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Thumbs up/No kids' burger ads: Perhaps sensing which way the wind is blowing, Burger King in the UK is to voluntarily drop advertising…

Thumbs up/No kids' burger ads: Perhaps sensing which way the wind is blowing, Burger King in the UK is to voluntarily drop advertising during children's TV programmes.

The chain will stop creating and showing TV adverts for children from December 22nd in the UK. It will also stop broadcasting any adverts during children's TV programming from that date. Advertising aimed at children in the chain's restaurants will remain unchanged.

Thumbs down/The gifts of no reason

We may complain about being ripped off at every turn but that isn't going to stop us splashing out on Christmas presents, a new report indicates. Ireland tops the chart when it comes to spending money on Christmas presents, according to Deloitte, and the average household spend here over the coming weeks will be an absolutely ridiculous 824.

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The Dutch are expected to remain Europe's stingiest Christmas shoppers by spending 197 per household on presents.

Thumbs up/Bring your flyPod

The iPod looks set to really take off next year after a number of major airlines announced plans to make their passenger seats more friendly to Apple's music and video player. Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM and United will enable iPod users to watch their machines' video content on seat-back displays. The six airlines will also provide connections to power and charge iPods during flights. Apple said the "in-flight iPod connectivity" would be available from the middle of next year.

However, it's not all good news for Apple, as last week Microsoft's MP3 player Zune went on sale in the US. The 30-gigabyte device plays songs and videos which can be downloaded from the Zune Marketplace website.