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The portable media player is fast becoming the way we read books, watch movies and listen to music and audio on demand. The CD is the first item to fall it will appear with local music stores (other than the large chain store department stores) opting for a digital music kiosk where you can pay for downloads and burn your own CD and take it away or download it onto a memory stick for playing on your media player, eg Ipod, Zune, mp3 or VOD player.

The cost of downloading a track online is about $1.69 per track, videos (full screen high resolution) is just $3.99 approx Australian from one provider.

I can tell you this service doesn’t suit me because under the rather old fashioned laws that govern my job I must own every CD I have digitize on my computer system. Also that allows hard copy back ups to be kept which you cannot do with this liquid data style system.

Well how stuff works is a website about exactly that, from computer technology to cooking, you get simple explanations’ about how things operate, how things are created and why they work they way they do. www.howstuffworks.com

If you hear something that we talk about on these segments and don’t quite understand the words, then help is available. Webopedia is a free online dictionary for words, phrases and abbreviations that are related to computer and Internet technology. Webopedia.com provides an easy-to-understand definitions in plain language, avoiding the use of heavy jargon when possible so that the site is accessible to users with a wide range of computer knowledge. From the beginners to the advanced user this site can assist most people make sense of the jargon.
The definitions on Webopedia evolve and change as technologies change, so the definitions are frequently updated to reflect trends in the field. New terms are added on a daily basis, and many of the new terms come from suggestions from the site's users.
This information was compiled from the webopedia website

MICROSOFT'S has announced that the software giant will be involved in the voice over IP market by January. Talk about missing the boat, skype has been around for how long!!! However, Microsoft have dipped into voip before on their msn software, but it this time around they will adding VOIP technology and software the company's operating system, desktop applications and server software. Microsoft is believed to be creating options for its server software allowing voice conversations and video conferencing over Internet networks.

According to Microsoft it will soon stop selling downloads of songs on its MSN music site but it will start redirecting customers to the Microsoft Zune site which has just been unveiled. The new website for the player describes the different fuctions the new player will provide for customers, it will also be place where people will be able buy and download songs for the Zune.

Skype, which is a software driven popular VoIP service, apparently has been having major technical difficulties with its SkypeIn service. The Skype In service enables Skype users to have a normal PSTN or POTS phone number and receive normal phone calls through their Skype service. However, a small proportion of calls to UK numbers are were only getting through, with voice mail failing and some users not receiving any calls at all. This has been a headache for the company, whose platform engineers have been working hard to resolve the problem quickly. However, the problem has been steadily getting worse since the middle of October and Skype were emailing an apology to customers who had complained about the problem and promising some form of compensation. However, it seems that there may well be business customers reporting lost clients, and personal users missing out on contacts, it seems unlikely that Skype will be able to satisfy many of the affected users.
According to the info technology website, theregister.com the SkypeOut service which allows Skype users to dial normal numbers, uses infrastructure supplied by British Telecom and is working fine, and Skype-to-Skype calls are also connecting without any problems.

Microsoft and Novell have released details that they plan to enter into an agreement that would allow open-source Linux software to work with Microsoft's Windows software. This appears to be a complete back flip by Microsoft as they spent years trying to defeat open-source software. However, the growing popularity of Linux servers has meant that its only a matter of time before Microsoft had to adopt a can’t beat them join them approach.

Well if you thought the Core Duo processor was good imagine what could happen when Intel release their new Quad Core processor. The dual core processor basically has two CPU processors inside the one chip and the new Quad Core processor will have four. The problem with new processor is that most applications such as games in the high-end performance intensive graphics area, where these chips are aimed, have not been developed to take advantage of the multi-threaded capabilities of the four-core processors. However, its believed that the video editing industry and software providers for such will begin working on development as the processing in the new quad-core kills its dual-core predecessor, with performance improvements in the region of 80%. So computers will be much faster in the future and more powerful especially in the areas of CGI (Computer Graphics Imagery)

November will be a big month in the USA as Microsoft has set November 30 as the release date for Vista (and Office 2007) to business customers and January 30, 2007 as the date for the official launch to consumers and The World At Large.
We are waiting for a response from Microsoft Australia with an official Australian release date for the new operating system to land on our doorstep. However, in the USA it will be five years, three months and five days after Windows XP made its debut that the new Microsoft Windows Vista will be released. It believed that the actual release date in Australia may well be January 30, 2007.and Microsoft Office suite 2007 will be released on that day.
However, Vista and Office 2007 will be shown off first for business customers on November 30 and aslo being shown off is the email server program called Exchange 2007. From that date, Microsoft will make programs available to corporate customers who hold an enterprise license or software assurance deal with Microsoft.
It is thought that the mainstream 'consumer launch' will take place nearly two months later when the retail stored will offer a massive amount of Vista retail packs as well as desktops and notebooks pre-loaded with Vista.