Tech Digest

iPod mini Skins

If you've now realised your foolish mistake in buying the boring old silver iPod mini just like everyone else, you can stick these skins on to regain a little bit of individuality. Adhesive vinyl covers allow you to have a Blue Peter-style sticky back plastic moment and the waterproof covering ads a bit of protection. If you then realise you've made another foolish mistake with the tie-dye cover (or, more accurately, *when* you realise you've made another foolish mistake with the tie-dye cover) you can whip the casing off no worries and spend the rest of your life trying to wipe the glue residue off.

Read [Via Engadget]

Slider MP3 Player

Ah, that's more like it. Rather than just doing the usual bit of iPod imitating, UnisonTech has come up with this strange-looking MP3 player. Love it or hate it, at least the Soriya MF100 shows signs that a bit of thought has gone into designing something different for a change. The player comes with a slider style that's similar to Siemens' SL55/65 handsets. The screen slides up to reveal the menu buttons underneath. Support for MP3, WMA and ASF music files along with FM Tuner and direct encoding are all present and correct, and the MF100 comes in 128MB, 256MB, 512MB and 1GB capacities. There's currently no news of any UK launch.

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Gamble on your mobile

It seems that the subject of gambling is never out of the news at the moment. And now we're adding to that by reporting on a story about gambling on mobiles. Never let it be said that we don't jump straight on those bandwagons. Zone4Play is launching a virtual casino on Hutchinson 3G for 3. The application allows gamblers to play for real on fixed odds so they can lose real money more efficiently wherever they happen to be. There will also be play-for-fun games as well as the real gambling ones. Still, this has got to be better than having to go to Blackpool, right?

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Telewest Shiny Awards Part II

You may be wondering why our fantastic awards are called the Telewest Broadband Shinys rather than the Telewest Broadband Tech Digest awards. Well, wonder no more. First, Telewest Broadband Shinys sounds better; second, our sister site Shiny Shiny got its own list of nominations together as well.

Keep reading for more *lady*-focused categories. Games Digest has also got its own award for best game. Nominations after the jump.

Shiny award for bling

Siemens SL65 Escada
Jens of Sweden MP-400
Gold Gameboy
Vertu mobile phone
Sony Qualia

Shiny award for handbag-friendly mobile

Siemens SL65
Panasonic X500
Motorola RAZR
Siemens SL55
NEC e338
Sony Ericsson V800
VK530

Shiny award for shameless pink-ness

Pink Fondue Set
iPod mini
Pink Tivoli DAB radio
Hello Kitty Bluetooth headset
VK530

Shiny award for best retro gadget

BenQ Monitor
Roberts DAB radio
Pokia
Nokia 7280
Kyocera Contax i4r

Shiny award for gadget fashion accessory

Knomo laptop bags
AcmeMade laptop bags
iRiver N10
AcmeMade MacAttire iPod mini cases
Swarovski mobile phone charm
Exspect leather iPod mini carry case

Shiny icon of the year award

Walkers pedometer
Sky+ box by Matthew Williamson
Sushi USB key
Motorola RAZR
Roomba
Canon Digital Ixus i5
iPod mini

Games Digest Game of the Year

Burnout 3: Takedown (PS2 and Xbox)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2)
Half-Life 2 (PC)
Halo 2 (Xbox)
Pro Evolution Soccer 4 (PC, PS2 and Xbox)

Holographic projector

Not, as we'd first thought (hoped), the kind of 3D holographic projector that R2D2 uses but impressive nonetheless. Developed by Light Blue Optics (a company "grown from the Department of engineering at the University of Cambridge"), the Mobile Video Light projector is the size of a packet of Lambert & Butler. It uses lasers and holograms to project an image onto a surface without having to rely on the normal, bulky projection technology.

A two-dimensional holographic image is created and displayed using a small liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) microdisplay. This is then illuminated using a laser. Apparently, holograms are "extremely complex mathematically" which makes calculating them at any decent speed tricky. However, Light Blue Optics has developed a chip that can generate 200 frames a second and, with the price of lasers coming down, we may soon be seeing these projectors in all manner of portable gadgetry including laptops, PDAs, mobile phones, white and blue droids...

Read release

Band Aid - good news and bad news

Ooh, bad move for iTunes in the UK. You may have already read about how iTunes is currently refusing to sell the new Band Aid single because it won't charge the £1.49 that the charity wants. The company seems to be unwilling to change its policy of only charging 79p a track. While this is understandable in some ways (and the US reports offer a very different slant on the story than the UK ones), the company should be wary of upsetting the GB public over a charity that's seen as part of British musical history. But upsetting the public will be the least of their worries if they upset Sir Bob - remember him confronting Thatcher over the VAT refund?

