There’s been lots of speculation going around the various blog sites about the release of a new version of Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
Yesterday Microsoft confirmed that the Xbox 360 Elite is a real product and will begin arriving in US stores on 29 April with an expected retail price of $480.
The confirmed spec of the 360 Elite is a combination of a 120Gb hard drive, new accessories bundled in, and to all of those HD TV fans, an HDMI port built in. Oh, and a return to a black case like the original Xbox. Microsoft tell us that the retail price of all of the bundled bits is over $600 if bought separately.
The HDMI port is an interesting move – yes it will make it simpler to get High Def screens connected (if you have a screen with an HDMI in port), but importantly it will let Elite owners play protected HD-DVD discs on the long-discussed add-on HD-DVD drive. HDMI connection is needed for the HDCP content protection scheme.
The new, large hard drive is a big step up from the previous version of 20Gb to 120Gb – all the more space for Microsoft to sell you TV shows, films and software to download – oh … and save you game positions to as well of course.
The hard drive is detachable and will also be sold separately so standard Xbox users will be able to get hold of them too. Expected US price is $180.
Alongside the goodies above are an Xbox 360 Wireless Controller in black and a headset, in … err, black. Do you get the black theme? There’ll be a couple of other new bits available separately too, a Play & Charge kit for the the wireless controller ($20) and a black rechargeable battery ($12)
Peter Moore, Corporate Vice President – Interactive Entertainment Business, Microsoft, turned the hyperbole meter way up to deliver the following, “Today’s games and entertainment enthusiast has an insatiable appetite for digital high-definition content. Xbox 360 Elite’s larger hard drive and premium accessories will allow our community to enjoy all that the next generation of entertainment has to offer.”
It’s worth noting that the first shots of the Elite, while looking slightly underground, are in fact taken by ‘Major Nelson,’ the pseudonym for Larry Hryb, Xbox Live Director of Programming. So ‘leaked’ photos are now coming from official sources!
Images courtesy of Major Nelson
Sometimes the simplest applications can make the biggest difference to your productivity, and we reckon that freeware Clipboard Recorder by LW-Works could be such a fella.
The neatest way to can access the extended clipboard is by selecting the Windows+V keys or clicking on the system tray icon and selecting the desired text from a list of ‘headlines.’
Although it doesn’t possess the most attractive interface we’ve ever had grace our desktop, Clipboard Recorder does a very useful job without any fuss and for free, we’re not complaining.
Smaato News is a RSS reader for smartphones that lets users read RSS feeds of their favourite Websites and blogs and get other information on the move.
Although the application is free, the program is supported by adverts which appear on the top section of the screen (“if you see something interesting, don’t hesitate to click,” implores their manual, rather optimistically).
Microsoft’s Corporate VP Bill Veghte was clearly a chuffed fella, “We are encouraged to see such a positive consumer response to Windows Vista right out of the gate,” he purred in an official statement released on Monday.
The figures seem to stack up well against the 17 million copies of Windows XP sold in the two months following its release in 2001, but the PC market has increased exponentially since then: according to IDC, total worldwide PC shipments hit 136 million units in 2001, a figure dwarfed by last year’s 227 million total sales.
Although Windows marketing director Bill Mannion acknowledged that the upgrade program had nudged the sales figures in an upward direction, he played down the numbers saying that upgraders didn’t make up the “core component of the 20 million.”
Miglia have not only signed a deal with software suppliers Equinux, but have a package available already with the software, called The Tube. They’re calling the hardware and software bundle the TVMini Express.
Equinux are confident with the swift reaction of the software, as they tell us it was written “from the ground up” in Cocoa, Apple’s object-oriented application environment designed specifically for developing Mac OS X-only native applications. ie it wasn’t written for Windows and ported over to the Mac.
We mourned the lack of Mac and Linux support. Given that all Polycom needed to do was write a driver or two to get it running, we were disappointed that there was no movement on this 
Ofcom has just announced that it will be carrying out an inquiry into the whole area.
The inquiry will be led by Richard Ayre, a former Deputy Chief Executive of BBC News. He is expected to receive extensive input from the premium rate services regulator, ICSTIS, who are already investigating a number of individual cases.
Adobe has released an alpha version of an interesting piece of software tasked with “bridging the gap between the computer desktop and the Web.”
“Web browsers are great for reading Web pages,” said Lynch. “For Web applications, it’s really been a stretch to support things like word processors or e-mail,” he added.
For maximum compatibility, Apollo supports existing web application technologies such as HTML, JavaScript and Flash and will, for example, let users place bids, maintain watch lists and post new items for sale on eBay straight from the desktop.