LG confirms status as the one to watch

Let it be known, I’m a big fan of classic sci-fi. Actually let’s amend I’m a big fan of the set design and the optimistic worldview of genre staples like Star Trek and Space 1999. They speak of a world where in the near future anything was possible. And better yet, where domestic robots would do the hard work, so we don’t have to.

It’s perhaps not surprising then that I’m putting my name down for LG’s retro-modern watch handset. Dubbed the LG Touch watch phone, judged on looks alone it appears to be a truly wondrous thing indeed.

But I don’t think that the admittedly small demographic of fans of retro-modernism will be only the takers for the phone. Its standout design is likely to be a hit with anyone who is bored of the same old same old approach to the appearance of mobile phones. And given that we’re served a near-constant diet of candybars and sliders, that’s got to be quite a few disgruntled consumers hungry for something new.

The phone is no slouch in the specifications department either. HSDPA connectivity means fast downloads, while video calling, media playback and web browsing ought to seal the deal.

There’s no official release date yet, with LG stating only that it’ll be out “later this year”. I can’t wait.

Music industry discovers marketing power of iPhone apps

The early White Stripes releases were on a label called Sympathy for the Record Industry. The name was a canny little dig at major label practices. But in truth sympathy for record companies has been in short supply of late. Not least because their failure to foresee the growth of MP3s over physical formats left them with an outmoded business model and at the mercy of pirates until Spotify offered some form of salvation.

But not all companies are quite so techno-phobic. This week XL, home of the Prodigy the Stripes and Lemon Jelly, came up with a fantastic marketing wheeze that harnesses the exponential growth of iPhone applications.

Visitors to the iTunes store can currently download a free Tetris-style game with the twist being that players are loading a tour van with musical instruments. The app is even equipped with an online high score table.

It’s all in aid of promoting newish signings and disciples of the shoegaze movement Titus Andronicus. Two tracks from their Airing of Grievances album play throughout the game, one of which called My Time Outside The Womb is set to be their next single.

You can only applaud this kind of marketing verve, which if it doesn’t give them a hit will raise their profile far more effectively than any number of gigs on the toilet circuit or wearisome interviews with T4 types.

If you’ve any doubt about this, cast your mind back to the dark days of the original Gameboy, which used Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy as its backing music. A cash-in single which remixed the ancient classical piece was a top ten hit, purely off the back of kids recognising it as the Tetris theme.

With any luck, as companies wake up to the marketing possibilities that the iPhone app store offers we’ll get a deluge of free diversionary software in months to come. One thing is for certain, though, is that XL’s rivals will be checking the apps download numbers very closely in months to come.

Auto-tune and Bob Marley game on the way as iPhone gets I-rie

Auto-tune has been all over Hip-Hop records in the last six months. Kanye West’s last album was slavered in it - rather pointlessly obscuring the flow of one of the few rappers left with anything to say. Lil Wayne also revealed himself a heavy user on the meta-irritating Lollipop. But the award for most grating use of the software goes to T-Pain in the dance craze-tastic Low. So smothered in Auto Tune’s effects was his novelty hit, that it’s unlikely there’d be any record left it you took it out.

Here he is in a titfer that's unlikely to get past the bouncers at Royal Ascot's Ladies Day:



However, clearly not satisfied with sullying Hip-Hop with his own shonky records today it has emerged he wants everyone to get in on the act. According to reports, T-Pain is working with engineers at Antares to develop a lite version of Auto-Tune for the iPhone. Up and down, the country we’ll be forced to listen to amateur rap producers playing their erm latest shit on their iPhones. It will be utterly inescapable. What horrors.

Still on a musical tip and frankly just as frightening is the news that a Bob Marley iPhone application could be on the way. It seems that along with a beer tie- in - that a Rastafarian would never drink, incidentally, alcohol being banned under the creed’s strictures – his money-grabbing family figure this will be fitting tribute to the man credited by many as Reggae’s greatest ever artist.

Apparently, it’s likely that the game will be a Guitar Hero-style arrangement. I can already picture hordes of white men doing an embarrassing skank as they play along. Alas we all know they’ll look about as irie as William Hague did when he rocked a baseball cap at Notting Hill Carnival.

Mobile broadband bandwagon leaves Sky and TalkTalk trailing

Over recent weeks TalkTalk has been the ISP that has dominated the headlines. And unlike say Virgin Media, whose brushes with the ASA continue to mount up, it’s mostly been for the right reasons. Its offer to waive charges for a six-month period for customers in particular was an inspired piece of pr.

