David George-Cosh
Sun

TORONTO — Investors sent Research in Motion Ltd. stock to a record high Tuesday — at one point making it Canada’s most valuable company — after it revealed it had partnered with telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent to sell BlackBerrys in China.

RIM’s stock surged to $120.42 on the TSX, up 8.2 per cent, after the announcement that the 8700 BlackBerry model would be distributed in the booming Chinese market later this year. No specific date was given for distribution.

Peter Misek, Canaccord Adams’s senior technology analyst, said RIM’s developments in China are just the beginning of what could be a banner year for the Waterloo, Ont.-based company.

“This is going to be the biggest company in Canada,” said Misek, who rates RIM a “buy.” “The company is a world beater and its technology is second to none.

“It’s got an excellent execution engine and tremendous earnings growth. This is just step one for RIM in China. They’re going to have additional partnerships, additional devices, additional services.”

China poses a huge opportunity for RIM. The country is relatively untapped in terms of wireless-device penetration. More than 10 million workers are employed in Fortune 1000 firms and about 400 million middle-class residents are flush with disposable income in a culture that embraces new technology.

However, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky said Tuesday’s market reaction was ahead of itself and valuing RIM mostly on its long-term prospects rather than what he called “modest traction in the short term.” He rated the stock as an “outperform.”

Still, the announcement drove RIM’s market capitalization to a peak of $69.2 billion, surpassing Royal Bank of Canada as the country’s most valuable company for much of the afternoon.

RIM’s shares are the biggest success story on the TSX, rising 138 per cent this year and more than twentyfold over the past five years.

Concern over RIM’s entering the risky Chinese market, said Misek, should be calmed with its decision to partner with Alcatel-Lucent, which has strong roots in China.

“Alcatel-Lucent has been … in China a lot longer than RIM has, for about the past 25 years,” he said. “You have to have senior politburo contacts in order to do business in China in the scale that they’re looking at.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Gillian Shaw
Sun

online : HAVE YOU EVER MADE A COLLEAGUE MAD AT YOU BECAUSE YOUR E-MAIL READ LIKE THIS?

Or maybe your 😉 was misconstrued as a :'(.

Or you’ve fired off an e-mail to a colleague in a far-flung city and then spent the next three hours trying to follow up by phone to make sure it was read and understood.

If so, you’re not alone.

Almost 40 per cent of Canadians have run into a work problem that arose from an e-mail being misinterpreted.

Two-thirds of Canadians worry their e-mail may be misinterpreted and they worry about how the recipients will react. Some 62 per cent prefer to use the phone or talk in person for business communication.

The figures are from a survey done by the Strategic Counsel for Microsoft Canada which is hoping to solve some of those e-mail concerns with the launch this week of a new suite of communications software led by Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and the user’s software, Microsoft Office Communicator.

Designed to put an end to telephone tag and e-mail mayhem, the software borrows lessons from instant messaging and lets users pinpoint the availability of people they want to reach. A simple icon can let them know whether someone is available at the office or on their cellphone to take a call, whether they’re in a ‘do not disturb’ meeting or how best to reach them.

The survey shows that while more than a quarter of Canadians use e-mail to conduct business, it is not always the most efficient way to communicate.

Almost a third of people say they have recalled an e-mail because of worries that the tone or intent may be misinterpreted by the receiver. And they are so concerned that 83 per cent of Canadians re-read their e-mails before they hit the send button to make sure they are not conveying the wrong message.

Re-reading, recalling and agonizing over e-mail can swallow up valuable time.

According to the survey, 36 per cent of people spend more than 30 minutes a day crafting e-mails before sending.

More than a third of Canadians feel e-mail is ineffective in conveying intent, tone and emotional context. So almost 60 per cent use capital letters and emoticons — groups of punctuation marks intended to convey everything from a wink to tears — in work e-mails to try and add the sense of emotion and the intent of what they are trying to get across.

“We all have had experiences where e-mails have been misinterpreted,” said Bryan Rusche, unified communications and collaboration product manager for Microsoft Canada.

Rusche said communications are at crossroads right now and business people are beginning to realize the phone is often the best way to communicate some messages.

“It starts to paint a picture that says e-mail is great for a lot of different things but not necessarily every communication is right for e-mail,” he said.

The problem becomes reaching the person on the phone.

