports news and results plus the latest java games. Get the best guide going to the new Premiership season. Who are the newbies to watch? Who has the wildest fans?

VHS goes digital

This is a gadget that your mother would like. All those old VHS videos she’s got of you in your first school play/egg and spoon race/naked in wellies in the paddling pool (at the age of 25)? Well now she can convert them from analogue to digital using Plextor’s ConvertX PX-M402U and keep them for all eternity. The ConvertX has support for a variety of MPEG video/audio compression standards, including MPEG-4. It will also convert to DivX in real time, so you can film and convert on the fly.

You can connect the box to a video source—such as an analogue or digital camcorder, DVD player, VCR, or television— via a selection of AV connections, including RCA Composite Audio/Video Input, S-Video Input. Then it’s just a case of burning the files to CD and DVD and you can enjoy your home videos in glorious digital.

Plextor

Sennheiser Happy Clappy headphones

While we may live in disposable society, there’s nothing wrong with trying to do you bit for the environment with a spot of recycling. The HD 555 (£99.95) headphones from Sennheiser have been designed so that when the headphones start to give up the ghost, you can replace the bits that need fixing rather than chucking them out and buying a new pair.

Sennheiser, a company that specialises in very high quality headsets for DJs, aeroplane pilots and other headphone wearers of note, has designed the HD 555s for home cinema and music. They feature an internal Surround Reflector, which apparently generates an “extended spatial sound field”. Sounds a bit hippyish to us, as does the metal mesh over the earpieces that “reduce resonances” to ensure that “harmonic distortion” is kept to a minimum.

Sennheiser

Denon budget Home Cinema

Denon's new home cinema set up may not help to ease the burden of the UK's £1 Trillion debt but it still kinder on the pocket than most home cinema set ups.

The AVR-1705 61.AV receiver costs £250 and offers 32 bit DSP digital decoding and Six 110 watt amplifiers with high current output devices.

Combine that with the company's progressive scan DVD-1710 (£130) and a set of Elac 5.2 Cinema 0.5 speakers for £300 and you've got a Home Cinema system for £680. What's a couple more quid on the credit card?

Buses go wireless

While buses may not be the most complicated of creations, Portsmouth City Council has decided it needs to employ some serious technology to get them running efficiently. 300 buses are to be fitted with a wireless transmitter that will send signals back to the Traffic Control Centre letting everyone know its whereabouts and ETA.

MeshNetworks is providing the technology to power the service, allowing the coucil to set up a wireless network that encompasses 36 bus stops and 9 kiosks in the city. An LCD screen in each will provide real time travel updates to customers.

This is a pretty extreme way to get the buses to run on time in the UK, but it beats fascism we suppose.

[Yes we know that's a London red bus above - but it looks nice.]

NTL Photo Service

NTL Broadband customers can now make the most of their digital images using Photobox, an online service offering photo prints, frames, greetings cards and postcards. 400MB of online storage space for digital images is being provided along with fifteen free prints a month. All this at no extra cost.

Photobox also provides services that let you to make those photo cushions, calendars, key rings and other personalised tat that you can use to torment friends and family. If you want to really get on everyone's nerves this Christmas, why not create a load of cards with your face on and then hand out gifts bearing images of you pulling hilarious faces.

We're sure there are plenty of nice uses for this service - you could create cool bags with your own arty photos on and suchlike - but as we all know, it will mainly be used for creating tasteless coasters for your mate's wedding present.

Read all about it.

3 to offer video downloads

T-Mobile, Orange and O2 all already offer music download services via mobile phones, but 3 has gone a step further today by announcing that it is to start a mobile video jukebox. In what could be the future for downloads services, 3 customers will be able stream the latest music videos straight to their video phones.

This is the first time a service like this has been available in the UK, which goes live on 2nd August. As well as the music videos, users will also be able to watch the latest video releases via “Today on 3” – the live mobile news and entertainment channel that launched back in March.

3 has paired up with record label, BMG to provide the service, so users will no doubt be subjected to a torrent of lite pop courtesy of the likes of Dido, Britney, Justin Timberlake and Will Young. Music videos will cost £1.50, either as QuickPlay live streaming, or as a download. There’s also the option of paying £10 a month for unlimited services.

Creepy Mind Reading Ball

It’s saying something about the state of humanity when a small blue, battery operated gadget can work out what you’re thinking. But that’s precisely what Firebox is claiming of its latest toy.

The 20Q (£12.95) can apparently establish what word you’re thinking in just 20 questions (animal, vegetable, mineral – remember?) The small LED screen flashes up the questions, to which you answer yes, no or maybe. If you manage to flummox it, it will ask five more questions before giving up – but if it guesses correctly it will taunt you with the power of its might.

There must be some sort of scientific formula that makes this easy or something. Nevertheless, we still find the idea of it pretty creepy. But that’s what comes of watching too much Chocky as a child.

