A Cellphone is for Xmas not for Life

This week we've been evaluating the 21st Centuries most popular Christmas Gift. The mobile cellular phone. Every year the carriers launch special holiday plans, the manufacturers launch both new models and discounts on old ones... whilst the dealer gets a pre-holiday headache trying to understand whats going on and what to recommend to their customers.

Cell phone shopping and comparison sites are the latest integration of the web / shopping and telephony. I've been evaluating both cellphone websites and phones themselves and have come to a couple of simple conclusions.

First, the phone I want for Christmas is the T-Mobile RAZRs which comes in a wide array of colors (black is my favorite)

Secondly, based on past experience and my checking out the latest tariffs, I will migrate to T-Mobile (no plug intended since you can check out the tariffs yourself)

Thirdly, blue tooth is the way forward. No matter what deal you get, I advise getting your blue tooth headset with your phone, it ensures compatibility and avoidance of the blame game when / if it doesn't work!

Merry Cellular Christmas

Getting Ready for a Trade Show

Its the Christmas season approaching which means the number of exhibitions, fairs and events aimed at consumers is about to go a little bit crazy. If your a shop or wholesaler, how can you determine which event to exhibit at and more importantly how to exhibit.

The key to any exhibition success is drawing visitors to your booth, using trade show graphics is the first step, making your stand stand out against the competition. Many friends of mine from the commercial blogging sphere decide on their exhibition stands based on budget and what they want to achieve (sometimes a simple stand a couple of googd looking girls is enough)

Today there are online trade show booth supplier with electronic catalogues it can take you weeks to sort through, with something for every budget. After years of trade show expertise a quality supplier will be able to advise on anything from a table top model, a 20 ft. display or something in between, superior quality is a must as is customer service.

Blogs Fit for a King

The world of blogging is developing and growing, the concept of the geek sat in his darkened bedroom spilling his mind onto the keyboard and releasing his soapbox thoughts to the world are a thing of the past.

Business blogs, expert blogs, political blogs, community and family blogs combined with the new generation blogs that support enterprise and consumer initiatives are all the rage. over 80,000 new blogs are created every day (many never get beyond the first post). How can you determine which blogs are worth subscribing to, which are the blog networks that have the most valuable content and which are those that can be trusted.

I always begin with Google Blog search and then move onto blog directories such a technorati that rate the quality of blogs for their inbound links as a measure of value and worth.

The key factor is the freshness and uniqueness. How many new post are submitted per week and how targeted is the content for my needs.

Online Christmas Jewelry Selector

Cant think of a Christmas gift for your loved one ? Or do you want something special, luxurious and a little bit different? well now you can design Christmas Jewelry online and get something a little bit special for the one you love.

Whether its a diamond ring, earrings or if you just need some christmas gift ideas, the pain of going out into the cold is in the past. From the comfort of your own home you do all your Christmas shopping from the touch of a button. And with the eCommerce sphere becoming so so competitive, online discounts can always be found.

Google Adsense for Custom Search

Google Adsense have recreated their affiliate and referral perspective by adding the facility for custom searches from your website. If you have a site with rich content, you can add a Google search facility for within the site.

What does this mean? quite simply, previously a Google search box would open new window with the search results displayed in a Google window. Now you can integrate search results into the theme of your own website!

All you need is a Google Adsense Account and some simple code to add to your web.

Innovative Exhibition Stands

The world of exhibitions just got a whole lot more innovative with custom built trade show booths.

Now you can either select from standard built designs or have the most technically and design creative booths created specifically for your purpose, tailored to the theme of the exhibition. The days of unfashionable and monotonous trade show booths is behind us. Todays modern materials are lightweight, easy to transport and assemble in a snap.

Web Service to Spot Mortgage Fraud

We've all had our horror stories of being conned and ripped off by mortgage brokers and agents. those disreputable fiends who overcharge for simply referring us to a mortgage provider.

Now you can access a online database with all the information to helps you fully understand the ins and outs of borrowing money with peace of mind. Once registered, all customer data is protected via SecureTrust, another great web service that guarantees FTC compliance, DoNotCall & Can Spam regulations and services.

What we consumers have demanded now exists, a full mortgage broker database and extensive mortgage directory to let you search the best deals while intuitive web forums let you identify the best and worst from other peoples experiences.

A decent and technically superior web service now exists to battle against any mortgage broker that feels his deviant ways are primed to siphon our hard earned cash... never again !

BBC set to Launch Internet Television

At long last, the national UK broadcaster BBC is set to launch its Internet TV service. Aiming for an Xmas release, MyBBCPlayer will allow registered users to download premium programming and watch either streamed broadcasts or downloaded versions.