“It is difficult to know if a person when you reach out to make a call, or to e-mail them, is going to be available,” said Rusche.

The key capability in the new communications software is something Microsoft refers to as ‘presence,’ said Rusche.

Drawing on what is already familiar to users of instant messaging, the software displays little icons to show the person’s status — whether they’re away, available or how they can be reached.

“We have the ability to say whether we are available to accept a communication,” said Rusche.

While the software, which pulls information from a variety of sources — including your calendar — may seem a little invasive of privacy, Rusche said control is in the hands of the users. They can choose how they want people to communicate with them or if they don’t want to be reached at all.

“When we talk about these types of technologies some people feel it is an invasion of privacy potentially,” said Rusche. “But you also have the ability to present how you want to be communicated.

“When I am in a presentation, I can set it to ‘do not disturb’ so I don’t have instant messages popping up on my screen when I am presenting.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Sun

Technology professionals, take heart. You can expect an average 3.7-per-cent pay increase next year, according to a national survey by Robert Half Technology. Workers most in demand — project managers, applications and Web developers, network managers and technical support — will do much better with increases as high as 7.6 per cent. That places their wages between $87,000 and $110,750 annually.

Other information technology groups expected to see increases above the average are:

– Software developers with a predicted 5.6-per-cent wage increase to a range of $55,000 to $85,250 a year.

– Help-desk professionals with an increase of 4.6 per cent, bring starting salaries between $32,000 and $41,750 annually, on average.

– E-mail and related messaging administrators should see starting salaries increase 6.1 per cent, to a range of $51,000 to $65,750 annually.

– Project managers and senior consultants can expect base compensation in the range of $77,250 to $113,750, a gain of 6.7 per cent over 2007.

– Network architect base pay should rise 5.8 per cent next year, to a range of $75,000 to $101,750.

– Business systems analysts will get a 4.5-per-cent increase on average to a range of $64,000 to $87,500.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

MATTHEW NEWMAN
Sun

BRUSS E L S , B elgium— Microsoft Corp., whose software powers about 95 per cent of the world’s personal computers, gave in to European Union demands that it help competitors connect to the Windows operating system.

Microsoft agreed to license proprietary information on how Windows shares files and printers to end three years of legal wrangling over a 2004 antitrust order. The accord will help Red Hat Inc., the world’s biggest seller of Linux systems, and Sun Microsystems Inc. offer replacements for Windows.

“ These changes in Microsoft’s practices will profoundly affect software industries,” European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes told reporters in Brussels Monday. “ I sincerely hope that we can just close this dark chapter of our relationship.”

Th e a c co rd f u r t h e r s Microsoft’s bid to resolve legal disputes worldwide that have been weighing on its shares. The company last week dropped its appeal of an antitrust decision in South Korea and Monday said it won’t challenge a court decision last month upholding the EU decision. It’s also seeking to end five years of U. S. court supervision for illegally protecting its near- monopoly on PC software.

Under the 2004 decision, Microsoft had to disclose information to rivals and sell a version of Windows without a built- in video and audio player. The company resisted licensing data to open- source developers, who give away the software’s source code, or the underlying instructions, because it would violate trade secrets and patents.

Kroes said open- source products are “ virtually the only alternative” to Microsoft, which has more than 70 per cent market share for workgroup server software. Microsoft got $ 4.5 billion in sales from its Windows Server software in its most recent fiscal year. Since 2002, the product’s sales have grown at an annual rate of 13 per cent, on average.

The agreement “ marks an important milestone” in the EU’s efforts to address Microsoft’s “ continuing abuse of its dominant position,” Thomas Vinje, a lawyer at Clifford Chance in Brussels who represents the European Committee for Interoperability Systems, which includes International Business Machines Corp. and Oracle Corp.

Gillian Shaw
Sun

HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Centre, $270

This portable compact printer packs a lot of fun into photo printing, with a seven-inch (18 cm) touchscreen and stylus that lets you play before you print. You can edit photos, design greeting cards, and add graphics, captions and other personalized touches right on the touch screen. Also remove red-eye and enhance photos before you print. And our personal favourite, slim down your subjects before you print — now there’s a present that should win points with your mother-in-law. Kids will also love creating photo projects right on the screen. A portable printer with a distinctive egg-shape that sets it apart from the usual models, it produces 4-by-6 and 5-by-7 prints. HP’s lower-priced compact photo printer, the A626, lists at $200 and comes with a 4.8-inch (12-cm) touchscreen.

