Tech Digest

Glastonbury's Silent Disco

So, Michael Eavis, founder of the internationally renowned Glastonbury festival, famed for having one of the world's largest privately owned fences, just how do you satisfy both a bunch of disgruntled villagers who would like to have the serenity of country life back and a mass of drugged up tree huggers with an urge to rave? Simple - Wireless headphones. In a revolutionary move, the Glastonbury founder announced this week that to overcome a noise curfew, lucky festival-goers will be supplied with wireless headphones by a pioneering Dutch firm, who have already field tested the system at similarly drugged up events in the Netherlands. The festival is scheduled for 24th – 29th June with no official statements on who will be headlining yet.

Glastonbury Festival

PodGear's PodShave for iPod and iPod mini

PodGear has steadily acquired a reputation for intelligent solutions to everyday problems encountered whilst enjoying your iPod. Take shaving for example, no one wants to put down their beloved Personal Audio Player merely to rid themselves of unsightly stubble; we here at Tech Digest firmly believe that excessive facial hair is an unavoidable part of indulging in expensive gadgetry. But at last there is a solution: PodGear's new PodShave and PodShave Lady compatible with the iPod and iPod Mini. Simply attach the matching white shaving clip to you iPod and, without need for extra batteries, an ultra smooth shaving experience and even collects the clippings in a useful vacuum collector. PodGear's PodShave is available now for £19.99 at iPodWorld ... tell me, what's the date tomorrow?

PodGear

iPod Shuffle carbon copy

Déjà vu? Ok, so it looks like an iPod shuffle, and until recently was in serious danger of infringing on copyrights by sporting the name Super Shuffle. Now renamed as the Super Tangent, Luxpro's tiny device looks promising as a rival to the Shuffle. Already sporting two extra features: an FM receiver and voice recording, we will have to await a price to determine if Luxpro is healthy competition or a shameless rip off. Read [via Engadget]

Sony ICF CD73 Clock Radio

Shake up the drudgery of the early morning bathroom ritual with Sony's splashproof CD73 Clock Radio. With approximately 15 hours of battery life and stereo speakers, the FM/AM receiver has 15 presets and is complemented by a CD player. Included is a design feature often avoided by piracy paranoid Sony: the ICF CD73 is compatible with CD-R and CD-RW, so you can create your very own bathroom mix. There's even an alarm clock in case you feel like another snooze. Perhaps £74.99 seems an unnecessary drain on your wallet, but premium audio products capable of withstanding the conditions of a bathroom are rare at best and seldom include a CD player.

Unbeatable.co.uk

Shiny Media launches HippyShopper

Shiny Media launches HippyShopper (www.hippyshopper.com) – the UK's first Green Consumer blog

Heard about Motorola’s biodegradable mobile phone? Or the toothpaste-free solar toothbrush? Or even Nike’s green ethically-sourced shoes?! You’ll find them all at HippyShopper (www.hippyshopper.com) – the UK's first blog about ethical consumerism which launches today.

Published by  Shiny Media, and written by Stuff magazine’s Managing Editor, Adam Vaughan, HippyShopper aims to enlighten and amuse its readers with green news stories from the UK and links to environmentally friendly sites around the world.

Its daily updates will: • Track the latest green gadgets • Tip readers off about what’s coming in the organic food market • Give details of green exhibitions • Offer updates on eco-friendly health and beauty products • Give tips on how to recycle products

The site kicks off with a competition to win a shed load of green stuff including: ten Solios – solar powered iPod/mobile phone chargers – five Adopt An Animal Panda Packs from the World Wildlife fund; ten copies of Save Cash and Save The Planet; and a Collins/Friends of the Earth book stuffed full of practical tips to help you be a bit greener.

For more information about HippyShopper contact Adam Vaughan (adam@hippyshopper.com)

Eidos rejects the bid from Elevation corporation

The Guardian newspaper today reported that Eidos executives have decided to reject the bid for the company made by Elevation corporation, as reported in Games Digest last week. SCi, which is making a competing bid for Eidos in stock rather than cash, confirmed that it received enough support from the board, at least temporarily, to reject the bid. SCi has stated that it is 'confident' that it will have more support by the end of the week. If the smaller company SCi win the bid, Eidos can expect to see some radical restructuring of their company. The bids range from 50p per share from Elevation and 53.6p from SCi. Eidos used to be worth over 10 pounds a share, during the dotcom boom. How fortunes change, hunh.

