As expected, there’s lots of interesting things being revealed at Steve Jobs keynote at MacExpo, and in parallel at the BBC, where Steve Kennedy is embedded for us.
Among the things that grabbed us is big news for Podcasters. Apple are expanding GarageBand to include a podcast authoring studio.
Included are 200 royalty-free sound effects and 100 jingles. While other audio such as music is playing, the volume will automatically reduce once the host speaks.
Apple are also including a speech enhancer, which, without extra detail, I’d imagine is an audio compressor.
This kind of move by Apple will have a serious impact on companies offering podcasting software like Odeo.
Another great addition, which may hit Skype slightly, is the ability to carry out remote interviews using iChat.
More details soon. We’d imagine, once Steve gets off the stage on the Apple aite.
Yahoo is launching a new service aimed at making it easier for users to connect to Yahoo Internet-based services through multiple Web-connected devices, including mobiles and TVs.
So long as the device is connected to the Internet, users will be able to access their personal Yahoo content such as photos, email and address books.
Yahoo! will be rolling out their Go TV service in the next few months, with the service enabling users to access various other Web based services for TVs, including local movie listing search and personalised MyYahoo! functions.
If you haven’t been to CES, you may have heard of the headache inducing noise, leg-ache inducing size and debt-ache inducing taxis and hotel rooms. We’ll save you all that and run over the highs and lows from this year’s CES 2006 show – shame we can’t help out with the glitzy lights of Las Vegas.
Satellite radios from XM and Sirius while Toshiba’s new HD-DVD playing Qosmio laptop gathered attention. It’s the first laptop to debut with a built-in HD-DVD player. The laptop can also play hi-def discs on your TV. The Qosmio is expected to hit the streets in March 2006 – months before the first Blu-Ray boxes are due out.
It looks great, but you’ll need deep pockets and an understanding partner to justify forking out $399 for a humble remote control. 
Elsewhere, the PC World editors were less than impressed with the ongoing willy-waving battle for the biggest plasma screen, arguing that they’d prefer it if the manufacturer’s considerable energies were directed into producing affordable plasmas for regular folks.
Slapping iTunes around the face with their hefty gauntlet, Google have laid down a challenge to iTunes with the announcement of their new video and television Internet service, the Google Video Store.
The service promises to “democratise” video sales, letting wannabe Spielbergs sell their movies on Google Video Store, with Google taking what Larry Page has described as a “very low” percentage of the sale cost.
Visitors to the Google Video homepage at 
Speculators with a wad of cash might like to consider convert said cash into an ITV plc share holding in the next few days some feel. 
BT, despite having previously stated that it has no desire to enter the content market, needs to consider the competition from both BSkyB and a revitalised NTL. This could force BT’s into making an early move before other predatory companies come out of the shadows but will need to balance this against the cost of such an acquisition. 
Unlike Sky, which is principally a broadcast platform owner and call centre operator, ITV actually has what companies with desires to be fully-grown media giants badly need; content and a fifty year plus heritage of making TV programmes. 
Like a pub drunk wanting to take on the entire world, Google have gone over to Microsoft’s table, knocked over their pints and invited them out for a scrap.
Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience at Google commented, “The pack has been created to give users a way to painlessly install all the essential software they need – pre-configured in a sensible way – in a matter of minutes. Better yet, users don’t have to keep track of software updates or new programs – we maintain and update all the software for them.”
Josh Bernoff, a media and internet analyst at Forrester, a technology research company, described the move as a “direct action to challenge Microsoft,” adding, “Google is saying, ‘We can manage the browser and other elements of the computer-desktop experience better than you’.”
Interestingly, after 
Mr Gates, speaking in the keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, evangelised the “arrival of the much-trailed ‘digital lifestyle'” (which of course, we here at Digital Lifestyles just loved when