You can buy it from here

Play Real tunes on your iPod

Owners of an Apple iPod will be pleased to hear that RealNetworks has found a way to play tunes from its music downloads store on the player. The Harmony software it has developed means that the iPod is no longer limited to downloading tracks from Apple’s own iTunes store.

Because the software mimics Apple’s own copy protection software, Real is claiming that it has not interfered with Apple’s property rights. Real approached Apple some time ago asking to license its FairPlay, but was turned down.

Read the press release here.

iPod loading service for Londoners

If you can’t be bothered to load up your iPod with CDs let the experts do it for you.

As an exclusive offer to Tech Digest readers in the London area we will take your CDs from you, load them up on your laptop, or our PC if you haven’t got one, and then transfer them to your iPod.

You’ll get your iPod back in a week with your entire CD collection ready to be enjoyed.

The service costs £1.50 per CD and £20 for pick up of your discs. We’ll waive the £20 fee if you have more than 100 CDs.

The service is available for Mac and PC owners and you can specify if you want MP3 or AAC files.

E-mail chris@chrisprice.net for more details

Never leave home again

Modern technology has made it possible for you to go days without ever seeing another person. The existence of things like personal video and music players means you don’t even have to share your movie watching with anyone, while texts and emails mean you can go weeks without ever having to actually speak.

And now you don’t even need to see other people if you fancy playing some arcade games. The Classic Arcade Machine from Boys Stuff means that never again will you need to set foot in a loud and noisy Amusement Arcade full of people who are too obviously having fun and interacting, like in the olden days.

It’s got 118 games on it and all the old favourites are there: Space Invaders, Pacman, Defender, Bomber Man, Super Mario Bros, Wrecking Crew and Donkey Kong 1 – 3. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to gain the respect of your peers when you gain a new high score if you’re all alone, but it’s a small price to pay for isolation.

Yours from BoysStuff for a mere £1,499

Apple iPod mini launch con

Got yourself an iPod mini yet? Course not. As we suspected all along the launch of the mini was a bit of a con as there were probably only a few thousand players in the UK – nowhere near enough to meet demand.

Apparently you couldn’t even guarantee getting your hands on one even if you had pre-ordered it. According to the Apple website it will be four weeks before the next batch arrives. We’ll believe it when we see it.

The Guardian has the full story here.

T-Mobile launches newspaper

So is it time to ditch your newspaper and catch up with the latest news and goss on your Mobi? T-Mobile thinks so. It has just launched what it is billing as the first newspaper for phone users.

Slated to cost £6 per month, although it is free until October, the News Express service features news, sports and entertainment gossip along with regional weather maps of the UK.

The news is actually pushed to your phone (there are two editions one in the morning and one in the evening) and stored on it. So unlike Wap pages you don’t have to go on line to access it, which makes it great for place with no mobile coverage like the tube.

The company hopes to extend the service so it offers editions of proper newspapers online. Maybe soon you’ll be able to customise the paper too taking Guardian news coverage, Mirror Sport and, ahem Tech Digest technology reports.

So far the service is only compatible with Symbian phones like the Nokia 7610 and 6600 and Sony Ericsson P900 although it will be available on Microsoft and Java-based phones next year.

We think the service works pretty well, and we like the way the paper (it is the first UK use of Macromedia Flash on a phone) is put together. Subsidising the paper through advertising and bringing the price down would help make it a very worthwhile feature.

Sony iPod Killer? Maybe not…

The Wall Street Journal has the first review of the Sony “iPod” – the NW-HD1 and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it gets pretty trashed… all without one mention about the sound quality.

The review is quick to highlight the NW-HD1’s advantages. The far better battery life is a key point, as is the smaller and lighter chassis. However, apart from that, the Sony apparently lags way behind.

One of its main stumbling blocks is its user interface. Compared to the highly usable iPod, the NW-HD1 is confusing and overly complicated. The PC software is also hard to use, with music files apparently being far too laborious. This is also in part due to the fact that files have to be converted into Sony’s ATRAC3 file format as they are transferred to the player. iTunes is also far more user-friendly than Sony’s own Connect music downloads service.

Despite giving it a round thrashing on nearly every aspect, the review fails to make any mention of the actual sound quality of the NW-HD1. But this may actually be its saving grace. From our own experience of an early sample of the player, we suspect it of having superior sound quality to the iPod. So maybe there’s hope for it yet.

Read the full review here.

Now Sony has a seven mega pixel compact camera

How many mega pixels do you want from your compact digital camera? It wasn’t that long ago that makers were telling us that three mega pixels were enough. Well now Sony has taken camera technology a step further by offering a model capable of taking 7.2 mega pixel images.

