Freyburg

It would appear so. Apple’s new Apple TV product is essentially a front end allowing you to view music, movies and whatnot downloaded from the iTunes Store. But Microsoft already lets users download HD movies and tv shows onto their Xbox 360 (in the US, at any rate) and recently announced they’re building an IPTV network to allow watching on-demand and streaming TV on the 360. Apple’s box can…..watch stuff off your computer.

I’ll give Apple this, it already has a section set up for video podcasts, and the 360 network doesn’t. But that’ll surely change as more and more video podcasts become popular. And even though I’m a die-hard Apple fan, I think the 360 setup is better thought out, offers more for the money, and is just as convenient, if not more so, than Apple TV.

Still, that iPhone is awful sexy.

In what can only be described as an act of of unspeakable cheekiness, leading torrent site The Pirate Bay is looking to buy Sealand, a disused oil platform that doubles as a micronation. If they actually pull this off, I’ll have to give them a congratulatory “W00T!”

In what looks like a cross between an academic paper and a titanic piece of nerd-think, one lone geek has figured out how Episodes I-III change the dynamics of what’s going on in Episodes IV-VI. It almost hurts my brain to read this stuff, but clearly this guy has done his homework. More so than George Lucas, who pretty much slapped this stuff together from the get-go.

With sod all on the horizon in the way of new Who (or spinoffs) for the next couple of months, Steven and I have decided to cast our jaundiced eyes way back to the distant past, and we’re examining one of the Doctor’s eras each week. To start with we naturally picked the first Doctor, William Hartnell, and we managed to squeeze (amazingly) 45 minutes of discussion out of his pioneering tenure in the role. The usual meanderings, including a tale of drunken quote-yelling debauchery, round out the podcast. (feed, web, direct download)

Not a bad idea.

Eminent smart guy Bruce Sterling puts out a “state of the world” (in glorious ASCII) on the Well, one of the net’s oldest gathering places, every year. It’s always a good read, and this year is no exception. And I’d also like to point out that I got my start with the Internet back in the dark days of the 1980s on the Well, racking up my dad’s monthly bill and expostulating to the Bay Area’s resident ex-hippies and smart folk. Ah, good times.

So the United States will be getting the iPhone in June…but Canada, as usual, is left in the dark as to when this fine beast will grace our shores. Mezzoblue has some thoughts on the matter. I think the presence of wifi negates some of my concerns about surfing the web while I’m on the go, but Rogers (the GSM player in Canada) has ridiculously high data rates, which is a bit off-putting. That’s assuming the damned thing even makes it here before next Christmas, of course.

Oh, this baby looks pretty sweet. Apple took a look at the current cell-phone market, said “feh”, and introduced this sexy little number today at Macworld. Nobody’s done any hands-on with it yet, but the fact that it’s an iPod, phone, and internet device all in one, and that it runs OS X, really raises the bar not only for the mobile phone industry but for computing in general. It comes out in June, which gives me time to start saving my pennies. It’ll be interesting to see if I can use Garageband on it, and be able to blog, podcast and maybe even vidcast while I’m on the road.

China has always relied on strong central rule, whether through dynatic rule or communism, to keep a lid on a huge population in a sprawling land-mass. But now that China is changing into a free-market economy, the centre is crumbling. Interesting read from The Guardian.

A taste of the future.