Meanwhile, Orange has just announced that the Band Aid 20 single has become the fastest selling Orange mobile phone download ever. The single can be downloaded  by texting RINGTONE BANDAID to 247, visiting Orange World or from any Orange shop. It costs £3.50 in truetone, £2.00 in mono and £3.00 in polyphonic formats with "the company donating all proceeds to the Band Aid Trust, excluding VAT and production costs. Customers who buy a ringtone therefore donate £2.98 when buying a truetone, £1.70 for a mono or £2.55 for a polyphonic tone."

Telewest Broadband Shiny Awards

Apologies for the lack of stories up so far, normal service will resume shortly. We've been working in the background though, honest. You see, we've jumped on the bandwagon and started our very own awards.

Yes, the Telewest Broadband Shiny Awards are here! We got a top notch panel of judges (ie. our tech journo mates) on board, got a list of nominations together, and had a bit of a tussle over which ones were our favourites. Read on for the nominations.

TD award for Chav-iest gadget

BlackBerry
LG 8110
Motorola Bluetooth headsets
Oakley Thump MP3 sunglasses
Nokia N-gage (nicked)
Burberry iPod case

TD award for services to digital music

Napster – for its online jukebox streaming service
O2 – for pioneering music via your mobile
Apple – for the iPod and the iPod mini
Live 365 – for letting anyone with an internet connection start their own radio station
All of MP3 – for offering an almost legit service from Russia
Griffin - for its cool iPod accessories

TD award for the coolest looking computer

Apple iMac G5
Sharp Mebius Muramasa CV50
Fortissimo
Amethyst
Sony Vaio – PCG-X505

TD award for most random place to house an MP3 player

Inside Garfield
On a watch - Aigo U watch
Underwater – Oregon Scientific MP120
In a camera – Vivitar Multimedia PVR
In sunglasses – Oakley Thump

TD award for most indispensable mobile

Orange SPV C500
Sony Ericsson V800
LG 8110
Nokia 7610
Motorola RAZR V3

TD award for best use for broadband

Napster
Live 365
iTunes
Cinemanow
Vidzone
BBC
Atom films
Skype

TD award for best e-tailer

Boysstuff
Firebox
Ebay
Amazon
Gemm
Net a porter
Dynamism

TD gadget of the year award

Apple iPod
Sony NW-E95
Archos AV800
Sky + 160
Roomba robot vacuum cleaner
Vodafone 3G card
Philips Streamium surround sound system
Nokia 7610

Samsung's Digital Scart DVD player

High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), also known as Digital Scart is the next big thing when it comes to home cinemal kit. The digital connection means you can get digital image as well as digital sound quality through one cable, without all the usual converting back and forth business. The only problem? There's not enough digital scart products around at the moment. Samsung's doing its bit, though, with the launch of the DVD-HD945. The player also supports both SACD (Super Audio CD) and DVD-A (DVD-Audio) playback.

Not much more to say, except it's available now for around £179.99.

Samsung

Goodmans Personal Entertainment System

Following on from Goodmans' GPDR1 budget video player, the GPDR40 is the company's higher-end addition to the PVP market. The GPDR40 Personal Entertainment System has 40GB of storage on its hard drive, which is enough room for up to 200 hours of TV recording. This can thankfully be done directly from the TV, and there's also an SD/MMC slot for memory expansion and data transfer. As you'd expect, the PVP can be used for MP3 playback and picture viewing, and there's also a calendar that you can synch with Outlook. The colour screen is 3.6 inches and the unit can be plugged into the mains or powered using the battery. It'll be available on the high street from January, with prices still TBC.

Buy Napster vouchers with your milk, fags and scratch cards

Napster's planning on extending its customer base by flogging vouchers in newsagents across the country. More than a thousand stores, including Forbuoys, Dillons and Martin's, will stock the vouchers in a bid to make life easier for those unfamiliar with that there t'interwebnet. Just how this is going to help encourage people to buy music downloads online if they've never done it before remains to be seen, but it does mean you can buy all your Christmas pressies down the newsagents - scratch cards for mum, Napster vouchers for the kids, pack of Hamlet Miniatures for dad and a selection of scotch miniatures for your nan. We're nothing if not generous.

Vaja Case for Sony NW-HD1

In a break from the constant stream of iPod cases, we bring you this leather Vaja case for the Sony Walkman NW-HD1. Innovacases is selling the case for $54.90 (no UK price quoted - even on the UK site, strangely). Although it looks reddish in the pic, the standard cases are quoted as black. You can then pay extra to customise your case, with a whole load of different colour options to choose from and addtional things like name and logo embossing and a choice of different linings.

