The iPhone Saga Continues ...

WITH only a dozen days to go before Steve Jobs strides out of the left-side wings of the huge stage in the ballroom of the Moscone Centre in San Francisco to open Macworld 2007, we are up to our ear lobes in rumours.

I am told on fairly good authority that the actual announcements will be fairly small. But that's only a rumour, too, and does not sit with what you might call the main spate of rumours that Jobs will again, at the end of his keynote speech, have "just one more thing" that will shred everyone's socks.



In other words, the long-awaited iPod-with-bigger-video-screen-and-mobile-phone.

Before committing my well-bruised body to that maelstrom of speculation and misinformation, let me mention a product much more likely to appear - Apple's iTV.

This, further evidence that Apple aims to dominate the world's living-room entertainment, is a sort of set top box that will stream movies, music video podcasts and picture slide shows from networked Macs and PCs to television sets and video screens.

And now back to those damned iPodPhone rumours.

Speculation about an Apple wireless mobile device has been around for more than a year and, in the lead-up to Macworld 2007 has become all but a frenzy, fed principally by a couple of industry analysts who have gone hard on its imminent release. Of these I have already written, and advised taking some salt with the soup.

Some say it will be a GSM 2.5G phone, others that it will be 3G working in the 1900MHz and 2100MHz wireless frequency bands, and still others, noting what is said to be a relationship between Apple and Cingular, one of the biggest US mobile phone networks, that it will operate in the 850MHz band. This last-named is the frequency used by Telstra's national 3G NextG network.

But there is another possibility, that the device will be an iPod with Bluetooth for personal networking, and WiMAX for wireless internet access.

So, just for rumour's sake, think of an iPod with WiFi and/or WiMAX capability, with an internet browser in its software. It could, for example, have a scaled-down version of MacOSX as its operating system.

Then think of that little iPod hard drive also holding software not unlike Skype or Gizmo. And just suppose the device had a plug-in microphone/earbud setup, akin to a mobile phone hands-free unit - or maybe even a built-in microphone and earpiece.

Would you then have an iPod mobile phone with which you could make internet phone calls to anywhere in the world for next to nothing?

The technology is there. It may not yet be 100 per cent reliable, but it is improving all the time and nothing is more sure than that the internet will soon be at the core of almost everything we do, if it is not already.

But will that be the "just one more thing" we will see in San Francisco on January 9? Your guess is as good as mine.

Wii outsells PS3 in Japan

Sales of both the PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles jumped in Japan during the second week of December thanks to greater supplies of the consoles from their respective manufacturers.

Nintendo's Wii was the best-selling console for the week at 108,237 units, according to figures from Media Create. The retail market data provider ranked Sony's PlayStation 3 in second place among consoles at 70,942 units and Microsoft's Xbox 360 in third at 17,168 units.

The figures mean both the new consoles recorded their best week of sales in Japan yet, with the exception of the launch weeks.

Among software sales games for the Wii easily outranked those for the PlayStation 3. Two games, "Wii Sports" and "Pokemon Battle Revolution" made it into the top-ten with sales of 69,923 units and 67,607 units, respectively, for the week. The best-selling PlayStation 3 title was ranked at number 35 in the chart, which is dominated by games for the Nintendo DS handheld and PlayStation 2.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 saw sales drop during the week but they were still relatively good for the year-old machine. During the week, sales of the machine totalled 17,168, Media Create said. That's about half the amount sold the week earlier but well above sales recorded in November.

Waiting for Apple's cellphone call

Apple talks of combining the company's hit iPod digital music player with a cellphone.

The introduction of most cellular phones doesn't cause much buzz on Wall Street, and when it does it usually is because analysts have actually seen the gadgets. But when the cellphone maker could be Apple Computer Inc. and the company hasn't even confirmed the existence of the device, the chatter just won't stop.