Due in September, the Cyber-shot P150 also incorporates a pop-up Carl Zeiss Varrio-Tessar 3x optical zoom lens and a 1.8in LCD monitor. Sony is also claiming a breakthrough in battery life, with the camera able to shoot up to 320 images from one charge. Other facilities include MPeg video movie capture, automatic and manual expo sure, macro, Flash and self-timer options and compatibility with Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro storage cards.

Sony hasn't confirmed a price, but we reckon it will be £4-500

First Megapixel Laptop

Little-known laptop manufacturer, Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) has stolen the march on some of the laptop companies by announcing the first ever notebook with a built-in 1.3-megapixel camera.

The ECS G220 is an ultraportable machine (weighing less than 2kg) with a 12.1-inch screen. The inclusion of the camera is intended for use as a webcam for video conferences – or (and let’s face it, this is what you’ll really use it for) just for taking pictures of yourself looking busy and important.

Other features include 802.11g wireless and a memory card reader. The range is available in a number of different specifications based around Intel’s Pentium M processors. The graphics card is nothing to write home about (integrated Intel 855GME) but that’s about par for the course on an ultraportable.

No pricing info yet, but you can take a look at the machines here.

Music Players on the Cheap

Hard Disk music players have a way to go before they can be considered cheap, but the prices are coming down all the time. Copy cat manufacturers may not supply the kudos or cool of an iPod, but their price tags can often be their main attraction.

Two hard drives on Advanced MP3 Players currently come in at very pocket-friendly prices. The XClef HD-500 and the L1 are both 20GB players that cost £100 less than the iPod 20GB. The XClef is the cheapest at £169, while the L1 comes in at £189.

Both players offer pretty comparative specs to the iPod – although both are heavier, with the L1 weighing 190kg and the XClef coming in at a hefty 260g. The battery life of the XClef is quoted as 22hours, while the L1 is the same as the iPod at 8 hours.

Although there’s no vouching for the quality of these players, the price is what interests us most about them. Surely it can’t be long now before a 20GB player can be had for under £100? While the iPods may be more resistant to price drops than others, with so many cheap unknown brands appearing on the market, we’re expecting to see the costs come down considerably.

You can buy them here

DAB developments

If you’ve been waiting to buy a digital radio until the products available are either more sophisticated or more mobile, you won’t have to wait much longer. DAB (digital audio broadcasting) has just taken a huge leap forward with the launch of Radioscape’s RS300L – a tri-band DAB receiver module that will let you
have three separate streams of data pouring into a single chipset.

That means you’ll be able to record to your Memory Stick, MMC or SD card on one channel while you listen on another (as with a VCR) and perhaps have news scrolling across the screen on a third. You can pause and rewind live broadcasts and flick around the – one-touch, colour – EPG (electronic programme guide). Products featuring the new module are expected to hit the shops by Christmas 2004. Too, over the next year or so Radioscape’s RS350A will provide similar functionality for your car DAB radio.

Liz Bailey

MP3 Alarm Clock

While some of you may be unwilling to give up your morning ritual of hurling abuse at your radio while Chris Moyles holds forth on his usual brand of self-congratulatory drivel, his sycophantic posse of morons clapping their hands like lobotomised seals, we thought it only right that you should know there is another way to greet your day.

This MP3 Alarm Clock is currently only available in Japan, but it’s only a matter of time before one of the UK gadget sites hears the nation crying out and gets some shipped over.
More here (in Japanese)

Nintendo DS revealed

The Nintendo DS final designs have been released and it looks like Ninetendo has had a bit of a rethink after the lukewarm response to its original design.

Gone is Nintendo's trademark cutesyness in favour of a sleeker design that should, presumably, help grownups feel less foolish when playing on it. It will also , no doubt,have something to do with Nintendo's desire to come up with a proper competitor for the PSP.

[Via Gizmodo]

New 3 phone from NEC

The NEC e228 has just been announced for the 3G network operators, 3. Although the UK wing of the company hasn't confirmed a definite launch date. Fittingly, 3 different colours are available for the video mobile phone – silver, white and blue. The e228 is the upgrade for the 313 and is smaller and lighter than its predecessor, weighing 125g.

The 313 might not have set many gadget lovers hearts racing, but it has been a huge seller in the UK on account of the fact that it is one of the cheapest pay as you go handsets.

The phone boasts two cameras – one on the front and one on the back, allowing you to make video calls and snap pictures. A Sony Memory Stick Duo slot is enabled for up to 128MB if the 19MB of internal memory doesn’t suffice.

All NEC’s 3 phones are constantly connected to the Internet and you can synchronise it with your computer to get your Outlook Calendar and other PC apps.
More specs:

40 tones polyphonic ring signals
Downloading capacity of 384 kbps
Video calls, MMS
Java games
Support for video streaming
Media player (video and sound)
Speaker phone
Battery time: 132 h Standby, 136 min voice, 106 min video
Weight: 125 g
Size: 129×53×21,5 mm
Volume: 120 cc
Colours: Silver, white, and blue

Sony 'iPod' on sale in UK now!

