BBC To Go On-Demand with iPlayer

The BBC is tio launch an on-demand media service which will allow viewers to catch up on TV programs for up to a week after airing, and to also be able to download some series for up to 30 days. The new iPlayer system went through a trail period during January of this year in which 10,500 individuals and organizations participated in a test of the service. iPlayer users will be able to catch up with selected BBC programming from the previous seven days, and store programming on their computer for up to 30 days. As a fan of some of the bbc's programming I'm looking forward to what this has to offer...

Cathena CX UMPC

Data Evolution, announced their first UMPC for the North American market. The Cathena CX, is designed to be a fully functional, small form factor computer. This Windows XP based UMPC, features a seven-inch touchscreen, measures 8.6" x 6.4" x 1" and weighs about 2.2 pounds. Other features include; a good sized QWERTY keyboard, a AMD Geode LX800 processor, 802.11 b/g wireless, Bluetooth 2.0 support, 512MB of starting RAM, a hard drive starting at 40GB, a rechargeable battery which offers about five hours of usage, a touch pad, five-way directional joystick, built-in speakers, USB 2.0 support and a multi-format memory card reader. The new Cathena CX has an SRP of around $800. For more information visit Data Evolution.

Critical Flaw Found In Photoshop CS2 & CS3

An exploit code that could take advantage of a "highly critical" security flaw in Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 3, as well as CS2, has been published. The security flaw is related to the way Adobe Photoshop handles the processing of bitmap files, such as .bmp, .dib and .rle. A malicious file of these types, could allow an attacker to exploit the flaw to launch a buffer overflow attack. The resulting buffer overflow could then allow the intruder to take over the affected user's system. For more info visit silicon.com.

Addonics Selling $35 CF to SATA Adapter...

This CF - SATA HDD Adapter is designed to enable Compact Flash II media to be used as a replacement for a 2.5" SATA hard drive. Notebooks and any supporting devices that use a 2.5" SATA hard drive can be easily converted to use low power and Solid State CF media. Once installed, the CF Drive appears as an ordinary hard drive to any OS and can be configured as a bootable device, meaning you can have all sorts of fun with trying out different OS's on your devices...

Harman To Be Acquired For $8 Billion

Harman International has announced that it will be acquired by KKR and Goldman Sachs for a whopping $8 billion. Harman are the makers of Harman-Kardon, AKG, JBL, Lexicon, Revel, Mark Levinson, and other well-known brands of consumer, auto, and pro audio gear. They will be acquired by private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co and Goldman Sachs Group's private equity firm for about $8 billion.

Blu-ray Sales Beat HD-DVD

Like that wasn't unforeseen ... as I mentioned in an earlier comment claims were made which stated that HD-DVD had sold more units that Blu-ray. What with Blu-ray being an integral part of the PS3 you could immediately discount those claims. and now with reports on sales of HD content, that turns out to be something which was right to to with many more titles being sold on Blu-ray than HD-DVD...

Commodore XX Gaming Monster

Commodore have announce the launch of what they say is the fastest and most powerful Gaming PC money can buy. The Commodore XX come equipped with an Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core QX6700 CPU, an Asus P5N32-E NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI mobo, 2x 500GB 7200 RPM SATA Raid 0 HDDs, 2GB of Corsair DOMINATOR Twin2x2048-8500C5D 1066MHz RAM, a DVD rewriter, 850W ICE Cube PSU, Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer sound card, twin nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB SLI graphics cards and Vista Home Premium. At £2,899.99 it's quite the machine ... though I would have expected at least a Blu-ray drive would have also been included.

Lord Of The Rings Online Goes Live

The release of The Lord of the Rings Online is another yet another gaming milestone. This MMO will be popular with gamers and Tolkien fans worldwide. With an Expansion Pack already planned for sometime in June, there'll be plenty of adventures to keep gamers happy and eager to experience Middle-earth online. For more information visit http://www.lotro.com/ and http://www.ebgames.com/.

Wacom Display Tablet For The Masses?

With the cintiq line of Wacom display tablets costing some very heavy coinage, it was initially nice to read about the new DTF-521 Interactive Pen display. This 15 inch offering from Wacom is a lower resultion offering for users who want some pen capabilities but who are not necessarily worrried about a great deal of precision. However I still think that for the $1,624 price tag, I can buy a pretty decent tablet pc with even more in the way of capabilities...

