HOLDING WORLD 2007: Team Sanyo Xacti HD1000 eliminated in quarter finals

Disaster for Sanyo. This is an appalling hold. The device is so far off centre you can hardly see it, the body of the camera is almost entirely obscured by her hand, the angle of the background and odd tilt of the shoulders is giving us motion sickness - the whole scene's one sad, sorry mess.



And... is it even turned on? At least she remembered to remove the lens cap, but that won't be much consolation to her on the flight home tomorrow.

HOLDING WORLD 2007: East European challenge fails to appear

Every year we expect the East Europeans to come out in force - and every year they disappoint.



Uninspired background, a PC monitor is taking our gaze away from the intended device, and call those smiles? What's wrong, ladies? Mr Tiddles just got run over this afternoon?

HOLDING WORLD 2007: LG powers into semis

A touch blurry, but the judges felt the coy smiles and sheer enthusiasm of this pair was enough to get them through. And we're very keen on seeing what they can do together in the lingerie round.



The photographer will need to up his game if they want to go home with a medal, though - this sort of amateur focus work is not world class.

HOLDING WORLD 2007: Facial align error costs Samsung dear

Well, you have to give her credit for trying a risky facial align without a safety mirror, but that phone's nothing like lined up with her head and face.



It's at least ten degrees off. Anything under five and you may get away with it, but that's a disaster for the Samsung team this early in the competition.

HOLDING WORLD 2007: Samsung debuts "The Piano"

Well, here we are! Our plane landed in Shanghai last night, and we're ready to report LIVE from Holding World 2007! It's going to be brilliant!



Here's an early taster of the sort of innovation we can expect to see over the next three days - Samsung's Wei-Lan Fo debuting "The Piano". Designed to illustrate the ease of use and lightness of the LCD screen, The Piano is a delicate, subtle hold, of intermediate difficulty. She won't be up in the medals with this...

"Darling, where's my camera?"

"The new one you bought me for my birthday? Have you seen it?"



"Oh never mind, here it is. I put it in the cup."

AMSTRAD launches product display robot

It's the AMS Product Display Robot. They never were very good at coming up with names.



£99.99 and can also send text messages and emails down a standard BT phone line.

POSSIBLE NEXT NEW PHONE: Nokia N81

They're doing an 8GB version of it too, so if you can get it for free as an upgrade it means you're getting a nice 8GB memory card without having to risk getting sent a fake one from some little shit on eBay.



The bad news is the N81's spearheading Nokia's music download service which it's stupidly calling "Nokia Music Store" instead of "Nokia's iTunes", plus it's also heralding the return of the N-GAGE gaming brand.

THE LAST THINGS WE NEED:

5. More music download services

4. New types of phone

3. Some alternate memory card formats

2. More than 10 text messages and two free minutes a month

1. A return of the N-GAGE gaming brand

Sanyo's budget product display humanoid PD-01F

This entry level product display bot has been designed to give smaller companies a cheap entry to the automated product display scene.



She has one facial expression, plus a left arm that hinges at the elbow and can be adjusted by remote control. The included discreet grey product table is height adjustable, allowing PD-01F to easily display large or small devices.

PD-01F goes on sale this September, just in time for the spring 2008 round of technology shows.

Over confident LG crashes to defeat

A wooden TV and a pose from a 1950s holiday camp brochure. Nothing good about this. Even the background's an incoherent mess, with alternate model TVs drawing the eye away from the new screen. They've got cocky and thrown it all away.



And who wants that much brown in their living room?



Terrible. It's Amateur Hour down LG's way today. Even the photographer has let us down with his choice of angle here. So many things wrong it's hard to know where to start.

Robot knows way to a woman's heart

More specifically, it knows the way to her chest, and the way to her letting you touch her chest without having to make it look like you just innocently brushed it with your elbow. Alcohol.



The Asahi DateRapeBot will be out at the end of the year. Out on parole, for previous offenses.

POSSIBLE NEXT NEW CAMERA (if you're a woman with a budget of £49.99): Pentax Optio Z10

Sorry about this. There must be another camera show on somewhere. It's as boring for us as it is for you.



