Posted by: Jane Douglas

So the interim Digital Britain report released this week has given us an idea of how the final version will look in some months' time: the acknowledgement of broadband as a basic utility, access for all by 2012, operators being compelled to commit to mobile broadband and ISPs to gather data on illegal downloads.

(And then there's digital radio and the creation of a Rights Agency, plus skepticism from the Tories.)

In other news, the super-skinny, super-high-contrast, world's first OLED TV from Sony we've long had our eye on has finally reached British shores - with a spectacular £3,489 pricetag, bafflingly pricier than the $2,500 American version.

However gorgeous the XEL-1 is (that is, very), it is still a mere 11-inches across. We can't imagine too many people will have £3.5k to drop on a little TV for the kitchen.

This week on T&G:

BlackBerry Picking with our gadget columnist

Gadgets to get you fitter

Gadget battle: e-books v paperbacks

More than human: artificial eyes, brain chips and beyond

Posted by: Jane Douglas

We've recently been pitting Kodak's compact camcorder, the Zi6, against our faithful old Flip.

Kodak brought out this mini HD camcorder to serve those who like the idea of taking quick and easy video on a relatively cheap device but want some more pixels for their money.

So the Zi6 captures higher resolution video than last year's Flip, producing a widescreen, 1280 by 720 pixel picture at 30 or 60 frames a second and in .mov format. (The makers of the Flip have similarly introduced the Mino HD, which features the same resolution - as does the new Creative Vado HD.)

The quality of video we've taken with the Zi6 is impressively high: a nice step up from the VGA-resolution generation of compact cameras we weren't paying much less for six months ago. Its performance dips a little in low light, however.

Macro mode
There's no zoom function on this compact camcorder, but happily there is a simple switch for going from the regular focus distance  to a macro focus (especially handy when, say, shooting other gadgets in close-up).

Though the Zi6 itself looks and feels good, it is a touch on the chunky side. It will still fit in a pocket, yes - but one of your bigger pockets. And you will not forget it's there.

Memory
An SD card to expand the Zi6's meagre onboard memory will be essential, though we personally like the reliance on an SD slot - if you were recording a lot of video at once and didn't have the chance to offload it onto your PC, a spare SD card or two would do the trick instead.

(The camcorder doesn't come with an SD card, but accepts capacities up to 32GB - enough for several hours of footage.)

Power
The Zi6 is powered by a pair of rechargeable AA batteries; it comes with these and a charger. That'll be a plus point if you're on the move without access to a USB port for recharging - you can just pop in some standard AAs. But if you prefer to charge via USB, you're out of luck. Offloading video is via USB, of course.

Kodak's mini camcorder is a good little package in all - with a few minor quirks that will annoy some users and work well for others.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

If you make a lot of video calls with your computer, it must be painfully clear what the experience is missing: a third dimension and retro-looking 3D glasses. Right? Well, suffer no more, fans of internet video chat: the "world's first 3D webcam" has arrived.

The Minoru* is a shiny red critter that sits atop your monitor and goggles at you through a pair of light-up camera eyes. Between these and the Minoru software, the webcam produces a stereoscopic image which, viewed through the included cardboard glasses, comes alive in glorious 3D.

That's the idea, at any rate. Having recently been spoilt with 3D entertainment enabled by polarised lenses and active shutter glasses, we were skeptical when we first got our hands on the Minoru and its lower-tech, red-cyan 3D system.

At least the installation and set-up was a breeze. Pop in the CD,  plug in the camera, focus the lenses, run through some quick calibration and the device is ready to go.

And then how does it work? Better than we had expected, in fact. Although the picture looks very much as you remember 3D of old (that is, with funny colours and some ghostly artifacts), there's no denying the kicks to be had in watching yourself or your Messenger buddies pop out of the screen.

Besides working with video chat via the likes of Messenger and Skype, the Minoru can capture 3D photos and video in resolutions of up to 800 by 600 pixels for later viewing. (The manual suggests uploading your 3D clips to YouTube.) 

We're not sure you would could comfortably carry out long video conversations via a couple of Minorus (though sturdier, better-fitting glasses would help) but as a novelty it's good fun. And if that novelty wears off, the Minoru can be put to work as a regular, two-dimensional webcam.

