Smartphones, iPads, iPhones, mp3 players – few of us can get through the day now without tapping or swooshing on those oh-so-cool touchscreens, marvelling at how a little swipe of the finger can open an app or zoom through a cluster of status updates. For all their cleverness, however, there is one major drawback to these modern wonders – reliant on your skin’s natural conductivity of electricity, they require bare fingers. Not such a big deal if you live in a friendly climate, but for those of us who spend several months of the year bundled up against the elements, using your phone or tablet outside involves an elaborate off-again, on-again, off-again juggling of gloves, generally resulting in freezing fingers and a mouthful of dirty fluff from pulling your handwear off with your teeth.

Now, though, a few companies have recognized this problem and come up with various solutions that let you leave your gloves on to text or scroll, by altering the glove to allow for the needed conductivity. Some versions merely have a small slit in the thumb and index finger that permit you access to your bare skin with minimum exposure to the cold. More sophisticated recent styles either weave conductive thread into the fingertips, or place conductive fabric on top.

Firebox.com offers the Touchscreen Glove and the Isotoner SmarTouch Glove (from £12.99), both of which have conductive thread woven into the thumb and index finger. Fivepoint Gloves (£24.99) from Etre work on a similar theory, but weave the conductive material into all five fingertips on each glove. Dots Gloves ($20.00) have little dot-shaped patches of conductive fabric on the index and thumb, while North Face Etip gloves (£22.00) also opt for patches of fabric. Not to be outdone, Apple have naturally created their own patented iGloves (from £13.99), which would appear to work on similar principles to the others by incorporating special conductive material in the fingertips.

All sounds too good to be true? Some of the drawbacks reported with these gloves include complaints that the conductive thread can sometimes unravel pretty easily; others find that, while allowing you to text and email, they don’t actually keep your hands that warm in more serious weather. Overall, however, they seem to provide a good option to the numb-fingered among us.

If you don’t want to buy a separate pair of gloves you can always take the DIY approach by sewing conductive thread into the fingertips of any pair you already own. GloveTips ($19.99) are a product based on this idea, providing you with a kit which includes three buttons, conductive material, and a special installing needle that lets you turn your favourite pair of gloves into a techie’s winter delight.

As for this techie, my fingers are still cold. The problem? These products have proved so popular, most of the stores are sold out. More stocks are promised by the end of January.

Until next time..

Loloknows

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Me and my sis used to love our Sony Walkmans, we were inseparable (me and my walkman that is), it really was the must have gadget when we were growing up, it didn’t look like that though, more like a small laptop!

So now years later, while the taste in music and clothes have dramatically
changed (my sister had yellow and brown checked flares for gods sake)… the Walkman is back.

Sony are releasing the latest comeback today, although the X series has much tougher competition now with the iPod reigning supreme in the music player market.

The new Walkman can be used to watch videos, browse photos, listen to music and surf the net. The 16GB model is £209, and £279 for the 32GB model.

Paul Gyles, Sony UK group product manager for Audio, said, “When Sony launched
the first ever Walkman, it changed how people listen to music. “With the X Series, we’re aiming to change how people see their media players – using a touchscreen, an unbelievably crisp OLED display and digital noise cancelling technology for the first ever time in a media player means that the X Series offers the best audio and visual experience around.”

Are Sony just looking to the past or does the X series really cut it? Listen to my review on BBC radio later on today.

Available in Sony Centres and selected retailers from May 13th. £209 for the 16GB model, £279 for the 32 GB.

Features

• 16GB (4,000 songs) or 32GB (8000 songs)
•  3″ OLED touchscreen
•  Built-in Digital Noise Cancelling.
•  13.5mm EX earbud headphones for balanced rich sound quality, with unique  closed and air-tight fit giving you deeper bass
•  Continuous playback for 33 hours of music and 9 hours of video
•  Surf the web with built-in Wi-Fi: On-board connectivity lets you stream YouTube™ clips and podcasts
• S-Master digital amplifier
•  DSEE
•  Clear Audio Technologies

For all you Dior die hards out there at last some images have emerged of the new Dior phone available later this year. The phone will initally go on sale in Russia and China the reason being there is greater demand for these types of phones over there – high design with an equally high price tag.

Specifications are still a bit sketchy but features will include a touchscreen, camera and special ringtones although not quite sure what constitutes a ‘special’ ringtone’ ?!

The exciting bit is the clip on mini phone that comes with the handset aptly named “My Dior” . This connects via bluetooth to the phone so the user can answer calls more easily, sounds fun if not a bit gimmicky.

It comes in pink,red and white and the price tag – a bling -ing $5000 !

The new KF 700 from LG is slick looking and refreshingly easy to use and is all about control, there’s a touch screen a key pad dial and a jog dial so take your pick.

The 3inch touch screen is responsive, clear and a good size – although size isn’t everything girls. The menus are easy to navigate and very intuitive especially the text messaging, which for me is a biggie given how much of a text addict I am, although scrolling up and down on the longer messages was a wee bit tricky, as was adding the recipients name at the end.

I loved the return key function on each screen whenever you want to get back to where you started, always handy when you’re a bit lost and the folder choices on the main screen were really useful. Especially liked when you entered the first few digits of a phone number and the relevant contact names automatically appeared, v tidy.

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