Cavius Travel Alarm, $70

palm-size gadget that warns you of everything from luggage thieves to smoke. An ear-splitting 130 decibels should shoo away would-be robbers if they make a grab for your luggage or laptop bag. You can also set off the personal alarm manually by hitting the red button on the Cavius. Sleep easy with it propped up as a door alarm and doubling as a smoke detector. The Cavius comes from New Zealand’s Travelsafe Security Products. Online at www.cavius.com.

Timex iControl Watch, $150

Track your workouts and run your iPod at the same time with the latest addition to Timex’s Ironman collection. Its wireless iPod controls let you play-pause, turn the volume up or down and track forward and back. It has a 50-lap memory recall chronograph, training log to store your workout with date, best lap and average lap. It has a multi-mode countdown timer and two interval timers for speed and endurance training. Combine that with three customizable alarms for daily, weekday and weekend seconds and a three-year battery life and you should be fit in no time. Comes in black/silver, black, blue and pink.

Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Speakers MD-5W, $170

Crank out the music from your MP3 players or Bluetooth stereo-enabled mobile phone with these portable speakers. Hooked up, they can also be used to answer, end and redial calls. Plug into power with Nokia’s travel charger AC-4 or run it on four AA batteries.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Province

The battle is on for unified communications, the new trend in office technology that promises to erase the boundaries between the computer and the telephone.

Equipment and software vendors are pushing to convince companies that the future of the workplace is getting voice messages in an e-mail program and listening to e-mails on a cellphone.

And now that Microsoft Corp. has broken into the telephone market, the economics of office communications are expected to change.

Microsoft has launched its Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, marking its end as a pure-play IT vendor.

The grand dream of unified communications is to eradicate dead time in a world where a one-hour delay in replying is considered poor business etiquette. That means that your computer will know whether you’re at your desk and forward your e-mails and office calls to your mobile.

It means you can pull up your address book and see if one of your contacts is at his or her desk. And if so, you can send her or him an instant message, or e-mail a file, or even start a conference call over the Internet.

And all this without having to rip out cables and install huge back-end systems. It all works through software lying atop the Internet.

“The IT and telecom worlds used to be well-defined, distinct markets,” said Lawrence Surtees of research firm IDC Canada.

“This convergence is grounds for greater competition for established players on both sides.”

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Leslie Cauley
USA Today

Ultra-hip fashion designer Nanette Lepore, famous for her saucy minis and sky-high platform shoes, has added one more item to her “It” list this fall: a hot new wireless technology.

Her fashion house recently began using an advanced wireless technology called “WiMax” in two Manhattan offices. The service by Towerstream provides fast broadband and Internet phone calling for 110 users.

In fashion terms, the move to WiMax was, well, seamless.

“It’s completely transparent to the user,” says network manager Jose Cruz. “People don’t know they’re getting it.”

Around the globe, there is growing support for WiMax — short for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access.

It can be used for “fixed” office solutions, a la Lepore, but what’s really building interest is its potential for high-speed data surfing on the go via wireless phones and other WiMax-enabled devices.

Unlike Wi-Fi wireless technology, which is limited to small hot spots such as Starbucks  or the home, WiMax can cover several miles or more. Proponents — including some heavyweights such as Sprint  and Motorola— say a network of WiMax towers could make the USA one huge hot spot.

The rush to embrace WiMax is being driven by advances in technology, a shifting competitive landscape and consumers’ ever-expanding appetite for broadband wherever they are.

Also adding impetus: The Federal Communications Commission is urging companies to deploy WiMax quickly to expand mobile broadband options for consumers.

WiMax technology was developed for mobile data transmission, but it’s also ideal for Internet phone service. That makes WiMax exciting as a consumer product — and threatening to traditional wireless carriers, says Clearwire  CEO Ben Wolff. The company, backed by wireless pioneer Craig McCaw, is working with Sprint to build a national mobile WiMax network.

“It will do for the U.S. consumer what we did for the U.S. consumer 20 years ago when we came out with cellular,” Wolff says. By enabling people to surf the Internet anytime, anywhere, on any device, it “will be as game-changing as when you no longer required people to be tethered to a 6-foot cord to make a phone call.”

