The open source alternative to iTunes is downloadable in it’s first major version (1.0.0) for Windows XP & Vista.

Songbird has been in the works for a long time, with the project started nearly 3 years ago, in February of 2006. Since then the music player has seen lots of differences to appearances and usability, but everything being forward thinking and progressive. Sadly missing with this release is iPhone or iPod Touch support, however, but Songbird does still support other iPods & MP3 players – and I’m sure it will be fixed very soon (it’s on their list of high priority bugs). Audio enclosures in RSS feeds (podcasts) are supported, along with SHOUTcast radio integration (much like many media players) and also last.fm support.

This project is exciting and I’m glad to see the first major release, as I’ve been keeping my eye on the media player for a long time. The interface is very clean and inviting, which looks and feels like iTunes – although seems to be slightly less responsive than it’s heavily funded cousin. Podcasts are a little hidden to start with as well (cryptically under the menu as "New Subscription…"). But thankfully, as it’s written around the Mozilla code base (like Firefox & Thunderbird) you know that it’s going to be stable and functional. The player has the ability to have add-ons installed, much like Firefox, to help with things like different music formats (like quick-time, or protected Windows Media files) and other features like the ability to book concert tickets through songkick.com. It also supports tabbed browing, and is very functional surfing the net – with an added bonus that any audio feeds found on the page will pop up for you to download or play in Songbird.

There are more features on the way, and a growing collection of add-ins available. But then in it’s very first release, the team behind Songbird said, "…take a long hard look in the direction we’re pointing. We assure you, this is just the beginning" so we can be sure Songbird isn’t going to stop with version 1. To have a look, and support the project, you can download the latest version from the getsongbird website.

Jerry Yang is going to stand down as CEO for Yahoo, as soon as a suitable replacement can be found. Has he finally bowed to pressure after the Microsoft mess? Personally, that’s what my gut feeling is. With Carl Icahn on the board now, who publicly stated that he would fire Jerry Yang if he won his proxy battle, nearly six months ago, has convinced some of the other members of the board that the way forward for Yahoo is without Yang. Is this the right move for Yahoo, or could it destabilise the company further?

The "Jaguar" in Tennessee, USA, has been crowned the fastest computer in the world and is to be used for science.

The new champion, consisting of 284 Cray supercomputer cabinets, will be able to crunch an amazing 1.64 Petaflops – 1,640,000,000,000,000 floating point operations per second. Tested so far up to 1.3 Petaflops, the team at Oak Ridge National Lab are hoping to crank the machine up to it’s full potential soon.

Specification:

45,000 Quad Core Opterons (AMD), 362 Terabytes of RAM (that’s 370,000 Gigabytes!), 10 Petabytes of storage (or 10,485,000 Gigabytes)

Performance:

578 Terabytes per second Memory bandwidth, 284 Gigabytes per second bus bandwidth (to move data around the system)

All in all an impressive machine which will knock the current champion, Roadrunner (at 1.34 Petaflops), off the top spot when it’s up to speed. Read The Register article, and also check out the top 500 supercomputers on Wikipedia (soon to be updated I’m sure!)

PC World reports today that the once full-proof wireless encryption standard, WPA, has been partially cracked by Erik Tews and Martin Beck - two researchers which are due to make an appearance in the PacSec applied security conference next week.

Erik Tews was involved previously with developing new ways to crack the older, and shown to be weak, WEP method of wireless security. He has now developed an attack, along with Martin Beck, that can compromise the TKIP protocol within 15 minutes – much less time than was previously thought possible.

TKIP is a wrapper protocol that surrounds the old WEP encryption, essentially turning the once weak WEP into the thought to be stronger WPA. The encryption standard hasn’t fully been cracked however as the data was decrypted from the router to the PC and not from the PC to the router. So even though the password you type in to your browser is safe, the data coming back that might contain your bank balance won’t be. I’m sure it will just be a matter of time before it’s fully broken.

For those who are worried, WPA2, the latest version, does not suffer from the same flaws, but is also not available on every router and PC. If you have the latest service pack for Windows XP, or Windows Vista, WPA2 is built in, but you’ll have to verify that your router supports it too.

After the bad press Sony have got over the last couple of years for battery recalls (and most recently the recall of over 400,000 of their own laptops), you would think they would have sorted their issues out, or examined exactly what was going on in manufacturing that is producing this shoddy technology. But on the surface, it doesn’t appear they’ve done anything.

News appears today, that the battery in your Toshiba, HP, Dell, Acer or Lenovo could be potentially dangerous. The affected batch from Sony - produced between October 2004 and June 2005, is prone to overheating and could even catch fire. And it’s not just a few either, there are an estimated 100,000 batteries produced during this period that might have the same fundamental flaws.

Laptops that are currently on the affected list are: HP Pavilion dv1000, dv8000 and zd8000 - Compaq Presario v2000 and v2400, and HP Compaq nc6110, nc6120, nc6140, nc6220, nc6230, nx4800, nx4820, nx6110, nx6120, nx9600; Toshiba Satellite A70/A75, P30/P5, M30X/M35X and M50/M55 - Tecra A3, A5 and S2; Dell Latitude 110L, D500, D505, D510, D520, D600, D610 - Inspiron 500M, 510M, 600M, 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150, and 5160 and Precision M20.