But as bit of canny maths from Top 10 Broadband showed, recently they’ve not always been so quick to react to shifting moods in the UK broadband market. Over the last 12 months, TalkTalk and Sky have been notable absentees from the mobile broadband market. And the site calculates that as a result they are missing out on £36 million of potential revenue every month by failing to do so.

Jessica McArdle, marketing manager at the site, however predicted that it’s only a matter of time before this happens. She said: “TalkTalk and Sky must be looking into ways of offering mobile broadband either as a standalone product or as part of a bundled deal – failing to do so would amount to commercial suicide”

It’s hard to disagree with her. The worry is that in the meantime, rivals such as O2, Vodafone, 3 and Virgin Media are carving the market up for themselves. Thus by the time that TalkTalk and Sky have readied a mobile broadband service, they’ll have to work twice as hard and offer deals three times as eye-catching in order to capture a share of the sector.

Henry Holland and O2 go dutch on dongle

Just after Christmas, we predicted that mobile broadband dongles would follow mobile phones by becoming more of a fashion item than a purely functional device for getting online. We also forecasted that limited edition exclusive dongles would become commonplace, as ISPs look to distinguish themselves from the competition.

Today, we’re awarding ourselves prescience points a-plenty with the news that Henry Holland has designed a dongle for O2, which will be available for a limited time until February 27.

You’ll know said cove from appearances on Channel 4’s fashion programme Frock Me, where he often talks more than a little inanely about matters of the day with his childhood friend Agyness Deyn. Typically they’ll conclude that like the war in Iraq is REALLY BAD.

But judge not before you’ve seen the fruits of his labour:



Admit it, you want one. With any luck though, the House of Holland polka-dot number will be the first of a slew of dongles with eye-catching looks. We’ve already discussed the prospect of Star Wars dongles and how fanboys would snap them up in a trice. So what else is on our wishlist?

I’d like to see a collaboration with Bathing Ape. Imagine some natty camouflage numbers along the lines of Nigo’s work with Pepsi:



Can you picture them? Nice eh? Or better yet how about some designed by Futura 3000 who did the Unkle sleeves? Or even Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz and Tank Girl fame?

MacAce offers Apple apostles 24Mb broadband

This week the UK's Mac-only ISP MacAce announced a new service offering 24Mb broadband. The reponse from some quarters has been a raised eyebrow. Why do Mac owners need an ISP of their own? Why can't they just use the same service as the rest of us? Isn't this just Mac owners being snobbish again?

This impression is compounded because as any fule kno Mac owners can in fact already get 24Mb by opting for Be Broadband. But in fact the idea that a Mac-only broadband service is a pointless frippery could not be wider of the mark.

If owners are to be believed even the best ISPs customer service is targeted at PC owners. This leaves Mac types tearing their hair out in frustration, especially since Macs are generally a more difficult proposition to configure for internet access.

Success for MacAce seems assured, no? Even priced at £16.46 pounds per month for the cheapest deal with a peak download period of 10GB, it looks like an easy sell. And the one-month rolling contract and lack of migration fee means that cost-conscious types won’t be discouraged. Meanwhile, the fact that Mac folk tend to be early adopters suggests that they'll be pliant market for faster broadband.

One thing is for sure, though, a bit of competition in the market for faster Mac broadband is long overdue. And with any luck, prices will drop in time, too.

ASA rap for Virgin Media

UK internet service providers are no strangers to raps over the knuckles from the Advertising Standards Agency. Over the last couple of years, it’s been the disparity between actual connection speeds and those being delivered that has been at the root of most of complaints that were upheld.

And we've had some splendidly spiteful spats, that's for sure, as broadband companies traded body blows in their ads. But that looked to have come to an end with a pledge before Christmas that they would clean up their act. It seemed to be the broadband industry equivalent of the Hays Code that cleaned up Hollywood with tough censorship rules in the 1930s.

A few months down the track, has it changed them any? Has it hell. This week it emerged that prime offender Virgin Media was in the dock again. The complaints centred on claims that the copper wire network used by other providers is struggling to cope with demand as well as Virgin Media’s loudly trumpeting that its network was a fibre optic. As this ad attests, they've been far from shy about their 50Mb service:



In the end the ASA eventually upheld no fewer than four complaints against them. This brings Virgin Media total to 13 complaints in total since the start of 2007 – a rap sheet to rival even that of supercrim and lifetime lag Charles Bronson.

I can understand Virgin Media doing its upmost to market its 50Mb service. It’s a tough sell at the moment, after all. But unless their campaigns are cleaned up, it won’t just be their public perception that is tainted. Rather it’ll be the whole industry that suffers.