We reported yesterday how we were going to the Best of Stuff Gadget Show. Well I’m pleased to say the organisers have given us 10 complimentary tickets to give away to our readers.

The tickets are for this Saturday (5th November 2005), so if you fancy a day out in London and a chance to see a load of the latest and coolest gadgets, then be sure to get in touch.

In order to get a free ticket, leave a comment to this post explaining why you want to go to The Best of Stuff Show. We will send out tickets to the posters of the most amusing and original comments. The closing date for ticket requests is 3PM (GMT) Thursday 3rd November, so that we can catch the last post.

Good luck.

Guess where we’re going

After enjoying the Ideal Home show last month I was delighted to find another much more gadget orientated show is opening this Friday. The Best of Stuff is an annual show where various companies showing off their latest gadgets (just before Christmas coincidentally) .

This year promises to be something special with stands from the vendors like Archos, Creative, Gizmondo, I-Deck, JVC, Sharp Electronics, Q-Be, Nokia, Siemens Mobile, Philips, Sky, iriver and more.

You can get tickets from the Best of Stuff site and included in the price are free tickets to the What Hi-Fi Show

For those who can’t attend you can be confident that we will be reporting on all the best stuff we find here on CG.

A quick note for any developers out there: Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Sever 2005 have finally gone gold, meaning that the code has been finalised and the master CDs have been sent off for pressing.

MSDN subscribers can download the CD images now, the rest of us will have to wait until November 7.

(Via Microsoft Watch)

If the rumours are to be believed Google are readying another weapon in the quest to assimilate the entire internet. Google Base looks like a sort of information free-for-all where you can put “stuff”, tag it, and get it indexed.

Ars Technica have a more coherent and detailed look at the idea.

Gizmondo have been burning VC for a while now in the UK with a shop (”boutique?”) in London’s Regent street (I’d love to know what the rent on that is). I do have a soft spot for them – you have to admire any company that tries go against Sony and Nintendo with a new hand held games console.

Admiration doesn’t pay the bills though and somehow I suspect they may have been a tad optimistic in trying to poach gamers away from the PSP et.al, which is why they’ve repositioned the device as a personal navigator and started pushing the GPS functionality a little harder.

They launched in the US yesterday with an SRP of $229. Actually you get a lot for your money – you get a games console, media player, GPS and GPRS/GSM device. Unfortunately you don’t get Wifi which is fast becoming a desirable feature in mobile electronics.

More details and pictures on the gizmondo website.

[edit: I've just looked on their shop and although the device does have an embedded GPS, the mapping software will set you back an extra 250 bucks which could start to hurt. For once we get a better deal in the UK - we can pick up the unit+navigiation package for 200 quid - about $350]

If there was ever “One gadget to bind them” this might well be it. A tablet PC with a decent screen (8.4″), browser, email client, movie and video players etc plus WiFi, bluetooth AND to top it all an infra red blaster that can be programmed as a learning remote.

It looks like it’s got a small but useable keyboard over on the left panel with a number pad on the right.

They also claim it’s “water resistant”. I don’t know what to make of that – I’m not sure I’d take my expensive piece of electronic equipment waterskiing! Although given it’s intended use it’s probably quite likely that it will have beer or coffee spilled on it at some point so that feature could come in handy.

And eHomeUpgrade are reporting that they’ve just started selling them in Best Buy for you lucky guys who live in the US and have 850 bucks to spend (or don’t have the money but just want to check it out anyway)

More specifications here

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, Apple unveiled a new iPod model yesterday which will play videos. Seems like every product launch for the last year or so has been awash with rumours of such a beast, I guess they had to be right some time! It comes in black too – about time!

My currently uncharitable feelings towards Apple notwithstanding (my 4G iPod drive died last week, about a month or so out of guarantee) I still don’t see the point. I guess that everyone else’s hard drive player with colour screen plays video so they had to jump on the bandwagon but for me it’s not a huge selling point. As a driver I can’t exactly watch an episode of “Lost” on the way into work and I’m not sure I’d want to on a 2 inch screen either! And as for paying for music video downloads….

The new G5 looks cool though, proving that at least they haven’t lost their sense of style!

More details on the Apple site.

To meet the demand of silent PC for users, Shuttle has launched a new product that can be redefined as a workstation, a home server or a home theater system. With the XPC SD11 G5, Shuttle has created a silent PC system that meets the price and technical simplicity of the mainstream market demand.

Offering several benefits over standard PC system, Shuttle designers have only one thing in mind, and that is KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). They aimed to customise a reasonable affordable PC for the silence world, yet equipped with optimum functionality. Utilizing a single fan design coupled with Shuttle’s ICE heat-pipe technology, the system offers efficient cooling of internal components with little cost in noise. The whole system is powered by Shuttle’s noiseless 220W external Silent X power supply, keeping noise level to a minimum.

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