Unlike Wi-Fi, which is unlicensed, more-powerful WiMax uses airwaves that require a government license — the same as cellphone service.

Not surprisingly, carriers that have WiMax licenses, such as Clearwire, are bullish on its future. Those that don’t, including companies that want to offer mobile broadband via cellphone networks, are quick to dismiss it as a fad.

WiMax is a workhorse, so it can support lots of high-bandwidth customers with ease. That translates into fast broadband at cheaper prices. Cruz says his Internet and phone bills are 50% to 75% cheaper than what he used to pay Verizon.

As for performance, Cruz is paying Towerstream  for a 3-megabit connection in both directions, but he says speeds have hit 10 megabits. He hopes in time to adopt mobile WiMax for Nanette Lepore’s international sales force. “Our idea is to bring in the best technology for our time to provide us with the best bang for the buck.”

On the move

While “fixed” WiMax has proved useful, mobile WiMax is relatively new — and controversial. Critics say it offers few advantages over conventional wireless broadband options.

The biggest WiMax proponent in the USA is Sprint, the No. 3 wireless carrier. In addition to Clearwire, it’s working with a stable of wireless allies — Motorola, Samsung, Nortel  and Intel  among them — to push mobile WiMax globally.

Atish Gude, Sprint’s senior vice president of mobile broadband, says the growing popularity of Wi-Fi only underscores Sprint’s belief that broadband users want to take the Internet with them on the road. Mobile WiMax won’t disappoint, he promises.

“It will really be like the broadband that we experience today” with DSL or cable modems, Gude says. “It will be the real Internet.”

Motorola CEO Ed Zander predicts WiMax will take off like a shot when WiMax-enabled devices powered by Intel chips — laptops, handhelds, smart-phones and more — hit the market next year.

“WiMax could be even bigger and more dramatic than the original Internet,” he says, adding: “We’re doubling down and betting the farm” on WiMax.

Smiling users?

Consumers could be the big winners, says Moe Tanabian, a principal at IBB Consulting in Princeton, N.J. Because WiMax is efficient, he thinks retail prices for consumers will be cheap compared with today’s cell-based wireless broadband.

Over time, he says, WiMax will deliver Internet speeds up to 100 megabits per second on the downlink path and 10 megabits on the uplink. “That happens around 2012.”

That remains conjecture, however. To prove their case, WiMax supporters need a real network with real customers.

Cut to Sprint and Clearwire. Their planned nationwide network has Clearwire focusing on smaller markets and Sprint tackling big cities. To complete the job, they’ll have to install mobile WiMax gear at more than 60,000 cellphone sites across the USA.

Sprint has committed $5 billion, but allows that the final tab will be a lot more. Its first markets — Chicago and Washington, D.C. — are expected to go live in the spring.

Gude says consumers are in for a few nice surprises — such as no service contracts. Customers also will be allowed to use any WiMax device or software. “We’ll take anybody.” That’s a big departure from typical cellphone businesses, which put strict limitations on devices and software.

Once mobile WiMax takes off, Sprint thinks cellphone carriers will be forced to change their ways. “The pressure will come from customers,” Gude says.

Other viewpoints

Not surprisingly, wireless companies that don’t own oodles of WiMax spectrum, as Sprint does, have a different view.

AT&T, the largest U.S. cellphone company, favors cell-based HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) technology for offering mobile broadband.

Kris Rinne, an AT&T senior vice president, acknowledges that her company has few WiMax licenses, but says that’s not the issue. “We view WiMax as very suitable for fixed” locations, she says. For mobile wireless, however, “HSPA is the right choice.”

For Rinne, it all comes down to the numbers. While mobile WiMax is in development, HSPA is based on a wireless standard called GSM that is already used by 85% of the world’s mobile phone population. In addition, “more than 180 operators worldwide already use HSPA.”

Her point: WiMax as a standard will have a hard time getting global traction. “Lots of times, a technology has some great aspects, but it gets overhyped in terms of how it will develop,” Rinne says.

HSPA supporter Hakan Eriksson, chief technology officer of Swedish equipment giant Ericsson, agrees. “WiMax technology is not offering anything in terms of performance that HSPA is not already offering.”

