A college in Dover, UK (South Kent College) has spent over $50,000 to outfit the student body with the iPod Nano. 250 very lucky students will receive the iPods, free of charge, with the expectation that they will use them for handling lectures from their professors- which will of course be in podcast format.

Digital music players are already in use at Georgia college and the State University in Milledgeville (in the US). At many colleges, the use of digital music players, and other similar digital devices that have the ability to record sound, has become an integral part of the coursework.

Surprisingly, some people in Dover have raised objections to the faculty's decision to spend taxpayer's money on what is seen by some as a "bribe" to get students to attend college. Some, like pressure group Campaign for Real Education Chairman Nick Seaton, have even gone so far as to call the program "a scandalous waste of taxpayers' money." Fortunately, others involved with the situation are more circumspect. Mr. Coleman, the principal of the Dover college involved with the case, asserts that the iPods would only be handed out to those teenagers who had completed all their assignments and had full attendance.

He further added legitimacy to the project by adding that the entire project was funded by money the government saved in a business venture and not from a general fund contributed to by taxpayers. Officials at the school maintain that the staff reaction to the plan has been positive.

Lectures surrounding IT, motor vehicle engineering, and childcare will be the first courses that offer podcast formatted lectures with the remainder of the course offerings scheduled to be available as podcasts next year. Although some people reacted negatively to the plan to give iPods to students, the course has already been set.

Technology is an inseparable part of the educational experience. Students who are not acclimated to technology by using it during their coursework each day will be sorely missing out on an important part of the learning experience.

Apple has notified the Security and Exchange Commission that it will miss the deadline for filing the quarterly report detailing its financial figures for the most recent period. Unfortunately, delaying this report might be the most insignificant problem facing the company if the SEC launches an investigation into the recent stock option post-dating scandal that is still unresolved.

Amid rumors of financial irregularities, Apple launched an investigation of its stock option granting practices. Recent allegations suggest that numerous companies (including Apple) have come to rely upon the practice of post-dating stock options for favored executives in order to get them more compensation.

Apple has also admitted that it will have to restate earnings reports for the past 15 quarters and is conducting a probe that might end up causing Apple to restate earnings all the way back to 2002. Speculation at Apple has been that their investigation will uncover substantial discrepancies that will need to be accounted for in the revised earnings statements.

It seems as though many of our corporate leaders are trapped in a pattern of illegal behavior. First it was Enron, using offshore shell companies to hide and accumulate bad debt. After the good folks at Enron got burned, people realized they needed to find a new scam that would fool everyone and allow them to rake in the cash.

This time, Apple and other companies promised massive blocks of stock options (sometimes a large percentage of the company) to top level executives for the excellent work they do every day. The problem is that they allowed these executives to pick the day they wanted the stock purchase orders to go through at the end of the year, when it was simple to look back and choose the day with the lowest price to buy your personal shares.

The folks at Apple had to know better than that, so why did they do it? Apple certainly isn't the only one guilty of trying to jump on the stock option post- dating bandwagon, but many (like myself) imagined Apple to be different than most companies. It is possible that the post dating episode was an oversight and that there was no irregular financial activity going on, but the whole thing just smells bad.

Griffin Technologies has an impressive history of making accessories for PC, Mac, PSP and Ipod that make our lives easier and add capabilities to our already multifunctional devices. Once again Griffin has announced a product designed to make our lives easier.

The PowerBlock is a USB charging system that helps extend your battery life when travelling. It comes complete with adapters that make it compatible with the power supply on most continents, a dock for charging your Ipod and a pouch to hold your adapters.

Most portable device owners will agree that battery life is the most important factor when taking your portables on the road. The PowerBlock comes with an Ipod charging dock, but it can be used with any device that is charged using a USB port.

When you consider the mind numbing boredom inherent in long trips by air, some type of battery extending solution is a must for all your favorite handheld gaming devices, portable media players and the like. At $34.99 USD, the PowerBlock from Griffin (which is available right now) should quickly become a standard piece of kit for most portable owners.

As a user and supporter of EV-DO, I have watched with great anticipation as the technology has moved slowly towards maturity over the past few years.

With Verizon and Sprint signed on as EV-DO supporters and both companies well on their way to completing nationwide EV-DO networks of their own, the question is no longer if EV-DO will be the most widespread wireless broadband technology in the US, but if there will be any other technologies coming to compete with, complement or replace EV-DO any time soon?

The most recent sign that EV-DO has come of age is the USB modem released by Franklin that will bring Internet connectivity to a while new class of devices.

