Hey there all, as we said last week, it’s nice to put up a blog post on a Friday afternoon just to see if we can’t cheer people up during the last hour or two at work. Today we have a couple of small things to post, the first is this charming video referenced in a conversation with the lovely guys from our RMA department.
It’s not too complicated, but inordinately entertaining – set a Tickle Me Elmo on fire.
Sony has announced that, through the medium of Google Books, it’s offering over a million books for free in what’s hard to see as anything but a direct assault on Amazon’s Kindle.
Sony’s e-book readers have always had a bit of an edge over the Kindle in the looks department and its latest move to include more than a million books puts it streets ahead of the competition in terms of the sheer amount of content users have access to. At this stage, the fact that Sony now offers so many public domain books available might well be the straw that breaks the Kindle’s back.
While everything we’ve heard so far about the Microsoft/Yahoo search and advertising deal seems to have been wine and roses, it turns out that (for Microsoft at least) there are some considerable losses to be taken.
This news comes from a slide pointedly not shown by Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer during Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting. Fortunately enough, a reporter for the Seattle Times did manage to get his hands on it, and throw it up on the web for all to see. It’s worth pointing out that the slide does include the words, “Net: we will lose money in first 2 years ($300m total), then start making decent return ($400m steady state).”
As much as it’s been said that netbooks will never catch on (whether because of their small size or their relative lack of heavyweight computing power), it looks as though Intel is having some serious trouble keeping up with the demand for its Atom processors.
There’s relatively little known about the shortage of Intel’s Atom Z processors for now apart from the fact that Intel has told its customers that it won’t be taking any more orders for Atom Z processors. Digitimes is reporting that the company is “close to completely digesting its inventory,” which if nothing else communicates the gravity of the situation quite nicely.
In an entirely unsurprising turn of events it looks as though the minds behind DRMed (Digital Rights Management) music don’t actually expect you to be able to own it forever. Moreover, the idea that you’d expect that to be the case is ridiculous.
Word comes from ArsTechnica that Steven Metalitz, who’s been lawyering for the RIAA, on behalf of DRM on content and just how much they can squeeze into your media before you buy it. His word on the subject seems basically to be that the more control on a piece of content the better it can be handled in general terms.
As most of you will know by now, we like to highlight one product every week that we think is worth you guys at least having a look at and seeing what you think. Last week we were talking about the OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator, which lets you control games without a keyboard, charmingly enough. This week though, we’ve been mouse aware people.
Click the image to see the main page for the Deathadder
Razer’s Deathadder isn’t quite the massively high end kit that incredibly serious (read: possibly too serious) gamers demand, like the wireless monster that is the Mamba, but it’s still an excellent piece of kit and it’s priced low for what it is. While higher end gaming mice typically weigh in around the €100 mark, we’ve been impressed by how well it handles itself, especially considering the fact that it’s just €37.50. Moreover, we’ve seen brick and mortar shops carrying it at around the €85 mark, which is a bit much.
Apple has come out with a statement to the effect that jailbreaking the iPhone could cause all kinds of trouble, including crashing cellular masts using their newfound ability to run non-Apple-approved code.
Apple revealed the possible danger of jailbroken iPhones in an ongoing case arguing for the legality of unlocking the device. The basic threat, according to Apple, is that if users were to use their hacked iPhones in a very specific way, they could use a sea of devices to initiate a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on a cellular provider, drowning the network with an inordinate amount of traffic.
When Microsoft revealed that a significant portion of its upcoming Microsoft Office 2010 would be ‘cloud-based’ significant questions were raised about the capacity to deliver a robust experience through the web.
All About Microsoft is reporting that Microsoft has released (to a select number of approved recipients) the “Microsoft Office 2010 Click-To-Run Technical Preview Program for Home, Student and Small Business Consumers.” We’re hoping that catchy name gets kept on until Office 2010’s release. We’re interested to give MO2010CTRTPRHSSBC a go as soon as we can.
Generally, there’s some lag time between the release of any software (be it an OS or a videogame) and those with nefarious intent managing to crack it for illicit use. However, the Windows 7 RTM (release to manufacturers) has been cracked already. Moreover, it’s been cracked in a manner that makes it decidedly difficult to put the worms back in the tin.
TomsHardware is carrying the story that the Windows 7 RTM release has been cracked using an OEM license key, which is basically a nice and easy way of telling your machine that you’ve got a legit copy of Windows 7 from an OEM – in this case, Lenovo.
Yahoo and Microsoft have finally hashed out the details of a plan that will see Yahoo’s search business moved over to Microsoft, while Yahoo will continue to handle the search advertising for both sides of the bargain.
We’re told that “for web users, this deal will accelerate the pace and breadth of innovation by combining both companies’ strengths and search platforms into a market competitor with the scale to fuel the sustained development in search and search advertising.” It sounds like a very sideways way of saying that Microsoft and Yahoo between them might be able to compete with what Google has become, but there are some odd bits and pieces mentioned in the press release that aren’t really being given the emphasis they deserve.
Cheer Up Everyone – It’s Friday Afternoon
July 31, 2009Hey there all, as we said last week, it’s nice to put up a blog post on a Friday afternoon just to see if we can’t cheer people up during the last hour or two at work. Today we have a couple of small things to post, the first is this charming video referenced in a conversation with the lovely guys from our RMA department.
It’s not too complicated, but inordinately entertaining – set a Tickle Me Elmo on fire.
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Tags:ballmer, elmo, friday, jabba, steve, tickle, youtube
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