Sky is updating customers on its AdSmart targeted-advertising system. An email is doing the rounds that highlights the updated terms and conditions now in effect, ready for AdSmart’s launch on Sky Player in January. Sky combines the information it holds about you with data bought from third parties. This includes data such as your postcode …

Vodafone has entered the Crystal Maze with the 533 Crystal phone. It’s a pretty standard pay as you go handset, apart from the fact that it’s bedecked with 126 Swarovski crystals. At least it’s not pink. The 533 packs a 1.3-megapixel camera with 4x zoom, FM radio and Bluetooth. You know a phone is light on features when the specs …

O2 iPhones can be unlocked from today — totally free if you’re on contract. The ability to put different SIM cards into your iPhone comes just in time for the iPhone’s arrival on Vodafone and Orange. Pay monthly customers can unlock their handsets at any time, completely gratis. Once unlocked, you can stick any SIM card in your iPhone and …

Channel 4 has revealed the programmes which will make up its 3D week. The Queen, Derren Brown, Miley Cyrus — or Hannah Montana or whatever her name is — will be joined by two 1970s horror films over the week of 16 November. 3D is a hot topic right now with the Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W1 compact camera hitting …

Samsung has announced bada, a new smart phone operating system. bada is Korean for ‘ocean’, which is all well and good but in English it still sounds like ‘bad’. The tabs on the bada Web site read ‘bada for business’ and ‘bada for developers’. Let’s hope bada isn’t bad for business or developers. Samsung previously pasted its own TouchWiz (dear …

You see some funny things at gadget trade shows, but the highlights are often the overblown multimedia launches. LG excelled itself at IFA with a video on the theme of removing borders, with footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall segueing neatly into a discussion of the invention of the Internet — followed by some tellies. Our hogwash detectors …

Philips Net TV does exactly what you’d expect from the name: it’s an app that puts the Internet in your television. You connect up your Philips telly to the intarwebs and you’ll be able to browse sites such as YouTube and eBay in a Philips-friendly format, with large text and simplified layout. Other sites will be displayed in the usual …

Sky is hoping its customers don’t end up with a Hangover after holding a Sky+ HD party, complete with free high-definition film. Ten thousand partymeisters get a choice of movie, from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Hangover (pictured) or Angels and Demons. The parties will take place any time over the weekend of Friday 11 to Sunday 13 …

The Motorola Droid will be called the Milestone in Europe. The Droid is exciting techheads’ trousers in the US as one of the first handsets to be specifically designed for Android 2.0. The headline-grabbing feature of Google’s next mobile OS update is turn-by-turn sat-nav. The official Milestone page, however, notes that Google Maps and Motonav are network-dependent features and may …

After a long engagement, Nokia is jilting the N-Gage gaming platform, which will be closed down at the end of next year. paidContent:UK reports that games will still be sold, and the N-Gage Arena open to users, until September 2010. N-Gage never really took off, after launching as a gaming handset in 2003 then being relaunched as a platform last …