Each year the Toy Retailers Association along with the British Toy and Hobby Association make their predictions about what they think are going to be the best sellers this year. Many organisations publish these predictions of course. Dream Toys though has the distinction that the Toy Retailer Association represents over 75% of the toy trade in the UK - they should have a good idea. They also have a pretty good track record in their predictions, although of course it's hard to know whether that's because they know what people really want - or that they really push the toys they have on the Dream Toys list!

The awards are split into six categories of twelve suggestions each. From these an overall "Hot Dozen" are selected.  72 products in total appear on the lists, the individual categories being :

• Boys
• Girls
• TechZone
• Creative
• Games
• Pre School

If you want to see the winners in each list then please download the official Dream Toys announcement (it's a PDF - but it's not too big!).

I will give you the top 12 Dream toys though - with links through to any that we've reviewed. We may well review a few more in which case I'll update this list.

• BABY born® with Magic Potty, Zapf Creation® (RRP £33.99)
• Bakugan™ Starter Pack, Spinmaster (RRP £12.99)
• Ben 10 Deluxe Omnitrix, Bandai (RRP £15.99)
• Catcha Beast, Bandai (RRP £19.99)
• Cupcake Maker, Character Options (RRP £29.99)
• Elmo Live, Mattel (RRP £59.99)
• FurReal Biscuit, My Lovin’ Pup, Hasbro (RRP £149.99)
• High School Musical 3 Musical Dance Mat, Vivid Imaginations (RRP £22.99)
• In The Night Garden Upsy Daisy and Her Chase and Play Bed, Hasbro (RRP £34.99)
• My Life, Flair Leisure Products (RRP £49.99)
• Rescue Pals Swim To Me Puppy, MGA Entertainment Ltd (RRP £29.99)
• Star Wars Clone Trooper Voice Changer, Hasbro (RRP £29.99)

We'll be putting together our our own "what's hot for Christmas lists" shortly so let us know if there's anything your think really ought to be on the list!

For those of us old enough to remember Apricot of yesteryear you'll remember a range of innovative, high quality computers with carefully thought out designs (leave us a comment with your own recollections!)

The name disappeared from the UK retail market some time ago with the brand being bought by Mitsubishi. That's all changed now as Apricot returns as an independent UK company once more launching the PicoBook Pro - a competitor in the burgeoning sub-notebook market.

I had a peak at the new product last night and it does look good. Rather than some other competitors Apricot have developed a well specified laptop in a very small form factor. Key features are 60GB hard disk (enough space to actually store your work), 8.9" display, sub 1Kg weight and with a usable keyboard. Battery life is also a usable 4 hours.

To quote Shalid Sultan, CEO of the new Apricot "Many offerings in the sub-laptop market are missing the point. A mobile PC user fundamentally wants to be able to connect to the internet whenever and wherever they are and to be able to use it for a prolonged period of time, without needing to charge the batteries. We have created a PC that is truly mobile and - despite its high quality credentials, functionality and look and feel - it is also affordable."

You can buy the PicoBook pre-installed with either Microsoft Windows (£328) or with SUSE Linux (£279).

We do of course hope to bring you a full review of the PicoBook Pro as soon we can lay our hands on a sample! In the meantime there's lot of information on the Apricot Web-site :

http://www.apricotcomputers.com/

With the recent demise of Evevsham it's great to see ths UK brand making a comeback.

It's great, every now and then, to find a Christmas present with traditional values.

This week we found out about the special Denis the Menace Go-kart from the Children's Furniture company, made to celebrate The Beano's 70 Years of Fun.  It's a very limited edition - only 70 have been made - one for each Beano year of Fun.

The go-kart comes in simple to assemble kit form and looks very much like the type of go-kart we might have had as kids ourselves.  That was back in the days when Dads had time to make these things from scratch out of the pile of odd bits of wood out back - only this one should only take around 30 minutes to assemble!!  The Denis the Menace Go-kart has an adjustable seat so all the family from the youngsters to the young at heart adults can play together.

If you want your kids out in the open air this Christmas, playing like we used to, then have a look at this lovely product at www.thechildrensfurniturecompany.com . Price £195.

The Good Design Awards (G Mark) is the successor to the Good Design Selection System, which was established back 1957. The Good Design Awards is presented for designs that clearly demonstrate merit in one of a number of categories.

This years 'G-Mark' awards have now been announced and it's good to see some gadgets on the list from some of our favourite companies including Ricoh, Sony and Logitech.

The awards cover the whole of industry, much more than just gadgets, however gadgets were very present in the top 15 awards. Ricoh received a top 15 award for their GR series of digital cameras. I have a fond spot for Ricoh - still owning a now ancient KR-10 35mm SLR - still going strong after 20+ years service. With this in mind it's great to see Ricoh awarded for longevity of design, something very many other manufacturers could well aspire toward! The judges commenting "In the digital camera market, where new products appear in rapid section, this series has always aimed for long-lived design with the high-end amateur users in mind. Ricoh doesn't want its cameras to become mere commodities. I appreciate Ricoh's effort to lengthen the life of their products from an industrial designing standpoint" (read more about the Ricoh award here). It's been a long time since we've reviewed any Ricoh products - I hope that will change!

