Hot Gear and News

This is my second attempt at writing this latest news post ... my first one is flying around the internet somewhere precipitated by an IE crash. So I'm a pillock ... instead of writing it in one of my standalone editors, I decided to do it directly in the submission window for this column.

I'm fed up with crashes and also fed up with Windows and IE (I guess I should stick with firefox as a browser). I've no idea what my next machine will be, I'd love an Intel based Mac, so that I can run both Mac OSX and Windows. I'm also torn with wanting a good tablet PC for my graphics and design work ... come on Apple get it together and release a pen based computer.

Ok, enough already, lets get onto the news ... it's been a busy week for product releases and announcements. The first big piece of news has to be from Sony and it looks like they've come to their senses. The Playstation 3 will, after all, feature an HDMI port and to be honest I feel its the only decision Sony could have come to, in the current market. If they'd released the PS3 without HDMI, it would have been nuts ... a gaming dodo. Sony have also announce a 20% price drop in their lower end model for the Japanese Market. I hope that this is indicative of their global pricing policy. For us Europeans however there are a lot of unhappy people who feel Sony have screwed up by not releasing the PS3 here till spring 2007.

Wifi Trains
Virgin and GNER have both had Wifi on their Trains for a while. GNER were the first company in the UK to have it available throughout the whole train. Virgin will soon extend their coverage so that you no longer have to be a client of first class to get the service. GNER have indicated that their service has seen a 22% increase in customers who would have otherwise taken a plane. Virgin have not given out any details on the cost of their WIFI service.

Engadget HD
Online blogosphere, Engadget have just relaunched and part of the relaunch meant a number of branded specialist news blogs. Engadget HD is an obvious news site and one which will appeal to HDTV fans from all over. The news blog has been put together as a collaborative effort with the team of HDBeat. Coverage looks very US centric at the moment but I've always enjoyed reading engadget blogs. Visit Engadget HD for the scoop on all things High Definition.

Exploding Laptops
For those of you who haven't heard, all is not good in laptop land. It seems that a recall of laptop batteries has not come soon enough for some folks. Engadget reports that in recent weeks, there have been a number of incidents where peoples Laptops have caught fire and in some fairly high profile places too. These incidents have prompted Virgin Atlantic, Korean Air and Quantas to ban Apple IBM and Dell Laptop batteries from their flights. I just hope that something is done and real soon before this costs somebody their life.

LG C1 tablet PC
LG are to release a super sexy tablet based PC which borrows some of its aesthetics from their Chocolate mobile. This new tablet which has been previewed over at TabletPC Review, features super clean styling and some very cool capabilities. It also appears, from the photos, to feature slots for a GSM EDGE card and a mobile Sim.

Kickstartnews Revue - Podcast #58 - Show Notes for September 19, 2006

For those of you wondering about the printers we recommended to Geoff from the Netherlands, read our reviews of the HP LaserJet 1320, Lexmark E332 and the Brother HL6050.

For poor Mitesh from Bombay, who installed Windows XP Pro to a boot drive and then proceeded to accidentally re-install it on his data drive, we say a sympathetic "OOPS!" in all the languages of the world. Try Undelete to recover some of your data.

Our new feature—The Techspertise Minute—provides all sorts of useful help and advice about web design, web development and search engine optimization. Look for host Paul Rochford's Techspertise web site.

In our opinion, the easiest-to-use DVD movie converter which produces the best quality video file for your 30GB iPod is the iPod Video Converter from CuCuSoft.

We interviewed Splash Data CEO Morgan Slain. You can find all the Splash Data products for Palm, Windows Mobile, Smartphone and Blackberry right here. Before you jump though, read our reviews of SplashClock, SplashID, SplashPhoto, SplashMoney and SplashTravel.

See you next time!

KSN Revue theme music "I Love Baby Cheese" by permission from Banco de Gaia

Yet More New Gear.

The Choices we are faced with over what to buy during the coming holiday season (Re: Christmas) are not getting any easier. This week has seen the announcement of several new gadgets including; the Zune, a new media player from Microsoft which should be out in time for the Holidays. Microsoft have also launched a whole pack of computer peripherals, including and wireless backlit keyboard, Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000, Wireless Presenter Mouse 8000, Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000, and the new LifeCam NX-6000 webcam which features 7 megapixel Stills and 2 megapixel video.

Apple has updated their iPod line with a new generation of iPod, iPod nano and iPod shuffle. To be honest the new iPods all appear to lack that spirit of innovation we have come to expect from Apple, with the exception of the shuffle which I think is bang on target. Everything else, including the new iTunes, is a big let down to those of us expecting a larger screen based video iPod. They did announce their new iTV video product which will interface with their new version of iTunes. Though I am a bit confused as to what exactly it does ... I'll do a bit more reading and get back to you.

