Have you ever bought songs from iTunes? Once in a while I would buy song(s) from iTunes because they have the largest collection of songs online. Some songs I can find it there, where I can’t find it elsewhere.

5 Billion songs sales milestone is quite fast, just four months after it surpassed the 4 billion songs in terms of sales. This is definitely an outstanding achievement. Good job Steve Jobs! Artists who want to make money is to hop onto the digital virtual bandwagon instead of relying on the traditional record sales at stores. The next update will be the 10 Billion mark, which I think it would not be a long wait.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer rolled out this week some user interface bits from the forthcoming Windows 7 at The Wall Street Journal’s “D: All Things Digital” conference. Click on the picture below for a video demo of the future OS.

Read the rest of this entry »

The high-definition disc format war is over, but the real losers aren’t those who bought HD-DVD movies or players but Toshiba, the company behind the bested standard. The company has announced today that their net profit this past quarter dropped an astonishing 95 percent, thanks to losses prompted by the format pull-out. Overall, net profit scraped in at 1.25 billion yen (US$12 million), versus 26.17 billion yen this time last year.

Toshiba also blamed a drop in the price of flash memory chips for their ailing profits. Revenue overall for the quarter was 3-percent lower than last year, at 2.09 trillion yen (US$20billion). Total profit for the financial year up until the end of March 2008 was 127.4 billion yen (US$1.2billion), a fall of 7 percent.

Microsoft launched this month Windows Mobile 6.1, an operating system update the company said will make it easier for IT managers to set up and manage devices than using Blackberry Enterprise Server and offer greater usability for mobile workers.

Windows Mobile 6.1 offers users Exchange connectivity to both IMAP and POP mailboxes, as well as auto-discovery features that will speed up the process of connecting to Bluetooth or other networks.

Keypad or touchscreen?

Windows Mobile 6.1 will offer users the choice of using applications via keypad or iPhone-like touchscreen, similar to HTC Touch.

Source: Microsoft WM 6.1 Device Center

Intel has announced plans to release an anti-theft initiative for laptops by the end of the year. The rate of data hacked from stolen or misplaced laptops has been increasing and Intel has planned to release this technology to prevent your vital data from being widely misused. Read the rest of this entry »

Since I wrote about Ubuntu 8.04 in the last post, it’s worth to mention OpenOffice 3.0 Beta. Note: This is only Beta and it’s not 100% stable nor fully tested. But some of you want to get your hands on the latest stuff. You can now download OpenOffice 3.0 from list of OpenOffice mirrors, choose a download site, and then find the Developer folder and the DEV300 supfolder and you should be able to download a Windows, Linux, or even Mac installer (hey, Apple’s fans).

What’s new for 3.0 where 2.3.1 doesn’t have?
Read the rest of this entry »

For all you Ubuntu lovers, the Ubuntu team is proud to announce the beta release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) on desktop and server - available to download. Some of the highlights of this version: Xorg 7.3 comes stock with 8.04, along with a newer build of the kernel, an updated version of Gnome, Firefox 3 Beta 4 and many others!

Source: Ubuntu

With the Asus Eee PC’s success, other competitors are planning to launch the low end computers to get a piece of the pie! Instead of making tiny notebook, Intel promised that their Atom chips will bring us cheaper computers (desktops) with “good enough” performance for basic tasks like surfing the web or viewing CDs and DVDs. But just how much cheaper the desktops might be? Well, according to this report, Intel expects the systems to be priced in the $199 to $250 range.

Now you can sync your Google Calendar meetings to the Outlook so you can view all your schedules even offline. On top of that, you can then sync your Outlook across your PDA, Blackberry or other mobile devices.

Source: Google

Even me as a gadget lover have the following question: what the hell’s the difference between a UMPC and a MID?  According to CeBIT, here’s the explaination finally.

UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC)

1. Business-class device for enterprise users
2. Runs a “heavy” OS like Vista
3. Optimized for office-use applications like Excel, Word, etc.

MID (Mobile Internet Device)

1. Consumer-class lifestyle device
2. Runs a ‘lightweight” OS with quick startup like Linux
3. Optimized for things like media playback and web surfing
4. In 2009 (or so) Moorestown-based devices will be classed as MIDs only

Source: Intel