100,000 HD DVD Units Sold

According to Shiny Shiny, "HD-DVD is first to sell 100,000 units, leaving Blu-ray in its wake." With over 100,000 HD-DVD players sold since their launch, that seems like a pretty decent figure. However it is a figure which pales in relation to the actual sales of Blu-ray based players. Isn't the Playstation 3 a Blu-ray player as well as a games machine? We know that there have been many more than 100,000 PS3s sold. Sony actually peg its European sales alone at over 800,000 units to date, and the January figure for US PS3 sales was 244,000. Go figure.

Dell Reintroduces Windows XP On New PCs

In a move which many users have been clamoring for, Dell have decided to offer the option of installing Windows XP on new machines. This is a reversal of their policy decision to offer only Windows Vista on new PCs. Dell said its customers have been asking for XP as part of its IdeaStorm project, in which Dell asked its customers to help the company come up with product ideas. It was amongst the most popular of requests.

Mac OS X Patch Fixes 25 Security Concerns

Apple have issued a security update that deals with 25 security flaws in its Mac OS X operating system. The security update deals with a trio of zero-day bugs that were disclosed in January. Some third-party components such as the Kerberos authentication technology are also dealt with. The most serious of the vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to gain complete control over an unpatched Mac.

Spotlight On . . . NTI PhotoMaker v1

Available mainly as a program bundled with desktop PCs, notebook PCs, digital cameras and printers, NTI PhotoMaker v1 appears to run well under Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional. Unfortunately, we had some serious problems making full use of PhotoMaker v1 under Windows Vista Home Premium. Not to be confused with MicroFrontier's PhotoMaker or Direct Logic System's Easy PhotoMaker, NTI PhotoMaker is a simple digital photo project creator designed to help you choose and sort digital photos to create a slide show which can then be emailed, burned to CD, published as an HTML file or just saved as a file. After assembling the photos for a slide show you can also add narration or a music file and even opt to automatically fit music to the length of the slide show. Transition effects can be chosen to make slide changes more interesting. Basic editing is available to adjust brightness, crop, reduce red-eye and rotate photos. PhotoMaker works nicely until it's time to burn a slide show to CD or DVD when running on a Core 2 Duo processor in Windows Vista. Even after several product reinstallations we could not burn a slide show to CD or DVD. However, running PhotoMaker on a single core Pentium 4/2.8GHz Windows XP Home PC, allowed us to create and burn a small slide show as a VCD. We then tried burning a DVD of the same slide show, but PhotoMaker stalled halfway through the process. We tried reducing the already small number of photos in the slide show from 25 to 10, but the DVD burn still failed. PhotoMaker v1.0 has an intuitive user interface and lots of potential, but it needs bug fixes and compatibility updates. 2 out of 5 stars

iPod Mods offer 100GB Upgrades for iPods and Zune

iPodMods are offering to spruce up your favourite media player with a massive 100GB of storage. The Zune, both 60GB and 80GB iPods will accept the upgrade with some ease, however, the 30GB 5G and 5.5G iPods require a slightly modified back cover. Do you really want to spend the $300 required for this though. Thanks to Engadget for this lead. Good luck with the decision, I for one, can't be bothered.

Dell Offers Blu-ray Drive Option On XPS M2010

Dell have added a slot-loading Blu-ray drive as an option for their very cool XPS M2010 notebook unit. This luggable system is very unconventional, and whilst it is certainly something close to a laptop, I wouldn't want to rest one on my lap. Equipped with Core 2 Duo processors, an ATI Mobility Radeon X1800 graphics card, and support for up to 4 GB of RAM with up to 240 GB of storage on two hard drives. It'll give many desktops a real kicking.

I Spoke Too Soon ... NAND superdrives

No sooner do I post about a 120GB NAND drive from Stealth Imaging, then along comes SimpleTech with their announcement of 512GB and 256GB NAND based SSD drives. SimpleTech announced the Zeus-IOPS SSD 512GB and 256GB Drives, both of which offer flash drive capacities which would make any tech head, green with envy. The drives are available in a 3.5-inch enclosure. The 256GB is available now witht he 512GB model dues in Q3. No prizes for guessing they'll be expensive.

