....of sorts. Rumour has it that $ony is going to offer a download of XCP affected albums to complaining customers via a number of online music stores, of which iTMS is going to [apparently] be one of them. It's all backfired this XCP rootkit plan!

Congratulations to Mr Jonathan Ive, the designer of the iPod and iMac, who has been given a CBE.

I've added a Frappr map page so visitors can see where others are visiting from! Last post of 2005, so have a great new year! :-D

I've been looking through iPhoto [before it gets updated at MWSF ;-)] and realised why Photo titles weren't showing. I've put the names of Photos as comment! :-o oops. I've now put up 70 or so photos from the USA holiday. Find them here. Why have I put them online? Purely for the fact that I have too much bandwidth and webspace to use! ;-) More photos soon [once I've done a HDD transplant], as well as a Flickr page!

Removed Gallery pages as they're not as easy to manage as the slideshow.

I've been editing the site today, streamlining it somewhat and added a new page. The site is now officially finished in the new theme! :-D

Went for a Family walk this afternoon, even though Don is away, and took this photo from the top of the South Downs. Hope you like it!

Merry Christmas to all my visitors, and have an enjoyable New Year. I'll be back blogging properly in the New Year, but that doesn't mean I won't be working on the site. I've got some stuff I want to play with to see how it looks online, and whilst there won't be a complete redesign of the site, there will some little changes around the site to look forward to! See You in 2006! :-D

Today, apart from being ill, I've spent a good hour trying to get a friends iPod Shuffle to be recognized by their Windows PC. It really shouldn't take that long! But, why IS it taking that long? I did a number of things: downloaded the latest Shuffle software [the Shuffle, bought from Boots, had been in stock since April by the version of iPod software], which made accept disk-mode transfers :-). Then I tried to run the CD that came with it. But the installer was saying it was "corrupt", which it wasn't as it ran perfectly on my Windows test system. So I tried downloading the latest version of iTunes from Apple. An yet Windows would insist it was corrupt.
Then, a thought struck me. SP2 was saying it was unsafe to open the file, and blocked it if I clicked open from the IE Download Window. So, I tried this:

1. Downloaded the file to the desktop.
2. Once finished downloading simply closed the dialogue box, and went to Desktop.
3. Right clicked and chose Unblock.

That cured the install woes, but now something else means that the PC doesn't recognise the iPod. Hmmmm.

Why is it that M$ block something that has a valid digital signature purely because it was downloaded? Madness.

Finally, Internet Explorer for Mac has been put out to rot away in cyberspace. Apple no longer ships it on Macs, and M$ has finally announced that IE for Mac is dead. Why am I glad of this? Well IE for Mac doesn't work well at all. It hasn't been updated in nearly 3 years, doesn't even display M$N properly, and doesn't accept the web standards this site is built on. Time to party I think :-D

In other news, Apple's Online Stores have run out of iPod shuffles! :-o The website states:

Sold out for the Holidays and we hope to have supply again later in January
Let the plot thicken, as by late January, any MacWorld releases will be shipping! 1Gb Nanos? Let's hope so!

Today is the 1st Birthday of my iBook. Time to celebrate! ;-)

Well, I've noticed that Microsoft Mail Live [i.e. Kahuna, Hotmail of the Future] now works with Firefox, however I've just tried in in my trusty Safari browser and it works, with only a Delete button to hand for the time being. I wouldn't mind, apart from the fact that the spam filter doesn't seem to be any better than the old Hotmail. Ah well. It's only a beta. Mind you, so is Gmail, and that doesn't suck.

I've become a great fan of MacDailyNews.Com, and article today made me laugh. MTV is trying to attract people to its non-iTunes/iPod store whilst the "demographic" of its potential users [MTV viewers] are the most likely to use an iPod, or already using an iPod. With 80% marketshare, iTMS is leading the way, and MTV clearly wants to be better than that.

