The hip young power couple of the Royal Family, Wills and Kate, are to use their winning smiles and dashing good looks to charm former colonial subjects into investing their wealth in the tech start-up hub of Old Street in London.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will big-up the Tech City initiative and London itself as a great investment location at a panel debate on Friday in Beverley Hills to discuss how the UK can emulate the success of Silicon Valley.

Trade and investment minister Lord Green said he is pleased that such a famous and awe-inspiring couple will talk about the region, as it is vital that the UK's technology sector thrives.

"I am delighted that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are giving their very public support to Tech City and to British business. Tech City is key to Britain's high-tech future," he said.

"The government is committed to bringing innovative investment to east London and to every part of the UK. It is Europe's fastest growing technology hub and so far over 300 organisations have set up there."

It's great that everyone's favourite royal couple is doing its bit for Blighty and encouraging investment but, while Wills and Kate could persuade investors to look at London, it doesn't strike V3.co.uk as enough to convince hard-nosed Silicon Valley venture capital managers.

After all, would you embrace London and its rain and dull grey skies as a better location to set up shop than the endless blue skies and confidence-inspiring warmth of the Californian climate?

No, didn't think so.

Digital technologies are great - crisp, clear and with the scope to deliver far more content over the spectrum on which they run than traditional analogue services. The main battle, though, is getting people to switch over.

This is not an issue in the TV market, as the spectrum for analogue signals is being switched off to make way for 4G phone coverage in the future. It will be replaced by digital signals so that services likes Freeview can offer more content and channels to consumers.

But it's not so simple in the radio market. Standard radios that pick up AM/FM stations are still the dominant devices as consumers fail to understand the benefits of digital radios, mostly because they never actually use the technology.

However, the key driver to the take up of the technology looks like it will come from the car industry as manufacturers start to fit digital radios as standard.

Internet minister Ed Vaizey said during a speech at the Intellect Conference in London that in-car deployments are on the up, and that he welcomed commitments from major car manufacturers to make the technology standard for all new vehicles.

"Forty per cent of cars have DAB [Digital Audio Broadcasting] radios as standard now, up from just four per cent a year ago. Ford has promised that all cars will have DAB installations by 2012, and BMW and Vauxhall have made similar announcements," he said on Tuesday.

It's not just digital radios that are entering the cars of the future. Satnav devices are often built in these days, and other, more exotic, forms of technology are on the horizon.

Ford announced at the CEBIT show in Hanover in March that it will launch a number of vehicles in Europe with built-in voice-activated technology designed to allow drivers to integrate devices such as smartphones.

The Ford Sync technology will be built into 10 vehicles due to be launched in Europe next year, including the latest Ford Focus. 

With all these innovations to come, and 4G wireless signals to offer speeds of 30Mbit/s or above while on the move on smartphones and tablets, our cars are set to become a lot more fun, although the driver needs to stay focused on the road ahead, of course.