For £5 per month, the BT Vision service will now offer PictureBox from Universal, which offers a choice of 28 films per month. BT Vision already offers a range of monthly subscription packages, and this new one should go live on 5th May. The PictureBox service is already available on TopUp Anytime (Freeview based) and Tiscali TV (cable based). BT promise the films will not have already aired on Free to Air TV channels, although they may have already featured on other premium services.

BT Vision uses a Freeview PVR box, but to get BT Vision you must already have a BT Home Hub (ie be a BT Broadband customer). However, the self-install version of the service includes 2 Powerline adaptors allowing you to use the power cables to connect the PVR with the Home Hub if they are in different rooms or different locations. A nice touch there, with someone thinking through the average UK house design…

On Friday O2 finally launched their competition to Vodafone and 3’s Mobile Broadband. For £20 a month you get a 3Gb allowance (with a handy text message at 2Gb warning you the allowance is running out). Over that, it’s 20p per MB. However, you do also get unlimited WiFi via The Cloud. One limitation - you must be an existing O2 customer, and it’s an 18 month contract. There’s a month-by-month option (a bit like PAYG) which is still £20 per month, but you’ll need to buy the USB modem at £120 first.

Unlike 3, the max speed on offer today is 1.8mbps, with O2’s 3.6mbps rolling out in June.

Certainly the unlimited WiFi deal is a bit of a differentiator, but compared to 3’s offer of half price broadband to existing customers; and with the trick of getting a 3 Skypephone on a 6 month contract just to become a customer, it’s not necessarily the cheapest way of getting online for everyone.

Some content courtesy of SMS Text News.

LG are planning to produce some new low cost 16:9 screens suitable for the new range of low cost laptops, such as the Asus Eee and the Everex Cloudbook. They are planning a standard 16:10 8.9″ 1024×600 screen in August, followed by a 16:9 10.1″ 1024×576 screen in October. These screens are (according to industry sources) likely to be picked up by Acer and HP for their laptops, with a possibility Asus will adopt them too. Either way, the market and range of low cost lightweight laptops is set to continue during 2008 and into 2009.

In other news, it’s looking definite that we will see the Intel Atom chips in the Asus Eee 900 from around June time, which will hopefully improve battery life.

Some content courtesy Engadget.

Nokia have updated their Beta product, Nokia Text Messenger. They’ve fixed a bug with connection issues and the software will now install on non-English OS versions of Vista. As with previous versions, this can be downloaded from the Nokia Beta Labs website here.

This 8 megapixel is not unique, but certainly different from the standard camera you can buy. As well as the 3″ touchscreen on the rear, it includes a GPS module to record exactly where the picture was taken. The press release (pdf document) refers to their solution as a GPS Navigation solution, indicating the camera contains maps as well as the actual GPS hardware, but it’s not yet clear how good the maps are, nor which countries they will be providing mapping for. However, it’s certainly the sign of things to come, and we can expect many more cameras with GPS (or GPS addons) in the coming months.

Story and picture courtesy of NaviGadget.

3 have made a number of changes to their mobile broadband USB modems today. The new USB Stick Modem is now the same price as the other USB Modems if you take out a contract (ie free on all contracts except Broadband Lite 12 months). 3 have also dropped the PAYG price of the E220 and ZTE modems by £20, although the USB Stick Modem stays at the same price. When we checked, the pricing was yet to appear on the website, but should do soon.

Even more reasons to go and buy one today….

Update: The PAYG price change will happen on 1st May, although the contract price changes are already up on the 3 website.

An enterprising individual is looking to create a cheap GPS addon for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and is even looking at providing an Open Source software solution for accessing the GPS data. To be able to produce the GPS addon boards, he needs a minimum order quantity of 1000 modules, and he’s currently half way there. Head over to his blog to see more and vote if you are interested in purchasing one (or more).

Story courtesy of Pocket GPS World.

Here’s an interesting view of 3’s data usage. It’s interesting for two reasons; firstly as it’s rare for a network to release information like this, and second as it shows the impact the release of their USB Modem solutions has had on their network. The six month period covers the release of the 3 SkypePhone and the increased marketing behind their USB Modems.

In other news, the 3 SkypePhone is currently on special offer at 3 - you can (for a short time) get the phone for free on a 6 month contract (instead of the more normal 12 or 18 month contracts). Even better, this 6 month contract is enough to qualify you for half price mobile broadband, although you will need to keep the contract running to benefit from the reduced mobile broadband pricing.

