Today sees the start of the 61st Cannes Festival and for the second year running LG are partners for the festival, this year bringing all the highlights and best clips to you via the web on our special Scarlet monitor inspired viewer, in partnership with Canal+.

Sadly the service is French so lost on me but for the multi-lingual (&/or French!) among you, you can find out more here.

The past few weeks have been a real test of my willpower - first, Di at Designers’ Block introduced me to Michael Michaud’s amazing nature inspired jewelry.

Water Lilies brooch, inspired by the painting of the same name by Claude Monet.

Then Register Hardware brought the Mobile Watch - complete with camera, Wi-Fi, 512MB memory card and GPS satnav - to my attention too:

As a result I had to spend a few minutes quietly repeating to myself ‘there is a big difference between wanting and affording’ before I could be trusted near the computer (or my purse!)
I think the major problem was that with these items combined my latest desires would have allowed me to feel like a bond girl and the agent himself simultaneously - a very tempting combination!

Fortunately Susie over at Style Bubble has bought a more affordable temptation to me - the East End Thrift Shop - and Dezeen have given me another affordable distraction by bringing the Rolf Sachs ‘ Take2′ exhibition to my attention and, thanks to the clever Mr Clayton, I have The Cans Festival to check out too!

So much to see but not to buy…

Here’s a bit of an LG Blog exclusive - Jeremy Newing, LG Mobile’s UK Marketing Manager, talking about the Secret and his ideas for the future of LG Mobile, at the bloggers’ event we held to launch the LG Secret last week: We also managed to collar John Barton, UK Sales and Marketing manager, as he spoke with Helen at the official press conference for the Secret’s release: These videos and more (such as an interview with Simon Perry of Digital Lifestyles) on our brand new LG Blog UK YouTube channel, which succeeds the LG Viewty one we had last year. Of course, we’re not the only ones who’ve been on about the Secret, or indeed videoed about it. Over at Tech Digest Susi has a video review (showing off the tempered glass front). Simon at Zath, Stephen at Gadgeteer and Al at Coolest Reviews both previews the phone - Al especially highlights the m-toy aspects, which I remember a lot of people enjoying at the event. In fact that’s one of the best things about it - was seeing how everyone enjoyed themselves in using the phone, something that I hope we’ll see as more detailed reviews come out in the coming weeks…

Last week LG announced the ‘Viewtyful World’ online photo contest, which runs until 11th June. The eight-week contest is running in association with Yahoo, Flickr, Kelkoo, and National Geographic magazine which features some of the highest-quality photojournalism in the world.

The competition was devised to provide opportunities to explore the spaces surrounding our lives and rediscover the wonders and attractions of these worlds through photography.

You can enter the contest through the Viewty site on Flickr, you can also see others entries and vote for your favourites!

There are three Viewty phones on offer as weekly prizes - two of which will be decided by the online votes and the best photo will be selected by a renowned National Geographic photographer.

The grand winner - chosen from eight candidates selected through evaluation by National Geographic magazine - will have the honour of seeing his/her prize-winning work featured in a Viewty advertorial in National Geographic magazine and receive a copyright fee of US $10,000 for his or her work. Kerching!

For more information visit the Microsite.