Looks like a Kodak Disc 2000 from 1984. Not even if it was the last camera in the world, and was free, and came with some free sex in the box.



Oh, well, it doesn't look much like a Kodak Disc 2000 from 1984, but we spent two minutes looking for a picture of the stupid thing so might as well put it up.

POSSIBLE NEXT NEW CAMERA (if you live in China or North Korea): Sony Cyber-shot DSC H3

Quite possibly the ugliest camera in the world. We can only assume it's being targeted at emerging markets. The entry level end of emerging markets.



Or perhaps it's for old people who remember when cameras used to look like this and could only take one photo before having to be sent back to the manufacturer for a refit?

POSSIBLE NEXT NEW CAMERA: Canon Powershot A720 IS

Back in March, we held and very nearly bought a Canon 710 IS. The fact that a 720 IS was maybe around the corner, coupled with the crippling indecision that mars our every day lives and turns even the simplest purchase into a nightmare of Google searching and Amazon review reading, made us put it down and leave the shop.

That possible "Most Boring Anecdote of the Month" sets up this. A picture of Canon's new A720 IS.



It looks very lovely. The only problem is it's only 8 megapixels, and even though most people are well aware that it's all about the "quality of the sensor" these days, it's still not really enough megapixels to tell mum our new camera can do.



This one, the A650 IS, can do 12 megapixels. Mum would be impressed by that. Even more impressed than when she found out we've managed to get a job.

Woman uses £2000 TV as a mirror

Having a screen that reflective is a very bad idea. Making eye contact with yourself is the worst possible thing that can happen while 'relaxing' in front of the telly.



This is a fake, anyway. She's holding up her right hand in real life, whereas the image on the TV screen is showing her left hand. As if we'd fall for such an obvious Photoshop job.

Microsoft Sidewinder Gaming Mouse

For those weird people who use their PCs for more than Firefox, Notepad and WS_FTP95 LE.



We've done an update about this as it looks a bit like it has an erection in this particular photograph.

Another PR disaster for Sony

Honestly, what were they thinking?



Dunno where to start with this. The hold is clumsy, the "Net-Sharing Cam" looks angular and old fashioned, and without getting too personal, she's a right old boiler for reasons too numerous to list.

It takes more than a bunch of flowers from the garage stuck in the background to make a decent promotional photograph, Sony.

The Nokia 6555 also comes in MILF-tastic lavender

We have spotted a new trend. It's making off-colour, subtle things for the 35+ year old female business/leisure sector. Sony did it last week and now it's Nokia's go.



Perfect for grandma to put on the mantelpiece.

The Nokia 6555

Didn't come with any lifestyle photography :(



Looks a bit "The Matrix" and a bit "Motorola RAZR" which isn't really acceptable in mid-2007 :(



Has a nice big clock, although you might struggle to tell which way up it's meant to be and therefore what the time is. Is that twenty-to-ten, five-to-one or twenty-five-past-six?

Woman holds "data"

Now the joke here should really be a reference to Lieutenant Yar's sex moment with Lieutenant Commander Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation Series One, Episode 3 story "The Naked Now", but that would alienate readers quicker than you can say "Battery Week III".

So here's a photo of a woman holding some data.



"My mate knows I like pictures of people holding stuff, so he sent me this link, to a pic (attached) of a woman holding some 'data'. This is likely the most remarkable hold I've ever seen for two reasons - firstly, she's holding a concept, not an actual thing. I've heard this is actually quite difficult but she makes is seem so easy. Secondly, she doesn't appear to have any arms, so she's holding the data with a huge hand sprouting from her right shoulder. Are 'special' holders judged using exactly the same criteria as non-special holders?"

POSSIBLE NEXT NEW CAMERA(S): Canon Powershot G9 and SX100 IS

Looks a bit bulky, and no doubt uses a proprietary battery like the old G7, but all those dials and buttons say "I'm a proper photographer and that's why I've got my camera pointed down your blouse, madam."



All we can think of to go here is some sort of joke about the G8 summit. Perhaps we'll re-edit this post if one ever materialises.



