A NEW PHONE FROM LG!

But LG's using different girls to model it :(





The blonde one's school holidays must've finished. This phone's called the LG-SV280, but LG is also insisting on calling it the Green Banana Phone. That no doubt sounds a bit catchier in Korea.

Hi-Po batteries - King of the Jungle!

Or is that the lion? Hippos are king of something, aren't they? King of the river? King of mud? King of those little birds that pick fleas out of their folds of neck fat? They'd be king of us. In fact, you'd have to do what a hippo said even if it wasn't king.

Anyway, you can't say batteries are boring when they're called Hi-Po:



Ironically, we have stolen this image off Phorenzik who stole the idea off us. He will no doubt be along in about three minutes to leave a comment on this post, just like we left a comment on his post. His will be more crude.

If there was a contest for Most Bored Person In Work Today, we'd be neck and neck for gold.

The EMFields Screening Headnet

Is it, fantastically, a microwave shielding "headnet" for utter lunatics who think mobile phone waves are going into their brains and making them mental.

No, it's not mobile phone waves going into your brain making you into a lunatic, it's the fact that you ARE a lunatic making you a lunatic.



"The headnet can be worn as it is, perhaps tucked into a jumper or coat; or it can be worn over a hat of your choice. This gives extra room around your face and head... You can wear the headnet in the garden, when traveling or when visiting places where microwave exposure is likely to be high e.g. shopping centres."

Buy it, or just laugh at the idea of buying it as a joke for a friend, or buy one just to wear while wanking, here.

Men shake hands over something entirely inconsequential and meaningless

Look at them. The man on the left's just agreed to supply the man on the right 15,000 bath plugs over the next ten years. Or maybe the one on the right has signed a deal to let the one on the left use his company's can opener design.

Or perhaps they are collaborating on a new kind of washing machine.



It must be horrible doing "business" as your main job.

Hot Photocopying Hunks

Friday night is, once again, ladies night. Office-based fan fiction in the comments bit, please. Keep it hetero - we'd rather not spend the weekend thinking about these guys going at each other in the store room:





They're making the best out of what must be quite an awkward scenario. It's not every day a Korean webmaster asks to take a photo of you when you're a photocopier salesman.

The Umix FX100

Quite similar to the Lumix FX100, only, for some odd reason, not looking quite so aspirational today:



SAYS THE FINDER: "It's clear that no thought was given to the strap's angle of dangle. Obscured logo? Heads should roll. On the plus side, he does manage to look slightly aroused, which is nice."

Less-fit woman holds umbrella for fit women

It's modern-day slavery!



The uglier underclass is being kept in its place by the toned and tanned elite, forced to stand behind the scenes, serve food, and carry things for the more attractive people. Not that Sharapova's aged particularly well.

And judging by that look on her face, she'd rather be at home eating discounted Cadbury Creme Eggs and playing Virtua Tennis 3.

The Panasonic Lumix FX100

Due to reasons even more tedious than a long series of updates about batteries, printers and radios, we didn't end up buying a new camera at the end of March like we said we would.

We are therefore still 'in the market' for a new camera. The Lumix FX100 looks nice, plus it can record HD movies in 1280x720 resolution, which, while not particularly useful, is something everyone else's camera can't do so will go some way toward relieving the "status anxiety" we feel every day about having a camera that's four years old and only five megapixels and therefore SHIT.



The FX100 goes up to 12 megapixels, which is more than most cameras so better, plus it has an optical image stabiliser so super-close macro photos of batteries will come out very nice.

ABOUT OUR NEXT CAMERA:
Primarily, our next camera will be used for getting out of a bag and waving about in public, so people know we have a good camera. This is the most important thing, so it has to be a better camera than most other cameras. If this involves spending more money than £129.99, then so be it.

Possible next obsession: Antique radios

Check out the dials on these babies. When we go insane and start hoarding things, it could well be antique radios bought from junk shops for 50p that they don't even make the type of batteries for any more.



Nice, eh? It's a Zenith R-7000-2 TransOceanic Radio from 1981. It's amazing and www.transoceanics.com is available for registration! You should always check domain registration availability before getting obsessed with something.

