The big features aside from the keyboard are 720p video on the 3.7in touch screen, built in DNLA for sharing video, audio and pictures via wifi to other DNLA devices,  1GHz cpu, 8 Gb of onboard memory and support for 32Gb sd cards and, it has android 2.2  with all it’s voice search goodness.

Apparently the Milestone 2 is capable of tethering – sharing it’s 3g/HSDPA broadband connection with other devices, like a laptop, over WiFi. This sounds great, but I would be amazed if any of the UK networks will ship the Milestone 2 with this feature still enabled, after all they want to sell you a separate mobile broadband dongle for your laptop.

Cue speculation about  ”iPants”, Tomorrow’s World-esque mock ups and visions of a future utopia like something out of the Jetsons. I wonder which “news” outlet will be the first to wheel out Kevin Warwick to tell us about how he’s a cyborg. Again.

On closer inspection it appears that what Cute Circuit – the firm behind the LBD – have done is stitch a sim card in to the dress and very little else. There’s no information on where the battery goes  or whether or not it’s washable, apparently you just have to bend your arm to answer calls. Oh, and it will be on sale next year.

Wearable technology has been in and out of the news for years, it’s possible, but does anyone want it?  You see the thing is, the problem wearable technology aims to solve (if there is one) was solved thousands of years ago by an innovation in the textiles industry – pockets.

My phone is currently in my pocket. If I need to use it, I can remove it in a matter of seconds, I can wash my jeans and simply move my phone to the pocket of another pair.

If my phone was an integral part of my jeans it would actually make my life harder. Assuming the jeansphone was washable, I still couldn’t use it while it was in the washing machine.  If I got mugged I would be walking home in my boxers. I pay precious little attention to fashion, but people that do would be saying things like “does this phone go with my shoes?” and “does my mobile make my bum look big?”

You could argue that having the microphone and speakers built in to your clothing would provide hands free functionality, true, but so do hands free kits that you can wear with any clothes you like. And, if your clothes mean you don’t have to wear a bluetooth headset while you walk around the supermarket you will have to find a new way of making sure everyone knows that you are an idiot.

Since mobile phones have become as much a status symbol as a communication device it’s hardly surprising that the fashion industry wants a slice of the pie, well I want a piece of the pie too and I have a plan to capitalize on people’s desire to show off their shiny new tech.

Behold the iHelmet – a revolutionary and magical helmet that holds your iPad on top of an eight foot pole sticking out of the top of your head, people will be able to see that you have more money than sense and are unusually susceptible to hype and marketing from hundreds of meters away. You won’t be able to do anything useful with your iPad while it’s attached to the iHelmet, oh, wait….

While this may have been a minor inconvenience to some, roaming buisness users were no doubt livid, and were made more so by Orange’s admission that they had no scheduled fix for the problem.

No information has been forthcoming about the cause of the outage.

Earlier this year the advertising standards agency upheld a complaint about Orange’s claim that its “3G network covers more people in the UK than any other operator“, the ASA ruled that because orange could not show that they had gathered data for the performance of their rivals in the same way that they did for their own network the claim was misleading.

A big company misleading people? Advertising people lying through their recently whitened teeth?
Surely not.

I can’t help feeling that this outage and Orange’s response is a fairly standard fare for big business nowadays. If you work for a big company, feel free to print out and keep my handy guide to managing major technical problems:

1. Say NOTHING until someone goes to the media. Arrange for your forum to be  ”down for maintenance”.  Spend more on advertising.

2. Deny the problem and stonewall any questions.

3. Keep denying the problem until several high profile third parties have confirmed it beyond the point where anyone with half a brain still believes you.

4. Issue a vague, non committal statement that the problem may possibly be real but only affects a few people and it’s probably their fault anyway. Stupid customers.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until the problem is fixed or the media lose interest.

6. If the problem gets fixed, either:

a) SAY NOTHING, that would mean admitting you were wrong.

b) Announce the fix amidst great fanfare, casting yourself in the role of hero whilst glossing over the fact that it was your stupid fault in the first place.

7) If you are still getting flack, a member of management may have to do a Captain Oates.

Sound familiar?

Come to think of it, I never take in coming calls, no one has my land line number, in fact the only reason I have a BT line is for broadband. I take for granted the fact that all the calls I make and receive are on my mobile phone, but I’m curious how many other people have abandoned their land Line for all but internet.

Mobile phone deals are coming with more and more inclusive minutes for a monthly price, so there’s less pressure to save mobile minutes by using the land line.

A big thing for me about land lines is that I don’t spend much time at home, so if someone calls my land line I will almost certainly miss the call. My home phone has an answer machine built in, but why would I risk missing an important call when I can just give out my mobile number?

If I move house, my mobile number stays the same, but it can be impossible to keep your land line number and it often takes several weeks to get a land line put in to a new home.

Fixed lines are under pressure from other quarters too,  Skype and other VoIP services can be a much cheaper way of making long distance calls, particularly over seas.