Stealth Imaging unveil 120 GB PCMCIA NAND Drive

Talk about perfomance, the development of these NAND Drives is outpacing our ability to forcast the next capacity jump. Stealth Imaging announced at NAB 2007, that it would be offering NAND solid-state hard disc drives of up to 120GB in capacity, and in the form of a CardBus Type II adapter. The drive will reportedly be capable of sustaining 132Mbps read / write rates, and support random seek times of under 50-nanoseconds, all whilst using less than a third of the power used by standard HDD.

Cool Collapsible Webcam

Jasco has released its first collapsible Webcam. The device looks more like a piece of personal jewellery than a conventional webcam. These webcams bend, twist and are self supporting. The camera also sports a quartet of LEDs that can enhance subject lighting when needed. The GE branded "Collapsible Designed Web Camera" as it is called, has an integrated microphone and is capable of recording VGA quality video at 30fps.

Adobe Begin shipping CS3

Adobe have commenced shipping CS3. Quite how many folks will upgrade initially remains to be seen. I've heard the opinion from a few designers that although the U.S. price is excessive, even higher pricing in the UK presents a huge purchasing barrier there. Many UK-based designers are thinking about buying grey market US versions. Can't say I blame them. For more information on the release visit Adobe.

Yet Another Media Player...

Microsoft announce yet another browser plug-in for playing media. Silverlight promises all that Flash has and more . . . OK . . . I'm really not holding my breath on this one. When will these guys wake up and realize people don't need more confusion but simplification of the software and solutions they use for accessing the internet? I have one question — will Silverlight work on all platforms, including Mobile and PPC, or am I going to be pulling my hair out when I want to have media I can readily transport? And what about DRM? Is this yet another vehicle to annoy me and countless others when we try to use media we have paid for fairly, on more than one device?

Spotlight On . . . Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

These days plenty of doctors are prescribing ergonomic keyboards in an effort to alleviate the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome and other injuries caused by unnatural typing positions. The Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is decked out in black, with a soft palm rest made of very durable and washable synthetic, plus an array of system control and web browser navigation keys positioned above the F-keys. Professional keyboards such as the Kinesis Maxim offer adjustments for keyboard split angle, lateral angle, vertical angle, and tent angle. The Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 offers only vertical angle adjustment using hinged feet, in addition to the fixed split key layout and moderate fixed vertical tenting. The supplied Intellitype keyboard driver installs a configuration tab in the Windows Control Panel keyboard applet so that you can assign and configure the extra control and navigation keys. The gently curved key split reduces wrist pronation and the tent angle provides a noticeably more natural wrist and forearm position. The key layout conforms to Microsoft's standard which pairs Insert/Delete, Home/End and Page Up/PageDown in a double row. The numeric keypad is on the right side. An F-Lock key is provided to activate alternate key functions. Indicator LEDs for Caps, Num, F and Scroll Lock are located between the split key layout. Most of the key caps are concave, so strikes feel generally accurate. But the Ctrl keys are flat and the space bar and Alt keys have slightly convex tops which are disconcerting to some users. General home users, general business users, students and gamers should get good use out of this one, but medium to heavy duty typists still need a professional keyboard such as the Kinesis Maxim or the Goldtouch. 3 out of 5 stars

LaCie 526, 25.5" LCD Display for Photographers

LaCie's new 25.5-inch LCD monitor is clearly aimed at photographers, video editors, and design pros. It features a 1,920 by 1,200 resolution, a wide gamut range which supports 95 percent of the AdobeRGB color space and 98.5 percent of ISO coated colors, offering consistent color-accurate across displayed, output, and printed colors. The 526 also features a 12-bit Look Up Table and 16-bit processing for smooth color gradients; with an embedded color sensor which monitors and stabilizes the output of the displays backlight over time. The LaCie 526 Monitor has an SRP of $1,999 ($2,299 with the blue eye pro colorimeter) a price, truly aimed at pros.

Microsoft To End Sales Of XP In Jan 2008

Despite problems with Vista, Microsoft are planning to end the availability of Windows XP for sale with systems from January 2008. This means that all Windows PCs offered for sale after that date are going to have Windows Vista installed. This decision applies to all versions of Windows XP. Manufacturers like HP, Dell, Toshiba, and others will no longer be able to offer new systems with pre-installed versions of Windows XP.