In the past six months, talk about an Apple device that combines the entertainment functions of the company's hit iPod digital music player with a cellphone has reached new heights. The hypersecretive Apple has stayed silent on its phone plans has only amplified speculation about a device. Entering the cellphone business likely would give Apple a huge revenue boost, which would be good for current shareholders over the long term.

People familiar with the matter say Apple's cellphone is in the works. One person says it likely would have voice and music capabilities in its initial version, but not email and word-processing software. Apple has provided some tantalizing clues about its plans. An Apple patent application related to a wireless iPod-like device was recently made public on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Web site. Analysts and bloggers have widely speculated that the Apple cellphone could be called the iPhone, but the prospects of that look more doubtful now: Earlier this week, Cisco Systems Inc. released a family of Internet phones under the name iPhone.

Ms. Runkle wrote that she had been told that two cellphone models went into production this month with four-gigabyte and eight-gigabyte storage capacities, similar to the iPod nano and enough to store as many as a few thousand songs. She has Morgan Stanley's most positive rating on the stock.

As big as the risks are, it would be riskier for Apple to ignore the cellphone market. Handset makers are improving the entertainment functions of their products, designing them with music
playback in mind and adding more storage capacity.

Read full story at MoneyWeb

Cracks found in new Windows

Researchers, hackers find flaws in Microsoft's Vista




Microsoft is facing an early crisis of confidence in the quality of its Windows Vista operating system as computer security researchers and hackers have begun to find potentially serious flaws in the system that was released to corporate customers late last month.

On December 15, a Russian programmer posted a description of a flaw that makes it possible to increase a users privileges on all of the company's recent operating systems, including Vista. And over the weekend a Silicon Valley computer security firm said it had notified Microsoft that it had also found that flaw, as well as five other vulnerabilities, including one serious error in the software code underlying the company's new Internet Explorer 7 browser.

The browser flaw is particularly troubling because it potentially means that Web users could become infected with malicious software simply by visiting a booby-trapped site. That would make it possible for an attacker to inject rogue software into the Vista-based computer, according to executives of a company based in Redwood City, California, that sells software intended to protect against operating system and other vulnerabilities.

Should one buy Vista ? Atleast I am going to wait and watch ...

Innovative Firefox Ad

Today I found this ad for firefox while surfing ... quite innovative I would say. If you cant read the text (because of image resolution) it says : - Always use Protection ; GetFirefox.com ; Firefox is a free web browser that offers greater privacy and prevent pop-ups, spyware and viruses.

At $200 Xbox 360 HD DVD is a bargain

While the Sony PlayStation 3 may have an integrated Blu-ray player, Microsoft is doing its best to blunt that possible competitive advantage with a next-generation DVD player of its own for the Xbox 360.

Dubbed simply Xbox 360 HD DVD player, the fairly basic external drive connects to the Xbox 360 via a USB cable. You can either stand the drive upright or lay it down horizontally. Whichever way you go, the whole outboard concept is a little kludgey, but the drive's $200 price tag is quite reasonable considering today's stand-alone HD DVD players start at $500.

Better yet, Microsoft is also throwing in an Xbox 360 Universal Media Remote and, for a limited time, a copy of Peter Jackson's King Kong HD DVD.

The Xbox 360 HD DVD player offers most of the features we expect from stand-alone HD DVD players, such as bookmarking and a zoom function. The 360's current component video and VGA adapters both have an optical digital output as their highest-quality audio jack, which can carry only standard DVD-level Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound.

The good news: Dolby Digital is the base soundtrack on all HD DVD movies, so you should always get a solid surround soundtrack instead of dead air.

Apart from its connectivity drawbacks, the Xbox 360 HD DVD player makes a perfectly suitable means of watching HD DVDs, and it's a good way for Xbox 360 owners get in on the next-generation DVD action without investing too much. Of course, adding $200 to the cost of the Xbox 360 puts the total cost of the console at the same price as the PlayStation 3 and its integrated Blu-ray drive.