MTV states they need concentrate on where there's going to be a bigger market than iPod+iTunes

Umm, wheres the bigger market than iPod+iTunes?!! The service will offer paid-for downloads, subscription services and free streaming of music videos, and most interestingly will be the fact that Urge "will be the prefered service" in Windows Media Player. That's gonna hurt RealNetworks, who chose $300 million worth of service advertisement with Microsoft as part of their settlement. Do read the article above as it's a really good read, and RealNetworks: PlayedforSure? I think so.

Theres a little excerpt from my train ticket on Saturday morning :-o and yes that reads 0404am!

The latest info I had for the opening was that the centre was opening at 6am - so I that that even though I was arriving earlier than this [0525] I'd still be able to get in like I did at the Trafford Centre [I love automatic doors that just open!]. So having got off the train, I found that the doors to the huge bridge over the Public Transport Interchange were open and walked across - each set of doors making me wonder how soon I'd have to stop. None of them were locked, although it appeared that the burglar deterent was a very slippery [and freshly cleaned] floor on the bridge over the bus terminal. Made it to the centre, and walked down the escalators [that were off!] and proceeded onto the lower concourse. Thankfully the kind people at Meadowhall who answered my email had provided directions from entering the centre to get to the store. After arriving at the Apple Store, I blogged to myMacpad as I had done at the Trafford Centre, thanks to the WiFi connection each Apple Store has. Took some photos, and chatted to the guy baby-sitting the store overnight. At about 6am the Meadowhall suits turned up and put out the tensa-barriers for the queue, and once someone else arrived, the queuing began in proper!
Here's the basic outline of the day [as written before]:

1. First in line :-D [followed by another myMacpad user Mark Milaszkiewicz, who made the first purchase]
2. Head of UK PR at Apple [I think!] was sorting out photos, and I'm sorry to say that a lot of photos were taken of me in a Meadowhall T-Shirt [cleverly sourced there!] as well as in my Trafford Centre. We had photos taken with Polly, the store manager, as well as some of me on my own, and some of these are being sent to me at some stage, and I will put them online as soon as possible.
3. In addition to the T-Shirt I was given as per normal, I'm being sent an iTunes Music Store Voucher for my time and presence in the photos! :-D Now that's really cool!
4. The contract security manager was the same guy as from the Trafford Centre opening! :-o

Now, the webstats for the site have been going crazy, so crazy in fact that the server that handles them is occasionally not allowing me to view them :-|, however at the last count there had been 223,495 visitors since 9am GMT on Saturday and I will blog again once the webstats server is going again. Now 225000 visitors @ 21:08 on 13th December

I've had about 50 emails, each of which I've replied to personally, however the main question is "How did you make that cool slideshow?" The answer is Rapidweaver - it is a fantastic piece of software, and makes for a cool photo display page. Another thing that's made me laugh is the way people have used my images on their websites. Some, like TUAW sneaked out an image before they were put into a Flash slideshow, but since then there have just been links. A lot of people asked why I didn't just put them into a normal web page, however this allows people to hotlink your images [use your bandwidth whilst serving the images to their own page]. I set up the Flash slideshow to try and control exactly who has copies of the image. Mostly it's worked, with just brief text articles linking to my Meadowhall page. However one site made me laugh. They'd taken a screenshot of the slideshow photo, but not moved their mouse so the slideshow controls are still showing! How did I find it? Simple - each time a page refers a viewer to my site, the webstats can track exactly which page refered each user to my site. I went through the list to see whether there were any interesting referers [more in a sec] and this French Mac website came up. I've hotlinked their image left [haha that'll teach them!].