To be sure, mobile WiMax is in the early stages of development, but IBB Consulting says it’s poised for fast growth. By 2012, IBB predicts, it will have 45 million subscribers in North America.

Even so, it would still have a long way to go to catch HSPA, which already claims more than 300 million users worldwide.

While HSPA can leverage off its global audience, “WiMax has to start from scratch,” Eriksson says.

Confident supporters

Motorola CEO Zander says he expects such criticism. “IBM said the same thing about mainframes” never being overtaken by PCs, he chides.

“Incumbents,” he adds, letting the word hang in the air for a moment, “you know how they are.”

As any technology buff knows, mainframe computers have survived for some uses, but PCs now rule the world. Therein, Zander says, lies a Golden Rule of business: “Don’t bet against technology.”

“If there is something that is compelling to people, it will happen,” says Zander, who spent years in the trenches of Silicon Valley before jumping to Motorola. “Incumbents might wind up doing it, or new entrants might wind up doing it, but it will happen.”

Peter MacKinnon, general manager of WiMax for Nortel, seconds that notion. While HSPA is strong, he says, history has shown that clever innovation can — and often does — trump the status quo. Witness the death of eight-track tapes, VCRs and pay phones.

“The WiMax industry is here; it’s going to happen,” says MacKinnon. “We need to think about what we’re doing with our nice, comfortable (wireless) world we live in, because it’s about to be shaken.”

 

Jefferson Graham
USA Today

LOS ANGELES — A Leopard is set to join the Apple family, the latest in a string of animal-named products aimed at taking a bite out of the competition.

Apple calls Mac OS X Leopard its biggest operating system upgrade ever. At $129, it’s due in stores Oct. 26 and promises 300 new features.

Leopard, which replaces OS X Tiger, arrives as Apple is having a record year. Its stock has doubled in 2007, from about $85 a share in early January to nearly $170 now.

It has sold more than 1 million iPhones, the year’s most hyped and discussed tech product. And Apple’s iPod business remains strong. New iPod units recently introduced include a video-capable Nano, a small media player that is the most popular in the line.

While much of Apple’s attention has been focused on non-computer activities, Leopard is aimed at a core goal: selling more Macintosh computers. The new operating system has loads of new stylistic bells and whistles, with two notables:

•Time Machine automatically backs up files without your involvement and lets you “turn back time” to retrieve a lost file. It’s different from other backup utilities in that with “a couple of setup clicks, you’re done,” says Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller. “Everything is automatic from there.”

•Boot Camp gives you the ability to run Windows on a Mac. All you need to do is buy a copy of Windows software, and you can run both platforms on one machine.

Boot Camp was introduced in early 2006 as beta software that could be accessed from Apple’s website. Apple says it was downloaded 2 million times.

With the release of Leopard, the software will no longer be available as a free download. At any rate, Wolf Bytes analyst Charles Wolf says the broader audience of 100 million shoppers who frequent Apple retail stores will pay closer attention to an operating system feature than a download.

“Most Apple Store visitors are Windows users, and once they see how they can use Windows on a Mac, so many more will be switching,” says Wolf.

Apple’s computer market share is 3% worldwide and 7.8% for the non-business U.S. market, says Roger Kay, an analyst at Endpoint Technologies. “Market share is clearly increasing for Apple. It’s up 50% from the 2% Apple had from 2000 to 2004.”

Kay thinks the idea of millions of Windows computer users switching to Apple with the Leopard release is just not about to happen. “You have to buy Windows, install it and hope it works,” he says. “That’s a cumbersome process.”

Buying Windows XP or Vista will tack $200 onto the price of the Apple computer.

Microsoft launched Vista in February, the latest overhaul of its operating system. It offers advanced multimedia capabilities and improved security but has left some consumers grumbling over upgrade and software incompatibility woes.

Mike McGuire, an analyst at researcher Gartner, says those kinds of issues are rare with Apple operating system upgrades.

“Vista was a whole new platform, while the Mac OS X platform was first rolled out in 2001,” says McGuire. “It’s been revived and enhanced since, but it shares the same core platform, so I don’t expect any upgrade issues.”

While Microsoft says Vista is doing just fine — about 60 million copies have been sold — several computer manufacturers are now offering the previous Windows version, XP, to consumers who prefer it.

“Apple has a real chance to play off Vista unsatisfaction,” says Kay.

