Author: Andy Merrett
Bargain of the Week: Jabra SP5050 Bluetooth Speakerphone
Welcome to a new feature on Tech Digest — Bargain of the Week. Each week, I’ll take a look around the web for the best tech/gadget bargain I can find, and report back to you.
Now, there are deals all over the Internet, so I can’t promise to always find the best deals all the time. If you know of some amazing discounts on a product, drop me a line.
This week’s product is the Jabra SP5050 Bluetooth Speakerphone, a slim, plug-n-play speaker that you can use on the move with any Bluetooth mobile phone. Answer and end phone calls, voice dial, automatic pairing, DSP noise reduction, night driving mode, and up to 12 hours talk time…
Suck up to your iPhone with the iFlyz Media Stand
iFlyz (so named, presumably, because the company manufactures stuff that’s useful on flights) has announced its Media Stand for the iPhone. This ingenious piece of kit is basically a strong sucker (patented suction cap, no less) on a long flexible arm and clamp.
It will attach to the back of an iPhone or iPod Touch by the power of spit, though given my success with suction caps over the year (no rude jokes, please) I’d be wary of trusting it to iPhone’s protected by leather or silicone cases…
UK Lycos/Tripod users: you're unprofitable, get lost
There was a time when the black labrador at Lycos was a fairly common sight, but times change and the RSPCA may have to step in shortly to rescue the poor little mutt.
That is, if Lycos UK does to him what it’s doing to its email and web hosting users.
You see, it’s not very profitable running free email and web hosting services, particularly when there are much bigger (Hotmail) and better (Gmail) ones out there.
From 15th February, users with Lycos Mail or Tripod web hosting accounts will lose all of their data and no longer be able to send or receive emails. While I’ve not visited a Tripod page in about ten years, nor seen anyone in the UK with a Lycos email address for about the same period of time, a little piece of Internet history is slipping away…
Setanta Replay coming to Virgin Media: football on demand
In the ongoing battle of cable and telco providers against each other and the big, bad Sky, Virgin Media has announced that it’s done a deal with Setanta to bring Setanta Replay to its cable TV customers.
In basic terms, this means that a range of football, including Premier League, FA Cup, England home friendlies and World Cup qualifiers will be available to watch not-quite-live – up to seven days after the game, in fact.
XL customers will get the package free, while M or L subscribers must stump up seven quid a month. If golf, racing and Scottish football is more your bag, you can catch live action via a Setanta Sports package…
Fake heart rate monitor wristwatch taunts your time-telling skills
Just when you’d got the hang of telling the time on a variety of Tokyo Flash watches, along comes the EIN Cyber Heartbeat LED watch which enables you to make a fool of yourself in front of complete strangers who ask you the time as you try to decipher the heart monitor-like display…
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives: Epic Fail
Hard drives crash from time to time, that’s a fact, but it seems that one particular type of Seagate drive is failing en masse, according to online accounts from annoyed customers.
The Barracuda 7200.11 1TB drive fails at boot time with a firmware error that locks the drive and makes in inoperable. Laughably, when the unit is returned, Seagate replaces it with the same model. The Register also suggests that you could pay Seagate twice by using its i365 company to recover the data before replacing the unit.
Virus infects Royal Navy computers; sailors lose vital access to Facebook
It seems there’s been a nasty virus floating around some of the Navy’s finest warships — and no it’s not something one of the crew caught during their last shore leave, but in fact a computer virus that’s caused the loss of email and Internet access.
The affected computers are part of the Fujitsu-supplied NavyStar N* system and also handle storekeeping and various support functions…
Vodafone to trial 21Mbps HSPA+ high speed mobile network
Vodafone has announced that it has been testing technology that could succeed HSPA, successfully having completed trials of 16Mbps “HSPA+” and with plans to test a 21Mbps service in the spring.
With a theoretical top speed of 21Mbps, Vodafone claims real-world download speeds of up to 13Mbps, and at least 4Mbps across its entire network…
Canon launches PowerShot A480 compact digital cameras
Canon has announced its latest compact digital camera, the 10 megapixel PowerShot A480 featuring a 3.3x optical zoom (that point three is all important, evidently), face and motion detection, 15 shooting modes, 30fps VGA movie shooting, red eye reduction, and a 2.5-inch LCD screen.
It features Canon’s DIGIC III processing system that promises low noise levels and better colour reproduction, while face detection can adjust focus, exposure, flash settings and white balance to take the best pictures of up to nine human subjects, aided by motion detection to reduce the blur caused by shaky hands or moving subjects…
Mobile phone company lied about "unlimited data", but that's OK says ASA
unlimited: not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent.
It seems that the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has a problem interpreting the standard dictionary definition of “unlimited”, because it has ruled in favour of a mobile phone company which used the word before “data” but really meant “250MB per month”.
Yes, it’s one of those words that should bring joy to the hearts of consumers (well, unless it precedes “torture” or “bills” or some other unpleasantness) — and yet so many tech-related companies abuse it mercilessly.
The ASA has already proved itself ineffectual in complaints against broadband providers who boast of “unlimited data plans” and yet cap or throttle users for breaking the obscure “fair use” policies…
