...the more they stay the same. Here’s a blast from the pre-3G past: one of our TV ads from 1996 trumpeting our widespread digital coverage. Back before 3G, or even 2G, which makes it just... G?

We doubt there are still this many bicycles in Vietnam, but thankfully some things never change. Our all-singing all-dancing 3G network now reaches a whopping 93% of you here in the UK – you can check if your house is covered with our handy (and strangely fascinating) interactive coverage map.

In fact, we've just picked up a What Mobile award for 'Network of the Year' – so whether it’s reading the latest news on The Feed, updating your friends on Facebook, watching videos or downloading apps, you know you're covered. Check out our dedicated 3G site for more on our 3G handsets and (we're blushing a bit now) some of the other awards and accolades we've collected.

Apparently the Bright Top Ups advert has been tickling the funny bones of more than one YouTube user. And that’s fine with us because Fluffy Cone and friends must be the happiest characters on TV. Even your favourite, Screaming Peg, is happy to be screaming.

And we’ve finally worked out what she was screaming about. The Bright Top Ups Widget.

We've made a little box of screaming, springing, beat-boxing happiness to brighten up your blog or social networking profile.

The Bright Top Ups widget features all your favourite characters from the advert, but the fun doesn’t end there. It’ll also keep you updated on all the prizes Orange are giving out to pay as you go customers.

If you’re not familiar with Bright Top Ups, here’s the lowdown. Every time you top up you’ve got a one in three chance of winning anything from a laptop to a mini fridge, scooters to free minutes and texts. The prizes change every month, so you can go on winning and winning.

As this is the widget that keeps on giving, it’ll give you a nod every time Orange changes the prizes, makes every top up a winner, or runs an awesome prize draw.

The widget couldn’t be easier to get. Just click and grab that embed code or choose your Social Network location and get smiling.

We'll have none of that, thank you: stay safe online with Orange's help

The top three safety mantras drummed into us at school were as follows...

Number 3: eat the liver and onions at your peril.

Number 2: look left, look right, look left again.

Number 1: don't talk to strangers.

All excellent pearls of wisdom for diverting danger. But these days, as well as the real world, there's the online world for young people to stay safe and happy in too.

There's so much great stuff to see and do around the internet, including connecting to people across the globe. But it's good to be aware of the potential risks and know how to avoid them, so you can enjoy the digital experience to the max.

Want to discuss staying safe? Whether it's on a mobile phone or on the internet, there's help at hand from Orange with their new Safety Talking Points For Children.

From offensive content and cyber bullying, to helping young people avoid meeting someone who isn't who they say they are, there's lots of topics to get the discussion going. Orange have also covered off the little things that can protect you and your family, that you might not even have thought of.

At The Feed we believe that online safety is something we should all know about and can help each other with. So whether you're a young person curious to learn more about internet safety, or you're after the know-how to protect your family, why not head over to the Orange Safety Talking Points For Children website. You can browse the articles, rate how helpful they were and find useful links too.

Now that's what we call safe as houses.

We've been leaving a trail of teaser photos since August, but now we can reveal that Orange's first ever Multimedia Store is open for business.

As you read, we're there talking to the first customers and finding out what they think of this one-of-a-kind store. Keep your eyes peeled for our video tomorrow.

We first visited a long time ago, well before the transformation was complete. It was a veritable bomb site as the old store was stripped back to the bare bones.

But it's come a long way since. Last week, it was really starting to take shape and the team worked like Trojans to make it happen.

Designed to encourage people to interact and have fun with technology using their mobile phones, the Multimedia Store is stuffed full of toys and gadgets to play with.

As you enter, you immediately come across a large cinema area. Pull up a pew here to watch product demos and videos of Orange events, like the recent Orange RockCorps gig.

To your left is a floor-to-ceiling interactive screen; one of the biggest in the UK. Take part in creating the world's largest virtual Mexican wave by asking a member of staff to record you doing your wave. Shortly afterwards you'll see yourself up on the screen, along with all the other wavers. Here's some testing going on.

Further into the store are a selection of spanky handsets hanging down from different pods, just ripe for you to get testing. They're helpfully divided into categories, so social media mavens, film fans, music addicts and those on the move and in need of sat nav, can all find recommendations right for their needs.

There's also a games pod, where you can use a mobile phone to play computer games on a large TV screen, and a whole counter of phones, laptops and accessories to browse.

We think it's a great success, but the proof will be in the pudding when we talk to people visiting the store today. And we can't wait to show you their reactions :)

Well looky here!