I can’t see a time when large businesses will be able to do away with land lines, certainly not in the near future, but save for broadband I would happily go without.  In fact if I was in an area where cable broadband were available I doubt I would have ever bothered with a land line.

I can’t help feel that domestic land lines are headed towards becoming pipes for broadband and no more. As cable and fibre optic broadband gather pace will home phones become a thing of the past?

What do you think?

Feature wise, the Spiro is a master of sound coming from the Walkman range and also offers social network integration with dedicated Facebook and Twitter applications. Communication wise the Spiro handles SMS, MMS, email and instant messaging and when you are on a night out the 2-megapixel-camera/video recorder will allow you to capture the action.

The Sony Ericsson Spiro in pink makes a great gift at only £40 on pay-as-you-go with Vodafone or an indulgent treat for the fashion conscious.

Check out our full review and compare the latest offers by clicking here.

The other area in which the Nokia X6 excels is in the camera department, Carl Zeiss optics give a quality feel to your pictures and auto-focus ensures blurry images are a thing of the past. The X6 also has the edge on its competition with a video recorder that captures images at 30 frames per second in either landscape or portrait views.

Nokia can’t be praised enough for the X6 as they have hit the nail on the head when it comes to offering users what they really want. The 8GB memory is very generous and the new blue colour scheme makes this one stand out in a crowd.

Monthly line rentals start from below £10 so to bag a great deal click here.

That would be an interesting change of tactic for google who attempted to bypass the networks when it released the Nexus One mobile phone. The Nexus One was initially only available via google’s own online shop, unlocked and un subsidised. Although the Nexus One was a great phone, sales were disappointing because punters were not as willing to stump up the full cost of the handset as google hoped. By the time the Nexus One was made available at a subsidised price thorough the networks there were bigger and better devices available and google recently stopped manufacturing the device.

So back to the rumoured tablet. The article says that it will most likely be made by HTC and based on NVidia’s Tegra 2 “PC on a Chip”, this would make it roughly equivalent to an reasonably good netbook in terms of performance.

The Chrome OS is where it gets interesting for me, I’ve played around with development builds of Chrome OS on my netbook and I rather like it.

It’s basically just google’s Chrome browser on top of a very stripped down linux Kernel, which makes it very, very fast. Running Chrome from a usb stick on my Samsung NC10 results in boot times of less than 30 seconds, so expect the tablet to go from off to surfing the web in a very short time indeed.

Will this do any harm to the iPad’s sales? I don’t know, it depends on the price and how well non-nerds get on with the Chrome OS.  The Tablet is likely to have flash support right out of the box so you’ll be able to watch videos on You Tube (in your face iPad owners) – which let’s remember google owns and serves up ads on.

Of course this whole thing could just be a rumour put about to upset Steve Jobs. Tee Hee.

If you have found that a smartphone doesn’t quite give you enough, then the Mobile Wi-Fi solution gives you that same flexibility of connecting whilst on the go but now you can use a laptop, netbook or tablet to get the larger picture. The internal memory can be expanded with a 16GB MicroSD card and you can also swap files between connected devices.

The complications of getting your devices linked to the Mobile Wi-Fi simply don’t exist as there are no wires or software needed, simply turn on and use straight away. Thoughtfully Huawei have included both mains charger and USB charger for ease of replenishing the battery power.

You may note that we have brought you the Mi-Fi from 3 in the past but this latest model can now let you indulge yourself into Vodafone’ award-winning, dependable mobile broadband.

Android v3.0 is expected to run the handset and will offer access to the Android Marketplace where popular gaming titles are expected to be available for download. On the phone side things the display should measure 3.7-inches or more and a 5-megapixel camera may also be on hand. The 1GHz processor should keep things moving without a hitch so this has to be one of the most exciting prospects of the year.

The month of October has been pencilled in but this may be a bit of a stretch, so maybe this one will be topping the charts in the most wanted Christmas gift list. Keep your eye on our Blog and we will keep you updated as the details and launch become official.

The Sony Playstation 3 Slim is currently our no.1 gift picked by you, our valued customers. The PS3 Slim is much more compact but there are other real benefits to this latest release such as quieter operation to allow you to not only enjoy your gaming experience but also enjoy Blu-ray movies without that distinctive hum depleting the sound quality. The PS3 Slim also offers users Wi-Fi connectivity for Web browsing and access to free online gaming services.

The next question our customers ask is ‘what premium do I pay for getting such a great gift?’. The answer to this is very little indeed with tariffs starting from less than £18pm and with a selection of free handsets to choose from there is nothing to stop you from taking advantage of our great deals.

To check out our PS3 Slim deals click here.

Our top 10 most popular gifts are:

1. Sony PS3 Slim
2. iPod touch 8GB
3. Compaq CQ61
4. Dell laptop
5. Acer laptop
6. Samsung N130
7. 42 inch TV
8. 32 inch TV
9. 50 inch
10. Xbox 360 Elite

To check out our whole range of free gifts, from TV’s to laptops click here.