iRon

More April Fool madness....but it's still only March 31st. Doesn't this bring bad luck?
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PRESS RELEASE for immediate release
GEAR4™ unveils the iRon™ – dance away your washday blues
UK based digital device accessories manufacturer GEAR4™, now provides music while you iron


“Steam Your Tunes”

London, UK, April 1st, 2006 – GEAR4™, the established UK brand of iPod™ and digital device accessories, today announced the launch of the iRon™ for the iPod™

The iRon™ is a revolutionary cable free travel iRon™ for the iPod™ . Simplicity is the key to the iRon’s design, simply unfold the iRon™, fill with water, dock your iPod™ and “Steam Your Tunes.” The iRon™ uses the iPod’s battery for power and the steam jets are controlled by the tunes playing on the iPod™ . Thanks to GEAR4’s unique “SteamTempo™” technology, the jets spray in time to the music – fast, bass heavy tunes producing more steam and softer music providing less.

The iRon™ is shipped with a software plug-in for all colour screen iPods which allows the iPod’s screen to display the water level, temperature and remaining battery life. The iRon’s clear, high fidelity sound is delivered through two 6W stereo speakers mounted on the body .

Tom Dudderidge, MD of GEAR4™ commented “I’ve never been a big fan of ironing, but now, the iRon™ has made ironing fun. I’m a frequent business traveller and I often find myself in a hotel room with a creased shirt – I turn to my iRon™, and get down to some serious pressing. The whole “Spray and Play” idea is very exciting. I find that most Snoop Doggy Dog tracks on the iRon™ will transform even the most wrinkled garment in minutes, whereas Barbara Streisand or Barry Manilow is perfect for less resistant clothes and Bach is just great for silks and other delicate fabrics. The iRon was inspired by an entry on the pimpyaplayer website, and it’s a great example of Gear4’s continuing drive to find new and exiting ways to “Free your tunes”.

Shipped with its own stylish, 100% polyester travel case, the iRon™ takes up less room in your overnight bag than a real iRon™ and doesn’t require batteries or recharging.

The iRon™ for iPod™ . – A revolutionary travel iRon™, made for and driven by Apple’s iPod™ , for more information visit www.Gear4.com The iRon is available through all usual GEAR4™ outlets, and online at Gear4’s store http://www.gear4store.com/.

The fools are out already

I see the April fools have started already with , this USB 'Memory' stick purporting to store the contents of your brain cells. The set comes complete with frontal lobe connector. Apparently 2GB is enough to hold 2.5 hours of memories...

3G inside...but not yet

Finally someone has created a meaningful partnership with a 3G provider. Dell has teamed up with Vodafone, to be precise. Lift up the battery in the new Latitude D620 or D820 and you'll find a SIM card underneath. I know; I've seen it. The 3G card is built into the main body of the laptop and like most WLAN solutions the aerial is built into the screen. If you've an existing 3G card on contract, you can also use the SIM card and software from that solution though, of course, Vodafone are hoping you'll choose them. The solution is factory fitted but requires a phone call to set up your 3G account when you receive your laptop. However, confusingly, despite Dell having said we'd be able to order the solution from today, we can't. You can get the laptop, but there's no build-to-order option for the 3G yet.

New photos

It was Mark's birthday at the weekend. That won't help if you don't know him, but here are the pics from our Friday night in Shepherd's Bush and Saturday night in Old Street and LSE just off the Strand. Watch out for the hot pasty.

Karl on tour

I see Neighbours doc Alan Fletcher (otherwise known as Karl Kennedy) has his own band. And they're going on a UK tour! Genius. More here.

Card games

And you thought your 6600GT was enough? Think again. Now, you need four cards, you really do. Quad SLI is with us. The question might be 'why?', but nobody really gives a stuff about that; they just want to sell more kit. Fair enough perhaps, games still aren't challenging two high-end GPUs, let alone four, while a single mid-to-high end card is more than enough to play virtually everything the tiresome PC games industry can throw at it. Now with four GPU cores across two cards (that's two apiece on two dual-slot cards, by the way) you can do...more. It's also worth noting that four 7900GTX cards will give you a staggering 2GB of dedicated graphics memory. Still, the lack of need certainly hasn't tempered the hunger of box-shifters, with Dell announcing its XPS 600 Renegade complete with Quad SLI and very un-Dell paint job. And you thought they just wanted to rule the offices of the world?


