One of the more innovative announcements at Macworld 2008 was Apple’s Time Capsule, a combination of an external back-up hard disk drive and a Wi-Fi base station.
The Time Capsule allows anyone running the latest Mac operating system, Leopard, to wirelessly back-up all of their Macs onto either a 500GB or 1TB device. According to Apple, you plug it in and using the Time Machine software it’s easy to set-up automatic wireless back-ups for all the Macs in your home.
“Bring Time Capsule home, plug it in, click a few buttons on your Macs and voila — all the Macs in your house are being backed up automatically, every hour of every day”, said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With Time Capsule and Time Machine, all your irreplaceable photos, movies and documents are automatically protected and incredibly easy to retrieve if they are ever lost”.
The Time Capsule is also a full-featured Wi-Fi base station using 802.11n technology. The key features are:
* dual-band antennae for 2.4GHz or 5GHz frequencies;
* three Gigabit LAN ports;
* one Gigabit Ethernet WAN port;
* one USB 2.0 port;
* Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA-2), 128-bit WEP encryption; and
* a built-in NAT firewall supporting NAT-PMP for features like Back to My Mac.
The 500GB model and the 1TB model are priced at £199 and £329, respectively, and will ship next month.-Martin Lynch
In the least surprising announcement at Macworld Expo 2008, Steve Jobs took the covers off a much-rumoured and ridiculously thin laptop called, MacBook Air.
Apple, always one for inventing new words, described the process as “Thinnovation”. The notebook is just 0.16in at its thinnest point and 0.76in at its maximum, which is very thin indeed. It sports a 13.3in LED-backlit widescreen display, a full-size and backlit keyboard, a built-in iSight video camera, big trackpad with “multi-touch gesture support so users can pinch, rotate and swipe”.
It is powered by a 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache, and comes with 2GB of memory, an 80GB 1.8-inch hard drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi technology and Bluetooth 2.1. Users can also opt for a 64GB solid state drive (SSD). Battery life is rated at 5 hours and prices start at £1,199.
“We’ve built the world’s thinnest notebook—without sacrificing a full-size keyboard or a full-size 13-inch display,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “When you first see MacBook Air, it’s hard to believe it’s a high-performance notebook with a full-size keyboard and display. But it is.”
That said, Apple’s quest for a Size Zero notebook means that certain sacrifices did indeed have to be made. There’s only one USB port, no Ethernet, no Firewire and no optical drive.
Ah, the price of fashion. Jump for another shot.-Martin Lynch
The sharks are in the water and they are smelling HD DVD blood these days. Following on from Warner Bros and New Line dumping HD DVD and Toshiba’s desperate new price cuts and bigger ad campaign to save the format, we now have the YouTube parodies.
I’ve seen this video used for the hilarious Hitler Gets Banned (from Xbox LIVE) and it’s ROFL material. The clip is from the top movie Downfall, charting the last few months of Hitler in the Berlin bunkers although, to be honest, this HD DVD version, like the Xbox LIVE one, has a lot more laughs.
Take a break, put your feet up and have a giggle. Jump to the next page to see the brilliant Xbox LIVE parody.-Martin Lynch
While the purpose of drinking a lot of alcohol is not necessarily to do stupid things, it is a guaranteed side effect.
Which is why next time your judgement is lacking, you may find yourself holding on to this odd little device: the Pocket Lightning Reaction. You can probably guess where this is going.
Each player grabs an end of the devilish device, then you push a button in the middle and listen to the music play. However as soon as the green light lights up and the music stops, you have to press your trigger button ASAP. If the other idiot does it first you get a nasty electric shock. You can see why this would be less fun sober. That’s probably why the makers say:
“Play with alcohol for best effect. Wicked!”
Shocking, maybe, but at just £10.50 here, it’s a cheap way of electrocuting your mates.-Martin Lynch
Despite a rocky start and some delays, the BBC’s catch-up online TV service, iPlayer, has been used by more than a million people since it launched on Christmas Day.
Over 3.5 million programmes have so far been streamed or downloaded via iPlayer in its first two weeks. That’s an average of 250,000 per day. There are currently around 250 programmes on offer from the past week’s schedule. On average, users stream programmes for just under 25 minutes, while the number of those choosing to stream content outnumbers those that download content by 8:1.
Ashley Highfield, Director of BBC Future Media and Technology, comments:
“Attracting a million visitors, who've accessed over three and a half million programmes, within just two weeks is a wonderful start. Typically, people who use the BBC iPlayer are spending nearly half an hour a day watching streams of their favourite programmes, suggesting that it looks set to revolutionise the way BBC Television programmes are viewed in the UK.
"Significantly, while the BBC iPlayer allows the public to catch up on their favourite mainstream BBC shows, it is also encouraging to see that nearly half of all programmes streamed or downloaded are placed outside the top 50, demonstrating how on demand services can bring niche programming to a wider audience."
Jump now to see what the Top 10 programmes downloaded over the holidays were.-Martin Lynch
While the purpose of drinking a lot of alcohol is not necessarily to do stupid things, it is a guaranteed side effect. 
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
Contributor | Tamlin Magee
