July 2009 Archives

By Jay Garrett

Hello again gadgety faithful!

I survived the Latitude Festival and a few gigs with my band Subset and will soon be off to Knebworth for Sonisphere.

“What's been happening in the gadgety world Jay?” I hear you ask.

Well, since we last met I had a tour around Sony's operations in Stuttgart and brought back a UK exclusive, Samsung are aiming to undercut LG's wristphone with their S9110, the Modu modular mobile has gone on sale and official pics of LG's tasty Chocolate BL40 have been released.

As usual there's been Apple product rumours.  More whispers about the iPad Apple Tablet reckon that this device could be here next year or even before Christmas!  The iPhone Nano has also come back to the surface after a patent has been spotted.

By Dan Owen

Ideally scheduled for summer nights, FX have started showing the first season of HBO's vampire drama TRUE BLOOD, based on a series of novels by Charlaine Harris and adapted by Alan Ball (American Beauty, Six Feet Under). The high-concept premise find vampire-kind admitting their existence to humanity after synthetic blood ("TruBlood") is made available, supposedly releasing them from their existence as secret bloodsucking killers. Oddly, none are brought in for questioning over centuries of unsolved murders where victims were found with bites to the neck...

By Jay Garrett

So Gadgeteers – what's new?

By time you read this I'll be at the Latitude Festival either drunk, watching a band or in a ditch – perhaps all three!

Well, preorders for Windows 7 at discount prices zipped away on Wednesday, and the Marketplace Mobile opened up for all 6.x users.

MJ will be back in video-gameland, new news regarding Apple's iPad tablet has surfaced where as Nike have produced perhaps the most gadgety football – ever!

Marvell have managed to squeeze a  computer into a plug, Aston Martin has built a bus and DARPA have created robotic hummingbird drones.

By Dan Owen

A little glimpse ahead at the next seven days, with some notable TV highlights to consider watching -- or perhaps avoid...




Torchwood: Children Of Earth (premiere)

BBC1, Monday, 9pm

It's the long-awaited return of Torchwood for a truncated third series of five episodes, airing daily this week until Friday. Creator Russell T. Davies is back in charge, writing and co-writing a story that begins with the children of the world stopping in unison and chanting "we are coming". Apparently, an alien race called the "456" are on their way, and it has something to do with a government deal made in the '60s. Early word has been very positive about this mini-series, so let's hope Torchwood has finally come of age and is going to deliver the adult, intelligent sci-fi it's only occasionally delivered over the past three years.

By Jay Garrett

Well, since we last met an actual GTbyCitroën has been seen driving around in real life, I spotted some painfully cute Hello Kitty/Star Wars stickers, Windows 7 got priced,  London got a Tesla showroom and Aston Martin is making a tiny city car.

Big news for folk with loads of various mobile phone charges as Europe has managed to get 90% of it's providers to standardise to microUSB charging.

Word on the street is that a new, slim-lined PS3 will be out this month, probably in Japan but coming to Europe a couple of months later – only to be followed by a PS4 or summink next year.

Award for the bizarre this week has to go to the Pellermodel Concept which gets you to put yours, or somebody else's face on a puppet type of jointed toy thing.  Odd.  Just odd.