Today we’re pleased to say we can take our first look at the forthcoming LG Renoir KC910, the 8MP full touchscreen cameraphone that is the successor to last year’s enormously successful Viewty.

The KC910 boasts a 3″ WQVGA 240×400 pixel display that is fully touchscreen. The camera is a ISO1600 8MP camera with Schneider-Kreuznach optics, digital zoom, image stabiliser and geotagging. The videocamera has VGA capability at 30fps and QVGA capability at 120fps and DivX and Xvid. Connectivity is important, with HSDPA connectivity, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi and and TV-out support. It can also take SD cards with a capacity up to 8GB.

Check out the photos we have below and keep checking the site - we’ll have more information on the phone and in-depth coverage of its features in the run-up to its release, which will be this October.

As well as a touchscreen it also has three function buttons at the bottom

And it looks good from an angle as well as head-on

If you’re interested in further details about the Renoir KC910, then you can always check out the official specification.

Last night we unveiled three new LCD televisions which form part of our autumn lineup of flat panels, exclusively to bloggers at Fulham FC’s Craven Cottage stadium. LG’s head of TV marketing George Mead took our guests through three LCD televisions, with a little presentation followed by a discussion:

The three new TVs are:

• The LG Slimline Scarlet (LG6100) is the successor to the LG Scarlet and is the world’s slimmest LCD TV with digital tuner integrated. Measuring just 45mm (1.7 inches) thick, it features a Full HD 1080p LCD screen with 100 MHz TruMotion, built in Digital Freeview, invisible speakers with Clear Voice and Intelligent Sensor brightness control.
• The LG7000 is a HD Ready 1080p LCD TV, which comes in 32″, 37″, 42″, 47″ and 52″ sizes. It features an invisible speaker with Clear Voice technology, dual XD Engine, three special AV modes, Intelligent Sensor brightness control and inbuilt Bluetooth and USB connectivity.
• The LG4000 is LG’s LCD TV with integrated DVD player. It features a 32″ HD Ready screen, invisible speakers with Clear Voice technology and customisable display options for you to get the most out of what you’re watching.

We had some great guests, including Matthew of Gadget Venue, Andy of HDTV UK and Marc of Coolest Gadgets, as well as Andrew Wong and Tom Phillips. After the presentation George took some questions and a discussion followed about about LG TVs, LCD v. Plasma and the future of televisions.



The topics were quite interesting - environmental responsibility and power saving were important issues (especially in a climate of environmental change and rising energy prices) - with George underlying LG’s commitment to lowering power consumption; the Intelligent Sensor reduces consumption quite significantly already, and from next year onwards all LG TVs will have simple power-off rather than standby buttons to reduce consumption when offline. We also talked about LCD TVs and the differences between them and Plasmas - and how LCD is not the poorer relative of Plasma as commonly believed. We also touched on ease of use - why it is so important and how mobile phone UIs have influenced how LG TV interfaces are designed.

The Slimline Scarlet will be out imminently in the UK, while the LG7000 and 32LG4000 are out in September. If you’re a Slimline Scarlet owner or interested in getting one, be sure to check out the new product video and also the videos featuring Ed, one of our product trainers, talking you through how to set the TV up and how to get the best out of it. Here’s a taste of one of the videos - we’ll be posting more to our YouTube channel over the coming week.

Yesterday One Part Truth… introduced me to the work of Bruno Taylor; a recent graduate of Central Saint Martin (MA in Industrial Design) who, as part of a project entitled ‘Playful Spaces’ installed a swing at a London bus stop and also created a bouncy bench:

“71% of adults used to play on the streets when they were young. 21% of children do so now. Are we designing children and play out of the public realm?

This project is a study into different ways of bringing play back into public space. It focuses on ways of incorporating incidental play in the public realm by not so much as having separate play equipment that dictates the users but by using existing furniture and architectural elements that indicate playful behaviour for all.”

~ Bruno Taylor.

It’s a lovely idea and I couldn’t help wishing for a swing to occupy me while I waited for my bus home last night. But then this morning I saw the headlines about the new UK ‘fat map’ and I now can’t help wondering about the likely correlation with a the lack of safe places for children to play.

On my route to work this morning I passed at least 3 schools but only one park/play area - a very nice, well used one, for the record. I also passed 2 cinemas, countless fast food/take away joints and corner shops/newsagents selling unhealthy snacks, at least 10 pubs/bars and 4 bakeries. I didn’t pass any sports/leisure facilities or any other services for children or for free, active fun. There was also only one grocers.

I don’t think the effects are only felt in the nations waistbands, over the past few decades we’ve become a much more work-lead culture, everything is always on, always working and always available.

