Creative are due to launch the diddy Zen Stone for a paltry £27.99 that gets you a 1GB MP3 player. It is available in six flavours, have a simple navigation control (aka Shuffle), drag and drop your tracks, and upto 10 hours of music playback. We will bring you a review soon.
SimCity 4 Rush Hour Intel Update
Aspyr Media has released a free patch for SimCity 4 Rush Hour to add Intel-based Mac support. The patch is not yet an official launch, rather a public beta, asking that you provide feedback of anything that still needs fixing. It is available for download here.
Sling adds Apple TV to SlingPlayer
Sling Media today launched a new version of SlingPlayer for Mac, which amongst other things, adds support to control Apple-specific devices. SlingPlayer can now control the Apple TV and play its content from any broadband connection, meaning you can now remotely control and listen to your iTunes library. This is great news and shows that Sling definitely wants to support and improve functionality for Mac users.
Samsung start shipping 16GB flash memory
Samsung have started shipping 16GB flash memory NAND chips. These new chips are built on a 51 nanometer process, that means they can squeeze 16GB onto a single chip. This new process also improves data read and write rates, so these new 16GB offerings will work faster too. Apple has reportedly ordered a large amount of memory from Samsung for their future iPod devices and no doubt the iPhone too. Who knows, maybe we will see a laptop using flash memory too.
Folkestone Kent - Hit by Earthquake
Not exactly tech news, but being based in Folkestone I felt I should bring you this news. At around 8.18am this morning (GMT) we were the victims of an earthquake. Reported to have measured 4.1-4.3 on the richter scale, things shook for around 15 seconds.
My own experience was pictures crashing to the floor, ornaments and bottles falling over, but most saddening was losing half of my morning cup of tea and my internet connection. All of my family were pretty scared, this being our first experience (and hopefully last) of such an event.
On a more serious note, there was also an explosion of someone's gas boiler pretty near to us. There was also a complete house collapse and many chimney stacks had fallen in the roads nearby. Emergency crews have been very busy making sure everyone is safe and also evacuating unsafe buildings. I would like to put my thought out there, to hope that everyone is safe and well.
iQuiz Maker for iPod - Free App from Aspyr
Aspyr Media, Inc. has released iQuiz Maker, a new program that allows anyone to create their own custom trivia packs, sync them to their iPod and share them with friends. Users of iQuiz, the fast-paced entertainment trivia game from Apple, can download the free iQuiz Maker from Aspyr at iquizmaker.com
iQuiz Maker works seamlessly so you can write, create, and package your very own quizzes. Download the free application today to begin putting the world to the test. Included with iQuiz Maker, or available as a separate download, is Quiz Installer, which allows for easy loading of quizzes onto an iPod.
Currently iQuiz Maker is only compatible with Mac OS X 10.4. The PC version is scheduled for release in May.
Apple Reports Second Quarter Results
Good news all-round for Apple and the faithful…
Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2007 second quarter ended March 31, 2007. The Company posted revenue of $5.26 billion and net quarterly profit of $770 million, or $.87 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $4.36 billion and net quarterly profit of $410 million, or $.47 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 35.1 percent, up from 29.8 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 43 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Apple shipped 1,517,000 Macintosh® computers and 10,549,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 36 percent growth in Macs and 24 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter.
Griffin Technology Air Dock for iPod
Griffin Technology Inc., today announced their AirDock, a charge/sync/play docking station for the iPod, which has been designed to position your iPod as the centerpiece of any home entertainment system.
Griffin's AirDock is much more than just another dock for iPod. AirDock provides the output connectors for integrating your iPod with your TV and home stereo. Connect the included AV cable, and soon you are enjoying your music, audiobooks, TV shows, movies and music videos, and your own photo slideshows, direct from your iPod to your TV and sound system. Living up to its name, AirDock even includes a RF remote control, so you can control playback from your couch. It also lets you connect your iPod to your computer for data synchronization and charges its battery while you work. Just connect AirDock to your computer with the included USB cable.
AirDock features:
- Connect AirDock to your computer's USB port to sync or play your iPod while it's charging
- Connect AirDock to your home entertainment system to share your iPod with the whole room
- Included RF remote controls audio and video playback from your iPod
- Works with 4th & 5th generation iPod, 1st & 2nd generation iPod nano, and iPod mini
AirDock for iPod (9803-AIRDOCK) is priced at $69.99, and is available from Griffin's website and most major retailers nationwide.
More new UK Get a Mac Ads
Apple have posted yet more UK versions of their Get a Mac adverts. Office Posse (pictured) shows the various elements of Microsoft Office, in aptly coloured suits, all in the Apple Camp. Ramping up maybe for the new MS Office for Mac release.
Markzware ships FlightCheck 6 for Mac
Markzware has today started shipping version 6 of its FlightCheck software. The updated preflighting software now offers support for XPress 7, Adobe's CS3 products and Intel Macs.
FlightCheck Designer and FlightCheck Professional v6 for Macintosh are being shipped now for those of you who need to purchase. Upgrades are available free of charge for registered FlightCheck 5.8 users who purchased from 1st February, 2007 onwards. UK upgrade details for pricing have yet to be announced.
Adobe Media Player - iTunes Challenger
Adobe announced the planned launch of Adobe Media Player later this year. This new player offers multi-format playback, along with the ability to deliver paid for content. It will also enable the playback of high quality flash-based content, and certainly sounds (on paper) to be a strong challenger.
Quote: "Adobe Media Player is developed using Apollo, the code name of Adobe’s recently announced application runtime that empowers content publishers and web developers to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) on the desktop using technologies such as Flash, PDF, and HTML. Adobe Media Player is planned to be available as a free beta download from the Adobe Web site later in 2007 with full availability expected by the end of the year, from Adobe and a wide range of media and technology partners."
You can check out the full press release here.
Steve Jobs & Bill Gates Comedy Sketch on BBC
A very funny comedy sketch just appeared on "Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul", starring Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. They played the parts of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (respectively) and were turning each other on talking about tech stuff. Bill wanted to shoot his downloads all over Steve at one stage. Very funny, I just hope it appears somewhere online soon, so you can all enjoy it.
Check back here soon for some screenshots, that I managed to grab from scrambling for my remote control when it was shown tonight at 21:30.