August was a great month - it was good to see lots of existing members returning to the site along with a good number of new members. Once the weekend is out of the way we'll draw the winner for iPod Shuffle.

Unfortunately a few people who signed up were not entered into the competition because they didn't enter their required details in their profile!. Of course they may not have wanted to enter - so that's OK. If you want to be entered into the next draw please make sure you enter your name and phone number in your account details and ensure that you're receiving our email updates. The details you enter are only visible to us unless you decide to make them public, and we don't give any of our members details to other people unless we ask first.

We have another prize draw this month - we haven't decided what the prize is going to be yet. It'll be a surprise! Please do bear in mind the points above though if you want to take part!

We've made lots of changes here at GadgetSpeak over the last few months, including our revamped site design. Now we'd like to hear from you! There are several ways you can help us improve GadgetSpeak further :

• What do you like/don't like about GadgetSpeak?
• Any features or ideas that you'd like to see us add to the site?

Finally - are there products that you'd like us to review? Are you in the market for a new gizmo of some kind and don't know which one to choose? You're thinking of buying a widget, but not sure you believe the sales hype and an independent review would help? Just let us know! 

Use the comment area below to let us know your thoughts on the points above and help us to make GadgetSpeak more relevant to you!

That's what we have on offer in this months member prize draw. That's right - the new, vastly improved iPod Nano. Before the Shuffle came along the Nano was the baby in the family. It's growing up now. No longer limited to playing your favourite music, the new version does most of the things the big grown up iPod Classic can do:

• Plays your favourite music (of course!)
• 2" 320x240 resolution screen - gorgeous according to Steve Jobs
• Play videos
• Play games - it comes with three pre-installed and you can download more from iTunes
• Apples new user interface - making it so simple to browse your content

With all these new capabilities you're going to need more memory so the new Nano comes with a minimum of 4G bytes - the same amount as a DVD.

If you want to know more take a look at our round up of the new iPod family.

Sound interesting? We thought so. We've ordered one for this months members prize draw. It's silver with 4G bytes of memory. The draw is open to all GadgetSpeak members - and anyone that would like to join. Just make sure you're receiving our email updates and include your name and 'phone number in your profile. As long as you've done that - just log in at least once before the end of September and that's it!

As a special bonus this month we 're giving away three runners up prizes of the execllent Logic3 i-Station speakers - great for listenning to your iPod without headphones! Not got an iPod? No problem - these speakers use a standard jack-socket so you can plug in the MP3 player of your choice!

For those new to GadgetSpeak - welcome. For our many repeat visitors and members - welcome back!

As a thank you to our existing members - and to anyone else that want's to join, from August onwards we've launched a monthly prizedraw. We want to keep in touch with you and tell you all the news from GadgetSpeak - so as long as you're receiving our email newsletters/updates all you have to do is log into GadgetSpeak at least once within the month.

This months prize is an Apple iPod shuffle - great for taking up to 1Gbyte of music on your travels.

There will be a new draw each month - and we're planning other exciting competitions in the coming months - so if you're not a member then come join in the fun!

If you've already joined, but not logged in, make sure you log-in at least once each month to be entered into this great prize draw!

It's almost the end of August, and we've managed to get most of the changes we'd planned onto the site. I thought I'd summarise the changes we've made in this blog entry. We'd love to hear your views on the changes we've made so please leave a comment!

• Recently blogged, our monthy prize draw - this month an Apple iPod!
• Appearance - our updated design!
• Product categories - helping you find similar products
• Special offers page

Our new site design!

The most obvious change is the appearance of the site, which hadn't changed since we launched. While we've kept the colour scheme, we've removed the left-hand column and the banner. We think the result is much cleaner, giving a lot more space for content and saving you having to scroll so much!

Product categories

Ever wanted to find similar products? Now - when you read an article you'll often find two additions to the page. The first is a box titled 'Reviews by Category'. A Canon printer might for example list 'canon printers', 'inkjet printers', 'photo printer'. Click on one of those and browse related articles.

The second box lists reviews from the category we think you'll be most interested in.

Special offers

This is still new - and we're hoping to add many more special offers as and when we find them. The offers aren't from us but from particular vendors. We'll list the ones we find that we think are most applicable to GadgetSpeak members.

Take a look at our current offers page

Already half way through August, and the nights here are starting to close in. It's only 9:30pm here and already pitch black outside.

A couple of things are happening here and I thought I'd blog about them...

Firstly, as I said last time I wrote, we've now turned on weekly site update emails. These emails will include a summary of the articles, blogs and discussions started in the previous seven days. The first update should be sent this Wednessday (23rd August I think). If you've subscribed to email updates then you should receive that one, if not then why not give it a try?

GadgetSpeak now has a lot of product reviews. Each is filed under an appropriate topic. Finding a specific article is quite easy - just use the search page, which incidently we improved a lot a couple of months back. How do you find other related articles though? Say you're interested in HP printers. You find the first through searching - what then? Well now, we've started to create 'related article' lists. It's a bit of an experiment at the moment, but if you go to one of the products in a list, in the right hand column you'll see a list of Related Product Reviews and you'll be able to click through other reviews.

Back to the HP printer reviews, if for example you'd just read the HP OfficeJet 4315 review, and it's not quite your cup of tea. In the right hand column you'll see links to the HP OfficeJet 4355, HP Photosmart 8050 and others. Is this usefu? Let us know by adding a comment to this blog. We're always interested in your feedback about any aspect of our site.

Finally, many of you will be aware of our 5x5 smiley awards, the most recent of which was awarded to the excellent Canon Ixus 800IS. Well, we've given out only 9 of these awards since they started. That's to be expected, how many of your gadgets are perfect? It seemed a pity though not to have something for those almost perfect gadgets that just missed a 5x5 award. To rectify this we've introduced our 'highly commended' stamp. We've retrospectively awarded this to well regarded products with the result that just over 40 products qualify. Is your favourite in the list? If not then you need to get writing!

I'd also like to encourage you all to help improve GadgetSpeak by writing down your experiences with gadgets. If you'd rather jot your notes down informally then write a blog entry - if you'd like to write a full review then articles are what you want.