The e-reader market is starting to take off, with devices from Sony giving the Amazon Kindle a run for its money (not to mention a whole slew of more esoteric devices)

The QUE reader from Plastic Logic will be added to the mix in January at CES. It’s a slimline 8.5”x11” (US Letter) sized reader made from shatterproof plastic with Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. Uniquely, it will support “business” file formats (Word, PowerPoint, PDF and Excel) and includes a touchscreen for interacting with them.

Price and full specifications are not yet available.

If you’re concerned about water use in the home, power showers are a good place to start looking for savings. The EcoCamel shower head restricts the flow of water from the shower to 7 litres/minute - around half the flow of a decent power shower – which should result in significant saving if you use the shower a lot.

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Tag Heuer (famous for luxury fashion watches) have entered the luxury mobile phone market with the Meridiist, a £2600 chunk of unashamed electronic excess. The specs aren’t anything to write home about in these days of 8 megapixel, GPS enabled smartphones but somehow I don’t think that’s the point.

Unlike the B&O Serene, Tag have followed a fairly conventional design so this one looks like something I’d actually want to be seen using.

You can see some photos over at Stuff.TV – as you’d expect, the phone looks exceptional and has a wealth of timekeeping functions.

Tag are running a competition to win a personalised Meridiist of your very own at Meridiist-phone.com – enter your email, watch an aspirational video and wait for the draw on November 2nd.

The LG BL-40 Chocolate has caused quite a buzz with it’s sleek lines and widescreen form factor. I’ve been using one for a week now so it’s time to give some thoughts…

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Battersea power station is the venue for the London Freeze snow sports and music festival taking place at the end of the month - for a long weekend the building will be transformed into a giant indoor ski resort featuring bars, music and some extreme snow sports like the UK leg of the LG Snowboard world cup. Or, if you like your sports more virtual you can try your hand at the new Sean White snowboarding game on the Wii.

We’re giving away a pair of tickets to the event and all you have to do is answer this simple question:

How many meters long is the ski run? (hint)

Send your answers to [email protected] – we’ll be pulling names out of a hat at 6PM next Wednesday (14th October).

Good luck!

The newly launched Sony VAIO X series notebook should appeal to the “small and light” business travel market. Weighing in at under a kilo it boasts the title of “Worlds lightest laptop” (amongst models with comparable screen sizes).

Clearly ignoring any talk of a recession, Sony are targeting this machine at the premium market – the spec sheet includes:

• Carbon-fibre chassis
• LED backlit screen
• Integrated 3G
• Wireless a/b/g/n
• Integrated webcam
• Solid state drive

Taking a leaf out of Apple’s book the gesture pad is multi-touch enabled and Sony boast an impressive 8 hour battery life.

We don’t have any prices yet but if it’s anything like the other object of desire in the VAIO stable (the Z series) you’d better start saving now…

I’ve just received a BL40 Chocolate to play with – this is the latest in LG’s “Black Label” series of fashion phones. I’ll be making some notes on usability over the next few weeks, but here’s some unboxing photos and first impressions. (click on a photo for the larger version)

Sliding the outside cover away reveals an inner box with a magnetic closing flap – nice touch!

The phone in its protective foam packing. The first thing you notice is the odd dimensions, it seems much longer than a normal phone due to the 4” wide screen.

The second thing I noticed was the inclusion of a standard MicroUSB plug for charging – this will soon become ubiquitous as the big manufacturers have all agreed to adopt this style of adapter next year but it’s nice to see companies getting in early.

It’s a small point but one worth mentioning – a standard 3.5mm headphone jack makes it a usable multimedia device without any additional cable hassle (HTC are you listening?)

Physically the gloss black finish gives the BL40 a high quality look. Flipping the phone into landscape mode automatically changes the on-screen keyboard from a phone keypad style to a QWERTY layout.

That’s it for now – I did say it was a first look! A more detailed review will follow when I’ve had more time with it, but I’ll leave you with the headline specifications:

• 345*800 pixel display (WVGA resolution, multi-touch)
• Wifi (b/g)
• Bluetooth
• 3G, Quad band GSM, HSDPA 7.2mbps, GPRS, EDGE
• 5MP camera, LED flash
• 1.1GB internal memory, MicroSDHC expansion
• A-GPS
• FM Radio
• DivX video playback

Back in March I enthusiastically extolled the virtues of my original Sennheiser CX300 in ear headphones. This outburst was brought on by the release of Sennheiser’s CX300 II Precision in ear headphones.

At the time I hadn’t tried a pair but after seeing them on sale for £13.99 from both www.7dayshop.com and www.play.com I took the plunge. These are in fact the Eco version which simply means that they are packaged in recycled cardboard rather than the traditional, impossible to get into, plastic.

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… but it’s listed on Firebox and it’s not April so it looks like the stuff really does exist. The finest food scientists mankind has to offer have finally come up with the condiment to end them all:

Vegetarian-friendly spreadable bacon.

Words fail me. I’d love to be dismissive but since I’ve just ordered a jar that would be kind of hypocritical!

[Edit: Having now tried it, I can say it tastes more "smokey" than "bacon" to me - reminds me of Frazzles!]

It might be time to upgrade my trusty Squeezebox. A recently announced addition to Logitech’s range of networked music players is the new Squeezebox Touch.

It has the same core capabilities of the squeezebox line (great sound quality and a very hackable server component) but adds a 4.3” touchscreen. This displays album art and details about the currently playing music, as well as allowing direct control with the touch interface.

Listed on the Logitech website at £259 it directly replaces the old Squeezebox model.