Hands on with Nintendo DS

Editor of Games Digest, Simon M, has had a good old grope with the Nintendo DS and has written all about the experience for us. He's given it his seal of approval - but since there's no official price or launch date for the UK yet, don't get too excited just yet:

The great and the good of the games industry gathered last night to get their greedy paws on a Nintendo DS. We were in the scrum. The result? Games Digest has played Metroid Prime: Hunters, the first-person shooter, and Mario 64 DS, the retooled version of the N64 classic platform game.
Here's what we thought...

At Los Angeles trade show E3 in May the DS looked and felt like a cheap kid's toy. Now it looks and feels much more grown-up and cool. It has gadget wow factor. And the wireless multi-player gaming (and potentially online gaming) add to that. So the hardware's impressive.

What about the software? Again, at E3, only six months ago, Metroid Prime: Hunters felt clunky, awkward and dire. The control system's been worked on, the graphics improved and now the game feels great. Smooth, fast-moving first-person shooting. With a better-than-ever-before control system using the DS's unique touch screen display. You touch the bottom screen and where you move the stylus dictates where you look on the top screen. It doesn't sound it, but it is intuitive.

Mario 64 we've had less of a go yet. But again, what was awkward at E3 has come along in leaps and bounds (typically for Mario's platform jumping play). This, possibly one of the greatest platform jumping games ever, looks to have been tweaked in all the right ways, leaving the core gameplay and levels superbly intact.

Nintendo often gets the hardcore gamers seal of approval for no reason other than they're Nintendo. And they're often applauded even while clearly cynically just milking their fanbase. But in this case, it looks more and more like Nintendo have a hit, and a deserved one.

Can't wait to get your hands on one? The official launch date in the UK is set for "first quarter" 2005. Price and exact launch details due supposedly in January.

Simon M

Text Tony today

O2's gets the benefit of a fantastic publicity stunt today. From 1pm you'll have the chance to text Tony Blair to ask him a question. He'll be texting people back with his answers. The session will be transmitted live from Number 10 and will go on for 45 minutes. You can start texting now on 80202 and can ask about anything you fancy - including fox hunting, gambling, the Iraq war and the smoking ban. If you want to join in the chat you can go to the O2 Active Chatroom to read Tony's answers.

Tony said, "every week I take questions from MPs. This is the chance for everyone else to use their mobile phones to ask me the questions they want answered."

You can send normal texts or picture messages (remember, it's neither big nor clever to text Tony pictures of your backside people. Imagine what your mother would say). We're not sure if Tony's well-versed in txt spk, but it will be interesting to see him try to explain what happened to those WMDs in less than 160 characters.

O2

Roomba gets thumbs up

Ashley's been playing with the new Roomba this week and he's utterly sold. Apparently, it's far better than the original version, and he can now see the carpet in his study for the first time in years. The dog wasn't best pleased with it though and he's broken his cleaner's heart.

He's reviewed it for the Guardian and had this to say about it "the new model is effective at sucking up dirt and can detect when it is stuck and initiate an escape. It also goes under beds and sofas and will mesmerise you and your pets. It doesn't vacuum stairs but, given its very competitive price of around £199, the Roomba has become more than a luxury item for gadget obsessives - honest."

Read the full review here.

www.vipdomotec.co.uk

CD Carousel

The CD Carousel is perfect for those sorts of people who like to keep their ties on a revolving tie rack. It's got room for up to 150 CDs which are spat out at the press of a button. If you've got more than 150 CDs, you can connect multiple CD Carousels Multiple CD Carousels can be hooked up together. This latest version has a keypad and a USB hub built in.

Read

Goodmans DAB alarm clocks

These DAB Digital radio alarm clocks will give you the fright of your life in the morning. One look at their less-than-pretty mugs and you'll need a lie down just to recover. Still, knowing Goodmans they'll be nice and affordable, and it does mean you get to choose from about 400 random stations to wake up to each day.

The GCDR1955DAB (catchy name) DAB has 4 presets and is also a CD player and FM radio. The egg-shaped GCDR1930DAB (again, catchy) DAB Stereo Clock Radio is just a basic DAB radio with 10 station presets. Available from the new year.

Philips gets into the PC market

More signs of convergence in the home computing/home entertainment market. Philips has gone and released a home computer in association with Dixons. Apparently, it's "a further step forward in realising [Philips'] Connected Planet vision" which sounds like something a dictator would say, but with home entertainment instead of neighbouring countries.