Apples to apples, if next-generation DVD is what you're looking, the PS3 is going to be the better overall solution from a design standpoint. But for die-hard Xbox 360 fans, the PS3 just isn't an option.

On the Ending Note : Microsoft didn't market the Xbox 360 HD DVD player to work with PCs, nor does it officially support PC connectivity, but there are reports on the Web that you can indeed hack the player to work with a PC. However, on top of a set of Windows drivers, you'll also need a copy of DVD playback software, such as WinDVD8, that supports playback of HD DVD discs.

You can get one here

Also read the full review from CNET

Seagate CEO: We help people watch porn

You think tech execs are boring? Check out a freewheeling interview with Seagate's Bill Watkins, who might be Silicon Valley's most outspoken CEO.

When Seagate CEO Bill Watkins spoke to Fortune senior editor Jeffrey M. O'Brien last week, he showed an openness usually reserved for cynical media commentators and reviewers. Over a dinner in San Francisco the outspoken Texan told the reporter about Seagate’s ultimate goal.

"Let's face it; we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn."

Watkins goes on to comment on a range of issues, from his own board members to the HP scandal, the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD war and about saying no to meetings to watch his beloved football team.

When asked about the recent scandal involving HP, and if anyone has taken notice, he says: "Wall Street certainly didn't. I saw it and thought, it's good to know there's a board of directors more dysfunctional than mine."

So, I will say thank you Mr Watkins, for showing us that some CEO’s are still living, breathing people.

You can read the whole story here

MS boss prefers a Mac

No, No .. its not what you are thinking ... I am not talking about Bill Gates, this is about Jim Alchin, the man who has just brought you Windows Vista has told his boss Stever Balmer that if he had his way he would buy an Apple Mac.

"I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft."

That was the very unexpected declaration made by Windows chief Jim Allchin in a January 2004 e-mail to Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates. The previously undisclosed e-mail was introduced as evidence last week in Microsoft's antitrust trial in the USA. Now, in a blog post responding to the coverage, Allchin cautions against taking the statement out of context and writes that he "was being purposefully dramatic" to make a case for a major overhaul of the Windows development process. In the 2004 e-mail, Allchin wrote that he saw "lots of random features and some great vision," but he warned that the Windows teams had lost their way.

Allchin says in his explanatory post that the company made the necessary changes. And he takes the opportunity to make a pitch for the result, Windows Vista, describing it as "far, far better than any other software available today."

Presumably that means the Seattle-area Apple Stores shouldn't be looking for a surprise customer anytime soon. Nevertheless, Steve Jobs suddenly has an eye-catching quote to add to his slides for next month's Macworld keynote.

Apple's iPhone ... Can it fail ??

There are a million reasons why the worst kept secret in the world, Apple’s upcoming iPhone, will succeed. Unfortunately for the Cupertino company there are even more reasons why it will not.

When Apple first introduced its iPod range of mp3 players it solved a big problem for consumers; space. The music players had up to that point been severely lacking in storage capability and the public knew it.

Enter Steve Jobs with his funky glasses, bean bags in the office and beautiful design. The iPods took the world by storm, and has no doubt been the catalyst to Apple’s other successful products. Ultimately, however, Apple is not a phone company. The last ‘revolutionary’ product that came out of the hipsters was the Mac mini, which largely flopped.

The mobile phone market is extremely competitive, and newcomers normally don’t do too well. Not only do the manufacturers have to compete on technology and performance, but getting in on lucrative deals with the carriers as well.

Apple also has to take into consideration the frequency that people trade in their cell phones. Unlike a high end mp3 player, mobile phones can be traded in as often as twice or three times a year, according to trends and emerging technology. Apple can not afford to jump on an already frantic race to always be first to market as well as being competitive on price. Ultimately, end users will be very interested to see Apple’s offering, but the hype will die off eventually.