OTHER POSSIBLE FUTURE OBSESSIONS:

Really obscure trade shows

Big elastic bands that only people who work for the Post Office can get

Possible next new obsession: REALLY BIG printers

You probably think printers don't get that big - well THINK AGAIN.



Imagine how exciting it would be loading the paper tray when one false move could take your arm off.



And you thought Battery Week was dull. Imagine what Big Printer Week would be like. It'd be like sitting in front of a black hole, pressing F5 for infinity.



These printers are so big HP suggests printing out photos of real women at their proper size.



The possibilities are endless! You could... er...



And this is the real reason we have started liking big printers. They like big printers. See you in PC World at 5.35pm.

Perfectly innocent caption competition

We have to throw this one open to the floor, as the only things we can think to say about what's happening here are VERY BAD THINGS about massive robot cocks, rape, blood and death.



You could perhaps open MS Paint and fashion a crude "30 seconds later" illustration, although that will also no doubt also involve massive robot cocks, rape, blood and death. It would appear that there is no escape from the massive robot cock.

More new black rectangles

By JVC and HP. TVs are now more boring than iPod docks, especially as whenever we turn ours on the only program available to watch is Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps.





And why are companies continuing to make TVs? Haven't they heard the future of entertainment is watching grainy clips of people doing impressions of other people on the internet?

Three new kinds of dog revealed at Hong Kong Canine Innovation Expo 2007

Development in the world of dogs has skyrocketed in the last decade, thanks to advanced manufacturing techniques and new 'smart' materials. Here, we take a look at some of the new models of dog recently revealed to breeders at the Hong Kong Canine Innovation Expo trade show.



This one has an eight-litre rectal storage compartment, meaning it only needs to be taken out for a poo once every eight weeks.



This one can last for 14 days on a single food charge, drastically cutting down on costs over the lifetime of the dog.



This one lives for up to 25 years, making it much less awkward and emotionally upsetting for a child to own it. These enhancements will make dogs more popular than ever!



An example of an early dog, from the 1960s. The recent manufacturing improvements are clear to see.

Our new favourite gadget site for 20 minutes last night

It's called Bengalboy. It's a man who takes photos of his 'bitches' modeling mobile phones and other gadgets, to fuel his James Bond wank fantasies.



This is also what we would do if we had the ability to make women take their clothes off on demand and knew some women.



The entirely innocent way we stumbled across this was by running a Google image search for Q9 and seeing what came up. We most certainly were not looking for pimps and bitches while drunk with unfastened trousers.

VISIT BENGALBOY'S FORUM
It contains such gems as:

BengalBoy & Celestrelle Make "Sweet Music" with the Sony Ericsson W810i "WalkMan" Cell Phone!!

"Wireless GentleMan's Club" World Exclusive Look!! The Kittens Get Twisted Up With SE's W600i!!

Bengalboy is Doing CyberShots! Damn Fine Ass Sony Ericsson K790i 3 MegaPixel CyberShot Camera Phone!

Motorola's Q9 looks less 'Amstrad' in silver

This boosts the Motorola Q9 from 'Amstrad' all the way up to 'Alba' in the gadget prestige chart.



You'd still have to put a sock over it when making calls in public.

Woman loves printer EVEN MORE than the last woman, who, it turns out, didn't love her printer very much at all

This one's gone the extra mile and used the classic technique of printing out a photo of herself, while also setting a photo of the scene as her desktop image!

And that isn't a belt she's wearing, it's a drawing of a belt made out of printer ink.



Nice USB memory stick insertion illustration, too. Samsung proves once again that it is the undisputed #1 thing-display company.

Possible next new phone #2 - The Motorola Q9

Now don't go saying it's all wanky and pretentious - we really need something like this for saving pictures from other web sites and uploading them here with a sarcastic introductory paragraph while 'on the move':



There's also a Q8. But who's going to get that when there's a 9?

PROS:

Has a sort-of keyboard that our spindly little grandma-fingers could just about use

CONS:

Looks a bit 'Amstrad'

The Fujitsu Lifebook U

It'll be too expensive, will run Vista at a snail's pace and probably only come out in Japan and maybe Korea, but we're fascinated by really small laptops. Especially their need for really small fingers to make them usable.

