iTunes offering DRM-Free Music!

Today iTunes is finally offering DRM-free music for your listening pleasure. Each tune now has a lighter AAC compression applied to it, 256kbps instead of iTunes’ customary 128kbps.

Called iTunes Plus, it’s available now, and all it asks is an extra 30 cents per song. I wonder if there is a big difference between the 256kbps compared to the previous iTunes files.

To access the iTunes Plus songs

First upgrade iTiunes software to version 7.2.0.34.

Then, you simply tell iTunes you’d like for it to offer you iTunes Plus songs whenever they’re available.

I would think myself that a 64 kbps difference in tunes would be fairly hard to detect and would not improve the audio by any ground breaking means. m looking forward to testing this theory on my JBL speakers at full belt to a Daft Punk tune, Thats a bulletproof test and I think id def be able to distinguish between the two qualities.

However this is a little of the point the main attraction of this development is the lack of DRM, letting you play your music wherever you want. Sweet! Play them them anywhere that can handle AAC-encoded files. I can now move away from iTunes which is fantastic news as I just dont really like it Id much prefer to use Winamp or even WMP 11.

Essentially if you buy these new iTunes, you control the way you want to listen it. No more shackles attached to the tracks and thats the way it should be from day one.

Google release Web Development Apps

“May 30, 2007 (Computerworld) — Google Inc. is using its first worldwide Developer Day on Thursday to launch Google Gears, an open source technology for building Web applications that can work offline.”

In addition the company will unveil plans to work with other vendors to mold standards that would provide developers with consistent APIs for building offline functionality into Web-based applications.

The free Google Gears technology builds on the existing programming models for the Web, and adds new JavaScript APIs for data storage, application caching and multi-threading features, the company said. The Gears tool will work with all browsers that run on the Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems.

An early version of Google Gears is now available,

Google joins technologies such as the Apollo tool from Adobe Systems Inc. and the Silverlight technology from Microsoft Corp.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said in a statement that Google Gears is “tackling a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud.”

Hammond said it has been several years since the industry has seen “significant innovation around the core of the browser itself,” which Google is aiming to do with Code Gears.

Although I work mainly in Networking and desktop support I’d love to know if Googles web development apps are industry standard or even better than what’s out there! I have a few friends who work in this field surely they will tell me about it’s prowess!

UFC 71- Alan Belcher Submission

This was an undercard fight at UFC 71. Alan Belcher takes this submission really well.

Microsoft’s touch screen developed.

Reading an interesting development on Crave.com today apparently Microsoft are making a Surface Computer or a tabletop system that allows users to interact with digital media in some unique ways.

“Surface Computer users can fingerpaint digitally, resize and interact with photos and videos, and even “digitize” some real-life events, such as splitting up a restaurant bill and researching wines. The Surface Computer can recognize some real-world objects and creates on-screen versions to interact with.”

They say its very similar to demo here now-famous YouTube video.

Its not intended for personal home users which is what I thought straight away but is going to be used as an interactive kiosk for businesses, restaurants.

The MAC Notebook

I had the privilege this weekend of using a MAC Notebook. And what a pleasent experience it was. With all my  relentless battles with windows in work I found it extremely refreshing to use an OS that was  a truly elegant  and had  hardware and software that is  full of useful little features and innovations. The Notebook itself was sleak and tidy looking making it very easy on the eye.  The boot up time was  very fast and when the option to connect to the wireless network came up it was a simple  click and I was surfing. On first look  the program navigation between apps  stuck out. It was a series of icons on the bottom of the screen and when you rolled the mouse over they enlarged. Very graphically impressive! The minimize and close  button for pages are positioned on the top left of each page . I suppose this is a very slight difference but still it took alot of getting used to because of the fact I used Windows for the lasr bgillion years. Having  a retro iMAC from years ago I was not totally unschooled in using the OS but it still took me time to find my feet around the nooks and crannies.

After using the machine I could not help feel that Apple provide this machine with gleaming shiny graphics, excellent functionality, usability but at the sametime implying that anything that borders on difficult dont worry about it we will give you a nice shiny little button which will do it and you can just sit back and drink your beer! I am none the wiser however to knowing to change the background or doing some basic configuration I really should of explored more but that adds to my interest which is probably a good thing for Apple as I might buy now after tasting the OS.

Intalling  apps was basically a drop and place function from the .EXE file to the an Appliccations folder. I dont even have to think anymore!

Impressively also  the MacBook is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with speeds revving up to 2.16GHz.

A nice thing as well was the lens in the display bezel? Introducing the iSight camera. You can video chat simply by opening iChat AV and clicking a buddy icon Or launch Photo Booth and take a few snapshots with the iSight,  That little camera lets you create web-ready videos as well. Very nice!

 

 

All in all I really liked using it. Thing is though Apple Notebook or Ubuntu Dell?