Yesterday, following a showdown between Amazon and some book publishers, Amazon had to remove books, through their whispersync network from people’s Kindle devices and re pay them the purchase price of those books.

This came about because the publishers decided that they no longer wanted to sell their books via eInk and then they persuaded Amazon to go one step further and delete the books from people’s Kindle devices without them knowing. This raises questions about privacy and people’s rights - if Amazon can connect remotely and remove, or add, files to people’s devices without their knowledge then it sets a very dangerous precedent for future uses. I’ve read that Apple also have the ability to remove apps from iPhones remotely too, but they’ve not gone as far as Amazon and actually used the system.

Amazon reacted to the news by saying that they will never make use of the system again. Hopefully they’ll keep to their word because I would hate to see this become a practice that more companies use. It would give the large companies way too much power over what, and what not, we can have on our devices. With more and more mobile devices using “apps” things could become extremely messy in the future.

This is a handy little gadget that you could give someone as a gift. The Cash Stash Keychain would be great to have over the summer holidays, especially if you’re likely to attend one of the many music festivals that are happening all over the country.

The Cash Stash Keychain can help keep some of your money safe and dry, so long as you don’t lose your keys obviously. The Cash Stash Keychain will hold your money safe and secure within its aircraft grade aluminium shell.

It would be great to have one of these if you find yourself stuck without any money for a taxi home at the end of the night, or even if you find yourself running short of money and don’t really want to make that trek all the way to the cash point. The Cash Stash Keychain could save you a lot of embarrassment if you find yourself short of cash in the pub when it’s your round too. I’m talking from experience here… I’ve had to do the walking to the cash point thing to pay for a round of drinks.

The Cash Stash Keychain will pay for itself many time over if you use it often. It costs under £5. That’s a small price to pay for peace of mind that you’ll have some spare cash somewhere safe.  Get yourself one today!

I’ve often found that writing for this blog is a challenge and no more so than in recent days. Some of you may know that I have a huge amount of work to get finished by the end of this week. For those of you that don’t know what I do outside of this blog, then I’ll tell you.

I am currently a student at Bolton University studying for a degree in Special Effects Development. The first year hasn’t exactly been an easy ride. We’ve had a whole lot of problems because we’re doing the first year of the degree (well three of us anyhow)  at another location. The three of us are doing the first year at Coleg Harlech, which is a Further Education college in North Wales. All three of us that are on the Special Effects Degree course have been past students of the college. I wouldn’t be in the situation I’m in now if it wasn’t for the great staff at the college. If I’m honest I’ll be quite sad to leave there.

Anyhow, our first year is up and I thought I would let you know that I have passed my first year with flying colours. We still have a film to make, but that’s more of a labour of love now rather than an obigation for the course. We feel that we need to get this film made because of the time that we’ve spent on the planning and preperation for it.

We’ve already filmed it once, but the tape got corrupted so we’ve decided on doing a re-shoot. The main reason for this is because we don’t want to let the actors down. They gave us their time for free, so it’s only right that we produce the best possible piece of work for them rather than us. We’ve been marked on the work that we’ve done already.

The idea is that we produce a film and a prper DVD in the end with extra features and behind the scene stuff. That’s the idea anyway. Obviously I’ll upload an show you the finished piece of work.

I’ve read recently that most of the top mobile manufacturers in Europe have decided on a single universal socket for their mobile phones. This is great news in my opinion because at the moment there are so many different types of plugs out there. Apparently there are around 30 different combination of plug and socket from the different suppliers.

Apple, Nokia, SonyEricsson, NEC, LG, Samsung and Texas Instruments have all backed the move to create a single micro USB style charging socket on their mobile devices from next year.

It will be great to see this because my iPhone keeps running out of battery in the most inconvenient places and I rely heavily on it to keep in touch through SMS, Facebook, Twitter and email. Being able to use any charger would obviously be a great bonus.

It would also be a great move for the environmentbecause people could use the same charger for any number of mobile phones. The manufactures could offer the mobile devices with or without a charger. As I said, it’s a great move to make the socket an universal one for all manufacturers as it’s going to mean that anyone can charge their mobile anywhere there’s a charger available.

This is definitely a move in the right direction for a change.

It was a very sad day yesterday indeed. The world lost two amazing stars in the form of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. They were both young and taken away from us too soon. Farrah Fawcett was only 62 and Michael Jackson was a mere 50.

Farrah Fawcett was probably best known for being a pin-up model back in the 1970’s and for being one of “Charlie’s Angels” in the hit show of the same name playing Jill Munroe. She also starred in a number of movies. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2006, but four months later was given the all clear. Then in 2007 she was once again diagnosed with cancer.

Michael Jackson, the self named “King of Pop” has undoubtedly been an influencial figure in the world of music for over 3 decades. He released his “Thriller” album in 1982 and it went on to become the world’s best selling album of all time. He was also know for having a lavish and sometimes eccentric lifestyle. This was backed-up when he bought Neverland; his fairground themed home. In later years his life had been dogged by allegations of child abuse and ill health.

Michael Jackson was due to start a gruelling 50 date concert at the O2 arena in London.

I hope that both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson rest in peace. They will both be missed.

Today I witnessed something that was quite horrific and disturbing. I’ve personally never been in an accident but this morning I saw one. Two cars, a motorbike and an LPG lorry.

The tailbacks were quite bad and we had to find an alternate route to college. I usually catch a bus there, but today I had a lift from one of the tutors. I’d informed them of the accident and they still decided to chance it.
I’d seen the state of the two cars in the accident and they looked to be complete write offs.

On a slightly more cheery note, we finally managed to get some filming done with the new High Definition camera that we’ve bought at the college. I have to say that the quality of the camera is excellent and I’m pleased with what we’ve captured so far. Only got the one scene filmed and edited together, but it’s a huge leap forward from what we’d managed to do before.