What’s my point? I’m not sure - Bouncy castles for everyone perhaps? Industrial progression, particularly technology is so oft-maligned as the cause of these problems, with the invention of console gaming, computers and the internet apparently being more persuasive than our collective willpower - or at least an easier target for complaint! But perhaps technology can offer up solutions too, do the current trend of sport-related console games encourage players to go to the park with a ball?

There are plenty of designers out there trying to keep our inner children alive and kicking - such as Rinotchild with their Laughing Swing, or the BCXSY ‘Play!’ range of furniture, including the Puzzle Coffee table and the occasional nod to the traditional playground from the tech world too such as i-Play or Playful Parasites - but are we, as a society, doing enough for our children? Have we made good, old-fashioned, playing outdoors uncool, inconvenient or less fun? Are we all missing out as a result?

I think I might stop off at those swings on the way home tonight, just to check…

Research* by LG has this week revealed that the TV industry needs to do more to inform and educate consumers about high definition (HD). Results show that although the majority of respondents want to experience HD, over 60 % of those surveyed are yet to invest in it due to confusion.

•    25% of the UK still don’t understand what high definition is
•    80% of people don’t know the difference between HD Ready 1080p and HD Ready
•    62% of Brits still don’t own an HD TV

The main problem seems to be most customers think by buying a HD TV they will automatically see everything in high definition – the research highlights that consumers are suffering from information overload and struggling to keep up with the latest technology and jargon.

But a recent Ofcom report found that incorrect information from retailers, such as the common misconception that HD is currently available on Freeview, frequently added to consumer confusion. The results of these reports show the need for clear and simple consumer education to ensure people know how to get HD and what to lookout for.

George Mead of LG Electronics digital display says,
“The HD industry is booming – with new products being launched more regularly and content becoming widely available – consumer choice has never been greater. It’s key for us to translate this growth into relevant and tangible consumer experiences and the only way this will succeed is through education and by keeping the tech jargon simple and clear.”

Other findings to come out of the LG study include:
•    Yorkshire and Humberside have the lowest understanding of what HD is with 30% of people surveyed believing that owning a TV with an HD Ready logo or a digital box would automatically make all content high definition
•    Wales has the highest understanding of HD with 90% knowing how HD content is produced and viewed
•    After buying an HD TV, over 30% of Londoners thought the reduction in picture quality was due to lighting conditions in the room rather than the lack of HD content running on the screen

This gives us further motivation to make our new official presence on AV Forums work as effectively as possible to help educate and inform. You can find out more about that in Chris’s post from last week.

*Research involved 1000 people over the age of 16 from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland participating in lengthy telephone surveys during August 2008.

It’s almost September already - where does the time go!? - which means it’s time to prepare for the ‘08 London Design Festival (13th-23rd) and S/S 09 London Fashion week (14th-19th).

On an eco-conscious front, I’m looking forward to the From Here to Eternity exhibition - a collection of designs using plastic and studying:

Pioneering arts consultancy Arts Co is commissioning ten leading contemporary designers and design collectives to celebrate plastic through their work and look at ways to re-think our growing mountains of discarded plastic. The participating designers will show how plastic’s versatility - transparent or opaque, hard or pliant, able to take on a myriad of colours and forms – can serve their creativity.

and hoping there will be a fifth LFW outing for Estethica, the Eco sustainable fashion initiative:

As consumer demand grows more sensitive to ecological design, estethica
celebrates designers who chose to work with either recycled materials, organic
and sustainable fibres, or who adhere to being fair trade, by producing their work
in a safe and social environment. estethica is unique in that it offers a network
of like-minded labels to come together during London Fashion Week.

The photographic exhibition, ‘British Style Observed’ by Mary McCartney, at the Natural History Museum as part of LFW also sounds very worthy of a visit and I’m sure that week could become hugely busy (& rather expensive) if I let myself go. How about you - anything you’re looking forward to seeing, or any recommendations for me?

As it’s a Friday, here’s something a little bit different. The 2008 Olympics may be winding down to their final weekend, and with it some amazing physical feats (and a fair bit of British success to boot). But you don’t have to be a physical superman to impress at the Olympics - dexterity and dedication can find you fame outside of the sporting arena. One dedicated man has done so, creating a model of the Olympic village out of 140,00 playing cards. Amazing stuff:

(via Gizmodo)

The artist behind this is a chap called Bryan Berg and some of his other work is quite impressive - supporting the weight of two people for example. You can find out more about him in on his official website.

We’re always looking for new ways to talk to and engage with LG customers and potential customers online and to make sure they get the information they need - this blog is just one of them - and this week we’re happiest to announce our latest venture. Over at the very popular and highly-respected AVForums we have this week launched an official forum for LG TV products - both LCDs and Plasmas.

