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’s parent company, Video Networks, managed to notch up hefty losses of £46.5m in 2004 – £1.5m worse than the year before – and faces an uncertain future of fearsome competition from the likes of Sky, the recently merged NTL/Telewest and BT.
Compared with Sky and NTL/Telewest’s subscription figures (7.8 m and 5.5m respectively), Homechoice’s last reported numbers of just 15,000 subscribers suggest that they could provide a tasty minnow for a major operator like Sky.
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.
Although Homechoice recently doubled the amount of homes that could receive their service to a more respectable 2.5m, there’s no guarantee that subscriber numbers will reach anywhere near that amount.
We got on the blower to Homechoice and were, not surprisingly, given the official line that, “There are no current plans to sell the business.”
City analysts, however, suspect that Sky could snap up the company as part of its plans for video-on-demand and broadband.
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).
The web wires are waxing wildly with rumours about Google Base, a hush-hush Google project that “accidentally” appeared on the Web for a few hours yesterday.
Under pressure from bloggers, Google company product manager, Tom Oliveri, revealed a little in his blog:
The screenshots revealed an entry page where Google suggests the type of information to submit to Base, with one sharp eyed Dutch blogger 
This service would let individual punters submit classified adverts for free on Google Base and could possibly signal the imminent arrival of the much rumoured Google Payment (aka Google Wallet) product.
CASIO have announced their new, wafer-thin EXILIM CARD EX-S600 digital camera.
According to Casio’s announcement, Revive Shot mode “adjusts for obliquity as well as brightly refreshes faded colours.”
As is de rigeur on consumer compacts, there’s a built in movie mode with the Casio capturing MPEG-4, VGA (640×480 pixels) at 30 frames/second.
Canon are trumpeting that they are “bringing IXUS style and performance to the wireless age” with the release of their PowerShot camera.
The camera can be registered with up to 8 target devices including wireless access points via a secure communication system to prevent eavesdropping or interception of your photographic masterpieces.
Although we naturally warm to the convenience and sheer ‘techiness’ of Wi-Fi enabled digital cameras, we remain to be convinced that the technology has reached maturity yet.
We speak from some experience here too, after foolishly being seduced by Sony’s innovative – but frankly pointless – Bluetooth feature on its 20002 DSC FX77 camera.
The festival has been developed by Bloc (Creative Technology Wales) and Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. They have managed to accommodate a large number of complex yet accessible projects. This collaboration is all the more impressive in its scale when you realise that both organisations have their own projects running concurrently (Bloc are developing Northern and Southern pilot projects in Wales with accompanying seminars; Chapter are hosting the first UK showing o the artists Olaf Breuning).
To join in you can access a number of computer terminals at the National Museum and Gallery or at one of the festival hubs at Chapter or g39 (cor). If you are unable to visit you can play from your own 
The artist group Second Site will be displaying new video works in the windows of a empty bank on Bute Street, while Chris Evans will project his interactive game onto St John’s Church in the centre of Cardiff.
The portable game business will be worth a thumping great $2.3 billion in four years, according to a report released today by research firm, The Yankee Group.
With the line between wireless handsets and portable CE devices continuing to blur, the Yankee Group used data from both their Video Capable Device Survey and the Mobile User Survey to come up with what they describe as “the most comprehensive view into the portable device market.”
“The major players must understand who will lead and who will follow in order to successfully plan future strategy and appropriately target their investments,” he added.
I come not to bury podcasting but to praise it. It is the creation, and victim, of its own success. It captured the imagination of the press and public with a hip pedigree and a huge wave of media hype. It will exit with a permanent mark on the media landscape.
Podcasting is in fact not one phenomenon but three. The first is its name. Mother Apple came to claim the child it midwifed when it folded podcasting into iTunes. Apple has successfully ridden the digital music rocket by staying at the forefront of technology. It ensured the future integrity of the iPod brand, as well as the podcasting name, when it added video to the iPod.
Eniro, the Swedish equivalent of Yellow pages and the phone directory have integrated the Skype URL, callto:, in to their online directories.
“It’s important for us to add all types of contact information and that makesadding Skype to that logical”, says Cecilia Geijer-Haeggström, VP ofproducts and market at Eniro.
We also understand that they’ll be printing the Skype ID’s in the printed directories for a small fee.
Wi-Fly
Is it a bird, is it a plane…
Oooh Aaargh, ‘cos we’re pirates!