I had one of these a while back (this one). I used it all the time with my mobile phone and it was both a great conversation piece and ergonomically and functionally superior to putting the mobile to my head.

Be ware, there are lots of people out there now manufacturing similar things and the quality varies dramatically. The one linked in PP looks to be of pretty poor quality.

The phobile is no longer available as far as I know which is a shame.

We have a reconditioned rotary dial telephone. Up until recently I could still dial out with it, but as you say the newer telephone equipment doesn't support pulse dialling any more. Also, it was really designed for a time when numbers were four to six digits long, not 11. Dialling 0777 etc gets old very quickly.

Those things are awesome. We had one at a company I used to do contracting for. The only interaction anyone on their IT staff ever had with it was double-tapping scroll lock. I found out the IP address and used it without getting up from my desk and they all thought I was some kind of wizard.

I worry about the state of some people's IT staff.

My own anecdotal experience as someone who likes a lot of current music.

I hear a song premiered on the radio during one of the evening shows that promote new music (Zane Lowe mostly). I get really excited over this great song I just heard. I go home, find it on youtube or soundcloud (usually posted by the artist or label) and listen the hell out of it. Post about it on twitter and facebook and so on.

However, this song is a good month or two months away from actually being released. By the time it's actually released, I've already heard it many times, and I've already moved on to the next new exciting song. My urge to purchase song 1 is significantly reduced.

I try to override this for artists I really care about and make sure I purchase the song, but I'm not excited about buying it.

The massive disparity between a song being released to the world and the song actually being available to buy is probably responsible for quite a lot of lost sales.

OK, you got me. I'm intrigued (genuinely), could I have a source please?

OK, I'll bite on this bite ...

I didn't go and see Avengers in the cinema but would very much have liked to. Also want to go and see Bond. Feedback on both has been overwhelmingly positive, and having watched Avengers on blu-ray, I was not disappointed.

I did go and see Cabin in the Woods (in a small independent cinema, no less), and enjoyed it immensely.

Many people rated The Dark Knight Rises highly (although it's not my sort of film). The Hunger Games was equally quite popular.

The Woman in Black.

The Lorax

Titanic 3D (my wife took the children to see that one)

Snow White and the Huntsman (took my daughter to that one)

Prometheus (not greatly rated but a lot of people went to see it)

Rock of Ages

and more, I'm only up to June.

I can't reliably remember the dates of birth of my children, but I can still remember my skype ID which I haven't used for approximately ten years.

I've used Sophos in both the small business and enterprise incarnations, and both of them had a centrally managed way to download updates as frequently as you required. This wasn't even recently.

I'm typing this on a Unicomp "On-the-ball" USB model with Windows key, UK layout and trackball in the top right.

I don't use the trackball at all, it's not sensitive enough.

The build quality is not the same as an actual Model M, but still miles better than most other keyboards.

Mine has an irritating bug which means I have to replug it on reboot. I don't know why this is. When I was using it with my laptop this was a real pain in the neck, but I've now got it attached to my desktop at work, and I hardly ever reboot that, so I'd forgotten about this bug until fairly recently.

I'm happy with it. I would recommend it.

Interestingly (or not, depending on your point of view), the Virgin Media branded PVR V+ in the UK would disable the analogue outputs when using an HD source, presumably to stop you recording stuff off it, or more likely to stop you beaming it to other parts of the house via an AV sender and getting second box functionality for free.

The Virgin Media branded TiVo (in favour of which V+ is being phased out) does not have this restriction.

I never use bookmarks. I don't even have a very good memory but I do instinctively know whether I've read or not read something. I open the book to roughly where I think I was, and if I've read that bit I go a bit further back, or if I haven't I go a bit further forward. Takes seconds.

And it sucks.

You can't (for instance) use MHL at the same time as USB on the go (USB host mode). Or at the same time as USB AT ALL, as far as I know.

  At least, you couldn't, until they released a new INCOMPATIBLE spec for the connector (starting with, I think, the Galaxy S3).

Also, there's no standard interface for external controls, so you can't have a dock that supports skipping forward/backward/etc.

There's no line level analogue out (as previously mentioned), so that connector is not useable as a dock connector.

Apple make questionable choices about some things, but the dock connector is something they got emphatically right, in my opinion.

Year after year I repeatedly refused to sign the "Internet Permission Slip" sent out with my children because the school put in a clause that they were not responsible for any inappropriate content that my children might see on the internet (primary age children). I refused to sign it because I knew that the school relied on the Birmingham City Council internet filter to prevent access to dodgy stuff rather than adequately supervising their computer use.

I think they eventually gave up chasing me and just let the children online anyway in the end.

Huawei make the 3 "MiFi", the original generation at least and probably the rest too. They also make 3G dongles.

and an unlicensed particle accelerator on the back ...