This week Adam Walton kicks off the new series on mousemat with gossip about the hottest gadgets and discusses what technologies may be making the headlines in 2009. We hear how the games industry is bucking the recession, there's a technology journalist's take on "cyberchondria", plus we answer a listener's question about spam email.

Groovy Gadgets

Adam is joined by Rhiain Morgan from T3 magazine who tells us what has been on her gadget radar. She includes the Google Android G1 (it's a phone!) and the Blackberry Storm plus what some of the best "apps" (applications) you can download. "Shop Savvy", which traces best local prices using barcodes, and music discovery engine "Shazam" are two top tips from Rhiain (thousands of other apps are available!).

Games buck the trend

Keith Stuart, a games journalist who writes for The Guardian and Edge magazine, joins Adam to discuss the continued growth of sales of video games, despite belt-tightening in many areas of our lives. Keith suggests that games offering good entertainment value as one reason for the industry staying buoyant. Also the growth of mobile games is making an impact.

Search a symptom

Technology journalist Rhodri Marsden gives his view of the new phenomenon of "cyberchondria" - a term, coined by Microsoft, for the habit of searching for your symptoms on the internet. He suggests that having too much medical information may often be misleading.

What has technology done for us?

Broadcaster and technology "guru" Bill Thompson joins the programme for a reflection on how technology has impacted our lives over the last 12 months - including the growth of online video via BBC iPlayer and 4OD from Channel 4, and improved YouTube. He also briefly gazes into his digital crystal ball as we enter the new year,

spam email causes a headache

Simon Zerafa joins us from Haverfordwest with his answer to a problem sent in by John Griffiths in Tredegar, who is having a problem with spam in his Inbox. Simon suggests firstly if you are using email supplied by your internet provider, contact them to see what spam filtering options are available. If your email is supplied by the likes of Google, Hotmail or Yahoo! - they usually come with some spam (junk mail) filtering - so check the settings and switch it on. You may need to try different settings to see which is most effective at catching most spam. Bear in mind that some spam and junk mail filters, if set to too high a setting, may also prevent legitimate emails from getting through.

Links

• T3
• Keith Stuart
  
• Wikipedia article on cyberchondria
  
• Bill Thompson
  
• Simon Zerafa