Or there's this one, Canon's new SX100 IS. This one looks a bit light on buttons. If you're reading this, Canon, can you do a camera that's between the two? If this one had an extra button on the left to make it look a bit more semi-pro, we'd definitely consider it. As long as it's under the psychological £130 barrier.

Samsung SCH-W300 and a nice nightie

Or is it just her underwear? Either way, this is a trend that could take Samsung back to the top of the product display world rankings. We haven't seen a cleavage like this since the late, great Deborah Cleeve ruled the scene in the mid-80s.



Subtle, but sexy. The ball's in your court, LG!

A nice chest freezer

It would appear to have enough room to store the dismembered body parts of two innocent Korean prostitutes.



That compartment is for heads.

SPECIAL REQUEST FROM AVING!

We got an email from AVING again! AVING has asked us to link to this story about the Game&Game World Championships which are starting in Korea right about now.

We kind of owe AVING a favour thanks to stealing at least one of its photos every day for the last two years, so here you go.



IDIOT TOYS: Proud to be twinned with AVING, and also trying to work out if that one in the middle is a girl or not.

Samsung F8 series LCD TVs

Samsung has made three big errors here. (1) It has made its new LCD range look like everyone else's LCD range. (2) It has not bothered Photoshopping a wildlife scene or landscape on the promotional image. (3) There doesn't appear to be even one Asian lady modeling the screen, unless she's really tiny and standing behind it.



It does 1080p, has a USB socket for god only knows why, can display 25:000:1 contrast ratios simultaneously per second, plus it has a loss-leadingly pointless THREE HDMI sockets. None of this explains why it's called the F8. What can it possibly have eight of that start with F?

ADVICE FOR WOMEN #2

Do not use a laptop as a coffee table. It's an accident waiting to happen.



Yes, there is a lid on it, but they're quite flimsy and you probably didn't put it on firmly enough. There's also a little drinking hole in the lid that would allow sufficient fluid out to do irreversible damage in seconds.

Don't take risks with the laptop or you'll be sent down to the internet cafe to change your Facebook status from now on, sweetheart.

FREEZE! SAMSUNG YEPP POLICE!

Uniforms, CHECK. Asian babes, CHECK. Thing holding, CHECK. If only there was a battery in shot or a man dressed like Sonic in the background this would be photo of the decade.

If the photographer was kneeling down and perhaps behind them all it would be a bit better too. Other than that - class. Sensational return to form for Samsung.



Yepp, yepp, yepp, yepp, yepp, yepp, yepp, yepp, yepp, yepp and even though you can hardly see anything of the one at the back, she's almost certainly a yepp too.



Good to see Samsung raising its game in the face of increased competition from LG. We are all the winners in this sexy holding war.



If they catch anyone on the streets of Seoul listening to an iPod they get thrown in the back of this little police car and given a good tickling. Creative Zen users get on the spot fines of $100 while anyone wearing Sony headphones gets stun-gunned and left to die in an alley.

Only men are allowed to demo touch screens

This is one of the things we have learned from spending an hour a day trawling through Korean press sites.



This is because men don't have sticky fingers. You can't let women touch screens, else you're forever wiping off Kit Kat residue smears.



That's either a Dreamcast logo, a hand/eye coordination test, or he's gone a bit insane.



This man has instinctively jabbed at the girl's tits, even though she's only on a screen. This is what happens when you've had hardcore internet porn at your disposal for over a decade.



That V-sign thing is definitely sexier when cute Japanese girls do it.

The MILF-tastic Sony Ericsson K770 Cyber-shot

3.2 megapixels, plus it comes in "Truffle Brown" for the discerning older lady. It also does video calling, so there's still the opportunity to make the world's first mobile video call.



She's got to be at least 28. Look at those faint smile lines. Definitely a new upper age record for mobile holding.



That's an erotic knee shot. Powerful.

The LG Trax

It's a phone. They've got Team USA in to do the modelling again, although it looks like the blonde one has been replaced by a slightly more sincere looking one.



"Hello? Yes, this is Jennifer speaking. What's that? We've BOTH won the lottery? Fantastic!"



