Google's birth

Over at Wired, the genesis of the world's favourite search engine is chronicled in an excerpt from a new book to be published in September. Among the interesting nuggets are how the two founders didn't like each other to start with. But, more importantly, the source of Google's accuracy is explained.

While you're there, check out this piece about how easily pay-TV (and much more) in hotels can be hacked via the infra-red remote control.

Damn statistics

New research suggest file-sharers buy four times more music from legitimate music sites than other consumers. So are they the saviours rather than the villains of the industry? What the survey doesn't answer is whether the file-sharers would have bought all their music legitimately if the illegal option didn't exist? Or do illegal downloads act as a taster mechanism spurring people to go out and buy the product? Damn statistics.

And they say file-sharers are rotten?

Evidence of the intrinsic corruption in the American music industry (the labels and the radio stations are deeply in bed with each other) came this week with Sony paying a $10m settlement to US authorities to make a a lawsuit over pay-for-play go away.

Among the court documents was a huge list of e-mails detailing how many freebies, trips, etc, were handed out to get the likes of (spit!) Celine Dion on the airwaves. Rotten to the core.

A flea in your ear

In answer to the ever-so-smug Apple/iPod ads - those silhouette ones, with an accessory for everything - comes the bang-on parody, the iPod Flea.

Absolutely tiny! With storage space for one song! Genius!

Vodafone on track

In today's paper, read about Vodafone's Full-Track Music Downloads, the network's attempt to compete with iTunes. Leaving aside the price/quality/selection deficiency, the surprising thing is the service ain't that bad. Much like Vodafone's 3G offering overall.

Also reviewed is Sony's tiny DSC-T7 digicam, the latest in the T range which manages to be much smaller than the last - more desirable and just as capable (except at night). Very pricey though at €530.

In games, Star Wars Galaxies: Total Experience wraps up the original massively multiplayer online game plus the two expansion packs in one big-value package. But many of the old problems still remain. Finally, there's Lucifer's Call, a Final Fantasy-style RPG saved by its modern setting.

Microsoft maps the world

MSN continues to play catch-up with Google, today launching Virtual Earth, a Google Maps-alike but without the smart features and the broader coverage. Already, The Register has pointed out Apple's HQ seems not to exist in MSN's database.

Google Map's latest cool tool is a hybrid map/satellite image where street names are overlaid on the aerial photos.

Screw the corporate jackals

This is the story of one foolish megacorporation overstepping the mark only to be thwarted by the little guy and the internet. Internet giant AOL was the official online broadcaster for Live8 and transmitted all of the acts' performance both on the day of July 2 but also kindly made it available for subsequent viewing at your convenience. In fact, it's still there.

Trouble was (although less so now) that you were bombarded with ads, pop-ups and technical restrictions to watch anything. So a bit of detective work from blogger Ian Daye discovered you could easily watch them without going to the AOL site and he put up a list of direct links. Only the legal jackals got on his case and forced him to pull the page.

But - hurray! - not before another blogger took up the cudgels and replicated the links on his site. Hasten yerself over to Adam Richards' blog to drink your fill of video of every act in QuickTime format. The files are large but worth it.

Worst. Offer. Ever

The back of a milk carton is usually last-resort reading but I couldn't help but be drawn to the two-litre of Avonmore during dinner tonight. DIGITAL CAMERA OFFER, it screamed. But don't get excited - the fine print (and the howlers in the spelling) tell a sad story.

Scrupulously avoiding mentioned any brand name, the breathless prose promises 8 megabites (sic), presumably of storage, and 300,000 pixels. In other words, it's not even one-megapixel in resolution - 640x480 is the best it can muster.

The killer blow is that they want €7 post and packing - for a digicam that's no better than most cameraphones (and worse quality than several). If you want more details, you're advised to go Avonmore's website which is one of those designer-wankerama Flash efforts. Needless to say, there's no sign of the camera.

Don't. Touch. With. A. Bargepole.

Rock-bottom broadband

As broadband finally overtakes dial-up in Britain, here in Ireland the competition is much less aggressive but at least today's move by telco Imagine is a step in the right direction.

Imagine's undercuts Eircom's price for the standard broadband product by a whole €7. At €23 a month, you get the usual 1Mbps/128Kbps service, so long as you sign up for Imagine's phone service at the same time.

Imagine is also trumpeting its €9.99 time-based product (20 hours online per month) but not only does it actually cost €13 because you must pay rental on the modem, the entire per-hour concept is ridiculous and hardly worthy of consideration.

What a difference a 50 makes

In today's paper, read about the Nokia 6680 3G phone, the successor to the hapless 6630, a reasonable handset blighted by humungous bugs but going cheap as Vodafone tries to boost 3G subscriber numbers.

Though they may be only 50 apart in terms of model number, the two siblings couldn't be more different and the 6680 is an outstanding upgrade. It's available through Vodafone for €280.

Happily, Voda hasn't crippled the 6680 when it comes to installing new apps, as it often does. As Adrian Weckler found out, his 6630 was so well locked down it took a Nokia engineer (in Finland!) several hours to iron it out.

Also reviewed is Dell's 540 Photo Printer, a small but capable machine which does 6x4 prints and not much else. It's cheap to start with, but just watch for the cost of the prints.

In games, Destroy All Humans! (PS2/Xbox) is a knowing parody of all those 50s B-movies where the aliens invaded. It's frequently hilarious but the gameplay is repetitive. Then there's F1 2005 (PS2), the only official Formula One licence - but which suffers from being just too dry.

