Mobile Phones
New Becks phones
David Beckham will shortly have some new phones to get his head around. Coming at the end of the month to the Vodafone Live! network is the successor to the Sharp GX10 camera phone - the GX10i. It has a fairly similar specification to its predecessor, though it is finished in grey, boasts an enhanced screen, and its triple-band capability means it can be used in most countries. It's expected to retail for around £150. The Nokia 3650 camera phone will be added to the Live! portfolio at the same time.
Vodafone is also lining up the successor to both versions of the GX10 in the Sharp GX20. Details are sketchy, but it appears the new model will feature a higher resolution camera, a colour sub-display on the front, triple band roaming and an improved screen. Expect it in late summer at the earliest.
<A HREF="http://www.vodafone.co.uk"" TARGET="_NEW">www.vodafone.co.uk
Palm phone arrives
It has been a bumper month for Palm users, for a week after the high-end Tungsten C PDA launch comes the UK debut of the Tungsten W PDA/mobile phone. Similar to the Tungsten C with its large screen and keypad, the Tungsten W adds internet, email, and SMS via its GPRS facilities. It has 16MB memory, uses the 33MHz Motorola Dragonball VZ processor and sports a 320x320 TFT screen. The phone comes with a hands-free headset and delivers 10 hours of talk time and 200 hours on standby. It is available now for around £500, although deals with networks -Palm says the Tungsten W will also be sold via Vodafone - should lead to more competitive prices.
Motorola mad
Mobile phone manufacturer Motorola has once again been parading a selection of futuristic gadgets. Among its innovations are a phone built into a glove, a life recorder (a tiny shoulder-mounted video camera that lets owners archive their life on a hard disk), and a Bluetooth crash helmet that enables motorcyclists to make and receive phone calls. Don't pester your phone store for them just yet, though. For also on display was a wristwatch phone the company first unveiled back in 2000!
More likely to reach the stores is the A835 3G phone, the successor to the A830 currently on sale in the UK via the 3 network. Unlike its predecessor, the phone has an integrated digital still and video camera. It also has 256MB of storage and an on-board GPS system. No news on a UK launch yet, though.
Internet
Google latest
Google plans to add a weblog-only search, according to its chief executive Eric Schmidt. The firm, which gave no further details, has been criticised by some commentators for giving undue prominence to blog entries as a result of the emphasis it places on hyperlinks, and such a search could allow users to filter out blogs.
Google has also started a UK version of its news service, which automatically orders headlines from 4,500 sites, grouping together reports of the same story from different sources. It looks like a useful resource, but is not foolproof: on Monday, as our screenshot below shows, the search engine's system was grouping stories about Madonna's happiness about living in the UK with one about home secretary David Blunkett's attempts to get the imam Abu Hamza al-Masri out of the UK, to comic effect.
Faster Telewest
After putting the service on trial for a month, cable company Telewest has launched its 2Mb broadband internet service - the fastest currently available to consumers in the UK. But customers are going to have to dig deep into their pockets to pay for it. New subscribers will pay £54.99 per month to access the service, which promises download speeds up to four times faster than traditional ADSL broadband networks. The monthly fee drops to £50 if users also take the company's phone service. Existing customers can upgrade their service via the company's website.
Apple share
Steve Jobs will not be amused. Enterprising fans of Apple's iTunes have discovered a way to hack the latest version of the music player, so they can share music over the internet. It's a development likely to spark the ire of the big music labels Apple has been wooing in recent months for its iTunes Music Store.
The team behind Mac fan site spymac.com were among the first to discover that a feature of iTunes could be exploited to allow iTunes users to listen to fellow Mac-heads' music, streamed over the net. Their hack allows iTunes users to make their music available to other iTunes users.
In the case of commercially sold music, that's likely to be a big breach of copyright, which is why the music labels will be upset. Apple intended the feature to allow downloaded songs to be played only on another computer on the same local network.
<A HREF="http://www.spymac.com/music"" TARGET="_NEW">www.spymac.com/music
Gadgets
Roomba
Fancy the Electrolux Trilobite robot vacuum cleaner we featured two weeks ago, but not quite ready to shell out £1,000 for one?
Well, the Trilobite's much cheaper rival, the Roomba, is now available in the UK via the Let's Automate website, for a less princely £200.
Already a huge success in the USA, the Roomba is smaller and thinner than its rival (making it ideal for cleaning under beds), though it is nowhere near as intelligent or as stylish. It works in a similar way, using an infrared system to weave its way round obstacles while sucking up dirt from the floor. After a two-hour charge, it will clean for as long as three hours.
One-size-fits-all, audio-visual solution
Invite a hi-fi buff to listen to a prototype of the latest high-end system from Linn Products and shock him with your choice of demo material: not Madame Butterfly, but Mario Andretti driving round in circles in Super Speedway. The company known for its devotion to vinyl is about to enter the home cinema market, but without leaving audio behind.
The idea of the Unidisk 1.1 is that you should be able to feed it a disc and it should simply play it. That means DVDs and audio CDs, of course, but also CD-R/RW, Video CD, all variants of DVD-R/RW, DVD-Audio, SACD super audio, and even your holiday snaps, whether JPegs or PhotoCD format. This is possible because the Unidisk has three sets of electronics: Linn's CD platform, SACD from its partner, Sony, and DVD from ESS. Simplicity has its price - £6,500, including installation - but cheaper versions are on the way, and Linn is also offering its design to other manufacturers. Oh, you will also need a multi-channel processor. Linn plans to launch one, the Kisto, for about £8,000.