You would need fingers like matchsticks. Steve, the plumber who very nicely fixed our leaking tap for £239, would press V + B + N + F + G + H + T + Y + R while only meaning to press G, for example. This is not for real men with big fingers from doing proper work outside.



It has a 5.6" screen and comes with a 20GB hard drive, which still impresses us as we can remember when hard drives cost £89,999 and only let you save three lines of text on them before getting full and needing to be sent back to the manufacturer for an eight-week refurbishment program. Screens used to only be .001 of an inch across, too.

Woman REALLY LOVES her new printer

She's set it as her desktop wallpaper and is now having her photo taken with it.



Women, eh? Glad there aren't any on the internet yet.

Oh, it was actually Pioneer's new 1080p plasma TV range

This proves the point about HDTVs being so boring you can't tell the difference between any of them.



We've had a similar generic black rectangle in the corner of a room for 18 months now, and still couldn't pick it out of an identity parade.

Panasonic's new 1080p plasma TV range

So anyway, we're supposed to be the sort of web site that does updates about things like this, even though HDTVs are as boring as watching a documentary about the sort of people who watch documentaries about making documentaries about old women's conversations about their pets:



It's a Panasonic TV1080pXX42BLAHBLAH-P-for-Plasma-B-for-Black or something a bit like that, and has a 20,000:1 contrast ratio which means it's either four times better or four times worse than ours. 20,000 seems like a lot of contrasts, so it's probably better. It's best not to retroactively rate your gadget purchases, though. Makes you want to go and live in a tent somewhere without electric and cry about spending all the money you should've used to buy a house in 1997.

World Korean Outdoor Championships, 2007

The second week of May means only one thing - the start of the new outdoor holding season.

Third to go in round four is the fancied Korean newcomer, attempting an MP3 player fan.



So here is Chun Wie-Pak, 19, performing the extremely difficult four-item single-handed hold. Perfect fanning, even distribution, nice blend of colours... and yes, devices all activated and set to different option screens.

This is a superb display of the 5.9 difficulty-rated hold. This will be hard to beat and could see her move into the bronze position, what with the Russian failing to...



But what's this? WHAT IS THIS NOW?! What is she doing? She's... she's looking away from the hold! She's LOOKING AWAY! My goodness! She's doing it! She's doing it without looking! This is... is... EXTRAORDINARY!



And now a smile! A SMILE! Good lord, she's won it AND SHE KNOWS IT! Sensational!

Battery Week actually ends HERE

With this.



There will be no more speak of ****eries around here.

BATTERY WEEK ENDS HERE AND NOW

With this.



Brilliant. We're done with batteries for at least a week, while we 'recharge' and possibly 'dispose of ourselves in a fire'.

BATTERY WEEK II TRIPLE SUMBISSION: The "Judo" and the "Dickie" and the "Uniross"

All these from one man. We've included the Uniross rechargable even though it's not particularly interesting, because he says it first went into service in 1987 and still works. That's power.

He also supplied three high/super/ultra quality photos of each, so we sort of should use them all as he put in the effort.







EXPLANATION: "The Judo. It’s a high quality battery (it says so), and is *super* heavy duty. So there."







EXPLANATION: "A Dickie Power rechargeable. Marvellous name. Must be high quality, as all the text is in German. Occasionally recharges if you try a few times."







EXPLANATION: "A Uniross rechargeable. Maplins, circa 1987. Still works (just)."

BOYCOTT GOLD PEAK INTERNATIONAL!
Maker of the so-called "Green Power" range responsible for factory deaths in China: "...cadmium induced problems in these factories have already caused deaths"

BATTERY WEEK II: A battery just called "Battery" and the "McNair"

By far the worst photograph of a battery ever taken:



A nice find RUINED by inferior photography. The same reader also submitted a photo of a "McNair" - at least that what it looks like it says:



THE EXPLANATION: "The photo is shite beyond belief. Blame the Toshiba TS608 mobile phone. Worst camera in the world, ever, EVER. I could draw a better reproduction of a scene, whilst on fire and dead."

BATTERY WEEK II: The "Shilihe"

"Just found these inside a calculator I bought" is the only explanation that accompanied the Shilihe. Please try to be a bit more enthusiastic. These are exciting batteries, not PowerPoint presentations about the importance of working as a team.