Well, that’s a lie actually, but if you’re too impatient to wait for the NW-HD1 to reach these shores, you can always order one now from Audiocubes.

Sony’s iPod killer is due to arrive in the UK in September and looks set to cost around £220. At £398 (plus shipping) from Audiocubes, you might prefer to hold back your urge to own one for those few extra months after all.

But the NW-HD1 is an appealing prospect. The 20GB hard drive (the same as the mid-range iPod) is smaller than the iPod and has the benefit of playing MP3 and WMA files, as well as Sony’s own Atrac 3 files (compatible with the Sony Connect music download service coming soon).

But its trump card is its battery life. With Sony claiming it will last for 30 hours under certain conditions - at least twice what the iPods currently deliver.

Buy it here.

Are music files the new plastic toy?

We’re getting the feeling that it may not be so long before we’re all collecting the tokens on the back of cereal packs to get free music downloads. Why giveaway Le Creuset pans and mugs with cockerels on them, when what the public wants is the latest Kylie MP3?

The signs are already there. McDonalds and Sony appear to be teaming up to offer hungry customers free music downloads with their meals (although, no one at McDs or Sony is saying anything just yet), while London newspaper,The Evening Standard , is offering readers free tracks via Wippit .

It’s quite a strange deal, though. Readers have to buy two copies of the paper to get two passwords and then get a web address from the Tuesday edition. Once they’ve gone to all that trouble, they finally get their 10 free tracks, chosen from a set list of just 50.

The Sun newspaper has a similar deal with Napster throughout the summer, while The Guardian got there first with its deal with EMI that allowed readers to download EMI artists appearing at Glastonbury. Unlike the Evening Standard, The Sun offer allows readers to pick from the full 750,000 track Napster playlist.

So how long will it be before you’re getting free tracks in every pack of Walkers crisps, or getting Napster points on your credit and loyalty cards? Surely it can’t be far away. But there’s no mention yet of who Apple might be pairing up with. The initial rumour was that Apple and McDonalds were doing a deal, but it sounds like Sony pipped Apple to the post (and who ever heard of getting free Apples in McDonalds… sorry that was a pretty rotten Apple joke... and so was that one).

A Pepsi ring pull giveaway with iTunes apparently didn’t go down as well as expected in the States, but maybe they’d have more luck if they tried it with Tetley teabags over here in the UK.

Roaming (a bit) more free

Good news for those who like to browse the Internet while grazing on a sandwich. BT is cutting down the price of its Openzone Wi-Fi service, so you can do all your work from a hotspot café.

The company is scrapping its four different subscription packages in favour of just one standard tariff. Customers will now pay a £25 (ex VAT) monthly subscription fee (for a minimum of 12 months) in return for 4000 minutes of wireless broadband.

What this means is that users will get 3 hours a day, five days a week, making it a pretty competitive deal compared to the other service providers. Despite this, it’s still far from cheap – especially when there still appears to be no roaming agreements on the cards with the other service providers. You’d still have to be a pretty committed “Road Warrior” to want to pay a monthly fee.

But for those less dedicated to a life on the road, BT is offering a number of “Openzone Per Minute” services (previously known as Pay-as-you-go) :

30 Day Voucher for £40. This gives you 4000 minutes without having to subscribe to the monthly service.

1 Day Voucher for £10

1 Hour Voucher for £6. This is the same as before, and so continues to be stupidly expensive.

Find out more here.

HP goes launch crazy

HP has announced four new iPAQ models, the most interesting of which is the company’s h6340 smartphone. The Pocket PC-based smartphone is obviously designed to be a direct competitor for O2’s xda II, and comes with quad-band GSM/GPRS, WLAN and Bluetooth.

Judging by the pics, we’re not convinced that the h6340 is going to be good enough to loosen the xda II’s grasp on the smartphone market – especially not if the rumours about the xda III are to believed.

The design is pretty boxy - and that protruding aerial leaves a lot to be desired. It uses a 200 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 1510 processor, compared to the 400MHz Intel PXA263 processor on the xda. The 64MB of memory can't compete with the xda II's 128MB, but the VGA camera and 16-bit TFT display match the xda II's.

The other PDAs announced are the high-end iPAQ hx4700, the consumer-friendly iPAQ rx3000 series, and the entry-level rz1710. Expect to see them in the UK in September. The h6340 should cost around £470 SIM-Free.

Motorola MPx220 finally confirmed

Along with the launch of the V3 RAZR, Motorola also finally confirmed the release of the MPx220, the company’s upgraded smartphone.