Read

Fibre optic links to be built into processors

Small, San Francisco based company Luxtera has announced that it has beaten Intel to the punch in the development of a 10Gbps fibre optic link to be built directly into processors. Although information is scarce, and although this technology wouldn't be ready to roll out until at least the end of the decade, it would make high speed networking dramatically faster and cheaper. Intel had been developing similar chips, but has so far only managed a tenth of the speed of what Luxtera are claiming. Innovation at its best, or premature April fools? Stay tuned for more.

Read

Everything you've ever wanted to know about Tetris…

Wow, probably the most important game in the world celebrates its twentieth anniversary, with all of the commercial oppurtunitues what normally come when games celebrate anniversaries (re-releasing old NES games for the GBA, without changing them? Come on, Nintendo. And you're no better Atari). Sky's attempt at least sounds a little better- Sky Gamestar, Sky's interactive TV games channel, have launched the Tetris Liveplay Championship, starting tomorrow (Thursday 31st March). People throughout the UK will be able to duel with their remotes in real-time, and the highest ranking player after two weeks will awarded £1,000. To help celebrate the anniversary, Gamestar have put together a top ten things you didn't know about tetris list. Yup, we actually think that's cool.

1. Tetris is based on an ancient Roman puzzle called Pentamino
2. Over 86 million units have been sold worldwide to date, eclipsing sales of Michael Jackson's Thriller album (best selling album of all time at approximately 56 million copies)
3. The Tetris logo was designed by legendary record sleeve artist Roger Dean, who created famous album covers for rock giants Yes in the 1970s
4. The game inspired a terrible single in 1992 by Dr Spin, featuring samples of music composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber
5. In September 2002, Faiz Chopdat, 23, of Blackburn, was jailed for four months after refusing to turn off his mobile on a flight from Egypt to Manchester. The crew asked him three times to switch off the phone, which was interfering with the plane's communications system, but each time Chopdat turned it on again. He was playing Tetris.
6. The world's smallest game of Tetris took place under an electron microscope using 42 glass 'microspheres' at the Department of Physics of Complex Systems in Amsterdam
7. Brown University in Rhode Island, US, was turned into the biggest game of Tetris in 2000, when the windows of the 14-storey building lit up as the shapes 'fell'. It was visible for miles.
8. Yuri Yevushenko, director of the Russian Academy in the 1980s, claims Tetris is so successful because "unlike American games it is not about murder, shooting or chasing; it is about building and order."
9. In a recent US study at the Harvard Medical School's department of psychiatry, 27 Tetris players spent seven hours a day, for three days, playing the game. Many had 'Tetris dreams'.
10. There is an online Church of Tetris website, which attracted hundreds of visitors per week.

Port Camera Case

If you feel that all your digital camera wielding friends are making fun of your manufacturer's standard case, then look at this new offering from Port Designs. These compact little camera pouches come with additional pockets, adjustable shoulder and belt straps, metal buckles and perhaps best of all, a camera saving pull out rain cover.

Port Link

Orange gets ready for Episode 3

Uh-oh, the marketing behemoth that is Lucasfilm is really getting into full lightsabre-like swing with the release of Orange's Star Wars Episode 3 box set. Apparently if Luke had decided to make a phone call during the trilogy, he would have chosen the Orange network, because inside the box set you not only get a Nokia 3320, you also get a Darth Vader phone holder and wookiee phone pouch (both have to be seen to be believed), a Star Wars Lenticular featuring Yoda, Darth or new baddie General Grevious, free Yoda wallpaper and limited edition Yoda top-up card for pay-as-you-go boxsets. The set is expected to retail for £89.99. For those already on the Orange network, Orangeworld has also put up some brand new Star Wars related content. Crap shameless marketing? Or so kitsch its genius? You decide, I'm off to get my wookiee pouch holder.

Orange