Shelf Life: Elana Wine, old-style apple pressing and sapient washing

Louise Marsland (@Louise_Marsland)’s weekly pick of recent product, packaging and design launches: Elana’s wine; Sir Juice’s unique launch press; LG zaps ‘angry germs’; and rejoice with Hertex!

Shelf Life: Downton Abbey wallpaper!

LG proclaims ‘It’s all possible’ when ‘Life’s Good’; Standard Bank moves ‘design forward’; trendy Woodstock gets some Middle-Eastern flavour; you can own a ‘piece’ of Downton Abbey; and we’re still waiting to hear when Kiehl’s will open in Cape Town…

Media Future: LG is back

LG has long lagged behind Samsung in the smartphone market, but the new G Pro marks a convincing return, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee)

Do you remember LG? If you do, it’s possibly because you have a TV set, washing machine or air conditioning unit carrying that brand. And then you’d know that it goes hand in hand with the slogan, “Life’s good”.

That’s not really what LG stands for, of course; it began life as a merger of the Lucky and GoldStar brands, and the Life’s Good handle is what’s known as a backronym.

Now LG wants to go back to the future it had envisaged for itself before its Korean compatriot at Samsung became the behemoth of cellphones.

Media Future: Gadget war moves into the lounge

Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) Sony, LG and Samsung all stole the show at the International CES last week with TV sets that, once again, raised the stakes in both technology and marketing.

The war for domination of consumer electronics has shifted from the handheld portable gadget to a device that is firmly ensconced in the living room.

At last week’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the launchpad for the industry that owns Las Vegas in January every year, smartphones took a backseat. One dazzling TV set after another was unveiled to oohs and aahs – and aarghs from those who had just bought the previous state of the art version.

There was little to choose between the flagship screens of the world’s TV giants, with the big three, Samsung, LG and Sony, all unveiling versions of the new Ultra High-definition (UHD) 4K standard – sets with double the resolution of High-definition TV.

Sony stole a march on its rivals, however, with the world’s first 4K TV using OLED (Organic Light-emitting Diode). Samsung, for its part, put out a 3D OLED TV.

Arthur Goldstuck calls 2012

Smartphones, tablets, undersea cables, fibre networks and the Cloud will all contribute to a storm of change in 2012.

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