I am sure the good people at Apple are aware of these concerns. At times they have proven to be equally brilliant at creating a profitable business model, as at creating eye-catching products. What future holds for Apple, we can only wait and watch.

Apple to Take on Xbox, Wii, PS3 ?

Wall Street analyst says Apple hiring game developers.

The latest Apple rumor has the computer maker entering the gaming console, taking on Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.

In a note to clients published Monday, Prudential Equity Analyst Jesse Tortora said his checks show the Cupertino, California computer maker is hiring video game designers. The hires could indicate a move into either the gaming console market or that Apple could add fresh gaming capabilities to its existing line of iPod music players.

If Apple attacks the gaming console market, it would put the company up against some various serious competition. However, such a move might be needed to keep Sony and Microsoft from dominating the digital living rooms.

Both Sony and Microsoft are relying on their consoles to push new technologies into the living room, posing a serious threat to Apple’s own digital lifestyle aspirations. Apple has been edging into the living room building the ability to download feature films into its popular iTunes digital media store and announcing plans to introduce a set top box, code named iTV, that will allow users to more easily move downloaded films to their televisions.

Ultimately, we think Apple’s decision to enter the video game market could depend on its need to defend its position against the competition in the battle over the digital home.

Apple has dabbled in the console market before. The Pippin (see below), a set top multimedia player and game console designed by Apple and licensed by Bandai was a flop in the early 1990s. In May of 2006 it was named by PC World as one of the 25 worst tech products of all time.



There are two possibilities for Apple. A handheld device would allow Apple to easily build on the success of its iPod music players, which already play a wide array of games. A game console, however, could build on Apple’s efforts its MacMini computer and its plans for the iTV set top box.

IE beware , here comes the 3rd Fox

Mozilla fans still starry-eyed from the recent release of Firefox 2.0 can already get a glimpse at what the next version of the browser will look like, as an alpha version of Firefox 3.0 has recently been uploaded to Mozilla's public FTP server.

Mozilla today hit an early milestone on the road to the next version of its open-source browser, but the final product is still a year away, developers say.
The Mozilla team released its first alpha release of Firefox 3.0 today, giving Firefox and Web application developers an early look at the next-generation browser. This release is not intended for regular users, not even those who like to play around with early versions of a product, Mozilla said.

The software, code-named Gran Paradiso, comes just six weeks after Mozilla shipped version 2.0 of the browser, but it has already been more than a year in development, according to Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering.

3.0 Features

The final version of Firefox 3.0 is expected to be released by the end of 2007. Developers hope that it will be a major step toward making Web applications indistinguishable from programs that are installed on the desktop, Schroepfer said.

Gran Paradiso features better support for a number of graphics standards, such as the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) language and the Canvas specification, Schroepfer said. "These are fairly major architectural changes to enable us to improve performance."

Firefox 3.0 also supports the Cairo graphics library, which aims to make Web pages look the same whether they are being printed or viewed on a Windows PC, a Macintosh, or a small-screen device.

The Firefox 3.0 plan calls for browsing, bookmarking, and privacy enhancements to be built into the browser, but Schroepfer said there is still a lot of time to work out new features. "It's a bit early to be talking about the user-facing features," he said.

Internet gangs hire students for cybercrime

Reuters report that organized gangs have adopted "KGB-style" tactics to hire high-flying computer students to commit Internet crime.

Criminals are targeting universities, computer clubs and online forums to find undergraduates, according to Internet security firm McAfee.

McAfee said the students write computer viruses, commit identity theft and launder money in a multi-billion dollar industry. The gangs' tactics echo the way Russian agents sought out experts at trade conferences or universities during the Cold War. Although organized criminals may have less of the expertise and access needed to commit cybercrimes, they have the funds to buy the necessary people to do it for them.

McAfee said its study was based partly on FBI and European intelligence. In Eastern Europe, some people are lured into "cybercrime" because of high unemployment and low wages.

