In what’s being portrayed as an anti-spam measure, Microsoft has decided to eliminate Hotmail access from its standalone email products. Not for all Hotmail users, just the ones with free accounts. IMHO, dedicated email clients are the only thing that makes the service truly convenient in the first place.
I think I just wet myself.
Canon just announced a new version of their flagship dSLR, the EOS-1Ds Mark II. Similar to the original EOS-1Ds, the new version has a 50% greater pixel count, reduced shutter lag, a larger frame buffer for faster continuous shooting, and uses the new version of Canon’s DIGIC image processor for better image quality.
Oh, and the body alone is about $8K.
Cyborg-in-Chief Involved in Gaming Novel Soundtrack Pt. 2
As I mentioned in a previous posting, I worked with composer/artist John Bergin recently to create a soundtrack to Traitor General, the latest Gaunt’s Ghosts novel by Dan Abnett. The Gaunt series takes place in the gothic sci-fi gaming world of Warhammer 40,000. John and I created a soundtrack (with John doing most of the heavy lifting) to accompany a limited edition hardback version of the novel. I wrote an article for The Black Library about the making of the soundtrack and interviewed John about composing the music. You can also see a title list and the full credits here.
Serial ATA microdrives
A consortium of storage manufacturers has announced a new
drive interface for tiny hard drives meant to go into handheld consumer electronics like iPods and cellphones.
“The CE-ATA interface involves creating a new way to address the major concerns of consumer electronics manufacturers,” the news article says.
So does anyone else think this means drive manufacturers will be adding built-in DRM?
Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL
Wired has a story about Chatting AIM Bot, described as “a free service that lets anyone play a devious practical joke on a friend, in which an artificially intelligent AOL instant message, or AIM, bot carries on an innocuous, 10-minute conversation before finally lowering the boom and informing the unwitting human at the other end they’ve been had.”
The bot, which apparently IMs the victim using the capitalization-challenged, abbreviation-loving style common to 13-year-olds, then emails a transcript of the conversation back to the victimizer.
So Hot You’re Cool
You may have thought of using your spare time to throw a robot together, but where’s the life-threatening thrill of that? Adrenaline junkies or the merely destructive would probably prefer a do-it-yourself flamethrower project. Hey, even Mark Pauline had to start somewhere.
How the Floppy is like Fassbinder
If the Associated Press says it, it must be true:
“Like the penny, the floppy drive is hardly worth the trouble, computer makers say.”
It seems just about everything else you can use to store data is faster, more reliable and holds more data than the venerable floppy disk, which isn’t even all that floppy anymore.
Incredible Anti-T-Mobile Rant (and Sidekick II Review)
Gizmodo’s got a great rant and review about how great the new Sidekick II is, and about how awful T-Mobile is. I’ve got one of the original Sidekicks, and have been waiting for the II to come out, so I can upgrade. But now I’m not so sure.
Anyone feel like making suggestions?
Imation CD-Rs: Favored Medium of Terrorism?
Does anyone else feel for Imation every time the news media shows the latest Al-Qaeda
computer discs seized in Pakistan, and they’re always Imation-brand CD-Rs? I mean, do they know that they were on Imation media, and what difference does that make if they were? I would think a company would really sweat such evil association, sorta like Kool-Aid and the Jonestown massacre.
Myst IV On the Web
Ubisoft has opened the doors on a Web site preview of Myst IV: Revelation. The site does a pretty decent job of recreating the look and feel of the game itself and there are the usual puzzles to solve and mysteries to contemplate. The press release says there are also “exclusive bonuses to discover and collect.”