After launching the touchscreen-only Viewty and Prada phones, you might think LG is keen to kill off the humble mobile keypad. But it seems consumers have said 'not so fast!' to the company, with the result that LG is now including slide-out keypads into a number of its touchscreen phones.

"We did a lot of research into consumers' reactions to touchscreen technology, and some are a little bit nervous," Jeremy Newing, head of marketing for UK and Ireland at LG, told me yesterday. "People still want to have a keypad, whether it's for texting or dialling numbers. So we're doing that."

He cites LG's new KF600 phone as an example of this policy in action, with its slide-out keypad, but also the way it splits its display into a non-touchscreen main screen, and a touchscreen 'InteractPad' which has virtual buttons that change according to what you're doing on the phone - texting, playing music, taking photos or whatever.

It's approaching a year now since CNET editor James Kim and his family were left stranded in a remote area of South-western Oregon in the US, a story which many immersed in the online technology world followed for days, until on the 6th of December his body was found in the Big Windy Creek several miles from where he set out on foot from his stranded car, in search of help for his family.

Since then, his wife Kati Kim has avoided the incessant media attention and denied the repeated interview requests, but this month granted our sister blog, Dollymix, an exclusive interview, the first time she's spoken out about the ordeal. The first part is up on the site, with the second part being published this Friday. Definitely worth a read if you heard about the tragic story last year, or ever followed Kim's work at CNET.

Part one of Kati Kim's interview at Dollymix

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Charming Miles, one the the game world's nicest blokes, invited us up to his North London pad for a barbecue. We had a lovely burger, although the July weather was a bit cold and we regretted not bringing a jumper almost immediately. But that's not the point.

The point is, Miles told us about the most important new features in Football Manager 2008, plus a few of the other "over 100" changes the Sports Interactive team has made to the man-pleasing footie series. He also revealed the company's plans for console games - that bit's at the end, so you might want to skip the bulk of it if you're just interested in the PSP or Xbox 360 versions...

Thanks, Miles. Good luck with the game and thanks for the partially-cooked meat. Football Manager 2008's out for Mac and PC at the end of the year.

Last Thursday I grabbed a few minutes to chat with Richard Warmsley, Head of Internet on the Move at T-Mobile UK, about their Web 'n Walk, Music Jukebox and other services available to customers. And also to tease him about his obvious job title. Hey, it's better than Communications Manager, non?

T-Mobile UK

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Okay, so a big mobile manufacturer saying that MP3 players will soon be toast isn't entirely surprising - they're keen to push their handsets' music capabilities after all. But Victor Fredell, Sony Ericsson's content acquisition manager for music, is still adamant in his prediction.

"I won't go as far as saying that the digital audio player as dead, but I will definitely say that it won't exist in two years," he says. "Not in the way that we have it today, anyway." Naturally, Sony Ericsson is hoping its Walkman range of music handsets will help boot MP3 players down the gadget dumper.

In our interview, Fredell explains why mobile users prefer sideloading to buying songs over the air, how Sony Ericsson is putting more emphasis on music applications for its Walkman phones, and how Web 2.0 and music-sharing fit into the future of mobile music. Oh, and obviously, he does have an opinion on the iPhone too...

Mimi Rogers was in town the other week promoting World Poker Tour and its recent launch online. She took time out to teach Susi how to play Texas Hold 'Em, tell her about why women have the advantage over men in poker, and who was her favourite - Pacey or Dawson. We always wanted to know what Jen's mum thought of her two male buddies...

World Poker Tour Online

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As you read on the weekend, I've spent the past few days in Newfoundland, Canada, peeking in on the life of English explorer David Hempleman-Adams as he prepares for his world-record attempt at crossing the Atlantic in the world's smallest helium-powered balloon.

I managed to grab a few minutes before he departed into the air, to discuss his trip, and the technology which he carried aboard. Unfortunately the sound quality isn't brilliant due to the whipping Canadian wind atop Signal Hill in Newfoundland, but you'll get the gist of it, promise!

