Don’t forget, there are still a few days to enter our competition to win an LG 42″ LED-Backlit LCD TV.  For more information head to here.

Absolute Radio (105.8FM, also available online and via DAB) have released an interesting feature which works on the iPod Nano.  It’s called iTunes tagging, and it works like this; you tune your latest generatino iPod Nano into Absolute Radio and listen to their songs.  Should one of the songs catch your attention, you can tag it, and then when you dock your iPod, you’ll be able to see who the song was by, what is was called, and you will even be able to buy and download the song from iTunes.

This is a nice level of integration between the non-connected iPod Nano and the well-connected iTunes PC, and could prove a nice feature for many people.

Absolute Radio have more information on this service, including a video on their website here.

giffgaff is a new virtual mobile phone network operator, sitting on the O2 network (in fact the company is actually part of O2), but with an innovative business model, and hence tariff.  Firstly, no call centres (some will celebrate this single point), in fact they have very few staff at all, and will be relying upon other customers to help in the online forums (the main route to support).  When an existing member is thanked within the forum, they will earn kudos, which adds up, along with many other things into giffgaff points, which add up to hard cash (or at least credit).

However, as well as keeping costs down, they are keeping the tariff simple, and encouraging individuals to recruit their friends and family onto the same tariff…

• Calls, SMS, MMS, call forwarding, and even video calls between giffgaff users will be free (as long as you topup £10 every 3 months, and only calls up to 60 minutes will be free)
• UK landlines and mobiles (and voicemail) will cost 8p/min
• UK SMS will be 4p each (possibly showing a more accurate figure than other networks)
• MMS will be 16p each
• Video calls will be 50p/min

That’s the general stuff out of the way, now let’s look at the two exciting bits…

• Freefone calls (0800) will actually be free!
• Data will be free for 6 months!

Wow, it’s really good to see a network returning to the Orange / T-Mobile ways of many many years ago and providing freefone numbers for free.

The reason for free data is partly to gauge the interest in the service, partly to allow them further discussion on what pricing to set.

If you want a SIM, head over to the giffgaff website and order one, and let us know how you get on!

Some content courtesy of Dan at The Really Mobile Project.

When we reviewed the 3UK Mobile Wi-Fi unit (MiFi) here, we said it allowed devices such as the iPod Touch to gain extra facilities by being connected to the Internet whilst mobile.  Well, it looks like 3UK agreed, as they have just announced a bundle deal whereby you can get a 3UK MiFi on a 24 month contract for £23 per month, but for that, as well as the 5GB of data each month, you’ll also get an iPod Touch.

Now, the MiFi would normally be £17 per month (18 month contract), so ignoring the extra tie in period, it’s an extra £6 per month for 24 months, which is, to be fair, £144, so although the exact spec of the iPod Touch hasn’t been announced yet, it’s not an unreasonable sum for the device (it’s certainly not massively overcharging for the device).

Details should appear on the 3Store at some point next week, but maybe this might be worth it as a Christmas present for someone special…?

Update: This deal is now available in the 3Store, and features an iPod Touch 8GB along with the 3 MiFi and 5GB of data per month (24 month contract).  It even throws in 80 free text messages per month, although I’m unsure how these can be used from the iPod Touch…

According to this website, v400 firmware for the Nokia E71 is just starting to become available, and the changelog includes:

NEW FUNTIONALITIES:
Gimlet v9.5 (v9.5.3.72)
Quick Office 5.3
Ovi Store 1.5 (v1.5.2)
Ovi Contacts – Preinstalled
Mail for Exchange 2.9.176

CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS:
Email Setup Wizard update
WLAN Corrections
Internet Radio v1.16 – Increased functionality
Camera functionality improvement
Incoming call hang issue fixed
Turkish SMS character input improvement
Many functionality and Stability improvements in MfE
Support for Russian and Ukranian keymats
Phone activation Baseline updated
Yahoo account hack fixed

GENERAL
Stability and functionality improvements
Email and WLAN functionality improvements
Increased robustness in handling SMS and incoming calls
Memory leak fixes and crashes
Email and WLAN functionality improvements

CALL HANDLING
Fix for Incoming call hang issue and fast call crash
Fix for making emergency call when the phone is locked

