Tax Time News

I am taking time off from trying to get my tax liability to match my ability to pay to cast my eye toward the tech news. Today is the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Kate and Leo were not actually aboard. President Lincoln died on this day in 1865. Ray Kroc opened his first McDonalds in Des Plaines, IL, in 1955. Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452. Don't ask, don't tell.

1. Apple has announced that OS X Tiger will ship at 6p April 29. Tiger is the most significant update to OS X since it was shipped four years ago, and at $129 for the upgrade, it better be. Apple announced its quarterly results on Wednesday and it's looking good for the little Cupertino upstart. The company announced earnings of $290 million on sales of 1 million Macs and 5 million iPods in the quarter. Despite beating forecasts, Apple's stock dropped 10%.
2. Microsoft has announced that it will unveil the new Xbox 360, May 12 in a half-hour special on MTV. The special will be hosted by Frodo, aka actor Elijah Wood, reportedly an Xbox fanatic.
3. News agency Reuters was forced to shut down its instant messaging system yesterday due to an infestation of the Kelvir worm. There's no schedule for bringing it back online.
4. US anti-spam laws are a bust. In a telephone survey of 1,421 Internet users by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 28% said they’re getting more spam than a year ago. Only 22% said they were getting less. But we’re getting used to it. 53% of e-mail users now say spam has made them less trusting of e-mail, compared to 62% a year ago.
5. The US music industry is going after Internet2 users. The prototype high speed network is restricted to campuses and research institutions so far, but according to the RIAA that hasn’t stopped students from taking advantage of the 100mbps speeds to share music. Lawsuits have gone out against 405 students from 18 campuses who use ihub2 to share music on the high speed network.
6. Ebay traffic has fallen for the ninth straight month. 5% fewer visitors used the site in March. That's a "paltry" 65.9 million uniques. (Are there that many Internet users in total? Jeeze.) Wonder how much of this has to do with the January fee increase?
7. Internet casino Golden Palace.com has paid $650,000 to name a new species of monkey. This is the same company that paid $28,000 for a grilled cheese sandwich with the purported image of the Virgin Mary on it. The monkey will be named callicebus aureipalatii, that’s Latin for “golden palace.” CEO Richard Rowe said, “This species will bear our name for as long as it exists. Hundreds, even thousands of years from now, the GoldenPalace.com Monkey will live to carry our name through the ages.” What a ghastly thought.
8. Intel Russia has created the first Wi-Fi hotspot at the North Pole.
9. The NY Times has revealed the contents of President Bush’s iPod. The device was given to him by his daughters last July, and he uses it to pep up his bike rides. It contains mostly country music from George Jones, Kenny Chesney, and the like, but also songs by Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and the Knack. There are only about 250 songs on the 10,000 song device. Someone needs to turn him on to Kazaa.
10. He may use an iPod, but he doesn’t send email even to his daughters. Bush said he’s afraid his “personal stuff” would be made public. He said “everything is investigated in Washington” and as a result “we’re losing a lot of history, not just with me, but with other presidents as well… I don’t think you’re entitled to be able to read my mail between my daughters and me.”
11. Gordon Moore says time is running out on Moore’s law. That’s the one that says transistor density on microprocessors will double every 18 months. It’s held true since he coined the law 40 years ago, but Moore says it will stop working in another couple of decades. “Something like this cannot continue forever. The dimensions are small enough now that we’re approaching the size of atoms and that’s a fundamental block. I think the law has another 10–20 years before fundamental limits are reached.”
12. Intel’s eBay offer of a $10,000 bounty for the April 19, 1965 edition of Electronics Magazine where Moore first made his pronouncement has caused an uproar in libraries, where people are stealing copies of the magazine.

Listen in this morning at 7:50a Pacific for the gadget of the week on KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles. Tune in tomorrow at 7:45a Eastern for my weekly visit with John Donabie on 1010 CFRB Toronto. And, of course, listen to my show every Saturday and Sunday, 11a to 2p Pacific on KFI, Los Angeles.