We just found this in our email inbox. Hurts, doesn't it?

BATTERY WEEK II: Alternate silver "Vinnic"

This update is the one where battery updates stopped being "fun" and started being "a chore". It will all be over soon. There are about three more left.







We have lost the email these came in with, so have no clues about how to track them down or anything else to say about them.

BATTERY WEEK II: Fake shame of the "LUMBERJACK"

Those are some nice batteries, we thought, before wondering why they looked the size of kitchen rolls and seemed to be very shiny - a bit TOO SHINY - at the ends.



It's because the Lumberjack is a FAKE BATTERY, designed by a reader in 3D Studio Max. Which, although a shameless attempt at fooling us, is quite impressive all the same.

We have requested the faker changes the text to "Idiot Toys" and alters the best before date to "2006" so it can be our new logo.

BATTERY WEEK II: The "Huahong"

This is a beauty! There's something so primal, so raw, so honest about the Chinese people's use of brazen primary colours in their batteries. The red represents fire! This battery burns inside with the power of a thousand stars! It is unashamed and bright, it needs not hide behind false promises. It is Huahong. It burns with the flame of life. It is super heavy duty. It is eternal.

The really large warning letters also hint that opting for a Huahong is a slightly more dangerous choice than using mere normal batteries. Definitely a contender for Best Battery of Battery Week.



Do not destroy in fire? CANNOT destroy in fire, more like. Fuck you, fire! Huahong will make YOU explode. WARNING: RISK OF EXTINGUISHING IF FIRE DARES GO NEAR HUAHONG.

RELATIVELY SIMPLE EXPLANATION: "Found inside one of those Chinese lucky cat ornaments that move their paw."

BATTERY WEEK II: 3MB of "Golden Power"

Yes, yes, we've all got a Golden Power in an old Amstrad stereo remote control somewhere - but we can't not use a 3MB, 3888 x 2592 photo of one.



Well it was 3MB before we rotated it and saved it at JPEG quality setting seven. It hasn't lost much in the processing and we couldn't be bothered to think up a new headline. Battery Week is starting to drag for us. God knows how it must be for you.

BATTERY WEEK: The "Sunpadow"

Someone's showing off with their camera's fancy macro mode...



You can see the man who took the photo clearly reflected on the right-hand side of the high-res image.



There he is! He looks quite normal for a man who takes hi-res photos of batteries to send into obscure blogs. Although it does look like he's wearing a Starfleet uniform.



This battery is padow.

BATTERY WEEK II: The "POWER"

Just POWER. Pure and simple - it's incredible no one's thought of this name before.



Black trousers, brown jumper - it's in classic Duracell fancy dress.

BATTERY WEEK II: The "Jingle"

Awful battery! It looks homemade! It's just some greaseproof paper, casually wrapped around a mercury and cadmium core, then covered in sellotape.

Absent-mindedly chew on this a couple of times and you'd be in the Jaw Replacement Ward for six months of soup through a tube while they build you a new face out of bits of your arm.



EXPLANATION: "Please find attached my humble submission for battery week - a "Jingle Heavy Duty AA". I have included a statue of a duck in the photo, to give a sense of scale. The battery was in a cheap MP3 player."

BATTERY WEEK PROGRESS REPORT
We have seven more updates in "saved as draft" status, plus a further four written in Notepad and ready to go. Barring getting sent YET MORE FUCKING BATTERY PHOTOS, we'll wrap up Battery Week this week by doing five updates today and six tomorrow.

BATTERY WEEK II: The "Can Do"

Not sure if we've done anything on this in the past or not. It's all turning into a slightly tedious blur.



It's also a GIF which makes us suspicious about its origins. We'll bury this disappointing post with a slightly less disappointing one in a couple of minutes. Don't bother doing any comments, it'll be gone soon and you'll have wasted your time.

BATTERY WEEK II: The "Wise" battery

Not to be bought by the "wise" consumer, as any "wise" person would know that quality batteries aren't bought in batches of 24 from places that mainly sell food.







