Rui CarmoMostly thanks to CES and the return of my odd work peaks, I've been unable to cope with the veritable flood of tech news that has filled my inbox to the brim, answer e-mail, or code anything of interest at home.
And yet, I feel oddly satisfied that half the stuff I'm looking at now is about music or video downloads - of course most of it was timed to coincide with CES, but nevertheless it's nice to see my sole timid prediction almost vindicated so early in 2006.
Consider, for instance:
- The recurring Google-is-going-to-do-a-media-store rumors, which you can find just about anywhere (although only a few seem to know what they're talking about).
- Microsoft's stake in Vongo and Urge, and the amusing note that, as a Microsoft-oriented service, Vongo titles its "access denied" page as "Geographic Failure" - which is wrong in so many ways...
- Some of the new devices, such as the Gigabeat. Looks familiar, no?
...and the continuing onslaught of music phones (this time it's the W810).
Of slightly more interest to me, though, is the resurfacing of eBook readers. For instance, the Sony/Reader looks very nice (although I will never even consider buying one of these things if I can't put PDF and HTML files on it).