We reported earlier today on Spin-my-Blog, a new service that lets users add entries to their blogs simply by calling their assigned telephone number and speaking the text they want added.

Daniel Doulton, co-founder and VP Marketing, Strategy and Development at SpinVox, was kind enough to answer a few of my questions about how the service works and what those testing it think of the service.

While at CES last week, I caught up with Mark Heinrich, chief technology officer and co-founder of Phanfare. It's an online photo and video sharing service that stands out through its use of a subscription model, charging $54.95 a year.

"We have the audacity to charge our customers money!" he told me. "That's why we call them customers, and not users. And because there's no advertising, we don't turn your private photo albums into some kind of billboard for adverts or print-ordering services."

Phanfare started in January 2005, and now has over 5,000 users, 80% of whom pay the annual subscription fee (as opposed to the monthly or lifetime options that are available). And Heinrich has strong views on the prospects - or lack of - for Phanfare's free competition.

Nokia has maintained a high profile at CES, announcing three new phones and deals with the likes of Skype, Yahoo and Six Apart. I sat down for a chat with Pekka Pohjakallio, VP of Nseries computers in Nokia's multimedia division.

Besides giving Nokia's initial response to the Apple iPhone, he also talked about the new N93i, N76 and N800, promised that Wi-Fi and 3.5mm headphone jacks will be standard in ALL Nseries handsets from now on, and hinted at a potentially-ace collaboration with guitar-maker Gibson. Read on for the full details.

Welcome to the third and final part of our transparent attempt to spend more time on the sofa after Christmas review of some of the best Tech Digest interviews of 2006. Today, it's some of the more whiz-bang futuristic ones, to show you where it's all going.

Huw Robson - HP Labs
Memory spots? Well, I do recall a few zits when I was a teenager... No no no, memory spots are HP Labs' latest invention, which have been compared to 'turbocharged RFID chips' and 'computers the size of a grain of rice'. Huw filled us in. Read more

Robin Shephard - Eleksen
For most people, wearable technology means they have a pocket set aside for their iPod. But to Eleksen, it means jackets and fabrics with the tech built in. Which often means a pocket for your iPod, yes, but also more imaginative features. Read more

Julian Morris - OMG
How did we get from ping-pong balls to Gollum in just a few years? Motion-capture firm OMG has the answers, with Julian explaining to us how the technology has moved on to pioneer new advances in movies, games and videos medical technology. Read more

Still feeling portly from the Christmas food splurge? Tsk, have another slice of going-slightly-green turkey and stop moaning. Then read three more Tech Digest interviews from 2006, all focused around the latest developments on mobile phones.

Neil Edwards - dotMobi
Have YOU bought yourself a .mobi domain name yet? You haven't? Well, that's understandable if you're not a big company. But Neil explained to us just what dotMobi's about, why brands are signing up to it, and where it's all heading in the future. Read more

Pete Russell - Player One
Okay, so at the time, doing all manner of cool mobile content based on the Ashes sounded like a great idea. Until England spooned it. But nevertheless, Player One's mix of video and games mobile cricket content is well worth a second read. That pic's not Pete, by the way. But you probably guessed that. Read more

Russell Buckley - AdMob
Mobile advertising is going to be huge in 2007. So we got in early and had a chat with Russell Buckley, who besides being an all-round guru on all things mobile, thanks to his MobHappy blog, had just taken a new job at mobile ads firm AdMob. Read more

It's been a great year for the tech-world. We would summarise what happened, but you can find it all podblogged on YouTube's MySpace profile. Something like that, anyway. Instead, how about a reminder of some of the key interviews this year on Tech Digest? Starting today with Yahoo, Garlik and MTV.

Yahoo - Mecca Ibrahim
She's in charge of Yahoo 360 in Europe, and Mecca talked to us about the blogging / social networking crossover, mobility improvements, and how blogs might be surfaced in Yahoo's news output in the future. Read more

Garlik - Tom Ilube
Scared of having your identity nicked by online fraudsters? Garlik was a brand new Web 2.0 service set up by some of the founders of internet bank Egg, to reveal what's online about you, and what to do about it. Tom told us all. Read more

MTV - Angel Gambino
How will social networking evolve as it transfers to mobile devices? MTV Europe's Angel Gambino has plenty of ideas, and shared her thoughts on how Bebo and MySpace will translate to mobile, as well as MTV's early efforts in the space. Read more

It's been quite a year for blogosphere-baroness Mena Trott. In October, Six Apart commercially launched Vox, its blogging-cum-social networking service, following a successful beta. And since then, it's been picking up users at a rapid pace.

