Posted by: Jane Douglas

As we watch the end of September whiz by, it's time for another virtual rummage in the Tech & Gadgets (e-)mailbag.

First up, there's been rumbles of discontent over the lack of HTC handsets in our selection of the world's hottest mobiles.

"Where was the mention of my HTC TyTN II?" asks Christopher. "HTC keep getting ignored in these types of polls because they are not one of the big boys but the TyTN is being marketed through Carphone as a designer model!"

JohnM, meanwhile, wants to know: "How come there is no mention of the HTC Touch Pro or the HTC Touch HD?"

Good points, you two. The TyTN II and Touch Pro can hold their own with the best Windows smartphones out there - scoring 8.3 and 8 in their respective reviews on T&G. And the Touch HD looks very promising indeed.

But there's really no bias against HTC phones here. Hey, HTC designed the T-Mobile G1, which did feature in our pick of hot new mobiles, of course.

Secondly, the feature on soon-to-be-extinct gadgets accompanying our interview with futurist Richard Watson met with a certain amount of skepticism.

Alan, for instance, scoffs: "All these things are going to happen in the next 40 years??? roflmao don't be so stupid man!!! lol you would be lucky to be right on one of these never mind all of them..."

In fact, the predictions in question were not made by us but come from Richard Watson himself. As for whether they are accurate or not - let's get together in a few decades' time and see, shall we?

Finally, some podcast love from over on the message board.

"Very funny podcast," says Kilidath, "and brought back some good memories of old games."

"Loving this podcast, guys!! Always look forward to it!!" says Tom, AKA Tommy-Gun.

Elmo_joypad and Man_with_idea also had nice things to say, though both point out that one month is too long to wait between casts. Could we be looking at a more frequent podcast in the future? With feedback like this, it's certainly a possibility.

At any rate, Iain's popping by for a podcast recording later this week. Until then...

Posted by: Jane Douglas

This week we've been playing through Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (for the second time), strapping the new Oregon Scientific ATC5K Action Cam to anything that moves and gawking at the buzzworthy Android-powered T-Mobile G1.

The Force Unleashed
It's by no means a perfect game, as just about every review out there will tell you.

There are a handful of graphical glitches - more than you'd hope for in a game with this much money and expertise behind it. Getting knocked down leaves Starkiller unresponsive for a couple of moments too long. And although you're rewarded for fancy lightsaber work, it's easy enough to plow through the game with the same three-button combo.

All that said, I've had a damn good time with The Force Unleashed. As a Star Wars game, it feels authentic - not a cheap franchise cash-in, but a lovingly designed slice of Dark Side action.

The levels look great, the voice-acting is spot-on and the plot rattles along at a pace that puts Episodes I-III to shame. The lightsabers may be lacking, but the Force Powers are really where it's at. A game in which you electrify Jawas and drop Stormtroopers from great heights can only go so far wrong.

As for the stuff that's caught our eye on our daily roving around the web:

Atari Modern Classics: blockbuster next-gen games reimagined as Atari 2600 titles for your retro-loving pleasure. Mmm, blocky.

The Wonderful World of Early Computing: Did you know that notched baboon bones were the first ever mathematical instruments? No? Neither did we.

The Sheep Market: 10,000 sheep, hand-drawn by online workers paid two American cents for each etching. Only on the web. I wonder what the 662 "rejected sheep" looked like?

The best of this week's T&G

Posted by: Nik Taylor

I got to have a sneaky peek at the Gears of War 2 campaign mode today. Unfortunately, I've been told to keep it all under my hat until the 29th September. It's secret, y'see. More info to come on here soon - but safe to say, you're right to be excited about the return of Marcus Fenix.

We've had plenty of ace stuff to click on once again this week - here are some of the highlights from T&G.

Meanwhile...elsewhere on the web...

Make the most of your 140 Twitter characters - stick some symbols in there too.

Coooool. Make your Wii Nunchuk wireless...

You've got a week to get practicing for the GTA IV Live Weekend.

More GTA news as we're drip-fed a little more info on GTA: Chinatown Wars.

Apparently, the home of the future will be grown from living trees. Um, didn't we move on from all that a few millennia ago?

Spore buyers give it a kick in the DRM.

Happy weekend. :)

Posted by: Nik Taylor

So what name are we to use for portable music players now? Back in the day, it was easy. Every portable stereo was called a Walkman, regardless of whether it sported a Sony badge or not. It was a simple, elegant term that fit the product perfectly.

But then formats changed and we started talking about MP3 players. Not the most catchy of monikers, but it did the job. Until photo capability and video playback came along, saddling us with the even clunkier 'personal media player' term.

Now Archos wants us to call its current crop of kit 'internet media tablets'. Sorry, what? There's no denying Apple has the lion's share of the portable player market, and surely that's at least in part because it sells iPods, not 'pocket-sized musi-vidi-foto solutions'.

Come on Archos, you've presumably got some marketing people tucked away somewhere - surely they can do better than that eight-syllable mouthful of tech gobbledegook?