CALENDAR/CLOCK
Minor Functionality improvements
Time display correction when the phone is locked

CONNECTIVITY
WLAN functionality Improvements and fixes for crashes
Improvement in WLAN authentication
mVPN authentication improvements and general functionality improvement

CONTACTS/PHONEBOOK
Functionality improvements for search functionality

EMAIL
Email setup wizard updated
Fix for Yahoo account hack while setting up Gmail account through Nokia Email
Fix for mails getting duplicated after restoring backup
Mail for Exchange upgraded from 2.9.158 to 2.9.176
Gimlet updated to v9.5
Many functionality and stability improvements in MfE
Robustness and functionality improvements in email items.

INTERNET RADIO
Improved functionality
Increased application stability

QWERTY KEYBOARD
Usability improvements
Keyboard mapping corrections for Russian and Ukranian keymat

MESSAGING
Improvement in Turkish SMS characters input
Fix for delivery report for SMS with more than 22 characters
Increased robustness in handling SMS

It’s nice to see Nokia not neglecting the elder phones!  Once this becomes available in the UK, don’t forget the Nokia E71 does not hae UDP (User Data Preservation), so it will wipe everything off the phone when you apply it.  Certainly with the memory leak fixes and the time display correction, this may be an update worth applying.  As always, the network operator branded firmware versions will take longer to be released.

Yes, that’s right, for our first ever competition we’re starting with a rather impressive prize; a Super Slim 42″ LG LED-Backlit LCD TV (SL9000). If you want to know more about the TV, read our article here when this range was announced a few months back.

The competition is quite simple; you simply have to email your answer (and your details) to the following question to info@gadgeteer.org.uk before 5pm Friday 4th December 2009.

Unfortunately, as with many competitions, there are a few rules we have had to impose; no UK Gadgeteer or LG staff (nor anyone living at the same address), you must be over 18 years old, you can only enter the competition once, and the TV will only be shipped to a UK address.  The winner will be selected by random from the correct entries. You will need to provide your name, address and contact telephone number, which will not be used for any marketing activities, although the winner will be expected to:

• Take part in some limited marketing activities, and your name will be revealed.
• Provide some feedback on the TV, in terms of a review with pictures and/or video of how the TV has fitted into your lifestyle.

That last point is key, but should not be too onerous!

Just to show this is real, here’s a picture of the TV (still in the box; more pictures next week of it out of the box…) and we’ll be providing a review of this very TV next week too, before it’s boxed back up and ready to be sent off to the winner.

So, to win, all you need to do is email info@gadgeteer.org.uk your name, address and contact telephone number, along with the answer to this question:

What are the screen sizes of the two models in the SL9xxx range:

a. 32″ and 42″

b. 42″ and 47″

c. 32″ and 47″

The winner will be contacted and announced soon after (likely to be the following week).

Good luck!

Thanks to LG and the LG Blog for offering this fantastic prize.

Good news: TiVo is returning to the UK!

Not so good news (depending on where you live): It’s with Virgin Media

Probably the only company that could realistic bring TiVo back to the UK has done just that; Virgin Media and TiVo announced this week they will be working together to produce Virgin’s next generation HD boxes.  TiVo is providing the software to allow this, which will include Video-on-Demand and Broadband delivery of video too.  The TiVo functionality will be in both Virgin’s DVR and non-DVR boxes, which is all good news.

Given Virgin offer both their traditional Cable Modem service and ADSL, it’s not clear whether you’ll need to be within the 50% of the population covered by Cable TV, or whether it will be possible to get access to the TiVo features via an ADSL connection, but this is still very good news for those of us who have supported TiVo for many years.

Of course the other interesting situation is that Virgin already offer BBC iPlayer on their set top boxes, so assuming they don’t intend to remove that functionality, we may see the TiVo solution supporting BBC iPlayer (and even the other networks’ alternatives too, creating a very compelling solution, and one that can truly rival Sky).

Standby for UK Gadgeteer’s first competition; yes, if everything goes to plan, we’ll be announcing our first UK Gadgeteer competition tomorrow.  This competition will be open to UK residents only (sorry, but this is a UK based website!) and will (in our opinion) feature a prize worth winning, especially in the run up to Christmas.