The Philips Freeline PC range has all the necessary wireless technology and pre-configuration to make it fit snugly into Philips Streamium wireless, broadband entertainment devices. This means you can run your music, video content, photos, games and Internet access throughout the house.

The Freeline range consists of four desktops and two laptop models available through the Dixons Group. All machines come with Intel Pentium 4 processors and Pentium Ms for the laptops, Wireless g and Windows XP. The beefed up LS2000 runs on Windows Media Centre, has a 17-inch TFT monitor, over 1GB of DDR RAM and 250GB Serial ATA hard drive. The laptops are called the X10 and the X20, which will delight Samsung.

X-Arcade retro gaming heaven

There's been much talk of retro-gaming in the past few months, and it seems the novelty value still hasn't worn off, with the gadget e-tailers continuing to make a comfy living out of our nostalgia. X-Arcade (£99.95) is the latest gizmo to tap into the nation's love of all things old. It's basically a universal joystick that looks like the panel on an arcade machine. All the usual buttons are present and correct and you can plug it into all manner of gaming consoles - including PlayStations 1 and 2, X-Box, Gamecube and the Dreamcast – as well as PCs (you might have to buy an additional adapter, mind).

BoysStuff

[Incidentally, check out Games Digest for more gaming news and views]

Mouse USB drive

Which is the hoax? The USB soft toy Mouse? Or the Mince Pie USB Key? Both seem pretty ludicrous to us, but it's the Mince Pie that's telling porkies. Those naughty boys over at Custom PC have been interfering with innocent mince pies - modding christmas cakes when they should have been modding PCs. They've had a good response from it, apparently, with people wanting to stock the stocking filler for Christmas.

Still, the Mouse is real enough (we're assuming it is anyway). The USB Plush Mouse has 128MB of storage and costs nearly $40.

Read

Shiny Media in non-gadget blog shocker

Top news from Shiny Towers. Our latest Shiny Media site is now live so we thought it was about time we let you know about it. See the press release below for more info, or just get over there right now and have a look for yourself: Shoewawa (and sign up for the mailout)

Britain’s most exciting web-publisher, Shiny Media, has unveiled its latest addition to the Shiny fold. Shoewawa is a snappy, sassy, and slightly sarcy website about every girls’ favourite obsession: shoes. Written by fashion journalist and long-time web-editor, Gemma Cartwright, Shoewawa gets you through the day with its shoe-fixated stories. Feed your desire for footwear with:

• High street copycats of designer numbers.
• eBay watch – we keep you up-to-date on fantastic bargains on eBay.
• Latest launches – new high street and designer ranges.
• Celeb shoe-gazing. Find out what the celebs are wearing and where you can get yourself a pair.
• Focus on new talent, latest fashions, accessories – in fact, anything remotely shoe related!

Our Friday round up of the best auctions on eBay means you can spend your afternoon bidding for the best new and 2nd-hand shoes from Manolo, Jimmy Choo, Prada et al, all from the comfort of your computer. We’ve also tracked down all the best online shoe shops so you can find your new sole mates without wearing out your old ones on the streets.

Sign up for Gemma’s regular Shoewawa mailout and you’ll get all the latest shoe news and reviews sent straight to your inbox. With daily updates to the site, you can get a regular fix of footwear without spending a penny.

V@MP Media Player with 60GB of memory

Continuing that long and annoying tradition of replacing all 'a's for @ signs, the V@MP Media player is a 60GB MPEG-4 player from NHJ (the same innovative company that brought you the Wrist Watch TV and those Bluetooth headphones). The player comes in a rather retro-looking black finish, or in every gadget-lover's current favourite silver hue. The 2.5-inch 60GB memory can hold up to 30,000 music files, around 100,000 JPEG images, or 60 hours of MPEG-4 movies. There's also a memory card slot (SD/MMC) if you get greedy for more. It's got a 3.5-inch screen for movie and picture viewing and a built in TV tuner in the docking station so you can record TV straight onto it.

GadgetShop is selling it now for £399.

V-Tec - Britain's answer to the iPod

It may not be as purty as the iPod, but V-Tec's V-MMV Player is hoping to garner a bit of interest by offering a load more features. It's a bit larger than the iPod and comes with a pretty standard 20GB of memory, but a quick run-down of the rest of the specs suggests that it's got some unusual features to offer. A 2-inch colour LCD, 13-in-1 card reader (are there really 13 memory cards now? We've obviously not been paying enough attention), MPEG1 and motion JPEG playback, MP3, WMA, Audio CD and WAV music file playback and TV Out connector - all this coupled with a JPEG viewer that can show pictures up to 16 megapixels in size.

