Software: Footballers Ahoy

By | November 24, 2011
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 Electronic Arts Inc. has launched the 2004 version of NCAA Football 2004, the number two selling football game behind Madden NFL. It has 20 new mascots, over 150 new teams, new pre-game tunnel presentations, and an online competition for the PlayStation 2 version something called a “Talk in-game chat”. I have no idea how that last bit works, but I thought I’d tell you anyway.
 
At the time of writing the website seems mighty slow; either EA are getting cheap or else folks have been awaiting this product for a while.
 
 
 

Site: PDA Reviews

By | November 24, 2011
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  Interesting new website from BargainSpots.com, Inc., “a company devoted to helping consumers make informed decisions before buying handheld/wireless computing devices”: PDAReviewSpot.com.
 
 
The site provides links to written reviews and price comparisons of the latest models of mobile computing devices by such manufacturers as Palm, Hewlett-Packard, Handspring, Sony, and Toshiba, among others.

Software: Messenger 6.0 Is Out! Whee….

By | November 24, 2011
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 The new version of Microsoft’s Instant Messaging program, MSN Messenger, is now officially out. The new version comes with, wait for it, more than 60 new emoticons (smiley faces to you and me), including ones that come alive with animation (o horror of horrors), and the ability to make personal emoticons (even more horrors); dozens of background images and personal display pictures for the IM screen, online games such as Tic Tac Toe and Minesweeper which users can play at IM speed with friends (no wonder companies don’t like their employees using chat programs at work), an integrated, easy-to-use Webcam service to share live video and voice with other users, easy ways to save your favorite IM conversations to a personal hard drive.
 
 
What’s probably more interesting in the long run is MSN Messenger’s closer integration with other devices, including cell phone, personal digital assistants (PDAs), MSN Direct watches or Tablet PCs. Clearly this whole IM thing is going to converge at some point with SMS or text messaging — a mobile phone version of the same thing, really — while the more fancy enhancements are, as Microsoft says, “to help the online network attain its long-term goal of providing broadband users a growing array of communications services”. That’s short for making messaging a serious tool in the work place (presumably with lots of self-designed smileys with it too).
 
I have not used Messenger ever since it tried to automatically load itself every time I use Outlook or Outlook Express. (If you have the same problem, try this). I prefer Trillian, which keeps my desktop free of little IM clients. But then I’m a grouch.

News: Netscape Is Dead, Er, Long Live Mozilla

By | November 24, 2011
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 AOL has effectively killed off Netscape, the browser that started the whole WWW thing, laying off 50 developers and moving what is left of the project — an open source version of the browser called Mozilla — to a non-profit basis, Paul Thurrott of WinInfo writes in its latest newsletter. 
 
AOL purchased Netscape in November 1998 for a $4.2 billion (no, really) but last month signed a 7-year contract with Microsoft to use its Internet Explorer as the underlying technology in its AOL software, which pretty much signalled the depth of faith it had in its own browser. It really is the end of an era, or else the end of a very long funeral. IE now controls 95% of the browser market, pretty much reversing the situation about seven years ago.
 
Wired puts a more positive spin on the development, quoting Mozilla folk as saying this is the beginning of a new chapter, and saying that the Mozilla browser has “surpassed IE in terms of features and standards compliance. For example, the latest versions of Mozilla support tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking and junk-mail filtering — none of which is provided by IE.” This is Mozilla’s own version of the event.

Mail: More on Pirates

By | November 24, 2011
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 More mail about online piracy and the music industry. I wrote earlier:  
 
I agree with you about people being upset, but I’m not so sure about the recording off the radio bit. Digital versions don’t have DJs interrupting before the end of the song, and they’re perfect copies, and can be copied perfectly and distributed easily. I can give you my whole music collection on a CD or two. That makes it a different ballgame…
 
Here’s Lynn Dimick again:
 
That’s true. The question I have is this: Is music swapping costing the industry money? Now, on the surface anytime you have a product being given away for free it is going to take away from sales. But, if the product is being given to a consumer who cannot or will not buy it, even if it cost $1 then there is no lost sale. My suspicion is that the music industry is producing music that is appealing to those who have less money and less inclination to spend than before. Even if music sharing were not available they would not be buying CDs.
 
 I am 43. I have well over 200 CDs in my collection that I have bought. But I haven’t bought a CD in the past 3 years. Why? Because they (the music industry) are not producing a product that I listen to. The demographics that I belong to (white male 40+) has more money than any other age group, especially the teenagers that seem to be doing all of the sharing.
 
I heard on the news this morning that Bruce Springsteen had a concert last night at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. 55,000 people came to see the show. He has 9 more dates there. Most of those attending are going to be my age and not teenagers. Who has the money and who is being ignored by the music industry?
 
Thanks for that. Thoughts, anyone? A friend recently forwarded me a piece from The Guardian on this very topic. My view is that the music world has splintered so effectively, hastened by the advent of the Net, that it makes it so much harder nowadays to find the music we want. There’s some very appealing stuff out there — my favourite of the moment is Lemongrass, for example — but you’re not going to find them in a CD shop. In a way this diversity is good but us busy folks (I’m no spring chicken either) don’t have the time or energy to look too hard for this kind of thing. I’ve found a sanctuary of sorts in Emusic where at least one can experiment legally without blowing a hole in the housekeeping.