Web Interface for Microsoft Messenger

25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: News, Geeky | 0 Comments 

Probably many of you already knew about it but Microsoft is beta testing a version of MSN that can be accessed via web. In my case it is the only solution to use MSN from my office (why on Earth would I want to do that?? ) because everything is here heavily firewalled and protected... but you know, it's good to have

Web Messenger

There are other similar tools out there but this one is coming from Microsoft so it should work better. Surprisingly, it even works fine with Mozilla!! (need to try with Safari, though)

Crap-o-lympics

25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: General, News | 3 Comments 

In case you were not sure that the Crap-o-lympics are just a big advertising venue, take a look at the following articles: Games' eagle-eyed sponsor police, In Greece, an Inside Track for Some, No Pepsi and only the Golden Arches at the Olympics. The Olympics, which should be a symbol of freedom represented by sports and with people from all over the world, have become an event where people are allowed to choose the food the like as long as it's McDonald's, drink the beverage the like the most as long as it's Coke and wear the clothes they like as long as it's Adidas. Not to mention that tickets can be paid with any credit card as long as it's Visa.

Outsourcing in the U.S.

25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: News | 0 Comments 

Outsourcing has been a hot topic lately, all over the world but specially in the US, where many many companies have chosen to outsource part of their operations to cheaper countries such as India, China or Russia. The issue is reaching unseen proportions and even some democratic candidates for presidency (such as Howard Dean) are already planning some measures against it. Now, Yahoo is carrying a very interesting story about a report in which several american tech firms defend the idea of moving jobs overseas... While I agree on some of their claims, the last one is simply outrageus (and I am not a US citizen): "The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S". So basically, the guy is asking for highly skilled workes who are willing to work for peanuts while the CEOs, CTOs, CFOs and CxOs earn 15 times more. Guess you don't have to be american to find that outrageous...

Apple stuff

25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: News | 0 Comments 

Apple released a couple of days ago several new products including the iPod mini. Francesc talks about them in his blog so there's no need to write more about them

Also related to Apple, I found the following, detailed and well-written What is MacOS? article. For those who want to know more about the Mac OS X system in general, withouth unnecessary technical words, this is a great resource. Did you know that I've been thinking about getting myself a Mac lately? O

HP to integrate support for WMA in iPod (updated)

25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: News | 0 Comments 

Not long ago I wrote here that Apple had licensed the iPod to HP. Well, now HP has announced that HP is working closely with Apple to provide support for Windows Media Audio files for the iPod. Now, isn't that good news? I think it's the icing on the iPod cake, making it surely the most elegant and useful, feature-wise, player in the market (price notwithstanding)

Now, in a foreseen move, Microsoft has dismissed the move and commented that this is a bad move for consumers because this will limit their choices to Apple products. If you are capable of reading between lines, this basically means that customers will be limited to Apple products instead of Microsoft products (what a surprise!) and that they're now pretty much screwed, since rumors say that M$ is about to open a new online music service and HP will install preinstalling iTunes in every new computer, which is a bad thing.

In my case, I couldn't care less about those folks from Redmond say. If I ever have a Mac, I'll buy an iPod

UPDATE 13-01-2004: Turns out that this wasn't true news. Or perhaps it was but looks like something has changed... So, no more WMA for the iPod.