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LG has announced the arrival of its first-ever 1GHz smartphone – the LG eXpo, which comes packing a optional pico projector add-on.

The eXpo features a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, a 3.2-inch touchscreen, 5MP-megapixel camera, a microSD slot, and a removable projector courtesy of Texas Instruments.

While it’s not quite an integrated projector phone as Samsung is promising, it does point to which way the smartphone market is moving, now that cameras and camcorders on handsets are now ten-a-penny.

Although the eXpo is only slated for a US launch at the moment (AT&T has snapped up the distribution) the phone has also been announced as the LG IQ in Canada, so it will be interesting to see what catchy moniker the company give the device when it eventually reaches UK shores.

Future proofed

The optional pico projector allows projection up to a distance of eight feet, with LG hoping that the addition of the technology makes the device into a “future-proofed smartphone.”

Other features include Smart Sensor finger-print recognition and support for up to 16GB memory, via microSD.

Out in the US 7 December, the LG eXpo will set you back $199.99 (plus contract) and the optional pico projector add-on is $179.99.

Via Gizmodo

A new utility allows jailbroken iPhones to get multi-tasking in a similar fashion to the Palm Pre.

The Multifl0w project has managed to make things super-simple to allow multiple applications to co-exist on the iPhone, all displayed in an easy to swipe set of windows.

Of course, it doesn’t have the Palm Pre’s ’swipe up to exit’ functionality, but we still like it a lot.

Simples

Simply put, you choose an application; hold the home button and it will add it to the ‘background’. Then double tap that same button to see all your open applications all in a row… how pretty.

Of course, Apple is making the point that this will drain the battery, kill the processor etc, but given every other phone can do (and with Flash as well, while we’re on the point) and it would be nice to think the next iPhone will be able to multi-task.

But a video makes things a lot easier, so check out this little set of moving images to see how it works (although we don’t know why so many examples have to be set):

Via Engadget

Collins America has recently introduced the BagAmp, a portable amplifier system that is perfect not only for the guitarist, but also for anyone seeking a highly portable vocal or music PA system. Measuring 3.5-inch x 36-inch x 8.7-inch and weighing 11.3 kilograms, the system adopts the company’s “Audio Piston” technology that eliminates the need for [...]

JVC and Kenwood have collaborated to release their first car navigation system, the MDV-313. This GPS navigation system features a DVD player, a built-in One Seg TV Tuner, a USB port, and Virtual 3D Maps. Unfortunately, there is no info on pricing or availability so far. Stay tuned for more updates. [Kenwood via Akihabara]

Thermaltake has unveiled their latest PC case that comes with a transparent window at the end of the left side panel that provides a good view of what’s happening inside the cabinet. Dubbed as the Thermaltake V3 Black Edition mid-tower “Black ‘n Stellar”, the PC case features four 5.25-inch external bays, one 3.5-inch internal bay, [...]

When Sky first showed off its efforts at screening 3D TV back in December, TechRadar was there, feeling impressed but a little concerned that, with no firm commitments, it amounted to little more than a publicity stunt.

3D, after all, has been the ‘next big thing’ for decades, and although the latest round of polarised stereoscopic 3D is a world away from the anaglyphic coloured lens disappointments of the past, nobody would deny that it’s going to take a massive push to convince the public that 3D is more than a gimmick.

But then Sky backed up the sports footage that it had shown that day with a commitment to bring a dedicated 3D channel to its satellite platform by the end of 2010, and continued spending huge amounts of money learning just how to take the lessons learned from the new raft of 3D movies and take them to the sport and arts coverage that has established it in the UK.

Next big step

It is a decision that many would describe as brave, and some as foolhardy, but as we watched the company film the ATP Masters tennis at the O2 with modified 3D rigs, and then beam that footage live through one of its boxes, it’s difficult to deny that Sky may just have a point; 3D could well be the next big step for television.

The intent of everyone within Sky to make 3D TV a success is clear; special permission was required from the ATP just in order to allow a television in one of the executive boxes so that the service could be shown to journalists. An entire second outside broadcast (OB) van was present so that the action could be filmed and shown live.

Within that OB van was not only the usual suspects – all bedecked in 3D glasses – but also three convergence experts, people just responsible for manually adjusting the field of vision, backed up by three specialist ’stereographers’ that are in place to make sure that it’s all working.

Well-rounded personality

Some of the lessons learned in the past 12 months are immediately obvious; in the original footage we were shown a year ago the 3D suffered greatly from feeling like a load of 2D pictures on rails – like flattened sprites in a computer game.

