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“It’s always darkest just before dawn. So if you’re going to steal your neighbours newspaper, that’s the time to do it.“ – Anonymous
My week in tech was pretty uneventful this week, whereas Gareth’s was pretty full. He purchased an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid, which he has yet to unbox, though he does promise a review when he gets it plugged in. But he was particularly stoked about his other endevour, he has jailbroken his Apple TV. The superlatives came thick and fast, which I think indicated that he was quite pleased.
Then I kicked off the stories…
Bill Gates joins Twitter – The Uber-Geek has joined the eponymous micro-blogging site. At the moment he’s using it, apart from following a few dubious Tweeters, to promote his new Gate’s Notes site. Which is keeping us all informed about his charitable works. That’s nice for him, but you’d think his ego would be stroked enough just looking at his bank balance.
$100,000 prototype laptop stolen from Apple’s campus in 2009 – It’s reported, on Zirana.com, that a prototype laptop, most likely the next Macbook Pro, was stolen from Infinite Loop. It’s since been recovered and investigations are ongoing. I know it was probably something really low rent, a pissed employee trying to score big after being shit-canned. But I keep seeing a Mission Impossible kind of thing. Complete with Tom Cruise and all the cool gear, and the theme tune, definitely the theme tune. And maybe Howard Stringer stroking a cat, and laughing diabolically. But I’m guessing that’s probably just me, time to up the dosage again.
Bing to be default iPhone search engine – Is it a negotiating ploy, to squeeze more money out of Mountain View? Or have relations between Google and Apple Become that strained. Either way Ballmer has sensed an opportunity to push MS’ search alternative. And given the dominance of the iPhone in mobile data, and hence mobile search, this move should buy Bing some extra share points. However, there is no need for panic as it turns out setting your default search engine, is just a visit to Settings.app away.
YouTube and Vimeo get HTML5 video – You can sign up for the beta’s right now, if you are using either Safari or Chrome. Firefox will undoubtably follow, although they’re betting on the Ogg Theora codec, rather then H264. Either way it’s a win win for Mac users, Adobe’s Flash and IE in it’s many flawed forms are bound to lose out.
Cisco successfully trials IP router in space – A point to point network in space, satellites bouncing data between each other, on route from ground station to ground station. Every day these boffins think up marvellous new way to improve the intelligence of the machines that they produce. The only thing wrong, in my opinion, is the name, IRIS or Internet Routing In Space, just doesn’t do it for me. It’s just begging to be called SkyNet.
IBM and Fujifilm develop 35TB magnetic tape cartridges – Tape devices are the last bastion of the old guard in storage. Dull and old fashioned, but reliable and with ever growing capacity, the work horse for archiving in most data centres the world over. So another increase in capacity, this time to 35TB, is just what the IT geek ordered. It’s strange to think, that it’s going to get to the point where you could probably store the sum of human knowledge on a single tape. As opposed to Rob Enderle’s which could go on the back of postage stamp.
NY court revives antitrust against the major music labels – It’s amazing that with all the competition in the music industry, the price of music downloads just sort of ended up at 70 cents. Now the antitrust investigators in NY have successfully appealed against an earlier ruling, the big four labels have a case to answer. On just how, with no collusion, that price, a price higher then the cost of physical media, came to be set. The major labels have nothing to fear though, they can always count on Bono to ride to the rescue of these poor oppressed corporations.