"Many of these cybercriminals see the Internet as a job opportunity," McAfee quoted FBI Internet security expert Dave Thomas as saying. "With low employment, they can use their technical skills to feed their family."

Hackers are paid to write computer viruses that can infect millions of machines to discover confidential information or send unwanted "spam" emails. This "spyware" can detect credit card numbers or other personal information which is then used by fraudsters. Criminals trawl through social networking Web sites which allow people to leave their pictures and personal details.

Their research helps them to target "phishing" attacks, where people are sent fraudulent emails to trick them into revealing credit card numbers. Hackers are increasingly hired to spy on businesses, McAfee said. "Corporate espionage is big business," it added.

( Read the full story here )

And they said : Zune will fail ....

The music device can't go up sale-for-sale against industry leader iPod, but it's holding its own



With its Zune digital music player, Microsoft is showing just how powerful its marketing clout is. On Dec. 6, the company disclosed that it's on track to sell more than 1 million Zunes by June 30, the end of its fiscal year. Zune is establishing critical mass. "It's totally in line with our expectations," says Bryan Lee, vice-president of entertainment business at Microsoft.

The projection comes in the wake of sales data from market research firm NPD that shows Zune sliding from second to fifth place among digital music players in the week ended Nov. 25, its second week in stores. But Microsoft says that data includes cheaper players with less storage capacity, not the market it's targeting with Zune.

"The De Facto Challenger"

Lee says Zune isn't positioned to go for the high-volume segment of the digital player market that the flash memory-based players are shooting for. Instead, Microsoft is focusing on the higher end of the business for hard disk-based players.

Zune is the latest effort by Microsoft to find new growth. The company is gambling that it will build an iPod-like business over several years and hopes to eventually cut into the market leader's hegemony with such features as the ability for Zunesters to share music wirelessly with each other.

Making the Numbers

"We wanted to get out and be relevant in the space," Microsoft's Lee says. That grounding will give the company the foundation on which to build its Zune business. "We're pretty fast learners," Lee says.

If Microsoft hits its sales forecast, it would translate into $250 million in sales. That would put Zune sales in its first seven months alone on par with what Goldman Sachs analyst Rick Sherlund estimates will come from annual sales of Microsoft's mobile phone software. And that would be sweet music indeed for Microsoft.

( Read the full article from Businessweek )

MySpace say's : Bye Pedophiles

MySpace to Purge Sex Offenders

MySpace announced today it will begin searching its 100 million-plus user list for people listed in a national database of sex offenders.

Why didn't I think of that!

Just kidding, one can run a perl script to screen-scrape the Department of Justice's National Sex Offender Registry and run all the names and ZIP codes through MySpace's search engine.

Now MySpace is going to do its own searching, in partnership with a background-check company called Sentinel Tech Holding Corp.

From the press release:
"We are committed to keeping sex offenders off MySpace," said MySpace's Chief Security Officer, Hemanshu Nigam. "Sentinel Safe will allow us to aggregate all publicly available sex offender databases into a real-time searchable form, making it easy to cross-reference and remove known registered sex offenders from the MySpace community. The creation of this first-of-its-kind real-time searchable database technology is a significant step to keep our members as safe as possible."

The whole first-of-its-kind, never-been-done-before, thank-God-the-technology-finally-exists thread runs throughout the press release. The language seems calculated to let MySpace escape responsibility for failing to police the sex offenders on its site prior to October, despite the availability of a free online registry demonstrably useful for exactly that purpose.

That said, Sentinel's database promises to be far more powerful than the DOJ registry. As described, it'll contain detailed information, including height, weight, eye and hair color, and the complete offense history of each offender -- all completely searchable. It'll be like a Google for sex offenders.

That leaves just one real disappointment in this announcement: How MySpace plans to use the data. With all that information at its disposal, and a "24-hour-a-day dedicated staff" using it, MySpace could seriously enhance its policing. Instead, the company is taking a sophisticated database and wielding it as a blunt instrument, simply banning everyone on the list from registering or keeping a MySpace account, regardless of who they are or what they did.

