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.