Lenovo P960 - The Stalker’s Phone

The Lenovo P960 is quickly becoming a mobile phone destined to be used by a whole bunch of weirdos. As well as offering that all essential mobile phone component – biometric fingerprint scanning, it will also have an automatic record function that records any phone calls from a particular number. I’m sure it will have genuine uses, and may make the ideal mobile phone for parents that are loathed to otherwise let their children have one.

The problem with that theory is that the design is a little blande, although not entirely unpleasant in all honesty. It leaves a huge question mark as to who exactly the finger print security and automated call recording is geared at.

There’s very few mobile phones that currently use fingerprint scanning security, although the technology does exist. Laptops are featuring biometric scanning more and more regularly to mixed reviews. The VIP Record feature, as Lenovo describes it, is certainly unique and most definitely handy… to somebody… probably.

The press release doesn’t give much more information and certainly no pricing details so if you’re interested then please let us know why, and keep your eyes peeled for more news.

60GB Xbox 360 Available Friday

The new 60GB version of the Xbox 360 and the price reduction for the Core (Arcade) version of the machine that has no hard drive will hit shops this Friday in the UK. The releases have been highly anticipated and, as expected, the price of the Premium package including the upgraded 60GB hard drive (rather than the 20GB drive you currently get) will remain the same at £200 although a couple of websites are offering it cheaper at £180.

The Arcade Xbox 360 package does not include any hard drive and instead offers a next to useless 256MB memory card. To go online and use Xbox Live you need to have the hard drive and the memory card really won’t hold that much. However, this bare bones version will be reduced in price to £160.

There has been no updates and altered pricing plan for the Elite, which features a 120GB hard drive but costs a mighty £250, which is a lot extra for the few benefits you receive (although we wouldn’t suggest using gloss, you could always try some home brew modding to give your 360 the appeaance of being Elite.)

ATI Radeon HD4870 X2 - The World’s Quickest

It’s quickly becoming the week of graphics card news, with AMD announcing the launch of the fastest graphics card ever made that is seriously hardcore and not really for the average online BBC iPlayer watcher. The ATI Radeon HD4870 X2 and the name unashamedly eludes to is the combination of 2 Radeon HD4870 graphics cards and has a staggering 2GB of dedicated memory.

Fortunately, ATI hasn’t just relied on the pot of super glue or Bostik to stick them together either. An advanced cross-GPU connection means that you actually gain more benefit from using the Radeon HD4870 X2 than you would from running two of its parent cards simultaneously.

2GB of dedicated memory is an absolute mass, and is more memory than a lot of PCs have (although not the kind of PC that is likely to feature a graphics card like this). The end result of this graphics card pimping is that it will easily work on ridiculously high resolutions.

Already available in the shops you should expect to pay at least £350 so you need to be really serious about graphics, gaming, and multimedia and you also need to have a huge HD monitor to truly benefit.

60 Million Apple App Downloads

Apple is already boasting a staggering 60 million downloads from the Apple App Store, only a month or so after it was first opened to us public types. While many of these downloads have been of free software and applications, Steve Jobs is also bragging a substantial revenue from the new service showing that iPhone owners clearly want more applications and are willing to pay the pounds to get them.

Equivalent to half a million pounds a day, the service has already made about £15m in sales for the commercial applications available. No matter how you look at it, and whatever your opinions on the product or products in question, that’s one hell of a lot of sales for such an immature service (in terms of its age, not appeal).

The Apple App Store enables iPhone users to buy applications that can be run on the iPhone. The new service was released last month and can be used by owners of either of the iPhone models. This just goes to show the increased willingness we have to spend money and convert our mobile phones into multifunctional portable devices.

The Wind Up Universal Remote Control

Perhaps we’re going just a little too far with the wind up, alternative energy gadgets – the likelihood of me actually using the wind up universal remote is not that huge to be honest. Having to crank up the dial every time you want to flick channel does kind of detract from the whole convenient, labour saving ethos of the TV remote control.

Fortunately, things are rarely as bleak as they first appear and it’s alleged that the wind up universal remote will run for about a week after thirty rotations. The rotations are done through the use of the old school microwave dial set up and presumably you can give it more than a week’s juice if you like.

As it’s a univeral remote, you have to bear in mind that this figure may be based on the pensioner that only has a television and only changes channels between Coronation St and Eastenders. For those that intend to use the same remote for TV, DVD, games console, speakers, and satellite TV, the wrist powered requirements may be a little more intense.

£20 will buy you an ecologically friendly, renewable power based wind up universal remote and will go some way to help build your wrist muscles in the process.