The Minoru 3D webcam is currently available at Firebox.

*Minoru means "reality" in Japanese, we are told.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

25 years ago, Apple ran the now-famous television advert for the first Macintosh personal computer (above). Directed by Ridley Scott, the ad promised:

"On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you will see why 1984 won't be like '1984'."

I was just a couple of weeks old at the time so I never actually got my hands on an old Macintosh - until today.

Andrew Webb, BBC Technology video producer, kindly let me have a bash on a Macintosh Plus - not exactly the 128k machine that launched a quarter of a century ago, to be fair, but a slightly later model.

BBC video: getting to grips with a Macintosh Plus

Still, it was just as alien (to me) to be operating a computer with a monochrome, nine-inch display, powered by an 8MHz processor and requiring endless swapping in and out of 3.5-inch floppy disks to get the system started, then to install and run various bits of software.

But let's not sell the Macintosh short. Its release marked a revolution in consumer electronics. It sold for about $2,500, an "accessible" price previously unheard of for this kind of technology.

It was also the first really successful product with a graphical user interface - that is, point-and-click graphical icons: an innovation most of us can now barely imagine computers without.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

What a couple of weeks it has been: both the last ever Macworld Expo and the Consumer Electronics Show 2009 have been and gone, leaving our poor Tech & Gadgets heads spinning with a glut of gadget news.

OK, so Macworld didn't exactly set the world on fire, although the new 17-inch MacBook Pro and iTunes' dropping of DRM were both welcome. And then CES didn't have a game-changing reveal to match the likes of HD TV, the DVD and the Xbox (all unveiled at previous Consumer Electronics Shows).

But it would be churlish of us to complain about the lack of gadget news shocks when now it seems 2009 is shaping up to be a pretty exciting year in gadgetry, even in the face of a financial crisis.

We're looking forward to Palm's newly announced Pre shaking things up later in the year. Healthy competition in the smartphone stakes can only be a good thing - especially for us, the buyers and users. And if smartphones aren't your thing, how about a 3G watchphone or a smart smart projector phone?

It seems if the electronics industry has its way we'll all soon enough be playing games and watching television and films in 3D. We're not convinced that the world wants to wear special glasses to enhance their viewing pleasure but, hey, stranger things have happened.

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The top stories of this year's CES

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Our television editor recently came to the Tech & Gadgets desk with a problem: what to do if you're strongly left-handed and need a proper camcorder?

She bought a Sony Handycam before Christmas but these few weeks of trying to get to grips with it have been a pain. The problem is that the camcorder is designed, of course, for the right-handed majority - that is, with the strap handle on the right side, the flip-out screen on the left and the eyepiece positioned for right-handed use.

If you are left-handed and your right hand isn't strong enough to support and stabilise the camera, you're a bit stuck.

I'll admit I hadn't contemplated the problem before. A hunt around on the web confirmed what our TV editor already knew: none of the well-known electronics brands manufacture a reversed, left-handed version of any of their camcorder models.

With about 1 in 10 of the population preferring to use their left hand, I wonder if these firms are missing a trick? Or maybe not - other lefties I've polled say that they manage to operate camcorders with their right hand. They must be more mildly left-handed, more ambidextrous than the MSN TV editor.

Some web forums suggest turning the camcorder upside down for left-handed use - though I suspect having to later process all your video to get it the right way up would be annoying. Other people recommend certain grips you can buy from camera stores to convert your device into a reasonable left-handed camcorder.

I would have thought that something like the Sony TG3 would be more suitable, or even something more symmetrical (ambidextrous), such as the Kodak Zi6, Flip Mino or, when it arrives, the Vado HD. That said, if you're after a full-sized, full-featured camcorder, these might not fit the bill.

Any left-handed users with tips or tricks for the MSN TV editor? Or do you use your camcorder right-handed?

Posted by: Jane Douglas

The Palm Pre picked up both the Best of CES and People's Voice prizes in the Best of CES awards hosted by CNET at the show. And I concur. Palm deserved a pat on the back for bringing us a standout touchscreen smartphone - that's far from easy these days, in the shadow of the iPhone and a space crowded with the efforts of other handset makers.