This is bad because, obviously, banning sex offenders won't keep them off MySpace: it'll just give them a reason to lie about their name or location, even if they aren't up to no good. Now sex offenders who want to stay on MySpace will all be using false information from the start.

MySpace is essentially refusing an opportunity to detect and imprison active repeat offenders, by moving the entire superset of ex-offenders into the shadows. Does the convicted pedophile have lots of teenagers on his friendslist? MySpace won't know, because he'll be under same veil of anonymity as the flashers and peeping toms.

We know there are some ex-sex offenders who attempt to recidivate from accounts opened under their real names. If you believe they will now stay off MySpace, then the company's policy is good for safety. But if you think they'll simply start spelling their name a little different or lying about their ZIP code, then MySpace has lost the chance to take them off the streets.

MySpace is taking the easy way out. It may be good PR to be able to say that you don't allow past sex offenders of any stripe on your website, but the company should keep its eye on the ball: the goal isn't to keep a former flasher from blogging about his cat, it's to keep current pedophiles from pursuing children. MySpace could tell the difference, if it wanted to. A smart policing effort would use the sex offender database as one of many data points in keeping the site safe. Sometimes zero-tolerance is really tolerance.

(Read the news at The New York Times )

Got a camera ? Start clicking ...because Yahoo will pay for it.

I read an interesting article this morning in the New York Times about a joint effort on behalf of Reuters and Yahoo! to attempt to monetize Yahoo!'s large and constantly updated collection of user photos.





"Starting tomorrow, the photos and videos submitted will be placed throughout Reuters.com and Yahoo News, the most popular news Web site in the United States, according to comScore MediaMetrix. Reuters said that it would also start to distribute some of the submissions next year to the thousands of print, online and broadcast media outlets that subscribe to its news service. Reuters said it hoped to develop a service devoted entirely to user-submitted photographs and video."

Which is very interesting and something that probably should happen.

A couple of thoughts though.

First off is that a news agency's reputation is *everything*. This is a bold step on the part of Reuters. Even with experienced editors reviewing the images there certainly can be fraudulent photos submitted.

If you are a blog, or digg, or some other kind of user generated content service, people to a certain degree (or at least should to a certain degree) take what gets published with a grain of salt. After all anyone can write a blog and anyone can submit to digg. Certainly over time some bloggers build up reputations that can be as solid as a news agency, but in the end it's the news agencies out there that have the most to lose when bad news gets out there.

"This is an imperfect process. Last summer, a blogger discovered that photos of the conflict in Lebanon by a freelance photographer working for Reuters had been digitally altered. Reuters stopped using the photographer and withdrew his work from its archive. The company is now trying to develop software that will help detect altered photographs."

So it's a big step for Reuters to make the jump from hiring known photographers (who can still cheat) to letting anyone in the world submit photos. I think this is good, I'm just surprised to see it under their name. I would have thought that even if they wanted to get into the user generated photo news business that they would create some kind of a subsidiary with all kinds of let the viewer beware labels or something.

It will be interesting to see how people respond the first time someone gets a doctored photo published as news on Reuters. Who knows, maybe nobody will care.

The thing with news though is that it breaks fast. We say this with the London bombings when photos of the bombings broke on Flickr before the major news outlets. And sometimes when it breaks fast you don't have the time to do the due diligence with a photo. I wonder who will be the first person to get a goatse or a hidden image of Howard Stern in the background of a photo picked up by them.

So I think this is an interesting and bold idea by Reuters and Yahoo is probably the perfect company to match with this.

But here's what I don't like:

"Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites. But people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters clients will receive a payment. Mr. Ahearn said the company had not yet figured out how to structure those payments."

