Don’t worry, Gadget Spectrum is not about to turn into a Big Brother blog, but seeing as the house has tonight been taken over by ‘Big Brobot’, we wanted to share with you the amazing Titan who has been sent in to keep the housemates in order.

Click here to visit the Channel 4 website and see Titan in action.

The BBC’s Click website has published a simple guide to getting the best from Facebook’s new privacy settings pages.

Facebook have been forced to make their privacy settings more transparent and easy to use after months of pressure from the media and users over the way that their personal information is handled.

To view the BBC Click guide, click here.

If Facebook privacy is something that concerns you, you may also want to keep an eye out for a new social networking website, which is currently in development, called Diaspora.

Diaspora are aiming to create a “privacy-aware”, open source social networking experience that hands the control of personal information entirely back to the user. The initial launch date is set for September 2010.

To find out more about Diaspora, have a look at this page from BBC News, or visit the Diaspora website here.

As you will most probably have already heard, the Apple iPad has launched in the UK today, as well as in Europe, Australia and Japan.

It has been reported that eager Apple fans have been queuing outside Apple’s flagship London storesince yesterday afternoon in order to be one of the first in the country to own the new iPad.

To read a detailed review of the iPad, check out this page from the Gadget Show’s website.

Or click on the store names to find out if your local PC World or Currys stores are currently stocking the iPad.

Continuing our look back over the gadgets and technology developments of the last decade, we will start by looking at how the way we used the Internet has changed.

Ten years ago, approximately 15.4 million people in the UK had access to the Internet, which was around 26% of the total population. The average connection speed was 128 kbps, with the majority of people using a dial-up modem. Over the decade, broadband became more readily available, with connection speeds increasing and subscription prices falling. The average connection speed in 2009 was 4 mbps, with nearly 80% of the UK population regularly going online.

As the speed of our connections have improved, so has our experience of the Internet. Content-rich websites are now the norm, with videos and flash animations often replacing the more traditional text and images. People also trust the Internet more than they did ten years ago. In the year 2000, online sales only accounted for 0.5% of total retail sales, a figure which has increased to 10% in 2009.

As well as being used for browsing and emailing, the Internet has also seen many fads come and go. In the early part of the decade, MSN Messenger was very popular, allowing people to chat online with their friends by sending instant messages, as well as share files and play games. Social networking began to take off with the popularity of MySpace, which let users create and continually update a free profile about themselves.

In the last few years of the decade, Facebook came along with a similar idea, but with many more features and applications. This lead to many MySpace users switching to Facebook and MySpace has been playing catch up ever since. Facebook also helped kill of the popularity of Messenger when it introduced (the terrible) Facebook Chat.

The latest Internet fad, which really took off in 2009, is Twitter. Twitter is basically a stripped-back version of Facebook, allowing users to post short status updates, photos and send messages, but not having all of the games, quizzes and applications that Facebook has become cluttered with.

Over the decade, the developments with Internet have also played a big part on how we watch TV and play games consoles.

Back in 2000, most of us had large, bulky cathode ray tube (CRT) television sets that were very heavy and took up an entire corner of the room. Free-to-air digital TV was still fairly new and the interactive ‘red button’ content that came with it left a lot to be desired.

According to Dixons in the UK, at least 80% of the total volume of televisions they sold at Christmas 2004 were CRT models. By the following Christmas, this had dropped down to around 15% and in 2007 they stopped selling CRT TVs altogether. By this time, the much slimmer LCD and Plasma television sets were taking over the market.

In 2001, Sky launched the Sky+ recorder, allowing subscribers to record, pause and rewind live TV, giving customers more control over what they watched and when they watched it. During the following years, many broadcasters and service providers introduced their own catch up and on demand TV services, such as the BBC iPlayer, providing even more freedom to the viewers.

The biggest change over the last couple of years has been the increasing availibilty and demand for high definition (HD) televisions and programmes, with larger screen resolutions and much clearer, sharper images.

Games consoles have also taken advantage of the improvements in TV technology.

For instance, the start of the decade saw the release of Sony’s PlayStation 2, which was the first games console that was also capable of playing DVDs. This was closely followed by the Nintendo GameCube, but due to the smaller size of the discs used with the GameCube, DVD and CD playback was not possible.

In 2005, Microsoft launched their second console. The Xbox 360 was designed to take advantage of the increasing broadband speeds with the inclusion of the Xbox Live service, allowing online game play, as well as access to streaming television programme and film services from suppliers such as Sky.