Tablet PCs, lightweight laptops, some PDAs, and many of the recently released UPMCs and other ultra tiny portables that run XP, but yet are too small to sport PCMCIA slots or other wireless equipment, are being given the unexpected opportunity to get online using their USB ports.

Known as the CDU 550 USB modem, this tiny device will only be available for use on the Sprint wireless network. The package comes complete with the modem itself, a carrying case, Y-shaped USB cable, an owners manual, and a Windows setup CD. Once you get your CDU 550 in hand, you'll need to do an ESN swap to move your active Sprint wireless account from your EV-DO wireless card to the new modem. The new USB modem works with all Macs (with a few caveats), but it cannot be used to create a network using the Kyocera KR1 EV-DO router under its current firmware.

Then all you have to do is use the Sprint connection manager (included on the setup CD) to activate your account and tweak your settings. The average speeds for an EV-DO network are from 500Kbps to 800Kbps when downloading and 80Kbps to 180Kbps in the other direction. I would imagine that the lack of an external antenna port on the tiny modem could potentially limit its speed a bit, but since it is the only available EV-DO option for Sprint customers with machines that have express slots alone, I guess they won't mind.

This lucky person certainly did get a new Mac Pro. Not only was this brand new Mac Pro owner kind enough to share his experience with the world, he also ran his new machine through a gamut of benchmarks and real world application-based tests to prove its mettle. I think the fact that this guy took the time to provide us with usable information about the new Mac Pro makes his post different than the average all photography and no substance box openings that populate the web.

This particular machine has two 2.Ghz Dual Core processors (2 Xeon woodcrest processors- for a total of 4 logical processors), 1GB of ram, a 7300gt graphics accelerator, and a 250GB Seagate hard disk. As unbelievably powerful as that machine sounds, the specs for the test machine are not anywhere near the top of the line for the Mac Pro. Keep in mind that this test machine has but 1GB of ram. 1GB of ram, inside a machine that has the capacity for an astonishing 16GBs of ram total, is not a whole lot. In fact, 1GB is the minimum amount of ram that you should have when using a dual processor system as powerful as this one.

Geekbench provides an entire page full of test results that indicate the actual performance potential of this particular Mac Pro. The generous new Mac Pro owner also ran a Photoshop test, a timed compressor test, a Rosetta test and an encoding test. Of course, this extremely giving person also blessed us with a variety of near pornographic shots depicting the new machine in intimate detail. I must admit, when I look at the pictures of our lucky Mac Pro owner opening that box, my heart begins to race and my mind wanders off to think of the things that I could do if I had one.


Photoshop Test:
Test 1: 80% memory allocation, 20 history states = 3min 52secs

Test 2: 90% memory allocation, 1 history state = 3min 4secs

Test 3: (more a test of raw CPU) Radial blur 100, best quality on Eagle Image in test
Mac Pro= 29 secs
Quad G5 = 42 secs


Compressor:
source: 5min HDV 1080i60 clip (export from FCP timeline)
output: Compressor default 16:9 120min fast encode
results:
G5 2ghz 2.5gb ram: 34min
Mac Pro: 12min


Handbrake:
h.264 main profile
1000kbps Average Quality
2-pass encoding
128kbps AAC audio
Donnie Darko disc (not image on HD) 65fps average.

Geekbench:
297.9


Rosetta test:
194.8

WWDC is a conference for Apple developers that gives the company a chance to show them some love while disseminating important information about the next-gen hardware on Apple's launch horizon. There is no live stream coming from the event floor, so minute to minute coverage (complete with pictures) is all there is until Apple makes the footage available after the event.

Mannymix03, a member of our forums, has been kind enough to make up to the minute posts about the event to keep us all informed about the latest happenings at WWDC 2006. So far, so much information has come out of the event that it would be impossible to detail it all here. I will do my best to give you a brief rundown of the important finds that have been discovered thus far.
 
In his usual style, Steve Jobs kicks off the conference with his enthusiastic rundown of what Apple has in store for us in the near future. He began with his usual optimism by quoting record sales figures and mentioning the unprecedented level of penetration that the company is experiencing in the OS market.

After stroking the developers egos by detailing how much of their work Apple sold the previous year, Jobs goes on to discuss the move to utilize Intel chips and the upcoming move into the next generation of Intel chips known as Core 2 Duo. While all the information about new chips and the smart architecture of the new Mac Pro kept folks interested, the news that kept many on the edge of their seats was about Apple's upcoming OS.