"People have really embraced it," she says. "They're saying they think blogging is fun again. A lot of people got burned out, because blogging had become a task rather than a pleasure. But we're winning those people back, along with some of the people who are usually more sceptical and cynical about Six Apart as a company."

Alongside that, there's been the launch of Vox's slick mobile application, several redesigns of the service's homepage, and more partners. While she was in London last week, I sat down with Mena to chat about those, as well as how she sees Vox competing if the big social networking services ever get their blogging features sorted, and why fostering communities is the next big step for Vox.

Forget inviting family and friends round to see 520 prints worth of skiing holiday photos. You know they'll find excuses after the last time anyway. Nowadays, the Web is where you should be sharing your holiday experiences with willing (and not so willing) observers.

Flickr is increasingly popular, of course, as are blogs – which can now even be updated while you sit on the beach sipping your Mojito. But some people are going beyond even that, on a site called Everytrail. It mashes up users' photos and words with GPS data, and Google Maps and Google Earth to create a record of their trips, from hiking and mountaineering through to sailing and biking.

Everyone's talking about mobile communities and viral content. It's just that not many of those people are actually doing it, and turning a profit. But the fact that the buzz around Web 2.0 is bleeding into the mobile industry is a healthy sign that there'll be some cool services ahead for mobile users.

One of those cool services is Zannel, which bills itself as "the easiest way to share content on mobile phones", albeit with a flying-pig logo that could make casual observers wonder whether they're entirely serious.

It's not just a mobile YouTube, although there are parallels in the way Zannel aims to make it easy for users to upload videos and then promote them to a potential audience of millions. The company is still officially in stealth mode, but I chatted to them to find out more.

Web 2.0 isn't just about groovy startups, y'know. The firms who rode the internet boom the first time around are coming out with their own attempts to keep pace with the user-generated content phenomenon.

Services like Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces and Yahoo 360 combine blogging, social networking, and tight integration with these companies' other web tools. Mecca Ibrahim is in charge of Yahoo 360 in Europe, overseeing its launch in Germany, France and the UK, with Spain and Italy planned for next year.

"It's very hard to say whether it's more of a social networking product, a blogging product, or just a place to collect things that are important to you," she says. "We do see it as a central place within Yahoo where people can publish what's important to them, and share it with their friends and the wider community if they want to do that."

Most pubs' dabblings with new technology extend to buying a shiny new plasma screen every four years for the World Cup. But that's changing, thanks to connected quizzers, broadband jukeboxes, and even digital fruit machines. All three are the work of Inspired Gaming Group, which has spent the last four years bringing boozers into the 21st century.

"Compare entertainment in pubs with your home," says co-CEO Norman Crowley. "In the last 15 to 20 years, your home's gone from having four TV channels, no internet and a basic Atari games console, to having broadband, iTunes, Sky+, hundreds of channels and a Sony PlayStation. What have pubs done in that time? They've got fruit machines, which they had 20 years ago, and very little else. That's what we've been trying to change."

Hurrah for England, we're going to stuff the Aussies in the Ashes. Well, I can hope. But the Ashes are significant this year not JUST because of England's imminent historic whitewashing of Ricky, Shane and chums (am I tempting fate yet?). It's also the first Ashes to have its own 'mobishow'.

What's that when it's at home? A made for mobile TV show called Ashes Down Under, which consists of three-minute episodes consisting of news, reports, banter and contributions from current England captain Andrew Flintoff AND his crocked predecessor Michael Vaughan.

"It's about taking something like the Ashes, which is going to be a massive event over here, and creating a suite of content around it," says Pete Russell from Player One, the firm behind the mobishow. "Sky have the live and highlights rights for the actual event, but there's a lot more you can do with it."

First, let's clear up a couple of myths. Fraudsters aren't rooting around in your rubbish looking for receipts. They can get all the information they need in a couple of hours online. And they don't want to clean out your bank account. They want to steal your identity to rack up debts - credit cards, loans and mortgages – and maybe use it for immigration rackets or even terrorism. Crumbs.

This is according to personal information management service Garlik, which conducted a survey of 100 (presumably reformed) criminals to find out how identity fraudsters are actually operating, as opposed to how we think they're operating. Tech Digest first interviewed Garlik back in August, but the company has now launched its DataPatrol monitoring service, so I caught up with CEO Tom Ilube to find out more about it.

idiomag is the point where the Web 2.0 and print publishing worlds collide. It describes itself as "a virtual magazine personalised to your interests", which you might think was just a website. Instead, it really is a virtual magazine, complete with proper page-turning, adverts and a sticky bit on the front where the free CD fell off. Oh alright, maybe not that last one.