However, if you win, we’d like you to write a short article on how the item has changed the way you live, either with a few pictures or maybe a short video, so be prepared to get involved once it arrives.

More details tomorrow…

Firstly, in a move we are fully supportive of, Vodafone has announced that as of 1st December, all marketing must refer to their mobile internet service as “500MB of mobile internet data”, and will no longer use the wording “unlimited mobile internet”.  This is a very positive step, and we welcome the change, and hope this drives all other UK networks to adopt the same attitude.  Here at UK Gadgeteer we’ve been careful to lay out the true figures for some time, but it’s nice to see the change being applied across all marketing activities.

Of course, given that competitors such as 3UK offer 1GB for the same money (or less), it would be nice to see their offering increase, but at least they are starting to offer a level playing field and allow the consumer to be able to choose their level of service knowing exactly what they are buying.

However, in an equally positive move, Vodafone UK is making their mobile internet service completely free tomorrow (Friday 27th November 2009); this is only from mobile handsets, but whether you have a PAYG or Pay Monthly contract, you can surf the internet directly from the phone, and it won’t cost a penny.  Equally, if you already pay for mobile internet on your phone, then any usage tomorrow will not eat into your data allowance.

Interestingly, we note it’s exactly three months since Vodafone last offered mobile internet free on a Friday; we can only hope that Vodafone find their network is able to cope, and can open up free / inclusive mobile internet to even more people as standard.

Well done to Vodafone!

Now available in the Ovi Store is a Symbian Facebook  for the Nokia E71 / Nokia E72.  To see more screenshots, head over to ZOMG its CJ’s website here.  However, from our point of view, it’s not enough…

On much cheaper phones (eg the INQ Mini 3G, reviewed here) the Facebook support is actually much more integrated into the phone; it will happily take the Facebook contacts and add them to the local addressbook, it will bring their picture down, and it even puts their latest status updates right in the addressbook for you to see if you are about to ring, text or IM them.  The Sony Ericsson T715 we recently reviewed (here) also had support for Facebook, with the ability to upload pictures to Facebook as soon as they were taken, so why aren’t we seeing this level of integration on Symbian?

None of this is difficult, and if it can be achieved for a £50 phone, then surely it can be achieved for a £300 phone…

However, it’s a start, and one we hope that Facebook and Symbian work on to improve.  Also, we’ve no idea why this application is limited to these two phones, although we can understand the need for a portrait version and a separate landscape version given the way Symbian works.

Screenshot courtesy of ZOMG its CJ too.

Amazon have just announced a new firmware update for the Kindle, which has a couple of new features.  The first, and potentially in response to the Barnes & Noble Nook, is support for PDF files.  Now, anything too complicated won’t really work, and, although you can rotate it into landscape mode, there’s no zoom, so some PDF files will still be unreadable (and for them we still recommend Calibre to sort out your conversion into the native Kindle format for better reading).

The second though, is even more interesting, especially in the UK; they have announced that you can extend the battery life by as much as 85% (offering up to 1 week), although you can extend this even further (to nearly 2 weeks) by turning off the wireless support.  Remember in the UK, there are additional charges for using wireless (to download ebooks which is built into the price), and until they offer full browsing next year, the only accessible website is Wikipedia (see here for more information).

This update should appear automatically via the wireless connection shortly, if it hasn’t already.

SatMap have quietly released a new firmware, v1.4, for their SatMap Active 10 devices.  As well as addressing a range of bugs, the full Changelog is included in this article.  Highlights include better Geocaching.com support, better power management, including hibernation support.  For the full changelog, read the rest of the article…

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As we seem to be talking about music today, this week saw the launch of the Spotify client for Symbian S60 (both 3rd Edition and 5th Edition), and it seems to have been generally well received.  Granted there are maybe a few minor issues with the UI (it’s difficult to tell what music is available in offline mode) and some have (quite rightly) questioned the £120 per year cost of being able to listen, but not own the music.