But, this has now been adjusted to allow for a much improved rounded feel; it adds a level of solidity that really helps make the 3D less tiring on the eyes because, we felt, your brain settles down and accepts this much quicker.

When we interviewed Sky’s 3D guru Brian Lenz earlier in the year he suggested that filming live sport in 3D changed the game in a way that past improvements never really had.

For instance, when HD first arrived on the scene for Sky, people suggested that it would fundamentally change the way that sport was filmed, but the truth is that – aside from the cameras – much of the expertise and knowledge that had been honed over years was still entirely relevant.

With 3D that is not necessarily the case; new angles, new techniques and the abandoning of old tried-and-tested practice is necessary.

Take something as simple as the DOG (digital on-screen graphic) – the graphic displaying the channel name that traditionally sits in the top right corner on all Sky Sports channels. In two dimensions it is largely unobtrusive, but we happened to witness one of the first tests of the DOG on the tennis and it’s, frankly, a little odd because it sits well forward of everything else on the screen; it literally stands out in a way that it shouldn’t.

The setup used to film the tennis included three 3D rigs, which have been greatly improved in the past few months – not least to make them a little more robust and suitable for outside broadcasts rather then the controlled environments of the movie sets where 3D cameras have more usually been used.

These cameras were backed up by 2D cameras – but transitions between the two were perfectly palatable because the flatter pictures could be processed in real time by a computer chip which created the impression of depth.

Perhaps the biggest lesson that has been learned, at least from TechRadar’s perspective, is subtlety. As the first 15 minutes of Avatar footage showed, overwhelming camera movement and gimmicks such as having things flying into the camera (and towards the viewer) are not helpful – and Sky’s Tennis coverage was a study in restraint.

The majority of the action was kept from the traditional camera position behind one player, and although the line judges occasionally felt a little more imposing than is ideal (they are, of course, positioned at the back of the court nearest the camera) this made it much less tiring to watch.

Some issues

Of course, there are still the age old issues with glasses and the occasional jarring transition or, at this still early stage, malfunction that makes it sometimes difficult to watch – but this was the first extended 3D session on a smaller screen that TechRadar had gone through without ending up with a headache.

One of the most enlightening moments actually occurred in the tennis when there was one of the problems with the main camera (camera one in television parlance).

This left us for a few minutes with all the action coming from a 3D camera that was sat half-way down the court on one side looking diagonally across the net.

It should have been a horrible few minutes, but a wonderful rally and missed drop shot that bounced past the field of vision was genuinely fabulous. Much more visceral than the traditional view and far closer to how it feels watching a tennis match from courtside.

The future

It was a small part of a big day for Sky – but it is becoming increasingly clear that this is not a technology that is going to disappear if the likes of such a major satellite broadcaster are prepared to commit this kind of effort to perfecting it.

With Avatar on the 3D horizon, a dedicated Sky 3D channel on offer in late 2010 and CES in January likely to bring a whole new raft of 3D televisions that will launch through next year – this is a very, very interesting area of entertainment and technology.

After the HTC was confirmed as not getting the 1.6 Android firmware upgrade, it appears the phone has been jumped up to the cutting-edge 2.1.

While these numbers might not mean a lot to some people, essentially this is all about what the phone is capable of doing.

Android firmware version 1.5 is the OS you’ll get out the box when buying the Hero, and many assumed the phone would automatically get the 1.6 update, which brings elements like a faster camera and detailed power meter.

Leapfrogging

But HTC has confirmed it wouldn’t be going to the 1.6 upgrade, instead optimising the Sense user interface for Android 2.0, which brings even better features like integrated social networking for contacts.

It seems that things have gone one step further now, with an HTC Hero being shown on Be Geek as having the 2.1 upgrade, which hasn’t even been released yet.

So if you’re a Hero owner, (or probably a Tattoo user as well) you can hopefully expect the latest and greatest Android update to land on your device - just don’t hold your breath.

The DRDB (Digital Radio Development Bureau) is reporting that sales of digital radios have hit the 10 million mark, with 5 million of those devices sold after 2007.

Digital radio manufacturers seem to be laughing in the face of the recession at the moment, with sales of the devices outperforming the rest of the consumer electronic market both in 2008 and 2009.

The industry has seen a 12 per cent increase in home audio systems being sold and a whopping 60 per cent increase in digital radios for the car. The market is now said to be worth around £170 million a year in the UK.

Delivering firsts

One manufacturer who seems to be reaping the benefits of the digital audio upturn is Pure, who has announced that it has sold three million units worldwide.

Being that it’s a British company this is great news for the UK, with Paul Smith, General Manager at Pure explaining: “Pure has consistently delivered firsts in the digital radio market. We were the first manufacturer to sell half a million digital radios, then one million, and now we’re the first to sell three million.

