I know, I know. Though I was recently on holiday, we’re going back to Hungary to see the relatives and whatnot. It’ll only be for a week, and I’ll try to post as much as possible when I get back. Until then, I hope todays news will tide you over.
Monthly Archive for October, 2006
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Artists rendition of the iPod nano
Oprah and Bono are getting ready to unveil a new red-coloured iPod nano to support the PRODUCT(RED) scheme on TV tomorrow. The red nano is expected to debut tomorrow, in a 4GB model, for the same price as the other 4GB iPods ($199) and Apple has agreed to donate $10 from each nano sale to the PRODUCT(RED) charity.
Bono’s new charity is helping raise awareness of AIDS, and has partnered with many other companies such as Motorola, American Express and Converse. The income from the sale of each PRODUCT(RED) product is donated to The Global Fund, where it is destined to help women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa.
It seems that Sony has decided to skimp with the cabling of the PS3. It has a blu-ray drive, the Cell processor and a HDMI port, everything needed to view High-def content, except the high-def cable. The latest issue of Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu reports on the cables that will be included with the Japanese version of the PS3. Those who buy 60 GB or 20 GB models will get a power cord, USB cable, ethernet cable and standard composite AV cable.
This is really disturbing. Sony are advertising the superiority over the 360 that it can play true 1080p high-def content, but it doesn’t even come with a high-def cable! Even the Xbox 360 comes with a basic component/composite combo. They could at least include it with the 60GB version. I am absolutely outraged! Even though I wouldn’t buy a PS3 anyway, but considering how Sony claim the PS3 to be better than the 360, and they skimp on ways like this, which doesn’t save much money anyway!
A Dutch Xbox 360 fan site (X-life) is reporting that Microsoft will be officially supporting the DivX and XviD formats within two months. This means that no 3rd party software will be needed to stream XviD and DivX files to the 360, and presumably, it also means that XviD encoded DVD’s will also be able to be played on the 360. However this is just a rumour so far, as it has not been confirmed by anyone else. The following excerpt, was translated from Dutch, during a Microsoft retailer training session.
After the event I had a short talk with the host and asked him whether there’d ever be support for DivX and Xvid playback. Much to my surprise, he started telling me that Microsoft is working hard to implement this and a firmware update is expected within 2 months allowing you to play DivX and Xvid directly on the 360.
The shorts for Thursday 12th October:
Geek24.com went geek licence plate spotting (on Flickr of course), and found some very good ones. There are quite a lot of them; The above few are just some of the ones that I found funny. If you look in the comments of the article, you will find links to other pictures of similar types of licence plates. If you don’t get them, well then shame on you 
Yesterday Google announced what I think is the biggest news of the month, they bought YouTube. Yep, Google acquired another Web 2.0 company (remember Writely), this time for a massive $1.65 billion USD. And to think that some companies laughed at the thought that YouTube could ever be worth so much. I think most of us anticipated this move, as there had been a lot of buzz about this over the last week.
Google organised a short press conference call after the press release, which can be heard here. Read on for the full Google press release, and see TechCrunch’s post for the main notes of the call.
YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen, have posted a video onto YouTube just to give a shout out to everyone on their thoughts, and what they hold for the future.
It sure didn’t take these guys long. I don’t think I mentioned that when iTunes 7 was released, it made the DRM-remover myFairTunes6 useless. However with some hard work and elbow grease, they managed to bump out a new version, which supports the latest version of iTunes, 7.0.1.8 (Honestly, why all the need for the numbers?) It is Windows only, so us Mac folk are out in the cold, but at least windows users aren’t stuck in command-line mode waiting for the music to play at 1:1 speed!
IGN reported that PS3 games were supposed to cost in the region of $70/$85USD, and in all the anger from consumers, I guess Sony learnt that they need to tell people the better news, fast. Sony have announced that 1st party games like ‘Resistance’ will cost ¥5980 ($50USD), as well as future 1st part relesese; While 3rd party games like Sonic will cost around ¥7140 ($60). This will bring game prices on par with current Xbox 360 prices in the US. We’ll have to see in spring what the prices will be like here in the UK, but I’ll tell you know, it’s not going to be pretty.
Awww, for the first time since I got my mini (around August of last year) it has received its first kernel panic. I was doing some work, and had my flash drive plugged in and boom; The grey kernel panic screen just showed up. Sorry for the rubbish picture, but as I have sent my camera in for repair, I used my phone. For those who haven’t seen it before, or can’t see what is written on the screen I will transcribe what is on the screen.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
There are three other iterations written in French, German and presumably Japanese. Maybe it is just showing its age, but it was rather unexpected.