Samsung’s new Tic Toc, motion-controlled MP3 player is aimed at young ladies with a penchant for a fashion accessory and offers 12 hours playback for only £39.99.

Georgina Franklin of Samsung told Pocket Lint, “The Samsung Tic Toc is perfect for young women who want the latest fashion gadgets. With so many features on such a small MP3 player, it really is the latest must have colourful and fun accessory for music fans”.

LatestGadgets.co.uk concluded, “With a 2GB version at £39.99 and a 4GB option also available, the Tic Toc is set firmly at the iPod Shuffle crowd, coming in a few quid cheaper than Apple’s offering, but its candy colours and cute design (plus its novel control system) will definitely help it appeal to a younger crowd.”

While Electric Pig praised its design, “The Samsung TicToc makes the special edition iPod shuffle look positively boring.”

It’s due for release in September and is also available in pink, blue, black – or even with a Hello Kitty theme. I say no more; it’s cheap and cheerful and a must for tech-loving, fashion-conscious tweens.

Miss Win It! is a brand new entertainment website offering the chance to win ‘money can’t buy experiences’. Prizes include exclusive shopping events with Top Shop and stylist to the stars, Terry James Lynch as well as backstage passes for red carpet film premieres (and chance to meet Eastenders soap stars, if you’re that way inclined).

For your chance to win one of these fabulous prizes simply log on to www.misswinit.com to enter your favourite competitions.

How to enter:

1. Free – free to enter, but for each competition you only get one go per person

2. Multiple Choice – for £2, you can enter premium competitions with bigger prizes, extra perks, and you can enter as many times as you like. You need to answer a simple multiple choice question

3. Predictorama – it’s the classic ‘How many sweets in the jar?’ estimation game. Entry costs £2 and you can enter as many times as you like to increase your chances of winning. The person who gets the answer correct (or is the nearest) is the winner.

Check out www.misswinit.com for the chance to win.

You’ll need to sign up as a Groupla subscriber today to receive their email alerts (although you can ditch these once you’ve bagged your sparkly iP4). Wait for links to be posted to you. Then, you’ll have the opportunity to grab one at 9.30am tomorrow (2nd July) morning.

Mark Pearson, managing director of Groupola, told The Guardian, “Given that the iPhone 4 sold out through pre-orders alone in just 48 hours through the Apple store, we thought it was only right to offer loyal Groupola.com discount hunters another bite of the cherry. We’ve proved that the concept of group buying can work within the UK.

“My advice is to open the link the second the clock ticks over at 9.30am – by 9.31am you may already have been too late,” adds Pearson.

Groupla are able to offer such low prices through group-buying, a phenomenon happening all over the internet at the moment (great article by Dork Adore about group-buying).

Mouse-clicking index finger at the ready…

1. Desire to Inspire

One Canadian lady and one Australian woman have combined forces and interior design passions to form, DesiretoInspire.net. This wonderful blog shares inspiring interior design. It really is the most consistently inspiring stuff I’ve seen.

2. Alkemie

Karen Olivia from California in the US writes blog, Alkemie and brings homes & interiors gems at the peak of chic to her readers’ attention.

2. Creature Comforts

With a motto to provide ‘design and inspiration for all creatures great and small’, editor Ez celebrates the details of design. My favourite posts are the simple collection of images in ‘Inspiration Daily’.

4. The Scoop

The blog for shop, Orange Beautiful, this site is a mix of interior, graphic and, generally, interesting design work.

5. Urban Grace Interiors

I’ve chosen this one for all the fantastic photography on here. Have a look for yourself.

First published on Your Gaff

As reported by The Guardian’s Charles Arthur, owners of Apple’s latest innovation are turning to duct tape or nail polish in light of antenna problems.

To celebrate the verstaility of nail polish and it’s new found glory in the technology industry, here is a list of its other uses (beyond being nail, er, polish):

1. Screens: Repair small holes in window screens by applying several layers of clear nail polish. Or, for bigger holes, stitch the hole closed with fine wire or nylon thread, says South Bend Tribune
2. Tights: Stop that ladder in its tracks; apply clear nail varnish to laddered tights to stop the hole getting bigger (disclaimer: please allow to dry before dressing)
3. Contrary to old wives tales, don’t put nail varnish on ticks (or any other living creature for that matter)
4. Match your gadgets: Dell offers nail polish colours to match their consumer laptops through a partnership with renowned nail lacquer maker OPI
5. Make your new £499 iPhone 4 work without holding it in a certain way: Add a dab of nail polish, and, boom, signal is restored

Got any more uses? Drop Witch Tech a line.

Let’s face it; technology isn’t a sexy industry. To remedy that, technology companies have been throwing pink at all of their products. Legally Blonde’s Ellie has been blamed for starting a pink tech renaissance after sporting a pink Gateway 450 Notebook in the film. But whether or not Hollywood is to blame, pink tech is still hitting the shops. Earlier this month, Sony launched another pink product: the Sony VAIO notebook (as reviewed by Pocket Link) is more pink than pink.
But there’s only so much splashing pink around can do. And some lady geeks are getting their tech-knickers in a twist. LadyGeek founder, Belinda Parmar recently asked, “why do technology companies think that pinking up and dumbing down their marketing is the way to get professional, well educated women to part with their cash?

