Engadget has reprinted an article where Tom Rogers (TiVo boss) has stated that he hopes that they will relaunch TiVo in the UK “soon”. It’s been about 8 years now, and with most of the UK Gadgeteer team owning at least 1 TiVo, we can’t wait for their re-entry into the UK market. No information is available, although it’s more likely to be Freeview or Freesat based than offering full Sky support.

Engadget story [Via Automated Home]

Mercedes Benz and Garmin have linked together to produce the “Streetpilot III”, which is actually a Nuvi 760 on a custom mount designed for the Mercedes A-Class, B-Class and C-Class. It will retail for approximately €550 and be available soon across Europe (it should also be available in the UK too). The custom mount links into the car’s system, so all spoken directions are through the car’s speakers (with other sources muted), and there are no visible wires as everything goes via the mount. As a Nuvi 760, it offers Bluetooth Handsfree calling, a 4.3″ widescreen, and traffic information. It has also been loaded with all the latest Mercedes Benz dealerships

This isn’t the first time Garmin have worked with a car manufacturer, having already announced a solution with BMW, but it’s nice to see other manufacturers looking into custom solutions using portable SatNav devices.

Some content courtesy of NaviGadget.

If you’ve been to the 3 Store recently, you will have seen the Mix and Match 1100 tariff on special offer; £20 per month (a 25% saving). There’s been a few comments on the internet about the fact that this offer is about to end (in fact, we were notified by 3 it was due to finish on Saturday). 3 have now confirmed to us that this offer is still currently on, and will remain, but will only be offered online.

However, we understand that the half price mobile broadband for existing customers deal is due to end this Saturday, so if you fancy that, head off to the 3 Store quickly and sign up.

Update: The £20 M&M1100 offer will only continue for a few more days, finishing at the end of next week.  However, 3 are looking at creating some online special offers moving forward.

We first covered the LG Secret after it’s launch, and have been using one ever since. However, if you want your own Secret, it’s now available;

• on Vodafone, and if you spend more than £35 per month (for 18 months; or £40 per month for a 12 month contract), you should find the phone is free too.
• on O2, spending £35 per month for 18 months, £30 for 24 months, or £40 for 12 months will get the phone for free.
• on Orange, although you won’t get the phone for free on any tariff.

We’ve been generally impressed with the phone, although it’s not in the same league as an N95 or an iPhone. We understand it should be available on 3 and T-Mobile soon, although neither are listing the phone on their websites today.

Vodafone are actually doing the right thing; instead of limiting the new 500Mb of inclusive data to “new customers”, Vodafone are removing the hard and fast limits of the past. Ewan at SMS Text News has more details, based on his discussions with Vodafone after overspending last month. The interesting point in Ewan’s article is; whereas before Vodafone included 120Mb of data, and charged for any single Kb over that limit, the new 500Mb is a “Fair Use Policy”, and apparently don’t intend to charge for customers who go over this limit (although if you constantly go well over the limit, you’ll get a polite letter from Vodafone, and ultimately may be moved onto a different tariff).

This is good news – it’s nice to see a network operator setting a fair use policy with just a “please stop it” method of dealing with overuse, instead of the more usual draconian charging.

Apple have released OS X 10.5.3. It features fixes for AirPort and network reliability issues. It also includes Time Machine and Time Capsule updates and a few other updates.

Having already released the original Eee PC, and with the 900 available and the 901 announced (picture shown above from blogeee.net), it looks like Asus might be about to announce the 10.6″ version this week as the 1000 series. More news as we find out…

Truphone have updated their mobile phone VOIP S60 client to v4.0, and included Truphone Anywhere. This allows you to route as many of your calls as possible over the Internet, which will reduce your costs. Clever logic in the program means it will offer a variety of options from a local area number, Call Back and true VOIP calls. If you have included bundled minutes, then Truphone reckon their service will still save you money on your international calls. Head over to the Truphone website for more information and a download link.

After our story of last week, it appears Nokia have rebuffed their own CFO. Nokia are now saying they have no plans to release Linux based phones. It’s possible that Nokia’s Linux strategy for Internet Tablets (where it is likely to be announcing more Linux *devices* in the next year) got confused with pure mobile phones, but we would have thought their CFO would know the difference. We’ll have to wait and see whether we see any Linux mobile phones from Nokia over the next year or two to see whether he was actually right…

There’s been a lot of talk about this in the last few days, so we’re simply going to link to the main article from All About N-Gage. Basically, if you buy a game for your N-Gage compatible phone, it’s tied to the IMEI (ie the phone itself). When you get a phone upgrade to this year’s latest model, you’ll no longer have access to that game, and will need to buy it all over again. This is mentioned in the EULA for N-Gage, but it’s even not clear what happens if Nokia themselves replace your phone under warranty for some reason. Not Nokia’s best strategy, and certainly not in line with the rest of the gamin systems available today…