Sony is also in the top-15 with with their HandyCam HDR-TG1 : "This HD camera incorporates sophisticated functions into the world's smallest, lightest body. [...] This is a video camera that will satisfy a wide range of users" (read the HandyCam report here).

Logitech, another GadgetSpeak favourite was represented with awards for two of it's mice (the V550 Nano and MX1100 Cordless Laser Mouse), an 'illuminated keyboard' and for their 'Pure-Fi Express Plus' - an iPod/iPhone speaker, bringing their tally to 20 awards in the last 6 years. We've not reviewed any of their winning products (yet!).

You can read more about the awards on the G-Mark web-site, be warned though - they are going to win no "good design" awards for their web-site, which is one of the most frustrating I've used!

Here's a lovely website where you can make a little bit of cash on your old CDs. Simply type in the bar code on the back of the CD box for the one you want to sell and it gives you a cash offer. CDs listed are then available for sale.

Details are on www.musicmagpie.co.uk

The service is simple to use. Users go to www.musicmagpie.co.uk and click the “Get cash for your old CDs” button. They then type in the barcode number from the CDs they want to sell. The website will search its database and make a cash offer for each one, with the site buying up to 250 CDs in each transaction.

When the user accepts the offer, they are sent prepaid padded envelopes to send in their CDs. A cheque is issued within 7 days of receipt after each CD is checked against terms and conditions.

When I checked today the site had already paid out over £219,000 to its registered users. So if you want a little extra cash to help with Christmas - or a way to find a cheaper prezzie - this is a great find.

Anyone that reads GadgetSpeak on a regular basis will know that I'm an ardent fan of radio. DAB radio has now been around for a number of years and has been steadily making inroads inthe marketplace. The DRDB (Digital Radio Development Bureau) has recently announced second quarter figures up 34% on the same period last year with 27.3% of adults now having at least one DAB radio at home.

This announcement by John Lewis of just how many DAB radio products they are selling shows how mainstream the new digital technology is becoming, despite continued issues with signal strength in some parts of the country.

Here at GadgetSpeak we've certainly reviewed a significant number of DAB capable products, with more on the horizon as we move toward Christmas.

Of course DAB has a few competitors - apart from the venerable analogue signal. Also making headway is Internet radio. These devices basically sit on your home WiFi network and stream 'radio' stations over your Internet connection. This gives you the benefit of a world-wide service, freeing you from the limit of just those stations broadcast locally - particularly useful for expats that would like to listen to their home country stations.

Multiple technologies however serve to create uncertainty in the market - should you buy a DAB radio or simply use Internet radio - or just stick with your old analogue set that works just fine? This kind of indecision has handicapped many new products - just think of HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray.

John Lewis see integrated DAB/WiFi sets as being a potential solution - one box - both technologies and are forecasting significant growth in this area through 2009.

What's your take on the future of radio? Or maybe you think it doesn't have one? Post your views down below and let us know!

According to a survey by NDS, 70% of people couldn't live without theirs!

Digital Video Recorders, those rather nifty little boxes that replace your ancient VHS recorder allowing you to record hundreds of hours of TV without a tape in sight, are popular! Just how popular has been illustrated today by the NDS survey of over 1,000 owners. Surprisingly for something so new the DVR is now rated as the third most indispensable household item after the washing machine and the microwave. That's pretty impressive!

We've reviewed a number of these products from a growing number of manufacturers and they are definitely addictive - once you've had one you'll definitely be loath to let it go again!

People in the survey cite a number of reasons for the popularity of the DVR - the two that ring most true with myself are the convenience (no tapes to find - just press a button, time-record something by selecting it in the schedule, record a whole series) and the role of 'peace maker' in a family where everyone has a different viewing taste. In the 'old days' with only 3 TV channels the likelihood of a clash between individuals was pretty slim - not so with the hundreds of channels now available. With most DVRs on the market being able to record two channels simultaneously there really is no reason to miss out!

In the depths of the biggest credit crunch since the term was first coined (last year) people are making savings - and what better way to save than a night in with full cinema experience (and maybe a nice bottle of red) catching up on the weeks TV? Along with the "Staycation" - the DVR is making "Staying in the new going out!".

We'd love to hear your experience of the DVR sitting underneath your TV. Could you live without it? What's your favourite feature? Is it on your Christmas list? Or do you wonder what all the fuss is about? Drop a comment down below and share your views with the rest of the GadgetSpeak community!

Disney hitched their horse to the Blu-Ray bandwagon a good while before HD-DVD finally lost the race. With that uncertainty effectively removed from the market it's good to see more classics being released on the high-definition format. In this case Disney are releasing five additions to their Platinum Collection : Pinocchio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Fantasia 2000 and Beauty and the Beast.

