World's Smallest Mac Laptop: "The Toshiba Libertto can now boast the distinction of being one of the world's smallest, if not the smallest, Macintosh! Here's an example of the Libretto 110CT running Mac OS 8.0 on the Basilisk II open source Macintosh emulator. Happily, you can multi-task and run the emulator in a window instead of full-screen if you so desire. Basilisk easily installs in moments and accepts installs of the OS from CD-ROM, floppy and downloaded image files." further details here.

CDs (MP3s) / TV (Films/Videos/Downloads): What are your views on all this? Whilst lending a DVD/CD of a film or music is completely legal (law-wise), where do you stand on copying CDs / MP3s / downloading TV off the internet / borrowing a dodgy copy of a film for one time watching etc? And what about allofmp3.com - currently (russian/international) law seems to say it's legal...?

Join the Waller Seti Team / See the team stats: Here
(optimised clients here - more info here) (alternatively do Grid / UD)

watermelon

double mouse: two mice, one you click with (left), one you move with (right).

argh! more sexy cool looking LED watches - this time available from a UK supplier! go here if you've got spare cash lying around, if not, then go somewhere else!!! (perhaps you'd like to buy an MP3 Player instead?)

Calmira II is an add-on to Windows 3.1 to make it look like Windows 95 and replace the (pretty) naff file manager that come with Windows 3.1.

With Windows 95 being 10 years old I dared people to install it... so here's the story and results: over on Hexus Forums. (posted from Opera 8 on Win95)

(kid from simpsons:) ha ha - Intel finally scrap Pentium 4 architecture (and HyperThreading), saying ignore megahertz, and gigahertz, "performance per watt" is what it's about now... (Intel will be making Pentium M their main chip in future... although probably with a different name?)

http://steveerrey.com - career and life advise for thirtysomethings - although equally applicable to 20 somethings. lots of free and interesting work / relationship related stuff on there. you might find it interesting (I did).

Is it just me or does google seem to completely ignore msn spaces websites? (0 results),

whereas (16) every (1) other (179), search (169), engine (15 results) finds (1 result) at (2) least (2), one (1) result when searching for monkeychai.

(number of results found in brackets)

super cool watches:
atari asteroids watch by fossil (wow!).
old skool red led watch.

Damn Small Linux Mini-Review written by me over here.

Link.

Read end of the world scenarios here. Some funny some disturbing. Great site.

Film Reviews - I've started putting film reviews on my website, here. Recently watched films: The Island, The Perfect Catch, Stealth, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Its been a while since I blogged. So long in fact I've almost forgotten how to do it. So heres a post. If its not very good I'm sorry and I'll try to do better next time.

So which AMD Platform is the most future proof?

Socket 939
Socket 754
Socket A

Clearly Socket A is the least future proof. Whats the other name for socket A?

Same list of Sockets whats the best value mainboard and cpu combo?

Can I compare say a "AMD Sempron 3000+ Socket A $137.36" to a "AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939 $234.95" I would think not as the Athlon 64 costs $100 more, but they do both say 3000+

these guys (icp-epia) sells all sorts of SWEET stuff, such as Pentium M / Pentium 4 Mini-ITX boards / Fanless 1ghz VIA Nehemiah mini-itx boards, but most SWEET of all is the fanless Pentium M 600mhz Mini-ITX board! I'm not sure how this would compare to other chips, but I would guess that it should equal a 1ghz P3, or higher?

holy cow, this is frikkin awesome!.
mac os x for intel hacked.
10 technological things CNET misses.
Dual Dual-Core Opteron "Laptop" here (2x Dual Core Opteron CPUs, making 4 CPUs)
Crying While Eating Videos.

want linux for free but can't be bothered downloading a 600mb+ file and writing your own cd? then get ubuntu linix shipped to you for free.

alternatively if you do want to download it, and burn it to cd, but don't want to download 600+ mb, then check out damnsmalllinux which is only a 50mb download.

Link - Man dies of computer games.

here's doom on the ipod.
here's a cheap laptop for sale.