It's the webOS that should really be getting the credit, though. Things like the deck-of-cards-inspired interface allowing for flipping through applications (think alt-tabbing through Windows) and the quickwave launch bar that can be dragged up from the gesture area below the screen set the Pre apart.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Wii games consoles in millions of households around the world may have paved the way for the device in the below video. It's the motion-sensitive remote control for the Kodak Home Theatre HD Player, a device for bringing internet content as well as your photos and other media to your television - making more use of "the best screen in the house", as Kodak told me at CES.

The remote uses motion sensors and radio frequency communication - meaning there's no requirement to have a direct line of sight to the TV. Also nice is that the cursor doesn't wander outside the screen, wherever you point - it stays within the boundaries of the display.

The technology for the remote, developed by Hillcrest, is ripe for use in a real television remote control. Pointing and clicking through grids of content and channels could be faster and more fun than scrolling down, down, down all the time.

Or, television remote control of the future might dispense with a physical handheld device completely: Panasonic had a gesture-based design on show at CES - meaning all viewers had to do was wave a hand at the TV set...

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Not ground-breaking tech but fun and eye-catching all the same: I liked this new six-in-one kit for making solar-powered toys by OWI, on show at CES. It's marketed as an educational tool for kids - but I can see it going down well among all lovers of gadgety gimmicks.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Advances in solid state memory (that is, higher capacities at lower prices) could mean we say goodbye to the last real moving part inside your computer - the hard disk drive - in the very near future.

Among the products unveiled at CES by flash memory specialist SanDisk were some high-capacity solid state hard drives (SSDs). The largest of the bunch had a 240GB capacity, making it more than suitable to replace a typical PC hard disk drive - unlike the 16GB or so models that came in last year's netbooks. (SanDisk also unveiled a line of higher-capacity netbook SSDs at CES.)

That 240GB model will sell for about $500 - a significant chunk of a notebook or PC's price, but not prohibitively expensive for manufacturers.

"We've reached a tipping point for solid state memory," Mike Wong of SanDisk of SanDisk told me. With larger, cheaper SSDs available, 2009 could be the year, he says, when we begin phasing out hard disk drives altogether for these more efficient, faster, less vulnerable devices.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

The celebs were out in force for the Sony keynote on day one of the Consumer Electronics show.

Sony chief exec Sir Howard Stringer brought a series of stars out to voice their endorsement of various Sony products and initiatives.

A trailer for Angels and Demons (Sony Pictures Studios) led the way for a stage appearance from Tom Hanks, who was amusingly cynical about schilling for Sony. "They write the lies but I tell the truth," he told the crowd, in an aside from the teleprompter's script. And to Stringer: "I'm whatever Sony wants me to be today, Howard."

Then there was John Lasseter, chief creative officer at Pixar, who praised Sony's Blu-ray and its internet-enabled BD-Live functionality, and speculated at the future of the technology: 3D at home with Blu-ray.

To talk about Sony's digital 3D cinema projection ("this ain't your father's 3D"), Stringer introduced Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief exec off Dreamworks. Katzenberg hailed 3D films as "the third period of great revolutionary change" for cinema, putting the technology on par with the advances that gave films sound and colour back in the early 20th century.

Katzenberg then treated the audience, kitted out with chunky black glasses with polarized lenses, to a dual-projected 3D scene from upcoming Dreamworks flick Monsters vs Aliens.

Former baseball star Reggie Jackson, American celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz and Usher also put in appearances, as did the slinky new Sony P-series Vaio, with Stringer pulling the tiny device from his jacket pocket.

But perhaps a prototype, ultra-thin and bendy OLED screen was the star of the show. Stringer also mentioned Sony's intention to follow up its 11-inch Sony OLED with a 20-to-30-inch version, but - disappointingly - with no specific announcement of a new product.

Kaz Hirai of Sony Computer Entertainment, however, did have an annoucement to make: a Sony-EA partnership that will bring new social games to the PlayStation 3 virtual world Home.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Surely things are looking a bit bleak for those in the gadget business, given the financial crisis and decreased consumer spending? Not so, according to Consumer Electronics Association head Gary Shapiro.