So let's see, I'm going to go out, capture news, create something of value, it's going to be used by two for profit companies who will theoretically be making money off of me, and I get? Nothing. Or maybe something when they get around to figuring it out.

First off, if I'm an editorial photographer shooting for Reuters I'm going to be pissed. So now instead of using assigned freelance photos, Reuters can now just go to Flickr and get one for free? Ouch. The cost of images really is coming down. Second, you are going to miss out on the best of the non-Reuter's freelance work out there because they are not going to bother submitting it to a site that doesn't pay them a fair price for their images.

Yahoo! and Reuters should have an established pay schedule by which they will compensate photographers. Something like, "we'll pay $250 minimum for every photo distributed in areas outside our online service," would have been nice to see in the article.

If you need a camera you can get it from here

(Read the full story from The New York Times)

Podcasting is Rolling on and on and on .....

If all you are looking to do is find a soapbox from which to speak your piece, chances are, after you've made your point, your podcasting career will come to a swift end. Too often have I seen this happen. At first, the idea of podcasting is new, fresh and exciting to people. They start out making a new podcast every day.


Now that a respectable duration of time has passed, podcasting shows no signs of slowing down.

People everywhere are creating new podcasts. Some of the more popular ones boast a loyal following of millions around the globe. And just like in any creative venue, you will find the good, the bad and everything else in between. For the most part, all you really need to create a podcast is a computer, Internet Free How-To Guide for Small Business Web Strategies - from domain name selection to site promotion.

As with anything, a little bit of research will turn up a wide variety of products ranging from the bare-bones basics to a complete, professional recording setup. Prices will obviously reflect the quality setup you select so be careful in your choices.

Deciding What to Say
One of the most important things you need to consider before plunging into the podcasting pool is what you have to say and how long it will take for you to say it.

If all you are looking to do is find a soapbox from which to speak your piece, chances are, after you've made your point, your podcasting career will come to a swift end. Too often have I seen this happen. At first, the idea of podcasting is new, fresh and exciting to people. They start out making a new podcast every day.

Then after they say what they have to say, their podcasts get updated every other day, then once a week, then maybe a couple of times a month, until the same podcasts remain unchanged for months, even years, only to be finally abandoned altogether as all interest fades into oblivion.

This usually happens because casual podcasters don't realize how demanding a podcast can be on one's time. So if yours is a limited quest, you may be better off creating one or a series of recordings, posting them on your Web site, and then leaving things at that.

A Plug for the iMic

On a related subject, just the other day I wanted to record something on my computer and discovered that the device I wanted to use did not connect via USB Latest News about USB. Instead, it had the more conventional mini-plug at the end of its cable.

Further exploration of my equipment drawer revealed several such devices, including microphones, telephone recorders, an AM/FM radio and even a cassette tape recorder/player. They all required input or output and the corresponding jack to make them work with my computer. I realized that if I ever wanted to use any of this older equipment, I needed something that could convert their analog outputs and inputs to digital ones, making it possible to physically connect them to my computer's USB port. That's exactly what the iMic from Griffin Technologies does.

Actually, the iMic has been around for years, but it recently got both a cosmetic and functional upgrade. The small, round, disk-shaped device sports "in" and "out" plugs to accommodate your mini-plug equipment. At its other end, the iMic has a USB cable that connects to either your Windows or Macintosh Latest News about Macintosh computer. If the device you're trying to connect is a microphone, for example, you just plug its mini-plug cable into the iMic's "in" plug.

Conversely, if you want to transfer audio out from your computer to your older cassette tape recorder, you connect a cable from the iMic's "out" plug to your cassette recorder's line-in jack. Depending on the sensitivity of the older device, the iMic offers a single switch that lets you select between line and microphone levels.

The iMic sells for US$39.99. Griffin also includes their "Final Vinyl" software that automatically senses and locates the iMic's USB connection, letting you just plug your older device in, connect the iMic to your PC, and start rockin' and rollin'. You can grab one of these here