Say you wanted to build some kind of multi-computer server farm / or just wanted to buy some more pcs / or just wanted to put together a super cheap pc / or just wanted to upgrade the core of your current pc (mat?), here's some options, and prices inc vat:

Intel Pentium 4 / Celeron System: (Socket 478)
PCCHIPS Socket 478 motherboard: £25
Celeron 2.26ghz: £44
Total: £69

AMD 64 / Sempron System: (Socket 754)
PCCHIPS Socket 754 mobo: £32
Sempron 2600 (@1.83ghz): £43
Total: £75

AMD Athlon XP / Duron / Sempron System: (Socket A)
PCCHIPS Socket A mobo: £15
Duron 1600: £27 (/a Duron 1800: £29)
Total: £42 (£44)

The Socket A (AMD) platform clearly offers the cheapest system - and I suspect it'll be quite some time before anything challenges it on price... (just add 512mb DDR ram for £30, and a heatsink/fan (if not included with the cpu) and you're set) ... if you wanted something even cheaper, you'd probably have to look on ebay*

*although you could end up paying more or the same for something worse such as this Duron "1800+" - whereby the motherboard manufacturer (ECS/Elite/PCChips) have decided to rip people off by giving something like a Duron 1.3ghz chip a "performance rating"... which is totally unsanctioned by AMD (Duron's have never had performance ratings applied to them).

bitta junglist massive bo hardcore morris dancers.

the lyrics go something like this: haaa! hit em with a bong, hit em with a bong, hit em with a bong, who could it be though bob? with a bitta bass... then after that i'm not sure what he's saying...

PC (VIA Mini-Itx) in a box file for sale on ebay: here. Quite a neat looking box - although you'd have to add your own powersupply - looks like it would stack well though :)

And did the Apple Mac Mini copy off one of these ultra small pcs?

4 dual core cpus, making an 8-core system by AMD and Boxx with 32gb of ram...

Atari in turbulant times, NasDaq listing problem, plus they want to leave infrogames. Link

Apple iPod 20Gb Colour Pics, and information about the new colour 20gb iPod now on my site.

Apple have gone nuts, completely nuts, maybe Ellen Fleiss has taken over, first they switch to intel, and now they've released a multi button mouse!

(no seriously, it's true, it's only taken them, what, 10 years to wake up to the internet and the fact that people might want the ability to scroll web pages with a mouse).

Windows Vista (previously Longhorn, basically the next Windows) is checked out at elite, here's what we get to look forward to: (basically Windows XP with new themes and silly extra features, and more slowness, yay, and you can change it all back to classic view so it looks like Windows 2000)

"After using Windows Vista Beta 1 for a while, I've come to the conclusion that it's a pretty good foundation to build something on. It's pretty stable for an initial Beta, but it feels sluggish. And somehow when you use it long enough, it feels even more sluggish, but the memory consumption doesn't change. The programs might also freeze up for a minute or two, and suddenly start working again. What I didn't show you in the pictures or tell you before is that when a program freezes and you try to close it down, a small window appears which says that Windows is trying to find out the reason why the program froze up. If the problem is found and is fixable, the program might become responsive again. But from my experience so far, it's hardly ever fixed."

Link test the sex of your brain with the BBC.

AMD's Geode GX processor (their low-power embedded market CPU) is based on the Cyrix 5x86 (486 on steriods / Pentium 1 class cpu, just about?) - is compared to the VIA C5P/Nehemiah (which USED to be based on the Cyrix 686/C3 chip, but they decided to go to WinChip/Centaur instead at some point) over at Sudhian

It makes for some interesting reading. (It also makes the 1ghz VIA C3/Nehemiah appear FAST, as the Geode is about half the speed - and if you put this into perspective - the 1ghz Nehemiah is about the same as a P3-500mhz chip - so the Geode must be somewhere around a P2-250mhz)

In other VIA related news - a company have released a $220 US Dollar VIA 1ghz PC with monitor, hard drive, etc! Link, Link.

2 cool new things I learnt about this weekend...

CouchSurfing - Free accomodation all over the world...

