Midnight express: worth staying up for, apparently
Like any self-respecting gadget lover, I look forward to reading about the latest phones, music players, digital gizmos and bits of kit. But have things gone a bit too far?
Yesterday, Sony Ericsson announced that it was going to be releasing a new model, the W800, on August 12. Fair enough. It's an MP3-playing phone with a 2 megapixel camera - a nice little bundle. And, perhaps more importantly, it's also the first phone to carry the Walkman brand. Now personally, I'm not entirely sure what the Walkman brand actually means these days (certainly not much to my 7-year-old sister) but I can see what they're aiming for.
To promote the launch, Sony Ericsson has brought in Jamiroquai front man Jay Kay, holding a private concert and sending him out to the Carphone Warehouse on Oxford Street to meet and greet the public. The glorious twelfth indeed.
But that's not all: Orange are going one step further.
"We are opening our Orange shop at 383 Oxford Street from midnight on the day of launch to deal with the expected demand for the new phone," said the firm's director of devices, Matthew Kirk.
One of my esteemed colleagues put his response succinctly: "It's all getting a bit silly".