“We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the thousands of retail stores that stock Pure radios and, of course, all Pure radio owners. Pure’s drive in the growing digital radio market continues with an ongoing strong roadmap for 2010 and beyond.”

Digital disappointment

Not everybody is happy with Scott Taunton, UTV Media (GB), Managing Director, pointing out that despite the 10 million sales mark reach, DAB digital radio sales are in decline, with a mere 1.3 million sets sold this year, compared to 2.2 million sold last year.

“Today’s disappointing DAB sales announcement is a resounding ‘no’ vote for the government’s proposal to switch off analogue signals in 2015,” explained Taunton.

“While cumulative sales of 10m digital sets prove that DAB is here to stay, there are 120 million analogue radios currently in circulation in the UK. At this rate of sales, it would take up to 60 years to convert them all to digital.”

Google has announced the biggest trends in UK search for the year, with celebrities, and swine flu joined by Facebook, Ebay and Spotify in the British search zeitgeist.

Bing has just released its US-centric search trends, but Google has published UK searches to give us a more British look at exactly what has caught our interest.

“Britons had mixed feelings as they headed online this year to search for their favourite online tools, to learn about celebrities new and old, and to find a good bargain,” said Google spokesperson Anthony House.

“People searched about new sensations like Lady Gaga and Susan Boyle, but they also turned to the web to learn about the deaths of Stephen Gately, Jade Goody and Michael Jackson.”

Top searches and fastest rising

The top searches for 2009 are dominated by websites – with many people using the search engine as a quick way to get to the sites that they love.

Thus, the top searches for 2009 included Facebook, BBC, YouTube, Hotmail, Ebay, Google itself (which is just strange), Yahoo and Bebo – along with ‘games’ and ‘news’.

Swine flu, Britain’s Got talent winner Susan Boyle, Stephen Gately and Google Maps all made it into the most searched for news items, along with the likes of the tragic deaths of Stephen Gately and Michael Jackson.

Interestingly, in among the fastest rising searches was Microsoft’s new search engine Bing – which stole ninth spot – although ‘Facebook Login’ was the top of that particular list, followed by Jogos, Ebay UK and Yahoo Mail.

You can check out the lists in more detail at anytime through google.com/insights/search but we’ll repeat them below anyway.

Top searches 2009
Facebook
BBC
YouTube
Hotmail
games
Ebay
news
Google
Yahoo
Bebo

What was hot this year (fastest rising search queries in 2009)
Facebook login
Jogos
Ebay UK
Yahoo mail
Hotmail
BBC iPlayer
Hi5
Stephen Gately
Bing
Spotify

The biggest stories (fastest rising news searches in 2009)
swine flu
Susan Boyle
Jade Goody
Robert Pattison
Rihanna
Michael Jackson
Google Maps
Twitter
Stephen Gately
Iran

How is Britain feeling? (top searches for “i feel…” in 2009)
I feel love
I feel alone
I feel fine
I feel good
I feel sick
I feel fat
I feel ill
I feel pretty
I feel ugly
I feel free

The hottest tickets (fastest rising ticket searches in 2009)
Lady Gaga
Michael Jackson
Taylor Swift
Whitney Houston
pixies
JLS
Beyonce
Green Day
Tinchy Stryder
U2

Windows Marketplace for Mobile has generated the expected rash of cheap apps from the useful (TubeRun shows live departure boards for the London Underground, Calendar To Map opens a map of the next appointment in your calendar) to the pointless (do you need your phone to test your stress?) to the questionable (there are two fart apps already).

With so many great free apps for Windows Mobile, are there really apps worth spending your money on? Actually, yes.

1. Co-Pilot, £27

You can get it for iPhone and Android but Co-Pilot for Windows Mobile is the original and best. Detailed maps (in multiple styles, including night mode so the screen doesn’t glare at you) with full route planning and turn-by-turn directions in your choice of voices with street names.

It also provides all the other features of a dedicated navigation device such as lane assist and real sign display. The walking directions know about footpaths as well as roads while you can save favourite places and navigate to addresses from the Windows Mobile address book.

Plus, as well as searching for thousands of points of interest (near you, along your route or in a specific place) you can Bing for local businesses and attractions, get petrol prices for nearby garages, look up the weather or turn on traffic alerts, get warnings about speed limits and speed cameras and send your location to friends as you travel. If you’ve got a geotagged photo, Co-Pilot can navigate you to it.

The only drawback for this excellent app (which is fantastic value at £27) is that the on-screen keyboard in this version is alphabetic rather than QWERTY (and Co-Pilot says its working on that).