GeoCaching - finding other people's stuff all over the world using GPS...

Time / Tiny Stores close as they no longer can accept Credit Card payments. Full details here.

iPod arrived today. Much excitement and review to follow...

New Computer Time

Okay, so I want a new computer - I want FAST, small form factor, and will be using my current HD and DVDRW - main uses will be UD/ Seti/ Photoshop/ Gaming. (I intend to get a Radeon 9700/9800 256mb card or something similar) But I'm stuck on what CPU/mobo/system combination - here's the options from cheapest to most expensive:

System1 - Pentium 4 3.2ghz / ASUS mobo small form factor cube (socket 478 - so no upgrade potential) / 1gb ram
Total price around £300

System2 - AMD 64 3500 (2.2ghz) / Shuttle Nforce3 small form factor cube (socket 939 - so plenty of upgrade potential, even the possibility of dual core AMD chips... and will be able to run Windows 64bit) / 1gb ram.
Total price around £460

Edit - Found this system (using a QBic EQ3901A barebones cube) for £371 inc vat so am gonna get this system with an AMD64 3500.

System3 - Dual Core 2.8ghz P4 (Windows see 2 processors as it's 2 cpus in the space of one cpu - lots of heat though) / ASUS/Abit ATX mobo (intel 955 chipset) / 1gb DDR2 Ram / ATX midi tower case (would prefer small form factor, but dual core chipset isn't available in small form factor yet).
Total price around £508

System4 - Pentium M 2ghz / Commel Mini-ITX motherboard / 1gb DDR2 RAM
Total price around £610 (excluding case as I'll be able to use my current case) - Found a cube system for £199 (AOpen EY855) so the total for this would be £581 (still too much!)

What are your thoughts? The AMD seems the best: most future proof, 64bit capable, performance is better than P4 3.2ghz, heat output is less than P4s...

or I could get 10 x 1ghz P3 computers for £350 - then I'd have the equivalent of 10ghz :)

Police in britain: retards.

"He said: "The murder rates in some of these slums are worse than in a lot of war zones and that could explain why, when plain clothes officers pulled a gun on him, he may have run away."

hmmm... what would YOUR response be to a PLAIN CLOTHES person pulling a GUN on you?!?!? natural reaction would be to run in about 50% of people I guess!! So the police chase the innocent dude and decide to stick 5 or 6 bullets in his head!

bbc news

unbeleivable - suddenly the police have a shoot to kill policy on anyone who runs away from them when they (in plain clothes) pull a gun out on someone!?!?!?

Link

USA national naval government department of irony congratulates itself on building the first ever stealth boat with the minor setback that it's too dangerous to be put to sea.

Gilly said there had no significant drop in takings since the attacks of two weeks ago and, as she was speaking, a group of Hare Krishna, chanting and banging on their tambourines, walked past.

She laughed and said: "Look at that. That is so London. These terrorists are bonkers if they think they can make a difference. Not in London they won't."

Gilly sounds cool.

gerbils

gerbils in the news. hurrah!

wooo harry potter spoiler

motorists learn how harry potter ends :-) what is the world coming to?

robotic cars: driven by via-epia, another driven by mac os X (and mac mini's), driven by pentium-m

video of dude doing a 'drive by' spoiler ruining the end of the new harry potter book for people going to buy the book. (the last person's reponse is funny... "Nooooooooo!!!")

Videos and photos of the weekend can be found here (click videos for videos, and click gallery for photos - on the videos page there's also a link to phil's photos).

RSI: h'apparently two button mice give you RSI - and h'apparently the one-button Mac mouse is better because your index finger can rest in a much more natural position on the right hand side of the button... so if you've got a two button mouse, configure your computer for a left-handed mouse and then you can put your index finger on the "right" button - much more comfortable.