Basically, if you like to listen to lots and lots of different music, potentially more than you own (in both music tastes as well as disk space limits) then Spotify may well be the solution for you.  It’s more expensive than Last.fm (which is more geared around giving you access to music you already own or is similar to your own music), but for many it’s worth the extra cost.  If, on the other hand, you don’t buy much music each month, and your current music collection fits happily onto your music device of choice, then maybe the cost of the Spotify Premium account would be better spent on buying more music, but for those that want to use the service, Spotify have added the Symbian client to their existing Android and Apple iPhone clients.

As we mentioned with the Spotify bundle deal with 3UK (here), you need to be careful not to over-use any 3G data connection you have, as music streaming can quickly eat through your monthly allowance, but by careful use of offline playlists and Wi-Fi connections, you should be able to listen to fresh music on a regular basis via Spotify.

To access and download the client, simply point your mobile browser to m.spotify.com, once downloaded, you’ll need to enter your Spotify account details (which needs to be a Premium account at £10 per month, no minimum contract period).  Even better, this version supports all Symbian devices, including those from Samsung and the Sony Ericsson Satio, so isn’t limited to Nokia devices.

Offline playlists are limited to 3,333 tracks (assuming you have enough space for all of those tracks), and every 30 days you will need to resync; if you go abroad, you can continue to use Spotify Premium in a country not normally supported by the service for 14 days, so you can have your music as long as your holidays aren’t too long (and you can afford the data roaming costs; if not; use the offline facilities which gives you a little longer anyway).

Another key difference between Spotify and Last.fm is that Spotify allows you to select an album to play, whereas Last.fm concentrates more on the artist, and will give you a selection of their songs, but not in strict album order.  Finally, both services limit you to 1 live online music stream, even if the same account has been configured in multiple devices.

With the limits on 3G data usage in the UK, and the higher cost than Last.fm (which can also be used on hardware devices), it’s difficult to see many people paying this subscription in the long term, but at least they are supporting a wide range of mobile devices.

Integration; one of the key driving forces behind the establishment of UK Gadgeteer, and Upcoming have released a new feature which seems to offer just that.  In case you’ve never heard of them (and although there’s not been much innovation coming from them recently, we’d be surprised if you’ve never heard of them…) Upcoming offer an ability to find out about, and confirm your attendance at events up and down the country (actually, all around the world).

Some organisations, like OpenStreetMap use Upcoming to help organise some of their events, and to help get a guide to the number of likely attendees, whereas for others, Upcoming is a form of Social Networking site, but based around events, and not people.

To improve the experience, and to offer something new, Upcoming announced a new feature this week; they can now take the details from your Pandora (US-only site), Last.fm and iTunes accounts, and extract the music artists you listen to.  Then, it will store this information as part of your profile, and should any of your musical artists be performing in your local area, Upcoming will notify you of the event.

Now, to some degree, Last.fm already has event information built into their offering, but it’s nice to see Upcoming happy to reach out to other sources to pick up information to improve their own service.

If you don’t have an Upcoming account (you can use your Yahoo! account to login) then personally we feel you may be better sticking with using Last.fm’s event functionality, but if you do have an account, login, let it find your artists, and see if the new feature is useful to you.

Some content and the screenshot courtesy of Lifehacker.

Having recently released an Android version of their fring client, fring have now announced an updated Symbian S60 client which offers video calling, allowing you to video call your fring and Skype contacts.  Initially for S60 devices (both touch devices such as the Nokia X6, Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini as well as the traditional non-touch Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8GB, and Nokia N82 devices).

For more details, and a video showing it in action, head over to fring’s website here.

We’ve mentioned Locale for Android a few times before, so we thought we should talk in some more detail about the application, the power it offers, and why, here at UK Gadgeteer where we like integration, it’s caught our attention.

Locale is designed to take actions based on your location (and many other triggers); a typical example is that of selecting a Silent profile when you arrive at a certain location, but Locale offers a lot more than that…

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3UK last week improved their 3UK SIM only offer; if you select the £15 per month option (remember the 3UK SIM Only contracts are rolling 1 month contracts), then you will now get “unlimited” 1GB of Internet Access thrown in as part of the deal.

On top of that, 3UK also provide “unlimited” 3000 texts, Free Skype (via their Skype Free Calls Forever promotion), 300 cross-network minutes to landlines and mobiles, and “unlimited” 2000 3UK-3UK minutes, along with Windows Live Messenger and free voicemail.

