Things like the eeePC from ASUS seem almost ideal but there are a few issues with it – slightly too small and horrific battery life. If the keyboard and screen resolution were a little better and the interface had a tad more polish (to suit the limited screen real estate) it would be damn near an instant purchase; but its biggest holdback is the battery – 2-3H battery life, one would assume quite a lot less when driving something the huwei E220 USB 3G/HSDPA modem.

Now both Intel and VIA have released their next generation mini-mobile CPU’s (Atom and Nano respectively) performance and battery life should be improved in these devices the Atom being the most interesting of the two CPU’s – hyper threading and SIMD instructions included but out of order execution has been dropped – it will be most interesting to see how such things are supported by software. Nvidia’s Tegra is very interesting an ARM based solution complete with OpenGL-ES support and a tiny power consumption footprint. One could conceive a decent portable device could be constructed based on this platform (the current non-3G iPhone is based on something with a similar architecture).

However my needs are pretty simple – I want a portable device with a reasonable screen (1200×800 pixels), reasonable keyboard for the fat fingered amongst us and fantastic battery life when used with a USB modem. I think drivers will be Tegra’s limitation and price will limit the adoption and acceptance of the Atom and Nano platforms, only time will tell – I think manufacturers have overlooked the reason that people have flocked to the eeePC, yes it is partially form factor but overall it is price I think there is a whole market segment between eeePC and subnotebooks (Vaio, Lenovo X300, MacBook Air) where people want some of the functionality of these subnotebooks, but not the prices attached to them.

** Addtion – whinge and you shall receive – seems the eeePC1000 may suit my needs – depends on final cost I suppose which looks like it might be going up.

If you’ve experienced the pain of a screwed up page (formatting) after embedding a youtube video – try the page here, very, very helpful! The above saved my site – it took forever to work out why the formatting went all fubar. The code supplied by youtube out of the box does not work well with WordPress and Firefox, most of this is related to changes introduced by the wordpress graphical editor. However, a few simple changes, removing of the “embed” tags and life is once again happy and videos, embeddable and viewable by the important browsers.

Now Apple don’t deserve all the credit here – EMI (and a big applause to them for the decision to go the route of portable music) deserve big kudo’s for being the first music distributor to offer tracks without DRM.

All is not so shiny with these DRMless tracks – they cost approximately 30% more than DRM encumbered tracks and albums however as they are higher quality (256kBit) this is somewhat easier to bare. The value proposition of the ITMS however is somewhat decreased now over CDs – with a CD which is basically the same price (if not cheaper) you get a permanent backup of it (the physical CD) and significantly more flexibility in the format that you can transcode the music into.

The biggest benefit of this – is that the ITMS becomes viable for people who want to use their songs on other devices (mobiles, Zune’s etal) hopefully we’ll see some price adjustment with the tracks on the store and many more labels jumping on the DRMless track bandwagon!

This is finally, and for once good for consumers!

Notes on my experiences – The ITMS is being slammed by people upgrading their tracks at the moment, the 45 or so songs that I had available to upgrade/update showed up, and came to $16.50 or so to have them in the higher quality more usable DRMless format, however when I clicked upgrade an error popped up, and I could no longer go to the upgrade my existing track selection. Was fixable by going to the shopping cart and selecting check for purchases – boom – a menu would you like to move your existing songs to the trash or desktop (i picked desktop – always keep backups of stuff ) and 45 tracks immediately started downloading.

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 – These 16 pairs of little hex numbers are causing quite a stir out on the internet. There is a massive underground campaign to spread these numbers about – as far and as wide as possible. The last time I saw this much fuss on the internet in relation to DVD’s was in fact the when dvdCSS algorithm was discovered and spread – that one was most useful as it lead to transcoding utilities that enable uses to convert there DVD’s to other formats (ie: iPod compatible clips/movies) and for players to be developed for operating systems where there is little commercial interest in developing a DVD player (Linux).

The reason that these 16 hex numbers are important for the community is that there is a potential for them to be used to create such utilities and players. For some reason the MPAA does not like this and are issuing DCMA takedown notices.

A reminder to those not liking these numbers spread about

1) They are a trade secret – the secret is out – you need to find your leak.

2) They are numbers

3) I’m in Australia – no DCMA takedown notice for you!

Looks like the number is once again just a plain old boring number again

“There has been a lot of misunderstanding. The key that has been leaked has now been revoked.” from the BBC

The latest version of the “BonEcho” optimised firefox has been released. Grab it while its hot.

A must for the bloggers out there! Several things that you really should consider when changing your wordpress theme. Something I should get around to doing some time!

M

Ever become worried that your site is not getting many hits from google? Perhaps you feel your site(s) may have been removed from the search results. Fear no longer, worry no more, cease your wonderment – google will tell you at this link!

Anyone who runs or manages their own website should not go past the Google Webmaster Central page – it has some very useful tools to help determine the status of your site (as it pertains to the google search engine) as well as handy tools to help you make the most of google services.

If  you’re anything like me, you have a few firefox extensions installed, but always wish you could be bothered to find one that does X or Y. This handy little list of 10 will provide some useful extensions to make Firefox even better (yes it is possible!)

M

When the original piece appeared on digg, there was much fuss regarding this being potentially real, and the detactors pointing out why it is likely not real. As  it has since been shown this was a portfolio piece, but the article here, goes over some good points, that people should apply to other sites when seeing “new” design. (Obviously with the individual aspects being examined relative to the appropriate brand).