"The multi-button mouse is a MAJOR cause of RSI/OOS: very dangerous. Waggle your index finger and you can see related muscle movement right up into your shoulder. Holding that finger hovering over the left button sets up a slight but continuous muscle tension that can be very damaging in a remarkably short time if you have to do a lot of mousing. The Mac one (or no) button mouse can be clicked with only minimal movement of the right index finger, allowing that finger to return to a resting position to the right of the mouse." link

SCO Group vs. IBM. Just thought I'd post an update here, coz this is pretty mental stuff:

"On July 14, 2005, Groklaw obtained [3] a sealed email [4] from Michael Davidson to SCO Group senior VP Reginald Broughton sent on August 13, 2002. In it, Davidson describes the Santa Cruz Operation's own investigation into whether or not Linux contained proprietary UNIX source code. "At the end, we had found absolutely *nothing*. ie no evidence of any copyright infringement whatsoever," according to Davidson. Darl McBride had recently become CEO of on June 28, 2002. Quickly thereafter he championed the SCO Group's accusations of "line-by-line"[5] copyright infringment against Linux in the hopes of bolstering SCOX's tepid NASDAQ performance." found at wikipedia.

Full details on the Groklaw site - basically they say the case is now over... (Although it may take SCO a while to realise this...)

Anyway, I found all this coz we found an old SCO Xenix box at work.

Join the Waller Seti Effort (aka Distributed Computing revisited): The old classic SETI has sort of stopped, and been replaced by new Seti - if you did the old version then it remembers your old score, and you can transfer that account over to the new seti - if you were already a member of the Waller team, then you'll still be a member as long as you transfer over your classic (old) seti account. To get started with it follow these steps:

1. Activate your old account, or make a new account: Seti Homepage.
2. Download, Install and Run the BOINC* software: Seti Download link.
3. Join Team / See the team stats: Waller Seti Team

When you do install BOINC - don't bother with the screensaver, "it's gay", to quote burnt face man.

* One of the neat things about BOINC is that it's multipurpose, and there's various different projects you can get involved in if you don't like the idea of SETI. Or you could join the HEXUS UD team - to look for a cure for cancer.

apple and the switch to intel

apple and the switch to intel

Apple have stated that they will be selling intel based macs in 2006.

Their 'reasons' seemed to be 'ooh we can do a better laptop'*

eweek:Glaskowsky : In this article Glaskowsky says intel processors will not cost less than ibm, that the pentium m is not a good enough reason to switch, and ibm has similar processors.. So the real resons he hints at are that apple won't have to do their own hardware designs for strange devices, and that apple could do a seamless windows (as in windows compatible) platform.

(* alli-g-ly)

Part 2:

arstechnica:stokes : In this artcle John Stokes gets some insider info too.. and suggests that ibm don't make enough spare chips for apple (because no one else really buys 2.5ghz ppc chips) and then apple complain when they didn't order enough. And intel will offer good bulk discounts, [for pc processors], while also being able to supply the processor for the next generation of ipod devices.

so waddaya reckon? - will the best power pc to run darwin (and hence mac os X) in future be a microsoft xbox 360 (over 3ghz, 64 bit) or some pentium 4 with rosetta emulation. or something better from ibm. Is speed what apple are looking for? or just under-cooked laptop users?

Napoleon Dynamite (2004) Film, available from Blockbusters. Get it, watch it, ENJOY it, laugh hysterically until you cry*. (*that's what happened to me at one part of it - maybe you'll laugh as much at some other bit). It's £9.99 from amazon.co.uk if you want to buy it (cheaper than play/playusa.com)

Hey there, read my latest review on epiacenter.com - I review the Mini ITX VIA EPIA MS-12000 - a small 17cm x 17cm motherboard with 1.2ghz CPU, etc.

We got the games!!! WOOHOOO!!!

What an awesome moment to stick it up the French. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Other operating systems: There's the usual Windows, Mac OS X, and millions of different Linux versions, but there's also: SkyOS (written from scratch), and Syllable (also written from scratch). Syllable is a free 31mb download for the Live CD so can easily be checked out. More info and links here.

Amiga people might want to look at AROS - an x86 Amiga OS aimed at being Amiga compatible. I wonder what would have happened if after the Atari Falcon (Atari's last proper home computer release), Atari decided to write/port GEM/TOS (Atari OS) for/to the PC? (Perhaps it could have been slightly successful allowing Atari people to move over to a familiar place?)

