After a few IBM staff members were put off SL thanks to too many normal punters approaching them with offers of virtual intimacy, IBM now has its own personal orientation trail away from the prying eyes of the public. Which leaves me thinking "ooo, get you".

Other things they've been mucking about with include, making presentations available in SL for customers and IBM staff, trying out real world stuff (turn on a fan in SL and it turns on in the real world, for example) and a translation service that lets you instantly translate conversations in SL so you can talk to foreign folk without any language barrier.

I'm a bit late with the introductions, but the IBM people doing most of the talking are: Roo Reynolds "metaverse evangelist" which has to be the best job title ever; Rob Smart, "emerging technology specialist"; Holly Stewart "infrastructure architect" and Andy Piper "software services specialist".

The day’s highlight so far was undoubtedly a panel discussion featuring reps from Google (Anil Hansjee, head of European Corporate Development), Yahoo (Jonathan Wolf, Director of Corporate Development) and VCs from Acacia Capital (Ajay Chowdhury) and Index Ventures (Ben Holmes).

The first and arguably most interesting question was ‘Is there any other options for start ups than being bought by Yahoo and Google?’

Well there’s good news if you are beavering away on that killer social networking site or jaw-droopingly good mobile phone applications. Most of the panel agreed that while Yahoo and Google would grab the headlines with big purchases, a host of other players might be shelling out out smaller sums for innovative tech based businesses.

Jessops is making the jump from photography to the wider field of consumer electronics with the launch of Tecno, which promises a range of top brands and quick turnaround of orders.

The new site will sell products including TVs, portable media, sat nav, laptops, PC peripherals and of course, photographic products from brands including Sony, Panasonic, JVC, Apple, Motorola, Olympus, TomTom, Canon and Samsung - around 3,000 products by Spring 2007.

I am sitting in the wonderful IMAX in London's Waterloo - the biggest 3D cinema in Europe. There's no lions leaping out of the screen at me today though. Rather the it is the big beasts of the media world who are very much on message at the Media Tech conference hosted by investment strategists Library House.

We are here with our begging bowls, along with lots of other entrepeneurs, talking to investors, big corporates like Google and Yahoo and other industry types. The session runs all day and we have already heard about the future of mobile and how TV and the internet will converge. Now it is the investors panel with reps from Google, Yahoo and other VCs.

This afternoon we'll get a broad sweep on where technology is going and how it will impact on the media.

The team at Shiny's new Nintendo Wii blog, Wii Wii, are currently brushing down down their sleeping bags and shopping around for large woollen sweaters in time for the big UK Nintendo Wii launch at midnight on 7th December.

Where is it? Well, I'll leave Wii Wii to tell you that, but if you happen to be at the big UK launch, you'll secure yourself a goody bag and meet a few celebs, including the likes of Jodie Kidd, Ian Wright and Ricky "the hit man" Hatton. I wouldn't get in a fight for a console with him if I was you.

To get the full details of the launch, head over to Wii Wii now.

Just why is SL so popular right now? With around 1.6million users it's not actually all that popular. I suspect a lot of it is down to some very good PR recently that has provided a few easy stories for mainstream journalists. Every time another of those stories goes out - the Reuters news desk, the first virtual millionaire, the Copybot controversy - membership shoots up. The BBC concert that was put on a while back saw UK subscription increase significantly, and popular musicians such as Ben Folds and Duran Duran have also got people signing up who maybe wouldn't have before.

One of the interesting running themes of the Nokia World conference has been the way Nokia is splitting consumers (i.e. us lot) into 12 distinct segments, which are being used to help the firm design its new mobile phones.

The categories are based around what you do in your life and how you use mobile technology. This morning, the company's VP of sales and marketing in Europe, Phil Brown, showed a slide with all 12 listed (click to see larger). Which one are you?

- Pragmatic Leaders
- Life Jugglers
- Mature Acceptors
- Family Providers
- Simplicity Seekers
- Style Followers
- Image Seekers
- Life Builders
- Style Leaders
- Young Explorers
- Technology Stylist
- Technology Leader

Sadly there's no Crumpled Blogger category, so I think I fall between three or four of those. But that's okay: in his presentation, Phil said these categories are not hard and fast, citing his own wife, who "is a life juggler, but thinks she's a style leader. Obviously, I tell her she's a style leader..."

This might look like an old radio cassette player with an iPod plonked on top, but it is in fact the Goodmans GCR 1870i, a clock radio with stereo sound and connectivity for your Apple player.

It has support for all Apple models from 3G onwards, including the nano and shuffle, giving you the option of waking up to FM/MW radio or to your favourite iPod tunes.And while your iPod is in place, the player also gets a charge.

I'm over in delightful Feltham, near Heathrow, at IBM's Second Life "Virtual Worlds European Media & Influencer Event". I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it certainly sounds impressive. There's a room full of UK and European journalists, some guys from IBM and a handful of PRs, and we're all sat round IBM laptops, hooked up to Second Life for a day of debating and virtual chit chat. I'm not too hot at live blogging, but I'm going to attempt to bring you the highlights of the day.

Probably the kind of gadget you'd expect to see in a spy flick rather than the high street, the C.A.T.S.eye is a matchbox-sized tracking device that can be fitted into most items of value, making sure you know where it is at all times.

It's already had the police seal of approval - one force claims its used led to a 14% reduction on 'theft from vehicle' related crime in just one month. The unit uses GPS technology, combined with GSM and Radio Frequency (RF) to pinpoint the location of its host via the internet. So if your lapptop goes walkabout - you know where it's walked to.

