The video-capable iPod has only been out three weeks, but already Apple are claiming sales of over a million video downloads from their iTunes online service.
Topping the download charts were music videos from the likes of Michael Jackson, Fatboy Slim and Kanye West, while episodes of ABC television shows “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” proved popular with customers.
Other music content available includes music videos from pop dinosaurs like Madonna, U2, Eurythmics, Coldplay and Kanye West (be still our beating heart), with animated shorts provided by the Oscar-winning Pixar, creator of animated hits like The Incredibles and Finding Nemo.
The video content, priced at $1.99 (~£1.12~€1.65) each, can also be played on computers running iTunes software.
Steve Jobs, Apple’s head honcho, observed that the healthy sales strongly suggested there was a market for legal video downloads.
“Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings, so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods,” he said in a statement.
Not surprisingly, not everyone was keen to shell out for their video fixes, with enthusiasts quick to start sharing and distributing their own music clips and TV programs for the video iPod via peer-to-peer networks.
Robin Simpson, a research director at Gartner, observed that although some illegal copying and downloading would inevitably occur, Apple had provided video customers with a realistically priced model.
“Most people are prepared to be honest if it is not too expensive to do so,” he added.
The cash till-ringing sales underlines dispels concern that people wouldn’t want to watch programs on the iPod’s titchy 2.5-inch colour screen and reflects the growing market acceptance of portable video.
The market was quick to react to Apple’s announcement, with share prices climbing by more than 5% in Monday trading.
The wires are hot with rumours that BSkyB is contemplating a bout of wad waving in the direction of the video-on-demand, broadband and telephone company Homechoice, which is reportedly finding things tres tricky in the increasingly competitive TV broadband market.
Homechoice currently provides a broadband Internet and telephone service, with on-demand programmes covering comedy, drama, music soaps, pay-per-view movies and home shopping.
City analysts, however, suspect that Sky could snap up the company as part of its plans for video-on-demand and broadband.
Travelling photographers and road warriors should love the new credit-card sized USB key from LaCie, offering a massive storage capacity of either 4Gb (4,000Mb) or 8Gb (8,000Mb).
The shirt-pocket untroubling device can be used on both Macs (OS 9.x/10.x) and PCs (Windows 98SE through XP), with no additional software or drivers needed, although the credit-card sized storage device also ships with LaCie Silverlining and SilverKeeper drive management and backup utilities.
“Mobility, reliability, ease of use, capacity and price are the five main keys to consider when buying storage. We meet them all with the Carte Orange,” table-thumped Olivier Mirloup, LaCie Senior Product Manager.
Vodafone UK and British Sky Broadcasting (Sky) have announced an agreement to launch Sky Mobile TV, the UK’s first commercially available mobile TV service available on a wide range of handsets, as we 
The deal looks set to turbo-boost adoption of entertainment and information services to mobile phones, with users able to enjoy TV programmes on the move with access to live breaking news and sports reports from Sky News and Sky Sports News.
The Sky Mobile TV pack will be provided free of charge (subject to Vodafone customer fair usage policy) until the end of January 2006, with customers being charged £5.00 (~$8.90, €7.38) per month for each of the Sky Mobile TV packs subscribed to thereafter,
Additional mobile channels are likely to sign up to the Sky Mobile TV service over the coming months.
Today Nokia announced CoolZone, a Bluetooth-based distribution system that lets mobile phone users locally browse, pay for and download content on their mobiles while they are in shops supporting it.
As the user of the service needs the user to download an application to use the service, we can imagine little hacking groups are already forming plans to hang around near these shops offering their own ‘applications’ with similar names to unsuspecting, or inexperience users.
There’s been an orgy of synergistic back-scratching and brand backslapping going on in Samsung’s schmoozing department as the company announces an alliance with German luxury car brand, BMW.
BMW drivers will be able to link the phone to the iDrive control interface, which features a control knob at the centre of the vehicle’s console, allowing access to various functions displayed on the in-dash monitor.
Samsung have already been poking their dipstick into the field of mobile-to-car technology, announcing a partnership with Audi back in July.
Telefonica SA, Spain’s número uno telecoms company, has agreed to shell out a massive £17.7 billion ($31.5 bn, €21.15bn) for U.K. mobile-phone operator O2, making it the largest acquisition in the European telecommunications industry for half a decade.
Management execs at the two European telecommunications operators were positively purring at news of the deal.
O2 was spun off from the BT Group in November 2001 and currently employs 5,000 people.
It’s almost always worthwhile upgrading the cheapskate headphones that invariably come bundled with MP3 players and phones – especially if you’re currently strutting around with a pair of 
The closed-type Fontopia design is powered by super-small 9 mm drivers kitted out in Spinal Tap black with go-faster silver accents (they’re also available in Mac-like white, but that’s just asking for trouble).
Nestled down low in the small print of an advert for some HP servers which run unix/Windows and Linux, the following text can be found
Quite who originally spotted this blunder in the small print, isn’t known, but we suspect that it’s someone with a very keen eye for detail – verging on the fanatical.