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“I wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.  There’s a knob called “brightness,” but that doesn’t work.”  – Author Unknown

We started off this week with Gareth regaling us with his experiences with Apple’s latest baby. Snow Leopard is here! Gareth’s already installed it on both his Macs and is full of good things to say about it. I shall let him test it for a few days before unleashing on my system, there’s been no reports of any real problems, but you can’t be too careful. Then we dicussed a few iPhone apps, ‘Where’ is Gareth’s current pick.

Then on to the stories…

All current iPods discontinued? – The supply channels are rapidly draining of the existing iPods, in preparation for new goodies from Jobs and Co. The SKU’s of all current iPods have been discontinued. Gareth just bought an existing gen iPod classic, purely for reasons of nostalgia.

A remote that Twitters – Big Blue has patented a remote control that can twitter. TV is going to get more ’social’. But if the remote starts blogging about the rubbish shows you’re watching. You’ve got nobody but yourself to blame.

Stunning image of single molecule – Those IBM boffins are having a busy week. This time they’ve produced an image of a single molecule of penacene Using an atomic force microscope, at near absolute zero, and complete stillness for 20 hours. Next up they’re going to examine Steve Ballmer for business acumen. But only if they can improve the sensitivity of their equipment.

USAA bank lets you call in cheques – If you’ve got a USAA account and an iPhone you can ring your checks in. You take a picture of said check, and an app does the rest. Encrypting and sending to your bank and the bank credits you the money. Now if we could just get rid of the whole small irritating inconvienent piece of paper altogether, that’d be progress.

‘Daily Prophet’ comes to Entertainment Weekly – By embedding a slim-line player within the pages, video will appear in a magazine for the first time. Up to 40 minutes of video will be contained on the chip that powers the ‘mobile phone’ sized screen. Not as animated as Harry Potters Daily Prophet, but much more 21st century in editorial style.

iPod classic to get a camera too – If the rumours are to be believed. On September the 9th we should see a slew of new iPods, all bearing cameras. The venerable classic included. Flickr is going to be groaning under the wait of all the new ‘fun’ photo. If its video capable, who knows, it could break You Tube.

Evolutionary theory of tech – An interesting article I culled off the interwebs. If species evolution is driven by the survival of the fitest, is tech driven by the same goals? Do the fitest devices succeed, and the rest fall by the wayside? A good piece, but unfortunately it couldn’t explain the success of Windows.

Sony’s new kindle killer – The ‘Reader Daily Edition’ has been unveiled. With a 7″ touch screen and 2GB of internal memory, it compares favourably to the Kindle. Topping it all off is a 3G connection powered by AT&T. So, they can grab books back off yours just like Amazon can.

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“Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana” – Groucho Marx

Another milestone this week, Episode 20

Twenty weeks already. Its amazing how time flies when your having fun, and we managed to get there with only a few weeks off. This week we began with the usual chat, about our weekly tech adventures. This mostly revolved around my ongoing love affair with my iPhone.

Then it was into the stories…

Q appeals for anti-terror inventions – Another story to warm the cockles of Gareth’s heart. MI5 are running a talent search, for inventors and their ‘boogyman’ fighting ideas. Something that might make us feel like we aren’t losing the war against terror, could be to give us back some of the freedoms we’ve lost. Just a thought.

Pre snoops on users – Once a day the Palm Pre calls home with data from your phone. Specifically location and app usage data. Its probably a perfectly innocent thing, for Palm to improve their new baby. Hey Palm its a simple thing, but if your gong to do this, always let the user know. then nobody can complain. How Palm is storing all the data from, the literally dozens, of Pres that they’ve sold I don’t know.

Microsoft barred from selling Word – A court in Texas is barring MS from selling Word, and in six weeks time the copies of Office will come down off the shelves, pending appeal anyway. Its all over a patent dispute with Canadian company i4i. Please someone be holding a patent on some crucial part of Windows.