Anyway, the big deal about idio is that you personalise it to your specific interests, telling it what subjects you're interested in, ensuring that when you load up the digital mag, it's just got articles that, in theory, you want to read. It's currently in its beta stage, focusing on digital design and music.

"It really came out of my personal experience," says founder Edward Barrow. "I'd find I wanted to buy four or five different magazines, but only wanted a few parts from each of those. So why should I buy them all?"

When you play Pro Evolution 6, you're probably thinking about working the ball out to your nippy winger, trying to organise your flat-footed back four, or wondering how much your friendship will be damaged if you slap the joypad out of your mate's hands just as he's lining up that 91st-minute penalty. Actually, that's probably just me and Jose Mourinho...

Anyway, chances are you aren't thinking about advertising. Yet Pro Evolution 6 is one of the increasing number of console games to feature proper, paid-for ads – in this case from Reebok, which is featured throughout the game, and Canon, which has pitch-side ads and sponsors the replays.

The ads are the work of New Street Media, a London-based game advertising agency, which has also placed ads within games like The Getaway, as well as interactive TV and mobile games. The company was set up four and a half years ago, and was one of the first firms to focus on in-game ads. MD Maryam Bazargan says it's going to become more and more common.

With all the hoo-ha over the dangers posed for kids by sites like MySpace and Bebo – you know, cyber-bullying, paedophiles lurking on every virtual corner, etc – it’s easy to forget the positive aspects of social networking for children. One company that hasn’t is Intuitive Media, which is trying to bring the benefits without some of the risks feared by many parents.

Intuitive Media is an education firm providing what it describes as protected online learning communities for children. It currently runs two main communities: SuperClubsPLUS for kids aged 6-12, and GoldStar Cafe, for ages 11-14. They’ve signed up over 120,000 children so far in the UK, along with over 12,000 teachers.

“Our aim is that kids talk to kids, work together and learn from each other,” says founder Robert Hart. “It’s about understanding kids from other backgrounds, whether they’re round the corner or on the other side of the world.”

Sky has a new show TV show under the name of The Big Idea, claimed to be the UK's largest-ever search to discover the next great British invention or business idea (with the winner pocketing £100,000 to carry it off). Vodafone is sponsoring it - and has taken this ideal marketing opportunity to launch new small business tariffs, starting from £22 per month.

Vodafone has research claiming just under 33 per cent of the population is considering setting up a company in the next five years - which makes you wonder where the staff will come from. But it also shows you the market for business-friendly tariffs. Vodafone's Small Business Plan starts at £22 per month and offers inclusive free calls between company handsets, mobile email for £5 per month, price plan reviews and the option to switch plans regularly. There's also 'same advisor' business support.

The company is also offering mobile access to a range of tools helpful to anyone starting up a business. For more information, check out the Vodafone business pages.

I speak to John Starkweather at Microsoft about the future of Xbox gaming, and how it's being developed to work with Windows Mobile. Hear about gaming on the move, and beaming your gaming creds to all and sundry when you're out and about.

When researching my post last week on mobile social networking, I canvassed several industry bigwigs to get their views on how well the likes of MySpace and Bebo would translate to mobile. Helpfully, Gmail chose to file the response from Angel Gambino, VP of commercial strategy and digital media at MTV Networks UK & Ireland, in the spam folder. It's not as if she mentioned viagra or offered to transfer a huge sum of money from a deposed dicator into my account either.

Anyway, her answers are interesting, so I wanted to put them up. MTV recently launched its own user-generated service, MTV Flux, so the company has a direct interest in the evolution of social networking, including its transition to mobile. Read on to see what Angel had to say.

The world of domain names has seen its fair share of controversy, and one of the hottest recent debates concerns the new .mobi domain, which covers mobile internet sites. It's run by mobile Top Level Domain Ltd (mTLD, or dotMobi informally), whose investors include the likes of Ericsson, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, T-Mobile and Vodafone. dotMobi opened up registrations to companies in June, before allowing everyone else to sign up last week.

Controversy? There's been plenty, including claims that .mobi is unnecessary, risks splitting the internet in two, and even accusations that it is purely for squeezing more cash out of companies frightened that someone else may register 'their' domain. Many of these criticisms have been made online, and dotMobi CEO Neil Edwards doesn't mince his words when responding to them.

"It's the most juvenile argument," he says. "We have companies like Microsoft, Business Week and BMW who all spend a lot of money doing proper development of their systems, so it's insulting that guys who write free blogs are passing judgement on how the best minds in the world should do their development."