After giving Microsoft some of the spotlight by highlighting the ways the Redmond-based giant has appropriated technology from Apple in the past, the details about the OS (Leopard) were released. Along with 64 bit compatibility at the UNIX layer, meaning you can run both 32 and 64 bit applications smoothly and without the aid of emulation, there was mention of a built in backup feature for the OS called Time machine that backs up "everything" in real time. This new feature is not as cut and dry as it seems however. Apparently, with Time machine you get a robust backup system that is capable of full system restores as well as an ala carte system that allows you to bring back just the files that you need.

When integrated with the Finder disk searcher, we are one step closer to having all of our information stored in a searchable database that is backed up in real time. So now you can search for, and find, a file even if you have already erased it! Wonderful! Even I couldn't lose data if I had a set up like this! One of the things that I found a bit surprising was the fact that every copy of the new OS will ship with Time Machine, Bootcamp, Photobooth and Front Row and Spaces. Each one of these modules provides functionality, like a virtual desktop (Spaces), photo editing and sharing (Photobooth), music, video and other media (Front Row), that is not included with other operating systems like Vista.

Spotlight, Core Animation and Universal Access are additional applications in the works at Apple. Spotlight allows you to search the drives of all of the Macs in your home from any one of them. Core Animation is a powerful program that allows you to deconstruct media into its various parts (video, music,ect) and manipulate it into a new creation. Universal Access is designed to allow all people, whether blind, or otherwise disabled, to use their new Mac with ease. With all the new software being developed and hardware changes galore happening at Apple, you'd think that they would be the ones with all the delays and shoddy releases instead of Microsoft!

Mail, Dashboard and iCal have also been updated and changed! Stationary, Notes and To Do's to mail have been integrated into the new email system that will come with the new OS. Dashboard has over 2500 widgets and with Dashcode users can easily create their own customized widgets. With Web Clip and Dashcode you can turn any part of a website into a widget that will update every day keeping you in the know with your favorites on the web. Then there's iChat and iPhoto, which are integrated and will offer multiple logins, invisibility, animated buddy icons, video recording and tabbed chats.

This is near information overload here so I suggest that you digest this as quickly as you can then can come back and get some more! The conference is more than three days long so you can be certain that Jobs and Co. will continue to hit us with surprises well into this week!

Finally, for those with short attention spans, here is a brief list of the key innovations that were revealed this morning:

• 64-bit
• Core animation
• Universal access
• Enhanced parental controls (who cares about that?)
• iCal
• The complete package
• mail
• Spotlight
• Dashboard
• Web Clip and Dashcode
• Announcing Xcode 3 at the afternoon session
• Spaces
• Time Machine
  

Keep an eye out for updates to follow. For those who got their appetites whet and are looking for ways to satisfy their "Apple" craving, check out the video of the conference's Keynote Address delivered by Apple top honcho, Steve Jobs.

From the Nimble company blog comes the story of an employee that used the Microsoft line of operating systems from the very beginning of his career only to make the switch to OS X after the years of frustration became too much for him to bear.

From DOS 2.1 to Windows XP he continued to suffer through instability, insecurity and lack of functionality. Finally, after losing one too many machines to a build up of malware, he decided to go Mac and not look back!

I may have been exaggerating his suffering (in a poor attempt at humor) but the underlying problems that pushed him away from Windows are real and cannot be ignored. The Nimblogger goes on to detail some of the differences between the two operating systems, along with some of the deficiencies that he found in Windows.

Many of the negative points that he makes about XP are legitimate but, he seems to have developed a permanently hostile stance toward Microsoft that cannot be changed. Although most of his assertions are common knowledge and their validity is not in doubt, some of his assertions simply express his now soured opinion of Microsoft.

The number of viruses floating around in the wild facing XP users, the level of style and design savvy apparent in the machines and the "it just works" factor are but a few of the reasons the author gave for making the switch.

Having been a Mac and a PC owner myself, I can attest to the fact that Macs actually do work out of the box better than PCs, and the Nimblogger seems to agree with me. Either way you look at it, more operating systems would benefit everyone; prices would likely be lower, consumers would have more systems to chose from and the competition would foster advancements in technology.

Regardless of what OS you use, learning about the causes behind an experienced computer users decision to switch operating systems can give you more to think about the next time you need to decide on a platform to use.

I must admit that I was quite surprised when I found out about the case of a young man in Vancouver Washington who has been charged with "theft of services" (a charge used to prosecute people who steal cable, or commit a similar offense) for using the free WiFi emanating from a local coffee shop and then carted off to jail.