Toshiba Transatlantic Challenge

HE'S the undisputed Queen of the celebrity bloggers but Perez Hilton is the first to admit he's a total technophobe.

In fact, he's only getting the internet in his flat next month when he moves - nearly THREE years after starting showbiz bible perezhilton.com.

But despite not being any good with gadgets, Perez told Tech Digest there is one gizmo he can't wait to get his hands on.

He said: "I really want an iPhone. They just look so cool."

Last night I had the privilege of speaking to Jason Calacanis, fresh off the plane from the US, on his first trip to the UK. Here to attend the NMK Forum (from which I'm liveblogging from as we speak), he had some exciting news to announce the next day, of which we've since learnt is Mahalo's Greenhouse. Take a look at the video to hear him talk about his online 'rivals' such as Google and Ask.com (plus his thoughs on the horrible 'Information Revolution' campaign), spill the beans on his feelings towards Nick Denton of Gawker Media, and most importantly, the exciting announcement of Mahalo.com's Greenhouse, and how it can earn you money.

Needless to say, I was dead-excited meeting him, as he's one of my online heroes, and he had some very interesting points to make about the way the online world is changing. I definitely have a tech-crush on this man (but don't worry Bill Gates, you're still my number one love!)

Voice-over-IP firm Jajah is experimenting with advertising-funded models that could mean free telephony in the future. Although most VoIP services offer free calls now, they're usually only to other users of that service, with calls to landlines or mobiles being charged – albeit at a lower rate than non-VoIP telephony.

However, Jajah co-founder Daniel Mattes says that advertising could lead to totally free calls. "Currently, 80% of our revenue comes from telephony, with 20% coming from additional features like conference calls or video calls," he says.

"We are testing advertising-supported models, and we think that at the end of the day, it will be possible to offer really free telephony based on a sponsorship model. It's not far away."

ISP traffic management can be a controversial subject. On the one hand, it can mean your ISP ensuring your online gaming session or VoIP call go without a hitch. On the other, it could mean deliberately squashing your Skype call to try and get you to upgrade to the ISP's own VoIP service. Like I said, controversial.

PlusNet thinks broadband users should be thinking hard about traffic management though - in a positive sense. "Traffic management has been a dirty phrase in the internet industry," says Neil Armstrong, PlusNet's products director.

"People have actively avoided ISPs with it. We've been almost the lone voice, because most ISPs deny they do it. We think consumers should be looking for it. People mistake it for a moral judgement about how you're using your broadband line, but it's really about identifying what's important to you."

At the CES show this year, Honda's humanoid Asimo robot was one of the big hits. He didn't just walk and trot up and down stairs. He ran. He played football. He danced. And through it all, he cracked jokes like a Vegas pro. You can watch our videos of it here.

Naturally, Honda isn't pumping millions of dollars into Asimo's R&D to get a few cheap laughs. The company uses the bot in its TV ads for starters. But in the long-term, Honda wants Asimo to become a genuinely helpful companion for us humans. I talked to Stephen Keeney, North American Asimo project leader at Honda, to find out more.

PKR.com has been described as a mixture of online poker and The Sims, which is as good a reference point as any. It’s a real-money online poker site, except instead of a top-down view with thumbnail cartoons to represent the players, PKR has fully 3D avatars who wouldn’t look out of place on an Xbox 360 game.

That’s not surprising, considering the site was founded by games industry luminary Jez San, who previously headed up developer Argonaut Software. The idea came from playing on a bunch of online poker sites, and realising the experience was lacking something.

“Although it was fun to play online, it was nowhere near as much fun as playing in real life,” he says. “They used a clinical top-down vewpoint which was very diagrammatic, without the social aspects, the body language, the people and table banter. They were just a technical version of the game, rather than the actual experience of playing.”

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to spend a week in Japan interviewing the likes of Sony and Panasonic about their visions of the connected homes of the future, where all your content (TV, music, internet data etc) would come into your house through a fat broadband pipe, into a media gateway device, which would then distribute it around the house.

