The consumer versions of Microsoft Windows Vista are finally available today around the world. Vista is available both at retail outlets and, in a first, via download. Microsoft’s tag line for Vista is The “Wow” starts now. And most consumers will be “Wowed” by the ridiculous number of different versions to choose from. Do you want Home Basic, Business, Home Premium or Ultimate? Good question. Most of the decision depends on knowing what you want to do. Unfortunately the technology experts in every family will end up answering many questions about Vista and most of them will not be happy about it. How many of them will answer, “Buy a Mac,” remains to be seen.

New Windows releases have been an event ever since Microsoft hired the Rolling Stones to perform for the Windows 95 release. …

Apple announced today four additional colors that are available for the iPod shuffle, adding pink, green, blue and orange to the original silver color to make a total of 5 different colors available.

“iPod shuffle is the world’s most wearable digital music player,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide iPod Product marketing in a press release. “Music fans can now choose iPod shuffle in one of five brilliant colors, or they can buy one of each.”

The iPod shuffle contains 1GB of memory, weighs only one ounce and is half a cubic inch in size. The new colors are available immediately worldwide from the online Apple store and from Apple retailers and come with a shuffle dock and earbuds.

Verizon recently released information that it was approached by Apple two years ago for a deal to provide service and sales for the iPhone, but declined stating that the terms requested by Apple were not mutually beneficial.

According to reports, Apple wanted to earn a percentage of the subscription fees from Verizon customers who used the iPhone as well as complete control over the development and launching of the product. Not surprisingly, Verizon had to decline the offer. “We said no. We have nothing bad to say about the Apple iPhone. We just couldn’t reach a deal that was mutually beneficial,” said Gerace, vice president of Verizon Wireless.

Maybe it was a mistake for Verizon not to make a deal with Apple since the iPhone is more than likely going to bring in a few new customers for Cingular, …

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the ubiquitous document format used by both the public and private sector to securely exchange and preserve information. Adobe published the complete PDF specification in 1993 and has been committed to making the PDF an open standard within recent years.

In an effort to reinforce their “commitment to openness”, Adobe has announced that it intends to release the full PDF 1.7 specification to AIIM for ISO standardization. AIIM will be responsible for identifying issues and will develop a draft document that will then be presented to ISO for development and approval as an International Standard.

Going back to 1995, Adobe has a long history of working within the ISO process to deliver various specialized subsets of PDF as standards for specific industries and functions. PDF for Archive and PDF for Exchange are already ISO standards, …

According to reports, Wii console hackers have created a mod chip for the new Nintendo game console that will allow users to directly boot backup games from consoles of the same geographical region.

The modchip named the Wiinja, has been developed only a couple of months after the Nintendo Wii has been generally released and the creators intend to have the modchip available for purchase February 1st.

Only requiring the soldering of five wires, the Wiinja site has step by step instructions for installing the chip as well as a schematic diagram. The site also states that the use of the Wiinja modchip is for areas of the world that allow the creation of back up games, and is only to be used to play back ups of the games that you own, of course.

This makes two of the three next-generation …

Palm has recently announced the availability of Microsoft’s Direct Push technology with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync for the Palm Treo 680 and Treo 700p running the Palm OS.

The Palm Treo’s have been able to sync up email information through the Palm VeraMail client, but this offering allows the Palm OS on the Treo’s to take advantage of the Direct Push technology from Microsoft which allows automatic wireless updates of emails, calendar items and contacts.

“Extending Microsoft’s Direct Push Technology to the Palm OS based line of Treo smartphones gives business customers a powerful new choice for wireless email, security and manageability,” said Joe Fabris, director of wireless solutions, at Palm, Inc. “This combination delivers the benefits of business-class email without the cost of additional infrastructure required by other middleware-based solutions, ensuring a fast return on …

Today Intel has announced plans for their next generation processor chips, intended to improve processing speeds and increase the lead between themselves and their competition when the new chips go into production. The new processor, code named Penryn, will used a 45 nanometer manufacturing process to provide faster processing on the same amount of physical space without significant changes to power consumption.

Intel’s ability to improve performance is due to the implementation of high-k dielectrics and metal material for the transistor gate electrodes. According to Mark Bohr, senior fellow at Intel, the insulation layer of the silicon on transistors has gotten so thin that there is a risk of excessive electricity leaking from the chips which would cause laptop batteries to run down too fast, among other problems. To solve this problem Intel implemented a new denser hafnium metal.

Intel claims that …

Nintendo is adding a new News Channel to their game console that will show up for users in the Wii Menu Saturday.

