Technofile: Need a new mouse, but one that works on the go? Logitech has introduced the V450 Laser Cordless Mouse, aimed at laptop users.
Available in silver or black, it promises one year of battery life on two AA batteries. It's also Mac and Windows-compatible.
•The latest iPod nano competitor is the mobiBLU US2, which is even thinner than the nano. Coming with one, two or four gigabyte 4GB varieties of flash memory, the 1.5-inch colour screen also supports video and photos. No pricing as yet, as this is still to hit our shores from its core Asian market.
•The FlashPhone F4K is a VoIP internet phone which handily incorporates Bluetooth to make it wireless. The F4K can make and receive voice calls over Skype, MSN, Google Talk, Xten, SIP Phone and more. Keep an eye out for lots of similar VoIP phones coming out in the near future.
•These days if you're in business, then you are almost certain to be using Microsoft Office products. This can be a double-edged sword.
Although powerful, the bloated software can be unwieldy - and after 15 years I still only use the spellchecker on Word, even though the software is about 10,000 times bigger. However, we are being promised more productive software, as next year it unveils the Office System 2007. The combination of hardware and software will offer VoIP calling, videoconferencing, and instant messaging across a number of existing applications, mostly in the Office Communicator 2007, which will be a desktop system and have a web and mobile version .
But perhaps the coolest application is Live Meeting's RoundTable tool, which employs a 360-degree camera to allow you to see everyone in the room at once.
•Feeling good about your iPod? Well perhaps you should spare a thought for how they are made. Newspaper reports of appalling working conditions in some of the Chinese factories which make the music player are reportedly being investigated by Apple. One plant housed 200,000 mainly female workers who earn as little as €39 per month, according to a report in the UK's Mail on Sunday.
However, it's worth remembering that Apple is just one company among thousands which use this kind of factory to manufacture the electronic products.
•Casio's new Exilim EX-S600D digital camera now comes with DivX compatibility. So what? Well, the DivX codec allows you to squeeze an hour of video recording time onto a 1GB card, along with the usual features of this 6 megapixel camera.
•Bluetrek's Serenity is wireless security for your gadgets. Fix the supplied electronic tags onto you prized possessions and a base station watches up to three tags simultaneously. If the tags move outside a set distance, the base sounds an alarm. Available from July for around €98.
•Limerick's MagneticTime.com has a new product that converts Outlook and Word documents into MP3 files that are read out by human sounding digital voices. Possibly a useful tool for digest documents while commuting, or if you would rather "listen" to Technofile.