Internet technologies have been primed for a couple of years now for broadcast quality television, only viewers have had the frustration of being fixed to a landline television set to watch their favourite programs.

3rd Generation company 3 this week announced their relaunch of mobile broadband services allowing users to view media on the go. Content is now set to follow allowing people to watch episodes of Eastenders on their way home from work!

Cable and Satellite providers are now contemplating the concept of subscribers gaining online access to the same tv packages they enjoy at home anywhere on the web. Slingbox lookout !

MyEclipse Plugins - The last you'll ever need

MyEclipse is a new full-featured software development solution for those of us who constantly bet our keyboards in frustration and the lack of features or system vulnaribilities of current software development tools.

If you understand the concept of SOA and SOBA then you probably understant what i'm talking about. Developing business / service orientated applications should be straightforward but rarely is. Now the Eclipse Plugin has arrived to offer plugins that sit on top of the Eclipse Platform to take your worries and grey hairs away. It is an system that could solve your developemnt efficiency issues in a pretty low cost manner. (MyEclipse costs only $30/yr)

Its worth a look to see if it the Eclipse Plugin features are compatible with your developement environement.

More info can be found at http://www.myeclipseide.com

3 - Third Generation re-Launches in the UK

Monthly fixed fee mobile broadband has arrived in the UK

3Group yesterday announced the new "X-Series" -- flat-rate tariff for its mobile broadband, this time round after their initial failed launch 2 years ago have setup some interesting content partnerships with everyone from Google to Skype to Sling boxes to Orb.

I hope that this will drive a chain reaction flat-rate pricing will be sown like the seeds of grass across the planet, creating an open platform upon which innovation will be alowed to flourish and the 2 billion phones currently in use will be fully functioning personal
devices able to control communications, entertainment, office and home functionality.

People of Britain Unite.... this new revolution of the 3G Revolution may just be the answer to your decades old problem of British Telecom monopolizing the hi-tech arena.

Insure your Gadgets

How many of us have a house or office filled with computers, electronics, gadgets and dont think about the level of insurance we have to cover them in the event of loss?

I for one have spent years knowingly under insuring my home, so yesterday I took the bold step of getting a range of Free Insurance Quotes and upgrading my policy.

Amongst others, Houston Insurance (the one I went for in the end) had the fastest and easiest online quote system where I could specify my items and quickly decide what was worth the premium and what wasnt.

Online systems are always a great plus point for dealing with anything financial, its quick and you dont have pushy salesmen telling you what you should spend your money on.

Technical Gadget for Smokers

Okay so this is a bit of a fun post, but hey thats half my job to find interesting and useful (or sometimes just interesting) tech items to review.

For non smokers, the worst thing in the world is the smell of cigarette smoke hanging around in rooms or on their clean clothes after hanging around in a smoky environment. No more, now there is a solution to this age old nicotine problem, the Smokeless Ashtray. Interestingly (and i dont know why) its shaped like a car and costs a mere £8.95 its a cool USB-powered device that inhales whatever smoke is released when a fag is in the vacinity.

Lose the Race - Lose your Car

Drag Racing fanatics, its time to get excited, drag racers, its time to race your car. Fear it or enjoy it this is a great bit of fun from the latest all day marathon of PINKS who will pick contestants in a best three-out-of-five format, with the loser handing over the title (pink slip) to his or her vehicle! what a laugh!

The season started in July (Check out the Drag Racing Clips). This is a sponsored paid ad by SpeedTV.com, and then revisit for the premiere of PINKS All Out on Speedtv on Nov 23rd

Firefox 2.0 is here and FREE

Mozilla have launched Firefox version 2.  It has now been available for 3 weeks and already is attracting huge downloads.  There are a number of new features such as automatic system restore in the event of a crash (which does happen a little to frequently) and close tabs on each tab your working on.

There are also some incompatibilities with some extensions (now called add-ons), though since many of these are 3rd party apps they will be updated as time goes on.

Overall the new version is slick and fast and the new features add some nic functionality to an already top quality browsing experience. Look out Explorer, your competition is hot on your heals !

Users can download the latest version of Firefox here.

Google launches Private Label Homepages - FREE

Google Apps for private domains has been updated to allows companies to create customized home pages in order to combine corporate branding and unique content with the original Google search and other free features such as, Gmail, calendars and GTalk.

Google is allowing and targeting large and small corporations not for profit organizations, as well as educational institutions to deploy their own Google applications to offer content that is relevant to thier own users.

