Twitter avatars go back on holiday again

Last night’s problems with avatars and user backgrounds on Twitter left a lot of people confused this morning, but it was due to a small bug that the company was fixing, and was planning to have sorted within a few hours.

Well, it seems as though some problems are back again, as the company is saying that some people may still be suffering from problems (we are with the site account) due to a caching error on their part.

So, like the earlier problem, it’s nothing to worry about, the avatars and backgrounds haven’t been deleted and they should start switching themselves back on when the company has solved the problem.

[Twitter Status Blog]

Voodoo founder talks about place in HP

Rahul Sood, the founder of high-end computer manufacturer Voodoo, has gone on the record and outlined where the brand now fits into the HP landscape after the announcement of HP’s own Envy laptop (not Voodoo’s Envy 133) without any Voodoo branding.

It seems as though HP decided to inject some of the Voodoo DNA into more products, and instead of diluting the name, they left off all mention of it, allowing the smaller team time to focus on more new products (including something completely unexpected apparently) without being focused on an expanding range of interesting HP products.

So it sounds as though the team is still going to focus on creating amazing products, but we shouldn’t expect to see anything new from them in the short-term as they’re “looking way ahead into the future” at the moment.

[Rahul Sood Blog]

Iggy Pop-ping up in Lego Rockband

Iggy Pop will be available as an avatar in Lego Rockband when it hits just before Christmas for the Sony PS3, 360, Nintendo Wii & DS, hopefully this will make up for those god-awful car insurance adverts he does…

Pure announces net enabled DAB radio

DAB radio is still taking a long time to catch on among users, as more and more people turn to the internet to get on-demand tracks, sitting through endless talking and adverts isn’t something users want.

However, Pure has been doing a decent trade in DAB-capable radios recently, and they’ve just announced a new model; the Sensia, which also connects to your favourite social networking sites. It packs a 5.7″ touchscreen which hooks into the net allowing access to various Pure “apps” like Picasa, Facebook and Twitter.

You can also stream tracks from your media enabled PC, and will be available in red, yellow, black and white when it hits just in time for Christmas for £249.99

GEAR4 launched an iPhone car stand

With the emergence of applications like the TomTom and Navigon ones on the App Store, there is now a need to be able to mount the iPhone in the car so it can be used as a bona fide Sat Nav.

GEAR4 has seen fit to fill this current hole in the market place with their new CarDock FM Follow Me peripheral which not only holds your iPhone for viewing use, but also transmits your tracks over FM to the radio to play on your cars’ speakers (it could even work with the talking turn-by-turn directions on some apps).

It plugs into the cigarette lighter for power, so requires no batteries, hooks into an FM band between 87.6 – 107.9 and sports a fully adjustable arm.

It should be available soon for £49.99

Top paid iPhone apps 16th September

Has it been a week already? Our weekly rundown of the Top 10 Paid iPhone apps in the UK is back again, so without further ado, here it is:

1. AppBox Pro – £0.59
2. iPark It! – £0.59
3. Scrabble – £2.99
4. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D – £1.79
5. Geared – £0.59
6. Max Injury – £0.59
7. Modern Combat – £3.99
8. Mobile Minutes Tracker for O2 – £0.59
9. Pub Quiz – £0.59
10. Live Cams – £0.59

The charts have changed almost beyond recognition this week, with all manner of new games, a new leader in the shape of AppBox Pro, with Geared slipping to 5th.

There’s also a few more expensive apps creeping in this week, which may well be down to new users who have bought the 3rd Gen iPod Touch and are playing with the App Store.

Twitter avatars go AWOL for a bit

Overnight, Twitter had some problems with avatars on the site, where people who already had images had theirs replaced with the new default avatar (pictured, but does come in various other colours).

Things look to be getting back to normal now, but if you do notice that your profile picture has gone, don’t worry, as it should be coming back shortly.

Twitter hasn’t said what the cause of the problem was, but they have confirmed that it was a bug that has now been fixed.

Stuff the iPhone, Palm Pre has two Google Voice apps

In a move to cleary differentiate themselves from Apple’s juggernaut of a smartphone, Palm has seen the light and has admitted another Google Voice application to hit the App Catalog.

P2GoogleVoice, as it’s known, sits alongside the already approved gDialPro to help you control your phone calls and text messages using your Google Voice number.

Voice is the controversial application from the search giant that hijacks the core features of your phone, allowing you to make VoIP calls, as well as allowing you to have one number for all of your mobile and home phones, so that whenever someone rings you (as long as they dial your Google Voice number), they’ll be ringing your home and mobile numbers simultaneously, almost guaranteeing to get through.

If you were cursing your luck that the Pre isn’t available in the UK yet on the back of this news, there is some light; Google Voice isn’t available here yet either.

[Palm Blog]

Alienware teasing more products

Alienware, the premium gaming brand that was snapped up by Dell a few years ago, has been teasing new products for a long time, but they’ve been stepping up their game lately with dedicated websites and now videos.

If you head to their YouTube account you can see the two clips they have, which look like pretty high-budget videos for web adverts, and the tagline; “They’re Coming” seems to indicate that it’s either multiple products or multiple SKUs.

The designs of their products have always been outlandish, and the prices astronomical, so hopefully this announcement will be for something slightly more tame and slightly cheaper.

However, nothing is known about these new products yet, but whatever they are, they should have some serious gaming DNA in them.

[AlienwareChannel]

Seesmic Desktop upgraded to 0.6

Seesmic Desktop, one of the Adobe AIR clients for Twitter, has just been upgraded to version 0.6 which brings several new features including greater integration with Facebook.

You will now be able to control your Facebook Pages from within the application, so you can post messages as well as respond to comments posted on your Page. This should be a killer feature for some brands who want a greater level of social media interaction, and who already have a Twitter presence.

You can also now reply to all of the users mentioned in a tweet, so as to make sure you respond to a grouped conversation on Twitter, without having to send multiple tweets with the same content.

Plus, they’re also announcing a partnership with Yfrog which means the site is to become the default image sharing site across all of the Seesmic applications.

We still prefer TweetDeck ourselves, but for Seesmic fans (and there are a lot), these new features should be well received.

[Seesmic Blog]