It sounded ace. It also sounded about as far off actually happening as the whizzy robots that some of those companies were also showing off. Yet now, a few years later, it’s not such a far-fetched vision. We’re not all living with robots yet, but media adapters capable of streaming content around the home are popping up in increasing numbers.

One such device is Linksys’ KiSS 1600 wireless media player, which was announced at CeBIT this week. I had a chat to Tunji Akintokun, Linksys’ country manager for the UK and Ireland, to find out more, and discuss the wider implications of media sharing.

Piczo might not be the biggest social network in the world, but it's growing fast (4.5 million unique monthly users in the UK) and has had some people suggesting it's the latest destination for the cooler teenagers who previously hung out on MySpace and Bebo.

UK MD Chris Seth says the site's success has come from giving its members more creative freedom to build their own mini-sites, as well as an invitation-only culture that shuns the friend-collecting aspects of MySpace in favour of deeper interaction.

He also hints that Piczo may be making some announcements soon on its mobile strategy, saying "it’s a big opportunity to give our members the opportunity to communicate off the screen". For the full story, read Techscape's interview with Chris.

One of the themes at this year’s 3GSM show in Barcelona was mobile navigation, buoyed by the fact that GPS is making its way into mobile phones, along with the mapping and applications to make use of it. Naturally, every company in this area reckons mobile navigation’s going to be huge.

So where does this leave traditional Portable Navigation Devices (PNDs) of the sort made by Garmin, TomTom and Navman? I talked to Colin Holloway from Navman to find out, and to see what the next big developments in this area are likely to be.

Social lending is a concept that's easy to explain. Instead of borrowing from a bank, you borrow from another person. No, not Big Chris from round the corner who'll break your fingers with a baseball bat if you default on the 1200% interest. That's A Bad Idea.

Instead, Zopa.com is a social lending service, which matches borrowers and lenders in the same way eBay matches buyers and sellers. "Lending to someone to improve their house or buy a new car is much more grounded than investing in exotic shares or funds,” says co-founder Dave Nicholson, explaining why borrowers are keen on the model.

For the full interview, explaining how the service is evolving, head on over to Techscape.

At 3GSM this year, Microsoft launched PlayReady, its new ‘content access’ technology for mobile content, including music, video, games, ringtones and wallpapers. In essence, it’s extending Microsoft’s existing Windows Media DRM system to mobile, and expanding it beyond music and video.

I sat down with Microsoft’s Jim Alkove at 3GSM last week to find out more, starting with the basic overview.

What’s PlayReady about, in a nutshell?

Basically it’s a content access technology that supports different business models, like subscriptions, rentals, purchases, pay-per-view and preview, for a wide variety of content types well beyond music and video.

The technology will support an array of operator partners, including Bouygues Telecom, Telefonica, O2, Cingular and Verizon. And it’s available on a platform-agnostic basis, meaning it can be put in a wide range of devices, including operating systems other than Windows Mobile 6.

It will be available in the first half of this year for device implementations, and we expect we’ll start to see volumes of handsets coming through sometime in 2008. So that’s the high-level framing of what we’re announcing.

Us Brits will soon be able to access MySpace on our phones – well, we will if we're on Vodafone, anyway, as the two companies have signed an exclusive deal. But is it that important that MySpace launches a mobile version?

Apparently so. Alex Kummermann of mobile social networking firm Clicmobile reckons that it's essential to MySpace's continued survival. "Big social networks are like mushrooms: they grow very fast, but they die very fast too," he tells Techspace.

Wi-Fi hotspots are mainly useful for business types, right? Great for catching up with emails over a Latte or seven, while barking out PowerCommands in a series of VoIP calls with your minions. But thanks to the pricing, not that useful to those of us who don't have a company credit card. That could be changing though.

"We're seeing a big swing in customers from niche business laptop users to people using Wi-Fi enabled consumer electronics devices," says Owen Geddes, director of business development at Wi-Fi hotspot network The Cloud.

"You've got Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, dual-mode handsets from people like Nokia, and we're expecting to see personal media players later this year, including Zune and Sony Mylo, as well as more Wi-Fi-enabled digital cameras and even car stereos."