A large number of organizations have already taken up this offer and launched their own customized Google home pages, companies include Arizona State University, Gateway Computers, as well as many small companies.  Sign up is free and initially activation is by invite only (free regisrtation).

Visit visit www.google.com/a/ to sign up for free.

Track your Blog Links

A great online (and free service) lets you track and report on all your outbound links you use in your blog. Instead of using the direct URL create an account with Bingr.com and create a redirect link. Every click is then tracked and can be reported at any time.

Checkout the one I created to this blogs homepage: Tech Review Blog HomePage


You can check the number of clicks per day and by location of the user. Location and number of clicks is analysed by IP address and cookies.

You can also choose to make the reporting public or private depending on the use of the redirect you want to track. Bingr is a totally free service, Bingr.com will track your link for 30 days - you get detailed reports about who's clicking your links. (After 30 days, your links will continue to redirect, but will not be tracked.)

With one free account you can track upto 50 URLS at any one time. (After the 30 days the links still work but tracking stops) so you can ultimately create and store hundreds of unique redirects so links you add to your blog will never expire.

Whilst the current Bingr.com is still in beta and I feel when it moves out into a full featured release it will have some great potential. I would certainly be prepared to pay a nominal few dollars a month to be able to track more than 50 urls and some additional information on traffic behavour would also be useful such as next page, time on site etc etc.

All in all though, another great freebie web service thats very useful for us bloggers. Link tracking just got a whole lot better.

Google Earth Goes 4D

Those clever guys at Google have taken their Google Mapping Service (Google Earth) to the next generation.

Google Earth

Just like Google News Archiving. You can now scan images of our wanderous planet dating back to the 1700's Obviousy you cant expect such detail as for the modern day since satellite imagery was only in the imagination of sci-fi writers and the insane. The browsing interface has also been improved and Google Sketchup is now better integrated.

Current it is only in Beta Version but Google Earth Version 4 is set to become a better standard for PC based mapping. You still need to pay for the Pro version for all the advanced premium modules.

So thumbs up again to Google for their Version 4 release of Google Earth, keep it rockin!

Personalized USB Portable Storage Drives

All the hype and development over USB storage devices, those little key-drives that nowadays can store gigabytes of data and are encrypted for ultimate security. Now a clever little company have taken this (now) everyday device a little further and offering free custom engraving with every purchase.

Pexagontech.com offers great deals on a custom flash drive with FREE laser engraving. You can just buy one drive engraved for your husband, wife or friend to carry around his work, music or private security documents.

The offer the complete range of sizes, from 512MB, 1GB, 2GB or 4GB of portable storage in tiny and very good looking Hi-Speed USB flash drive, aluminum casing and choice of five colours.

Every flash drive include hi tech security software to password protect your sensitive information.

Current online specials: 1GB Thumb Drive (any color) for $20.99 with FREE laser engraving & 2GB Thumb Drive (any color) for $38.99 with FREE laser engraving.

Sony PS3 - What went wrong?

Last week Sony launched the new PS3 games system in Japan. The initial 500,000 units selling out within hours amidst the expected long overnight queues and people trampling crowds outside designated stores.

The rest of the world still has a few months to wait for global release so we have time to decide on the cheaper or more expensive system. The one great thing which stands this system aside from Xbox and Nintento is the backward compatibility of games. Something which we would expect to be a standard but only Sony appear to be aware of.

Initial reaction to the system is as expected, the feature rich premium version with built in wireless and 60Gb harddrive are set to set a standar in online gaming. The quality however of the Blu-Ray disc system and the stability of the IBM chip is yet to be seen. Over the next few weeks we will publish user views and opinions. Come back for regular updates.

New Internet TV Service

A new Internet TV service has recently launched proving again evidence that the big media houses do not have the broadcasting world tied up. YourkindTV hosts its own tv shows for free view and a plethora of user generated content.

Get involved with the daily news and views from YourKindaTV, as they now presenting the 'British User Generated Awards 2007' – the first annual awards for user generated video. Showcasing the rise of citizen journalism and user generated content.

Fast registration and your watching innovative and fun broadcast TV quality content. One of my favourites (aside from The Daily Show) was the 'Queer eye' sketch by the guys from BB7.

Firefox 2 Versus Explorer 7

Almost a month into both their debuts and the jury is still out on which browser evolution is better, faster and most feature rich. In short which one was worth the hype of the new version and will the new version actually make any difference to Market shares.

Depending on which reports you read, Firefox has done well, claiming an additional 10% share of the market, though how many of these new downloads will stay faithful as oppose to just trialling it before moving back to Explorer, only time will tell.