I’ll be sure to write a review of the High Definition camera once we’ve finished the filming. The great thing is, that it works. The camera we had would film the scenes quite well, but when it came to getting them off the camera into the computer the tape was corrupted with artefacts all over it.

After our tests this morning, we’ve decided that it’s best to do a complete re-shoot of the movie. And, once we’ve done with all the editing and Post-production, I’ll put it up on here for you all to see.

It seems like it is that time of year again when all the festivals are upon us and whilst the festivals I usually go to are not running because of financial problems there are others going on.

What better way to improve your festival experience than by getting The Ultimate Festival Kit? It is a great piece of kit that will help you on your way. It’s packed with 18 goodies that are essential for a great festival experience.

There are apparently over 360 festivals happening this year so some of you will definitely be attending one or more. Maybe the most famous of these festivals is happening this weekend: Glastonbury. It looks like it’s going to be a great weekend for those of you who will be attending.

So what do you get inside The Ultimate Festival Kit bag of goodies then? Well, there are some really useful stuff to be honest?

• 1x PVC poncho (green or blue), reusable and durable
• 1x Banana Boat® SPF30 Suncreen, 29ml
• 1x Kiss My Face® Whenever Shampoo, 29 ml
• 1x Kiss My Face® Anti-Stress Shower and Bath Gel, 29ml
• 1x Travel size Kiss My Face® Liquid Rock Fragrance Free Deodorant
• 1x Pack of Pocket-size Tissues
• 2x Pairs of Moldex® Spark Ear Plugs in Pocket Pack
• 1x Moose Smooch® SPF15 Natural Lip Balm
• 1x Tube of 8 Magic Towels
• 1x LED keychain torch
• 1x Glow in the Dark Whistle
• 1x Travel Toothbrush with Paste
• 1x Extra® Chewing Gum
• 2x Condoms
• 1x Asseptgel Anti-bacterial Hand Gel, 59ml
• 1x Pack of 10 Toilet Seat Covers
• 1x Emergency Blanket
• 1x Mini First-Aid Kit

The Ultimate Festival Kit is one piece of kit you don’t want to leave home without. It’s available for £24.95 through PriceGrabber now.

Today is a big day for iPhone users all over the world because the 3.0 Firmware is released. I’ve written about this before, but now that it’s nearly upon us I’m getting excited. The new features that 3.0 will bring to iPhone 3G customers is nothing short of amazing.

I’m not going to list the new features as I’ve already done this but wanted to let you good people out there know that it will be available to download from today (17th June). Many of you might not have an iPhone so don’t know of the benefits (and frustrations) of owning an iPhone.

Some of the frustrations I’ve had with it will be addressed in this new Firmware update though, which is always a good thing. My inability to send picture messages was the biggest one for me, but Apple have included this ability in the update. I would encourage anyone who is thinking of getting an iPhone to wait a couple of days until the 19th when the new Apple iPhone 3G S comes out. This will have the 3.0 formware installed on it already, for those of you who already own a 3G iPhone the Firmware update will be free.

Once I’ve managed to get the firmware on my iPhone updated, I will post a review of how I found the new features. Things like easy of use and intuitivness. I’m really looking forward to this now. Speak to you all soon.

Recently the WWDC 2009 was held and as usual Apple had a whole host of announcements for all us fans. To be honest I had forgotten all about this but watched the Apple Keynote the other day. So what did they have to offer us then?

Well, as usual with any Apple announcement, there were a lot of rumours flying around, but we’ll stick with what was actually said. Firstly they announced that Snow Leopard would be released for $29! That’s $29 for a whole operating system! Unbelievable value for money in my opinion. It will be available in September.

They also announce a new iPhone - The iPhone 3G S (The S stands for speed). This new iPhone will have the already announced 3.0 firmware which has a whole host of exciting features. I’ve written about that before on this blog, so won’t go into too much details about that, but I will mention a few things that I think are important to cover again.

• Tethering - The 3.0 Firmware will allow you to tether your iPhone to a Mac or PC and use it as a modem. This is an excellent announcement. No longer will we all have to buy separate dongles!
• Peer to Peer - This will allow iPhones to connect to each other. Excellent for game playing!
• Cut, Copy, Paste - This speaks for itself really. The ability to (finally) cut, copy and paste on the iPhone.
• MMS - This is the best announcement for me. The ability to send picture messages.

All exciting stuff I have to say. But when are these brand new things going to be available to us the consumers? Well we don’t have to wait that long at all. It will all be available next week!!

On the 17th of June the 3.0 Firmware update will be available for free to iPhone customers. The new iPhone 3G S will be available in the UK on the 19th of June.

Next week could become an expensive one.

Hey guys! I’ve finally gotten round to creating a Twitter page for this blog. The idea behind this is to allow you to be notified of posts to the Gottahave Gadget blog using social networking. I’m forever talking about Twitter so I thought it would be best to start there.

It will be updated each and every time that this blog is updated so that you don’t miss out on any of the great products that can be found on PriceGrabber.

For those of you that don’t know what Twitter is, let me explain. Twitter is a micro blogging site that allows you to tell people what you’re doing in 140 characters. Why 140 characters, well it’s the amount of characters that fit into a single mobile phone text message. It’s a really popular website that has been much publicised in the media because of all the famous personalities that have started using it. Even the US President, Barrack Obama twitters.

I guess I’d better tell you how to sign up to this new account that has been created especially for this blog hadn’t I. The link you need is here. All you have to do is click on it, then click on the word “follow” that appears under the picture. You’ll see that I’ve customised it to look like this blog a little.

So what are you waiting for? Go and sign up to the Gottahave blogs’ Twitter page today!