As if Google hadn’t created enough products recently, this is the announcement of the next addition to Google’s portfolio – Google TV.

Unfortunately they aren’t making their own TV channel (Now that would be funny) or their own TVs. It’s a new idea which attempts to bring the internet to your TV. Google aren’t working on their own on this though, they’ve managed to get giants Intel and Sony on their side and now all 3 companies are working on this project.

So far, a set-top box prototype has been produced – But it has been rumoured that their technology could actually be implemented directly into TVs as well as Blu-Ray players. This would be helped by Sony, a large producer of TVs, who obviously could easily implement it straight into their products.

The idea of Google TV is that it will help users to watch their ordinary TV channels as well as have better access to the internet, search, social networking, YouTube and online games.  Playing online games directly on your TV, how will that work? Well it is also rumoured that Logitech, another large company, is working on producing a remote control as well as a small keyboard for the device. This will allow users to interact with their TV – So if they wish to complete tasks such as watching YouTube videos or browsing the internet, they no longer need to go to their computers!

It has so far been in development for a few months, but has been kept quite secretive. It seems Google wants to bring as many people into the internet as possible so they can fill the internet with their advertising system, which as a lot of us know, generates billions of dollars worth of revenue for Google every year. They’re a very successful company and are well-known for producing high quality products and services. For this reason, you can almost guarantee that Google TV will be a great new product.

Nobody is yet sure on when Google TV could be available to the general public. Nobody is yet sure whether it will be available internationally either, it may unfortunately be only available to the United States like some of Google’s other products. We just have to wait for more official announcements from Google to find out.

When I first found out about this, I thought it was some sort of joke – But apparently it isn’t. Researchers have found a way to lip-read which could be implemented into mobile phones in the future. What this means is that you could have a phone conversation with someone, as normal, but without making any sound at all!

Let’s take a look at some of the science behind it. Basically, the technology measures small electrical signals which are produced by the muscles during speech. It can then work out what the person was trying to say, even if it couldn’t be heard through a normal phone conversation, and then produce a synthesised version of it. This new technology was announced in a German electronics fair earlier on this week, Cebit.

One of the main people behind it, Professor Tanja Shultz, said that the inspiration behind this was that she was fed up with people chatting on their mobile phones on the trains, which I suppose is a good point. Most people will have come across this at some point in time.

Of course this is only in the testing stage so far and isn’t ready for the mass market. Currently, to use this technology, nine electrodes need to stuck to the user’s face. Not the nicest thing to do, really. But Processor Tanja Shultz did say that in future it could be implented into mobile phones without needing these electrodes.

Other ideas that were mentioned was that a person who had lost their voice could use it to talk to people or this technology could even provide instant language translation, where a user first lip-talks into the phone, the message is translated and then played back to the other person. In the future, this could be built further and further to something truly amazing. We just have to wait to see what happens with it.

Samsung seem to be trying their best to build the best technology in the phone market that consumers want to buy. They’ve been trying various different platforms on their phones including Windows Mobile, Symbian and Vodafone 360. This time, on their new phone the Samsung Galaxy Portal, they’re using Google Android as the platform. Let’s look into this phone a bit more.

The phone allows the use of a MicroSD card to maximise the storage capacity – Which is a good job actually because the phone onlt has a mere 180MB of internal storage. Compared to most smartphones on the market today, this is really low. Phones such as the iPhone, leading the market, have an 8GB storage allowance.

The screen size isn’t too bad, though. With a display of 3.2 inch, it doesn’t look too bad except for the fact that Samsung have downgraded the quality a little – They’ve moved to TFT technology rather than OLED which they’ve used in the past. This means the colours don’t show as nicely and the screen is more difficult to see in the sunlight. This is just one of the main ways Samsung have managed to cut the costs down on their Galaxy Portal phone.

The phone also has a 3.2 megapixel camera. Again, Samsung’s cost-cutting measures can definitely be seen – Although the quality of the images aren’t too bad, the quality of them just isn’t the same as we’ve seen in the past from other Samsung phones. Photos do look quite grainy in places and not as vibrant as you would expect.

