Oct 14 2006
Updated review on the Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta email/feeds/news/contacts/calendar client with new screenshots. This is an overhaul of the antiquated Outlook Express client and is targeted towards MSN/Live/Spaces users mainly.
Oct 13 2006
The red, iPod nano that everyone has been talking about is now available from the US Apple website. This was launched by Bono and Oprah Winfrey and $10 from each sale goes towards the fight against AIDS in Africa.
I really like the colour of this, and if I was in the market for a nano I would probably buy this one. I am looking to get a shuffle before the end of the year, so if Apple want to release one of those, then I’ll definitely get the red one.
Oct 12 2006
Microsoft today released Virtual PC 2007 to beta testers via the Connect website and I must say I am quite underwhelmed. We were expecting some form of multiple snapshots and a better management console, but neither are to be seen in this release.
Oct 10 2006
Internet Explorer 7 is just about at RTM and will be delivered to all Windows users as a high-priority, automatic update this month. What does this mean to you? Well, whether you like it or not, shortly you too will be running IE7 if you aren’t already.
Oct 10 2006
When will the music industry learn? Read this post from the Techdirt website to see how ridiculous American law is…
Someone who prefers to remain anonymous sent in the following link, highlighting a dispute in an Oregon restaurant that used to allow live bands to play. It turns out that, recently, one local band played three cover songs from the 1970’s. That night, there happened to be a rep from the American Society of Musicians and Publishers in attendance, who noted down the three cover songs (and the fact that the restaurant had not paid a license for them) and filed a federal lawsuit against the owner.
Source: Enjoying Live Music Is Expensive
Originally published on Tue, 10 Oct 2006 02:35:54 GMT by Mike
Oct 10 2006
Juha over at Computer World has just broke the news that Vodafone has bought iHug for $41 million. This is huge news for NZ residents and although I’m not sure how this will pan out, it can only be for the good.
Vodafone have just launched their own mobile broadband and will be offering home phones too. Now with iHug on board and the unbundling of the local loop this will give them a huge boost to face up against Telecom on all fronts.
Sep 30 2006
Been trying to catch up with my blogging over the last couple of days… An update to a previous post that I’ve been meaning to write-up is that Craig from the Wildimages blog managed to get his problems with the Flight Centre all sorted out. I posted previously how he had booked tickets with Flight Center, and how some misinformation from them put him in the position of potentially losing out on thousands of dollars of travel for his family.
Well, after a lengthy battle he finally got what he wanted and he now considers the matter closed. The publicity he received with the NZ blogosphere and the Digg post seemed to definitely help him with his plight. There was discussion over on Tim’s blog about what we should all do with the previous posts that were written, i.e. do we leave them intact, delete them, or modify them to update the situation. I’m not a fan of editing previous posts to tone them down, but I decided to remove the Flight Center logo from my previous post, as well as the individual from Flight Center that originally gave Craig the misinformation. Looks like Craig deleted his original post and that’s his prerogative. There are no rules to blogging and everyone should be able to do what they want with their sites.
Sep 29 2006
I’ve been meaning to blog about this for the last couple of weeks – Deb and I went to see “An Inconvenient Truth” (IMDB link) at the Penthouse Cinema in Brooklyn. The movie was Deb’s choice but I was so glad that I saw it.
It’s a really important film that everyone should go to see, it will really open your eyes. It’s a documentary that revolves around Al Gore’s campaign to highlight the serious issues with global warming. The film cuts between a slideshow that Al Gore is presenting and clips of him on the road, traveling around the word spreading his message.
The film hits home hard and Al’s presentation skills really gets the message across well. You’ll leave the cinema either feeling depressed or inspired – but either way you’ll know that changes need to happen. Here are a couple of environment-friendly links that I’ve come across in my quest to help out…
Personal Kyoto – this is a service only applicable to New York residents at the moment, but it’s so simple it should be relevant worldwide. You register with the site and give it your local electricity account number and they produce a chart showing your electricity usage and how it relates to the standards implied by the Kyoto Protocol. The idea is that you calculate what you need to do reduce your emissions in line with what the Kyoto Protocol would require.
Healthy Homes Check Up – more relevant to people in New Zealand, this is a series of questions designed to determine how energy efficient your home is. It then provides options for improvements, along with how much the improvements cost and what the payback period is.
What are you doing to help..?
Sep 28 2006
I started watching Robert Scoble’s new show today, aptly name the ScobleShow. I like it. I watched the first episode with Jonathan Schwartz, who is the approachable CEO of Sun Microsystems. Jonathan is passionate about Sun and its technology and it comes across in the interview. Heck, I want to build something big just so I can use a Thumper!!
Robert asks for advice on how to improve his podcasts and who to interview next. I don’t know much about podcasting, but I do know what I don’t like – I don’t like it when the presenters laugh too much. I thought Robert laughed too much – not even in response to a joke, but just random laughs during his questions. (The same goes for radio DJs, I hate it when they laugh at their own jokes!) I also thought that the laughing made his questions sound mumbled, but that may be because he only had the one microphone as he mentions in his post-mortem.
Robert’s got a huge long list of business cards, and he lists some of them to ask who to interview next. There’s so many interesting people on there, but I wouldn’t mind getting to know Nick Bradbury a little better. I don’t pay for software that often – I’ve always had access to free software through work – but Nick’s feed reader, FeedDemon, is a bit of software that I was happy to pay for.
Keep it up Robert, looking forward to more interesting interviews!
Link to ScobleShow post mortem (wow, Ask blog search rocks!) « Scobleizer – Tech Geek Blogger
Sep 28 2006
A new version of Windows Live Writer has just been released. This is by far the best Live product that has been released yet, and the only one that actually shows some originality. (The rest of the Live product range are all clones of competing software, or, renamed MSN services.)
This is a really useful update too – the categories list has now been improved (although not perfect yet) and it now sports a scroll bar to navigate through a long list of categories. Also, the Tags plugin functionality has now been built into the core application and has been redesigned and drastically improved to allow easy tagging of posts (now if only WordPress supported this!) Other improvements include performance enhancements and support for Blogger beta.
The Live team have also integrated their plugins directory into the Live Gallery so that all plugins can be centrally maintained. The first plugins most people will install is the “Insert Flickr Image” plugin and the “Blog This from Firefox” plguin. There’s also a “Blog This from IE” plugin for those other die hard fans! 
By the way, I installed Live Writer and am now running it from MojoPac running on my iPod. Full write-up on MojoPac coming soon – just as soon as I figure out how it works…
(Also posted in the beta @ amanzi site.)