If you remember a while back I mentioned that I was going to start making my own podcasts to go on another blog that I write for. Well, the first podcast went live this afternoon after being approved by the iTunes team. It was recorded on Thursday night , submitted on Friday and live today. Not a bad turn around really. I’m really impressed with the efficiency by which Apple work.

A lot of the readers to this blog won’t be able to understand what the podcast is about though as it is entierly in Welsh. This is because its a Welsh language blog about technology and the internet. I’ll give you a brief overview of what the Podcast discusses:

• Welsh Language Samsung Mobile Phone on the Orange Network
• The possibility of having to pay for BBC iPlayer in the future
• The broadband tax the government want to introduce
• The Welsh Assembly no longer broadcasting the meeting on S4C2
• A fellow members’ new iMac

Quite a variety of topics really.I’ve had a listen to it a couple of times and it sounds really good considering it was a first effort. Hopefully we’ll iron out the creases as we go along. The development of www.metastwnsh.com has been quite a bit more than I thought it would be really. It began life as just a small blog about technology, but we’ve now moved on to creating mashups for Welsh events ans creating a Welsh language URL shortening service. We’ve also got a campaign to get better 3G coverage over Wales.

We have a few other plans that we’d like to develop too, but I’ll write about that when things are at a stage that’s more than just a dream at the moment. It’s always good seeing things progress and develop. Soon the website will be a year old and I’m pretty sure we’ll have a lot to celebrate. Here’s hoping that it will continue to grow and mature at a steady rate.

On Tuesday I made my first ever visit to an Apple Store. It was the Apple Store located in the Arndale Centre, Manchester. I was on my way back to Bolton from Blackpool and had a bit of time to kill so decided it would be a good time to go and get a DVI to HDMI Cable, Apple Remote and MiniDisplayPort to DVI adapter. It was my first ever visit to the Arndale Centre too so it was a real treat.

I don’t know why Apple don’t do a MiniDisplayPort to HDMI cable or adapter to be honest. Maybe it’s a way for them to make more money by selling more products? Who knows.

The Television I bought ages and ages ago is perfect for being in the halls of residence here in Bolton as it has a huge amount of connection possibilities.There are two scart sockets; one HDMI; one VGA; one set of composite inputes and the old fashioned aerial socket. More than enough for me. (It doesn’t pick up any TV (digital or otherwise) though which is a shame). I’m really impressed with the picture quality that appears when connected via the HDMI port too. It’s super crisp and sharp. If you have the option to upgrade to HDMI, then I recommend that you do, sooner rather than later too.

The Apple Remote works as you’d expect a remote to work. It’s white and about 3 to 3.5 inches long. Being an Apple product means that it has the minimum amount of buttons on it. To be fair, it doesn’t need any more. It has Forward, Reverse, +, -, play/pause and a Menu. Pressing the Menu button opens up Front Row. This little feature is worth the £15 I paid for it alone. It means that I can turn my MacBook into a sort of Apple TV box without having to buy the actual Apple TV. A nifty little feature that I new nothing about until last week.

All in all my visit to the Manchest Apple store was a great experience and I’ll definitely be visiting it again soon. Although, I did find Manchester to be a bit daunting.

Apologies for not posting much recently, but it’s been a hectic week here. This was the week that everything needed to get done at home before I made the move to Bolton. There was lots to do too. Accomodation had been sorted out, but I wasn’t getting any information from Student Services about anything. I’m a bit of a worrier so I have to make sure that I know exactly what’s going on. Then there was the problem of transport. I’d asked a cousin if they could take me, but I never got any response back from them and the date was fast approaching. Luckily, my brother in law came to the rescue.

So, that’s briefly what happened last week. Last night I spent my first night at Orlando Village. I’d arrived at Bolton at 2.30pm and by 3.40pm I was on a train to Blackpool to see my girlfriend. She has been there since Friday because she has a wedding to attend to today. It was the perfect opportunity to spend a few hours together. She’s staying at the Hilton Hotel and we had the most wonderful dinner together.

My first night in the Halls of Residence went well although at about 12.30am people started arriving back from their nights out and were a bit rowdy. I’m sure that this is something I’m going to have to get used to. There are quiet halls available, but they’re on the other end of town.

So today my University experience begins for real. I’ve been a University of Bolton student for a year already, but as some of you know, this will be my first year actually at Bolton. It’s induction week this week and I have absolutely no idea what that means. I’ll have to pop to the Uni to find out later on. Firstly though I need to go and buy some food (and maybe a coffee). I also need to buy an aerial for the Television.