The 3UK SIM Only deal now looks even better value for money, although you do need an unlocked 3G capable handset to use it on 3UK.

This is the new Roberts ColourStream radio, which is yet to be formally announced or released by Roberts, but at least one website already has the item with specifications, so we can reproduce them here.

As well as being a DAB and FM radio, it features an iPod Dock (possibly only supporting the iPhone in offline mode), but also sporting a 3.5″ colour touch screen for many of the controls. In other respects, it seems to offer a similar feature set to that of the Roberts STREAM 83i (USB media playback, Internet radio).  It can make use of the BBC Listen Again function, has an AUX in socket, as well as Line OUT and Headphone sockets.

Until more details are released, it’s not clear if this unit will also play last.fm radio (as the Roberts STREAM 83i does), so we’ll update you when we get more information.

However, with a price of £400, I think many will prefer the styling of either the Revo IKON (see here) or the PURE Sensia (see here), and personally, we would head to the Revo IKON.

Also, we note that both this device and the Roberts STREAM 83i we covered last week (here) may not have DAB+ support (thanks to Paul Webster at his DABDig website for drawing our attention to this point), which may limit it’s usefulness in the future, should the UK ever decide to adopt this standard (other European countries are already rolling out DAB+, so lack of support may impact your ability to use either radio whilst travelling).

Specs courtesy of DNA Car Audio (via Paul’s DABDig website).

We’ve heard of a number of interesting Kindle updates that should come to the International Kindle at some point, although possibly not until 2010.

Firstly, we understand that Amazon have announced that by the first half of 2010 the Kindle will support organising eBooks into folders.  Of course, this comes just after the beta release of Kindle for PC (Kindle for Mac is due out into beta soon), which although it does not improve the organisation, does allow you to pick up where you left off on either your Kindle or your iPhone Kindle client.

Secondly, and probably more key to the uptake of the Kindle around the world, is news that Amazon may well be bringing the full web browser experience to the International version.  Now, when we say “full” experience, this means that the ability to view web sites on the B&W screen, without high CPU facilities such as Flash (it’s often better on the Kindle to head to mobile optimised websites), and it will be a little slow.  At the moment, the only Kindle accessible website is the English Wikipedia mobile website, so extending this will be very useful, and allow a number of small applciations (such as some games) to be able to work too.

This web access would remain free too, which will make the device even better for accessing email, news websites, blogs, Twitter, etc. as it is commonly used in the US; although at this moment in time there is no ETA for this function to be made available.

Having launched support for the Wii earlier this year (using the browser and Flash support), last week BBC went live with an improved iPlayer solution using their own embedded code and are now featured as their own channel within the Wii Menu.

To get the new menu, head to the Wii Shop, and you should find the new BBC iPlayer Channel available in the Wii Shop for 0 points (ie free).  However, you may find you need to apply a Wii System Update first (if this is needed, you’ll be notified as you enter the Wii Shop Channel).

Once it’s all downloaded, it runs smoothly, although as with the PC client, the streaming will be dependent on the bandwidth your broadband has; and the BBC have released some interesting figures about bandwidth requirements…

As the Wii cannot handle a very high frame rate, the Wii iPlayer client “only” needs around 700Kb/sec (using the H.264 codec), and the BBC have said that any higher resolution or data rate would cause the CPU to struggle and frames would be lost.  Although the Wii obviously can’t support HD, this does mean that HD content is not available, only SD.

The BBC also confirmed that the normal PC client uses roughly 1,500Kbit/sec for SD content, and around 3,200Kbit/sec for HD.  What do these figures mean; well, for people like us stuck out in the countryside on a 512Kbit/sec ADSL line, even the Wii iPlayer client will struggle from time to time, and needs to stop and buffer the data for a while, but it shouldn’t be as bad as the PC client.

There’s no download option (unlike the PC or mobile client) so it’s streaming only.

However, the nice feature of this improved Wii client is that it does give access to the BBC iPlayer content on your TV without needing a PC plugged into the TV, although there are some nice fanless options out there for those who do want to do this (including a device we hope to cover soon here on UK Gadgeteer).

Screenshot of iPlayer on the Wii courtesy of BBC.