I'm a fond Firefox user and find the new version pretty slick, althouth it does tend to be less stable. Explorer 7 still lacks some crucial features like 'open in new tab'

The jury is out since we may need to wait for the bug fixes and updates over the next few months to really be sure of the winner.

Tablet PC's Which one is best

At last I found a site that reviews them and and allows users to interact, this is a very good example of a website built on User Generated Content. The site has a wealth of Tablet PC Reviews and includes the best places to go find them. The site features multiple forums and an impressive PC database to search for all the tech specs and reviews to help you make a decision.

Personaly my two favourite sections are the coupon page (everyone loves a discount) and the rating scale for all models down the left hand side. Its simple striaghtforward and logical in its process. Now if your contemplating buying a tablet PC you dont need to spend hours reviewing hundreds of site, there is now a single Tablet PC Reviews website that has it all from trusted sources.

SEO Tips & Tricks

Volumes have been written on this topic, how best to optimize your website, which features are the best and what software can do it all for me, not to mention the plethora of SEO companies offering to do it for you.

There are 5 basic SEO Tips essential for basic SEO'ing on your site:

- Ensure Meta tags are inserted and unique on each page
- Ensure all Images have Img Tags
- Ensure Header tags are relevant
- Ensure all links are text links using relevant keywords
- Ensure the page has over 200 words of content

Simply put there is no software that will do the job for you, but there are packages that will help, these include: SEOToolkit, WPG Gold, WebCEO

If you can afford a few thousand dollars a month it is well worth employing a company with software and skills to do it all for you, results will be quicker and more profesional.

Online Document Storage - Safe at Last !

KeepYouSafe.com claims to be the the first truly secure Online Safe Deposit Box. Obvioulsy you cant store physical items like jewelry, but you can store all those important document details and account numbers.

The service also suggets scanning copies of all your important documents and uploading them as pdf/doc. This is intelligent and logical. Their website is a full features Online Safe Deposit Box and is littered with safe / secure logos and their levels of encryption seem quite impressive.

Security for this kind of Online Safe Deposit Box is obviously a big concern when divulging your details to anyone let alone an central repository, so you should check for yourself all their claims of security. I checked it and have opened a taster account which wont cost me a thing for the first year, after that it will cost $3 (or more dependant on size) per month.

The only question remains is how do you keep the password to this account safe !

Israel is the New Silicon Valley

People often ask where the latest innovations are coming from, which countries are leading the way in medical, technological and scientific breakthroughs. The answer i always give is Israel. The tiny piece of land that gets so much news time for all the wrong reasons.

This country of less than 6 million people is the new silicon valley. Just ask Intel who have used the brains of the land to develop their last 3 generations of procesors, ask Microsoft who are ever expanding their operations there or even Google who this year added Israel to their exclusive list of countries where they have full office operations.

The start-up world is nowhere more productive than Israel, just ask Sandisk who are now delivering multi-gigabyte disks on keys or Amdocs who are the market leading document storage people.

Truly, invest in Israel for the future and learn about the real country rather than that thats crudly shown on the news.

PC Blade - Sharper Servers

Choosing a server is complicated. Unless your decision is easy because of the applications your running, its difficult, windows, linux, shared, dedicated, mac, pc. Well let make the job a little easier, check out the new Blade Server by ClearCube. These servers are full featured PC servers and all include the latest Intel technology.

Life just got a little simpler ! PC Blade Servers look as cool as they sound and claim to be as sharp as they imply. The website has all the information needed to view images and read spec sheets. Servers Just got Sharper.

New System Online to Pay Bloggers

A revolutionary new marketing system has launched in recent months that matches publishers with advertisers

www.blogvertise.com is an invitation only service for publishers who can earn money by reviewing advertisers products / services on their blogs. 

Their slogan says it all ''Blogsvertise! It's simple. Earn cash and generate extra income from your blog!''

Yummy and Google Life

A very cool tool has come to market.  For those of us who now live by social bookmarking, should check out Yummy

A freeware little tool thats very much still in alpha / beta mode that is effectively a front end del.icio.us search tool. It sits on the desktop and lets you search by user or topic.  There are more and more web2.0 tools websites and interface tools hitting the internet, this is a very nice bit of integration.  If you know any more, let me know and i'll review it on this blog.

I'm still waiting for the all encompasing, all interfacing tool for my web management, email, news, web clippings and home entertainment system control...  I'm waiting for GoogleLife to launch.  It seems they have all the components, they just need to package it into one log in web interface with a desktop app for offline use and hey presto i'll be happy and they can rename the internet: googlenet

Telecom Israel 2006.