“PC World is telling me my world is pink (it has not been pink since I was seven)”, she continues, “And I need a new laptop to match my outfit (it would never even occur to me to match my outfit with my technology). Samsung is asking me, “What Colour is my Life?” (hello?) and Dell is telling me that technology is like candy (do me a favour).”

But not all women are offended; blogger, Theodora, says, “I have to say I don’t completely agree with women who get all annoyed with girlie looking computers and gadgets and see it as degrading. If I’m buying a laptop, I expect it to boot up fairly quickly, have a wireless card, decent screen size, good sound, good picture quality, enough memory for my photos and the occasional cheeky Glee or Big Bang Theory episode and powerful enough processor and RAM so I don’t want to shoot my brains out whilst waiting for Photoshop to load. Now if I can get all this and a nice looking albeit NOT PINK laptop with a stylish bag that can double up as a hand bag, well let’s just say the feminist in me won’t be particularly offended.”

But no longer to women have to battle over feminist ideals and pink technology. Pink isn’t women’s only fashionable alternative to grey hunks of metal and Atom chips. Fortunately, there’s been an underground surge of fashion designers and designer technology hitting the scene.

The ‘CREATE’ collection by Jason Wu has been hailed as the “UK’s first fashion camera”. Launched at Graduate Fashion Week this year, the 27-year-old fashion designer, Jason Wu, recently came under the spotlight for designing Michelle Obama’s inauguration ball gown. Now, he’s joined General Imaging to launch a range of ‘fashion cameras’. With a leather body and case, this camera is designed to look as good as it performs.

Nokia’s novero has also launched Bluetooth sets to look more like jewellery. More than £100,000 each, these luxe headsets aim to make technology more beautiful and fashionable. (see picture, left, ‘Stripes’ is molded from contemporary, black silicone and hatched with bright shafts of traditional, brushed gold. It’s like a technology choker).

According to Financial Express, statistics show that there is a surge in the percentage of women using trendy technology like internet, computer, mobile phones, PDAs and other consumer devices. A large demographic, nearly 70% women in the west, use the internet as the primary source of information for family activities, recipes, health, news, and entertainment listings. For a majority of women, internet highly influences their purchasing decisions. A good half of women use it for social networking and to keep in touch with family and friends when away. (Source: The Centre for Women’s Business Research).

Can fashion designers make technology more, um, fashionable? Will gadgets become the new must-have fashion accessory? Tell Witch Tech what you think.

‘Try before you buy’ has gone virtual. L’Oreal will roll-out in-store virtual kiosks later this month, allowing customers to “try out” hair and beauty products virtually before buying them.

The kiosks use EZface technology, which acts as a ‘Virtual Mirror’, showing users how products would look without having to apply them. The ‘Virtual Mirror Kiosk’ was launched in January 2009 and has already been used by Boots in several of its shops for the retailer’s teenage make-up range, 17.

How does it work?
The EZface Virtual Mirror Kiosk is a laptop-sized screen. The device snaps a headshot of the customer. Then, said customer is invited to scan a product bar code. Hey presto! The beauty product is applied to the face. More than that, it promises to give recommendations suited to each customer.

What is the technology?
Using sophisticated matching algorithms through an intuitive user interface, the technology is an open system and easily integrated into any e-commerce or CRM system (via Retail Touch Points).

According to Marketing Magazine, L’Oréal will be trialling the kiosks later this month, offering products from brands such as Maybelline, ahead of a possible commercial deal. Sources familiar with the technology, a commercial tie-up between Boots, L’Oréal and EZface could lead to the kiosks being rolled out across the UK. L’Oréal declined to comment, while Boots said its trials were ongoing.

The famous Paris kiss from the 1950s.

The film, titled ‘Kisses from Paris’, was shown at a launch in the Tate Modern’s East Room last night. “It took me a day,” said Attal to the Guardian’s Janine di Giovanni. It follows a young couple’s journey around the unseen and unexpected sides of the city. Being aimed at young travellers who do their booking on the internet, the campaign is a viral one involving a network of selected bloggers and social networking sites.

There has been an emerging fashion for creating short films to promote brands: Dior launched The Lady Noire Affair featuring Marion Cotillard and Viktor and Rolf put out a film for their Spring 2010 collection for Paris fashion week. Now Paris Ile-de-France hope their edgy three minute film can help refresh Paris’ appeal. With Rufus Wainwright providing the soundtrack, coupled with sophisticated snapshots of Parisian life and young love, how can you not be seduced? You decide:

Attal was chosen to direct the film after the Paris Tourist Board saw his five-minute film about New York as part of the New York, I Love You project.

Kisses from Paris is part of a larger online campaign, called ‘You, Me and Paris Makes Three’. One feature of the campaign will allow ssers visiting the Paris Tourist board’s website to declare their love and customise their favourite Parisian scenes with their chosen one’s photograph.

Paris, New York, wherever you may be, a lot of love – and advertising – is spreading online.

Called Cinderella Me, this site offers you your very own shoe-fairy godmother: a catalogue of amazing shoes available to hire. And they are stringent about hygiene – always a plus. Perfect solution to the approaching Christmas party season. (Did I just mention Christmas already? Whoops).