LG are one of the supporters of London Fashion Week and a few days ago we held an exclusive show down at the Natural History Museum to show off our latest LCD and Plasma televisions for 2008. With some of the top fashion, style and tech press there, George (one of our TV experts) talked them through what we have for 2008.

Following on from the success of the Design Art televisions of 2007, our new TVs are all about style and design excellence. Our LG50 series of LCD television combines an invisible speakers with no visible grille to detract from your viewing. They’re full HD, at 1080p, and feature cool stuff like the Intelligent Sensor (which adjust the brightness according to the ambient light levels) and a USB connection which allows the TV to play JPEG or MP3 content from external devices.

The LG60 series (which you can see George demonstrating above) is ultra-slim - we’ve moved the electronics and other gubbins from behind the screen to underneath it to make it thinner. It also has a red coloured back to add warmth to the television’s surroundings, and our 120MHz TruMotion technology with its improved response time and smoother motion display, as well as four HDMI ports for all you technology addicts. It also has a unique circular aperture at the base, which is used to turn the screen on and off by touch alone, with no moving parts.

On the Plasma front, George showed off the PG60 and PG70 series, which are totally flat all the way across with no raised bezel (so the television mimics a single sheet of glass), which looks gorgeous and sleek. Like their LCD counterpart the speakers are invisible

Everyone I saw who gave the TVs a look-over was appreciative if not impressed with the features and clarity of the screens, and you’ll be able to judge for yourself when they hit the shops later this year. If you want to find out more, then check out the official press releases for the LCD and Plasma lines on the LG website.

We’re pleased to announce not just one but two new phones for the European market this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The first is the LG KF600, which has already been out in the United States and has won an iF product design award for its InteractPad keypad. As well as the usual number keys which slide out, the InteractPad keys re virtual and context-specific, meaning they can change to the task at hand, making the audio player, camera and videocamera dead easy to use, as you can see below:

The phone is out now - for more information check out this press release.

The second is our brand new multimedia phone, the LG KF700, which has a three-inch touchscreen as well as an alphanumeric keypad that slides out, and a shortcut dial to make navigation quick and easy. The phone features a fully-featured web browser, letting you view sites like YouTube and use Ajax-powered sites like Google Mail or Reader. While the touchscreen allows ultra-fast 3G HSDPA browsing, the slide-out keypad allows a touch of familiarity for those who prefer it to dial or text:

It will be available from mid-March - for more information check out this press release.

I have a nice, eco-friendly end to the week - according to the BBC, building work has started in Abu Dhabi on Masdar (”the source” in Arabic and meant here as a reference to the sun/solar energy), the world’s first zero-carbon, and zero-waste, car-free city.

Designed by Norman Foster of London architects Foster & Partners, Masdar City will cost $22bn, take eight years to build and be home to around 50,000 people.

Sounding reminiscent of something from Blade Runner, it will be powered predominantly by solar energy and residents will travel in pods set on magnetic tracks. According to Evelyn Lee at inhabitat the city will be entirely car free. “Carefully planned public transportation will ensure that none of the city’s inhabitants will have to walk more than 200 meters before meeting some part of the transportation link.”

There are suggestions Masdar City may be just a token gesture, or distraction from the oil-rich Gulf emirates and Business Week were tickled by the “delicious irony that the Middle East, awash in oil and dollars” were investing “oil billions into a zero-emissions metropolis in the desert”

But this project is just part of the Masdar plan for “energy security, climate change and truly sustainable human development” and Masdar City is supported by global conservation charity the WWF.

This could be the dawning of a brave new world, but if it is I hope it’s a little less grey than the picture above!

It’s London Fashion Week and the beautiful and the stylish are flocking to London to fight for that impossible to get Moss/Westwood ‘comeback’ ticket. What could be a more fitting time to welcome the new ‘Dark Silver’ Viewty?

Yes, LG are now offering up the sleek silver edition LG Viewty in addition to the original black. LG researched colour preferences across Europe, and silver was selected as the number one colour choice of consumers looking for a stylish, polished, premium phone that reflects their own style.

But it’s not just a revamp don’t worry, the silver Viewty has all the functions and capabilities which made the original so popular, but with an improvement as well as a new look.

“The new ‘Dark Silver’ Viewty has all the quality of the black version but in addition to the stylish stand-out colour, we have re-designed the jog wheel to make scrolling the menus easier following consumer feedback. Viewty gives consumers the opportunity to own a phone that makes a statement, with a new high-tech finish that sleek, smart and complements its overall design,” said Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “We knew we had something special when we created Viewty, and it turns out that over half a million customers agree with us.”

There will be even more colour choices for the LG Viewty, with it’s 5.0 megapixel camera and a 3.0-inch touchscreen, available later this year.

Today sees the launch of the Discovery Channel’s Earth Live web application - brought to my attention by the ever-vigilant chaps at Wired.com.

“It may be more important than ever to track the state of the planet and Discovery Earth Live is designed to help you do that” says the Earth Live page. It’s big talk but the software for the application is pretty impressive - using Adobe Flex technology to wrap video around a three-dimensional object in real time AND allow you to move the globe around without loss of the video frames.

I have already successfully lost a tea break to watching storm patterns and changes sea temperature (it’s more interesting than it might sound!) though sadly there is little more to do at this stage. However the potential is huge and according to The Industry Standard “Future content will include migration paths of birds and animals, and projections of what the world may look like if global warming goes unchecked.” More big talk for the cool little app, which is also available as a facebook widget.

There’s lots of buzz about this interesting invention out - a phone charger that takes the waste energy from when you walk:

A knee brace which can generate electricity as you walk, creating enough power to charge mobile phones and medical devices, has been developed by scientists.

The device is inspired by technology used in hybrid cars which store the power from braking to generate electricity. So-called regenerative brakes can collect energy that would otherwise be dissipated as heat when a car slows. In the same way, the knee brace uses the energy dissipated at the knee as the leg slows after a step.

Using it just as a phone charger might seem a waste of the technology - and it turns out there are actually many more uses for it - such as powering automated prosthetic limbs for the lesser-abled, which is the main intention of the project. But the news coverage has been quick to come up with other ideas for what to do with the energy - and why not? Many inventions end up being used for purposes completely different from what they originally intended (just think about how text messaging was originally intended for voicemail alerts and not person-to-person messages) and it’s not hard to come up with loads of ideas for using that energy - whether it be mobiles, personal MP3 players, portable game systems, even personal computers.

It could even have beneficial effects for us - if our mobile or music player is running out of battery, we might skip that car journey or trip on the bus and walk instead so we can help recharge it, making us fitter and healthier as well (so much for the fearmongering that new technology is for us). And once we start shaping our activity around the electronic devices we’re using as they depend on us, does that make them part of our bodies? Is something as innocuous as this making us one step closer to being cyborgs? Such a simple invention brings surprisingly profound questions if you look at it close enough. Any thoughts you have, share them in the comments below.