The MPx220 looks likely to be an improvement on the MPx200, the company’s previous Windows Mobile clamshell. The MPx220 has added the features lacking in its predecessor, namely: a 1.23 megapixel camera and Bluetooth capabilities. There’s also a miniSD card slot and 10MB of available memory. It will be available at the end of Q3 which in our book means October.

Judging by this news release, it also sounds like the MPx220 is going to have RIM’s Blackberry capabilities as well. Having push emails is likely to make it a far more tempting prospect. Having said that, most of the handset manufacturers seem to be jumping on the Blackberry bandwagon at the moment (the latest rumblings are coming from the Siemens corner), so it might not be such a unique selling point after all.

Motorola

Motorola super slim RAZR phone

In terms of iconic phone designs, Motorola certainly leads the way and it looks like the company has just done it again with the release of the V3 RAZR.

The clamshell phone is incredibly slim – just 14mm – which is about a third of the depth of rival phones like the Sharp GX30 and Motorola V600. It is also very slight weighing in at a very pocket-friendly 95g.

Motorola has also pulled off some pretty neat tricks with the keypad which features illuminated keys sitting flush on the casing. Amazingly, the keys are incredibly easy to use.

The internal 2.2-inch TFT screen has support for 260k colours, and the external display is also in colour.

Motorola has managed to squeeze in a VGA camera as well as Class 1 Bluetooth technology. MPEG4 Video playback, along with a 3D graphics engine, means it’s not too shabby on specs – although obviously the slim design means it’s not the most fully featured phone on the market.

No pricing info as yet, but expect it to be at the top end of the market when it launches in October.

More on the Motorola website.

Apple and Motorola pair up

Apple is finally letting another company in on some of its iTunes action. The company has announced it is producing a version of the music downloading service for Motorola's mobile phones.

The phones, which are likely to be available in 2005, will be able to download tracks from the Internet via a USB or Bluetooth connection.

More here.

More iPod Rankings

Following on from our story about Amazon's iPod Mini colour comparison, it seems the Japanese are also opting for silver over the other colours.

But whereas pink is the UK's next iPod of choice, the Japanese are mad for the blue one. With green and pink fighting it out for third position.

Read more here

Telewest offers online console kit

Telewest's Blueyonder is offering a broadband starter kit to gamers wanting to get their PS2 or Xbox online. For subscribers using a 750k or above speed, the kit costs £30, plus £5 per month (if you're under 1.5Mb speed). For Xbox owners that gets you an Xbox Live Communicator headset, one year's Xbox Live subscription, Project Gotham Racing 2 and a dual connector so you can use console and PC simultaneously. For PS2 gamers it's a PS2 Network Adapter, dual connector and Hardware: Online Arena game. We're slightly curious what the £5 monthly charge is meant to represent in all this though? The hire of the dual connector? Come on!

Simon M

[Via Games Digest]

Games download service launches

StarDock has launched the TotalGaming.net service, offering PC gamers a subscription model for games not unlike the new postal rent-and-return system, or even iTunes. For $89 for the first year and $50 annually after that, users get access to a grab bag of PC games they can download to their hard drive, plus a new game each month. Or you can simply pay per downloaded game, with a range of prices from $9 to $50.

TotalGaming.net website

Simon M

[Via Games Digest]

ntl offers free Xbox!

It's the broadband wars. Hot on the heels of Telewest's offer for Xbox and PS2 console owners, ntl have decided to give new subscribers to either their 600k or 1MB speed broadband service a free Xbox. And in Sale Of The Century terms, that's not all folks. You also get an Xbox Live Communicator headset, two months on Xbox Live and Midtown Madness 3. According to ntl, they're due to increase the speed of both services later this year "at no extra cost". The 600Kbps service will increase to 750Kbps, while the1Mbps service will go to 1.5Mbps.

ntl Home website

Simon M

[Via Games Digest]

Indies join iTunes

It was a criticism of Apple iTunes when it launched over here. Yes great service, loads of mainstream tracks from the major record labels but where are the indies.

While independents are a relatively small part of the market in the US they account for 25 per cent of sales in the UK - and are popular with the very kind of people who download music. Anyway, it seems Apple has partly addressed the problem by signing three independents: Beggars Group, Sanctuary Records Group and V2.

This means you can now download music from several big names including Morrissey, The Pixies, Prodigy, Stereophonics, Paul Weller, Basement Jaxx, The Libertines and The White Stripes.

However, before you get too excited it's worth pointing out that there are still plenty of indies who haven't signed on the dotted line yet and that Sony Connect, Napster and OD2 (the main European distributor) all have a better selection of indie tunes.

Silver Mini iPod tops sales (boring!)

It's a debate that rages in TD Towers on those slow news days. Which is your favourite colour Mini iPod? Anyway, according to Amazon who have done a survey on all of its pre-orders it's actually the silver model.

Which is a great shame - because it's the least exciting looking of them all - but kind of makes sense because more of them have been made than any of the other colours. Interestingly pink is in second place which may confirm our theory that the iPod mini is meant to appeal to women at least as much as men.

