TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

The teasmaid and its close relation, the automatic coffee maker, are fundamentally flawed. Not as designs, but at a conceptual level: The only time you actually need coffee before you can leave the bed is when you have a monstrous hangover — which means that, by definition, you were unable to prepare the machine the night before.

Chinese hackers have managed to reverse-engineer the iTunes Gift Certificate algorithm and are knocking out knock-off cards and selling them cheap. In China, a $200 equivalent card can be had for just $3.

In a tribute to China’s healthy disregard for intellectual property (much like the policy in the US for the first 100 years of its life), these numbers are being traded on Taobao, the "Chinese Ebay".

In an interview at the PMA (Photo Marketing Association) show in Las Vegas, Olympus SLR boss Akira Watanabe confirmed what we have known for a long time: That more pixels doesn’t mean better pictures. Speaking to ZDNet, Watanabe said that "Twelve megapixels is, I think, enough for covering most applications most customers need. We have no intention to compete in the megapixel wars for E-System."

This is fantastic news. It has been the unofficial line at camera manufacturers for a while now, but Watanabe is the first to say it out loud, and to actually base future tech policy on it.

Going, going, gone. Circuit City stores nationwide will turn off their lights forever on Sunday as the electronics retailer finally goes out of business.

The move comes nearly four months after the chain filed for bankruptcy in November. In January, the second largest electronics retailer in the U.S. said it will close all stores and has had liquidation sales in a bid to get rid of its merchandise.

For gadget heads, reports say there are not too many deals left.

When I was bullied at school, the other kids told me I couldn’t punch my way out of a paper bag (they also tried to steal my pocket calculator and they would always call me "four-eyes"). If only Tyvek had been around back then — I could have made the geekily satisfying retort "That’s not a paper bag. That’s a high-density polyethylene fiber bag, stupid." My well-deserved beating would have swiftly followed.

Out of Las Vegas come a clutch of new lenses from Sigma. The best thing about Sigma lenses is that they can be bought to fit most of the major camera brands, unlike offerings from the camera makers themselves which are a lot less promiscuous.

The standout glass from Sigma comes in the form of two fixed maximum aperture lenses. These keep the same lens opening size throughout the zoom range instead of getting dimmer the farther you zoom. We have a 10-20mm F3.5 EX DC HSM and a 24-70mm ƒ2.8 IF EX DG HSM.

Now that Amazon’s Kindle 2 is out, it’s time to start thinking about the next version of the device. And the leaks have already begun.

The Kindle 3 could have a touchscreen, be bigger and make its debut by the end of the year, according to a report in Taiwanese newspaper DigiTimes.

Amazon rival Sony has already introduced a touchscreen reader. (All models of the Sony Reader have buttons but no QWERTY keyboard, as the Kindle does; only the top-end Sony Reader, the PRS 700, has a touchscreen.) Touchscreen devices have proven increasingly popular since the launch of the iPhone, with a host of mobile phones, desktop PCs and even laptops adopting the technology.

Canon is making a new, ruggedized camera, the D10. How do we know how tough it is? Because it has a camouflage color scheme, the universal symbol of manliness.

Weird, bulbous, cartoonish design aside, the D10 looks like a great outdoor camera. The D10 can be frozen, dropped and drowned and it’ll still grab pictures with a perfectly sufficient 12.1 megapixels and a 4x, stabilized optical zoom.

Lucky Brits – already enjoying a crash in their currency alongside their truly terrible weather – are to be further shafted by Orange and LG. The mobile carrier has, according to Mobile Today, agreed to sell LGs watch phone for a staggering £1000, or around $1450. This means we’ll have to reclassify the Dick Tracey Special into our prestigious "Bling" category.

Oddly, the article goes on to say that "it will cost around £500 with an additional minimum line rental of £40 per month."

So which is it? £500 or £1000? To be honest, it makes little difference.

Sprint Nextel has bagged exclusive carrier rights for the Palm Pre until the end of the year, according to CNBC, citing an anonymous source.

The highly anticipated smartphone from Palm is expected to launch by the middle of the year, which would give Sprint a six- to nine-month hold on the phone.

Palm had announced Sprint as the carrier for the Pre when it launched the device at the Consumer Electronics Show last month.