Microsoft has announced it’s getting into bed with music giant Sony BMG and MTV, in order to bulk up its somewhat wanting MSN Video channel.

The site already offers a cleaned up, ad heavy, alternative to YouTube, but it seems these latest deals are part of the Big M’s growing efforts to stifle Google’s web domination.

The move comes only a few days after Gates and co put in a not-too-shabby $44 billion offer for Yahoo, something which Google says raises issues about competition online.

The new deal will see the likes of tiresome Beadles About wannabe show Punk’d and, erm, Pimp My Ride, head onto the channel.

There’ll also be room for videos by up and coming and existing Sony BMG artists.

As for whether this’ll take on and beat YouTube, we doubt it. But it’s pretty clear that Microsoft won’t give up easily on its grand web plans.

Hold the phone folks. Following loads of web talk, Apple has officially confirmed its outing a 16GB iPhone and a 32GB iPod Touch.

The Apple store was down in the States for over an hour, with bloggers suggesting some O2 stores have already taken delivery of the beefed up Jesus phone. You can go and grab one right now.

It’s going to cost £329 over here, the same as the new 32GB flash iPod. The latter is a major surprise and something we weren’t expecting for a while. The touchscreen ‘pod is also yours now if you fancy.

For now, the phone remains on the EDGE network rather than getting a bump to 3G, so if you haven’t splashed out, maybe you should keep your hands in your pockets for now

We’ve got some exclusive one on one time with Apple’s Greg Joswiak coming up, so keep it here for news as we get it.

Beadle’s About and You’ve Been Framed, iconic television nuggets of the eighties which we swear led to peeps buying camcorders. How often did you whip out the old cammie at every birthday, wedding and nativity play vying for that all important crying Joseph or a drunk wise man? If only Beadle was here to see this the disgo video plus, we’d all be getting 250 smackers for our home videos.

The disgo Video Plus is as simple as a camcorder can get. It’s compact, so fits in your pocket or your bag. Switch on and you can start capturing your ‘rents doing the lindy hop or your gran the can-can. With a 1.5 inch flip out screen you can even record yourself miming along to any old song or those priceless You Tube moments for all you Micah Richards out there (anyone?).

Controls on the camcorder do look similar to those on a Fisher Price control car though, with a forward button, a back button and a big red one for recording.

Picture quality on the camera is average, but good enough for the web. With a measly 2x digital zoom we don’t think Spielberg will be quaking in his Indiana Jones boots. There’s 60 minutes recording time and an additional 4 hours recording available if you slap in a SD/MMC card. And with the inbuilt speaker, you can check that you’ve done your make up right before the big debut.

Now for the clever bit on this cammie. There’s no need for any software, no downloading no waiting for that status bar that says 4 seconds that means 5 minutes. Slip out the inbuilt USB arm (although we thought of another part of the anatomy), plug it into your computer and its all there.

Once you’ve plugged in you can view your vids, edit them and send them. The editing is as easy as the recording, but the number of changes is limited: the only edit you can actually do is crop the start and end of the video. We don’t know why either?

This cammie is a clever piece of kit, easy to use, simple controls and you can share you’re home videos quicker than Beadle could say “Next time the star of the show could be you”

It was supposed to be sitting pretty on a slew of N series handsets at the rear end of last year. And now, after weeks of delay, N-Gage is finally good to go.

Nokia’s gaming platform is still only limited to the N81, but it is available to every Tom, Dick and Harry who happens to be packing one.

According to the chaps at NokNok, it’s still in the testing phase, but there are three titles available: Space Impact: Kappa Base, System Rush: Evolution and Hooked On: Creatures of the deep.

The latter clocks in at a rather weighty 28MB, which is sure to test the HSDPA on board.

You can grab yourself the games from the N-Gage First Access site, which you can get to by hitting the link down below.

Now come along Nokia, let’s see it rear its head on your other high end cells too.

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

Check that evil scowl will you. You’re looking into the menacing red grill of Dell’s newest gaming desktop the XPS 630. Dell’s site modestly teases, “Here comes a new challenger.” Challenger eh, not leader? Come on Dell, you’re not going to generate any gaming hype with such tepidity. Drop in some NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics and say it loud, boy. Just not too loud, you don’t want to step on the toes of your Alienware subsidiary.

[Thanks, Thomas C.]

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