IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 27/01/2009

Apple to settle in scratched iPods class action case for $22.5 million
While court hearings are still required to give it the green light, the settlement in the class-action suit that targeted Apple for its say 'uninspired' use of very scratch-friendly materials for its first-generation iPod nano media players is becoming a reality. Through the settlement Apple will be required to provide $22.5 million to a fund from which owners of the scratchy iPods will be able to get a small refund.

The sum set to be available for the unhappy iPod buyers will be of either $25, for those who have an iPod nano that didn't come with a slipcase, or $15 for those with a slipcase. Not much for the shock of seeing your shiny iPod like it went intimate with Edward Scissorhands but in these troubled times any extra buck is welcomed.

Fujitsu to stop making hard drive heads
In a time when its hard drive business, which was put up for sale last year, seems close to being snatched up by Toshiba, Fujitsu has decided to stop making one vital component for the storage solutions, the heads. The Japanese company today announced that the hard drive head unit will be closed down on March 31 as part of a "broader strategic review of the HDD operations," with the majority of its workers set to be moved to other operations within the Fujitsu Group.

The move to stop manufacturing HDD heads will see Fujitsu take a charge of 5 billion yen or just under $56 million.

First batch of EVGA GTX 295 backplates already sold out
Revealed just four days ago, EVGA's secsi backplate for Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 cards sold like hot cakes, with the first batch snapped up in a matter of hours. Seen below, the backplate is supposed to improve the cooling of Nvidia's dual-GPU card and cost just $19.99.

Those interested in getting the backplate will have to keep an eye on EVGA's site to see when it is back on sale.

Apple gets multitouch patent
Computer and handheld manufacturer Apple Inc. was recently awarded a patent towards multitouch capable devices.

The patent, which is readable via the US Patent Office web site, outlines just about every absolute specific including some generalizations of the iPod touch and iPhone's multitouch capability, however in its terminology outlines "computing device" and "computer-based" products. This results in Apple owning the patent for all computer based visual multitouch products, meaning those who wish to manufacture said types of products will have to pay royalties towards Apple when manufacturing such products.

This may be bad news when it comes to Microsoft and HP seeing as the latest major advertising campaign run by the two include HP Multitouch screens used in combination with Microsoft Windows 7. As for the consumer, it may result in higher cost equipment if HP does wish to continue production, or, no access to said technology if manufacturers other than Apple don't wish to continue developing said technologies.

Internet Explorer 8 RC 1 released
Microsoft has now released the first RC (Release Candidate) for the eight major release of the Internet Explorer web browser to a seemingly less than impressed public. Unfortunately, most reviews of the new release have claimed numerous slowdowns, and performance issues.

The IE8 RC1 includes interface, reliability, performance, compatibility and security improvements. The download is available at Microsoft.com.

USA $6 billion broadband grant closer to becoming a reality
Several months ago a programme surfaced in the United States that was designed to help the more rural areas of the country connect together online. The proposed multi-billion dollar plan is now coming even closer to reality, as the members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce proceeded to vote approving the grant on Friday - as part of an even larger economic recovery package for the country.

"This legislation is an important step towards getting our economy back on track," said Henry Waxman, chairman of the committee.

The basic principle is to collect $6 billion and use it to assemble the wired and wireless broadband infrastructure that could bring the internet to communities in the country that have yet to be touched by providers due to lack of regional demand. The House Appropriations Committee believe that the spur of new technology and access available to a new consumer base will encourage new business growth and help stem the economic downturn that is effecting us all.

The grant for this project was chosen above a $10 billion grant for scientific research, and a $32 billion grant for improving the electrical grid. Between the three grants, you can see why the broadband work has been approved over the others, for its cheap kick-start combined with its economic benefit.

Photo to DVD Pro 3.0
Photo To DVD Pro is a really nice and simple piece of software that you can use to convert photos and mp3 to VCD, DVD compatible MPG/VOB files. You can add photos and images to a scene, set transition effects, add subtitles onto each slide, select an MP3 file to play as your background music, and then compile it all into a MPG/VOB file, which can really easily be burned into VCD, DVD.

Updates include:

- Adds time hint on previewing title and credit of album.
- Fixed error of burning VCD 2.0 still image.
- Fixed error of burning DVD disc occasionally.
- Fixed others minor bugs.

