Misc. News

Google Books Settlement Agreement

This sounds like good news - better accessibility for out of print books, and the ability to "buy" books to read on-line.

iTunes 8 "drops" DRM

I prefer to buy music digitally rather than physical cd's. But I've stayed away from DRM protected music. Not because I want to pirate it (I'm trying to pay for it!), but because it's hard enough to switch players and computers and operating systems etc. without having to deal with DRM issues.

But I still ended up buying cd's because iTunes didn't have the iTunes Plus DRM free version. Amazon has been selling DRM free music in the US and had promised to make this available in Canada in 2008 but that didn't happen.

I'm still running into some music that's only available in DRM versions on iTunes, but according to Wikipedia they plan to be 100% DRM free by April.

Picasa for Mac

I used to use Picasa on Windows to manage my photos. When I switched to using a Mac at home I really wished they had a Mac version. They've finally released it, but meanwhile I've got hooked on Lightroom so I probably won't use it much.

I still recommend Picasa to Windows users looking for something simple to manage their photos. It easy to use and does a good job. And with version 3 it's got even more tools for tweaking your photos.

It's hard to say how it'll do against iPhoto on the Mac.

Bug Labs Announces Five New Modules

These guys have a cool product and these new modules make it even better. I'm itching to get this to play with, but I know I don't really have time for it, so I've resisted so far.