Here are those results in full:

Silver 41%
Pink 26%
Blue 24%
Green 7%
Gold 2%

Click here to order your Mini iPod from Amazon for £174.99. They're due on sale on Saturday (July 24th).

Siemens gets on its bike

Funny, as the UK government has outlawed talking on a mobile phone while driving a car, we’d kind of thought the same rules would apply to other modes of road transport.

Apparently not. In fact Siemens is positively encouraging cyclists to make and receive calls while on their bikes by offering a super-tough mobile handset the M65, which comes with an optional Bike-O-Meter.

The phone itself is finished in metal and rubber and is designed to withstand a knock or two as well as coping with splashes of water and puffs of dust. It also sports a toughened, hard to scratch screen.

Features include a VGA camera with a 5x zoom and an attachable flash, triple band facilities, a 65k colour screen and a range of pre-installed games.

The bit cyclists will be most interested in is that it can be bought with a £39.99 Bike-O-Meter that includes a mobile holder that functions as cyclometer displaying information such as distance travelled and speed. All this info can apparently be downloaded to a PC.

Sadly the phone doesn’t include a speaker or come with a hands-free kit, so let’s hope that, just like the rest of us, cyclists pull over when their ringtone goes.

The phone and Bike-O-Meter are on sale now via O2.

XDA III, or is that XDA IV?

When push comes to shove our favourite connected PDA of recent times is the O2 XDA II. We like its size, ease of use, upgradeability and big screen for web surfing. An Opera web browser (which is so much better than Internet surfing than Pocket Explorer) and a push e-mail for the XDA II would make us very happy, though we are told these aren’t far way.

It isn’t just us in the XDA II fan club though. According to O2, which incidentally unveiled some pretty impressive figures today (click here for more) the XDA 2 accounts for more than third of the UK wireless handheld market.

Not entirely sure what O2 means by that. In its release it says ‘Handheld device is defined as a pocket-sized device aimed primarily for data and integrated wireless communications.’ So does this include the Sony Ericsson P900, Orange Treo, Nokia smartphones? Only O2 knows.

As the device is selling so well O2 now has something of a problem. That’s because HTC, the Taiwanese company that makes the devices, has already lined up what should in theory become the XDA III.

The new model is similar to the XDA II, yet includes integrated Wi-Fi, twice the amount of storage and a pull down QWERTY keyboard.

Overall it sounds like a pretty impressive upgrade. However, the first XDA IIIs which are wearing T-Mobile’s colours are about to go on sale in Germany as the MDA III, have received pretty indifferent reviews. Apparently the keyboard is rubbish, the battery life is severely tonked by the Wi-Fi and reviewers are a little miffed that HTC hasn’t upgraded the screen.

So O2 may choose not to slay its golden goose and miss out on the XDA III all together.

Instead O2 might plump for the next generation XDA which was unveiled recently by HTC. The XDA IV, which O2 may confusingly call the XDA III, also features Wi-Fi, the keyboard and more storage, only this time it will have a better screen, faster processor, and crucially be compatible with 3G networks. It ought to have a mega pixel camera too.

Sadly it won't be available anywhere until at least early 2005.

See-through speakers are back

It is not often we get all excited about speakers but we’ll make an exception for the glass speakers from barking mad French manufacturer Waterfall Audio.

The company recently updated its range to include a pair of new floorstanders in the Victoria TWN and the Iguascu TWN and the Hurricane (pictured above) satellite speakers which are aimed at home cinema enthusiasts.

There’s also a center speaker called Angel. A subwoofer to accompany the range and complete what surely must be one of the most striking home cinema speaker systems, is also available. Sadly it isn’t made out of glass.

Basic home cinema systems start at around £2000.