This poor kid was actually outside of the store in question sitting in his truck with his laptop, happily and repeatedly using the WiFi that he thought was free; after all it was advertised as such. However, where this guy went wrong was disobeying a direct order from the police. 

I am guilty of doing this myself. Admittedly, I did not use the WiFi at the business for three months on and off, but I did use it a lot. Since the WiFi was advertised as a free service, I figured that I or anyone else could use it whenever the establishment was open for business, as long as I didn't do anything illegal with it.
         
I was aware of people being prosecuted for stealing WiFi from their neighbors without their consent, but I always thought that the "free" WiFi coming from many stores was actually free...apparently it's not! There are limits to free WiFi and it doesn't hurt to buy something from the store that hosts the WiFi service once in a while!

Since the kid was only 20 years old and appeared to be no threat to the business or its customers, it would seem reasonable for the proprietor of the store to go outside and talk to the guy before he called the cops, but nowadays I guess that's asking a lot.

While three months is a long time to sit outside of a store (on and off) and leach off their WiFi, a jail sentence does not seem like the best response to the situation. In the end he was still charged with theft of services even though it seems he should have been charged with something related to his decision to ignore the police officer that told him to stop instead.

After reading this I am sure that many people will think twice the next time they click connect after searching for nearby WiFi signals! After all, free WiFi is not worth getting a record and a jail sentence!

I completely agree with PC World's assessment of the 25 worst tech products of all time. They actually did a good job creating the list and managed to avoid the pettiness and seemingly vindictive inclusions that many "worst of" lists are often saddled with. The top five was right on target and the product that they chose as worst of all is something almost everyone in America has been annoyed by in one way or another. Since the article takes up nearly ten pages I will attempt to summarize it and create a easily readable list absent of the several paragraphs of explanation and qualification that accompany each product in the actual article. Some of the products on the list you may never have heard of, but most are pretty familiar items. The list is not scientific so don't get angry if you disagree with any of the items included in the list. It's all just for fun! Have a look, you're certain to get a laugh at the very least.

Garnering honorable mention were the following "winners":

Web TV, Timex Data Link watch, the Motorola Rokr (cell phone), Dell's SL320i (the Ford Pinto of laptops), Apple's puck mouse and the Apple Newton Message pad were all included, along with many other completely forgettable tech products.

Now for the list. This is a list of the worst 25 tech products to be released since the tech revolution that started some time in the 1980's:

25. Sharp RD3D Notebook (2004)
24. DigiScents iSmell (2001)
23. Free PCs (1999)
22. Apple Pippin @World (1996)
21. Eyetop Wearable DVD Player (2004)
20. CueCat (2000)
19. OQO Model 1 (2004)
18. IBM Deskstar 75GXP (2000)
17. Apple Macintosh Portable (1989)
16. Comet Cursor (1997)
15. Iomega Zip Drive (1998)
14. Gateway 2000 10th Anniversary PC (1995)
13. IBM PCjr. (1984)
12. PointCast (1996)
11. Priceline Groceries and Gas (2000)
10. dBASE IV (1988)
9. Pressplay and Musicnet (2002)
8. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)
7. Microsoft Bob (1995)
6. Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994)
5. Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)
4. Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)
3. Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)
2. RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)
1. America Online (1989-2006)

As we have reported before, the release of the Intel Mac has spawned a series of highly competitive of benchmark tests designed to prove dominance once and for all. True objectivity has been somewhat lacking in some of the previous tests, and this one seems no different. The attitude of the person conducting this test is best summed up by a quote, taken from a site that created a good natured spoof of a recent Mac ad campaign, that can be found near the top of the page: "The Intel chip... For months, it's been trapped inside a Mac, inside a pretty little box, dutifully performing pretty little tasks when it could have been doing so much more. Starting today, the Intel chip will be set free, and get to live life in a Mac... running Linux. Imagine the possibilities."

The results: (see the full version for complete results)

In both tests the Mac had the poorest performance between the Intel machines running XP and several different configurations of machines running Linux. As a person who prefers Linux myself, it was refreshing to be reassured about something I already know. However, to be fair to Apple I felt that some of the criticism leveled at the company seemed to carry a general anti- Apple bias that led to some conclusions I did not agree with.

One thing is for sure, supporters on all sides will certainly continue their steadfast support of their favorite system. Most will be unswayed by these results. The marketing will continue, meanwhile the actual difference between products will continue to decrease.