Syllable seems quite quick, but the general user interface is like going back to using an Amiga (it's a bit ugly / basic looking - in fact the default theme is called 'Amiga' - you can choose from Beish, Next, Win98, Warp looking windows etc), the calculator's called 'Albert' so if you wanted to find the calculator you look in the Albert folder (rather than looking in a Calculator folder). Plus when you're in the Albert folder you don't even know it's a Calculator until you run it (the icon is simply the default Syllable 'program' icon). Whisper is a mail client - again you can't tell till you actually run the program as the program icon doesn't show you a mail icon or anything to give you a clue what the program does. The internet works though (ABrowse - at least it gives you a slight clue as to what it does). Well, I managed to crash the desktop by changing the window themes and the resolution / colour depth at the same time. (So now I need to reboot - I think I'll reboot to something else though :)

And in more OS related stuff, apparently Longhorn* (Windows XP + X number of years) is basically no more secure than Windows XP + SP2 - I was expecting something half way decent, but instead it's likely Microsoft are just going to force people to use it by dropping support of W2K and XP in the future. *link to PCWorld preview of Longhorn.

Che'ez! FoxZ3 First Look and FoxZ2 with Waterproof Case



I spotted these two cameras in John Lewis - the FoxZ2 (in orange) is a 2 megapixel camera, and is priced at £59 including a waterproof case! The FoxZ3 is a 3 megapixel camera, with a 2" screen, and is only 12mm thick - the camera comes with a small camera case, and is priced at £79.99 - it's available in Silver and Black. Both cameras have no optical zoom. Click images to enlarge. Expect to find a review of the FoxZ3 on DigiCamReview in the future.

There's a review of the thinner (9.8mm) FoxZ2 here. The FoxZ3 features MPEG4 video, so for example, you can fit around 86 minutes on a 256mb SD Card at 320x240, and 43 minutes at 640x480.

have you seen this? it's a J2EE development platform, based on a mini-itx VIA EPIA board/cpu running "a pre-installed copy of SUN's J2SE 5.0 platform, while the underlying operating system choices are Sun's Solaris 10, with either CDE or JDS3 preconfigured" - now if this isn't one of the freaky-est computer available, then I don't know what is.

dude gets fired for having an opinion in the UK.

Apple Dashboard - it's basically a version of Konfabulator but for the Mac, BUT it's main flaw is this: with Konfabulator, you can stick your favourite widgets on the desktop, open up your program, internet explorer for example, and resize IE so that you can still see your widgets. With Apple Dashboard you can't! It's simply all widgets and nothing else, or apps and no widgets.

Other things: You can't actually quit Dashboard - it's always on! (unless you get a third party app to switch it off!) Although you can remove it from the dock.

Matt: whats the difference between 'console' and 'terminal'?

I've put photos, and started a mini-review of the Mac Mini, on joshwaller.co.uk

Link - Deep Impact is a success and the BBC is there. Well, not really but you see the point. I love astronomy.

Take this poll: How many cups of tea do you drink in a day? Results: How many cups of tea?

Megapixel myth?* What do you think - If you could get an 8 megapixel camera for the same price as a 4,5 or 6 megapixel camera - would you get one, and why? Would you pay £300 for an 8 megapixel camera, instead of paying £200 for a 6 megapixel camera?

Black and White photography - do you bother taking photos in black and white? If you do, when would you use black and white instead of colour, and if you don't, why do you only shoot in colour?

* no one really answered the question here so I thought I'd make a fresh topic about it.

this dude really hates horses. (warning bad language). (via waxy).

Google earth seems pretty neat really cool! Link. Like a computer version of a world atlas, road map, directions, information guide etc. It's free and about an 8mb download.

