Obviously, downloading copyrighted MP3s without payment is illegal. You might be wondering, therefore, what on earth you’re going to listen to on your brand new MP3 player, by staying firmly within the boundaries of the law.

Thankfully, there are places on the web where music can be downloaded for free, without breaching anyone’s copyright.

These places are promoters of new, unsigned acts and take the shape of either social media sites, archives of live acts who are “bootleg friendly”, dedicated to promoting a new framework for musicians to earn a living without the thieving might of the record industry as well as a few freebies from established locations such as MTV and Last.fm

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Superb news for haters of iTunes, and all that the Apple profit machine represents - Nokia are launching a new free music download service that is set to challenge the Apple behemoth and let downloaders keep the music regardless of their subscription.

Comes with Music will first appear on the Nokia XpressMusic 5310 handset and will be exclusive to Carphone Warehouse - who also sell the Apple iPhone. Comes with Music will be launched in the UK.

The service gives users a years worth of unlimited access to the whole Nokia Music Store catalogue - and after that time is up, all downloaded tracks remain with the user. That’s right - users can keep the songs they’ve downloaded! Nokia intend to generate revenue via the period beyond the 12 months -at which point further songs will be available at what Nokia describes as “a la carte” prices.

Should phone, music or license go missing, the Nokia Music Store will hold a personal “Music Vault” for each user, where all tracks previously downloaded can be regained.

Remember - Apple pay songwriters and artists pennies on iTunes, and the failing music industry virtually shakes their hands off. While not bringing the control of music back to the creators, Nokia’s entry into this market at least generates competition to iTunes.

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Toy, gadget or surveillance tool? You can make your own mind up - suffice to say it’s a pretty neat piece of kit.

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The current big thing in digital cameras - smile and face detection!

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Known as the Bullet, this wireless camera incorporates a microphone, tiny colour camera and a 2.4 Ghz transmitter.

It’s just £79.99, features excellent picture quality and has a range of 25-50 metres. It will even run off a 9v battery.

Given the low price, take it as a given that you’ll find yourself on the receiving end of one of cameras at some stage.

If not your suspicious spouse, then your employer; or even the government flexing its Big Brother muscles. Fact is, this camera is tiny, and costs pennies.

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What’s this? A video first at The Gadget Monkey!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRYJtFxSVe0]

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With the sharp exit from the next gen storage race of Toshiba, you would be forgiven for thinking that HD-DVD is dead and buried.

While it will likely go the way of Mini-Disc, it isn’t there yet - XBox 360 HD-DVD devices are selling for under 10 euros in Ireland, and with a reduction in price of existing HD DVD prices a decent movie collection can be accumulated for under £100 with the help of eBay.

Sure, you need to be using your HD-DVD player on your main TV, and of course there will be no more movies coming out on the format - but why waste such a good opportunity? 

At the end of the day, Blu-Ray won’t be here forever either…

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The old “stealing music is like stealing a car” debate rages on this week, with a children’s charity of all things sticking its BMI-backed nose into what kids are downloading.

Given the disgusting amounts of child pornography on the internet, childrens charity Childnet should either throw in the towel or get back on top of warning children about paedophiles preying in chatrooms.

The BBC News dot.life blog has addressed the subject of Childnet dissuading children from exercising their right to listen to free music, to which The Gadget Monkey have given this response:

Unfortunately this is a massive argument, but it can be summed up as follows:

The music industry, desperate to RE-sell us CDs of albums we had already on vinyl and tape, spruced up with extra tracks and quality, are now upset because people are opting to try before they buy.

In an era when music acts from the 1960s and 1970s continue to outsell those from the current age, the people responsible for running these organisations need to stop blaming the technology that they encouraged us to adopt, and get their own houses in order.

The changes we’ve seen since Napster were signalled in the late 1980s, and none of the big publishers did anything about it.

Music is a big business. Like any business, if you don’t keep up, you’re out of the game.

What is most frustrating though is that people are continuing to paint anyone who downloads music as the same sort of thief who will steal a car. It’s far more involved than that, and framing a complex issue that bisects culture, technology, law and economics in such black and white terms is not only stupid, it is irresponsible.

It really is time to put this argument to bed.

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I’d been toying with the idea of buying a new MP3 player for some time. This time I wanted a devoted player – not a part-storage device – and the Sony NWS 706 4GB MP3 Player looked to fit the bill.

What I was really after was a player that would give me perfect sound reproduction on my favourite classic rock tracks – something that would treat a high bitrate like a high bitrate and not compress the output. Quality earphones were also vital, as would a realistic, intuitive browsing system (I once used an MP3 player with an “interesting” method of navigation, via a clumsy rocker switch. Not once could I find the track I wanted, turn the volume up or skip one track at a time.)

My obsession with sound quality comes from a love of vinyl, and a desire for old released to be remastered before I’ll listen to them on CD. I was in love with CDs (and to a lesser extent minidisc) for years, but MP3 has always been for me something of a “portable” format – that’s not a compliment. MP3 is the audio equivalent of PDF – convenient, easy, but ultimately disposable.

No one seems to have told the Sony NWS 706 4GB MP3 Player this, however. In this age of iPod beating, Sony has come very close with this player. The finish, while initially looking like it will fade and dull within days, seems to be pretty hard wearing, and the earphones are comfortable and unlikely to fall out.

Browsing, too, is excellent, with Sony’s simple but effective method of dialling through the track list and playing them.

Best of all though, is the sound quality. There is depth, resonance and presence as the player reproduces the high bitrate that made CDs so popular. Even without this level of sampling, the sound reproduction/earphone combination is impressive.

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This is one of those Tomorrow’s World items from the 1980s - a headset that lets the wearer immerse themselves in a movie or video game.

The ezVision Video iWear weighs just over 200g, and while that might be light enough to not cause any lasting neck or shoulder strain, it doesn’t create the best quality picture.  The battery lasts 8 hours, and the device comes with an A/C wall charger, RCA video cable and iPod video cable

However it is a good price, available online for around £150, and it is of course light and compact enough to be worn on a plane or anywhere you may be a passenger.

Stereo vision is of course nothing new - there was a trend for taking two photos from slightly differing angles in order to mount them on some freakishly big glasses with the result of a 3-D image, but this died out in the mid 20th century.

There is a future in video glasses, but I don’t think ezVision have got a killer app on their hands with this.

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