Have you ever been just about to board a plane and thought that you need more music on your iPod? You’ve got your luggage, your passport, your suntan lotion… everything except an extensive collection of the latest tunes on your iPod to see you through the flight.

Never fear, EMI have the answer. They’ve struck a deal to install iPod kiosks that will contain MP3 downloads for your iPod in 20 different airports throughout the United States. The kiosks will allow you to use your credit card to download any music contained in their databanks to your iPOd, all DRM Free.

Prices for the downloads are said to be $11.99, but sadly they’ll just be music from EMI initially, which means no Michael Jackson!

Eden Goldberg is the vice president for Business Development at InMotion Entertainment, who have partnered with EMI for the design and installation of the kiosks.

This is a great new opportunity for us to help connect the artists with fans. By offering a ‘fueling station’ for their portable devices, consumers now have an easy way to discover and buy new music they can enjoy on their travels.

You never need to board a plane without fresh musical content again!

Harry Redknapp may be in the news at the moment for his controversial walking out on Portsmouth to take the vacant management job at Tottenham Hotspur, but he and his family are also starring in a series of Nintendo ads promoting the Wii at the same time.

The notion of the Nintendo Wii is that it brings the family together so that people of all ages are able to play together and against each in games. It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how interested in video games you are, everyone will find the Wii easy to use and enjoyable to play.

In the advert Harry Redknapp plays with his son, former Liverpool and England player Jamie Redknapp, and his wife Louise, herself a former pop star. The celebrity family are seen playing games such as Wii Sports, Wii Fit and Mario Kart. The idea behind the ads is that people of all ages, all skill levels and all backgrounds are able to play on the console, even someone as old as Harry Redknapp!

Anyone who’s played with Google Earth while bored in work will know the brilliance and power of the system. You can enter pretty much any postcode in the UK and zoom in on someone’s house using a network of satellite photos. Google Earth allows you see almost anywhere in the world from the comfort of your own home, and you can even add your favourites, such as your house, your girlfriend’s house or your place of work.

However, Google Earth is now coming to the iPod Touch and the iPhone, so you’ll be able to locate anyone’s location and zoom in on their house from anywhere, at any time.

Is it the stalker’s paradise or a great tool for finding things?

For those who think that the portable version of Google Earth will be a reduced, half fat version, think again. The iPod Touch version will have its own unique features.

For example, using the unique Apple functionality you can zoom in and change the angle with the ‘pinching’ touchscreen control.

Best of all, Google Earth for the iPod and iPhone is free to download from iTunes, right now!

A school in Scotland has won an award after it has attempted to teach pupils the benefits of eating healthily by offering iPods as rewards.

The school, Shawlands Academy, has 1,250 pupils on its books and contains some of the poorest pupils in the country. The school has devised a scheme where they award points to pupils who eat healthily, based on which school dinner they choose. The healthier the dinner, the more points they are awarded. If they eat fruit with their dinner they get even more points.

Then, at the end of term, the points are totalled up and the pupils get to choose a prize which relates to the number of points they have earned. The top prizes include MP3 players and iPods.

One pupil, Niamh Murray-Sheridan, stated:

In the past, people went outside [school] to eat but now they are staying in and eating more healthily.

The scheme to promote healthy eating has earned the school the Sustainable School of the Year award, at a ceremony that was held in London, at the Palladium.

As we approach Christmas, people will be looking at buying gifts for their friends and family. Top of the Christmas lists year on year are items such as MP3 players and games consoles. However, typically around the time of the festive period people also think that doing some exercise is called for.

So which is the best option for exercise after Christmas? Is it the MP3 player or the Nintendo Wii? Both can help in exercise, but let’s look at some ways that the two can help you.

Nintendo Wii
The Wii comes with a wealth of games that encourage the player to get up off the sofa and physically get involved in the playing process themselves. When you add the Wii-Fit to the package you find yourself with a games system that teaches you to exercise, sets you targets for performance and weight loss and allows people to exercise in the comfort of their own home.

MP3 player
The MP3 player doesn’t allow you to exercise, but it does help when you’re in the gym or jogging or riding your bike. Music, typically provided by the MP3 player or an iPod, has long been known to help motivate people in exercise.

Whichever you choose, you’ll find that both items can help you lose weight and burn off the Christmas fat.

The current financial climate has seen the US dollar falling badly against the Japanese Yen, which has meant that US consumers are experiencing difficulty in affording games consoles from the Far East, including the Nintendo Wii.

The price slump has also caused other electronics from Japan to be expensive such as LCD TVs and stereo systems.

