Twice a year, our mate David Fanning organises an event called Digital Seasons, where technology vendors show their wares to excited journalists. And yesterday's Digital Summer event was very exciting indeed. Some great items were on show, some of which were displayed for the first time.

House of Marley has some beautiful iOS docks, headphones and earbuds on the way, all branded after reggae supremo Bob Marley. The dock shown here is called the Get Up Stand Up (see what they did there?), and is coming this summer. Its main body is crafted from a single piece of birch wood, and its 4.5-inch woofers, one-inch tweeters and powerful amplifier are enough to fill any room. It's expected to retail for around £350. Maybe if they sell enough of them, they'll be able to fix their iPhone's screen.

Kingston has launched two new products. Wi-Drive is a solid state hard drive with built-in WiFi for streaming content to your iOS device. It launched in 16GB and 32GB capacities a while ago, but a 64GB model is now available, for £84.52. A firmware update means all Wi-Drives can now stream data to any WiFi-enabled device that has a web browser.

Also new is the HyperX 3K, a 'a high-performance, lower priced solid-state drive' that uses SATA 3 for 6Gbps throughput. Available in 90GB, 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB capacities, it has sequential read/write throughputs of 555/510MB/s.

Philips had a range of monitors on show. We especially liked this USB model. It uses the USB bus for both power and data, so if you want to use it on the move, there's no heavy transformer or bulky kettle lead to carry around. It's 21.5 inches in size, full HD and costs £179. Is there an easier way to add a second screen? Or more if you like - the driver can handle up to six.

Also on show was a display with a glowing blue bezel, designed to reduce eye strain.

BubblePix is a great new 360° camera system for your iPhone 4 or 4S. After downloading a free app, snapping on the case and attaching the BubbleScope, you can instantly take full panoramic pictures and videos with a single button press. Snap full 360° stills with no stitching required, and record video footage that you can scroll left and right as you watch. BubblePix is out in around eight weeks and will cost around £70. MacFormat is sure to review it, but in the meantime, go to the BubblePix website and have a play with some sample videos.

G-Tech had a couple of new products on offer. G-RAID Thunderbolt is, as the name implies, a RAID drive with a Thunderbolt connector. It houses two hard drives of up to 4TB each, giving the top-of-the-range model an 8TB capacity for around £760. This is another one we're bound to review in a future MacFormat.

G-Connect is a 500GB hard drive with built-in WiFI for streaming to mobile devices. Up to five users can stream music or standard definition video footage, or three watching HD movies. It also acts as a wireless access point for up to five users, and you can go online at the same time someone is streaming content. Because it's not bus-powered, it needs its own power supply. This one's due for release in around three to four weeks, and will cost £159.

AOC had an interesting display on show. The iDock Monitor has an iOS dock built into the stand. It boasts some meaty integrated speakers too, so you can listen to your iPod or iPhone's sounds as well as using the display to watch video and view photos.

Draytek's Vigor 2850Vn is arguably the most versatile router ever. As well as ADSL, it also offers VDSL, which is welcome news for BT Infinity customers. There's also a port for cable internet connections, and even 3G to use as backup should your main ISP go down for a while. It has four ethernet ports and is WiFi-n, but unfortunately it can't do simultaneous dual band.

Mophie showed us some interesting new mobile charging batteries. The Juice Pack Powerstation Pro is built to last, with a ruggedised finish and an impact and splash resistant design. This 6,000 mAh capacity battery can keep you going in the most extreme conditions.

The Juice Pack Powerstation (PRODUCT) RED is a 4000mAh battery that can power most devices that use a USB charging cable, including the iPad. Five percent of its profits will be contributed to the Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS.

Epson's MG-850HD projector has a 30-pin docking station at the rear. It's big enough to fit an iPad. With inbuilt 10W stereo speakers, it can play music, videos and photos, as well as TV programmes and feature-length films previously downloaded from iTunes. Its versatile connectivity means you can connect it to a Blu-ray player, DVD player, PC, TV or games console. It costs around £650.

iGo had a lot of notebook chargers on show, but because Apple doesn't licence the MagSafe connector, they were PC-only. Boooo! We liked this pocket-sized charging cable for iOS devices, though. KeyJuice folds up small enough to fit on your keyring, but opens out into a USB-to-30-pin cable you can use to charge and sync your iPhone, iPod or iPad. it costs £9.99.

Company of Heroes: Campaign Edition puts you in the firing line, as you join the brave men of Able Company in their fight across the battlefields of World War II. The Campaign Edition brings together the single-player modes of the first three Company of Heroes titles; the original Company of Heroes, its sequel, CoH: Opposing Fronts and the third game, CoH: Tales of Valor. It scored five out of five in  Issue 247, earning the covetted MacFormat Choice award.