A few weeks back I mentioned that I bought an AirPort Extreme so that I could connect to my Hard Disks and Printer wirelessly. Well, I’m in the halls and I’ve connected it up and guess what. It doesn’t work! Something to do with security and creating wireless networks. Darn it!! It works for sharing the HDD and Printer, but in order to access the internet the computer has to be physically connected via Ethernet cable. A bit of a pain to be honest.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to this last week. Any of you been up to anything exciting?

Being a student myself I found this to be really amusing. I don’t know why it’s amusing though, because the Eatmecrunchy Bowl has solved a great problem - soggy cereal.

The Eatmecrunchy Bowl is made from Melamine and is dishwasher safe so no need to worry about it being just a “novelty” bowl. A lot of these things are great for the first few uses, but after a couple of washes they start to fall apart, or they’re just not safe to put in the dishwasher.

The Eatmecrunchy Bowl works by having a shelf inside that covers 70% of the bottom of the bowl. You put your favourite cereal in as normal and pour the milk on as normal but, and here’s the clever bit, 70% of your cereal stays on the shelf  and 30% goes in to the “well” at one side of the Eatmecrunchy Bowl where it gets mixed with the milk. How cool is that. As most inventions, it’s a blazingly simple idea that works exceptionally well.

The Eatmecrunchy Bowl has got to be one of the best non technology gadgets that I have seen for a very long time. Simple idea to a great problem. Not only is it an extremely great invention, but it’s cheap too - only £4.95 for a single or £7.95 for two. A great bargain if ever I did see one.

Now all they need to invent is a disposable version for us students so that we don’t have to do any washing up.

I’m not sure if the Sound Asleep Pillow is a good gadget or not. But either way, it definitely caught my eye. I’m one of those people who doesn’t like noise when they’re trying to sleep. In fact, even the sound of the mobile phone vibrating when a text message arrives is enough to wake me from sleeping.

Having said that, If I’m in a really noisy environment I’ll pop my headphones in to help me get off to sleep. The Sound Asleep Pillow takes the place of those headphones by playing music directly through its internal speaker. Before you ask, no, you can’t feel the speaker when you’re lying on the Sound Asleep Pillow.

The Sound Asleep Pillow is easy enough to use. You just plug in your device (iPod, MP3 player, radio or even the TV) in to the 3.5″ jack plug that’s built in to the Sound Asleep Pillow and you’re ready to go. There’s no mention of any control over the volume of the internal speaker, but I guess you’d use the device’s sound settings.

Whilst your device is plugged in to the Sound Asleep Pillow, only you can hear the output making this an ideal gadget to get if you’re a bit of an insomniac but don’t want to wake up the whole household at 3am. Costing from £12.99 it’s a great addition for any bedroom or indeed, for anyone going on a long flight.

Grab yours through PriceGrabber today!

It’s that time of year again when Apple have a special event over in California. This year is no different and today Steve Jobs made a welcome return to giving the Keynote.

Steve Jobs has been away from Apple for a while following a liver transplant. He mentioned that he got his new liver from a 20 year old who died in an accident. He encourged people to sign up to become organ donors.

There weren’t any real surprises today, although there were rumours about the Beatles back catalogue becoming available on iTunes after Yoko Ono let it slip to Sky News. But, this wasn’t to happen today. There were also rumours about the iPod touch getting a camera, but that didn’t happen either.

The iPod Nano however did get a camera upgrade. I’m not sure why they chose the Nano over the touch to be honest; it would have made more sense to put it in the superior touch. There has been speculation that Apple were having trouble with the hardware and that’s why ther’s no camera in the touch. We’ll never know I guess.

There’s a new 3.1 update to the iPhone OS and a new version of iTunes (iTunes 9). I’ve downloaded this, but am yet to play with it. Apple were really pushing the gaming abilities of the iPod touch and iPhone today too.

All in all it wasn’t anything spectacular that was announced but it’s always nice when Apple bring out new merchandise for us to all drool over.

I’ve not seen any news that stands out from the crowd recently that concerns new and exciting gadgets. It’s all quiet… a little too quiet to tell the truth.

I’m wondering if the big companies are holding back on releasing new goodies because of the state of the economy and the looming Christmas period (yes, it’s nearly that time again).

There is some exciting news about the Orange and T-Mobile networks merging in the UK to form the largest mobile operating company yet. Hopefully this merger will force the others to look at how they’re going to be keeping their subscribers. I’ve written previously about the lack of 3G Network Coverage in Wales so this might bring good news on that front.