Use the links here to check to see if your battery is up for recall, for various makes of laptops: HP - Toshiba - Dell

If you own a different model of laptop by one of the listed manufacturers, I would check anyway, just to be sure. And if there isn’t a link for your laptop, check with the retailer that sold it to you, or contact the company directly. The batteries have the potential to catch fire, so double check with family members too that may not have access to this article.

A job everyone can relate to - especially me as it’s something I do during the working week! System Administrators are the key to any IT systems in a business. They’re the people that keep things running on a day to day basis. They’re the ones who keep everything secure and well-oiled. So it comes as a surprise when somebody who works in such a high position of responsibility goes bad. Thankfully it’s not something you hear about every day, although fairly recently I wrote an article about the sysadmin in San Francisco who failed to hand over the passwords to the mainframe! Anyhow, on to the story:

Priyavrat H Patel, a sysadmin who worked for a screwdriver company, was convicted in the US for Computer Intrusion. He will spend 6 months behind bars, pay $120,000 in restitution, and be under house arrest for a further 6 months after release, and still be answerable to the courts for another 2 and a half years to make sure he stays an upstanding citizen. Apparently, the fuel that caused Mr. Patel to remotely access the servers and bring down their email and network systems? The demon drink of course! Read the full Register article for the rest of the details.

Of course it begs the question, why weren’t the passwords changed when the guy left?

Bloodhound SSC, a rocket/jet combination car, is aiming to smash the current land speed record. Set 11 years ago by Thrust SSC, at 763mph, Bloodhound is going to attempt to raise the bar even higher, to an astonishing 1,000mph!

Lead by Richard Noble OBE, and the same team that built Thrust SSC & Thrust 2, the vehicle is to be designed and built in Britain - ready for an appearance on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, in 2011.

Bloodhound SSC will have 2 forms of propulsion. Firstly there will be a rocket mounted to the top, and secondly the main body will contain a Eurofighter Typhoon engine, capable, in total, of 45,000 lbs of Thrust - the equivalent of 2.5 times that of a fighter jet at full throttle.

The job of driving the beast will go to previous Thrust SSC driver, and fighter pilot, Wing Commander Andy Green. Although safety is paramount for the attempt, I’m wondering exactly what you can do if the worst happens at 1,000mph anyway. Keep posted here and the official website, for any news regarding the development and testing of the vehicle.

News today has been inundated with companies announcing lay offs amid worries about the credit crunch, and a growth slow-down.

Firstly today, Imeem (a social music site) announce that they have made 25% of it’s workforce redundant. The reasons apparently due to not a lot money floating around in the market at the moment.

Then on the back of this, Jason Calacanis broke the news that Mahalo culled just under 10% of it’s staff too - saying that although there is plenty of money in the pot, due to potentially bad revenue from advertising over the next couple of years, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

No sooner had I drawn breath from the news, but it then appeared that Sandisk are in the throws of reducing it’s workforce too. Now I didn’t expect this industry to be hit by the global slowdown - after all, solid state memory is essential to so many gadgets - as long as those gadgets are continuing to be sold, of course.

Then there is the whole issue with Yahoo! moving 10% of it’s staff on, amid their yearly stock low of $13 a share. I think Microsoft are thanking their lucky stars now that they didn’t acquire the search company.

And what with the other news of Tesla, Pandora and others also cutting back, it’s fair to say that the economic crisis is starting to hit the tech industry. I say starting, because the big guns, like Apple, Google and Microsoft are doing very well at the moment. This can’t last forever of course - of those big three I see Apple being the most at risk of slow down, as they are essentially an iPod seller now (luxury?) followed by Google due to advertising revenues inevitably dropping, with Microsoft not seeing much of a change, being an essential part of most of our lives now.. That’s what I see, but then that’s only my opinion, and we all know what that counts for in the real world, right?

£1 Billion has already been ploughed into a monitoring system in the UK that could make every user of technology in the country a target for Big Brother.

The system, based in a building in Benhall, and reported by TechSnake in July, is being funded to intercept all email, SMS and internet traffic to the tune of £12 Billion, once running. Reported in a post on the This Is Gloucestershire website, the move has caused councillors and MPs to question the Government’s morality.

I, personally, can’t believe what is happening. In a modern society too. It is the civil right of every person to have private communications with each other without the government spying over their shoulders. This typical attitude by government agencies is of course wrapped up in the “threat of terrorism” cliché, that is starting to wear just a little too thin. Preventing terrorism is important, but not to the detriment of every other law-abiding citizen. The fishing net mentality is ridiculous - the process is already in place whereby a government agency can get a court order to track individual’s messages for potential terrorism involvement - the government doesn’t need to employ this level of privacy invasion. So what can we do about this - in the UK and globally?

Read the rest of this article…

News has emerged that Valve will be releasing a demo of its 4 player co-op zombie shooter Left 4 Dead. The demo, which should be out shortly before release, will more than likely be the first two maps of the game. The two missions start outside in the streets and later lead you into a subway station.

Left 4 Dead will be out on Xbox360 and PC with rumours of a PS3 version later to follow (not confirmed by Valve). The game will be available Nov 18th on Steam and the 21st in the shops.