Last week, on Friday, the Japanese Yen reached a 13 year high against the US dollar, meaning that the US dollar has slumped by over 20% against the Yen so far this year. As a result, consumers in the US are finding it difficult to purchase items such as the Wii and the fitness sensation, the Wii Fit.

US financial experts however are saying that the US currency’s drop against the Yen has its good points as well. They say that the lower US dollar means that American businesses can export their products much cheaper. The downside is of course that they are having to pay more to import products, such as games consoles from Japan.

Retailers would usually absorb the costs rather than increase product prices for consumers, and as spending has halted in the US, retailers are in fact having to discount items further to encourage sales.

Beatles fans have been out of luck for some time as you can’t buy their music on iTunes for your iPod. Anyone wanting to listen to the Fab Four on an MP3 player was forced to rip the tracks themselves and port them across (legally of course).

With the Beatles recently battling Apple over the name Apple too, the odds of getting their music on iTunes and your iPod seemed even more unlikely; however Bloomingdales has just released a special Beetles commemorative iPod with tonnes of their music. It’s not quite as good as it seems though, as the iPod doesn’t come preloaded with Beetles tracks. Instead the box comes crammed with CDs, 13 albums to be precise, and two master CDs (including the Love Album). It also contains an engraved guitar pick and it’s all packaged together in a wooden box.

Bundled in with a 120GB iPod and you’ve a nice Beatles set, however the price tag of $795 seems a little on the steep side, even if the iPod is engraved with the Beatles logo.

Nintendo’s latest Nintendo Wii sensation, Wii Music, has surprised the video games giant by the way that players are using the game.

Nintendo man JC Rodrigo has spent some time with kids who have been playing Wii Music.

We had a lot of kids come in with the artists. When their kids came in, I started playing with their kids. They would play simple stuff, like they would be able to recognize and associate what a piano sounds like and how to play the piano because of the tactile response you get from shaking your hands up and down as if you’re hitting keys. [It clicked because of the] imaginary idea that gets transcribed into actual sound and a result on screen that they can visually see and hear.

The strange thing was that the kids didn’t seem to know what to do at first with Wii Music, but once they starting playing they picked it up and were doing things that Nintendo hadn’t even thought of.

Wii Music wasn’t like the other music games they’d played. There were no colored buttons.

Some kids kept asking me, ‘What do I have to do?’” he explained. “And then I asked them in return, ‘What do you want to do?’ And then they said, ‘I want to play this!’ Then they started playing and I’m like ‘yeah, go ahead, let’s go!’ And I was playing with them. So kids would [be] very easily playing with adults and they could contribute on this ridiculously even level.”

The beauty was that the kids were able to adapt to playing different instruments very quickly, showing that Wii Music works in its goal to teach children to play music.

The Wii Fit continues to sell strongly week on week, ever since its launch. In fact sales haven’t slowed since it was released, and don’t look like slowing as the run up to Christmas intensifies. It’s on course to become one of the bestselling video games of the year (even though it’s not technically a videogame.

Analysts predict that the game could even outsell GTA IV if it continues to sell at its current rate.

According to sales figures provided by VGChartz.com, the Nintendo Wii Fit has sold a staggering 8.7 million units worldwide. This is just behind GTA IV in terms of sales, having sold 10.6 million since it was released in April.

According to VGChartz.com, the Wii-Fit has been more consistent in its sales since its release, selling over 200,000 units each week for the last few months.

Michael Pachter is an analyst with the company Wedbush Morgan. He claims that the success of the Wii Fit doesn’t necessarily show that convention games are becoming less popular.

I consider Wii Fit more of a platform than a game.

He says that the Wii Fit shows the potential and flexibility of the Wii as a console.

Whoever said that playing on a video games console was harmless?

Whoever it was, they were wrong. The third party peripheral, the Rage Wireless Guitar Controller for the Nintendo Wii, has been causing injury to players of late. The problem has arisen because of faulty circuitry within the guitar that is causing the batteries to leak. This in turn is a risk for players, as the battery acid that comes out can cause burns to people’s skin.

The company who made the third party peripheral for the Nintendo Wii, Performance Designed Products, might well have to recall as many as 57,000 of the plastic guitars in order to avoid causing injury to games players. This is according to ConsumerAffairs.

The dangerous guitar is the blue and white model, and they were bought by consumers between June and September this year. Performance Designed Products have requested that anyone who bought one should visit the website for the guitars in order to receive a refund.

Rock and roll was always thought to be dangerous!