PlayStation 3 was launched the following year. This console allowed playback of Blu-Ray discs and took advantage of full 1080p HD output. Around the same time, Nintendo brought out their follow up to the GameCube – the Wii. Although the graphics were no match for the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, the innovative new wireless motion sensor controller ensured the console had a lot of interest.

The Wii Remote, or Wiimote, encourages players to act out the movements they want to make on screen, and the game character automatically copies. This simple way of playing, coupled with a limited amount of buttons to press, has made the Nintendo Wii a huge hit with all ages groups.

This time ten years ago most people were getting over their Millennium hangovers, while the technology world was relieved that the much hyped Millennium Bug did not cause the chaos that was previously expected!

Now that we are back from our Christmas break, we have a special two-part post for you, looking back at some of the developments in the world of gadgets and technology over the last decade. And we’ll start by looking at mobile phones.

Do you remember when a mobile phone was used for making phone calls, sending the occasional text message and playing Snake II? If someone had told us back then what we’d be doing with our mobiles in ten years time, we’d probably have told them to cut down on the booze a bit.

The Nokia 3310, released back in 2000, was one of the first phones that appealed to the mass market and that every body wanted to own. Perhaps, too, the first phone with a hint of style, thanks in part to the customisable front covers and, of course, the internal antenna that removed the need for an unsightly, stubby bit of plastic sticking out of the top of the phone. The only real problem with the 3310, by today’s standards, was the large bulge it caused in your trousers if you wanted to keep it in your pocket.

By 2004, this problem was being addressed and mobile phones were really slimming down. Motorola launched its ultra slim phone, the RAZR V3, which was another huge success in the mobile world.

Another step forward in mobile design came shortly afterwards in 2005, when Sony Ericsson unveiled the W800i Walkman phone. Sony took advantage of the Walkman brand to bring the mp3 file format and mobiles together in a easily accessible way for the first time.

By 2007, the use of multimedia on mobile phones was becoming the norm, aided considerably by the release of the Nokia N95 and the first Apple iPhone. The N95 with its high spec camera and the iPhone with its touchscreen and innovative applications set the standards for all future mobile phones.

10 Mobile Phones that defined the Decade: www.techradar.com

Back in the year 2000, compact discs and cassette tapes were still the main players in the music industry. However, the cassette tape format was soon phased out as more and more cars were fitted with CD players as standard. The mp3 file format was also in the news quite a lot, but mainly for the wrong reasons due to illegal file sharing on peer to peer websites like Napster.

Portable CD players, also known as the CD Walkman, were still popular in the early part of the decade, but it wasn’t long before the first version of the iPod was released by Apple.

With the increase in sales of legal mp3 files, the way we were listening to music was rapidly changing. This led to the Official Charts Company updating the way that the UK music charts were compiled, counting downloads alongside physical sales for the first time in 2004.

By early 2005, download sales over took CD sales for the first time in the UK. This was helped by the boom in mp3 player sales and led to the popularity of the iPod family. The first generation iPod Nano was launched in 2005, replacing the iPod Mini, which launched the year before.

The small size of the mp3 format has also meant that some recent albums have been released on USB memory sticks. A bonus of this is that extra formats and content can be included, such as videos and photo galleries.

During the last couple of years, music streaming has become more popular. This is thanks in part to faster broadband speeds, as well as applications like Spotify.

Spotify allows users to set up an account and listen to a wide range of new releases and older songs for free, in exchange for putting up with an occasional advert. Users also have the option to pay for a subscription, which removes all of the adverts.

Spotify

In the second part of our Gadgets of the Decade post, which will be published later this week, we will be taking a look back at the changes in the way we watch TV and how we use the Internet, as well as the developments in the world of gaming.

3D Week kicks off today on Channel 4 (UK), with a selection of programmes being broadcast in 3D over the next 7 days.

If you haven’t got your free 3D glasses yet you can pick them up from your local Sainsbury’s store. These glasses use amber and blue lenses, rather than the traditional green and red, to give a clearer, more natural image.

The following programmes will be shown in 3D:

Monday 16th November
The Paul O’Grady Show in 3D (sections) – 5pm
The Queen in 3D – 9pm
Derren Brown Presents the 3D Magic Spectacular – 10pm

Wednesday 18th November
Flesh for Frankenstein – 12.40am

Friday 20th November
Friday the 13th Part III in 3D - 10pm

Saturday 21st November
T4 in 3D (sections) – 8.55am
The Greatest Ever 3D Moments – 9.20pm

Sunday 22nd November
T4 in 3D (sections) – 8.55am
Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert – 3pm

For more details of these programmes click here.

And while you’re waiting for these programmes to start, check out some of the amber/blue 3D pictures below.

You can see even more 3D images and videos here.