Thanks to MacFormat and Aspyr’s special offer, you can save £5 on the digital download version of the game. Company of Heroes: Campaign Edition usually costs £34.99, but MacFormat readers can get it for the reduced price of £29.99, saving a fiver. To take advantage of this discount, go to the special offer website and enter the promotional code MFCOH. The offer lasts until 17th June, so don’t miss it.

Minimum System Requirements
• Operating System: 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard), 10.7.2 (Lion)
• CPU Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo (Dual-Core)
• CPU Speed: 2.4GHz
• Memory: 2GB RAM
• Hard Disk Space: 13GB
• Video Card (ATI): Radeon HD 2600
• Video Card (NVIDIA): GeForce 8600
• Video Memory (VRam): 256MB
• Peripherals: Macintosh mouse and keyboard
• Supported Video Cards NVIDIA GEFORCE 8600, 8800, 9600, GT 120, 320M, 330M, ATI RADEON HD 2600, HD 3870, HD 4670, HD 4850, HD 5670, HD 5750, HD 5770, HD 5870, HD 6630M, HD 6750M, HD 6970M, Intel HD Graphics 3000

Languages: English, French, German

NOTE: This game is NOT supported on ATI Radeon X1000 series, ATI Radeon HD 2400, NVIDIA 7000 series, NVIDIA 9400m, Intel Integrated GMA 950 or Intel Integrated x3100 graphics chipsets, or on volumes formatted as Mac OS Extended (Case Sensitive) 

MacFormat is approaching issue 250 and to celebrate we'd like to feature the UK reader with the very best home Mac setup.

If you think you've got what it takes to appear in this very special issue of the UK's biggest Apple magazine then list the kit you have, take a picture of your Mac setup at home and email it to macformat@futurenet.com.

If our panel of Mac experts picks you then MacFormat will send a professional photographer around to your house to make your setup look even better – you'll be the envy of your friends as your Mac setup adorns a full page of issue 250 of MacFormat.

So, don't delay, if you think your Mac setup has got what it takes then drop us a line today!

By submitting your entry you agree to be bound by terms and conditions which can be viewed at www.futuretcs.com. Entries must be submitted by 5.30pm on Thursday, 31st May 2012. All entries will become the property of the Company upon receipt and will not be returned. The judges decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

We're all familiar with Apple's iconic 1984 commercial, broadcast during the Super Bowl, featuring a woman with a sledgehammer breaking out of an Orwellian nightmare. But what about 1944?

^{Steve Jobs hams it up as President Franklin D Roosevelt.}

Apple's wartime spoof 1944 video was for internal use only, and used to enthuse Apple's international sales force working on the Mac launch. It's a World War II tale that pits Apple against IBM, and features Steve Jobs as Franklin D Roosevelt. He's the guy with the bow tie and cigarette holder who first appears at around the 5.30 mark.

The near nine-minute 1994 video hasn't enjoyed the circulation of the 1984 commercial, but if you want to check out an obscure piece of Apple history, you can find it here.

^{Naturally, the war could only end one way.}

As regular MacFormat readers will know, we’re always advising you about the importance of backing up your Mac. My Mac at home is backed up to a Time Machine external hard drive and also to an online server, so I’m fully covered. Or so I thought...
   I’d been shooting some video footage for a DVD project, and since the video files were so large I decided to put them on an external hard drive, instead of filling up my Mac’s main drive. After spending hours editing my project in iMovie I plugged the hard drive in one day to find it was dead. Frantically searching for the drive in Disk Utility didn’t help – it was simply gone. The strange noise it made when first connected indicated to me that it was a hardware failure, and I was looking at the complete loss of hours of video footage and all the time I’d spent editing the movie. A complete disaster!
   It was at this point I realised I’d been handed the perfect opportunity to test the service of the data recovery experts at Kroll Ontrack. Its experts have the ability to recover data from drives that have been damaged. After an initial consultation over the phone they offer the service that’s most applicable. “Of course different people have different budgets, and we have lower cost recovery services for them and also DIY software. Really critical data gets a 24-hour turnaround service,” Robert Winter of Ontrack told me.
   So I sent off my drive, still fearing the worst. Much to my surprise I got a phone call a few days later saying that Ontrack had recovered 100% of the data! Thankfully none of it was in the bad patches of the disk, so I’d had a lucky escape.
 I’m eternally grateful to Ontrack – its service was professional, courteous and effective. But most importantly I’ve learned two valuable lessons from the whole experience. Firstly, a new hard drive can fail just like an old one can, and secondly, don’t forget to tell Time Machine to back up your external drives as well as your Mac!