After an exciting launch event last night at a glamorous London location, Motorola is back with a bang, with the Motorola DEXT.

Only available from Orange, the DEXT is Motorola's first Android-powered handset, which is exciting enough. But they have also created an intriguing new technology called 'MOTOBLUR'.

It takes all your conversation threads, friend updates, stories, links, photos and more from your social network profiles, and delivers it neatly to your homescreen in one continuous news feed. This news feed is called 'Happenings' and it's very cool being able to see everything in one place, wherever you are.

I was lucky enough to get a play with a DEXT yesterday and have to say, it's pretty slick. We've been told there will be more Android wonders coming from Motorola in the near future, but in the meantime check out the video to see more.

Monopoly City Streets: great for meglomaniacs

Welcome. It's Friday. Thought you'd never make it? Ha! Look see, you did. Here is what's been going on this week...

On Wednesday a hoard of greedy real estate tycoons carved up the world for purchase and you did nothing to stop them. Okay, it was only in the virtual world of Monopoly City Streets, but the exchange of a board for Google maps is a nice touch. Expect a virtual flurry of tyrannical tycoons to steal your street from underneath you, very soon.

We were a bit gobsmacked after reading about two Australian teenagers who Facebooked their plea for rescue, after becoming trapped in a storm drain. We know updating your status via mobile can be addictive, but come on... dialling the emergency services is infinitely more sensible. Thanks to a friend who saw the update, the duo were saved by a very bemused fire brigade crew.

But onto more fruitful and inventive ways to use technology: IBM employee Andy Stanford-Clark has hooked his house up to send Tweets. Cue bizarre new term ‘tweetject’ and a whole host of Tweeting appliances. Thumbs up for this creative and quirky way of using Twitter.

We’ve fallen in love with Winston, a South African pigeon who valiantly flew 60 miles to deliver 4GB of data on a USB stick, and beat the broadband in the process. The Feed is definitely in favour of the reintroduction of animals into the work place and we expect to see memos being exchanged via goat very soon ;-)

To round off, if you’re at a loose end this weekend, the onedotzero adventures in motion festival is back in London. Head down to the BFI Southbank for the best in digital and motion arts. Interactive installations include Squidsoup's portable pixel playground, where you get to play god with a sandpit of virtual bugs.

Enjoy, whatever you get up to, have a goodun.

Special thanks to Sam, our Feed Intern, for her most excellent research and wordsmithery in this article.

Sight. Sound. Smell. Touch. Taste. The five senses. As integral to us as the very air we breathe. They are at the heart of how we perceive the world, how we make decisions and communicate. But human kind has also amassed reams of knowledge, now stored on the internet, that we regularly access using our mobile phones and computers.

The remarkable SixthSense prototype joins up all that 'found' data, with the more intangible information gained from our five senses, so we can interact with it in a natural, intuitive way using hand gestures. So how does it do this?

SixthSense has a mini projector, a camera and a mirror worn around your neck. These connect up to a mobile computer that sits in your pocket. Any surface from a wall to your hand, can be projected onto, to be your 'computer screen'. The camera recognises and tracks your hand gestures and other objects around you.

On your fingers you wear coloured markers (red, green, blue and yellow on your thumb and index fingers), so the camera can track and stream the movement of your fingers. It looks like this...

Just some of the things it can do are projecting live news reports onto a newspaper...

Resizing and sorting photos using a framing gesture on a wall...

Or using your hand as a mobile phone interface...

We must admit, SixthSense has blown our minds a little bit. You see, when we use a laptop or mobile phone, we are physically adapting our own movements to the machine so we can get to the information we need. But with SixthSense we can use natural movements and gestures to do the same thing, all the while combining it with the constant blips and whirrs we're receiving from our eyes, ears, tongues, nostrils and skin.

We admit, there's a touch of the Hollywoods here with allusions to the film Minority Report, but using our bodies in such an expressive way in relation to what is essentially dry old meta data, is a huge leap forward in the way we communicate with each other and perceive the world around us.

We love it. And if you do too, then trust us, you'll be hooked by the video above, unveiling SixthSense and what it can do, from TED.com.

Last Wednesday we posted behind-the-scenes photos from a TV studio in Battersea. Well, the reason behind our sneaky camera work was the filming of the first of 12 Orange Monkey adverts.

For the uninitiated, Orange have teamed up with the folks at 4Music to create Monkey, the pay as you go package that gives customers free music and texts if they top up with £10 or more a month.

The adverts are musical weather forecasts and they look scorching to us.

So have a watch and tell us what you think. It's certainly a melodious outlook...