All pretty impressive we admit. One downside is that the battery life only lasts for 4 hours when showing video (no quote on music playback battery life) and there's also the question of how many people will want to watch video on a tiny 2-inch screen. It'll cost you £363.66.

V-Tec [Via MacWorld]

EDIT: Hey! Sod Sir Fergie's 1000th match - we've just realised that this was our 1000th post. We're celebrating with a cup of tea and a round of hurrahs.

Retro phones for sale

The British obsession with nostalgia continues apace. While Stuart Maconie is no doubt somewhere working on the first draft of the script for "I Love the Noughties" you can feed your love of all things 80's and 90's with an old mobile from Retrofone. The UK company has gathered up all your discarded 8210s and Z7s and is now hoping to sell them back to you to grab its own slice of the nostalgia pie (probably Black Forest Gateau - remember those?! Ah, those were the days. etc).

Prices start at around £15 for a handset like the Nokia 2110 up to about £125 for a Nokia 6310i.

Get yours here. [via CoolHunting]

Ergonomic Laptop Stand

Fantastically important as they make you look in coffee shops, laptops aren't much fun to work on day in day out. With the Ergo Station from PORT you can raise your laptop up on its pedestal to get the screen up to the right height. Presumably, you won't want to attempt using the keyboard in this position, but the Ergo Station has also been designed to act as a dock so you can plug in USB devices such as a keyboard and mouse and leave them plugged in when you take your laptop out. The company has also come up with the CoolStand, which raises your laptop off the table to keep the air flowing round it so it doesn't overheat, and the LapDesk which is a lighter, more portable version for travelling laptops. We like the neat little extra bit on the LapDesk for using your mouse.

Port

BT announces 3G plans

BT should be launching a 3G service next year. Its partnership with Vodafone means it will have a number of technologies at its disposal, including the 3G/wireless cards that you can use a laptop in hotspots or over the 3G network. The service will be separate from 02, BT's old mobile wing, since the two companies split a few years ago. BT's aim is to get business users on board, and 3G will be part of a wider wireless plan, which includes the use of WiMax and 802.11 connections. A phone that can be used over wireless hotspot broadband services is also in the pipeline apparently.

Read

VCR RIP

It looks like video recorders have gone the way of those small, cave dwelling Hobbit people. The Dixons group has announced that it won't be stocking any more VCRs and will slowly phase the videos out, with the hope that all will be sold off by Christmas. The video has, to all intents and purposes, been replaced by the DVD player. Those wanting to record shows are either turning to DVD recorders, or have bought themselves a hard drive recorder, which makes life a whole lot easier and doesn't necessitate the presence of a small child to set it for you.

Still, it's a shame for those who've finally collected every single episode of Quantum Leap, Star Trek and Twin Peaks on video - although if you're watching those shows you'll probably have a good idea of how to transfer them to disc anyway...

Read all about it.

IRiver's N10 goes up to 1GB

IRiver's N10 necklace music player has just been bumped up to 1GB over in Korea. The mugger-friendly jewellery MP3 player is already out in the UK, so we're expecting the 1GB version will reach us pretty soon as well. We've had one of the 256MB models in to have a go with and were pleasantly surprised. It's nice looking, small and does a pretty good job of pretending to be a pendant - although you'd have to be into big, bold, chunky jewellery if you wanted wear it just as a necklace.

Still, we're not quite convinced that people will be sporting these things as a fashion accessory. Then again, what do we know? We write about technology, not fashion.

Vodafone Vs 3 - Head to Head

Our very own Ashley Norris has been hard at work fiddling about with 3G handsets to bring you a head-to-head comparison of the two UK 3G services currently available. Vodafone and 3 are pretty even when it comes to handsets - Voda may have the natty Sony Ericsson V800 and the impressive Sharp V902, but not all the range is available yet, and 3 does a pretty good line in LG handsets as well as the tiny new NEC e338 and the Moto A1000. Tariffs are cheaper from 3, but there's more limits on them - 3's better for pay-as-you-go though as Voda's handsets are too pricey. Content's pretty comparable and network coverage difference will be negligible this time next year. So, it's pretty much down to which advertising campaign you prefer.

