Sony PSP A Hit In Beijing

Sony PSP a hit in BeijingWriting about the announcement of the new PSP brought the following little ditty to mind – one we’ve been meaning to write for a while.

You may be thinking that the Sony PSP hasn’t been the hit that it might have been, because in and around Europe you don’t see many on the street.

It’s easy to lull yourself into a false state of knowledge when you’re in a major capital, leading you to think that the behaviours that you see around the street are representative of the world as a whole.

This was clearly show in our recent visit to Beijing, where PSP usage told a distinctly different story. There were tons of the things knocking around, primarily on the Beijing Underground.

Used mostly by the under 30s, but not limited to males, we often saw people playing games on them during the crushed morning rush hour (and it was a serious crush). The other frequent use was using them to catch up on TV or film programming.

Alongside the genuine PSPs, we also spied quite a few copy PSPs having a similar form factor, but a rougher, less-engineered finish.

T-Mobile Web’n’Walk USB Modem

If you’re needing Internet access for your laptop when you’re out and about and the Wi-Fi’s nowhere to be seen, – and you haven’t been lucky enough to have been using the version that Vodafone has been exclusively offering for nearly a year – you might be interested in the T-Mobile web’n’walk USB modem.

As its name suggests, this wee little fella made by Huawei plugs into a USB port on your laptop, with a once-only auto-installation program getting you up and running in minutes. Two USB cables are included.
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X-pointer Bigs Up The Bling Factor

X-pointer Bigs Up The Bling FactorIf you’re finding that your PowerPoint presentations are lacking a little bling and pizzazz, then you might want to consider investing in the gold plated X-pointer to dazzle your audience.

The (frankly hideous) piece of shiny tut functions as a remote control, a wireless mouse, a laser pointer and a portable storage device, and comes coated with an 18k gold finish.
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Taking Gadgets To Glastonbury Festival

Taking Gadgets To Glastonbury FestivalLeaving the safety and relative sanity of our London office for a six day soiree at Glastonbury, we thought carefully about what gadgets to pack. Being veterans of Glasto – and all too familiar with the minging mudbath of 2005 – we made sure to pack ample waterproof clothing and bring along plenty of plastic bags for wrapping up our gadgets against the inevitable rain.
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iRiver W10 Reappears As A VoIP/Media Player

Seemingly metamorphosing at a rate of knots as the iPhone rumbles over the horizon, iRiver’s W10 media player has re-emerged again as a sleek all-in-one media player.

First seen in March 2006, the W10 appeared as a UMPC-like clamshell gadget running Windows XP with a 5in display and a 60GB hard drive for storage.
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Palm Sells Stake To Equity Firm, Ipod Genius Joins Team

Palm Sells Stake To Equity Firm, Ipod Genius Joins TeamFeeling the squeeze from a rampant smart-phone market and faced with the shadow of the iPhone looming large, Palm has announced that it is selling a quarter of the company as as part of a cunning reorganisation plan.

The 25% share has been bought by Silicon Valley private equity firm Elevation Partners for about $325 million, with the terms of the transaction seeing about $940 million in dividends dished out to Palm shareholders.
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Apple iPhone: Sales Restricted Until 2008?

Apple iPhone: Sales Restricted Until 2008?Slavering Mac fanboys anxiously counting the minutes until they can caress, fondle, drool and dribble all over their very own iPhone may be in for a very long wait.

Industry analysts are predicting that Apple won’t be able to keep up with demand and so will restrict sales of their shiny new iPhones until 2008.

A recent Merrill Lynch report sets the scene for much i-wailing and i-sobbing amongst the Apple cognoscenti with just 4 million iPhones rolling off the production line this year, with only a comparatively modest 12 million units coming out in 2008.
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