One of the pictures is Nelson, New Zealand. The other is Nelson, Lancashire, UK, including the famous Railway Street and other locations (Southfield Street, Lancaster Gate). Some locations have better satelitte images that others. (for example, in London, you can make out cars and trees quite clearly). The third screengrab, is of the Anthony Nolan Trust in London - if you click the image you can see a bigger version, where you can see all the little car dots - there's even a house nearby that seems to have a bright blue swimming pool.




Other neat features: double click (left) to zoom, double right click to zoom out. click and drag to scroll, click drag and throw the image to get it to continue scrolling. There's a sight-seeing tour (of America) in 'My places' as well. The middle button on your mouse will let you move the view around in 3D.

I've included a picture of the statue of liberty. If you go to a big american city like new york, you can turn buildings on and it'll show you all the buildings in 3D (pic attached to post). The only problem seems to be that sometimes the program will go really slow - othertimes really quick... restarting the program seems to speed it up again though - and it appears to keep a cache of the data it's downloaded so you don't have to wait ages for it to download it again.

Other neat stuff: It has Area 51. Railroads. Crime Stats. Census. Cloud coverage. Volcanoes. Earthquakes. Grand Canyon's pretty cool. There's even more cool places you can check out here. In fact - this would make a cool virtual holiday on a big projector :)

sun now make a laptop...
amd suing intel for intel making people buy intel (and not amd) ...

Supershadow - Star Wars Mania!

Features plot and scripts for the final trilogy.

The geek of geeks passes.

mugabe is a big fat pratt. news link. normally countries have all their houses knocked down by natural disasters, such as the tsunami, but in zimbabwe, the government is knocking down all the houses because they're led by a big fat pratt. comments here worth reading. someone should go kick his ass.

Have you seen the new button on here - blogger will let you upload photos easily while you post stuff, and they'll host if for you. Perhaps in answer to msn spaces. (You've always been able to do it with 'hello'/bloggerbot but this new way seems much easier).

DigitalCameraInfo review the Olympus E-800 8 megapixel Digital SLR - what do you think - why would you need 8 megapixels? Surely 6 is enough - in fact, I've printed 3 megapixel images up to A0 (16 A4 sheets), and it looks very good (due to printer interpolation).

shake it shake it shake it.

anyway, i've downloaded a screen saver called screenpaver - it basically does a slideshow of all your photos as a screensaver - just like the built in one in Windows XP - however I don't have windows XP - but I was wondering if there's a free slideshow screensaver out there that you know of?

the table

table and chair photos ('The Writer')
Click to view images:
[1][2][3][4][5][6]

severed arm

man loses arm in combine harvester. or something like that.

Film Reviews / Thoughts.

The Bourne Supremacy - About 20 minutes in they're accessing a computer system, and it prompts for a password ie. restricted access, yet it says 'Treadstone Project' - AS IF it would display the name of the secret project if it's restricted access!!? Anyway really good film. (ooh they're gonna make a 3rd one! due 2007)

Saved - Funny. Hyper 'born-again' christians at a hyper christian school struggle with vairous issues... worth watching.

also, I don't think anyone's written about i'robot on here (apart from a link to a trailer) - but it's very good worth watching at least once. depite all the blatant (crappy) 'converse all stars' adverts.

other films I've seen recently: Batman begins (link to my thoughts on it), Millions, Monster In Law, Spivs, The League of Gentlemen.

so we're getting a mac (not me personally). an old imac - unknown spec. we want to put OS X on it.

there's a good guide here on how to do it. and there's more info here.

However - I have some questions: I've found the requirements for OS X 10.4 (here: 256mb ram, firewire (why?), slot loading imac supported) - but will this run on earlier macs or is that deliberately disabled? Also what are the requirements of OS X 10.3? (according to this tray loading imacs will run it fine).

intel mac, osx mac intel, windows mac, osx dell, and other experiments. thinksecret (been slashdotted so super slow/down)

SMOG ALERT

smog (from the BBC)
heavy showers and thunderstorms (from metcheck)
Localised flash flooding, hail, gusty winds and frequent lightning will all combine to produce hazardous travelling conditions.
Sounds fantastic. Friday daytime, 7mm rain in N20, 4mm rain in Hampstead.

hamstead heath (london, UK) gets giant table and chair. bbc news.

civil servants (england, UK) don't have to wear ties. bbc news - quote: "He made it plain, though, that there was still no room for "Blue Jeans" or "Trainers", still considered barbarians by many." more funny comments at the bottom of the article.

foxit (download.com) - free adobe acrobat reader alternative.

