What The New Version Includes: No new bells and whistles, but it does contain some important security fixes.

Download a copy here.

This is looking to be a fake, but here’s what Kataku had to say about this supposed leaked Playstation prototype:

“The image shows a robust device that is sort of the exact opposite of sleek. Actually, it looks an awful lot like one of those projectors you use during Power Point presentations. Although it’s probably a fake, mostly because it’s way too fat to come from Sony, there are a lot of things about the image that makes me think it could be real.

“First off, it has a lot of other images on the page, including one of the PSP and two other devices a don’t recognize. One may be an LCD but I cant’ tell what the third is, is does appear to have a camera latched to it’s top. Joel says it is one of their phones. The small info box included has the following info:

Next Generation Playstation
CELL processor
Blu-ray disc
PS3 PSP UMD MediaMove
Plano-Black Design

“I’m intrigued with the UMD reference. The device appears to have three slots, plus a place to stick UMDs. I’m guessing one for the Blu-ray, one for Memory Sticks and one for, what, your soul? The thing appears to be page 12 of an 18 page presentation. Very interesting.” Source: Kotaku via Gizmodo

Last week a programmer named Jon Johansen aka DVD Jon hacked the digital rights management (DRM) scheme of iTunes and released a program called PyMusique that allowed you to still buy music from iTunes but minus the DRM protetction scheme. Apple quickly patched the problem and hacker-themed blogs around the world sighed.

But they’re back.

Today news.com has broken the story that the same gang has cracked the code again. Acciordin to ARS Technica:

“Apparently it took little time to break the iTunes 4.7 encryption to emulate the client, thus PyMusique 0.4 already works with iTMS, but without the DRM. However, the authors this time are saying that they will only maintain a Linux release, claiming that the entire point of PyMusique was to bring iTMS to Linux. While the goal may appear noble, it is, nonetheless, against the law.” Source: ARS Technica via news.com

Now Everybody Has a Search Engine Dept: This one definitely didn’t do it for me, but ZoomInfo claims to aggregate info about you by company and school. Disappointing.

Looks like the recall in February isn’t helping much. Today, despite the fact that the unit had a new replacement power cord, an X-box has blown up in Sweden. (How’s that for a headline?) According to The Register:

“Corroboration from many owners indicates chronic problems with early versions of the power supply, as we reported on Friday. Hardware sites have published pictures of the wear and tear that’s responsible for the short outs. Xbox owners are critical that Microsoft’s recall isolates the problem, rather than fixes it. But Microsoft has brushed off the evidence that links the frying consoles to the power problems supply in a statement we received today.

“A single report recently surfaced that inaccurately speculates that the recently announced power cord replacement for Xbox is somehow related to broken “solder joints” inside of early Xbox consoles. This report is simply not true. In rare cases, solder joints have broken. This issue is not associated with the power cord replacement program, nor is it unique to the Foxlink power supplies or even Xbox consoles.

“All consumer electronics products experience some broken solder joints as a result of ordinary wear and tear. Broken solder joints inside the Xbox are a warranty issue. All Xbox consoles (even without a replacement cord) have been designed to insure that a broken solder joint does not present any safety issue.

“The empirical evidence suggests otherwise, however. In the enthusiast forums, such as Xbox Scene, dozens of users report problems with sparks on early models, problems fixed by a newer power supply. Fans are scornful of Microsoft’s claim that “1 in 10,000″ consoles are affected: some put the figure at 1 in 500 and others at 1 in 10.”
Source: The Register

It sure is a good time to own a photo organizing and sharing service. Today alone, HP announced it was snapping up SnapFish, while earlier this morning Yahoo announced plans to snare Flickr. SnapFish has 13 million subscribers.

More on the SnapFish Deal
More on The Flickr Deal

How cool is this? It’s free and let’s you take your FireFox settings wherever you go.

“Portable Firefox is a fully functional package of Firefox optimized for use on a USB key drive. It has some specially-selected optimizations to make it perform faster and extend the life of your USB key as well as a specialized launcher that will allow most of your favorite extensions to work as you switch computers. It will also work from a CDRW drive (in packet mode), ZIP drives, external hard drives, some MP3 players, flash RAM cards and more.” Source: John Haller.com

Google has had a near lock on keyword advertising with its successful AdSense program. This website uses AdSense and so do thousands of other small blogs. It’s a fast and easy way to add revenue to your website with no programming know-how required. Today Yahoo announced that it was starting a similar program, which will hopefully turn up the dial on this category and get some well-needed competition going.

I found an interesting bit of commentary at TechCentral Station on what Yahoo could do to compete with Google. Some of the ideas are not only interesting but spell some financial relief to advertisers and blog owners. Here are some highlights:

What Yahoo can do to compete with Google?

* Offer Paypal and other overnight funds transfer along with regular cheques. This is, after all, the internet age.

* Make the publisher shareout transparent.

* Recognize that despite the groovy technology involved in placing context sensitive advertising on webpages, the actual role of an ad strip provider analogous to a very well automated advertising agency. Typically an advertising agency charges 15-20% of the ad buy. This compares rather unfavorably with the current 60-80% spread it appears Google is charging.

* By narrowing the spread between what advertisers are paying and what publishers are getting Yahoo would attract high quality publishers who are chafing under Google’s restrictions and relatively low payout rates.

* Reward quality publishers. While there will be an army of sales people out trying to get Adsense advertisers to switch to Yahoo, the real struggle will likely be for the tens of thousands of small to very small publishers who actually make the Adsense model work.

* Publish the bids for particular key words in an easy access format. Yahoo’s company, Overture, already does this by allowing people to lookup prices and traffic statistics for particular keywords. The more price and traffic information web publishers have the more keenly they will compete to build sites which attract valuable traffic.

* Offer advertisers at least one alternative to the pure “keyword bid” model. A flat fee for a set number of clicks might be more attractive to some advertisers. As well, while selling “page views” or “impressions” has fallen out of fashion, these are reasonable metrics for certain sorts of ad campaigns.
Source: TechCentral Station