One thing is for sure, O2 will have a fight on their hands to keep the exclusive deal that they have with Apple going. Currently O2 have 27% of the market share in the UK (making them the largest) but once things are finalised between Orange and T-Mobile they’ll have a 37% market share.

I’m quite happy with the service I’m getting from O2 at the moment. I can’t complain at all because their customer service is brilliant. My contract doesn’t run out until September 2010 though, so there’s plenty of time for new technology to come along.

I’m in my final couple of weeks of living in Wales too at the moment, there’s a big upheaval to Bolton on the cards soon. I just need to find a flat to stay in whilst I am there. Hopefully, there’s a pretty good 3G signal there as I don’t fancy having to pay for a phone line to get broadband speeds. I do still have my O2 dongle, so I’ll probably use that.

Today across the country most of the children are going back to school. I had the pleasure of waking up at 8am to get my girlfriend’s son ready to go to school. He was really excited to be going back too.

He was looking forward to seeing his friends again and to having fun. It’s been a really bad summer break for the children around this area. We’ve had nothing but rain really. He did get to go to Chester zoo though and apparently it was scortching hot there.

Some of us have to work so it’s not possible to go for an extended holiday abroad and it’s not the best time to travel with the economy in the state that it is. I actually prefer staying at home to travelling.

I’ve never really been abroad that much although I did live in Germany for four months back in the nineties. It was to do with where I was working at the time and it was a real eye opener. Learning German was a bit too much for me though.

Anyhow, now that the children are back at school I’ll start on a series of posts about things that they might need at school. I know that Josh wanted a load of things. To be honest he didn’t actually need anything, just wanted… lol.

I remember when I was at school and the excitement of a new school year would bring. I wish I could go back to that time to be honest, everything was much simpler in those days. No worries, no loans and no stress. Make the most of you time at school children, it’s definately worth it.

This one off drama from BBC One was filmed locally to me and yet it didn’t feel familiar at all. I’m sure the book that this is based on is much better than the production that we were shown tonight (Monday 31st August).

The story is about the National Gallery in London becoming flooded and the pictures being “evacuated”, as they actually were during the war, to a small town in North Wales called Manod. The works of art were kept in an old slate mine up in the mountains.

The production crew obviously didn’t realise that in North Wales we have a different dialect to that of South Wales. Getting Eve Myles (of Torchwood fame) to play a school teacher was a great coup, but to transform the entire population of that school from North to South Wales was a big mistake.

This seems to me like poor planning on the production company’s part. Surely they could have made a bit more effort in finding out about the town of Manod?

Apart from that the program was an OK watch. Not spectacular by a long shot. Definitely not up to the standard I would expect from the BBC. Trevor Eve made an excellent job of his character I thought. He was an a nice chap too according to a friend of mine who would pass him daily whilst out walking, albeit from the comfort of Mr Eve’s BMW.

It’s great that new drama comes to our screens but if they’re not going to make an effort to get things right why bother at all. Turning North Walians in to South Walians is like setting Eastenders in Newcastle. It just doesn’t work.

Right, that’s my rant over, normal service shall resume now.

I’ve been intrigued by the Amazon Kindle for a while now, but haven’t yet bought myself ’round to getting my hands on one. So when I stumbled upon the COOL-ER eBook Reader my interest was renewed in these gadgets.

I’m a big fan of reading and can often be found in my local library searching out autobiographies (I’m currently reading “Dear Fatty” - Dawn French’s one) and Colin Forbes books.

So what is it that keeps bringing me back to these devices? I’m not quite sure to be honest. I think it may be the portability of them compared to an actual physical book. But saying that, it’s nice to hold a real book and turn pages. The anticipation of what’s going to happen on the next page drives me on to read more.

So, back to the COOL-ER eBook Reader. This eBook Reader is apparently set to become the iPod of the eBook world according to some. The COOL-ER eBook Reader’s ability to store between 500 - 800 novels may be something to do with this.

Not only is it paper thin (excuse the pun), but it extremely lightweight too. The 6″ screen is comparable to looking at an actual page of a book and because it uses e-ink it’s pretty easy to read, even in direct sunlight. Putting eBooks on the COOL-ER eBook Reader is as simple as downloading, dragging and dropping.

The COOL-ER eBook Reader battery will charge in about three hours and is good for 8000 page turns. If you leave the COOL-ER eBook Reader unattended for whatever reason, it’ll shut itself down to save battery life. The COOL-ER eBook Reader is available in 8 different colours and a price tag of just under £190. Will this be the device that will finally get eBook readers to the masses? We can only wait and see.