Team: Alison Barclay

I'm the proud owner of a shiny new iPhone and I like to use it to listen to music in the background when I'm browsing the web, reading an ebook or whatever.

As we were developing games for iPhone™ and iPod® touch, we realised that people might want to play their own music as they played our games too. There are slightly different methods for iPod touch and for iPhone, but first of all go into the sound settings of the game you want to play and turn off the game sounds and music. In GTS World Racing, for instance, you need to select the 'Disable Audio' setting within 'Options'.

Once you've done that, exit the game and go to 'Music' on your iPod touch or 'iPod' on your iPhone. Choose what you want to play and start the music or podcast. Exit using the Home button and return to the game, and hey presto, your own soundtrack! There are a couple of other ways to do this - for instance you can double press the Home button on an iPod touch to bring up the music controls within the game, but this doesn't work for the iPhone. If you're using the iPhone headset provided with it, you can press the headphone button to start the music, but the best thing is to turn off the in-game music and sounds first.

As GTS World Racing involves cars you'll want to design your own driving soundtrack - I'd recommend 'Song 2' by Blur or 'My Favorite Game' by The Cardigans - but if you have your own favorite driving tracks, why not share them in the Comments?

Working at Astraware has given me a great opportunity to feed my addiction over the last few years with Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices galore. Now with our newest platforms S60 and UIQ, I have an even greater selection of phones to choose from. I'm already the proud owner of a copper Palm Treo 680 and the Samsung SGH-i600 running Windows Mobile, but with the release of our first titles for Symbian, I wanted to get a device to bring my knowledge up to date. I chose the Nokia N82.

In the past I've used organisers from Psion, which ran EPOC, on which Symbian is based and a couple of earlier S60 devices - the Nokia 6600 and Siemens SX1, so I'm not completely new to the platform, but it's been great fun learning what an S60 3rd Edition phone can do.

The device I chose, the Nokia N82, is full of great features - a nice fast processor, bright clear screen which automatically rotates from portrait to landscape, and excellent audio quality, all of which show off games like Astraware Boardgames and Hidden Expedition Titanic really well.

In addition, the phone includes wi-fi, assisted GPS (which enables it to get a position fix very quickly), and a 5MP camera with Xenon flash and lens cover which also shoots video. I took the phone with me on vacation recently and it's a real little powerhouse - with games to entertain me on the flight (in flight mode, obviously), the GPS proved invaluable for finding our way around Alabama in the hire car, and the camera came in very handy when the battery ran out on my camera during a day's sightseeing.

I'm looking forward to more of our games being available for my shiny new phone - look out for Astraware Solitaire for S60 and UIQ in the not too distant future, and lots more titles in the coming months.

Astraware recently became part of the Handmark family and is now known as 'The Handmark Games Studio'. In becoming a Handmark studio, we also have a new Studio Head, Cassidy Lackey, and now Cassidy is happily welcoming a new baby girl to his family. Reese Landon Lackey was born yesterday at 11.18am (Central DST) and weighed a perfect 7lb 7oz!

We're sure you'll agree that Reese is a beautiful baby and join us in welcoming her into the extended Astraware family!

You may have spotted that we've just added a brand new PC games channel to our website. It's powered by Big Fish Games and includes hundreds of fantastic, fun games for your Windows PC. Whether you like puzzles, adventures, action, word or card games, they've got a fabulous selection for everyone.

I've bought a few of the great games that they have available and I'd like to share some of my favorites:

Chocolatier - travel the world, collect receipes and ingredients, make a range of delicious chocolates and master the art of the Chocolatier! If you enjoyed Story Mode in Tradewinds 2 with its tasks and missions, then you're sure to enjoy Chocolatier. My only complaint is that it didn't come with real chocolates!

Virtual Villagers: A New Home is a fun SIM game. You start with a handful of scared villagers washed up on a desert island and you get to teach them skills and build a new community. As your villagers learn they can solve puzzles that reveal the mysteries of their new island home. If you played Village Sim on a Palm OS® device, then you'll love this 'big screen' version with even more puzzles!

Luxor Mahjong is a great variation on the classic game of Mahjong. Pair-up matching tiles to remove them from the board. The object is to try and remove them all, and then progress to the next level. Luxor Mahjong has beautiful Eqyptian theming, and 5 useful powerups to help you clear the boards.

Don't forget, all of the games have a 1 hour free trial so you can try them out before you decide what to buy. If you've enjoyed any of the games and would like to tell us about it, post your thoughts in our forum using the Comments link below.

Last night John and I took a trip down to London, along with WikiMonkey. The purpose of our visit was to do an interview with TalkSport Radio's Ultimate Late Night Show with Ian Collins. As you'll see from the picture, Ian was pleased to meet WikiMonkey, particularly as he's a big supporter of Wiki's cousins at the Orangutan Foundation. Ian's show has been known to be a little controversial in the past, so we weren't sure what to expect, but gadgets were definitely on the agenda for this one.

Ian's recently got himself a Treo 750 and has been keen to talk about his new gadget on air, so he invited us along to join in the chat. It was a general talk which covered a range of subjects including Windows Mobile, smartphone games, Treos, Astraware Sudoku, Girl Geeks, John's new HTC Touch, Facebook, Broken Sword, and whether co-host Alan Hyde should replace his Sony Ericsson P990 (we said yes)!

As Ian's show goes out nationally across the UK from 1am to 6am, we didn't stay for the whole show, but we thoroughly enjoyed our visit and have promised to go back in the New Year to talk about some upcoming exciting game releases. If talk radio is your thing, you can also tune into Ian's show via the internet at Talksport.net - those of you in the U.S. won't even have to stay up all night to do it!