technology

Longhorn Starter Edition Analogous to Windows XP Starter Edition. Longhorn Home Edition Analogous to Windows XP Home Edition. Longhorn Premium/Media Center Edition A premium superset of Home Edition that includes the Media Center functionality. Similar to XP Media Center Edition. Longhorn Professional Edition Analogous to Windows XP Professional Edition. Longhorn Small Business Edition A new product edition aimed at the small business market. Currently very similar to Professional Edition. Longhorn Mobility/Tablet PC Edition...

The problem of iPod and iTunes only working together has been highlighted again, this time by legal action taken against Apple by an iTunes user. From the BBC: A user of Apple's iTunes music service is suing the firm saying it is unfair he can only use an iPod to play songs. He says Apple is breaking anti-competition laws in refusing to let other music players work with the site. Apple, which opened its online store in 2003 after launching the iPod in 2001, uses technology to ensure each song bought only plays on the iPod....

MacCentral: "The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2005 has yielded dozens of news items and product announcements. Microsoft's Bill Gates' keynote showed his vision of his company's products as the center of a "digital lifestyle" (echoing Apple CEO Steve Jobs' pitch from 2001)." What the hell? Echoing Steve Jobs? Microsoft made their announcement of a "digital lifestyle" back in 2001, January the 6th at the CES during Bill Gates' keynote. When did Steve Jobs do his little speech on the "...

The Creative Zen Micro has now got a new firmware release which updates them to support MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) this also includes PlaysForSure logo support. This all means you don't need to install any software, any drivers. Windows Media Player 10 will auto-detect the device and you'll be able to sync from there. The new firmware can be downloaded from Creative's download page.

I don't think we're seeing trendiness here," Jobs said of the iPod. "I think we're seeing a product that's truly revolutionizing the way we listen to music." What a total lying bastard. Revolutionary? I had an MP3/WMA player before the iPod even existed. Steve Jobs has done nothing but steal other people's ideas since he rejoined Apple in 1996. Here's a hint Jobs - stop ripping off other people's ideas and claiming them as your own....

Well with Mark informing me that Microsoft have rolled out a beta version of MSN Messenger 7, I thought it was time a give my opinions on it after using it for a couple of hours. It is only the beta version so of course all of these things could be rendered obsolete with the arrival of the final version. Things I like: Very snazzy, now displaying the users image file along with it!...

Buzzing around in the news today is a story about a Californian based pornographer suing Google. "They're showing pictures from my magazine and my website for free, so there's no reason for anyone to buy my products." This is the basis for the legal action, it also demonstrates what a total idiot this guy must be. Let's clear up a few things about how a search engine, such as Google, MSN or Yahoo actually work....

I hate the iPod, everyone who knows me well knows I hate the iPod, not everyone knows my reasoning, it follows. Longevity problems, dare I mention the battery issues that have plagued the iPod, batteries in a device with this kind of price should not fail or lose a significant amount of charge for years - months and weeks is simply not acceptable, what’s more if (or when) the battery fails this actually requires Apple to sort it because the batteries aren’t removable, a critical flaw in the design....

Just got my hands on a Nebula DigiTV PCI card yesterday... Pretty good! For those who don't know it has a digital tuner allowing it to access all unencrypted channels broadcasted digitally in the UK (aka Freeview) as well as an analogue input for video from an external source, although the quality is quite poor and the newer software seems bent on trying to encode it to MPEG in real time creating a delay of several seconds, rather then just push it through onto the screen, the older pre-July software didn't do this so it's a little odd....

Over on the BBC News website they have up an article talking about the new Portable Media Centers (they actually fail to mention their names). It's based upon some of Jupiter Research's findings on consumers demand for portable players that can handle video. It reads "the analysis of the portable media player market found only 13% of Europeans want to watch video while out and about" "By contrast, almost a third are interested in listening to music on a portable player such as an iPod....