Anyway, enough ranting. To be honest, Archos can call its new range of players whatever it wants. I don't care, because they look the business.

Out of the models on offer, the one that really stands out for me is the Archos 7, which packs in a top-spec 320GB storage for somewhere around £400. That's a fair few quid for us gadget lovers crunched up at the bottom of the credit canyon, but you get a lot of fun stuff for your money.

For starters, you can surf proper web pages - all accessed via an immense 7" touchscreen. You'll need a dongle plugged in for that mobile broadband access though, unless you opt for the 5g model instead which has 3.5G internet capability built in. There also the confusingly similar-sounding Archos 5, which is the same as the 7 but with a 5" screen.

All have Freeview inside, so you can watch telly on the train, and - with an add-on - you can also schedule recordings on your TV at home. Stump up for a car dock and the thing doubles up as a satnav.

The Archos 7 is out over here at the end of the month, and the 5g pops up closer to Christmas. However, the Archos 5 is already on sale. I'm having a play with one of those next week, so keep an eye on the blog for some hands-on opinion.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Having just watched Sony Ericsson's live webcast preview of the Xperia X1 (left), I'm going to go out on a limb and predict a three-way battle royale between that phone, the Samsung i8510 and the Nokia N96 in the very near future.

All three are sufficiently pretty and feature-packed to put them more or less toe-to-toe when they hit shelves in the UK over the coming weeks.

Hype
Samsung, if you hadn't noticed, has had posters plastered up all over to point our that their i8510 is Europe's first eight-megapixel cameraphone. Meanwhile, the N96 (right) has got the N95's considerable fanbase to build on.

The Xperia X1 (below), on the other hand, is the first product in the new high-end Xperia sub-brand - and Sony Ericsson reports a record level of interest in this handset.

Specs

• Sony Ericsson Xperia X1:
  3.0-inch touchscreen (800 x 480)
  Full QWERTY slide-out keyboard
  HSDPA data speeds
  GPS
  Up to 400 MB phone memory
  Windows Mobile Operating System
  3.2-megapixel camera
  145g
  
• Nokia N96:
  2.8-inch screen (240 x 320)
  HSDPA data speeds
  GPS
  16 GB internal flash memory
  Symbian Series 60 Operating System
  Five-megapixel camera
  125g
  
• Samsung 8510i:
  2.8-inch screen
  HSDPA data speeds
  A-GPS
  16 GB internal flash memory
  Symbian Series 60 Operating System
  Eight-megapixel camera
  120 fps video recording
  140g

You can read our reviewer's glowing write-up of the 8510i here, and our columnist's hands-on preview of the N96 here. As soon as we get our hands on an Xperia X1 you'll hear about it...

Edit
This just in: a hands-on preview of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1. Enjoy!

Posted by: Jane Douglas

This week we've been watching the 'Big Bang machine' kick off, eyeing up the skinniest iPods ever and chatting about underrated video games in a new podcast.

Elsewhere on the web, we've been impressed by Spore creatures that look like stuff and this seriously cool demo video of the SekaiCamera by TonchiDot of Japan.

Best of T&G:

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Just when you thought Apple's iconic personal MP3 players couldn't get any skinnier, they drop another dress size. So to speak.

Apple shaved a fraction of an inch off the profile of the already slim iPod nano to produce the fourth generation model, available in veritable rainbow of colours and with 8 or 16GB of storage.

A built-in accelerometer now allows songs to be shuffled with a gentle shake of the player, and the Cover Flow interface to be accessed by rotating it.

The iPod "nano-chromatic" is just 6.2mm thick. It is joined in the new Apple product line-up by an updated iPod Touch - the "funnest iPod ever", according to Apple chief executive Steve Jobs.

Jobs unveiled the new devices at a San Francisco Apple event, brushing off rumours of poor health - and mocking the accidental publication of his obituary in late August.

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated," read the opening slide of his presentation.

Read the news article here.

Posted by: Nik Taylor

If you're going to chuck money at publicising something, why not make people happy at the same time?

That seems to have been the thinking behind last Friday's publicity stunt, where the PR firm charged with boosting the profile of new sandbox shooter Mercenaries 2 decided to hand out £20,000 of petrol to lucky passing motorists.

Not only that, they also did up the petrol station to look like some remote army back-post, along with PR lovelies toting replica machine guns. It was an awesome idea, and what I love most about it is that no-one in the planning process ever cut in and said, "Er, do you think we might get in trouble for this?"

Which of course they did, since news of free fuel spread quicker than wildfire and caused massive gridlock all around the petrol station in question - prompting MPs and the like to wade in, wailing about irresponsible actions.

Of course, it wasn't irresponsible, it was fun. In fact, the only bad thing about the whole idea was that I wasn't driving past the Finsbury Park garage at the right time to get a free tank-full.

It's quite clear more game-makers should be doing this sort of thing. We don't want exclusive trailers, or drip-fed screenshots. We want free stuff.

The game-makers only need a fairly tenuous link. Mercenaries 2 was giving away free petrol because its story has something to do with a war over oil. Other games could follow suit.

