Design your own Sennheiser headphones

To celebrate the launch of the new HD 400 headphone range, Sennheiser announces a global headphone design competition.- Each winner gets an HD 418 pair of headphones made to their winning design. There are 45 prizes overall with 15 to give away during September, October, November. Sennheiser will choose the 30 best designs from all ideas submitted and these will subsequently be presented in an
online gallery. Everyone who has registered will be able to vote and decide which
of the 15 headphone designs should be produced as a unique model. To help you, Sennheiser offers a web-based Online Design Editor package with 70 different background designs – from bright pink, to classic black all the way to hearts and leopard
skin patterns. The Design Editor also includes 200 design elements such as shapes
and icons. Alternatively it’s possible to use your own images or lettering. Easy preview allows users to see what the finished design will look like. You can get started here.

Gear 4's video buddy

New from Gear4 is the

Nano videobuddy.jpg

‘VideoBuddy’, a clever dongle for watching videos filmed on the new iPod nano on the big screen. Simply connect the dongle to your iPod nano dock and then link it up to the TV with the included RCA/phono cable for instant results.

Incorporating a new authentication chip from Apple that allows video (both recorded and downloaded), photos and movies to be played directly from the more recent iPod models. Older video connectivity solutions are not compatible with the newer iPod models for this reason.

www.gear4store.com

How tech has become cool, says Superbrands

No surprises that the iPhone was voted coolest and most desirable brand in Britain, according to the CoolBrands annual survey announced yesterday. But what is surprising is just how far tech has come in terms of being seen as desirable.

Of the top 10 brands named in the list, all but one are from the world of tech including Blackberry, YouTube, Bang and Olufsen, Playstation, Nintendo as well as obviously Apple, the iPod and the iPhone. Aston Martin, last year’s number 1, slipped one place to number 2, while the next highest non-tech entries are, bizarrely, Tate Modern (12), Dom Perignon (13), Virgin Atlantic (14) and Ferrari (15).

Bad news for Facebook which dropped out the top 20 and Twitter which failed to make the top 20 but is listed in the top. Good news for the BBC iPlayer which is a new entry at Number 20.

Cool Brands 2009/2010