The release follows

Waterfall launches full home cinema speaker system to accompany its glass models
French company Waterfall has finally unleashed a full home cinema system based around its astounding glass speaker range. As well as looking completely unique, Waterfall claims that its glass speakers are tip-top performers since glass, with its high density, helps eliminate unwanted vibrations from the structure of the loudspeaker. Anyway, here are details on all the speakers now in the range…
KRYSTA-LINE RANGE - VICTORIA, IGUASCU AND ATHABASCA
There are two floorstanders in the Krysta-Line range, the Victoria TWN (which uses two x 150mm mid-bass drivers) and the Iguascu TWN (1 x 150mm mid-bass driver). The speakers, like all Waterfall glass models, are constructed from 6 mm thick glass with a metallic colour coating.
The treble frequencies in both speakers are reproduced by a new generation of ‘Atohm’ neodymium magnet tweeters (the TWN 20 ND W). Designed specifically for Waterfall, this uses a titanium vacuum-coated dome, the rear of which has been damped for a better, more linear response.
On top of this, these speakers use drivers based on the famed Triangle T13 together with Waterfall’s patented ADT (Acoustic Damping Tube) system, which allows proper functioning of a loudspeaker in a non-damped structure, apparently helping create a quick, sharp bass and a mid-range reproduction without any coloration.
The crossovers, too, are all new, enhanced by new ‘Acculinear’ technology, designed to control the tuning of the driver units with excellent linearity at high frequencies.
For smaller environments Waterfall also offer the Athabasca (1 x 150mm co-axial driver) loudspeaker, a compact 455mm high design.
HURRICANE
If it’s small satellite speakers that are required Waterfall’s solution is the Hurricane satellite. Reckoned to be ideal for both music and home cinema applications, these 280mm high glass speakers (available with white or grey grilles) feature integral wall brackets, or can be mounted on custom stands.
Waterfall claims that the Hurricanes boast a number of technological innovations, including:
* Heatstream: helps to eliminate excess heat from drivers
* Low Diffraction Surrounding (LDS): creates a smoother sound
* Smarthorn: uses the grill of the satellite speaker as a short wave guide, providing a higher efficiency and better controlled directivity.
ANGEL
This is the center speaker in Waterfall’s range, and is therefore voiced to match the rest of the Waterfall series (with a frequency range that extends down to 45Hz) even though it’s not a glass model.
HURRICANE MKIII SUBWOOFER
This delivers bass down to 35Hz, thanks to a powerful 125W amplifier (previously 80w) plus an 8.5in low bass driver. It’s now available in black or white.
SPEAKER CONFIGURATIONS
All the speakers can be combined as required, but Waterfall particularly recommends packages comprising:-
1) 3 or 5 Hurricane satellites + subwoofer (3.1 or 5.1 pack)
2) A pair of Victoria TWN or Iguascu TWN floorstanders plus a Hurricane 3.1 pack
PRICES
VICTORIA TWN: £1999.99
IGUASCU TWN: £1499.99
ATHABASCA: £999.99
ANGEL center: £499.99
HUR-PACK-5.1: £1999.99 (5 x HUR-SAT & 1 x HUR-SUB)
HUR-PACK-3.1: £1499.99 (3 x HUR-SAT & 1 x HUR-SUB)
HURRICANE MKIII SUB: £599.99
HURRICANE-SAT: £299.99
HUR-VICT-3.1: £3499.99 (Victoria TWN [pair] + Hurricane 3.1 pack)
HUR-IGU-3.1: £2999.99 (Iguasçu TWN [pair] + Hurricane 3.1 pack)
Hurricane floor stands: £219.99
Hurricane shelf stands: £49.99
Call BBG Distribution on 0208 8639117 if you want to find out more.

USB vacuum cleaner

Ok, so I’ll be first to admit that I am the proprietor of a rather untidy desk, but a USB powered vacuum cleaner!? That sounds just a little too Monica from Friends-esque.

Still Oy-Oy hopes that there are some suckers (every pun intended) out there who might fancy one.

Its USB-powered Mini Vacuum comes with two cleaning attachments – a bristle brush for tackling air vents, monitors and general desktop dust, and a flexible rubber tube for vacuuming up debris trapped between your keyboard’s fiddly nooks and crannies.

If you fancy one they are only £15 from here.

Goodmans £140 camcorder

MPEG4 camcorders aren't exactly new. But here's one for the cash strapped. The Goodmans G-Shot 300cc features MP3 player, voice recorder and 1.5inch TFT display. It's available from today for just £139.99

Full features list:
64MB memory supplied
3.1 Million pixel CMOS sensor
Built in flash
Built in microphone and speaker
SD/MMC card expansion slot
Cables and software to connect to both your TV and PC

Fusion's screen test

More interesting stuff from UK newbies Fusion Digital. After impressing us with its FVRT100 Freeview decoder/hard disk video recorder and promising an innovative personal video player it is now lining up a plasma screen telly for release.

The 42inch FTVPD42W goes on sale later this year retailing for an ultra competitive £2500.

Fusion is also lining up a pair of LCD TVs for release next year one featuring an integrated hard disk video recorder , the other with a built in DVD player.

The company was founded last year and is helmed by Barry Rubery, one of the co-founders of Pace Micro Technology.

One month standby phone from Philips

Philips has taken an Okey-cokey attitude to the mobile phone market, in that it has been in, out and shaken it all about more times than anyone could care to remember.

There are signs that it is taking it seriously though with its latest release the 650. The small business-like clamshell boasts battery life of an astonishing one month – way more than most of its rivals. Talk time at 8.5 hours is pretty good too.

Another neat feature is a TV link accessory which enables viewer to see images stored on the phone on their TV set. This would be much more useful though if the phone had an integrated snapper – instead there’s a camera accessory that can be attached to it.