EXPLANATION: "Here is the Wise AA battery, which I found in the garage in my new house. They were with a smoke detector and I assume were the cells bundled with it. Probably not so 'Wise' to use these no-marks to safeguard your family though..."

MORE EXPLANATION: "I snapped them on top of a JBL SBL3 tower speaker using a Casio Exilim EXZ40. However, I did not take them at full resolution. Please advise if this is required."

EVEN MORE EXPLANATION: "I included three different 'warmths' of lighting, to suit your mood whenever you choose to view them."

A FINAL JOKE: "Note the logo looks like a mix-up at the BBC's graphics department, blending Thundercats with Panorama."

BATTERY TIME FRAME: The "XIONGJIAN"

Of couse, as everyone knows, Xiongjian is Chinese for "durable cell".



Why are they always so lumpy? What are you animals doing to these lovely batteries?

BATTERY MONTH: The "New TITEN"

Ambitious name. Nice photos, and the sender also did a bit of background research to accompany his submission, discovering the makers' impressive flash web site that is what the internet would've been like had the internet existed in the 1970s.



Always nice when they're silver.

BATTERY MONTH: The "Bater Max"

Scroll down the photo really slowly, while humming the 2001 music. It's worth it. This is the biggest photo we've ever put on the main page for a reason.

Also, proving that you can just guess most foreign words, it reveals that Spanish for "mercury" is "mercurio" and Spanish for "cadmium" is "cadmio".



EXPLANATION: "I win at Battery Week. See, it's a battery that not only implies, but demands, use during self-molestation. It allows you to 'bate to the max. Found in a kids toy bought in Spain. Yours stickily, GoodEvans."

BATTERY WEEK II: The "POWERCELL SUPER EXTRA"

Awesome name. Can't decide if the photos are "arty" and nice, or just a bit blurry and lit badly.





EXPLANATION: "Here is a battery for battery week. It was found under my mate's bed, it has probably been there years. As can be seen from the pic it is 'Super Extra' and also 'Heavy Duty', I'm not so sure about its bragging rights about being fresh though, given that it expires in 2008! I'm not sure if it works - and I bet nothing could harness its Super Extra power if it does!

BATTERY WEEK II: The "New Leader" in batteries!

Clever use of subliminal messaging from the Chinese. From the makers of "BUY THESE BATTERIES" batteries and "THE LONGEST-LASTING BATTERIES" batteries.



EXPLANATION: "I found these gems in a fortune telling toy I purchased off Play! They obviously hold some kind of mystical power as they powered a fortune teller! (before they went after 4 weeks). Perhaps these batteries knew they were going to be the new leader of batteries before they were even labeled?

BATTERY WEEK: Best Photographic Submission - the "Lightload"

Such a great photo. We hope this was taken by the spotter, and isn't just a stock picture nicked off the makers' web site:



Amazing use of shadow and the choice of background really brings out the silver-effect finish. Incredible work, especially as these are smaller and harder to photograph AAAs.

BATTERY WEEK: Hugo's spread

It's always nice when a fellow collector gets their wares out and shows you what they've got.



WHERE THEY ALL CAME FROM:

"Thomson -- these are probably the best batteries in the world! Came with my Thomson VCR six years ago, I've never replaced them. Never. Ever."

"Pirkka -- Finnish battery"

"ATC -- can't remember where from, best bit of these "Made in PRC" batteries is the "A product of the ATC-HOLLYLAND Group". Are they trying to conjour glamourous Hollywood ideas?"

"Ikea -- cheap Ikea battery."

"Tandy -- classic Tandy batteries, and a RadioShack from the same place."

"Two camera batteries, included cos they're a stupid shape."

"Ruwido -- I think these came with my new NTL remote, but I've never used them because I put the old ones from my old NTL remote in. "Interesting", eh? NTL batteries fare the worst, that thing eats batteries like nothing else."

"Airdeer! -- Or is it Pairdeer? Either way, no idea where from, but they're great!"

"An old Duracell Procell."

"Eastpower -- from my cheapo Technika DVD player from Tesco."

"Golden Power -- dunno where this is from either."

BATTERY WEEK: The British "Usance"

From a UK-based company! Who says the battery-manufacturing industry is dead over here?

Although, for a company that supposedly specialises in "innovative products," the idea of making a AAA battery isn't particularly inspiring.