Israel, the hottest new Silicon Valley this week is showcasing its wares and flares (excuse the pun).  Hundreds of start-ups through to multinationals that one wouldn't think are Israeli but are will be exhibiting in Tel Aviv.

The exhibition has become a central showpiece for the Telecoms world with many new technologies and think tanks in attendance showing their vision of the future of voice.  This years key topics include:

Exhibition Topics

• Basic and Value-Added Telecom Services
• CDMA, GSM, GPRS, IVDO, UMTS
• Billing Systems
• Intelligent Network
• IPTV
• Micro-Wave Communications Systems and Equipment
• Mobile Electronic Commerce
• Mobile E-mail
• Optical Fiber and Transmission Equipment
• PDA
• SDH Technology and Equipment
• Telecom Security Services
• Wireless Access Systems

MATIMOP (Israeli Industry Center for R&D) have endorsed an innovation pavillion, an initiative to recruiting premier innovative Israeli start-up companies to present in this unified location.  New demonstrations offering a variety of services will be showcased to the public.

An exciting year ahead is planned for the industry if the brainboxes in Israel have any say in the matter!

Vodafone teams with Microsoft

Vodafone, The world's largest mobile operator, has signed a deal with Microsoft to produce software for rollout of new services on all mobile handsets.

A Vodafone spokeman has said the new platform deal with MS will speed up the development of new apps and services for all its Windows Mobile devices,

In other news from Newbury, Samsung set to deliver the first handset using this new software on teh Vodafone network in the first half of 2007.

Vodafone have said that this deal does not mean that it will stop its deal with Blackberry or preclude its use on such handsets from Sony Ericsson, which doesn't use Symbian/S60.

We will wait to see how this pans out. The future's here and it may not be orange!

PlayStation 3 is almost here... check out the facts

After plenty of gameplay the console is cool -- or at worst warm -- to the touch on every surface. In a side by side test with the Xbox 360, the console is comparably virtually silent, and the Blu-ray drive is significantly quieter than the 360's DVD drive.

• USB keyboards and mice will be plug-n-play, no fuss at all. Who really wants to browse the web with a PlayStation controller anyway?
  
• Bluetooth mice and keyboards will not work with the system at launch.
• Any (A2DP) Bluetooth headset should theoretically work with the system, though Sony will have a recommended hardware list.
• The EyeToy is the only USB webcam that will work with the system. The original PS2 EyeToy should still work with the PS3.
  
• There are currently no plans for VGA out on the PlayStation3.
• The system will not support more than seven controllers.
• There are currently no plans for a cheaper, wired version of the SIXAXIS.
• With its media playback software one can have in-game custom soundtracks, as with the Xbox 360, Wii, etc.
• Sony insists the US is still officially targeted for a 400k unit launch; Japan is still set for a mere 80k. Sony execs are actually expecting an upturn in unit production before launch, so those numbers may actually go up.
• Some titles have an option to install some amount of game data (in addition to saved data) to the drive. Genji can install 4GB worth of data to decrease load times (quoted to drop from 12-15 seconds down to 3-4); this game data can be removed at any time without affecting your saved games.
• The drive can be upgraded, although not on any official basis (read: YMMV, do so at your own risk, you may void warranty, etc.).
• You cannot leave voice or picture messages for other users on the PlayStation Network, only text.

Who needs Firefox - Mac users dont !

I don't have a Mac, so I didn't know that Firefox - even in its latest incarnation - doesn't run all that well on them.  Oh yes, it'll work - they designed it to be platform and processor ndependent after all - but it doesn't take advantage of the hardware and OS niceties that make Apple's products so efficiently addictive. 

Enter, stage-left and grinning, Shiira, an open-source browser developed specifically for the Mac.

So what makes it so great? 

Well, being specifically designed for OS X means it's fast - Expose-style viewing of all tabs renders in an instant, rather than crunching along slowly as Firefox does, bookmarks are dynamically updated from any other browser you have installed, so you always have an up-to-date set in Shiira. 

Translucent sidebars show new RSS feeds and a "Page holder" for whatever site you're currently viewing, a kind of contents page with all the relevant links right there.

MySpace Goes to Japan

News Corp. owner of Myspace launches the Japanese version of its service today.

MySpace has grown to be the most popular website on the English-language Internet, and is already accessible in countries including Australia, France, Germany, Ireland and the U.K. The Japanese version will be the be the sixth national service and and fourth different language version of the service.

MySpace Japan is a joint-venture between News Corp. and Softbank. Myspace Japan is competing against a number of competitors, primarily Mixi, which has over 6 million users.