Tech Digest

Apple opens first European store in London

We once met a bloke who loved Apple so much he had the company’s logo tattooed on his shoulder and a big X (that’s for the operating system not, as we less than tactfully suggested, the Microsoft X-box) scrawled across his back.

We are very much looking forward to meeting him again – especially to see his iPod tats - as the fella is a dead cert to be at the head of the queue when Apple opens its first European store in London on Saturday November 20th.

You can join the pair of us, and thousand of other macsters, at the store at 235 Regent Street in the west end from 10am. Apple has promised a real bonanza of an opening too with presentations in a specially constructed mini cinema and demos at fourteen metre long genius bar.

Also as if gawping at the new iPod Photo and the iMac G5 wasn’t enough another wowsa reason to turn up on the 20th is that the first 250 people through the door will take home a free Apple t-shirt.

There’s also a series of events planned throughout the month with special tutorials, demos and much else.

You’ll probably have so much fun you might even find yourself buying something.

Full details here.

Cheap broadband from Telewest

Telewest is planning on convincing what it calls "dial-up die hards" to switch to broadband by making it so cheap that they're powerless to resist. The 256K blueyonder service will be the same price or less than its main competitors' unlimited dial-up services. From 1st November the broadband service will cost just £14.99 a month for the first year. After which it reverts back to the usual price of £17.99 a month, but you'll be so used to streaming videos of dancing kittens by then that you won't want to go back to dial up. Sneaky. You'll need to sign up before the end of November to get the special deal, mind.

Telewest

Amethyst's Cube computer

Remember the Amari Media Center PC we wrote about a few days ago? Well it's now available badged as the Amethyst IDO. Price is £899 + VAT for the model with keyboard and mouse and £1199 + VAT with keyboard, mouse, speakers and TFT LCD screen. It may be a little expensive for what is a glorified PC for the living room, but the features list is quite comprehensive. There's two TV tuners, TV guide, DVD reader/writer and, perhaps most importantly, it is much quieter than an ordinary PC. It also comes with those groovy coloured ports on the front which change colour when you plug stuff in.
Aria

Kerry backing broadband

So America's probably got a pretty good idea that the rest of the world is crossing its fingers for Kerry to win the election. And what better reason for the US voters to put Kerry in the Whitehouse than the offer of broadband for all? A Kerry admininstration would provide federal subsidies to get broadband access available to all Americans. While Bush is hoping to make things easier for broadband rollout by reducing regulations and hoping that does the trick, Kerry is planning on offering a 10% tax credit for investments in broadband for rural and inner city areas. 20% tax relief would be provided for next-gen broadband technology. If the Democrats have done their sums right, the tax credits would cost $2 billion over five years.

Read

Panasonic 3G handset

Panasonic's Z800 3G handset has just been announced over in Asia. The phone has a 1.3-megapixel outer camera (no mention of the internal camera's resolution) with auto-focusing and Panasonic's proprietary AV technology. The 2-inch internal screen is only 65K colour unfortunately, while the outer colour screen display 56K colours. There's a miniSD slot, Bluetooth, MMS, USB 2.0 and infrared. No mention of a UK launch, but we're not bothered: the Sony Ericsson V800 will be here soon. We've had a go with it and first impressions are that it's fantastic - and it beats the Panasonic for specs as well with 262k colour internal screen, 65K external screen, 1.3-megapixel camera that rotates so you don't lose quality by using an inferior internal camera and blindingly bright and effective flash light.

Press release

New Sky+ box's mystery USB sockets

Today we took delivery of the new Sky+, which regular readers will know has a 160 Gigabyte hard disk rather than the 40 Gig of its predecessor. In theory then we should be able to store at least forty football matches and still have enough space left over to save the odd episode of Green Wing.* Brilliant!

Cosmetically the unit is the same as the old one with two key differences. One it has a big 160 plastered all over the facia, handy for rubbing it in when fellow Tech Digest scribes who still only have the 40 Gig version, pop round.

More importantly it now comes with a pair of USB sockets - one on the rear and one on the front. Hazarding a guess, we reckon that these are in place to enable viewer to port programmes from the hard drive on to personal video players. Knowing Sky there will all manner of encryption to negotiate first, but expect to see a Sky badged PVR (made by Pace) that is compatible not just with normal telly, but also with Sky’s pay per view movies and sports sometime next year.

Incidentally, the USBs, which will apparently let users port digital music to iPod etc, have not yet been switched on (!?). We’ll find out for sure later when the installation man** has gone.

* For our US readers that the cool new UK comedy that you'll all be name-dropping very shortly

** Installation man has now left and no they don't work. Sky did say that the front one is for connection to a PVP type device which it may or may not launch one day, while the rear one might be for those who never leave their sofa and fancy upping the 160 Gig storage by adding an external hard disk.

Digital Retro: classic computers to ogle

Just what do you buy the computer geek in your life for Christmas? How about this coffee table book on retro computers from our mate Gordon 'propeller head' Laing.
Basically it's porno for tecchies, but it's packed full of interesting stuff too. There's wonderful titbits of information about the characters that shaped the computer industry in the early days as well as the behind scenes power struggles that took place as various manufacturers strived - in vain as it happened - to make their products the 'industry standard'.
Included are spreads on just about every computer from the 1970s and 1980s, from the MITS Altair 880 through to the NeXT Cube. Our favourites are the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and that classic piece of 1970s styling, the Atari VCS. Aah, they don't make 'em like that any more. For more info go to Digital Retro. You can buy the book from here for £13.96

MP3 Goggles

US-based Finis just unveiled its answer to an MP3 player for swimmers. Whereas the Orgegon Scientific MP120, which is already available in the UK, relies on a traditional earphone design, the SwiMP3 uses bone conduction technology to transfer sound to the inner ear via the cheekbone. According to Finis, this dramatically improves the sound quality underwater. A special pair of goggles is supplied to house the SwiMP3. The player is Windows and Mac compatible and has 128MB of storage space. In the US it costs $250, but there's no news of a UK launch at the moment.

Finis

Sony 1GB flash player with MP3 support

Sony is releasing its first digital music players that are compatible with MP3 files in the UK next month. From November, you'll be able to buy Network Walkmans NW-E99 for around £160, and NW-E95 for £120. The flash-based players have 1GB and 512MB of memory respectively. Using Sony's Atrac music file compression, the NW-E99 will be able to squeeze in over 40 CDs worth of music. The players should provide around 70 hours of battery life and weigh around 40g.

Sony

Review: Logic 3 i-Station

£49.99

The lowdown
If you want to listen to your iPod out loud and proud, the i-Station will turn your player into a mini hi-fi system. Plug it into the wall and it will also charge your iPod up as it goes along; stick in some batteries and you can take it out for day trips.

What’s good?
The white finish matches your favourite player (and, if you can cope with the colour clash it also works with iPod minis) and it comes with Firewire and USB 2.0 connectors, so you can hook it to a PC or Mac for transferring tracks.

What’s bad?
Sound quality is pretty much as you’d expect from a system that costs around £50: rather tinny. There’s also not much evidence of a subwoofer at work.

Do you need it?
The i-Station is good enough for small rooms and, at under £50, it offers good value, but there are better specified iPod speaker systems out there. The similar, but slightly pricier £100 Altec Lansing inMotion, Apple’s favourite, the £250 Bose SoundDock, and the audiophile’s choice, the £400 Eclipse TD307.
6/10

BUY FROM HERE