Apple has released iTunes 4.9. This update includes support for podcasting now. Link

Maybe I should wait on buying a Mac. Apple's decision to abandon IBM PowerPC chips in favor of processors from Intel raises the possibility of new, affordable Apple computers that could boot both Mac OS X and Windows. "Apple will not do anything to prevent it," says Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director with Jupiter Research in New York. (Today, Macs can run Windows only on a sluggish x86 emulator called Virtual PC.) Link

And so it begins. This is preparing the public for what is next, OSX for all. Journalist David Kirkpatrick wrote in his weekly column in Fortune Magazine that Michael Dell has openly expressed interest in licensing Apple's Mac OS X if the company decides to go that route. Other companies have reportedly been keen on the idea as well, but refused to be named publicly. According to Kirkpatrick, these companies are at the mercy of Microsoft and could face some kind of retaliation from R...

Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser will not have to wait until IE7 to experience tabbed browsing. MSN has shipped a new build of its MSN Search Toolbar that adds basic tabbed browsing support to IE6. But the feature is not fully integrated into the browser, instead relying on the toolbar to create tabs. Tabbed browsing capabilities first appeared in beta releases of the MSN Search Toolbar, but were stricken from the final 2.0 build that was released last month. ...

Developers at the 2005 Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco have submitted benchmark reports of programs running under Rosetta -- the emulation layer that will help smooth the transition between PowerPC and Intel -- and early results show that quite a bit of work is still needed to bring the software up to speed. At his keynote Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs demoed Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop running under Rosetta. To make it work, the program converts PowerPC to Intel co...

Mozilla has released an update to Thunderbird. "Mozilla Thunderbird is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component. Thegoal is to produce a cross platform stand alone mail application usingthe XUL user interface language. The intended customer is someone whouses Mozilla Firefox (or another stand alone browser) as their primary browser and wants amail client based on mozilla that "plays nice" with the browser."  

I recently spent the entire weekend building myself a new home office.  I previously had a small, cheap computer desk from one of the big office supply chains, and it just wasn't efficient for doing actual work.  So I went and bought a nice new glass/metal desk, a few accessories, and went to work.  I spent several hours carefully bundling and running wires, and making them nice and neat with wire ties.  I think I actually did a pretty good job of concealing most of the ...

"Windows Defender is a security technology that helps protect Windows users from spyware and other potentially unwanted software. Known spyware on your PC can be detected and removed. This helps reduce negative effects caused by spyware including slow PC performance, annoying pop-up ads, unwanted changes to Internet settings, and unauthorized use of your private information. Continuous protection improves Internet browsing safety by guarding over 50 ways spyware can enter your PC."

I think this is really great, and a big surprise. I expected the number to be much lower than what it is. A study conducted by Nielsen Entertainment showed that 64% of online gamers are woman. Also, about 8% of that are woman who are at least 45 years old. The study doesn't stay what type of games are played, so it's assumed that this also includes flash based games as well. So if any of your are on Xbox Live be sure to look me up.

I'd really like to know what happens to the people who "lose" these laptops.  "In advance of a House Committee on Government Reform hearing, in which the matter would have come up anyway, the U.S. Commerce Dept. responded to a Committee request by disclosing in a private briefing yesterday that it believes as many as 1,137 laptop computers have been lost from the Dept.'s inventory since 2001."

AMD and Streamload have launched a new service, and they are offering 25GB accounts for free. WWW Link

I told you a few weeks ago about a man who received 6 years for pirating software. Now another man has been given a record sentence of 7 years for selling pirated software on his website. He was also ordered to pay over 5.4 million dollars in restitution. "Nathan Peterson, 27, of Los Angeles, sold copyrighted software at a huge discount on his site, iBackups.net, prosecutors said. The FBI began investigating the site in 2003 and shut it down in February 2005"

Blu-ray seems to be helping the downfall already. Sony, just make a great gaming console, and leave the blu-ray to something else. "Sony will delay the European launch of its PlayStation 3 game console by about four months to March and cut its target for worldwide shipments this year by half, the company said Wednesday. Sony had planned to launch the new version of its blockbuster PlayStation console in November, setting the stage for a three-way showdown with Microsoft and Nintendo du...

That's a lot for one disc. "TDK announced Thursday that it had reached a new milestone in data storage on Blu-ray discs, revealing a prototype that can hold 200GB. The disc doubles TDK's previous 100GB prototype and is possible by creating six distinct layers of data, each capable of holding 33.6GB."

While I think the firing through text messages I posted about a few weeks ago is worse, this isn't too much better. Will this be the new way employers use to fire and lay-off employees? "RadioShack on Tuesday followed through on plans to lay off 400 employees as part of an effort to cut expenses and become more competitive in the marketplace, but the method in which the firings occurred has some fuming. The company notified employees of their dismissal through e-mail."