EXPLANATION: "Another battery for your obsession. Here's the USANCE AAA. Nearly spells nuisance. Which this battery was. 0% Nickel... 0% Cadmium... 0% power holding capacity. Taken with a Pentax *ist DL Digi SLR on Macro mode at 1.5mp (lowest setting). In my kitchen on the fake marble top. Standing on a chair."

Who has to stand on a chair to see the kitchen worktop?

BATTERY WEEK: The Chinese "Pairdeer"

Nice explosive imagery - that's because the battery is so powerful. That's what they mean by that. The explosion is because of the battery's extreme power, not its shoddy manufacturing.



EXPLANATION: "Here are some more excellent batteries! With no more actual animals to name their batteries after, the Chinese have resorted to using an image of a deer and appending an arbitrary word to the beginning of it. Unknown as to whether these are super, high or megapairsuper quality."

BATTERY WEEK: Generic "Carbon Battery" from China

Found in a hotel room in Beijing. Smuggled out of the country up arse. Can anyone translate the weird symbol things they use as words over there?





The black writing underneath is "0% mercury". Bet you anything.

AN UPDATE REGARDING THE 'PANASEMIG' BATTERY
The link was sent to us by Brendan McLaughlan. He wants us to point this out to win some sort of bet about getting his name on the internet.

Is there any chance that you you update the post and include my name in it? It's been a long running hope of mine to get famous on the internet, and it may help lift my spirits in my battle with AIDS. I'll also win a pint in a bet with a work mate. This will make me more popular with the ladies, and I may even get laid!
Oh, I'd probably practice safe sex of course.

Thanks,

Brendan McLaughlan.

BATTERY WEEK: Resplendent in orange - the "Sanli"

Beautiful. It'd be worth buying and ripping open the entire Woolworths kids toy department just on the off chance you might find a couple of these powering a Thomas The Tank Engine talking book.



EXPLANATION: "Please find the same attached. Note the distended middle 'thread'. This is from a £4.99 Tesco MP3 player. It lasted about 2 hours. Yours, Kieran."





Nice photos, nice amateur point. Very good all-round submission work from Kieran. The youngster shows a lot of promise. Hopefully he'll start sending us porn now we're friends.

BATTERY WEEK: The exotic "Jin-Fu"

Slightly blurry and the background doesn't compliment the batteries, but you can't complain when the battery itself is such a rarity.





EXPLANATION: "I don't know if you're still honking that battery train but I found some lovely "JIN-FU"s today in a Pop-Star Mixing Deck I bought half price from Pound Stretcher. They were all mouldy but I handled them anyway to get the pictures. I hope they will do. Joe."



That's a lot of plastic for one pound.

BATTERY WEEK: An extraordinarily rare albino 9v Hi-Watt

We love the Hi-Watt range, as regular readers will no doubt remember. This makes it all the more exciting to see a photo of a genuine 9v example in the wild, complete with dashing white colour scheme and superb art-deco-inspired rounded edges.

This is a shining beacon in the battery world and such a rarity. The photo was submitted in nice 2400 x 1920 resolution, although there's too much white space around the un-cropped original - better use of a macro mode could've picked up a lot more detail. And please, try to get the terminals in your photos. They're the most important part of a nine-volter.



We could look at this battery all day. Pure understated brilliance. The 9v Hi-Watt clearly works in everything, but they've taken the care to specifically point out it works in transistor radios, even though everyone listens to pop music ironically through the internet now and only buys 9v batteries for tingly electro-sex sessions in the bath.

AN IDEA:
Someone should make a waterproof 9v battery just for putting on your cock while wanking in the shower. Not that we've ever done this, but we'll probably give it a go tomorrow now we've thought of it. Cock/battery/wanking/shower review tomorrow (if the site remains not-updated, check the BBC web site for news of bizarre shower/electrocution/sex deaths of 33-year-old males in the South London area).

BATTERY WEEK: The copyright-infringing "Penesamig"

Let's see... the right number of syllables, the right colour scheme, the right kind of lettering...



The only difference between these and the proper Panasonic variety is you can buy 50,000 of these for six quid from a newsagent at 4.00am. Taken from here.