SensoSolutions SensoGlove

We thought we’d covered just about every type of deranged golf gadget conceivable right through to the automatic ball placer that puts your golf balls on your tee for you to save all the strenuous bending over and the like. The SensoSolutions SensoGlove offers to measure and analyse the grip you have on your club (sadly not on reality) and just how well you’re doing.

The SensoGlove creators appreciate that grip is everything when it comes to hitting the perfect shot. Poor grip means poor connection and can impact your swing, but the SensoGlove will analyse your current grip and give you feedback on how close you are to achieving optimum grip conditions.

The glove features sound effects and a graphical LCD display to let you know just how badly you’re doing but I suspect the chances of altering your grip mid swing because of the quick beep isn’t really that achievable.

The SensoGlove can be purchased online and will cost you just under £50. It’s sweat proof and weather proof design ensures that it will stand the many tests it will have to face in order to be considered golf course friendly and ensures you don’t fry your hand while playing in the rain, which is a bonus with any gadget.

New Philips Portable Media Players Coming Soon

There’s a big assortment of choices when it comes to Portable Media Players. It seems that electronics manufacturers see them as being as trendy and modern as many consumers do and no discerning home entertainment manufacturer would dare to claim they can compete if they don’t have at least one range of PMPs.

Philips are ensuring that they’ve got their contenders in by, despite already having a very popular and positive selection of such devices, have announced they will be releasing more and that they will look better and offer a sleeker form than their counterparts.

One of the seven new devices they plan to launch over the space of this year, the DCP951 has an iPod Dock that expands from the device when required. The dock is completely retractable so once you’ve docked your pod you can close everything back up again ensuring that no harm comes to your beloved little Apple.

Many of the range will offer unique features. Another device planned for release includes an SD slot and can be used as a digital photo frame rather than a PMP, if you really want to spend all that money and then waste it with photos. The devices will cost anywhere from £120 up to £200 depending on the model and features.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

It would seem that there’s an official enough release date for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 smartphone. Sim free pre-orders are being taken on the Play.com website although the price is likely to separate the genuinely enthusiastic from the mildly curious because sim free it will cost you a breath taking £600.

Off the bat, it looks a nice design for a smart phone. The QWERTY keyboard slides down from behind the screen, in landscape rather than portrait so it feels like a laptop that the Borrower’s might use. The design of the slider is arced so that it apparently offers a better user experience.

It is small and happily sits in the palm of your hand although that obviously means that while it does offer a full QWERTY keyboard you will be thumbing it, as it were. When you don’t require the use of a full keyboard, the touch screen interface and there’s even handwriting recognition as well as some beneficial personal features.

The phone will run a modified variant of the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system, which also includes Outlook Mobile and Office Mobile. The 3.2MP camera is coupled with video recording and playback as well as advanced GPS tracking capabilities.

The price is a little on the weighty side, but the phone packs a serious punch. Has some excellent features and provides a good looking and feature rich device for personal and business use.

Guitar Hero Air Guitar Rocker

This is the Rolls Royce in air guitar, borne undoubtedly through the incredible success of the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games. But you don’t need a PC or console for this one, because it comes with its own amp, belt buckle based sensor, and ten signature riffs that you can jam along with including classics like Smoke on the Water and Iron Man.

You clip the belt buckle on, flick the switch on the amp, choose your track and then start strumming the air strings of the the best air guitar you’ll ever own. The sensor in the belt buckle will register whenever you pluck a note around the buckle region and the result can be heard over the amp; although you can, should you wish, plug in external speaker for an even bigger noise.

In true rock style, the volume goes up to 11 and if that isn’t enough you can plug in your stereo speakers or even your home entertainment surround sound system if you really want to make friends and influence people. It’s available from IWOOT for an impressive £30 which is a lot cheaper than buying the full Rock Band set.

BTs Self Organising Robot Network Thing

BT is attempting to take over the world through the use of automated systems and intelligent… erm… servers. They intend to integrate their networks with certain human characteristics (other than the stubbornness that they already seem to have adopted to well) such as the ability to self heal and self regulate. It’s one step closer to world domination, in my eyes, but “Anything you can do with self-organisation is basically a ‘free lunch’” according to Fabrice Saffe, a chief researcher for BT.

Self organisation, despite sounding like a cream you buy from Ann Summers, gives networks the ability to regulate and control themselves, diagnosing any problem they might have and then taking the necessary steps to fix that problem.

The concept was discussed at the Artificial Life XI in Winchester this week. The Artificial Life program is geared specifically towards mimicing or recreating life in order to generate software or hardware that improves daily lives in some way or another. BT is one of several companies that research heavily into this area in the hope that ideas like the self organising networks can automate even unexpected events.

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