Here at Shiny Shiny we really love our surveys. Yep, we love nothing better than coming up with questions, wading through your responses, chuckling at your witty replies (well, sometimes) and generally finding out what you really think.

So here's a really good survey that has sent our excitement levels soaring. We have teamed up with Visual Networking experts Cisco to undertake some research into how you engage with online video.

You use your camera to shoot video. You use your phone to shoot video. You may even be capturing the world in high definition. Now's the time to get your footage working for you by entering our competition and scoring a great prize - there's eight lots of 50 quid DABS voucher, and some lucky sod is going to walk away with £500.

We have teamed up with Visual Networking experts, Cisco, to offer shedloads of cool prizes and all you have to do is show us a video that illustrates 'My Video Life'.

What's been hot this week, you ask? Well, as well as Kerry Katona dropping a sprog, Chanelle dropping a sex tape and the eternal 'Which Gladiator did you fancy' debate reigniting, there's been some hot tech stories. Here's what you missed:

- Thundercats were set loose on the Houses of Parliament. We quaked.

- The LG Viewty was purple-ified. We swooned.

- O2 dropped the price of the iPhone. We counted out pennies.

As well as Friday Choice Day Yay, it's also the day we say goodbye to Alex, the deputy editor here at Shiny Shiny. She's off the pastures new, where there are puppies to play with a web sites to take charge of.

She's been a shining light here at Shiny adding gravitas and comedy in equal measure, all the while having an unrivalled knowledge of how the English language is s'posed to work. Here are some of her best bits (I could *so* do Davina McCall's job).

The time we made Alex review the Hello Kitty 'shoulder massager'.

The time Alex waxed lyrical about Neil Gaiman here. And here. And here.

The time Alex was all LOLed out.

The one where she totally called your searching patterns.

The time she fell in love with Caitlin Moran.

Slowly but surely, the Shiny Crew are taking over all traditional media outlets. Before you know it, we will have Natasha Kaplinsky, Jeremy Paxman and AntnDec making our coffee and rubbing our feet. Next stop? Sky News.

Alex is going to be on the telly, talking about the Miss Bimbo computer game, which we wrote about here.

************Closing date extended**************

Do you:

- Read this site? (We would suggest the answer is yes) - Love this site? (See above) - Get unnaturally excited about technology and know your HSDPA from your elbow? - Excel in expressing yourself in the written form?

Marvellous! Then come and work for us. Shiny Shiny is looking for an editorial assistant, to join the team and enrich our lives. Your responsibilities will include writing up news stories, filming video and dealing with day-to-day loan admin. In return, we can offer money, a desk and maybe the odd press trip somewhere sunny. Whatever your background - writer or techy, marketing or education, if you think you might have a place here and you're over 18, drop us a line. Find out how, after the jump.

If this looks like the role for you, email me here with all the stuff we requested below.

We spend a lot of time filming all sorts of delights for your enjoyment, but wouldn't it be great if you could slip us in your pocket to consume at your own pace? Well, dreamers, those days are here. We're now uploading our weekly reviews into one handy dandy videocast, which is available to download from iTunes here.

We'll be adding more episodes each week, and adding other videocasting portals soon. In the meantime, grab your pod, grab the videocast and say goodbye to your boring commutes to and from work. The Shiny girls are here to entertain you!

Zara and I have just simultaneously posted a story about USB chargers. This is an indication of the number of product releases that are about at the moment. Because of our respective enormous egos, the fact that we both *hate* wasting time on useless stories and because I'm not sure what I'd write about in its place, they're both staying.

If you want to read one containing bullet points, click here.

If you want to read one containing facts, click here.

It's a whole new year, and with it comes resolutions galore. One of ours is to always, always send out a monthly Shiny newsletter, and we got a head start last year, as we sent out the brand new and sparkly first in December. If you haven't yet signed up, there's still time before I hit the 'send' button at the end of the day.

What do you get? Well, there's a round-up of all the top stories, links to things you might have missed as well as the occasional secret mailout-only competition. Each of us here at Shiny Shiny will be taking it in turns to write the letter - this month it's from Zara, so expect pink and excitement. Eventually, we'll be just like Pogs and you'll have collected us all...

How do you subscribe? Well, do you see that box on the top right? Hit the 'Subscribe to the regular newsletter' button and subscribe your little heart out.

We make ourselves sick sometimes...

It is, my friends, almost time for us to go. We've last minute presents to buy, egg nog to drink and relations to fight with. But worry not, for we will return rested, with renewed vigour and slightly fatter. We will also be writing odds and sods over the Christmas, when the prospect of cold turkey no longer holds any power over us. So do drop by, won't you?

There'll be much excitement come January, as we're off the the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Expect liveblogging from the press conferences, many and varied updates on the latest product releases and videos galore - some of them inevitably involving robots. It begins on the Saturday 5th January and we'll be there til the following Wednesday working our little hearts out for you. And consuming our body weight in frozen margaritas.