For those of you who are heavy memory users, Samsung have made some in-roads to producing flash memory with capacities of up to 64GB ... this should facilitate the production of CF Cards with 16 32 and 64 GB of storage within the next few months. Forget just having lost of memory for your media and devices; imagine a CF centric laptop, which would allow you to simply pull your data when you want to swap to a different or updated unit. Now, that would require some decent device handling in the OS, wouldn't it?

The Curse of Spam

No, I'm not talking about the pink pseudo meat in cans which was popular years ago, and which was immortalized by Monty Python. I am talking about the problem of dealing with the tons of digital waste, poured out everyday by companies who are a curse on our free time.

I for one, am sick of the endless barrage of crap which comes into my inbox. On average I kill around 170 emails a day using mailwasher pro. The reason I use mailwasher, is that it allows me to sift through the spam for incorrectly identified emails, so that I can then kill the stuff I don't want. A very useful tool...

What really worries me is that there are companies out there who deliberately flout laws which are in place to prevent this flood of digital rubbish. Just last week a US judge made a ruling in favour of a US spammer against a UK company which creates anti-spam solutions for blacklisting them as a source of spam. I wonder why a US court thinks it can rule against a UK company doing something legal in the UK in favour of a company which is doing something which is illegal.

So why haven't I named the companies involved? I've withheld any names because of a simple reason ... it doesn't matter who they are, it is just the nature of the dispute which is of concern. Spammers don't see themselves as doing something wrong; they see themselves as providing a service. This service, however, is costing billions of dollars/pounds worth of lost time to business and private citizens. It is long past time for the powers that be to do something about it ... nuff said.

New Gear - Too Many toys?

With all the new announcements in the last week, one would think we're coming up to Christmas ... I guess we are. A bunch of new laptops were announced by Alienware, Acer, Dell and HP, most of which look pretty cool. LG announce a new chocolate based flip phone, which is also a cool media player, and Rim announce their new BlackBerry Pearl, which is a bar type smartphone. Whilst I'm on the Smartphone front, HTC has officially announced a quartet of models for Q4, one of which (the artemis), actually looks cool.

From the looks of things, it's going to be a busy season.

The News According To Maz...

So it's been a busy week, Intel announce 10,000 plus job cuts, MySpace are to sell music from unsigned bands, Vista RC1 enters testing and Steve Irwin joins the choir invisible...

I believe that the only bit of news that immediately seemed to hit folks was that Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin got killed by a Stingray. Between risking life and limb on an almost daily basis, causing contention by taking his baby into a croc pen and entertaining millions with his madcap approach to nature shows, the man was certainly a character. He at least died doing something he loved. I wish his family well ... So what is he doing now ... well ... if you believe in heaven and angels, he's probably looking at an angel and saying "Cor, Mate look at the size of those."

On a Tech front, the most interesting bit of news was a posting I came across on Engadget which revealed some interesting developments in Bionics. Apparently the Aussies at the Bionic Eye Foundation at Sydney's Prince of Wales Hospital, yes, I did say bionic ... Have made some in-roads on the development of viable technology for helping blind people to see. Read more here.

Tech News is Occasionally Deceiving

I subscribe to a lot of blogs and newsletters. In the Saturday September 9th edition of C|NET's Weekend Hit List, Tim Moynihan's headline, "Is the iPod Already Dead", is completely unrelated to the linked article by Ina Fried titled, "Has iPod's Hit Parade Stalled", in which Fried clearly describes Apple's dominance of the worldwide music player market while musing about the next big thing that might be coming out of Cupertino. Apple, being its usual close-mouthed self, doesn't offer tech columnists much gossip. So Tim Moynihan is either young and foolish, or he simply doesn't understand the negative effects of heedless sensationalism. I hold neither love nor hate for iPods (they're inanimate objects for Pete's sake!), and no doubt Apple's dominance will be supplanted by some other company at some point in the future. Because I subscribe to CNET newsletters (among others) and listen to C|NET's Buzz Out Loud podcast (among others) specifically to obtain a regular dose of accurate, unembellished tech news, I hope to hear about the new music player that bests the iPod when that event takes place. In the meantime, Moynihan has to either smarten up or find a job in which he won't be tempted to mislead readers, wasting their time with articles that don't match his lurid leads. Moynihan's eructation wasted a few minutes of life that I'll never get back. Damn that's irritating.

Kickstartnews Revue - Podcast #57 - Show Notes for September 3, 2006

We're back after a sweet summer sojourn. Podcast #57 is available now. Go to the Subscription page, or download it directly, or subscribe through the iTunes Music Store.
Three items of note during the show merit a reminder here:

• We interviewed book author Wallace Wang. Read our review of Steal This Computer Book 4.0
• Problems with lost or accidentally deleted data? Read our review of UnDelete 5.0 Professional
• Last but not least, SpinRite and Lifeboat are not undelete utilities. Both programs perform some real magic from time to time, but they can't recover deleted files.

Enjoy the podcast!

KSN Revue theme music "I Love Baby Cheese" by permission from Banco de Gaia