FIFA's coming out soon, for a start - so why not pick a match somewhere and give away all the tickets for free. An England game would be a good idea. We're playing Kazakhstan soon - no-one's going to turn up for that anyway. EA could buy up Wembley for the night and hand out the tickets in a massive bun-fight.

It doesn't have to be on such a grand scale though. Lego Batman's on its way - I'd be quite happy if I was walking down the street and was handed a free box of Lego. Or maybe a pet bat, instead.

Either way, if something's being given away for nothing, it will get my attention. Whether it will make me go out and buy the game is another matter.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

This week we were taken by surprise by Google Chrome just ahead of the big G's 10th birthday, met giant living piñatas in aid of the Viva Piñata 2 launch and talked to legendary designer Will Wright about his ambitious god game Spore.

In gadget news, Dell just announced that its recently unveiled Inspiron Mini 9 (yep, another ultraportable laptop) will be sold with built-in mobile broadband, courtesy of Vodafone.

The 1.035kg devices will be available in late September, though the pricing details aren't yet clear. Hopefully Dell will delivers the Mini 9s with suitably mini pricetags - making this a netbook that can hold it own in a crowded marketplace...

Oh, and is anyone else as psyched about Star Wars: The Force Unleashed as us?

Onward to the best of Tech & Gadgets:

Coming up next time on Tech & Gadgets: a great new podcast with Iain Lee on the topic of underrated video games and a hands-on with Creativ's promising GigaWorks T3 speaker system.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Today I spent time with some folks from Rare - the British games developer behind upcoming Xbox 360 title Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise.

A few live - and huge -Piñata were even on hand to liven up the preview proceedings.

It would be dishonest to pretend I wasn't fairly exuberant about having a photo snapped with them.

The brightly coloured sandbox game itself, out Friday, looks to be a fine and worthy successor to the original Viva Piñata game.

Additions include a whole host of new Piñata animals, arctic and desert environments, two- and four-player co-operative modes and Piñata vision: a feature which lets you add to your garden by showing special cards to your Live Vision camera.

Look out for a full review feature from Tech & Gadgets shortly.

Edit: our review is up! Review: Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise

Posted by: Jane Douglas

It's a move that took most of us by surprise. (In fact, kudos to Google for keeping the lid on this for so long.)

And yet in a few days' time we'll all be looking back at the Chrome announcement saying "Well, of course Google launched its own browser. That was always going to happen." Benefit of hindsight and all that.

What am I talking about? Late on Monday Google announced that it would be entering the web browser market. The open source browser, Chrome, is being released later today.

The buzz among industry insiders is that the move may only be part of a wider strategy to bring the big G's services together, speculating that the search giant will add to its existing relationships with computer manufacturers by getting its new browser pre-loaded onto PCs.

Oh, and there's also a 38-page Chrome comic book, naturally. For a zippy summary of that online comic, try our 20 things you need to know about Google Chrome.

Posted by: Nik Taylor

Plenty of banter, as ever, on Tech & Gadgets over the past month. Let's take a look back at what you had to say.

Particularly popular on the message boards was our nostalgic look back at the mighty Sinclair Spectrum, as well as the 20 greatest Speccy games.

Many of you joined in to reminisce with us about our rubber-keyed friend, and the happy childhood memories it produced. We made our own fun in them days, you know...

"I remember sitting on the floor as a young kid with my dad's motorbike crash helmet on, playing 3D Deathchase... Soo addictive but so simple," says cpt_rascal.

Ah, heady days. As Terri75 sums up, "Kids these days don't realise how easy they have it."

On to more recent gaming news and it's good to see you've all listened to the August gaming podcast.

It seems you liked it. Steve36 is straight to the point. "Very good show, looking forward to the next one," he says.

Not everyone's happy though. Apparently the background music could do with a bit of a tweak. "The intro and outro doesn't do the podcast justice," says jimmy-bob-jones. "It's unbelievably cheesy with undertones of crap retro tunes."

Hmm, not quite the effect we were looking for, it's true. We'll work on that - in the meantime keep the feedback coming.  We're recording the next podcast later in the week, when we're going to discuss underrated games.

But which ones should we be talking about? Let us know on the message board. Iain Lee is giving the thread his own personal attention...

Sticking with gaming, Patrick's piece on Why Mario should retire kicked off plenty of debate, with bags of you standing up for the Italian plumber.

However, some people didn't think Patrick went far enough.

"Mario? How about Nintendo!" said Xyphex. 

"I know I'm going to be in even more of a minority than the article writer, but I just don't understand the popularity of the Wii.

"Yes, it has gimmicks like the motion sensitive controllers and the Wii board, but quite frankly its graphics and power just don't cut it in this generation of consoles."

Ah, that old 'the Wii isn't powerful enough' argument, eh? Next you'll be telling us the PlayStation 3 will never take off and the Xbox 360 doesn't have enough exclusive games... 

All of which brings us rather neatly to our battle of the consoles. At the time of writing, the Sega Mega Drive currently occupies the top spot. Don't agree? Add your votes to the battle so we can find out which is really the greatest console ever.