Merry Christmas!

Apparently, you lot are a demanding lot as well as a lastminute lot. And that's fine with us. So, we've extended the deadline for entering the LG Media Talent Award to January 1st. Once you've entered, three production people and three presenters will be shortlisted and will attend a judging day on 14th January here in London. The standard has been pretty high so you'd better get your thinking caps on for how you're going to get one of those spots. Here's a sample below, and you can check out all the entries here. Finally, you can enter here.

Here at Shiny Towers we spend many hours talking about you. We wonder where you are right now... what you like for breakfast... what your mother's maiden name is... And today, we launch our reader survey. Huzzah!

I'm told the questions are more along the lines of the fun you get up to at the internet, rather than glimpses into your personal life (but if you fancy sharing, leave me a comment below) so go ahead and fill it in. And in return, we'll enter you to win a 16GB iPod Touch. Yes, we've got the good sh*t. And why do we have this? Thanks to the lovely folk over at Play.com, who we *highly* recommend for all your Christmas shopping needs (you can even sell your old stuff and make some Christmas bucks).

Take the survey here! Here! Here!. And check out the terms and conditions here! Here! Here!

Mippin. Mippin. Mippin mippin mippin mippin mippin. Absolutely the best word ever. Also, the best service ever, since it means you can read Shiny Shiny optimised so you can actually read it, rather than having to scroll all over the place to take into account the images, links and the like.

All you have to do is type www.mippin.com/shinyshiny into your mobile browser, and you'll be taken to a page which has the story titles, the first sentence and a little thumbnail. From here, you can choose which bits you want to read, so you're not waiting forever for data that you don't even want. There is now pretty much nowhere you can't enjoy your favourite 'British girls who like gadgets and sometimes love and sometimes hate pink and sometimes love and sometimes hate Hello Kitty' blog.

Well, we've had our spiffy new redesign, and we're spending lots of time gazing into the mirror, admiring our reflection. We're soooo purty! However, one of the casualties in our quest for beauty has been the comments, which are probably telling you that you've submitted too many comments in too short an amount of time. Don't worry, it's telling us that too.

We love hearing from you (most of the time - we're not keen on people telling us to get back to the kitchen and to stop writing about technology) and are trying to get it fixed pronto like. We're on the Internet Owners List of Things to Do, but do stay with us whilst we sort it out.

Thanks.

If you see something strange going on today, don't panic. If all of a sudden, our 'Ps' turn to 'Qs' and everything goes black, don't raise the alarm. Today we're getting a redesign, and when we return we're going to be the prettiest site on the block. There'll be tag clouds, new colour schemes and a totally awesome video player.

In the meantime, we're going to carry on writing in the hope that we don't break the internet, so keep checking back for new stories, and hopefully in a few hours we'll be able to greet you with our new liposuctioned, face-lifted, Botox filled face.

Recently the Shiny crew have been taking big bold steps into the world of Web 2.0. We've been getting into the group swing of things over at the Who Ate All The Pies community and getting to know our readers. We do have the Shiny forums but if we brought social networking to you in a different way, would you be interested?

Did you know we had aspirations towards world domination? No? Well, we do. And stage one is complete, as we've just launched our US-based fashion and beauty blogs, Shiny Style and Shiny Gloss. On these, you'll find the latest US fashion and beauty news, from our writing teams spread across North America. They've launched just in time for New York Fashion Week, and have promised to keep everyone in the schweedie-darling loop. So, if you're into pretty clothing and make-up as well as pretty gadgets, take a look.

Dear Readers,

Hooray for us! And hooray for bloggers! And hooray for blogger's choices! And specifically, hooray for the Blogger's Choice Awards! We've been nominated, and the *only* thing we have to do to win is beat the other 297 really quite good shopping blogs by getting more votes. But I know that, together, we can do it.

All you need to do is click here for the shopping nomination, complete a registration thingy, and vote your little hearts out. In return, I offer you... well, pretty much anything you want. Chocolate? Diamonds? iPod covers? Just let me know. Seriously. I *really* want to win this.

Thanks a million,

Susi

PS For extra love, click here and vote for us in the Best Geek Blog category

One of the biggest conferences 2007 will see is happening right here in London tomorrow, and I'm proud to say that I'll be right there in the front row (ok, second, no-one likes spit-balls from crusty old CEOs directed at them), live-blogging it for your own enjoyment over on brother-blog, Tech Digest.

The New Media Knowledge conference is a Very Big Deal in the online world, "the most important digital media conference you can go to this year," as the site boasts. Attracting the like of Jason Calacanis (he of Weblogs Inc. fame, who founded Engadget, and who also just launched Mahalo.com, a new search engine, last week), Jyri Engeström (co-founder of jaiku.com, the mobile social networking start-up that often gets compared to Twitter), Dan Gillmor (author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People), and most importantly of all, Shiny Media's very own Ashley Norris, plus many more speakers, this is the one-stop conference for all the latest news on business and digital issues.