If you've invested in a large format TV then high-definition is going to be the best way to make the most of the technology you have. With this collection your kids (or you!) can see all their favourites in crystal clear quality!

So - hands up if your're the proud owner of a Blu-ray DVD player? Which one? Have you bought any movies - or have you only got one because it came as part of your Sony PS3?

Well, almost - subject to regulatory approval!

What is it? A shakeup of the management and development of the most common mobile phone software platform. For those that don't know, Symbian Ltd is a UK company that grew out of the excellent Psion Organiser company. Symbian, which has some of the major mobile hand-set manufacturers including Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola. Although taking a much lower profile than Microsoft or Apple the Symbian operating system (OS) accounts for 60% of the smart-phone market.

What's changing? Responsibility for Symbian and several of the user interfaces that run on it are being moved to a new not-for-profit organisation call the Symbian Foundation. What's interesting is that Symbian Ltd is being bought by Nokia (which already owns 48%) for around £209 so all the engineers that currently develop the OS will be Nokia employees - not part of the foundation.

Why? There are a lot of claims. One of the most compelling is to create a huge base of software developers supporting this system rather than competitors. Many people already develop for Symbian, but currently different manufacturers have their own customisations. The Foundation aims to bring consistency.

In a move reminescent of the launch of the Mozilla Foundation which brought the world the FireFox browser, the aims of this new Symbian Foundation will ultimately be to create a free and open source mobile platform (using the Eclipse Public License). That's going to take some time - two years according to the roadmap.

Accouding to a white paper on the new Foundations web-site (http://www.symbianfoundation.org/) funding will be from device manufacturers. There's no clear indication how this works or how much each manufacturer will contribute, how that will vary over time. Since any organisation can become a "Member" for the princely sum of $1500, it's unclear why any additional device manufacturers would need to provide funding. Prior to full open-source release only members will get access to the underlying software - but for $1500 per year membership is hardly a barrier.

There are plenty of questions raised by the white paper, particularly in relation to open source. Those at the forefront of my mind include :

• Apparently only members can contribute code to the organisation - but that isn't consistent with a true open-source model where anyone in theory can contribute code - subject to peer review and quality etc.
• The direction of the OS will be set by a board of directors consisting of the current device manufacturers - not by the community itself. They will be the main beneficiaries, but this could handicap the operating system. Innovation often comes from a fresh point of view.
• All the current closed-source developers from Symbian will become Nokia employees. It's difficult to see how this prevents Nokia having almost complete control over the direction of the OS. Other manufacturers can of course contribute code - but they won't have any of the key developers or the engineering influence. This should be balanced by the need for Nokia not to alienate the other major manufacturers and let in either Microsoft or Google Android, but in a pinch do they use their development resource for a short-term gain - or help out a competitor?
• Having the direction of Symbian Foundation dictated by the handset manufacturers could prevent a very good operating system reaching it's full potential under the Symbian banner.

Where could this take Symbian? I believe the underlying code has a very good real-time design with very robust coding. There seems no reason why Symbian should be limited to the mobile handset market. Once it's there as open source I can imagine it being an ideal candidate for set-top boxes, internet radios and in fact almost any embedded consumer product requiring an OS. The characteristics that make it ideal are precisely those that embedded Linux advocates are still trying to bolt onto that operating system. If the Symbian Foundation doesn't want to go down that route (it'd be sensible to focus!) then the open source license allows for "derivative works". One of the presenters at yesterdays press conference happened to work for a company that also builds set-top boxes!

I look forward to seeing how this change pans out. Release 4 million lines of proprietary closely controlled source code out into the open is bound to have a few hiccups, but a lot can be learnt from previous efforts.

You can read more on the Symbian Foundation web-site.

In the competition to provide the most realistic drive in a computer game, Thrustmaster have launched the "Thrustmaster Ferrari GT Experience", bearing the famous racing marque. From the company's press release they "aim to offer gamers a unique experience by allowing them to enjoy intense racing sensations with a racing wheel proudly bearing the legendary prancing horse emblem"

So what have they done to justify such a claim?

Well - it definitely looks the part with high quality textured rubber grips. Gear change has been incorporated into the steering wheel in true Formula 1 style with up-down click changing. To add to the realism a shock vibration device allows you to feel the terrain as you tear around the race track. They have also incorporated something they are calling 'bungee cord' - a technique for realistically implementing steering wheel resistence as you turn.

The pedal arrangement is also highlighted as a key feature with progressive movement, good pedal spacing giving the experienced racer the opportunity to employ heel-toe techniques.

The Thrustmaster works with the PS/2, PS/3 and standard PCs.

It should work with most racing games, with the following games making the most of the new features : Formula One Championship Edition, Ridge Racer 7 and Colin McRae: DIRT.

Can it live up to the claims? We're hoping to take a sample for a test-drive shortly so we can provide an indepth GadgetSpeak review and let you know how it performs in practice! 

If you can't wait for the review, you can read more on the Thrustmaster web-site