Apple tablet picture ‘leaked’ – Is it or isn’t it, the fabled Apple tablet. To be honest, I’m getting kinda bored of all the rumours and stories. I can wait for whatever Apple is going to bring. So stop with the stories already. Unless of course you have pictures of the real ‘iTablet’. Oh and a release date would be cool as well.

Google’s ‘caffeine’ to put Bing in the shade – With competition heating up in the search world, with Bing and the whole MS Yahoo tie up. Mountain View is planning a ‘major’ upgrade in its search technology. Pretty soon, you won’t even have to enter your search terms, they’ll know what your thinking before you think it. Why do you think they’re storing all that personal data.

Pre, iPhone owners satisfaction poll – Its now fact iPhone users are the most happy with their devices. But we knew that already, didn’t we. I know how I feel about mine. And knowing that all other iPhone users would feel the same, I filled out all 2000 survey responses, to save you guys the time.

Hobbyist 3D printers make manufacturing accessible – ‘Rapid prototyping’ is moving from the high end and down to hobbyists. Makerbot are releasing a new 3D printer, in kit form or ready built. It will produce any 3D object 4″ x 4″ x 6″ out of ABS or HDPE. So you can create anything, absolutely anything your puny mind can think of.

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“If it weren’t for electricity, we’d all be watching television by candlelight.” – George Gobel, American comedian 1919 – 1991

This week we began with the great news that I, at last have an iPhone. Hurrah! Unfortunately we also discovered that its tied to Apple’s exclusive UK partner O2. Whose network makes AT&T’s look perfect and ubiquitous in comparison. But it has been fabulous fun playing with my new gadget. Then Gareth had to force me to talk about this weeks stories instead of my iPhone.

But we did begin with this…

Google Voice apps rejected – There is a dark side to the iPhone, its the App store approval process. Whether this is down to Apple or AT&T is unknown, but the FCC is weighing in and demanding answers. So play nice guys or the government’s gonna take away your toys.

Microsoft’s retail stores – The Redmond behemoth is once again eschewing originality, and deciding just to copy wholesale the Apple Store model. Right down to the ‘cleverly’ named Guru bar. If monkey boy thinks this is going to turn the company’s fortunes around, well I think he’s going to be sorely disappointed. But I believe the Guru bar will be an unqualified success, in fact it will probably be fully booked, forever.

iTunes to support Blu-ray -It is rumoured that the next version of iTunes will support Blu-ray discs. You’ll be able to rip in your discs, transfer the movies to your Apple TV. All you have to do is slip the disc into your Mac’s Blu-ray drive and……Doh!

Wireless power system demo’d – A U.S. company called Witricity as demonstrated a system to wirelessly transmit power to all your favourite gadgets. No more forgetting to put your mobile on charge. As soon as its within range of this system it’ll start to charge automatically. It works by magnetic resonance, which to me sounds a lot like ‘flux capacitor’. So I don’t hold out much hope for it coming out anytime soon.

Is there rhyme or reason to the Twitter attacks? – It seems the attacks on Twitter, Facebook and numerous other social networking and blogging sites really were targeted at just one Georgian blogger, by Russian sympathizers. And it raises questions about the structure of the internet itself. With the attacks being so ‘random and unpredictable’, how can we adapt internet security to cope. I think its because we’re not all using Internet Explorer anymore, like good little sheep.

Jack White’s Vault – The musician wants to put the romance back into buying music. He believes that downloading ‘cheapens the experience’. Wanting to make it more of an experience, with video extras and access to online gigs. And with Apple and music execs trying to reinvigorate the album format, maybe he’s on to something. But if he wants to sell more records he could always include his sister’s ‘home’ movie, that’d do it.

News International plans to charge for news content by next summer – Calendar this as the final nail in the coffin for newspapers. By charging for content, especially when there is free content available. (Content, I must point out, that in the UK at least, is impinged with a vociferous right wing leaning that would make good old Dubya look liberal). Rupert Murdoch will lose enough money to forget all about newspapers and concentrate on making the Simpsons.

And that was…