Samsung have however not downgraded everything from previous phones. In the Samsung Galaxy phone, a processor running at 528MHz was used which meant that sometimes the phone could be quite slow. In the Samsung Galaxy Portal, though, they’ve upgraded this to an 800MHz, making the phone much more usable and quicker.

In conclusion, if you’re looking for a decent, usable phone running Google Android, you may want to try out the Samsung Galaxy Portal. Due to certain features being downgraded slightly, I believe you can get this phone for just £20 a month on a contract, which really isn’t bad at all. It all depends on how important a good quality camera, a decent display and a big storage capacity is when you’re using your mobile phone.

After being released in the United States for quite a while now, Google have announced the launching of their Google Nexus One phone to be in April, for the United Kingdom. It will not be on sale in the average retail shops however – It’s only on sale online through the Google website, which you can find at Google.com/phone.

No tariff has been announced, nor the idea of a pay-as-you-go model, but the Nexus One will start off on the network Vodafone in the United Kingdom, possibly moving out to other networks in the future. It is expected that the pricing of the Nexus One will be pretty similar to the pricing of the iPhone to try and compete.

Vodafone apparently wanted a UK launch in March, but now both parties have settled for the release in April to give enough time for everything to be prepared and ready for release.

It was a very interesting idea to make the phone only purchasable online. It means that they’re probably limiting their sales to start with as most users tend to prefer to buy mobile phones in shops instead of online. It also means they’re heavily relying on word of mouth to promote their Nexus One phone. They may find it quite difficult to compete with Apple’s iPhone, considering the huge marketing campaign completed by Apple. It’s going to be interesting to see how Google are going to market this phone in the United Kingdom – Are they going to start doing the TV advertisements like Apple do, or are they just going to hope that their phone advertises itself virally?

Personally, I will look at the Google Nexus One and consider buying it. However, I’m currently very content with my iPhone, and many users like myself may find it quite difficult to make the switch from the familiar iPhone over to a new phone like the Nexus One.

In this post, I thought I’d just talk about some of the iPhone apps I currently have on my iPhone, and why you should use them too.

The most-used app I have is probably TVGuide. This is a great little app. I can’t quite remember if it’s free or not (It’s been a long time since I first put it onto my iPhone). As the name of it says, it basically gives you the latest TV guide for many different channels – You can even select the channels that you want to see a TV guide for. When you start the app, you have to wait for the data to be downloaded to the iPhone (Which basically depends on if you’re using WiFi or 3G, normally doesn’t take long). If you watch TV often, then this could be a great application for you, which is well-worth using.

Another great app to use is Palringo. This is an iPhone instant messenger client – Which supports many different services, including MSN and Yahoo Messenger. It’s completely free and works perfectly. You stay logged in when you close the application too (You sign out once you use the sign out feature in the app) which enables your contacts to message you even when you aren’t using the app. This is a great way to contact people on the move, for free. It would be great if they added the feature to change your display picture though, which is probably the only downside of this.

The third app to use is Sky News. If you’re interested in staying up to date with the news, this is a great and quick way to find out what’s happening. The application runs quick and is very simple to use – Simply select the headline that interests you and immediately the full story is displayed. Unlike quite a lot of apps, it runs very quick even when you’re using 3G networking, which means that you’ll be able to check the news anywhere with great speed. I use this often.

The final application to use is Twitterific. Although I don’t use Twitter that much, I still have this app and use it when I want to check Twitter. It’s quick and is full of great features, allowing to browse your friends’ tweets as well as make your own tweets directly from your iPhone. It’s also very easy to check your direct messages. There are many different Twitter clients for the iPhone but, in my opinion, Twitterific is probably the best one to use.

In conclusion, these are the four main iPhone applications that I use. I do have other apps on my iPhone, so I might make another post about applications sometime in the future.