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Despite dying with a cold, I decided to take on one more media appearance before Christmas, seeing as I needed to head into the West End anyway to go to Neals Yard Dairy and my favourite Italian food store Lena’s.

Click the image above to have a look at the interview from this morning (not sure how long it takes before the video goes from free to subscription, but its free at the moment) - we covered a lot in a very short space of time:

• Nintendo Wii
• 2008 Console Outlook
• WiMAX
• NetSuite IPO
• Software as a service
• Mobile phones and a possible iPhone killer emerging at 3GSM

Merry Christmas everyone!

OK, I know I said the next post on this blog was going to be my Skypephone opus, and that is coming next, but I just wanted to slip in a quick post about my latest purchase and how much fun I am having with it.

On Monday, in-between having a puncture fixed on the car and trying to install Leopard on the MacBook, I did a load of Christmas shopping, and treated myself to a little gift.

Having recently received a iPod Nano as a gift, I’m using it a hell of a lot (it is a lot lighter than my 60GB iPod Video, which I still think is great, but the Video Nano is nice for taking to work and on short trips where I don’t want a brick in my pocket). The trouble is that the video output cable for my 60GB iPod Video doesn’t work on either the Video Nano or the new iPod Classic. Apple has removed the video out from the headphone jack on the new models and instead only offers video output from the dock connector (and they’ve changed the pin outs so that older dock connector video connectors etc won’t work).

Anyway, I decided to cash in my Nectar points, and in Argos I picked up the new and improved composite video cable with dock connector. It wasn’t cheap - £35 before Nectar discount - but you get a fair amount for your money. It is a well made cable, with a dock connector at one end (push-pull type rather than with locking clips), and three metal phono connectors at the other. There is also a USB connector, allowing you to charge your iPod while playing through the cable, or even sync it. Also included in the box is the new-style USB power supply. Its the same one bundled with the iPhone, so it is half the size of the original USB Apple power supply. US buyers get just the US 2-pin head attachment, us Brits get both the UK plug attachment and the 2-pin European attachment.

As a result of buying the cable (which works with the Video iPod as well as with the new models) I’ve been watching a huge number of video podcasts on my big TV in the study, as well as watching a roaring fire, courtesy of Cali Lewis and iYule.tv.  Even though I was only playing th iPod Nano version of the iYule video rather than the high-res one, it still looks and sounds great.

It’s extremely early, and I’m getting ready to head in to BBC Television Centre for a morning of radio appearances to talk about iPhone hacking:

• BBC Radio 5 Live (Wake Up To Money): 5.30am (Live)
• BBC Radio 4 (Today Programme): 7.20am (Live)
• BBC Scotland (Good Morning Scotland): Pre-record for some time this morning.

The trick will be to sound like I’m actually awake, which I am not!

Microsoft and Google announce quarterly results tonight, and I’ll be doing the usual round of TV spots to discuss the figures:

BBC News 24: Tonight at 9.40pm (Live)
BBC World: Tomorrow 5.30am (Live)
CNBC: Tomorrow 10.40am (Live)

As always, these times are subject to change as other coverage may overrun.

Just a quick update to let you know that I’m doing a few media spots today and tomorrow to talk about the US launch of Apple’s iPhone:

BBC World Service (Radio): Overnight tonight
BBC Radio 5 Live (Radio): LIVE Tonight at about 11.30pm
CNBC (TV): LIVE Friday 10.20am UK time

It’s a Monday night, I’m sat on the couch in the study with a bottle of wine updating various blogs, installing apps on my Facebook page, setting up a second Twitter feed while updating my main one, installing the beta of Safari for Windows on one of the laptops, watching Current TV and stress testing a Sky Broadband DSL line.

I really am a geek.

Unfortunately, due to a technical hitch with my mic that nearly derailed the whole thing, the interview has not been put online. However, it went rather well.

We also covered off the privacy issues of such services holding and displaying personal information, and even talked about Sony’s plans to morph the PSP into a phone - yes, yet another attempt at an iPhone killer.

Just a quick note to say I’ll be popping up on CNBC this Monday (June 11th) at about 10.20am talking about Facebook. We will be discussing why Facebook has become so popular so quickly and whether it is likely to command the same huge valuations that MySpace and Bebo have managed.

As always, I’ll post a link to the CNBC video once it is online, and in the meantime, here’s my Facebook page.

Well we had a bit of fun this past weekend.

On Friday the new sofa for my study arrived, and I was finally able to dump the futon that, while cheap and study and comfy to sleep on, was awful to sit on.

Much of the weekend was spent testing the new sofa, and catching up on the mounds of TV on the Sky + box that I simply have not had time to watch over the last 11 months since I started work at Dennis on IT PRO.

This was rudely interrupted on Sunday afternoon when, half way through watching the movie Thank You For Smoking, the TV in my study blew up!

The screen went blank, followed by a bit of a bang, then a shockingly loud short-circuiting sound, then the smell of burning plastic, shortly followed by some smoke. This in turn was followed by me diving across the room to clear a path through the shelving so I could pull the TV’s plug from the mains.

Obviously its not the only TV in the house, but it caught all of us by surprise, as it was the oldest, most reliable and generally considered to be the best of our TVs (even though it was a CRT, badged as Wharfedale and came from Tesco).

Still deciding what to actually buy to replace it long term, but for now I’ve gone for a cheap short-term replacement. A quick look on eBay produced a refurbished 28inch CRT widescreen TV of equal spec for 65 quid delivered, and it’s in transit now and due to arrive before Friday. This one was originally sold by Asda (badged as Pacific). I’m not expecting it to be great, but it will fill the gap left by the Wharfedale until I get round to buying a proper replacement, probably a LCD or a plasma (really would like a rear-projection TV, but haven’t got the space in the study for it, plus I doubt we would ever get it up the stairs).

As promised, here is the link to the appearance I did on CNBC Europe on Friday morning to discuss the PlayStation 3 launch. Sadly not featured in the video is the piece I also did beforehand on Oracle threatening to sue SAP for corporate espionage.

You can view the Sony debate by clicking here.