They are quickly becoming a ‘put it in your diary’ event, but the latest Apple keynotes had some core product innovations that will certainly turn heads. Some expected, some not so.

So what’s new … ?

There was a very interesting article on Reputation Online this week about the new Bribery Act due to come into effect next April, discussing what this will mean for PR.

Apple über fans – they’re like the male equivalent of Heat readers. Remember that mad Scottish lady in the Heat advert who attacks everyone standing between her and purchasing a copy of the gossip rag? Well, imagine that, but more male and stood outside the Apple store on Regent’s Street on a cold night, waiting for the launch of a new product. They’re scarily similar, aren’t they?

Following the huge success of CU Exposed back in March, the date has now been set for the next one. The mini expo, which will expose you to the hottest Apple, IT and consumer electronics products for Christmas, is due to take place on Tuesday 28th September at The Tower hotel in central London. So put the date in your diary!

Ofcom is currently in consultation to revise the rules on product placement on British television. Currently banned on all shows produced in the UK, the act of product placement is rife in other countries (namely the US) and acts as a valuable revenue stream to broadcasters. It looks like 2011 will see the introduction of a ‘P’ or ‘PP’ symbol on the screen at the start and end of programmes to advise viewers that they have been marketed to.

Its taken a few days to put this post together as it was such a good night we’ve only just recovered enough to put pen to paper!

A number of our clients were nominated this year and two were successful in winning!

Scosche in the ‘Best iPhone and iPod Accessory’ category with its FlipSYNC:

PR agency employed to promote new wireless memory cards

Aylesbury, UK, 23 June 2010: Ranieri Communications, the consumer technology public relations specialist, has announced that it has been appointed by Eye-Fi, makers of the world’s first wireless memory card for digital cameras, to drive sales and build the brand in the UK.

We recently worked with Fixation Video to create a viral for Wacom at Focus On Imaging. Fixation Video is run by Susi Weaser and Will Head, both former journalists who still freelance on the side. We caught up with them recently to find out more about Fixation Video and why video is the way forward for businesses…

With most of the big announcements taking place over the first two days, today was mostly a chance for hands on tests of the many funky new handsets which have been launched.

Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest mobile phone conference kicked off yesterday in Barcelona where over 1,300 exhibitors were showcasing the latest in mobile technology.

Major announcements included:

So apparently, today has been dubbed National Sickie Day, unofficially of course. It seems that the first Monday in February is when most people phone the office with their best ‘ill’ voice.

This worth a read, news piece on The Times blog talking about the fact that PC manufacturers are trying to get a piece of the smartphone market as they are worried its eventually going to cause a shift away from people buying PC’s as they get better and better…Click Here…

Those of you who’ve been around in the Mac, consumer tech, tech industry for a while now, will of come across a chap called Mark Sparrow. Based at Future Publishing for a long time, you might be surprised to learn that Mark is no longer working as he is in hospital near Oxford, as he is in traction and has been for quite some time.

As most of you know, if you’re in the tech industry, last night was T3’s Gadget Awards…there’s been quite alot of coverage pre and post event, especially as the winner of the top prize was the HTC Hero and not the iPhone if you can imagine such a thing…! :-0

For almost half a century, TV has been the leading advertising medium in the UK. According to a report announced today on the Guardian however, this has all changed. The UK is now the first major economy to spend more on internet advertising than on TV.

Following on from a previous blog about our ailing newspaper industry, I was interested to see Google’s announcement about Fast Flip – a news website offering content from different publishers, which is presented in a similar format to a traditional magazine or newspaper, enabling readers to flip through the online pages.

Like the rest of the media and PR world we are really getting into our social networking applications and devices that enable these applications… and of course we are also starting to offer unique social media services that the PR industry is demanding…

Over the work year a number of magazines have awards, we usually attend most of them for ‘work’ reasons, nothing to do with the champagne receptions, gourmet dinners or comedy acts…

In a previous life I use to work for a really smart guy called Andrew Forbes.

Andrew has now moved to Spain for a change of scenery, but is an exceptional provider of copy writing, photography and creative direction. If you are in need of such services and you are based in the UK or indeed anywhere in mainland Europe then get in touch via his website – www.andrewforbes.com

For those that have not heard or seen Apollo surveys in the past, they provide vendors, analysts and PR representatives with a measurement of the volume of articles within the technology media.

In case you’ve missed all the news, Google Wave looks like its going to be the next topic of discussion for the rest of this year and next. Although not launched yet, it promises to be really exciting, especially if your really into your real-time collaborative communication…

It is with great sadness that we learnt this week, our friends at Personal Computer World (PCW) are no longer in employment with Incisive Media (PCW’s publisher). After 31 years, the magazine has been forced to close citing the poor state of the advertising market as the reason behind the decision to declare the title as “no longer economically viable”.

Bluetooth is set to undergo something of a renaissance this year thanks to the new faster and more reliable 3.0 standard. A conference in Tokyo in April launched the new Global Wireless Standard with the aim of providing considerably faster connection and file transfer speeds, making it ideal for wireless home entertainment. However, will people be sceptical about this apparent new dawn?

The two biggest stories from the CES show earlier this year were the LG watch phone and the Palm Pre smartphone. Whereas it appears to be all quiet on the LG front, excitement is building again for the impending launch of the latest pretender to the iPhone throne. But can it possibly live up to the expectations that proceed it?

In between the worryingly enthusiastic posts about Eurovision, Twitter was all a flurry this weekend over the launch of the Wolfram|Alpha ‘computational knowledge engine’. So what does this mean? A search engine for nerds?  Google for geeks? Well…sort of!