The forecast

Analyst Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray doesn’t expect Leopard to have much of an impact on future earnings.

He sees it generating $250 million in revenue for the holiday quarter. Compared with his estimates of $6 billion in total revenue for the September quarter and $8.5 billion for the holiday quarter, he calls Leopard “just a drop in the bucket.”

Still, while iPods and the iPhone have gotten most of the attention, Apple’s computer business is humming. Wolf estimates that when it announces earnings next week, Apple will report more revenue from Macs than iPods.

Apple’s fiscal year ended on Sept. 30. Wolf projects a 30% increase in Mac unit sales to 6.8 million for the year. His revenue projections for the year: $10 billion for computers, vs. $8.3 billion for iPods.

In 2006, iPods outsold Macs, $7.6 billion to $7.3 billion.

Apple’s Schiller says that two-thirds of Apple’s 22 million registered users upgraded to Tiger after it was released.

In black and grey (for men?) or lavender and grey (for women?)

Jim Jamieson
Province

What is it? Boynq Sabre iPod stereo speaker

Price: $99.99

Why you need it: You want to share those same digital tunes you carry around in your iPod.

Why you don’t: A CD player seems so much easier.

Our rating: 3 out of 5

There are so many flavours of iPod speakers out there that it’s hard to maintain an appetite for what’s new in the marketplace.

But Dutch company Boynq seems to have an interesting variation on the theme, with its Sabre — an oddly shaped device that produces decent sound and has some interesting features.

First off, the shape will catch your eye. From the side it looks like one of those weird 19th-century bikes with the huge front wheel and tiny back one.

There is a metal-grilled speaker on each side and a control panel on the front face with a button and three dials surrounding the dock.

The dock accommodates inserts so the Sabre can fit all iPod models. It includes a stereo line in for the iPod Shuffle. On the back there is a dock-connector pass-through port, allowing the device to be used as a computer dock for charging the iPod or data synchronization.

There are line-in and line-out ports, as well as an S-video output. Sadly, there is no battery compartment in the AC-only Sabre, which detracts from the unit’s portability.

Boynq had its own idea of fashion, so the Sabre comes in two colour schemes. The black and grey is presumably for men, while the lavender and grey is for women.

We found the sound quality to be acceptable — especially if you like to turn it loud — but found the buttons on the face to feel a bit flimsy.

Available at Amazon.com and boynq.com.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Sun

XShot, $25

Putting yourself in the picture can require the skill of a contortionist. That or you have to put your prized digital camera in the hands of a passing stranger hoping he’ll take the shot and not your camera. XShot is the answer for the point-and-shoot photographer who doesn’t want to carry around a tripod. A telescopic rod, it connects to any digital camera or hand-held video and stretches almost a metre, getting it far enough away to include as many as five people in the shot. Available online at www.xshotpix.com or by calling 1-866-974-6899.

Belkin n52te gaming keyboard, $80

Belkin is back in the gaming arena with a new hybrid gaming keyboard. The Razer software makes for the personalization of multiple player profiles and Razer Synapse onboard memory enables plug-and-play with no additional software to install. Add to that blue backlighting and other features including 15 fully programmable keys and a programmable eight-way thumb pad with removable joystick. It debuted recently at the World Cyber Games in Seattle with planned release for the U.S., Europe, Australia and Korea set for November. Arrives in Canada as well as Asia and Latin America in February 2008.

Palm Treo 750, from $600 with a two-year term with Rogers Wireless, $250 with a three-year term on select voice and data packages, after rebate

If you’re not partial to Blackberries, check out the latest Treo in Rogers‘ lineup, the 750 smartphone. With Windows Mobile 6 Professional operating platform, it comes with a full QWERTY keyboard, a 240 by 240 pixel colour touch screen and support for Bluetooth stereo headsets. The built-in 128 megabytes of memory can be boosted with memory cards up to four gigabytes.

mStation Orb, $130

There’s an iPod docking station for every décor and mood. This one not only looks good, it was voted “best new product” at Retail Vision, a consumer products unveiling event hosted by Gartner. It has a dedicated subwoofer, it syncs with iTunes and delivers 30 watts of power. Comes with a 10-key remote that allows you to adjust the bass and treble. Available in a range of colours including blue, red, pink, green, silver, black and white. Check for availability at www.mstationaudio.com.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007