Samsung Announces Dual Format HD Disc Player

Samsung announce the release of a Dual Format HD Disc Player. They follow LG in what I hope is something of a positive trend in offering a player which will play both Blu-ray and HD-DVD media. The BD-UP5000 will fully support both formats including, interactivity capabilities. For more infomation read the Official Press Release.

Dell Sunset The Axim

After 5 years of offering a powerful Pocket PC solution Dell finally sunsetted their PPC offering. The Dell website no longer offers a PPc product for sale and indications from a variety of sources are that Dell have no plans to change this situation. Their most recent offering, "The Axim" never really got off the ground, despite it being one of the most robust of the Pocket PC product lines.

Fancy A Pininfarina Hard Drive?

You read correctly, Pininfarina have designed the SimpleTech SimpleDrive. These elegant external drives come in sizes ranging from 160GB to 1TB and feature a USB 2.0 interface, as well as One-Click backup software. Pininfarina are the very same company, who have designed for Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Ford, Mitsubishi, Volvo and styled a host of other products for over 50 years. Prices start at US$99.

Intel Launches Quad-core Chip for Desktop Gamers

Intel Corp. have launched a quad-core chip designed with desktop gamers in mind. This release is part of a series of new product releases the company has announced in the past week. The Core 2 Extreme QX6800 runs at 2.93GHz, and is fastest speed yet of the 12 quad-core processors Intel have launched since they announced the "Clovertown" Xeon server chip last November. The new chip will also reduce processing times for high-definition media editing jobs such as video encoding, 3D applications and digital imaging solutions. The new chip, comes with an 8M-byte memory cache and 1,066MHz front side bus speed and sells for US$1,199.

100 Million iPods Sold

Apple announced the sale of its 100 millionth iPod. Quite the milestone really. "At this historic milestone, we want to thank music lovers everywhere for making iPod such an incredible success," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, in a statement. "iPod has helped millions of people around the world rekindle their passion for music, and we're thrilled to be a part of that." With so many units sold it'll be hard for anyone to challenge it's position in the marketplace, although I've said it before, I think the mobile phone industry is beginning to make serious inroads with their latest generation of phones with multimedia support.

Spotlight On . . . Total Commander 7

Total Commander has been my file manager of choice for about five years. In that time it has evolved from a comparatively simple file utility into an all purpose file access, file management, archiving and file handling tool complete with fully customizable menus and toolbars. Version 7 is just about out the door with Release Candidate 1 appearing at the end of March 2007. If you manage a lot of files on a weekly basis, dual-pane file managers are probably familiar to you already, so learning to use Total Commander effectively should be quite easy. My first goal while reviewing v7 was to determine Windows Vista compatibility and I didn't find any problems at all. A couple of general file manipulation functions are slower than they should be, but that's attributable to some test or beta code that's probably still hanging around in the release candidate. Total Commander v7 received a much-needed face lift including new graphics and window treatment. It looks much better than previous versions. File browsing, copying, moving, renaming, splitting, encoding, decoding, archiving, sorting, space calculations, drive mapping, built-in FTP, back ups and directory updates all work swiftly and smoothly. File synchronization between folders located anywhere on a network or local drives works extremely well. Because of the number of files I handle daily, my workflow includes Total Commander set up to launch with Windows. Developer C. Ghisler & Co., has done a good job of keeping Total Commander small, efficient and powerful. Total Commander v7 does not have a robust file viewer—you can look at text files only. That's a minor gripe which is completely offset by Total Commander v7's excellent performance in all other areas of file management. 4 out of 5 stars

Rogue Programmer Sabotages Naval Systems

According to a story by Simson Garfinkel of the Technology Review, "Richard F. Sylvestre, a former government contractor who had a top-secret clearance, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to sabotaging computers used to track U.S. Navy submarines." Sylvestre apparently planted a logic bomb in several navy computers after his company was passed over on a bid. He subsequently fled for Italy. Three of five navy computers that are used to track submarines were shut down as a result of his logic bomb. If all five had been shut down, the navy would have been essentially blind. I'm sorry to say it, but if the idiot actually did this, he should be taken out and shot. (Ed. Note: Shot? Sure. But only after he's captured, arrested and interrogated to ensure the navy has a chance to plug its seive-like security.)