"The dealer says we can have two grams for free and there's no catch? Fantastic!"

LG makes it look easy!

Good lord! This is like watching the great Alba team of the 1970s!



It's so summery and light! There's nothing forced about this - it's like these girls hold telephones for fun!



They're really enjoying themselves out there. Look at their faces. Such natural smiles. Such beauty and elegance. They're having a whale of a time and boy does it come across.



Hold of the year? Could well be!

The Samsung SPF-72V interactive photo frame

Samsung strikes back today with this emotional piece of holding. She's seductive (main), enthusiastic (inset, left), sexy (inset middle) and then something like angry or a bit curious in the last.



A nice try, but you know if LG was doing this it'd have four women in four different dresses lying on top of each other in a neat pile. Samsung needs to up its holding investment NOW.

Man agrees to buy 500000 black and white printer cartridges from another man

Even working in the clothes section of Woolworths on the hottest day of the year would be better than doing business as a job.



Their eyes give away the truth. The truth that they took a wrong turn aged 23 and have somehow ended up HERE doing THIS. Perhaps if they'd taken guitar lessons more seriously...

Don't want to be an astronaut any more, mum

This is a space toilet. Looks more degrading than a French camp site, and twice as difficult to work out how you're supposed to go. You'll never get a poo down that little tube.



"First the user sits down on the toilet, then pulls up the railings, and turns them inwards, so they are over the legs. Then he lets them go, and the springs make them push the astronaut down onto the toilet. Then he fixes his feet in with the velcro. You need your hands to direct the [stream] of urine into the funnel for male users. Otherwise it would spray anywhere."

From Urinal.net

LG debuts 'Ring of Joy'

There's only one company innovating in holding right now - LG. Samsung's on the back foot, with its Korean rival rolling out some staggeringly impressive display techniques of late.



The logistics alone are amazing. Seven models, 14 phones, seven different coloured tops, a ladder for the photographer, a lawned area - nightmare. Few companies in the world have the resources to compete at this level. Hopefully LG's huge investment won't drive out smaller firms.

The GERMANS are packing them in

Keen disaster watchers take note - GERMAN "carrier" Lufthansa is planning to raise the potential death toll of plane crashes the world over, thanks to new, triple-decker beds that can ram more people into the new A380.



The dream scenario for disaster head-count fans must be a couple of these colliding with each other due to poor visibility, while attempting to land at Honduras' notoriously tricky Toncontin International Airport.

Sonic batteries!

When personal interests collide!



There was an email about these, but we can't find it. And searching our Hotmail inbox for "Sonic" doesn't really narrow things down much.

FUJITSU POOL BABE: Further material unearthed

Courtesy of this site which we tend not to use as a "source" seeing as they brand their images. Don't brand you images, fellow tech blogs, it makes them much harder to steal.



This is a classic over-compensation stare. She's using her eyes to draw attention to the phone to remove emphasis from the parts of her body that are on display, and the fact that her balance is somewhat precarious. "Look at the phone like I am, don't take photos of my feet and tits for the internet" is her exact thought process at this very moment.



You can see she's in trouble. She's trying to keep it together, but that's the awkward smile of a woman trying to mask a case of mild panic. Look at that left arm - it's tense and supporting her whole body weight. She's going through that rubber ring in a matter of seconds.

SONY: "Our digital cameras could KILL"

More bad news for Sony! The few products it has managed to sell recently are now being recalled, after the bungling corporation revealed its rubbish digital cameras could "cut" and even "scratch" users.



Three cheers for Sony!

LIFESTYLE PHOTOGRAPHY FRIDAY: In association with Aristoc Bodytoners

Today is a happy day. We have found an online press resource that contains links to promotional images for tights and underwear makers. It doesn't even require a username or password to stop people like us getting in.



This scene is representing the way Aristoc Bodytoners help shape the legs and bottom. And yes, they have made this model's legs and bottom look like quite the legs and bottom of a model.



High-maintenance pain in the arse bitch alert.



There is physical contact!



Man or woman? Whatever it is, it's having a whale of a time.