We also like the phone’s OLED front display and its perky, bit relatively sensible styling.

It is available across Europe, though knowing Philips not necessarily the UK, in September.

O2 re-invents the X1

After all the controversy surrounding the X1 handset (we've received hundreds of complaints here at TD Towers) you might have thought that UK network O2 would have been happy to put that particular phone behind it.

It seems not for the company is lining up a new version of the X1, called the X1i, for launch in September.

To be fair the phones have little in common other than the fact they both sport cameras and are very competitively priced.

They even have a different shape as the X1i is also a chocolate bar style phone – a little bit like the Sony Ericsson T610 – whereas the X1 was a clamshell.

Other features include a 65k colour screen, tri-bad facilities (so it works in the US), and simple access to O2’s Wap portal O2 Active.

The X1i costs £69.99 for Pay & Go customers or free for Pay monthly contract customers and is in UK O2 stores and from O2 Online.

The UK's cheapest personal video player?

What with the players from Goodmans and DM Tech flash memory based personal video gadgets seem to be everywhere at the moment.

Latest to join the fray is the PVR-A1 from Mustek, which, for the time being, is available exclusively via Boys Stuff.

At £170 it is one of the cheapest portable video players around and it is also one of the most flexible in that it records direct from your telly and archive DVDs as well as hook up to your PC to receive your video files. The MPEG4 quality video is viewed on its 2.5inch LCD screen.

Other features include MP3 playback, JPEG photo viewing and SD/MMC card reading.

The inevitable catch is that it only boasts 32MB of storage. To watch any amount of video on it you need to ramp this up via SD and MMC cards. Boys Stuff is offering the player with a 512Mb card for a pretty reasonable £269.

Apple's new iPod

So here it is Apple’s fourth generation iPod available frfom today. Sadly there are no huge surprises, just a bit of housekeeping with Apple addressing key issues like battery life. Here are the main differences.

Its thinner – There’s no huge reduction in weight or size, but the fourth gen iPod is slightly slimmer.

It has better battery life – It is up to 12 hours now from the rather pathetic eight hours.

An improved click wheel – There’s a faster and easier to use click wheel on board

Multiple playlists on the go - You can create multiple on-the-go playlists and delete songs from those ad hoc mixes.

Better price – The 40 gig player now costs £299. The lower-capacity model, 20 gigs £219. The 15-gig model is no more.

What’s missing – There are no colour iPods, it is available in white or white. There’s also no 60 gig iPod either.

Availability - No news yet. We think it won't be until September and that Apple has made the announcement now to take some of the limelight away from the Sony NW-HD1.

Our Verdict

This is no huge leap forward for the iPod. Sure the price reduction and the battery life are good news, but the new Sony NW-HD1 is still smaller, has better battery life (18-30 hours depending on the data rate of the music) and has a few additional features. If Sony matches Apple on price then it clearly has the better product.

Of course the iPod does have the trump card of compatibility with iTunes. So until Sony sorts out its rather lack-lustre Connect music download service the iPod is still likely to remain market leader.

For a fuller review click here.

SMS know-it-all

Ever woken up in the night wondering what the meaning of life is? Whether all religions lead to God or how they get jam into the middle of doughnuts? Well thanks to a new text message service your beauty sleep can now be undisturbed.

Any Questions Answered, which can be contacted by texting queries to 63336, reckons its can deliver an answer to any question within ten minutes of you asking it.

In what must be painfully slow news week at the Mirror, journalist Damien Fletcher spent several hours asking the service everything from why the weather is rubbish at the moment to whether Nancy should dump Sven.

You can read the service’s replies here.

Personally we want to know if Patrick Vieira is really going to leave Arsenal, oh and Keira Knightley’s mobile phone number might be useful too.

Sony fails to Connect

After high profile, well-thought out launches from Napster and iTunes we’d expected Sony's music download service, Connect, to be equally as innovative. Sadly this isn't the case. And as The Guardian reports it appears that Connect for the UK is a service in desperate need of a USP.

Sure it has great selection of tracks. And yes they are in a quality sound format. But the streaming facilities that make Napster stand out and the community features (like displaying users playlists) found on iTunes are notably absent on Connect.

We reckon it is a work in progress and that Sony is gearing up for a full on launch when it debuts its first hard disk audio players in the autumn.

Click here, or read on for the full report.

Sony isn't used to playing second fiddle. So it must have been galling that the unveiling of its Connect music download service two weeks ago barely received a mention in the press. Especially as rival launches from Apple and Napster a few weeks earlier had been so high profile. Even more annoying for Sony is that the service is still reeling from largely negative reviews that coincided with its US launch in May.

A cursory glance at the service's website shows that this month's UK launch was a soft one designed to take the sting out of its rivals. Sony's marketing muscle is most likely to focus on Connect in September, when its iPod killer, the NW-HD1 hard disk audio player, which i