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.

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.

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.

Last week one of Europe’s oldest cultural festivals was held in Bala, North Wales. The National Eisteddfod of Wales is an event that happens every year in Wales but it doesn’t stay in one location. Last year the Eisteddfod was in Cardiff and next year it will be in Ebbw Vale.

At this year’s event there was an announcement from the Welsh Language Board that Samsung have teamed up with Orange to provide the first mobile phone in the Welsh language. The interface and the T9 dictionary on the Samsung S5600 will both be in Welsh. This is a major step forward for the Welsh language and it shows that large companies think that the language is worth investing in.

The Welsh Samsung S5600 will be available from September onwards on the Orange network, with plans to introduce it on to other networks if the mobile turns out to be a success. According to a representative from Orange, they hope to show the other mobile phone manufacturers that there’s a need for mobile to have the Welsh language option built in to them.

Hopefully, this will be the start of something that keeps on getting better and better. I for one am glad of the development as sometimes, when writing texts in welsh, I have to delete things because the English language dictionary has seen fit to auto correct my Welsh.

Whilst I was looking at the bolt-on packages that O2 have available to me as a customer, I came across their “family bolt-on” which allows one person to pay £7.50 a month but up to 5 people can benefit from the one bolt-on. This led me to the O2 Joggler.

The O2 Joggler is an organiser for the whole family, but rather than things being written down on post-it notes and stuck everywhere, this is digital. It means that everything can be kept in one location that’s easy to access by the whole family.

The O2 Joggler connects to your WiFi network (or through an ethernet cable (supplied) if you don’t have WiFi) to get all the latest news and weather reports for you. The O2 Joggler has been designed to be easy to use for the whole family so that nobody misses out on anything, and there are loads of things that the Joggler can do.

O2 have Apps available for the Joggler that allow it to do various things: there’s a calendar to help organise the family appointments and memorable dates, you can share photos, music and videos, play games and as I mentioned earlier, get the latest news and weather reports.

Another thing that stands out about the O2 Juggler is its ability to send and receive text messages. A great feature to help keep your household ticking like clockwork. To do all of this, the Joggler is equipped with a touchscreen, and as a lot of you regular readers will know, I’m a bit of a fan of touchscreens.

I like the way that O2 are leading the way with these new and innovative gadgets. May it long continue.

Guys, just a quick reminder to you all that this blog, GottaHave, has got it’s own Twitter account. This was set up a couple of months back now and the response is a positive one.

You can use the twitter feed to find out about all the posts on this blog as soon as they’re published. This is great if you’re on Twitter a lot. And, let’s face it, it’s either Twitter or Facebook (I’m actually on both, but prefer Twitter). Using the Twitter feed also allows you to connect with other users and readers of GottaHave. It’s a great tool for social networking.

Hopefully I’ll get time soon to set up a page on Facebook, which will be another great way of promoting both PriceGrabber and the GottaHave blog. So, how do you get on this Twitter account of ours? Well it’s simple really. When you get on to our page, which you can find by clicking on this link (or any of the highlighted links on this page) and there will be a button there which will allow you to follow us.

Go on, you know you want to do it. There’s a whole host of reasons for following us. Not only will you get to find out about the great offers available to you, but you’ll be helping us out by letting us know how much you like us.

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.

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.

They say that your average computer keyboard has more germs than your toilet, which is a pretty hefty claim. But it’s a claim than can be justified if you think about it. Not everyone washes their hands after visiting the smallest room in the house (or workplace). We shed skin cells constantly, lose our hair and quite a few people eat and drink at the computer too.

There’s no wonder about that claim is there now you think about it. But you need fear no more! The Washable Keyboard is here at last! I think this is one of the best gadgets I’ve seen in a while. I’ve spent a whole day taking a traditional keyboard apart to clean it, and it’s not a fun job at all. So the Washable Keyboard is a Godsend.

The Washable Keyboard is completely waterproof; actually it’s dishwasher safe too! It’s simply amazing. The Washable Keyboard is completely plug and play too so it will work with almost any computer. Because the keys are laser etched you don’t need to worry about the letters fading as you wash it.

But, unfortunately, you won’t find this beauty on PriceGrabber just yet because it’s so new. I thought it would be good to bring it to your attention none the less. Remember where you read about it!!