Hardly low key, is it?

On the buses

The Divine Comedy did a rather good song about National Express. They'd probably have to alter it now though, since as well as taking people round the country in buses that smell of old people and sick, the company has announced it's to offer Wi-Fi on its services. Well one route, anyway. Yes, if you're lucky enough to travel on the 010 London to Cambridge route you'll be able to get giddier than a mouse on Red Bull as you attempt to surf the web using your laptop. The coaches on the route will be equipped with a small 1.4KG radio system that dishes out Wi-Fi to the sweaty masses. And you, if you're travelling behind in a car, we'd guess.
However, despite this being a rather good idea, laptops aren't exactly designed for coaches. We'd rather the rail industry decided to fulfil its promise to have more Wi-Fi enabled trains. At the moment, it's just stations and the first class carriages on certain GNER Mallard services. Is this the age of the Wi-Fi train?

Olympus: losing the plot

You know, I hate it when technology doesn't work, especially when it comes from big-name companies that really should know better. It was my girlfriend's first proper day at work yesterday as a nurse; something she has trained hard for. She naturally wanted to record the occaision with a picture or two, so in the absence of my usual camera at work, I lent her a 7.1 Megapixel Olympus model we had at work. She duly took some pictures. I came to copy them off at home last night but of course I couldn't. That's because not only does Olympus use the rediculous xD format unbeknown to most card readers, but it also insists on using stupid proprietary cabling. JUST USE A STANDARD CONNECTION. And here's the real punch; I attempted to download the pics today to find the card had corrupted and won't even re-format. This is the kind of thing that makes me very annoyed...

A lather over leather

In a crazy time last week, I actually forgot to post some pics from the Asus launch I went to at the trendy Sanderson Hotel in Central London. And what did the crazy Taiwanese come up with? Only a bloody LEATHER-finished laptop. Apparently it's real, as they only use real finishes. Anyway, the German designer dude who was telling us about it says it is.





Asus also launched a rather yellow Lamborghini co-branded laptop. In no way is this like Acer's similarly-themed Ferrari lappy. Not at all. You can imagine the above mentioned Asus design team rolling their eyes at this one. Pretty standard inside, too.





And here's an amusing shot of PC Answers' Henry Tucker with the Lambo. Just for the hell of it, like...

6G iPod?

Could these pictures be of the new-generation Video iPod? The rumoured virtual clickwheel is still present and correct, plus one of the pictures shows the new-style player in conventional music playback mode. As The Register points out in its piece, if the pics are fake, they're certainly good ones. Note also the presence of an iPod Hi-Fi in the pics.

IE7 is great. Sorry.

I can't hide it any longer. I think IE7 is fantastic. When I
proclaimed this opinion to the other hacks in the office, my comment
was met with derision. That's because everybody thinks Firefox is
cool. But I don't give a stuff. I still come across sites that Firefox
hates to render. And I don't subscribe to the theory that just because
something is alternative, it must be better in some way.



OK, so IE7 has its faults. But it's only on Beta 2. Nobody seems to
mind the short service outages in GMail do they? IE7 handles tabs
superbly, as it does feeds. A bit more customisation here and there
and it'll be the best browser yet. Do I mind that people think I'm too
pro-Microsoft? No. If I was worried about that, I wouldn't have spent
the last three years freelancing for Windows XP: The Official Magazine
now, would I?

Encrypted torrents

This is an excellent piece where the Editor of Newsnight comments on the criticism levelled at the programme after its BitTorrent report last Friday. The programme commented on how Torrents are increasingly being encypted to circumvent ISP filters and speed up the network. Sounds like fun to us...

New pictures

Chris and Karen's Wedding was on Saturday. The venue is Orchardleigh House, near Frome, Somerset.