I was recently moving some files around and came across a column I wrote for my college newspaper. I was on the design side of the paper1 and didn’t get to write that much. In the fall of 2006, I was given a short-lived column covering the tech news, and this entry is from October 25.
This week, the geek world was all about one word.
iPod.
Monday marked the fifth anniversary of Apple’s beloved music player. On Oct. 23, 2001, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, stood on a stage in California and introduced the world to a 5GB, $399 device that would play music back faster and easier than a Walkman.
Today, the iPod can hold up to 80GB, and play music, as well as show pictures and movies.
After month of being behind almost every other laptop maker, Apple released an updated version of its pro laptop, the MacBook Pro, with Intel’s latest mobile processors.
Somewhat lost in the hoopla about the iPod’s birthday and new Macs was what would have been today’s biggest story in Geekdom – the release of Firefox 2.0.
The popular browser, known for its safety and large collection of available plug-ins and extras, now sports better safety features (including phishing detection that can help keep your private information safe), better tab management, better handling of RSS news feeds and something new called “Session Restore,” that lets users re-open a tab they may have accidentally closed, or if Firefox or your computer crashes, users can re-open all the tabs they had open at the time of the crash.
Also, the search bar on Firefox comes with extra search engines built-in. Now, instead of just searching Google, users can search Yahoo! and Answers.com. All of this new ness in Firefox is wrapped in a new user interface, which brings Mac-like shiny buttons to the browser.
Firefox is not the only browser to be updated recently. Microsoft started shipping the newest version of Internet Explorer. Now at version seven, the update added many features that IE has lacked for several years, including security measures, tabbed browsing, and support for more complicated web site designs. Webmasters have been complaining for years that sites will often work fine in every browser expect Internet Explorer. Hopefully, that will be different now.
Speaking of Microsoft, the company is promising its next-generation operating system, named “Windows Vista” to consumers who buy PCs this holiday season.
Starting tomorrow, PCs sold with Windows XP and Office 2003 on them will be bundled with a coupon for a free or reduced upgrade of their software. Vista, which will be released in January – six years after XP was released, sports a brand new user interface, improved security features, a new search tool, Windows Gadgets (small applications that tell users the weather, upcoming events, etc.), an updated version of Microsoft Office and better backup software built-in.
President George W. Bush made it in the tech news this week as well. In an interview with CNBC, the president said he does not use e-mail because of the political liability.
He said of Google and Google Earth, “One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see that. I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite and you can like, I kind of like to look at the ranch on Google, reminds me of where I want to be sometimes. Yeah, I do it some.”
Be sure to note that he referred to the Internet giant as “the Google.”
The bloggers had fun with that one this week.
Oh yes, Google. As the Helmsman reported, Google bought YouTube for a mere $1.65 billion. Since then, 29,549 videos have been pulled off the site, after Japanese copyright holders complained that their work was hosted on the site illegally.
Illegal file on YouTube?
Get out.