It’s primarily a space for LG owners, or people curious about LG panel displays and thinking about making a purchase, to come together and ask questions and, we hope, get answers. As well as bringing together the wider community we also have an LG Blog login and a presence there ourselves, and we’ll be keeping a regular eye on things and will join in talking about LG TV, answering queries as well. We have several lines of new television coming out this autumn, including the Slimline Scarlet (the slimmest LCD in the world), the 52LG7000 (1080p TV with Bluetooth) and the 32LG4000 (HD-Ready TV with integrated DVD player).

And as a way of saying thank-you to the community, for the first month of the forum’s operation, we’ll be keeping track of all the answers and comments made by AVForums users, and the one that a panel of LG TV experts ajudge to be the most useful or insightful will win an LG television! So if you’re interested then get along to the LG LCD and Plasma forums straight away!

Solar panels are appearing on everything these days, and in one of those nice blends of tech and fashion, it appears they’re now appearing on clothes to help you charge your mobile or your gadgets - thus saving you the perils of a flat battery.

On the left is a solar powered tie that I found via Phones Review: academics at Iowa State University - the panels provide power for a phone charger (which you just pop in a pocket behind the tie). It wasn’t just a case of gluing on some panels - they had to make sure the tie could be flexible and the stitching stay durable enough for daily use. That said I’m not convinced - people can be very choosy about their ties and what they say about themselves (such as this fellow) and solar panel black may not be to everyone’s taste.

Meanwhile, on the right (via GadgetLite) the Iowans’ counterparts at North Carolina State University have a prototype solar panel jacket that incorporates the panel into the fabric of the back. This might be a bit better - the back is bigger (so more area and quicker charging) and less obtrusive. You could even have the panels coloured (although the colours they’ve chosen aren’t to my taste) and the potential for custom logos & slogans abounds. What other possibilities are there?

It’s a mirror made of wood. As mad as it sounds, it actually works:

Environmental Graffiti explains how it works:

The concept is simple but formidably clever: a tiny camera gathers light and shape data, before sending it to a computer that processes it and uses hundreds of tiny electric motors to shift the wood blocks into the image in front of the device. Subtle gradations of shade are achieved by both the natural grain of the wood and the angle at which they are displayed, casting shadow if necessary.

In other words, giant wooden pixels. While not useful enough to shave or do your makeup in it’s still remarkable seeing how people get transformed into a wooden pattern. However what really wins it for me is how wonderfully kinetic the “mirror” is - continually updating the image it is “reflecting”. This video shows how it in full operation - it’s surprisingly responsive and constantly making an ethereal fluttering noise as the little wooden blocks rotate to form the patterns required, which is quite relaxing in a way:

The end result is mesmerising and compelling, not least because of the paradox being set up: It’s one of the oldest mediums of expression in the world - wood - being used as part of one of the newest - digital data. An inventive take on modern technology, and artist Danny Rozen’s dedication and workmanship are to be commended as well.

The LG Style Icon contest tour draws to a close this weekend.

This weekend we’re heading to Dublin for the last of our roadshow events. LG will be hosting an open-call photo-shoot at the ILAC Centre from 10am on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th August.

If you haven’t entered and can’t make it to Dublin, you can still enter on the official Style Icon site.

For more information about the competition, check out the official LG StyleIcon site.

There’s an interesting post today over at Techcrunch entitled “Why the UK can become the global hub for mobile“, talking about the UK’s potential for becoming a mobile technology pioneer - thanks to an established userbase and some gifted startups:

The UK mobile market is a great place to launch mobile 2.0 startups; all five national network operators are offering 3G services, and faster 3.5G HSDPA networks are being widely rolled out. There are already over 15m 3G subs, around 25% of all mobile connections. Believe it or not, UK operators have been much quicker than those in the US, and much of Europe, to enable and support access to third party mobile internet sites.

It goes on to list some of the great mobile startups in the UK - many of which operate in and around an area of London called Silicon Roundabout. Having met some of the guys involved in the industry at events like Mobile Geeks of London, I got a real sense that there are lots of inventive people coming up with some great ideas. This is particularly with the explosion in 3G and mobile internet (something that hasn’t gone amiss by Ofcom, who today are talking about a “surge” in mobile broadband), which has vastly opened up the possibilities for mobile applications.

Yet with all this good news and signs of promise there’s one setback today. Twitter have announced they will no longer be sending updates via SMS to mobiles as the cost is too high (up to $1,000 per user per year). This is a shame and a real setback - even though Twitter is US-based, it is enormously popular in the UK and many of the same people involved in cutting-edge mobile technology use it. While I don’t think this will seriously impact Twitter’s popularity - and it might open up a niche for a service that does operate via SMS in the UK - it is still a shame that it’s had to take a backward step while there’s so much mobile innovation in the UK.

Maybe it’s because WALL-E is in the cinemas right now but the news is full of robots in one shape or another, it seems. Some have a fairly simple purpose in life, such as Robopong, a robot that fires table-tennis balls for anyone stuck at home without a partner. Unlike some ball-firers though, with the addition of an accessory it’s still able to pick up balls and reuse them, thus allowing you to keep playing till you drop (or pull the plug).