Giant hotspot

After all the brouhaha about WiFi access at Dublin Airport, Eircom has formally unveiled its wireless offering, describing it as the largest hotspot in Ireland. It ain't free, of course - well, it is, for a couple of weeks - but the terms of Eircom's contract with the airport authority forbids any other wireless operator from offering access.

So if you want connectivity airside, you'll be stuck paying prices ranging from €3 for 30 minutes to €30 for seven days' access. Vouchers are available on-site or you can buy one of Eircom's subscriptions. Encouragingly, Eircom is finally talking about roaming agreements with other providers which would enable users of other international services to get online with existing subscriptions.

RTE fed up

Can't believe I haven't noticed this before but RTE has got on the newsfeed bandwagon, so you can now set your reader to get the headlines under the headings of news, sport, business and entertainment.

GTA sex hoo-hah

Hilary Clinton is getting her knickers in a twist over the discovery/creation of a sex mini-game within the PC version of GTA San Andreas. Creators Rockstar deny they put it in there and it needs a special patch to make available anyway.

But the galling thing is that Hil is making such a fuss over what is fairly harmless fun while ignoring the far more serious violent content which has already been well publicised about GTA. In the Senator's world, murdering is dandy but a bit of humping will corrupt the youth of America.

And this from a woman who was indirectly involved in the most amusing/distasteful (delete where applicable) raunchy episode in recent presidential history.

Check out the Guardian blog for more reading on the subject.

Patches a-go-go

From Windows to Mac OSX to the Firefox and Mozilla browsers, today was a day of major patches. Do your civic duty and read about them, then download to your heart's content.

Light Light Show

Picture site Flickr is home to all sorts of fun themed sets and this sparkler collection is better than most. Do try it at home, folks.

Portable powerhouse

In today's column in the paper, read about the first laptop that truly cuts the mustard as a games machine while not weighing a ton or looking like a pile of melted grey goo.

And - surprise! - the machine comes from Dell. The Inspiron XPS (generation 2) can handle monstrously demanding games such as Battlefield 2 which even desktops can struggle. Plus, with a 17-inch screen and packing some powerful speakers, the XPS doesn't just run the games, they look and sound the part too.

One thing that gets me, though, is that the XPS battery lasts barely for an hour of gaming on battery juice, so why get a laptop at all to play games? Unless space or portability is an absolute necessity, a desktop is always gonna be cheaper and, yes, better. You could spend three grand speccing up the XPS to the max. Be sure you want it that bad.

Reviewed in games is the outstanding God of War for PS2. With a criminal lack of publicity for what could be the platform's best ever title, GoW may not burn up the charts but it would be insane to miss out on a fantastically varied, sumptuous-looking and compelling game. And yes, that is Linda Hunt doing the voiceover.

Worth a look for the kids is Madagascar, an all-formats little number which bucks the trend of crap movie tie-ins.

Free texts between home phones

In what seems to be a move to drive sales/rentals of its landline phones, Eircom has made text messages free between its fixed lines - but only for nine months. It's not as if this is costing Eircom a packet - it could easily offer SMS for nothing permanently given the practically zero cost of transmission.

The offer runs out in March 2006, is available only to Eircom customers and, obviously, you need a text-enabled digital phone (conveniently sold by Eircom).

File-sharing, it ain't so bad

Pick up today's Evening Herald where I lay out the case for why the Irish music industry is wrong to sue file-sharers. The moguls' arguments against the illegal practice don't hold water and they would be far better off devising a way to make money off P2P than trying to force the genie back into the bottle.

MSN search goes local

MSN launched its revamped search engine a little while back to largely indifference. Now MSN Ireland claims to have localised the search and, sad to report, there's not much new to it either, getting trounced on many fronts by Google - feature count and relevance to name a few.

So what's this localisation all about? Well, search for "government" and you'd hope the engine would be smart enough to know you mean the Irish government. But no. In fairness, neither does Google - and at least the right result appears second in both cases.

Most galling is the claim in the PR spiel that "it is the first ever search engine built from the ground up". Oh yeah? I'm no expert but I'd wager Yahoo! Altavista and Google would have something to say about that.

One more time, Ricky

Ricky Gervais had the best gag at Live8, telling the bemused crowd that the G8 had bowed to pressure and would quadruple aid, so the audience could all go home immediately. After a uncomfortable silence, the joke sank in but barely raised a chuckle. However, Ricky eased the awkardness with a brief rendition of his David Brent dance.

Now you can enjoy it all again thanks to the munificence of Ricky himself.

DVD, as easy as 1-2-3

In today's paper, read about Sony's €769 DCR-DVD92, part of its camcorder range which records directly to DVD. The notion is not without its caveats but it's a fantastically simple way for technophobes to store treasured memories in an easily distributable form. Just beware the cost of the recording media.

It's also great to finally find a cameraphone which doesn't disgrace itself on the picture front. Sony Ericsson's K750i (from €130 with contract) is a fab little phone with two megapixels of photo goodness built in. It's more than that too but the camera is well worth it alone.

In games, Battlefield 2 (PC) is reviewed and proves itself a worthy successor to the two (yes, two, this one should really be BF3) previous installments of vehicular/infantry-based warfare. Even the single-player is a blast but it's miles better online. And for Xbox, Conker: Live and Reloaded is a peculiar remake of an old N64 classic. The single-player outstays its welcome with too many cut-scenes while the multiplayer over Xbox Live has a steep learning curve from which many may not recover.

Relive Live8

You won't find any Beatles tracks on legal music download services but Macca's duet with U2 at Live8 on Sgt Pepper could hopefully be the first Fab Four song to break the duck.

Yesterday's performance is now available on iTunes (and in Windows Media Audio here) and the 99 cent goes to charity, natch. The Long and Winding Road finale is here too.