As a bit of light hearted relief for a Friday afternoon, we’re going to try a special article each week on a Friday, and highlight some gadget not available in the UK which we think should be!

This week, the Vudu HD Movie Streamer…

(more…)

According to the 3 SkypePhone Forums, if, on your 3 SkypePhone, you go into Launcher -> Messenger, you’ll find Windows Live Messenger is now supported on the 3 SkypePhone.  3 have confirmed that although this will remain “Free for Life” for Pay Monthly customers, those on PAYG need to note that Messenger is “Free until end of 2007″.

Also, Matt from 3mobilebuzz has mentioned in the forums that there’s a possibility of allowing you to sync your phone at some point in the future. He commented when asked “How about google calendar? I would find that pretty useful.” with “3 are looking at expanding the Google offering, but they are unable to reveal further information at this point.”

DigitalSpy report that Virgin Media have confirmed they are planning to launch a 50Mbps Broadband service in 2008.  It’s currently being trialled, and those trials are proving successful.

VIA announced in London today a new range of low power motherboards. These run at an average operating power of 2 Watts, with an absolute maximum of 20 Watts.

(more…)

Google has updated it’s Google Maps service. Now if you have a mobile phone without a GPS, the service will try to use cell phone triangulation to locate you. Due to the inaccuracies of this method (up to 1Km), instead of just displaying a blue dot to locate you, the service will surround the blue dot with a light blue circle, and hopefully your actual location will be within the circle.

This is available on most Google Maps Mobile versions, although you may have to head off to the website and download updated service (GMM does not seem to auto-notify you of new versions, nor offer to download and install them).

This isn’t available in every country yet (and not supported by every phone), and there are some questions as to how Google have built their database, with concerns they have harvested data from GPS Google Maps users without their knowledge or ability to opt-out.

For those in or near London, the Oyster scheme is being expanded further. As well as using the contactless smartcard to pay for your travel, the scheme has already been adopted by a number of newsagents, allowing you to buy low value items on the same card. Now, Nokia, O2, and Transport for London are planning to release a mobile phone with a built in Oyster smartcard chip, allowing the device itself to act similar to an actual Oyster card. The difference will be that the purchase amount will then be added to the user’s mobile phone bill.

Although this is a new development for the UK, The Guardian report that 50% of phones in Japan are already equipped with this sort of technology.

The trials of this device (a Nokia 6131) were announced this morning, with the trials starting today for the 500 lucky travellers.  These travellers are getting the new phone with credit on their mobile phone account, credit on their new Oyster chip in the mobile phone, and some credit from Barclaycard, who are also partners in the trial.  The trials run for 6 months, so will finish at the end of May 2008.

Thanks to The Guardian (and others), and especially Ken at UK Mobile Report, who attended the launch event this morning.  Also, thanks to Nokia.

Over at AutomatedHome, Keith has been using the 3 USB Modem for some while now, and has written a lengthy review. It’s well worth a read, especially in light of 3’s plans to have a PAYG (Pay As You Go) USB modem option in the future.

Thoughtfix, who runs the popular Tabletblog, also runs a UMPC blog. Yesterday he released a long review comparing the Nokia N810 with the small Asus Eee PC. Read the article to see which may be best for you.

Here’s a handy tip that not a lot of people know about. There is a Skype robot which allows you to post to your Twitter account from within Skype, and it even works on the 3 SkypePhone. Here are the simple instructions:

1. Add twitter4skype as a contact.
2. Type the following as a single chat message to twitter4skype:
   /account (shift+return)
   yourtwitteraccountname (shift+return)
   yourtwitteraccountpassword (shift+return)
3. The system should return: twitter4skype Registration complete!
4. The next time you write a chat message to twitter4skype, the entry will appear on your account and you’ll receive your friends’ twitters in Skype.

Another useful way of using the free Skype IM facilities on the 3 SkypePhone.

Please note, this service (as best we can tell) is not provided by either Twitter or Skype, and so you are providing your Twitter account details to a third party, who UK Gadget Blog do not endorse in any way. Make you own mind up, before using this service.

Thanks to Robert at pacificIT for the content, and 3mobilebuzz for alerting us to it.

There’s a new firmware available for the N800 – the new ITOS2008 firmware, which brings a number of features from the N810 to the N800. However, right now, the ITOS2008 is still in Beta, and it’s more for developers than users. For example, the new Navigation software on the N810 is not yet available for this version, and you’ll lose Skype too. Best to wait a few more weeks for the final firmware to be released.