The Associated Press has contracted with Nintendo for two years to provide news and photos for the News Channel on the Wii, which will be accessed through a map-based graphical interface. Users can navigate the map to locations around the globe and zoom in on areas of the world to get more regional news, zooming out will get news pertaining to a broader geographical area. Subcategories will be available for the regions, such as Business, Sports, Art, and Technology.

“What Wii has done for video gaming, we hope it will also accomplish for news,” says Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. “Just by pointing at your TV screen, you become your own interactive editor, instantly …

Microsoft may again be a victim of its own success. Many companies in South Korea rely on ActiveX, a technology built into Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, that enables users to run arbitrary applications in their browser. However, IE7 (Internet Explorer 7) breaks some of the functionality that companies rely on to run their ActiveX plugins in user’s browsers. Because of this the South Korean government through its various ministries has advised users to be cautious about upgrading.

So why has South Korea taken a shine to the ActiveX technology that many American companies have shied away from because of its proprietary nature? The answer lies in encryption. The US maintains a very strict export policy in regards to certain technology. Back in the nineties, US …

20th Century Fox has served YouTube with a subpoena over entire episodes of “24″ and “The Simpsons” which were uploaded to the site. Fox wants to know who uploaded the video to the video site. YouTube is owned by Google who may have set aside money for the legal defense of YouTube over copyrighted material that makes its way to the site.

Fox is upset because the “24″ episodes were uploaded to YouTube and another site, LiveDigital before their premier on Fox. Fox is claiming damages and according to Jane Sunderland, a Fox VP, during testimony, “the uploaded material could cause Fox irreparable harm”. It appears that Fox may be trying to find out who leaked the video and getting the information from YouTube …

Microsoft was announced the formal release of its ASP.NET AJAX framework. Formerly known under the code-name “Atlas”, the framework allows developers to create more sophisticated Web interfaces.

ASP.NET AJAX is a free framework and is intended to work with Microsoft’s ASP.NET 2.0 platform and Visual Studio 2005 development environment.

Ajax or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a popular web development technique for creating web pages that are more interactive and behave more like a traditional windowed application. The darling of Web 2.0 websites, the technology is intended to make web pages feel more responsive by limiting the need to “reload” the web page each time the user requests a change.

Microsoft will now need to convince Web developers to make the painful switch to its Ajax framework vs. sticking to one of current popular solutions like Script.aculo.us or Ajax.net.

ASP.NET AJAX is available …

Sony has announced a March 23, 2007 launch date of the Playstation 3 game console to Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. This launch comes a little over two months after the PS3 release in Japan and in the US.

The release had been rumored for some time in March of this year, but until now an exact date for the release had not been set. The console will go on sale priced at €599, £425, AUD 999.95, NZ 1199.95. This price is for the 60GB model of the PS3 which is the only model that will be available initially, and that UK price equates to over $840 USD which is quite a bit more than the $600 consumers have been paying in the US. Sony plans to make around 1 million …

I have a cell phone that I use strictly for its functional purpose – to make phone calls. I choose not to “personalize” my phone with ringtones, faceplates, photos, or smells. In wireless industry parlance, this makes me an “Adult Adopter”.

comScore Networks recently published a study that focused on trends in the wireless industry. The part of the study I was most interested in is the study of behavior and attitudes that wireless consumers have towards their mobile phones. The survey was conducted from October 25, 2006 to November 1, 2006 and consisted of 1,708 U.S. wireless phone consumers that were divided into three distinct groups according to age:

The Cellular Generation – Ages 18 to 24, these young adults grew up with cell phone awareness, experiencing cell phones as a part of their everyday lives.
Transitioners – Ages 25 to …

Sandisk recently announced that they along with Toshiba are planning on shipping their next generation of NAND flash memory in the first quarter of 2007 as they begin a transition in production at one of their joint wafer fabrication plants. The transition will mark the beginning of producing 56 nanometer multi-level cell flash memory chips from the previous 70 nanometer production. This will create the industry’s highest available density in a single chip MLC NAND flash memory.

This release comes after a number of recent announcements from Sandisk touting milestones in memory capacities, faster performance and flash storage solutions. The higher density in these chips equate to the potential of flash memory cards and thumb drives being available with higher storage capacities. Currently the capacity of memory devices is limited to how many chips …

Microsoft has announced that it will extend its free support period for Windows XP. The Redmond Washington software giant had originally planned to discontinue free support in January of 2009. Microsoft said the support period applied specifically to the Home edition of Windows XP.

Windows 98 and ME just ended their supported life in July of 2006. Microsoft has a history of extending the support life of products based on customer demand. Windows 98 support was supposed to end in January of 2004. Microsoft decided to extend the support period by about two years due to the popularity of the operating system.

In the industry support contracts are often a major factor for IT management deciding to upgrade software. Microsoft may use the initial support date announcement to spur adaption of its latest …