In an extended introduction to the Sony CES day one keynote (more of which later), Shapiro was rubbishing talk that consumer electronics are luxuries - thus likely to suffer in the financial crisis - rather than essentials.

"We brighten people's lives," argued Shapiro, and, beyond that, said that technology is essential in enabling entrepreneurism and leads to money-saving advances in energy and food production.

Although he sagely did not predict increased profits in the coming year (gadget sales are growing in number, he said, but prices are coming down at the same time), Shapiro contended that the consumer electronics industry would stay strong.

Going further still, the CEA head declared: "We will lead the way to a global economic recovery."

Seems we're pinning a lot of responsibility on technology here at the Consumer Electronics Show: not only is it going to boost developing world and save the environment, but it's apparently also key to coming back from the financial crisis? Here's hoping it's up to the task.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

This evening in Vegas, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer delivered the pre-CES keynote to a packed ballroom of press and industry reps.

Following warm-up jokes about Yahoo's Jerry Yang wanting to know why Ballmer was rejecting his Facebook friend request (ouch) and Bill Gates reminding him not to confuse CES with that "other", concurrent Vegas trade show (the Adult Entertainment Expo), the Microsoft chief exec got straight to keynote's apparent theme: three-screen convergence.

Three screens
The three screens being those of the PC, the mobile phone and the television - each of which will become "more sophisticated and connected" in the near future, providing the owner of all three with "anytime, anywhere computing".

By bringing together PC, phone and TV with cloud computing, Ballmer said, the technology industry could make a huge difference in people's lives - with Windows at the "centre of that solar system", naturally.

PCs for all
Ballmer referred to Microsoft's pledge some years back to put "a PC on every desk in every home" and noted that the current one billion people worldwide with PC access, though impressive, left five billion people out of the picture. He spoke of the need for "more accessible and more affordable" devices to "democratise computing", citing cheap netbooks and the One Laptop per Child initiative as examples.

Natural inputs
"Natural user interfaces will become mainstream," said Ballmer, claiming voice, gesture and handwriting recognition will become important input methods - though we will still be using traditional keyboards and mice in the future, too.

Announcements
Among the announcements of the evening: the Windows 7 beta officially available worldwide on Friday and a Windows Live partnership with Facebook. Robbie Bach of the Entertainment & Devices Division had our hopes up with a mention of Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST, but no big reveals on either - though there'll be a demo of the former out on February 5.

Also from Bach, a project from the community games side of Xbox Live: Kodu, a "game" for creating games that began life as a tool for teaching kids programming skills. Looks like a lot of fun - not entirely unlike the level creation and editing parts of LittleBigPlanet.

Stick with Tech & Gadgets for more on CES - the show proper begins tomorrow!

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Right now, I am supposed to be somewhere over the Atlantic, flying to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, the world's biggest international gadget expo. Instead, I am frustratingly stuck at Gatwick Airport departure lounge for another couple of hours, my flight mysteriously delayed.

On the plus side, it gives me a chance to blog and follow the news filtering out ahead of the show via the good people at Techradar, who are already out there. You can, too, at our CES 2009 page.

There's been murmurings that this year's show is set to be a less exuberant affair than those of previous years, given the financial situation - but there's still some 130,000 people attending to see 3000 exhibitors, and I'm still expecting some big news and exciting gizmos.

Things to watch out for:

Catching up with the proliferation of television content on the internet  (see iPlayer, Hulu...), think internet content on the television in 2009. As in Samsung's just-announced Internet@TV collaboration with Yahoo.

Touchscreens. More of them. On everything. Especially laptops and PCs, though I'm looking for someone at CES to convince me that gorilla arm isn't going to kick in after the first 30 minutes of operating one.

3D stuff. With the recent word that Sky is working on a 3D HD TV service, a firm called Minoru showing off its 3D webcam at CES, as well as Panasonic exhibiting a "full HD 3D" television: I'm thinking 3D is a watchword for the coming year.

And then there's skinnier TVs, organic light-emitting diode screens, green (and money-saving) tech, USB 3.0, GPS-enabled everything and new netbooks.

Right. I'd better go check those departure boards again...