I am a big music fan (and am really into audio books), and always have been.  So much so, that I have had three iPods since they first came out (various stories attached, but not here), and I currently have a 60Gb with color display (not the video version).  My current iPod is suffering a fair bit now from a number of ailments.  Such as it's near full, there are loads of scratches on the screen, the battery is not as good as it was, and it occasionally just stops in the middle of playing (I think the phone jack is buggered as it's extremely loose with all earphones!).

As such I have been watching news about the iPod for a while now, and there has been very little news about the iPod for a while.  Especially in the news about a new bigger/better version.  The current version is the Fifth generation iPod (also known as iPod with video)  That was until today.  I came across an article that 'hints' that there may be a new version in the works.  The article (viewed here) is a little sparse on actual concrete news, but does follow the patter that Apple seem to follow when a new product/version is due.

Obviously I'll wait for the next version to be out in the wild before making any decision.  Especially as the current iPod is still in operation and should be for a while (fingers crossed).  I wouldn't mind getting some video content on there either!

A friend of mine recently got one of those digital photo frames, and I must admit it looks really cool.  Well, in a similar style, I found this:

Men's Digital Photo Wallet

Leather wallet features a removable digital photo viewer. Don't carry a wrinkled paper photo of your kids in your wallet. Our new handsome leather wallet includes a removable digital photo viewer that stores 55 color images. Easy USB photo transfer from your PC. 1.4" screen. Better still, the viewer is rechargeable—no batteries to buy! Classic men's bi-fold wallet is soft black Nappa leather.

At $50 is must be worth a punt.

To keep up to date with the tools that a developer needs is a tricky thing.  It's made even harder when the core tools that they use are in the rpocess of being upgraded/improved/replaced.

The main development tool that I use is Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005.  There is a new version of this tool being developed by Microsoft, which is code named 'Orcas'.

I have known that there is a beta version of the application available for download for some time now.  The trouble with downloading and installing the beta is that it interferes with your current version resulting in you not being able to do your real work properly.

Thankfully Microsoft have provided an interesting solution.  The Visual Studio team have made Beta 1 of the next release of Visual Studio (codenamed 'Orcas') available as a virtual machine.  Its a 500Mb+ download but it does provide for a relatively easy way to assess the beta version without causing problems for your existing development environment.

For a long time now, the humble computer hard disk has been left behind in the development stakes.  Processors, RAM, graphics cards, screens, Front-side bus, etc have all been getting faster and better.  However, the hard disk hasn't really kept pace.  Yes, OK it has increased in size and decreased in cost, but it has not really gotten any faster.

How often have you nowadays been waiting for your application to start up, only to watch the HD light just constantly flash, and you can hear the drive churning.

Well, it looks like there is a bright light on the way.  Solid State Disk (SDD).  From Wikipedia, SSD is defined as:

"A solid state drive is primarily a data storage device, for use in computing applications that traditionally use a hard disk drive. A solid state drive is based on either non-volatile memory or volatile memory instead of the spinning platter and mechanical-magnetic head found in a conventional hard disk drive. With no moving parts, a solid state drive eliminates seek time, latency and other electro-mechanical delays and failures associated with a conventional hard disk drive."

To me, I describe it as a solid state drive is basically a lot of RAM put together that doesn't loose the data when not powered.

I have then found an article on http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/ that gives some details on the size and pricing of some of the early manufactured drives.  The article goes on to say "No word on pricing yet for the 32GB, but the 16GB weighs in at a hefty $250.00. With a range of SSD cards from 8GB – 32GB".  I can't wait until we get as common place these drives in every day electronics, such as laptops, iPODs, Mobile Phones, etc.

A lot of my current job is making sure that all the Web sites I create are AA accessibility compliant, and also cross browser compliant.  As many people who need to do this will already know, to test on many different browsers is difficult at best.  You can't have more than one version of Internet Explorer installed at the same time, for a start.  In my efforts to try and at least do a better job in my development of browser compatible Web sites I came accross Browsershots.org.

Test your web design in different browsers

Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

I've been thinking about doing this for a while now, and thought that I may as well start at some point.

Basically, what I've wanted to do is blog about some of the interesting Web sites that I browse to during the day.  I do have to say that about 90% of my surfing is restricted to IT and work related stuff, but occasionaly something grabs by attention.

So, for my first blog in this area:  I was reading my Blog subscriptions on MOSS 2007, when I came accross a blog on Its official I am Superman .  So I thought I'd give the 'test' a go.  Here are my results:

Iron Man 80% Hulk 70% Catwoman 65% Green Lantern 60% Spider-Man 55% The Flash 55% Superman 50% Batman 50% Robin 47% Supergirl 45% Wonder Woman 15%

Inventor. Businessman. Genius.

  I then also discovered that they also had the vilan test!

Dr. Doom 73% Lex Luthor 57% Apocalypse 53% Green Goblin 53% Kingpin 53% Venom 52% Magneto 47% Mr. Freeze 46% The Joker 41% Juggernaut 41% Riddler 36% Dark Phoenix 34% Two-Face 33% Catwoman 29% Poison Ivy 21% Mystique 21%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.