Search and browse smarter with MSN Search Toolbar, now with Windows Desktop Search

Did you know that Microsoft have an add-on for IE that adds tabbed browsing...? it's a big download at 7.88mb!

Search and browse smarter with MSN Search Toolbar, now with Windows Desktop Search

"Cruise, 42, was previously married to actresses Mimi Rogers and Nicole Kidman, from whom he separated in 2001." Crikey I didn't know he was married to Mimi and Nicole at the same time, kept that quiet, then seperated them at the same time, sneaky. Now he's marrying Katie Holmes. bbc news.

dell would happily sell mac os x, if apple were willing. linky link

Adam is in need of GPS solutions for outdoor pusuits - I have a Garmin eTrex. Any mapping solutions would be appreciated.

fancy a printer with your mouse sir? link.

dude switches from linux to mac (does anybody know who he is?). slashdot post about it. and mac os x for intel is apparently out there.

dude makes some photos, gets into trouble with the secret service (in "free" america).

this is a lovely website, with some lovely colours and some lovely pictures.

health tests easy to do and informative.

this thing's weird. really weird.

ebay link

Megxon M500 - digital camera with 2.5" screen - plays MP3s, plays MPEG4/DIVX video files, will RECORD TV and fit 90 minutes on a 512mb SD card!! 6 built in games, dictaphone. It's got tv-in/out so that you can directly record TV onto it! It's like an ultra portable video recorder/player! (it's pretty small too, at 18.5mm thick) It does VGA/30fps videos and has STEREO AV in! It's also got an alarm clock and built in calendar.

more weirdness: super fujicam a cheapo digicam that's trying to cash in on the fuji/fujifilm name!

rumours from the land of crazy people:
dude thinks intel will merge with apple.
Apple are a hardware company and their real enemy is Dell (not microsoft).

okay, lets make up some random crazy dude stuff / and some not so crazy stuff:

Apple's enemies are all other companies other than Apple (excluding their partners, Intel) - so that means that Microsoft/Dell/HP/Linux are competitors. Apple is interested in making money, pure and simple, IBM seem to be stopping them from making the most of the current market situation. The current market situation is made up of millions of people who want to use the Internet/Email, but are having major problems with Windows due to Windows/Internet Explorer stagnation - Microsoft have been taking a VERY long time with an extremely out of date browser, and an operating system that's probably got more patches than original code. So Apple want to make the most of this, and to do this they need suppliers who can supply them in bulk (and this is something Intel can do).

Apple could release ultra cheap Mini (Intel) Macs (or just leave them at the current price), sell more than Dell, and end up with 30% or more market share with all those people running Mac OS X because they just want to use the internet and email and are sick of buggy/dodgy windows / viruses / spyware / popups etc.

Those people who don't want to go Apple, can just use Firefox, and have to put up with dodgy Windows.

Google are officially God - all $77bn of it. cnetblogs tell the story.

I think CASIO may have just made the perfect digital camera.

The CASIO EXILIM EX-S500 - it's ultra compact, ultra cool, has 5 megapixels, 3x optical zoom lens, large 2.2" screen, built in anti-shake technology, and VGA MPEG4 video with sound, letting you record up to an hour on a 1gb SD card. If it's anything like the S100 I've currently got then, it'll be fantastic! (the S100 is ultra small 3mp, very fast very easy to use, lots of controls and features, but a limited video mode (320x240 /15fps))

link

Check out Dynamism.com - they get the brilliant gadgets only available in Japan, reprogram them in English and flog 'em. Legends.

well. holy cow batman. apple using intel cpus. FACT.

