After the Carphone Warehouse announced that that were giving away a free broadband service for any customer who signs up for there top Talk Talk package (blog posting) Sheffield based IPS PlusNet have announced a new package at the same cost being introduced in July.

The key differences between the packages are that PlusNet has a one month get out contract (with a £20 cancellation fee) with the Talk Talk contact lasting 18 months and PlusNet’s solution is a PAYG service with 50MB per month free (0.224ppm after that) while Talk Talk have a 40GB limit. PlusNet claims they will have more favorable usage restrictions.

Unlike Talk Talk the calls (of up to 70 minutes) are not free, but you get 4 hours of land-line calls included in the package every month. The PlusNet service is also not restricted to spacific exchanges unlike Talk Talk. More information is available from the PlusNet web site.

When reading through some now gadget reviews this little device jumped out at me. It is a mini hard drive based device that can copy files from several different types of memory card in the field and connecting directly to digital cameras and MP3 Players (and I would guess some USB memory sticks).

Battery life looks good with a claim of one charge allowing a 256MB memory card to be backed up 200 times. The device is less then 13cm wide and weighs in at 185g, but this strangely excludes the HDD weight.

You can also connect the device directly to your Windows, Mac OSX or Linux PC or laptop. More information can be found on the Sarotech web site.

At first I thought this was a spoof, but the “Flashbag” now appears a genuine concept design from the Russian designer Dima Komissarov.

This USB flash drive function like any other drive with the exception that it visually expands as more of the drive is used and contracts when space is released.

Will we see these in the shops soon? I think probably not, but what do I know. To find out more check http://www.plusminus.ru/flashbag.html.

If you want to have broadband installed in Hemel you might have a wait. BC Wholesale have run out of capacity preventing most ISPs from supplying a new service. Amazingly this situation has been described as indefinite.

Some good news is that with local loop unbundling (LLU) other suppliers will be able to offer broadband without relying on the full BT Wholesale equipment.

It feel like Google is releasing a new service every few days. Today they appear they have done it again with the quite launch of Google Calendar beta.

The calender is nothing new and something similar has been implemented by other portals and web sites, but this has the clean and simple Google treatment resulting in a very functional and usable service. Sharing of your calender with other users and other software is also easy and in my experience unique for a free service.

I have already added Birthdays that I need to keep track of and added some other key dates, and I will be considering it as a replacement to Outlook in the future.

Surprisingly one thing that has not been widely commented is that a company now not only sees what we are looking for on the net, holds a complete history or our email communications (if using GMail) but is also starting to hold information about what we do where and when. Personally I find this a little spooky at times.

If you already gave a Google account you can already log in at http://www.google.com/calendar .

We have had all the hype over the weekend that Carphone Warehouse would be offering free or very low coat broadband service. Well the details were released to day and if you subscribe to the Talk3 International service for £9.99 on top of the Talk Talk land line service for £11 you will get an 8Meg broadband service with a 40GB download limit for free.

I have to say that this is tempting to me but I will be holding out to see what other providers offer. There will not be many though as it is only financially viable to those companies participating in local loop unbundling (LLU) and offering telecom services.

The reason why I mention this is because the relaunched Talk Talk UK web site appears to be written in French. The good news is that I have a link to the offer information in English, and this is http://www.talktalk.co.uk/talktalk/servlet/gben-home-Home.

This little device caught my eye when scanning through a suppliers newsletter. Just add a hard drive to it (up to 250GB) and you have a file server with all the features you need for many small business networks.

It is based on an embedded build of Linux and is administered through your web browser interface. As CIFS/SBM is supported (probably using Samba) you can use it with your Windows machines with next to no configuration.

More information is available from the Lindy web site at http://www.lindy.com/uk/productfolder/03/32/32454/index.php.