Greeks Develop Haptic Navigational Aids

Scientific American reports that a team of researchers at the Aristotle University of Thessaloníki in Greece have developed a system that can convert video into tactile, three dimensional maps designed to help blind people navigate. These "Haptic Maps" work with standard video camera equipment and are created through software that maps the data to a virtual 3D space. In this system, a special glove and wand applies force to the fingers to simulate the virtual space points. The system can be used to provide textured maps in order to create navigational guides for virtual maps. The system can even vocalise locations and other location information using speech synthesis. For more information visit Scientific American.

Nano Generators

One of the more interesting bit of news this week was the announcement from scientists at the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, that they have demonstrated a nano-scale generator capable of providing electricity to microscopic machines by harvesting different types of energy from the environment. Zhong Lin Wang, professor at Georgia Tech, indicates that the generator can convert mechanical energy from sources such as ultrasonic waves, mechanical vibration or blood flow into continuous direct-current electricity. Some very definite advantages for powering nano-tech and machines without their needing or external power sources. Wang and his group, believe that their nanogenerator could produce as much as 4 watts of power per cubic centimeter. This level of power generation is several orders of magnitude greater than what is achievable on current power generation technologies at that scale. More details about the nanogenerator, which is constructed using an array of zinc oxide nanowires, will be released in the April 6 issue of the journal, Science. For more info before then, visit TG Daily and Georgia Tech.

iPod Virus Created

Kaspersky Labs have created Podloso, a virus design to demonstrate a minor security hole in the iPod. For the Virus to work the user must actually download it. The virus will only infect an iPod with Linux installed. Podloso cannot spread to other iPods on its own, one in the right folders on an iPod the virus will make all songs and videos unplayable. Instead of playing back the affected files, the iPod will display an error message which reads, "You are infected with Oslo the first iPodLinux Virus." For more visit tgdaily.

Asus C90 - Upgradable Laptop

Most techies consider laptops to be throw away technology because of the way the devices are built. The idea of being able to upgrade a laptop usually doesn't come into the picture. When you are buying one, you get what you get. Asus are trying to change that situation with their new C90 gaming laptop. Everything from the CPU and graphics card through to its optical drive will be upgradeable. The C90 will also include an HDMI port.

Monster 20" Laptops

20" Inch Laptops are becoming more common, with models appearing from Dell (M2010), Acer (Aspire 9800) and Malibal (Veda). However, these monsters (and monsters they are without doubt) are far from practical. They're huge and remind me of the old arm-breaker luggables of the early 80's. They are extremely expensive and heavy as boat anchors. If you want to read more, pop on over to Dell to find out about the 20 pound M2010 and also to Malibal to read more about the Veda.

Spotlight On . . . the Lowepro Slingshot 200AW Camera Bag

The Lowepro Slingshot 200AW is a single strap, sling-style camera bag that can be rotated front or back depending on whether you're walking or shooting. Access to your gear is through an outward opening, full width, zippered, padded flap which is limited by snap locks so that gear can't accidentally fall out. Lowepro's standard padded Velcro divider system in the main compartment allows several different configurations, and can accommodate two digital SLR bodies with lenses attached, storage cards, remote control, and hoods for both lenses. Lowepro's smart design decisions enhance the natural usability of this bag. Strap padding extends beyond where its normally needed, which means that almost any carry position remains comfortable. The hideaway rain cover is well made and is easy to deploy and stow quickly. The best thing about the Slingshot 200AW is that it has the depth and height to accommodate full size digital SLRs without pushing and shoving. For the record, I typically use the Slingshot 200 AW to carry a Nikon D200 w/18-200mm VR zoom and a Nikon D80 w/105mm f2.8 VR macro, hoods for each lens, half a dozen CF and SD cards, a Lowepro filter pouch, a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight flash unit, spare battery and a remote trigger for the D200. Access to the SLRs is easy, but could be better still if the zippers were smoother in the turns. Padding throughout the bag is robust but not intrusive. The front zippered pouch offers a number of internal slots which hold pens, utility knife, paper, cleaning cloth. The zippered pouch at the top of the tapered, tubular bag holds the flash unit, filter pouch and spare battery. The dedicated storage card pouch built into the main compartment can hold up to 8 storage cards. The Slingshot 200AW is rugged, looks inconspicuous, works extremely well and is relatively inexpensive. Walking and taking pictures among the urban canyons or on the hiking trails, the Lowepro Slingshot 200AW is a smart choice. For a smaller SLR, look for the Slingshot 100AW. For packing extra gear and bigger lenses, look for the larger Slingshot 300AW. 4 out of 5 stars

Apple Mac Pros Now Available With 8 Cores

Apple have released their first Octo-core Mac Pro. Prices start at $2,499 for 2.66GHz quad-core systems or for an additional $1,498 you can get yourself an 8-core Mac Pro running at 3GHz. Quite the machine, if you ask me...

