Saturday, March 26, 2005

Now this is just silly

As part of their Plays For Sure campaign, Microsoft has launched a webpage to help you pick the 'correct' MP3 player for you. It advises that "a player that uses flash memory to store music has distinct advantages over a player that uses a hard disk. Simply put, flash memory players have no moving parts, meaning that you can take them jogging and your music won't skip" and "Don't get locked into one online store...You might have to shop at more than one store before you find the song you're looking for." Unsurprisingly, it's 6 tips would exclude the iPod as a good choice for consumers. Now, I've had troubles with iPod, but my wife and I both use one at the gym without even experiencing a skip, and I've never had problems finding music on the iTunes Music Store. So I can tell you from personal experience that those claims are false. Not that I'd ever really trust Microsoft anyway...

Friday, March 25, 2005

Rise, Lord Vader

OK, I admit it - I'm a Star Wars fanboy, and I've watched the trailer for Episode III 5 times already today. I've also changed my PC wallpaper to this Darth Vader one. Yep, I am JUST that geeky...

What'll they think of next?

I sure could have used this clock this morning - Clocky. Developed by a research associate at MIT Labs (not Muppet Labs like you'd expect), Clocky will roll off the nightstand and hide from you after you press the snooze bar. After your snooze time is up, the alarm goes off again and now you've got to get out of bed and hunt for Clocky to turn it off. It looks pretty silly, but if it gets you out of bed on time then maybe it'd be worth it.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Update to Mozilla Firefox released

An updated version (version 1.0.2) of Mozilla Firefox was released yesterday. The release includes an important patch to a recently discovered flaw that could be exploited by a malicious file or program. So if you haven't yet - upgrade!

Spam industry sustained by bad e-mail habits

Here's an interesting article from the BBC News about e-mail spam. Apparently, according to a research study quoted in the article, nearly a third of e-mail users have clicked on links in spam messages - and one in ten users have bought products advertised in spam messages. And this is the primary reason that spam is still around - because it still works. This is very bad news, very bad news indeed.