Another interesting referer is the Apple European Email system - so they're clearly circulating my address internally, and 10 different computers within Apple [presumably some of them in-store] have visited my site. What was really amusing was that by the time I'd reached an instore Mac on Saturday someone had already opened my blog and photos in Safari and had just read them!
I've had visits from NASA, from the US Military, Sweden, Norway, Japan, France, Italy, the USA, Canada and of course a lot of U.K. hits :-D Mentions on MacWorld UK, TUAW.Com, MacDailyNews, iTrafik and numerous sites meant I've used over 10Gbs of Bandwidth this month - more than I'd intended to use for the entire year at the start of my hosting contract [but I've got 75Gb bandwidth a month to play with so it's no big deal!]

I'm still sorting a final blog post about the Meadowhall opening, but here's some web-stats inbetween:

:-o - Burned through 4.5 Gb of bandwidth on Saturday alone!
:-o - Over 128,000 hits since 9am on Saturday

That's a lot of bandwidth and bucket loads of hits!

The Unofficial Apple Weblog [TUAW] had an article about the "veritable smorgasbord of pictures" on the Meadowhall page.

Between this posting and midnight on Sunday 11th December [a mere 5 hours!] an additional 12000 hits were received and another gigabyte of bandwidth burned through!

Wow, what a morning! After three and a half hours waiting, the store opened to the most hi-5s I've ever had, and my palms are still sore after an hours train journey home! The store was packed as my photos show, however that's not half the events.

1. First in line :-D [followed by another myMacpad user Mark Milaszkiewicz, who made the first purchase]
2. Head of UK PR at Apple [I think!] was sorting out photos, and I'm sorry to say that a lot of photos were taken of me in a Meadowhall T-Shirt [cleverly sourced there!] as well as in my Trafford Centre. We had photos taken with Polly, the store manager, as well as some of me on my own, and some of these are being sent to me tomorrow, so stay tuned.
3. In addition to the T-Shirt I was given as per normal, I'm being sent an iTunes Music Store Voucher for my time and presence in the photos! :-D Now that's really cool!

Apple really did put on a great opening - it really went with a bang! No-one was asking 'Why the Hell are you here so early?!' questions, and people really were excited about the store. Apple Meadowhall ROCKS! :-D

.........the new Apple Zen Portables.
Oh, sorry, no it's the Creative iPods with video. Argh. I got confused. Sorry to any Apple fans out there for showing these hideous images [and no fanboys, it's not the first green iPod with Video :-D].

These are the latest goods from Creative Technology. Does that screen look familiar to you? It should. It's the iPods interface! But wait, Creative holds a patent for it. So that means it's ok to use the iPod design?! Hmm. There's so much news on this that I'm not gonna add any more comments. But remember to look out for the lawsuits! ;-)
Images from Engadget and MacDailyNews
This nastiness has scarred me so much I'm in need of some Apple therapy. Just as well I'm off to Meadowhall on Saturday then:-D!

Just added a whole load of photos from a small party we had in the flat whilst we decorated our [REAL :-D] Christmas tree! They can be found here.

So today I'm forced to download the lesser of two evils to access BBCi's content - RealPlayer for Mac OS X. I drag it to the Apps folder and I then run it to do a software update. Yet I find that the install package has not been updated since March 2005! There are 3 security updates required [totalling less than 1MB is size]. Why have these not been added to the install? With the .dmg installer they're compressed anyway! :-|
What have the people at Real been doing for the past 9 months? It's December for goodness sake. Apple ships usually one 10.x.1 revision behind, but are currently shipping with the latest build and Micro$oft can be up to 3 months behind, but then the time it takes to get the massive amount of media sorted [plus the master install discs that Windows PC manufacturers use] makes this more than understandable.
So yeah, a software install can be up to 3 months behind and that's the max/norm. BUT NINE MONTHS :-o... come on - that's taking the piss! If Real are at all interested in capturing any of iTMS market share, they're gonna have to do better than that!

This post has been reclassified as "Rant of the Week" and has been expanded!

Everyone's mentioning Apple at the moment, and it's becoming really great to see that Apple news is part of the mainstream - hell the BBC even commented on, and speculated on rumours about, the "One More Thing" event. Here's some Mac News for everyone! :-D Happy Reading!

