Hassan Tabbakh, born in Syria, is currently on trial in Birmingham for making ‘DIY bombs’ that were allegedly going to be used for terrorism. The jury has now retired, having heard all of the evidence, to consider their verdict in the case.

One of the pieces of evidence that the jury heard was that speeches by the al-Qaeda leader, and the world’s most wanted man, Osama Bin Laden were found on the defendant’s MP3 player. Police also found dangerous chemicals in his Birmingham flat when he was arrested in December 2007.

Hassan Tabbakh denies the charges and also denies storing the chemicals, and having the documents to explain how the bombs could be made.

Max Hill QC, the prosecutor in the case, explained how the defendant was caught by the police trying to create his own home made explosive devices. The defendant claims the explosive devices were intending to be fireworks for a religious celebration.

The fact that his MP3 player was found to contain the speeches of Bin Laden in MP3 format however will count heavily against him.

As Apple move forward to new heights with the success of their iPod range and their new iPhone bringing them their best ever Q3 results, the flip side of their success is just as impactful. Electronics firm Wolfson Microelectronics had Apple as one of their biggest clients, providing chips for their iPhones and iPod MP3 players.

Wolfson Microelectronics is based in Edinburgh, and they’ve stated there will most likely be job losses as a result of losing the contract with Apple for the chips. The company currently employs 370 staff in its Edinburgh plant.

Dave Shrigley, their chief executive, stated they will be forced to make cut backs and blamed the global economy for the proposed belt trimming measures. Staff are expected to hear about any job losses and cutbacks today.

Dave Shrigley stated:

Our ultimate business is determined by how many systems are sold to consumers. As a result we plan a review of non-research and development costs.

The company’s share price has fallen by 40% this year.

Nintendogs was one of the most popular games on the Nintendo DS as it appealed to children who were told no by their parents when they asked for a real dog. But what about those people who have a real dog? The dog market is huge worldwide, do it seems strange that Nintendo haven’t yet made a game for dog owners.

Well now it looks like they will. Ubisoft are apparently releasing the game “My Dog Coach: Understand Your Dog with Cesar Millan”, which shows Nintendo DS users how to train the naughty puppies with the help of the DS.

Cesar Millan is an Australian dog trainer who calls himself the doggy version of Dr Phil, offering advice and guidance on how to train your awkward pooch. Among his doglike accomplishments are: walking large packs of dogs at once and curing dogs of ‘red zone’ aggression. All of this means he’s quite good with dogs, and thus his advice in the form of a Nintendo DS game would be quite useful for those having problems with their dogs.

No date has been set for the game’s release as yet.

With teenagers getting ready to go to University after the summer, they’ll be looking for some essentials to take with them. These should include items such as a PC or Laptop, Dictaphone, TV and of course an MP3 player.

MP3 players are essential equipment for students in university as they have so many uses, for example:

• When connected to an iPod dock or MP3 player speaker system they double up as a Hi-Fi unit, with comparable sound quality. This is essential for any student party.
• Using the MP3 player students can download and listen to podcasts of the week’s lectures. This is handy to revisit the information they’ve learned, or experience it for the first time if they’ve slept in during the lecture!
• Playing music… obvious this one, but MP3 players and iPods are very comforting to have as music is very important in a young person’s life, especially when they’re living away from home for the first time.
• Games. Many iPods come with games that can be played during tedious lectures, or when you’re waiting for the bus to arrive.

Could we be about to witness the end of the MP3 format as we know it? MP3 was invented to allow for the maximum amount of music to fit onto a tiny player, thus the files were compressed creating audio quality loss. As technology always improves itself, and Blu-Ray emerges the victor in the HD v Blu-Ray battle, better quality audio is on offer for those that want it. Blu-Ray discs hold a staggering 50 GB, compared to the early MP3 players which held 256MB. The sound on a Blu-Ray isn’t compressed, meaning when they’re played through the latest home cinema systems, the sounds is nigh on perfect.

As many home systems now come with built in iPod docks, playing your iPod through the same systems can show up the flaws in the compressed MP3 audio.

With new technologies emerging, do we really have to put up with imperfect audio such as that on offer from the MP3 format?

As the latest iPod comes with 160 GB of storage capacity, and is advertised as holding 80,000 tracks in MP3 format, why not actually cut the quantity down in favour of quality? If you have 8,000 tracks on the iPod instead of 80,000, you don’t need to reduce them to the sort of MP3 encoding that loses around 90% of the audio data.

