After suffering unreliable to non existent phone signal in my rural house I went on eBay and bought a mobile repeater - an AnyTone AT-600 which has a yagi aerial (point at nearest mast 5 miles away) and a mini aerial (position in house). I then discovered that half my issue was having 18" brick walls all through the house. 5 bars in 1 room 0 bars next door.
So I installed a splitter and another internal antenna - now I have 2-5 bars all over the house.
I can use GPRS but as others said when I'm at home my phones are on WiFi for data.

Of course it cost near £200 for the hardware, my time for the install and it's costing me 8W an hour for power it but there's no cost to pay 02 and I could also use Vodafone who use the same bands in the UK so I'm not tied to one provider. As there are no available 3G masts near me nor any plans to upgrade the ones there are I figure it's worth the cost (I work at home) YMMV.

Its a Space Pilot 3D mouse from 3D Connexion
http://www.3dconnexion.com/3dmouse/spacepilot.php

I used to use their serial Spacemouse for Virtual Reality Design back in 1994 - it was the best 3D controller bar none, developed for the space program IIRC. I still use it with Google Sketchup now!

They have a consumer version for about £50

I also developed a Parkinson's disease simulator using the Sensable Desktop Phantom back in 2000 - it was excellent if a little flimsy and I can't see why anyone would be reinventing the wheel with the haptic part.

Still waiting for the engadget coverage of how royally we're being screwed by 02 in the UK.

http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/paymonth.html

The current 3G gets a price cut of less than £3 on the cheapest talk plan - apparently $99 = £96.89 these days.
The top end iPhone 3G S 32GB now costs £274.23 on £29.38 a month.

02 Boo!

Having worked on a haptic simulator for Parkinsons and attended several neurology congresses I can heartily applaud any effort to help with symptoms OR the underlying disease.
Anything must be better than diskinesia interspersed with near paralysis.
Patients I met had their brains cauterised which is destructive and non-reversable but a couple of years of more normal life was considered preferable to many.

No really, tell us more about it, we have no interest in hearing it at all or seeing how it works :o

Bought a similar charge convertor for my Alpine head unit to allow it to charge my 3G iPhone
$30+ shipping to the UK and my £250 head unit works properly again.
It also has the added bonus that if I start the ignition before I connect an iPod/iPhone the HU doesn't flip to FM or sulk with an error code.
Doesn't fit 'in' a dock though so this is a worthwhile alternative...finally

A bunch more are ludicrously over engineered solutions to non-problems.

One of the entrants appears to have 'invented' the bucket. All you need to do is replace your sink...?
http://www.core77.com/greenergadgets/entry.php?projectid=60

A rocking chair with a dynamo to power a reading light - fun, maybe? green no! What is the embodied energy to 'save' 1W to power an LED reading light direct from the grid?
http://www.core77.com/greenergadgets/entry.php?projectid=62

Even Stanford appears to have submitted a force-feedback, network connected light switch to encourage you to think about not turning on the light?!? Energy payback in the lifetime of the moving and electronic parts - I doubt it.

If this is the best we can do the planet is doomed - Buy fewer things and keep them longer!

£4 to the WWF - THE PHONE COSTS £319.00!!!

This and most other 'charity' lines actually contribute very little to the 'good cause'.
I know the charities are compelled to participate as any money is good money but if you want to support a good cause send them the money direct and buy the right product not the one with the fluffy panda on the packaging.

I was pretty disgusted to discover the tiny amount of cash that actually goes through to the charities from the Christmas cards sold in UK shops. Now I just buy nice cards and send £10 direct to Oxfam and they can claim back my income tax to push that up to £12.50.

And the world definitely needs a universal charging platform - I'm so sick of getting wall warts that suck power if you leave them plugged in - USB or miniUSB would get my vote.

You can have some fun by pressing the 'Take a survey' from the read link and let them know what you think.

Nice to see this guy getting work with LG ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQyxGTjZi2I

All the prices converted to US$ for a device in the UK with UK 3 pin plugs - at least leave the UK pricing too.
It seems to be some kind of low rent intruder detector - though it doesn't have a bell.

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39030036,49298759,00.htm
"Conclusion
We'd only recommend the Alertme to people with more money than sense. "