This news was music to my ears! Apparently there's been 16,000 MS Windows viruses this year. There have yet to be any Mac viruses, although the report mentioned claims there have [where did they draw that from?!].

Here's some staggering facts:

-An unprotected Windows XP system that is put online for just 1 hour has only a 6 per cent chance of avoiding infection! :-o
-There were nearly 200 viruses discovered last month alone.

If you want to feel better, then there's never been a better time to Switch ;-)

This just made me laugh too!

In the last quarter, Apple matched Real's music revenue of $25 million right around the 36th hour of the quarter.

So Apple took $25 million in music revenue - read iTunes Music Store revenue - in the first 36 hours of the last financial quarter. Real Networks took $25 million in music revenue in the entire last financial quarter. Now that Mr RealNetworks has just managed to squeeze Micro$oft out of $750 million [yes, you read it correctly - that's three quarters of a billion dollars! :-o] he can't pick a fight with Redmond for his products' failings. His new target is Steve Jobs, and Mr RealNetworks clearly thinks this new found wealth means that if he slams Media Person of the Year nominee Jobs {whose vision has inspired a who plethora of new products - the iPod and iMac [both original and latest versions!]; the Mac Mini and the iTunes Music Store with Videos to name a few} he can grab the limelight and success. Ermm. No.

Why does this mean anything? Well RealNetworks headlines and press releases will point you to their new services - which I think SUCK! You'll try them, and you'll hate them. Then you'll go back to using iTunes and iPod. If you choose to use Rhapsody/Harmony/Dissonance [whatever their iPod cracking software is called] Apple can disable it at any time. The result - a whole load of tracks that won't go on your iPod. Apple won't help you out, as Real's package isn't supported by them, and in some ways is an infringement on Apple's Intellectual Property.
The other day I read some documentation on Real's iPod software. They recommend you don't use iTunes for any transfer at all!

Before I ramble on about this, I'll bring the rant to a close.

As I've mentioned before, the only reason there's any anger from RealNetworks, M$ or $ony is because they're jealous. Apple has made an absolute killing from iTunes/iPod - there's no denying that. But just because the others haven't been successful doesn't mean it's Apple's fault. If the competitors had been innovative in the first place, there wouldn't have been a problem and they wouldn't be make the comparatively pitiful sums they are today when compared with Apple.

News and quotes from Computer Buyer and MacDailyNews

If you didn't manage to get your hands on an Xbox360, then console yourself with this ad that has never been aired. I love it!

If you don't care about Xbox360, then still watch it as it is very amusing! :-D

This one's interesting. I'd love to be able to have an Apple Set-Top box in my future living room, and MacworldExpo in January could be the moment when we see it. The ThinkSecret report linked to above gives some very detailed technical evidence of a new technology that might mean we see the new box during Steve Jobs' Keynote, although I'd like to see a link to the patent mentioned. A couple of things I don't like the sound of are the reliance on:

1) iDisk. I don't have .Mac, and wouldn't want to buy it to use with a Mac Mini / Front Row system as it's not entirely reliable [if I believe what I've read on the net].
2) the internet. I want to be able to watch movies etc on my iBook whenever I want. Not just when I'm online - it would make train journeys and the like far more comfortable - and if I can't do this, then I will just buy DVDs instead.
3) Downloads solely in the US, and no DVD importing. There's a world out there you Apple folks, and us Brits would LOVE to be able to download Lost, 24 etc too :-D! Also, what is there happening with DVD importing? With this new technology above, why not create a piece of Apple software that can IMPORT DVDs into this online storage? At least then I could watch all the first four series of 24 on a future iPod [with a few battery charges along the way! ;-)]

There's still over a month to go til MacworldExpo so let the rumour mills get going, and my bank account filling! [PayPal donations welcome! ;-)]