Read the full article on the Guardian

3Com Mini Hotspot Creator

3Com's OfficeConnect Wireless Travel Router lets you create your own little wireless hotspot while out and about. The size of a pack of cards, the 802.11g router plugs into a broadband connection via an Ethernet connection, providing wireless access to up to 16 computers. It costs £47 and can also work as a client supplying wireless connectivity to computers that aren't enabled. Wi-Fi Protected Access accompanied by Wireless Equivalent Privacy encryption services and a firewall keep the hotspot nice and secure. A neat little idea that lets you commandeer other people's offices for your own purposes.

3Com

Oregon's Flash-based Camera

Oregon Scientific's DV100 is the latest flash memory-based video/still camera to be launched in the UK. The 4-megapixel camera costs £200 and has 16MB of internal memory as well as an SD/MMC slot. It can record video footage as MPEG4 or ASF files at 30 frames per second. Other features include automatic white balance, various exposure and focus settings and a 6x digital zoom.

Oregon

Audio Backpack

Have you been good this year? If you have you could find yourself the lucky recipient of this Audio Backpack from I Want One of Those this Christmas. The Audio Backpack isn't just any old rucksack, no sir, it's the proud custodian of a set of 10cm directional 5 watt 2 channel speakers. The speakers are, and I quote, "attached to hinged flaps so they can be re-positioned at will". Powered by 6 AA batteries, you should give you 10 hours of music. A pocket for your CD player or MP3 player can be flipped out of the bag to give you easy access, while a pocket at the front houses the amplifier. We're hoping that the sound quality is going to be surprisingly good because the bag costs £99.99. Your fellow pedestrians are going to just love you.

IWOOT

Solio Solar Powered iPod Charger

What's this? An iPod accessory that doesn't have a lowercase i at the start of it? The Solio not only bucks the spelling trend, it also has the distinction of being the only solar power charger for the iPod (unless we've missed something?). The fan-shaped portable charger should provide enough juice for another 9 hours of music play back. The blurb points out that it's great if you're stuck on a desert island, which happened to us just the other week as it happens. But seriously, when are you ever far enough away from a power source to warrant carrying one of these round with you? Maybe we're just being cynical - having tested the iSun solar charger in the feeble-hearted British sunshine only to be greeted with a charge that couldn't shock a woodlouse, we're greeting the Solio with a healthy dose of British cynicism (it's the lack of sunshine that does it.) Still, it looks nice.

Solio

Nokia Communicator on Sale

Nokia's 9500 Communicator, the phone maker's first handset with built in Wi-Fi, has gone on sale in the UK. The handset is far less brick-like than the original Communicator handsets, and now comes with a built in VGA camera and a 16-bit colour display. The Symbian 7 platform is present and correct, while there's 80GB MB (oops!) of memory for your application-adding pleasure (along with a MultiMediaCard slot for adding more, transferring pics etc). There's Bluetooth and Nokia's Pop Port USB connection for connecting to a PC. You can get it SIM-Free for £529.95 or on contract for around £294.95.

[Edit: We forgot to mention its killer feature! How careless of us. It's also got Wi-Fi connection,l making it a highly attractive prospect indeed.]

The British Library Goes Wireless

The British Library in St Pancras has just gone wireless. With wireless service through all its public spaces, including its 11 reading rooms, 225-seat auditorium, restaurant and outdoor Piazza area, it's now the biggest wireless hotspot area in London. According to research commissioned by the Library people, 86% of visitors to the library own a laptop; the "average dwell time" in the library was 6 hours (6 hours! We thought we liked books, but that's impressive); and 16% of the visitors only came to the library to sit down, have a coffee and use the building as a business centre (ignoramuses).

The service can be accessed using your own service provider Wi-Fi service (currently BT and The Cloud accounts), or you can buy pay-as-you-go cards for £4.50 and hour (pretty reasonably compared to the £6 you have to pay in most coffee shops). The service is being provided by The Cloud.

British Library

World's smallest MP....ZZZ

This week's award for World's Smallest MP3 Player goes to DISC-O. The 15g device looks more like one of the those flying saucer sweets than a music player. Gadgets.co.uk, the company selling it over in the UK, is hedging its bets by settling for "probably" the world's smallest player, which is probably sensible since there's bound to be something even smaller just around the corner. The DISC-O is available in 64MB or 128MB capacities with support for both MP3 and WMA files.

Like many other recent players, the DISC-O is designed to be worn round the neck like a piece of jewellery. The 64MB version costs £39.99, while the 128MB variety will set you back £59.99.

Gadgets.co.uk

Music downloads from a vending machine?

We thought that the Japanese had the monopoly on crazy stuff available in vending machines. Apparently not. Inspired Broadcast Networks, the company which supplies networked jukeboxes to pubs, bars and shops, is extending its service to allow customers to download music tracks. The company, which has 7000 itbox terminals and 800 networked jukeboxes, has got together with Entertainment UK to allow consumers the chance to buy music downloads using cash or a credit card using a vending machine.