Data network story courtesy of The Inquirer [Via Tech Digest]

Although you’ll need a jailbroken iPhone (until we get the formal SDK and new firmware), fring is now available for the iPhone, bringing support for VOIP calls (Skype), and IM (MSN Messenger, ICQ, GTalk, AIM, and Yahoo!). More details, including how to setup the pre-release version, are available from fring.

Here’s a picture of the new Asus Eee PC 900. This will have the 8.9″ screen (1024×600 resolution), more memory, more disk space (4Gb flash onboard, with either an additional 8Gb SSD for XP and 16Gb SSD for Linux), and a formal choice of OS. The price will be from £329 (for the Linux version). The weight remains below 1Kg. Best of all, these should be available now (although whether you can actually purchase one today seems up for debate).

Nokia have signed up a number of key players to support the LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks, as a 4th generation mobile network in direct competition to Intel’s WiMAX initiative. Sony Ericsson, NEC and Alcatel-Lucent, NextWave Wireless and Nokia Siemens Networks are all part of the licensing framework which is designed to keep the LTE patent costs down to a minimum to ensure it has the best chance of success.

More information on the initial partnership on the BBC Technology website.

Along with all the general rumours over the release date of the 3G iPhone, it appears some websites are claiming that the new 3G iPhone will contain a GPS Broadcom chip, providing built in GPS functionality. We’ve no idea if this is true or not, but hopefully we’ll find out in the next few months…

This is a nice, easy to use, mid range phone. Compared to the Viewty it’s actually easier to use for some functions (real keys make typing SMSes much easier), but the spec is not as high. The camera is “only” 3 megapixel (compared to 5 on the Viewty). The smaller touchscreen area (only the bottom area is a touchscreen) does not affect the operation, and many of the advanced functions you would expect. We’ll be using this phone over the next few weeks and will report back on what it’s really like.

As from today, the iPhone should be £100 cheaper, ie it now costs £169 plus a contract. This should apply to both Carphone Warehouse and to O2 shops. Although stocks have been limited over the last few weeks, this seems to support those theories that stocks are being finally cleared out for the 3G iPhone to appear in June…

For those who have bought an iPhone in the last 30 days from a Carphone Warehouse store, even better news; “Launched 10 years ago and already responsible for customers receiving millions of pounds, the Ultimate Price Promise means The Carphone Warehouse will automatically give vouchers to the value of £100 to anyone who has purchased an iPhone from the store in the last 30 days.”

After releasing the initial support for the Nintendo Wii last week, the BBC have also explained that they weren’t able to reach a deal with Sony to provide the same functionality on the PS3. However, an enterprising individual has created the website PS3iPlayer.com, which, if you access it from your PS3, will get you access to the BBC iPlayer website. It’s doesn’t work perfectly, but it at least shows what could be possible if the BBC and Sony were able to resolve their artistic differences.

Story courtesy of Tech Digest.

If you are into your music, and have a last.fm account (which allows you to publish your music tastes, and what you are and have been listening to), then Michael Coffey has released a native last.fm client for Symbian S60 phones. It has a simple interface (you provide it your last.fm username and password and that’s it!), and whenever you play music it will silently in the background update your last.fm account (it also remembers the music should you be disconnected and will upload the data when a connection is available again).

Download it here.

According to Tech Digest, Coffee Republic are breaking away from the current mould, and moving to the pricing model most coffee drinkers want: free!

Coffee Republic will be offering it’s customers (ie you’ll need to buy something first) free WiFi access. The service will only operate during opening hours, and is likely to be limited to inside their coffee shops, but they are promoting that people who use it for an hour a week could save up to £234 per year.

Here’s an interesting link for the Everex Cloudbook (aka Packard Bell EasyNote XS) Laptops. In a similar vein to the Eee touchscreen mods, here’s an article on how one user of the Cloudbook forums has added a touchscreen, using the same sort of kit used for adding a touchscreen to the Eee.

Story courtesy of Cloudbooker.

Here’s an interesting rumour we’ve picked up on via the internet. It appears that Nokia might be trying to beat Apple to the launch of the first 3G touchscreen smartphone, by announcing the 5800 Tube in advance of the iPhone announcement in June. Although they’ve both been beaten to touchscreen mobiles (like the LG Viewty), it would be an interesting turn of events if Nokia beat Apple to this crown. It’s unlikely, but an interesting rumour nonetheless…

Back in January, we mentioned that Sling Media were planning the SlingCatcher, in essence a reverse Slingbox, allowing you to play any video; from your PC, from a Slingbox, from USB devices, or from internet video sites. However, this appears to have been delayed, and there is still no date for making this available.

Story courtesy of Engadget.