WEP Is A Doddle To Crack

WEP which is used by many to protect their home networks is proving to be a frail old security protocol. In 2001 when WEP was first hacked, it took about 4 million packets of data to crack a security key. Subsequently this has dropped substantially. Recently in the Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany a team of engineers have managed to extract a 104-bit WEP key in around three seconds, and all this only using a laptop with a 1.7GHz Pentium M processor. Collect the required 40,000 - 85,000 packets of data, and the hack could potentially be carried out a hacker using a cellphone or PDA. For more read info article...

Microsoft Sued Over Vista Capable Marketing...

A Seattle based law firm is spearheading a lawsuit which claims Microsoft of allowing PC manufacturers to label computers as "Vista capable" when they're barely able to run even the most basic version of Vista. Shame on you Microsoft and fellow Rogues...

EMI To Release DRM Free Music And Videos

EMI announced that it will be dropping DRM file protection for its entire digital library of songs. EMI says their DRM free songs will have much higher quality than older digital versions and that there will be a choice of bit rates. iTunes are to be the first download service to offer the new songs. EMI indicates that the music will have up to twice the sound quality of the songs offered with DRM and that consumers will be able to pick bit rates all the way up to CD Quality and will sell for $1.29 each. Owners of older DRM-protected songs will be able to upgrade to the DRM-free version for 30 cents. For more info visit The EMI Group.

Spotlight On . . . Tamrac Velocity 7x and 8x Photo Sling Pack Digital SLR Camera Bags

The Tamrac Velocity 7x and Velocity 8x Photo Sling Packs are single strap bags which ride across your left shoulder with the main pack slung around the back. To access the bag, you simply rotate the strap to pull the bag around front. Pop the top, pull out your camera and start shooting. It's great in theory, but Tamrac's execution isn't perfect. The top cover opens away from you, which is in fact perfect for a sling bag, but opening and closing the top is awkward, not the smartest design for a sling bag meant for quick access. At least it's an improvement over the reverse opening design of the previous Velocity series. The shoulder strap padding is adequate but doesn't extend far enough; when the bag is slung forward for access, the thin part of the strap hits your shoulder and starts digging in quite quickly making it uncomfortable to use the bag slung in front for more than a few minutes. When loaded, the narrow opening of the 7x is too tight for full size digital SLRs. For anything larger than a Nikon D40 or a Canon Digital Rebel 400, opt for the Velocity 8x instead. The bag material is strong but thin and lightweight, offering less protective padding against external bumps and grinds than we'd like to see. The interior velcro dividers are also thinly padded, offering only basic protection for sensitive gear. The Velocity 7x and 8x cost less than the top-rated Lowepro SlingShot 200AW and KATA T-214 Torso Pack. Reasonably comfortable on the back while prowling for photo ops, especially if you use the hideaway waist belt. For full size SLR camera gear, choose the Velocity 8x. 2 out of 5 stars

50 Greatest Female Characters In Video Game History

Twitch Guru have posted a gallery of what they consider as the 50 greatest female characters in video game history. This post is about as close to an April fools joke, as I'm likely to get, however the gallery certainly makes for interesting viewing. In many respects is also represents a historical overview of the history of gaming graphics and it's increasing sophistication. Visit twitchguru and take a look.

Adobe & European Pricing Issues

It seems that Adobe have also not woken up to the fact that people are not happy with their pricing policy. Prodig are reporting that European pricing is up twice that of the US prices. Come on Adobe, how can this be encouraging a fair market. you're going to be driving more people to buy grey market or dare, I even say it, Pirating your software. Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium Upgrade US £224 / $440 UK £465 / $912 Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium Full US £916 / $1,799 UK £1,409 / $2,766 According to Prodig, "Members of the AOP, EPUK, Hasselblad and German Freelance forums have all joined the bandwagon demanding reasons why pricing can be up to double that in the US." Come on, don't make us pay more because we're not American or you think you can get away with it ... I smell an investigation from the fair trade agencies...