Ermm now we are at the end of 2008.This year has seen furious competition between tech manufacturers, especially in the areas of mobile connectivity. Frankly, people want the net in their pocket, or at least in their backpack. People are starting to care less about the voice telephony aspects of their phones and more about the internet connectivity.

Apple's iPhone really shook the market up when it was released, with a software interface that was unparalleled anywhere in the marketplace. This forced mobile phone makers to stop thinking like engineers and start putting ease-of-use first.

The new iPhone 3G spearheaded mobile web use with the addition of high-speed internet connectivity, making it one of the year's top buys.

Laptop maker ASUS made the stunning discovery that the smaller the laptop, the cheaper it should be, with its very successful $499 Eee PC. This sparked a flurry of innovation (cloning, copying and duplicating) across the industry, with each PC maker bringing out its own cheap, small laptop.

Even if you're not in the market to replace your mobile or laptop, you can now add mobile internet cheaply, at long last. Carriers have dumped their requirements for long contracts of two or three years to get your laptop online via 3G and now offer a swathe of prepaid options. Of course, Telstra Next G is the only choice when it comes to extremely broad coverage and very fast speeds but it is expensive and the prepaid vouchers have short expiry periods. Three's prepaid mobile broadband is a stunningly good deal - on a network that provides good speeds, too.

Granted, any man on the street could have told computer makers that their ultraportable notebooks were way overpriced. But we're glad they reached that conclusion in the end. Dell's Mini 9 is our pick of the year because it has 3G HSDPA mobile broadband built in and you can get it from Vodafone for $0 upfront.

Of course, you're going to need to drive to the shop without getting lost to pick up your smartphone, netbook or mobile broadband dongle and this is where a GPS navigator comes in. Beware if you drive in peak hour though - navigators will often blindly steer you through roads that slow to a crawl. If you have a new TomTom with "IQ routes", though, it'll steer clear of slow-moving roads at all times of day and give you the fastest route to that shopping centre. Finding a parking spot, on the other hand, is entirely up to you.

Smart Charger Strap - USB Charger to Go

While most USB chargers are not exactly bulky, they are not really something that one can carry around easily or comfortably, which is what makes the Smart Charger Strap a very nice idea. It ties on to your mobile device, like any other cell phone strap. When you are near a USB port and need a charge, push the button and slide out the charger.
Price $4.99 [Gizfever via Red Ferret]

Blast from the past a crucial piece of apple and product design history

As a Core blogger I am excited by, and often post about, Apple products because I feel Apple really "gets" industrial design. Accuse me of bias, I don't care; this is an industrial design site and when you have a company that champions what you believe in, you're inclined to give them ink.

Sometimes Apple's design initiatives come from within; witness Jony Ive talking about the Unibody. But it's also interesting to see when ideas came from outside the company and were brought in for development and fine-tuning--for a good example of this we can look at Tony Fadell, Apple's recently retired director of the iPod division.

It's worthwhile to look at a Wired story (published more than four years ago) about Fadell and the original iPod, an object that arguably pushed the company into its current iteration. An excerpt:

"Tony's idea was to take an MP3 player, build a Napster music sale service to complement it, and build a company around it," [Former PortalPlayer senior manager Ben] Knauss said. "Tony had the business idea."

Knauss said Fadell left Philips and set himself up as an independent contractor to shop the idea around. Knauss said Fadell approached several companies and was turned away by all of them, except for Apple.

Apple hired Fadell in early 2001 and assigned him a team of about 30 people -- "a typical industrial design team," Knauss said, including designers, programmers and hardware engineers. He's currently the senior director of iPod & Special Projects Group at Apple.

Knauss said at one of the first meetings with PortalPlayer, Fadell said, "This is the project that's going to remold Apple and 10 years from now, it's going to be a music business, not a computer business."

"Tony had an idea for a business process and Apple is transforming itself on his whim and an idea he had a few years ago," Knauss added.

mp3 player

miShare for iPod: Share and Share Alike

so exhousting day is today.Towards the end of a long day in the office, a few colleagues and I will often grab our mobiles and start ‘bluetoothing’ music or funny photos to one another. Unfortunately for those with an iPod, there’s no built-in Bluetooth and no quick sharing files with friends.
miShare is a neat little gadget, produced by apple productions.so,now i can turn back my bored day to the most enjoyable day.he3:)

irecorder-movies-on-the-go-just-got-portable

Apple seems moving one step forward.With iPods advancing in technology and coming out with enhanced colour, high-res screens, it seems a shame to limit that use to watching the counter tick away as your favourite song plays.yes,Of course you can buy and download video from the Apple iTunes Store, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a wide range of movie choice not be limited to paying content costs determined by Apple? Well with the iRecorder, the sky is the limit with what you upload to your MP3 player.ok,enjoy your latest ipods.:)

miShake Portable Media Player: Shake, Rattle and Roll

Owh!be alert 1st.Please excuse the corny title; it was the first thing that came to mind! (What does that say about my mentality?). The miShake is a quality portable media player, packed full of great features, including music, photo and video playback. It boasts a black and silver, sleek design with a 2.4inch touch scree.i think its big enough for us to enjoy it.What the gorgeous gadget.:)