Blogger Russell Beattie stirs up a hornet’s nest by declaring he’s thinking of switching back from Mac to Windows.
Reports are coming in that the new very groovy iPod Nano’s screen scratches rather too easily, so bad in some cases that the images get distorted.
Hot on the heels of the flawed (badly, for some people) iTunes 5.0, Apple has released iTunes 5.0.1.
I’m clearing out a huge stack of Australian Personal Computer magazines and CDs. If you’re crazy enough to want such a thing, it’s listed on eBay.
(I hope someone wants them; I’m moving house soon, and could really do with not lugging them to the new place.)
Details of the many editions of Windows Vista have been leaked.
Play Steve Ballmer, but flinging chairs around an office. (via Scoble)
The Beeb and friends have released a bunch of free video content specifically for people to mix up and re-use. But only for people in the UK, dammit.
Well, after much speculation, this morning (AU time) Apple announced a swag of new stuff, including:
For those who couldn’t get to TechEd at the Gold Coast, Microsoft has a bunch of videocasts up from the event.
Speaking of which, Bob Cringely is about to launch a downloadable geek TV show, available in a number of formats including Mpeg4 and audio-only.
Check the lost/stolen status of an Australian mobile by its IMEI. You can see the IMEI by typing *#06#
This is a classic: Retro Engadget (thanks Justine)
While Google Talk will use the Jabber protocol, there are concerns over network interopability, with Jabber Australia President (and Geekrant reader) Jeremy Lunn questioning how (and if) Google Talk will work with existing networks.
Meanwhile, the extremely popular but extremely proprietary Skype has opened up… just a teensy bit… with an API to let developers hook into Skype a little more easily. Doesn’t mean other clients will be able to use the Skype protocols, or extend Skype support onto new platforms, mind you.
BBC: A film version of popular video game Halo is being made by two Hollywood studios, its developers have confirmed. (IMDB page for the movie.)
Let’s hope it’s a bit better than the usual standard of video game to movie conversions.
Happy birthday, Windows 95 — ten years old today. (Thanks to Malcolm for the reminder)
Looking back, Windows 95 was a big step forward for the Windows world, marking the first modern version, and certainly the first that is still usable today. Windows then trailed MacOS by a long way, and it felt with Win95 that the big gap was made much smaller.
It also seemed to be the first time that an OS got attention from the mainstream consumer, with a humungous advertising campaign. From memory (and rumour) the discussion between Microsoft and the Rolling Stones went something like this:
MS: Can we use “Start me up” for our campaign?
RS: No.
MS: We’ll give you $12 million.
RS: Okay.
Windows 95 finally made Wintel machines usable, in a way that Win3.1 and 3.0 just couldn’t. Maybe it was the long filenames, maybe it was the taskbar and Start menu, maybe it was the Plug’n’Play (though it was very dodgy compared to what we have now), maybe it was the preemptive multitasking (which is still very dodgy).
Under the hood it finally rid us of problems with very limited resources, and it killed the 3rd party TCPIP stack market dead, by including it out of the box. (Despite claims later from Bill Gates during the anti-trust trial that Internet Explorer was integral to Windows, it didn’t include IE unless you bought the separate MS Plus pack.)
It was slow, it was buggy, it trailed Apple by five years, it crashed after 49.7 days of uptime. But it was a great leap forwards.
PS. Thanks to an open-source x86 emulator, Win95 can now run on a Playstation Portable.
Google have launched Google Talk, a chat service that uses GMail logon/password for authentication, and supports instant messaging and voice.
It uses the XMPP protocol for instant messaging, so other clients can connect (including those on non-Windows platforms that their client doesn’t support yet), and they say they will support SIP in future for voice.
Now… why wasn’t this included with their Desktop sidebar? That would be one killer helper app. Not that I’m convinced the world needed another IM network.
To give my kids an education in the ways of the tech world, I dug out my old VHS copy of Robert X Cringely’s documentary masterpiece from 1996, Triumph of the Nerds. Almost to my surprise, they enjoyed it. And why not, it’s a ripping tale, well told. I don’t always agree with Cringley’s pulpit columns, but he does make good TV.
I wouldn’t mind getting hold of this on DVD. But of course, three things stand in my way:
It’s worth noting that Cringely went on to do Nerds 2.0.1, about the rise of the Internet. I don’t recall that airing in Australia. Where can I buy that one? Not even from PBS, who appear to be out of stock.
What a shame I can’t buy this stuff and dutifully pay the copyright holder with my cold hard cash.
PS. Wednesday 8am Found Nerds 2.0.1 on another (rather fuzzy) tape, so it obviously did air in AU.
Game nostalgia strategy quiz:
In Donkey Kong, did you bother getting the hammer to smash the barrels, or just head for the top?
In Galaga, did you try to get the double fighter?
Gyruss: double bullets? Or not bother?
Did you keep feeding in coins in Moon Patrol, to try and get to the end?
Pacman: save the power pills for when you can get multiple ghosts, or just clean up the board ASAP?
Who was your favourite character to play in Gauntlet?
In Popeye did you favour the top, or bottom of the screen waiting for the hearts?
Space Invaders: start shooting the sides, the middle, or in rows starting from the bottom?
Scramble: Try and shoot the fuel tanks ahead, or bomb them from above? Make it to the end?