Lowell Deeds

Headlines for Techies from Google News :

There’s a war going on… between France and Apple Computer. They are at odds over the exclusivity of Apples wildly successful iTunes and iPod. “Apple iPods” you can only download music from “Apple’s music store, iTunes”…do you see a pattern?…Apple works only with Apple. This doesn’t sit well with the French government. A bill passed by the French legislature would require iPods to be manufactured so that music downloads would be available from “all music stores”, not just iTunes. The question…will Steve Jobs (the CEO of Apple) say
Au revoir to France?

And…things aren’t that rosy for Microsoft and Bill Gates either. Apparently, Microsoft has decided to postpone the release of its new operating system, Vista until January of 2007. January… as opposed to the original release date of November 2006… that means the release will be a month after Christmas not before it…Retailers are upset to say the least (No Vista to put under the tree)…Microsoft is saying Vista still has some security issues that need to be ironed out before is released.

Have you hear of Firefox yet? It’s an open-source Web browser. It is in direct competition with Microsoft Explorer (I’ll bet you didn’t even know there was an alternative to Explorer…well, I just found out too)…and it’s FREE. Anyway, Firefox is ready to release a beta version of Firefox 2.0 anytime now. I use Firefox on my home computer and am very pleased with it.

And final an exclusive piece of techie news that you will not find in Google News…
I have completed burning 1629-1855 CD’s for six of our ten towns…”Bill and Steve, how do you like them apples?” …I know Google News isn’t too impressed.