And one of the shoes, so you can see the image quality and pixel shape.

THE PRESS RELEASE, WHICH COUNTS AS 'DIRTY TALK' IF YOU'RE INTO THIS SORT OF THING:

ARISTOC BODYTONERS – SMART TIGHTS FOR SMART WOMEN
Autumn/Winter 2007 sees premium British hosiery brand Aristoc re-launch their critically acclaimed Bodytoners range – the future of shape and control hosiery. Real women can now enjoy luxury, comfort and support in their hosiery, gaining confidence to strut like supermodels and make the most of their assets!

Aristoc, the pioneers of the body toning hosiery, have made significant improvements with the development of breakthrough technology. Problem areas have been targeted including the waist, tummy, hips, thighs, bums, legs and all over toning to help smooth lumps and bumps and give the wearer great definition, maximum support and sexy, feminine styling.

The Bodytoners range boasts enhanced comfort with flat finished seams, smoother, sleeker yarns and a silk finish that naturally moisturises the skin during wear.

The revolutionary collection focuses on the following areas to achieve a more toned, sleek and defined figure:

Waist and Tummy Smoother

A smoothing style that is waistband free for ultimate comfort, giving a perfect middle and a svelte finish.

Waist and Thigh Smoother

Smoothing the waist, tummy and thighs for a sexy, comfortable and defined look.

Hourglass Toner

A full upper body smoother that enhances the hips, tummy and waist. The high waist brief sits under the bust to define the waist and allowing the wearer to flaunt her perfect hourglass figure!

Toner Shorts

An essential bum, tum and thigh smoother to be worn beneath that sometimes-unforgiving pencil skirt or skinny jeans!

High Leg and Low Leg Toners

Presenting miraculous shaping for the waist, stomach and legs. The High Leg Toners feature high leg brief with comfortable flat seem for a natural feel while the Low Leg Toners a low leg brief with bottom shaping panels to smooth and lift. Both styles feature a tummy panel for extra control and a graduate compression in the weave to help improve circulation and massage the legs!

Invisible Toner

A truly invisible and ultra discreet miracle worker for all over body shaping. Sheer from waist to toe, the Invisible Toner is set to become your best-kept secret!

Waist Toner

This style will smooth and perform invisible shaping right before your very eyes….just like magic! The Waist Toner creates a beautiful waist definition for a very sexy appearance. Invisible shaping for a visable difference!

LG launches MP01 DemoBot to Korean markets

Designed to compete with Samsung's popular but flawed SA-01 Demonstration Humanoid, the new LG MP01 DemoBot has finally been allowed to demonstrate a product to the public.



The face is clearly only at prototype stage.

We have acquired GREAT POWER

GREAT POWER to the power of 12. 12 batteries, designed for cameras, but we're currently displaying them on the mantelpiece as a great conversation piece for if a person ever comes round.



They are official battery shape/power designation CR123A. That alone speaks volumes about the size and depth of our shared battery heritage.



For comparison purposes, we have placed a couple beside a Xuripai AA. These are currently on display at the Idiot Toys Modern Battery Museum.



They give you some great new ideas for ways to dangerously dispose of a battery. Who would've thought crushing a battery would be dangerous? What if you're a bit fat and clumsy and stand on one with your shoes on?



GREAT BATTERY. Shame we have nothing that takes them, so cannot road test their actual power greatness.

Seagate needs to get better translators

This company slogan is working on two levels - both very wrong.



They need to put in a generic placeholder slogan like "people matter" or "business with sense" with immediate effect, while they come up with something proper.

Samsung has made at least one, and possibly as many as 35, new TVs

Samsung's gone and changed something on its press site. This has made everything on its press site come up as "NEW". This is most confusing when you don't really pay attention to what's new and are just winging it.

One of these might be an exclusive that we're first with:



What about the LN-T3765F there, row six, fourth one in? That looks quite fancy.

Big TV or small woman?

It's impossible to say. She looks kind of spindly. This could be a 28" model next to a dwarf.



Plus evil thing-holding coaches like to starve their most talented holders to delay their physical development. She could be any age from 7 to 35.