Sony Readies iPod Rival

Sony is preparing to take another swing at Apple Computer's iPod digital music player, a top Sony executive said this friday.

The company is developing a new music player that will go on sale in the U.S. and other markets over the next year, alongside a companion download service and software, said Takao Yuhara, senior vice president of Sony, at a briefing with reporters in Tokyo.

Sony sold 4.5 million digital music players in the year to March, and expects this to rise to 5.5 million in the current year, the company said Thursday when it announced its financial results. In contrast, Apple shipped 8.5 million iPods in the first three months of this year alone, it said earlier this month.

Firefox ad on Google Homepage

It seems Google is getting serious about Firefox. Internet Explorer users who navigate to Google now find, in addition to the spartan search box and Google logo, an advertisement encouraging them to switch to Firefox with the Google Toolbar. According to the Spread Firefox website, Firefox is the first third-party product ever featured on the prime real estate of the Google homepage. Google has also been promoting Firefox using its adsense program, where affiliates get one dollar for every firefox download through their sites.

Is Microsoft's monopoly in danger?

This news may give a hope of that. A free word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation programs that are compatible with their Microsoft Office counterparts and that work in a browser. Thinkfree is here to change the world. Though still some bugs are there, but its far better compared to open office suite.

Time for Crossbow

Microsoft, which has been carving a larger slice of the mobile device OS market, is developing a new product, code-named Crossbow, which will incorporate features such as instant messaging, a Microsoft executive confirmed Monday.

Crossbow will have strong links with Office 2007 and Exchange 12, Microsoft's pending new office application suite and e-mail server, said Pieter Knook, senior vice president for the mobile devices and telecoms sector. Crossbow would be the successor to Windows Mobile 5.0, released in May 2005.

Philips files for patent to force ad viewing

Philips Electronics has done it again. Flush with heady optimism after successful products such as the digital compact cassette (DCC) and the super audio CD (SACD), the redoubtable European giant has developed a way to keep television free for the masses for the foreseeable future - a patent application for a device which prevents a user from changing the channel during commercials.

To put it bluntly, the television industry has been having some economic problems of late. The classic model of running a commercial break every 10 or 15 minutes during a program is breaking down as consumers discover the joys of avoiding ads through channel surfing and outright skipping via digital video recorder.

Apple unveils official support for booting Windows

Apple has announced a public beta of an application they call Boot Camp that allows owners of their Intel Macs to easily install a copy of Windows XP. Previously the domain of hackery and jiggery-pokery, Apple has officially sanctioned the installation of Windows onto their hardware. The application is in public beta and allows users to install legitimate full copies of Windows XP Home or Professional (not MCE, multi-disc, or upgrade copies). While not the virtualization that some had been hoping for (running Windows apps on top of OS X), this, at least, uncomplicates the current process.

Last month a team of hackers known only by the names of Narf and Blanka successfully won a user-run contest that offered up US$13,000 for the first person who could sucessfully manipulate Windows XP and Apple's new Intel hardware so that users could install the former onto the later. While the contest was technically "won," the process was probably far too complicated for the average user, and even required that the user have access to a PC.