On the much more sedate end of the robot spectrum comes this amazing robot fish from Japan. Now, fish aren’t that exciting normally but the realism in this specimen has to be seen to be believed:

It’s thanks to the guys at the University of Kitakyushu, who are going to use it to help explore underwater without disturbing or scaring the wildlife there, which is a great idea. Although if they installed a ping-pong ball launcher it could be even more awesome…

Creating robots to do things that would be damaging or hazardous for humans is a common theme, and on the more serious side of things are the ones being used in defence and security. Today the Ministry of Defence unveiled its ideas of robots to help out our soldiers, detecting threats such as bombs, snipers and armed vehicles. And looking further in the future, according to Professor Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield, we might have robot police by the year 2084:

Sharkey said he expects robots with “human-like features and expressions” to patrol the streets of the UK to cut crime, detect weapons, carry out drink and drugs tests and free-up police officers’ time.

Chips in the brains of these tin guardians would give them instant access to bank accounts, tax, motoring, shopping and criminal records, allowing them to instantly identify and determine who people were, according to Sharkey.

That’s a far cry from a ping-pong ball machine - with robots as complex as this we’ll probably need more than just the three laws of robotics to manage robots in society, lest they run amok. Should we be worried about robots with so much power in the future, or will we be able to keep a tight control on the technology?

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid seems to have developed a taste for fashion collaborations this year - first the bag-inspired Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion, and now shoes with Melissa, (a brand Susie at Style Bubble recently introduced me to) with this fabulous curvy creation:

Melissa is a Brazilian company which makes eco-friendly shoes that are 100% recyclable, has already collaborated with Vivienne Westwood, Judy Blame and Alexandre Herchcovitch.

According to PSFK the shoes will be available only at London’s Dover Street Market, and will be arriving in eight different (we envision neon) colors in September. The shoe will be officially launched at a party on September 18 during London Fashion Week.

Here is a video showing the making of the shoe:
Check this out:

The LG Style Icon contest tour is almost over - just two more chances to make your impression!

This weekend we’re heading to St David’s Centre for the ninth & penultimate of the roadshow events. LG will be hosting an open-call photo-shoot at the shopping centre from 10am on Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th August.

For more information about the competition, check out the official LG StyleIcon site.

No, this is nothing to do with computer games. Accelerometers in laptops and other devices have been catching on, doing a variety of things - from safety (shutting down the hard drive if your device falls off a table) - to just pure fun (in game controllers, or even on your mobile phone). Five cool things you can do with an accelerometer lists more ideas for what you can do with them.

However sometimes the nicest ideas are ones we never thought of in the first place, such as this one reported by the BBC:

A device originally put into laptops to prevent damage to the hard drive if the machine is dropped has been put to a novel use by scientists.

The tiny devices that detect unexpected movement are being used to give warnings on earthquakes.

The Quakecatcher Network has been built by combining the readings of sensors in laptops known as accelerometers.

I think this is a really good idea, especially as so many parts of the world are susceptible to earthquakes - just the other day, there was one in California in which thankfully no-one was badly hurt, which the network picked up. The system is still in its infancy, and the accelerometers are only powerful enough to pick up quakes as they are happening - but this still might give a few seconds’ vital notice to help warn people.

By combining the abilities of lots of computers over a wide area (what’s known as distributed computing), it’s using the power of the network - just like other projects like SETI@home, which is searching for extraterrestrial life, and Folding@home, which works out how proteins fold and is pioneering research into diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer. Wikipedia has a great list of all the different kinds - the key being they do stuff in the background, taking advantage of the uses of the technology without getting in your way.

So far they are mainly limited to computers - laptops and desktops - but given nearly all of us have mobiles and many of us have portable music players and other hand-helds, how long before a bright spark somewhere comes up with an idea for using their capabilities for the better of humankind as well?

I have to share this with you today - I found it on Neatorama - the Star Wars Wedding Flickr set:

Not only were the bride and groom in full costume but so were ALL of the guests:

Neatorama proclaim it to be “undoubtedly one of the BEST Star Wars wedding ever!” Well, I’m not familiar with Star Wars weddings so I’ll let them be the judge but as a seasoned organiser of fancy dress parties I have to say I’m hugely impressed that they managed to get everyone in costume! Congratulations to the happy couple and if you’d like to see more photographer Justin Winokur has added over a thousand photos of the event to the Flickr set.

The LG Style Icon contest tour is almost over - just three more chances to make your impression!

This weekend we’re heading to the Trafford Centre for the eigth of the roadshow events. LG will be hosting an open-call photo-shoot at the shopping centre from 10am on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd August.

For more information about the competition, check out the official LG StyleIcon site.