keynote speech by steve jobs in summary:

ibm can't make fast enough G5s, or G5s that'll work in laptops.
apple have been working on OS X for both G4/G5 and Intel chips for 5 years.
exchange features will come to the mac (currently you can't access calendar properly, and getting email to work properly is a pain too).
they're using a 'rosetta' program that lets you run powerpc apps on intel chips, but people can quickly and easily change their software to run on intel macs.

more links: apple press release | intel press release | MacNN speech notes.

just for some background - Apple have never ever used intel/x86 processors before, they have always used Motorola / PowerPC / IBM PowerPC chips. It makes you wonder what will happen next? Will you be able to install OSX on normal PCs? Will Macs become much cheaper? What CPUs will they use/will the be 64bit? And why didn't they go for 64bit AMD cpus?

apparently 'you will be able to order the 10.4.1 preview for Intel today'

G5 performance vs P4 performance (G5s twice as quick as P4) - perhaps P4s will simply replace the G4s and Laptop CPUs to start with? and then later use Quad core P4s when they get released? apparently they've been talking to AMD as well, although if Apple's deal with Intel is anything like Dell's deal with Intel, then that may never happen...

IE7 not for Windows 2000. "What kind of silliness is this?" Microsoft claim that IE7 will rely on too much stuff that's in Windows XP, meaning they couldn't possibly make it for W2K. I thought this was the kind of stuff Microsoft weren't allowed to do? You know, Microsoft, if you remember all those law suits? Do you remember them? you're not meant to tie software into an operating system. story here. I don't care too much, I guess we'll just have to roll out Firefox onto 3000 Windows 2000 PCs, when IE6 becomes completely obsolete. (It's pretty much obsolete as it is anyway).

The Weblog Review

The Weblog Review - this site review's blog sites. i found that funny. you might too.

G8 Summit in Edinborough. they're planning a protest on the 6th* of July to 'Make poverty history' - who fancies going? I do! (*6th according to the BBC - the make poverty history website has the date as the 2nd of July, not the 6th)

Interesting Mac Virus situation outlined here: linky. Facts such as: there are no viruses for OS X, there are literally over 100,000 viruses for Windows. Pretty interesting reading.

In other PC related news, I upgraded W2k on my work pc to WXP, it's a P4 2.6ghz/512mb/40gb hard drive machine, and now that it's got WXP on it's flipping slow! (Yeah I know it's best to do a fresh install but that would've taken ages, and upgrades should work, otherwise they shouldn't offer the feature.)

And a general appeal: does anyone know where I can buy one of these? (I know you can buy them in Singapore airport, but as I'm unlikely to be passing by Singapore airport anytime soon, I doubt I'll be able to get one).

remember joanne fothergill? well i found her wedding photos! here! (if you're out there, feel free to say hello! - email address on the right)

Worried your partner is cheating? click here to buy GPS panties.

factual post: there's a video of a fat kid dancing here.

dude and his company switch the mac citing windows/intel as "a national economic security risk". intel head chief recommends people switch to mac. here.

link

Please observe a digital minutes' silence for the voice of Tony the Tiger who is dead aged 91.

Okay, I'm on my 3rd PC in as many days that I've fixed using Firefox - this is due to Internet Explorer being broken and completely unfixable no matter how many times you try and reinstall it. (ooh look, you can get an Internet Explorer theme for Firefox so that people think they're still using Internet Explorer. Plus it seems to speed things up. link.)

this guy, wrote about getting a lomo camera. well worth a read. he also setup route79.com which is his website about his bus ride to and from work in London.

link

Scientist predicts entire contents of human brain could be downloaded to a supercomputer by 2050. Paris Hilton's could be done today using a Commodore 64.

Hey check it out, a big Atari logo on the top of the E3 expo - who'da'thunk it? Probably not the real Atari anyway (who pretty much went bankrupt, sold it to JTS (whoever they were/are), who sold it to Hasbro, who sold it to it's current owners Infogrames, who promptly realised how cool the Atari name was/is/could be, and renamed themselves Atari). Maybe Blade Runner will come true, and in the future massive Atari adverts will be everywhere? E3 coverage at engadget.