Users will be able to download tracks to all sorts of different gadgets, from mobile phones to music hard drives. The terminals will be located in pubs, but will also be embedded into things like drinks vending machines and music listening posts. Trials are currently going on in train stations and other choice venues in association with company’s such as lastminute.com, Coca-Cola and Woolies. The terminals will also offer lastminute.com travel and concert tickets and mobile phone top-up cards.

The company is planning to invest at least £50million along with its partner companies over the next two years, creating Digital Vending terminals all over the place. It’s a pretty neat idea as far as we’re concerned. But how long before you can just buy fully loaded flash players with the weeks top 30 on? Alternatively, we’d settle for vending machines selling used pants and cans of self-heating coffee.

Inspired Broadcast

Does Bono love Sony music players too?

He might party with PMs and presidents, have The Pope's number on speed dial and for all we know be in regular e-mail contact with The Almighty. However, according to gossip circulating at the after show party for Channel Four's UK Music Hall of Fame, it seems that the patron saint of pop, Bono, can still behave like an old-fashioned rather naughty rock star.

Perhaps the royalty cheques from Band Aid keep getting lost in the post* because U2's ‘hard up’ lead singer has *apparently* been getting someone from his entourage to ask Sony's UK PR for a freebie of one of those ever-so-covetable Sony NW-HD1 digital music players.

Not that there's anything wrong with blagging a player from Sony. Oh no, it's just that Apple, that's the company which manufactures the limited edition black and red iPod with U2's names on it, and whose ads the band appear in, might find it a tad disloyal.

Anyhow if Bono fancies having a go at a head to head comparison of the two players then we’d love to hear from him.

* We're just joking. Buy the DVD here and look out for the single on Nov 29th.

8Mbps Home Broadband

Sorry, what was that we were saying about Telewest's 4Mbps blueyonder broadband service? We thought that was pretty impressive, but it's just been trumped by UK Online's latest offering. The company is now enticing in new custom with an whopping 8Mbps service. For £39.99 a month you can get super-fast 8Mbps download and 400k upload speeds allowing you to stream all manner of goodness knows what all day long if you really must. There's no bandwith limit, but you will need to fork out a £50 set up fee and the Wireless Ethernet Router that's on offer costs £69.99. The service, called UK Online Broadband 8000 is available now in some areas, and will be available in 4.4million homes in the UK by early next year.

UK Online

Is Sky's dominance about to end?

There may just be trouble ahead for BSkyB. Not to get too dramatic about it all, but ITV's contract with the company runs out on Saturday, which could very well mean the end of Sky's monopoly of the satellite market (ok, that is pretty dramatic, we admit). If ITV decides not to renegotiate its deal with Murdoch and opts to go unencrypted instead, you'll be able to pick up digital ITV on satellite without paying Sky for the privilege. The BBC channels are already unencrypted, and if Channel 4 and Five follow suit, there will all five major channels, along with nearly 90 other free digital channels (that includes radio before you all start writing in) available free on satellite. Buy yourself a dish for about £60, set it up, and don't pay a penny to Sky.

It's not just Sky who'll be put out if this happens - all those Freeview set top box manufacturers may feel slightly miffed as well. Still, the government wants us all digital within the next five years, and who are we to argue? We look forward to finding out the fate of ITV digital on Saturday.

Read Greg Dyke's thoughts on the subject here.

Burberry iPod Photo case

We all know that Burberry plaid is strictly for those who consider gym-wear to be appropriate clothing for any occasion. Whatever you delight in calling them - Chavs, Scallies, Pikeys - Burberry knock-offs are part of every weekend football hooligan's uniform. Lucky for them, then, that Burberry is now selling a choice of plaid cases for the iPod Photo. We're not sure if you can get the cheaper version down the market just yet, but it's only a matter of time.

Read

Flash iPod in January?

Wicked iPod whispers number one: it appears that a flash memory version of the world’s favourite music player is just a couple of months away. According to a story on Apple Insider, Apple will debut the flash iPod at its next big Expo in San Francisco in January.

Apparently, the player will sport a similar interface to the iPod and iPod mini and come in several versions with storage ranging from 256MB to one Gigabyte.

Sales of flash players are pretty good at the moment especially as storage capacity has moved way beyond the album and a couple of bus tracks capacity of 64MB through to one Gigabyte as offered by Sony and iRiver.

Sony is already hinting that two and even three-Gigabyte players will launch next year.