2. Voice Command, £31

Some Windows Mobile phones include this full voice control software; if not, buy a copy to launch programs, play music, change the ringer volume, open your calendar or a specific contact and yes, make calls, including redialling and returning the last call.

You can ask Voice Command to tell you your next appointment or what you’re doing tomorrow (or just the time); it can read out new text messages and the subject and sender of incoming email. And it does it all without any training and with remarkable accuracy. You have to assign a button to it, so it won’t try to recognise random conversations and it works with Bluetooth headphones so you don’t even need to get your phone out.

3. Callligrapher, £18 ($30)

Apart from the HD2, every touch Windows Mobile phone works with a stylus; make it useful by adding real handwriting recognition with Calligrapher. You can write anywhere on the screen, rather than just in a tiny box, and you can teach it which letter shapes you use most to improve recognition.

You can’t teach it new letter shapes, though, and it takes some time teaching it shapes and making your handwriting tidier to get good recognition, but you can get there with patience.

4. PhatPad, £24 ($40)

PhatPad on its own is an excellent note application that lets you sketch, handwrite, create voice notes, add reminders to notes – and sync it all to and from the almost-identical PhatPad application on your PC, so you can have one to-do list and take it with you. But if you use it with Calligrapher (above), you can write notes in ink like jotting things down on paper in a hurry – and turn them into text when you have time, giving you the best of both worlds.

5. WMWifiRouter, £18 (£22)

You can use your Windows Mobile phone as a modem with your notebook by turning on connection sharing, but if you want to share that connection with multiple PCs, or with something that’s not a PC, WMWifiRouter does that and more.

It can share out your mobile data connection over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or USB; that gives you much wider range than Bluetooth and it means you can connect any device – so you could upload photos directly to Flickr from a digital camera with an Eye-Fi card via your phone. Obviously it takes a lot out of the battery (so plug your phone in) and if you share the connection with multiple devices they only get a share of the bandwidth, but it’s both easy to use and has plenty of advanced configuration options.

6. Kinoma Play, £18 ($30)

When you’re listening to music or watching video on your phone, you’re more likely to be interrupted; Kinoma Play remembers where you were, in everything you’ve watched or listened to. That’s especially handy because Kinoma gives you the same friendly interface for content on your phone and content online; you can browse camera phone pictures and your DSLR shots on Flickr with the same interface, and restart podcasts and YouTube videos where you left off.

Kinoma has a lot of extra features, from streaming Internet radio, playing Last.fm, reading RSS and playing media from Box.net or your desktop computer via Orb to reading Facebook, sending tweets and checking flight times (it even has its own App Store). At heart, it’s a good media player and a great way to explore media on your phone and online.

7. Evernote Premium, £3 ($5) a month

The free version of Evernote is excellent; pay $5 a month and you get 500MB of storage. You’ll need it because you can upload audio, video, PDFs and Office documents so instead of copying files to your phone you can put them online and access them from anywhere, including your phone. You can search PDFs and you can share notes with a friend, so you can both work on the same note. If you use Evernote extensively, the Premium option is excellent value.

8. RDM+, £24 ($40)

You can get some great apps for Windows Mobile, but how about using the ones on your PC or Mac from your phone? The official Remote Desktop client is one of the optional programs you don’t always get on Windows Mobile devices, it only works with Windows and it assumes you know how to set it up and get connected. RDM+ works with Macs as well as PCs and it makes connecting very simple, even through a NAT firewall, by typing in the number it assigns your computer.

You do have to run the RDM+ client on your computer and navigating Windows on your phone screen can be slow and finicky, but you can run your apps, zoom in so you can read them, browse files in a simple file manager or send shortcuts like Start and Paste directly instead of tapping buttons and menus.

9. SPB Mobile Shell, £18 ($30)

Microsoft keeps changing its mind about the Today screen and most phone manufacturers have their own interface on top; if you prefer Android’s three desktops side by side, check out the extremely popular Mobile Shell which replaces the Today screen with a short-cut packed layout (swipe left for a desktop and search bar, swipe right for the calendar) plus a custom contact picker, a Start menu with recently-used icons at the top and a 3D carousel interface for switching between all the different screens. It’s a little complicated but if you want to put everything in Windows Mobile at your fingertips, Mobile Shell will do it.

10. Shazam Encore, £4.69

Like Evernote, the free version of Shazam works fine but the pay-for version gives you more; instead of five songs a month you can tag and identify as many songs as you like and get suggestions for similar songs you’ll like. It’s virtually the same app you get on iPhone and BlackBerry so Windows Mobile users aren’t left behind. Want to find new music? Shazam makes it easier.