Hi-Fi manufacturers are starting to realise that many of us have home networks - and introducing systems that take advantage of it. Denon's D-F103HRDAB isn't the first, but it;s certainly one of the best equipped mini systems.

Features include DAB radio, FM radio, internet radio and CD player with MP3 playback. But that's not the big selling point.The D-F103HRDAB also has a built-in hard drive can hold up to 10,000 songs, converting tracks to MP3 with full track data, thanks to online access to the Gracenote database. And as it's network friendly, it can also stream tracks from other devices, such as your PC or Mac.

Mobile TV isn’t just about simulcasting existing channels, thankfully. There’s a number of companies looking to produce new made-for-mobile TV stuff, blending existing brands with user-generated content (i.e. your video clips).

One such firm is Player X, which launches its Geek TV channel on December 4th. It’s a one-hour show that runs on a loop, with a new episode every week. It’s launching first on 3 UK, although Player X aims to sell it to the other operators too. Richard Morris, the company’s video product manager, told me a bit more about it.

“Essentially it’s unique selling point is it’s all made-for-mobile content,” he says. “There are great brands like Miami Vice and American Dad, but it’s new content exclusively for the phone. And then there’s a user generated aspect where we invite people to send in their clips, and if they’re good enough, we’ll air them.”

The propaganda

As one of the bulkiest members of Olympus’ digital camera line-up the SP-510UZ bridges the gap between an SLR and a compact. The ‘UZ’ part stands for Ultra Zoom because the part of the camera’s increased bulk gets you a stalker-friendly 10x optical zoom.

Other features include 7.1 megapixel image resolution, RAW image capture, a BrightCapture enhanced 2.5” LCD, electronic viewfinder and an range of ISO settings going up as high as 4000. Dimensions are 105.5 x 74.5 x 70 mm and the weight is a solid feeling 425g with batteries in.

I wrote about Refresh Mobile and its award-winning Mobizines mobile application yesterday, but it looks like it’s got competition. Another company exhibiting at the Nokia World conference is Hands On Mobile, which you might know from mobile games like Call Of Duty 3 and Spider-Man, but which has moved into other areas of mobile content.

This includes HOMBRE, which might sound like a Mexican condom brand, but actually stands for Hands On Mobile Run-time Environment. And it sounds quite like Mobizines, in that it’s a Java application for your phone which serves up stories, information and other content, and updates regularly using your mobile’s connection to get new stuff.

“If someone’s already got a website, this is an easy way of mobilising that,” says Eric Hobson, president and general manager of Hands On EMEA & SE Asia. “We can take a feed off a website, suck that up into a Java application, and have it dynamically updating, with a lot of the graphics stored in the application itself, so it loads up quite fast.”

What will mobile phones be like in 2010? Ask Tero Ojanperä, Nokia’s chief technology officer, who did the final keynote speech at the Nokia World conference today. And he's not short of ideas:

1. “A navigation device in 2010 will be similar to the N95, but it will deduce information from your calendar, then input the navigation and take you to the place you need to go.”

2. “If you’re a journalist, you’ll be documenting an event like this with your 10-megapixel camera, and you will be taking videos with your HDTV-quality video camera that’s embedded in your mobile device.”

3. “Say you’re starving for your Latte. Your devices finds the various coffee machines for you, sends the parameters of your Latte over the Internet, so that when you walk to that machine, your Latte has been brewed.”

But the most interesting idea he floated during his speech was of phones with 100GB of internal memory, containing every single item of media you own - music, films, photos, documents and so on.

You might have read Andy's earlier story about Refresh Mobile scooping a Developer Of The Year award at the Nokia World conference. The company makes a product called Mobizines, which lets you get bite-sized versions of your favourite magazines and websites on your phone. I grabbed John Stoneman from the company for a chat to find out more about Mobizines.

“It’s slightly different from a WAP site because the whole content is downloaded to the phone,” he says. “You get a compete edition down to your device, which you can then browse. Because of that, it looks a lot richer than a regular WAP site, and it’s a lot quicker to read, because you can jump from page to page without having to download each one as you go.”

Today's Website of the Day is Geekrant, a great collection of slightly more technically-focused articles on everything from data security to Linux to games to technology culture. I actually wrote for it quite some time ago when I was but a young blogger (ahh those were the days) so this is by way of a small thank you to Daniel for the gig.

Refresh Mobile, a London-based company that runs the Mobizines service allowing users to access 'snack sized' versions of their favourite mags, web sites and brands via their handsets, has won Nokia's prestigious "Developer of the Year" award, beating off competition from over 100 global entrants.

One of Google's longest running projects, Google Answers, has been axed. The service which linked up us ordinary folk with the boffins who could provide us with the answers to complicated questions is being archived and won't be updated.

The official Google blog says, “If you have a chance, we encourage you to browse through the questions posted over the last 4+ years. Although we won’t be accepting any new questions, the existing Qs and As are available. We’ll stop accepting new Answers to questions by the end of the year."

Interviewed at Nokia World, the company's games chief Jaakko Kaidesoja said that when Nokia's N-Gage 2.0 platform launches next year – and no, they're not calling it that, I'm just trying desperately to coin a phrase – it will work on several handsets at launch. The new platform lets you play whizzy 3D console-style games on Nokia smartphones, with an Xbox Live style community wrapped around them.

"We are planning to support something like 5-7 devices when we launch," he says. "Some of them are already being sold today, in fact. So if you have one of those devices, you'll just have to go to our website, download the application to your phone. It's like any Series 60 application, and it works."

Nokia isn't naming which phones will support the new games yet, although they're using the N93 to demo them, so that's probably one of them.

(via Pocket Gamer)