TD ruins your weekend

Move over Jon Ronson and tell Alexander Chancellor the news - this week’s Guardian Weekend magazine been over-run by the Shiny Media team.

Shiny Shiny Editor Katie Lee cherry-picks the coolest and most colourful gadgets, Games Digest mainman Simon Munk puts a videogame virgin through her paces, occasional TD and Shiny contributor Caramel Quin attempts to prove that not all gadgets are an environmental disaster waiting to happen and TD’s digital janitor Ashley Norris checks out retro gadgets, most of which he probably remembers from the first time they launched.

The gadget supplement also features a couple of up and coming tech writers in Zoe Williams and Mil Millington, who we might just let grace these pages one day provided they can match our peerless editorial standards. The supplement looks even better in print as The Guardian spent the equivalent a Premiership player’s weekly Cocaine allowance on photography too. We are off to buy about 100 copies now.

Telewest's new 4Mb Broadband

Cable company Telewest Broadband has uppped its cable broadband offering and will soon be supplying faster internet connection speeds at no additonal fee. The big news is that the bandwith upgrades include a 4Mbps cable service for those previously using 3Mbps (with an upload boost from 256Kb to 384Kb). This is the fastest consumer broadabnd service in the UK with the exception of services in London offered by Bulldog Communications. There's no cap on Telewest's Blueyonder internet services, so you can browse away to your heart's content. As well as the 3Mb connection, the 1.5Mb and the 750Kb services will also be getting a bump up, with the 1.5Mb becoming 2Mb and the 750Kb going up to 1Mb. The only one to remain unaltered is the 256Kb entry level deal, which is on offer at £14.99 a month for the first 12 months (and £17.99 a month after that). The upgrades are being rolled out during December and will be ready by the new year.

Keep reading for full pricing info, or go to Telewest's blueyonder page.

Details from press release follow:

blueyonder broadband 4Mb
The flagship 3Mb service will become an even faster 4Mb connection, offering download speeds up to 80 times faster than dial-up access, for the same price of £50 a month. The upload speed will also be increased from 256Kb to 384Kb.

blueyonder broadband 2Mb
The 1.5Mb service will get a boost to 2Mb, still at £35 per month blueyonder broadband 1Mb.

blueyonder broadband 1Mb
The standard service will increase in speed from 750Kb to 1Mb and still cost £25 per month.

blueyonder broadband 256Kb
The entry-level 256Kb service will remain unchanged and is currently on offer for £14.99 per month (for the first 12 months, £17.99 thereafter).

DAB adapter for your sound system

This is a neat idea for anyone who's already got a smart sound system and doesn't want to have to buy a separate DAB radio. The Audio Adapter plugs into the Aux input socket on your hi-fi, adding digital radio capabilities to your set up. There's an LCD preview screen for the usual digital rolling station information. It also comes with its own remote control, a clock and an alarm, as well as 10 preset channels for storing favourite stations. The Adapter is selling through Dixons and Currys now for £59.99 or £29.99 if you spend more than £129 on a Hi-Fi. Dixons is expecting digital radio sales to overtake standard analogue radio sales in December, so you'll all be listening to the Archers in crystal clear sound quality over Christmas.

Read Press Release

Quality 3G howler

Ok, so over the course of our less-than-glittering journalistic careers we’ll admit to having penned a howler or two. Fortunately though none of our little ferk ups are quite as spectacular as the story on Voda’s 3G launch on page 2 of today’s Daily Mirror.

The piece reads ‘Mobile users will be able to see each other for the first time thanks to a new generation of phones launched yesterday. Vodafone switched on its 3G services in 13 countries, promising new handsets would be "mini entertainment centres".’

‘Mobile users seeing each other for the first time!?’ Someone had better tell 3 subscribers who have been able to make video calls for the best part of two years now. The evidence is here.

Voda 3G launch - where's the killer app?

After ploughing the best part of £7 billion into 3G you would have thought that Vodafone would have come up with a killer application for its new phone service. Apparently not, for at the launch of its Live! 3G service for consumers yesterday Vodafone’s bosses conceded that there isn’t actually a single killer app. Instead, Chief Marketing Officer Peter Bamford argued that 3G in its totality was a killer application for phone users - which sounds like  areal cop out to us.

Overall though it was a good day for Vodafone with the new services, handsets and even tariffs getting a warm reception. The only really cynical comments came from the Notebook column in The Guardian, which argued that the launch fell between an all out attack on both 3 and the UK market with heavily subsided headsets and services (the city certainly wouldn't like this) and a softly softly launch which would fall flat.