If you’re thinking you can’t tell the difference between an MP3 file and the original, you may be right when played on your iPod through your headphones, but what when you connect your iPod up to the latest home cinema system? Then the difference becomes evident, as the flaws in the MP3 codec are highlighted.
The choice is really up to you. Do you want to store more music with the increased storage capacity, or better quality music?

The amount of games coming out for the Nintendo Wii is good news for games fans, but so great news when you consider the limited space on the Wii itself. People’s consoles are filling up fast as their memory is limited to just 512 MB of storage space. Even additional SD cards aren’t sufficient to store what the games require in order to play.

Both games players and games developers have tried to get Nintendo to listen, and now it appears as though they have taken notice.

Reggie Fils-Aime, NOA President, stated in an interview with MTV:

We have said publicly that we’re looking hard at the storage situation, that we’re working on a range of solutions. We have nothing to announce now, but certainly it’s an issue we are aware of and we’re working to find a solution and we will… So in our view this is becoming much more of a mainstream problem, which is why we have a sense of urgency to solve it.

This should be good news for Nintendo Wii users, as currently games players are having to delete content they’ve downloaded in order to fit more on the console.

They’re two of the best known characters from video game history; Nintendo’s Italian plumber Mario and Sega’s blue, spiky haired hedgehog Sonic. Between them they’ve had more hits that the Beatles and Elvis put together, and their latest outing on the Nintendo Wii has sold well over a million units in the United Kingdom.

When you combine that figure with sales for the Nintendo DS, you get over 1.35 million sales of the unlikely pairing.

Currently the two of them are flying of UK shelves at a rate of a staggering 20,000 units per week across the two Nintendo games systems.

Alan Pritchard, from Sega North Europe stated:

Mario and Sonic has made gaming history with over a million software units sold on the Nintendo Wii within the UK alone.

The title has been an immediate hit from launch and we will continue to re-invest and market this title throughout the rest of the year with a hope of reaching over two million sales by the end of our financial year.

iTunes has been at the top of the tree for music downloads for some years now, but the competition is gathering in force. Recently websites such as Amazon, Tesco and as of last week’s announcement, Sky, starting to offer MP3s as downloads.

MySpace announced as far back as April that they too would be offering DRM-free music via its social networking website, which can played on iPods, MP3 players and also used on mobile phones as ringtones. MySpace has just three of the four big record labels on board, as EMI are still to sign up to their service.

Now MySpace says their service is to actually launch in September, with features coming online slowly over a period of a few months. This is according to their CEO, Chris DeWolfe.

This announcement was made by Chris DeWolfe at the recent Fortune Brainstorm conference, where Rocker Neil Young also made a speech rubbishing the quality of MP3 music.

According to recent research by Endsleigh Insurance, university students have on average over £6,000 worth of technology in student halls with them when they go away to university.

The items include such electronic gadgetry as MP3 players (iPods), laptops, computers and even musical instruments. In fact it’s instruments that are the most expensive items, with an average cost of £689 a piece. Laptops and computers and the next most expensive items.

Students also have consoles such as the Xbox, PS3 and Nintendo Wii in halls with them.

Despite all of the expensive items students have with them at university, 41% of students don’t have any kind of insurance for their kit, with 4 out of 10 students saying that insurance is too expensive. 30% of students don’t think their possessions are at risk from theft at all!

The most surprising thing is that students tend to underestimate the value of their gadgets, with an average estimated value coming it at £3,211, almost half of the real value.

Rhiannon Harris of Endsleigh Insurance stated:

Students are taking a lot of expensive possessions with them to university now and many of these items, such as laptops, MP3 players and mobile phones, are an easy target for thieves.

The iPod offers sound at a ‘Fisher-Price toy’ level according to Neil Young. This is quite a slap in the face for Apple who have engineered the leading portable music product of our generation. Neil was speaking at a Tech Conference called ‘Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech Conference.

In Neil Young’s address to the audience he stated:

Apple has taken a detour down the convenience highway. Quality has taken a complete backseat - if it even gets in the car at all.

He went on to say that the quality of music has been “dumbed down” as a result of MP3 files and MP3 players. He claims that MP3s represent poor audio quality, and is pushing for Blu-Ray to become the music standard going forward. He is also producing his life’s works on Blu-Ray, which he intends to release later in the year.

He hopes that Blu-Ray replaces MP3 as the musical standard.

During his talk Young criticised Apple in particular for what he called bring the quality of music down in a policy of convenience over quality.

He lamented:

We have beautiful computers now but high-resolution music is one of the missing elements. The ears are the windows to the soul.