January 10, 2006 at 20:28 · Filed under Entertainment
Well, I’m glad I didn’t buy tickets yet to the One Earth concert that I posted about a few weeks back, as it has now been postponed, according to the BBC.
The organisers, Cimate Change Now haven’t given a reason as to why it has been postponed, but I would hasten to guess that they haven’t been able to book as many bands as they have promised.
The Manic Street Preachers were added to the bill just a week or so ago, Embrace and Elbow were added just yesterday, with only two weeks until the date, 28th January.
Weird thing though, there is currently no mention of it on the official website, and strangely you can still buy tickets from Ticketmaster using the link on their site.
All ticket holders are to be offered a full refund.
January 7, 2006 at 12:03 · Filed under Technology
Bloggers around the globe are once again kneeling at the feet and licking the boots of Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google over their keynote speech at CES, Las Vegas yesterday.
Few new products were announced, Google Video Store, Google Local mobile and, Google Pack.
Now, Google Video store could be good, but, it doesn’t look like it will even be available to anybody outside of the US, at least not initially, apparently.
The best thing about this announcement is that there are apparently no plans to include DRM in the downloadable videos. I suspect that is if Google get their way. I dont expect that the content providers (US TV network CBS & the NBA) will be too keen on their content being unprotected. I mean, which record companies are out there selling their artists music in MP3 format?
Google Local mobile is another good idea, in theory, but again, G are alienating the other 191 world countries by making it US only. I tried testing it on my mobile phone. Although it downloaded, it would not bring through any local data for my area, even though Google Local does have a UK version.
Google Pack.
Google Pack is basically just a one-stop download point for Google products and other programs that are necessary these days to have a complete web-experience.
Lets just go through the offering, piece-by-piece, shall we?
Google Earth - A great program in its own right, why on earth would you want to promote it in a package?
Picasa - Again, great tool to have, but not everybody would want or need it.
Google Pack screensaver - Do we not all have this already built into Windows XP? The ‘My Pictures slideshow’?
Google Desktop - Ok, this one perhaps does deserve to be here, no qualms with it, although, I refuse to use it as it is too intrusive
Google toolbar for IE - GToolbar for IE bundled in the same install as Firefox with GToolbar? Perhaps a little trivial, but, I suppose there will be people who will still use both browsers. But, what self respecting IE user does not already have GToolbar? And if they don’t have it, I would expect it to be out of choice, rather than ignorance.
Mozilla Firefox with GToolbar - Great promotion for the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox, this should really help to get user numbers up. But, will it not artificially inflate usage figures? Users download the standard edition of Google Pack, Firefox gets installed. Google reports to Mozilla that 1.2million people downloaded Google Pack with Firefox, therefor, they must have 1.2million extra users, which may not be true. It may be sat there unused.
Norton Antivirus 2005 - I use Norton. I have no problems with it. A 6 month free subscription? Nice. Blatant product placement though, dumping a licensed product in with a bunch of opensource/freeware stuff. Symantec quite obviously paid Google quite a sum of money to get this in there, on the assumption that a large number of those that download GPack will then pay for a Norton subscription after the 6-month period. You have to hand it to Symantec, great marketing ploy.
Ad-Aware SE Personal - Not the best anti-spyware product out there. In fact, I have to hand that award to Microsoft Antispyware. But, I can see where G are going with this GPack thing, anti-microsoft. Good on ‘em.
Adobe Reader 7 - What web-user does not already have this? And, going back to the whole GToobar/IE thing, if they don’t have it, it’s probably through choice that they don’t. Some of us do prefer opensource PDF readers like Foxit Reader
Now we’ve spent some time looking over what Google Pack is offering, I shall conclude on my initial thought. Why are they announcing this as a major new product? There’s nothing new here. Except Google Updater, but that’s circumstancial, since all the programs that are offered in the pack already have their own updaters.
Some are dubbing it ‘way cool‘, but, Google Pack get a big thumbs down from me.
January 4, 2006 at 17:31 · Filed under Technology
After reading about the ‘Google PC‘ rumour that hit the blogosphere yesterday, I had been trying to gather together my thoughts on such a project.
But, it seems Google has beaten me to it and released a statement denying the fact that they are building their own computer hardware business.
It did seem a bit far fetched, to be totally honest.
Google are an able company, but, I cannot see them getting very far pitting themselves against mightily established players such as Dell & HP.
“We have many PC partners who serve their markets exceedingly well and we see no need to enter that market; we would rather partner with great companies,”
Google announced.
But, as RogerD says, this does not mean that they may not still lend their name to another product manufactured by a partner.
What remains undeniable is Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and president of products will be making a keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas this Friday and in true Google style, I would expect it to contain some type of product unveiling.
Google Calendar anybody? 