Download: Photo2DVD Pro 3.0 (Shareware)
Website: Fly VCD Software (The team's website is offline right now, so visit their downloads-city page for more product information)

Winamp 5.55 beta update released
The fantastic media app developers behind Winamp have released a brand new version of their famous software, fixing many of the problems behind Winamp 5.54, and adding some nice niche little features.

Latest changes include:

* New: Turkish, Portuguese & Romanian installer translations and language packs
* New: WBM system for lazy-loading of *.w5s files
* New: [Bento skin] Playlist tab (optional)
* New: [ml_impex] iTunes-compatible Media Library database import/export plugin
* Fixed: Accessibility fixup for Format Info string in Alt+3 dialog
* Fixed: New version check can't be disabled when anon statistics is enabled
* Fixed: Rare crash when closing vis window
* Fixed: Small memory leaks in in_wm, gen_dropbox, ml_local, ml_pmp and tagz.w5s
* Fixed: Various issues when starting/stopping/switching vis plugins
* Fixed: [gen_jumpex] Shell Options, B Hotkey, Send To menus & other misc bugs
* Fixed: [gen_ml] Library button resize glitch
* Fixed: [in_cdda] Potential cddb Disc null pointer crash
* Fixed: [in_mp4] Empty genre metadata field (eg. when transcoding from flac to m4a)
* Fixed: [in_mp4] Long hangs on slow network drives
* Fixed: [ml_disc] Potential crash on exit
* Fixed: [ml_local] Broken 'Create Playlist' button functionality in local media
* Fixed: [ml_local] Remove missing files broken with some older/corrupt databases
* Fixed: [out_ds] Logarithmic volume control dB display glitch
* Fixed: [ml_pmp] Crash when deleting playlists/files from a P4S portable device
* Fixed: [pmp_ipod] Deletion of non-existent files from database
* Fixed: [pmp_ipod] Reading of Play Count statistics
* Updated: Sonic Burning Engine v4.10.32.502
* Updated: [gen_jumpex] JTFE v1.0.2
* Updated: [in_mp3] Fraunhofer Decoder v4.3
* Updated: [lame_enc] LAME 3.98.2
* Updated: [vis_avs] AVS v2.82
* Improved: [gen_ff] Faster & no flicker when loading/switching skins
* Improved: [gen_jumpex] New 'Add to Library' shell menu item & other tweaks
* Improved: [gen_ml] Optional alternating row colors for list views
* Improved: [gen_ml] Optional skinned menus
* Improved: [in_mod] Experimental ExtendedRead support (transcoding, burning, etc)
* Improved: [in_mod] Now uses global Playback config for thread priority
* Improved: [in_mp3] APEv2 tag editing/creating tweaks
* Improved: [ml_local] Media Library searches now ignore diacritics
* Improved: [ml_local] New 'Category' and 'Lossless' database fields
* Improved: [ml_online] New toolbar and various other tweaks & optimizations
* Improved: [ml_online] Support for 3rd-party Services
* Improved: [vis_milk2] Pixel Shader 2.0 & 3.0 support tweaks
* Improved: [vis_nsfs] Unicode title display for currently playing track
* Misc: More miscellaneous general tweaks, improvements, fixes and optimizations
* Misc: New "Send Feedback" item in the Help menu
* Misc: Note that changes made to the ml database are not backwards compatible!
* Misc: Removed some older Milkdrop presets and added some newer ones
* Misc: Separated vlb.w5s and nsvdec_vp3.dll decoders from in_mp3 and in_nsv
* Misc: Separated timer from gen_ff into timer.w5s

Download: Winamp 5.55
Website: Winamp.com

YouTube embedded videos get high quality option
YouTube updated their embedded video windows last week, giving viewers checking in remotely from other websites a little more control over the quality of the content watched.

Google's previous policy, in particular for larger videos, was that should a user embed a YouTube video into another site, then the viewers would have to sacrifice on video quality or visit the YouTube page to see everything nicer and cleaner. However, last week the high quality 'button' quietly slipped in the menu of all embedded YouTube videos, allowing for a sharper image at the expense of bandwidth.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 27/01/2009

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