Here is Episode 35 of our weekly PodCast, Consumer Apple Show.

The topics covered in this episode are:

- How do you fix a undersea cable?
- Victim spots stolen GPS on eBay, seller gets pinched
- ASUS Unveils External Graphics Card
- More details about IPTV on Xbox 360
- Apples keynote
- SanDisk Sansa View

You can subscribe to the PodCast by putting this link into your iTunes / PodCast program: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AustechNews.

Download: Episode 35: Consumer Apple Show (38:41, 17.7 mb)
View: AusTech News PodCast Forum

A new search engine, Cranky, was launched earlier this week and plans to profit from age-specific ads by targeting the 50-year-old-plus baby boomer. The man behind the site is Jeff Taylor, known for founding the online employment site Monster.com. The name “cranky” was chosen by Taylor - it supposedly illustrates his mood whenever he gets lost searching the web.

Now CEO at Eons, Taylor hopes that the search engine’s design will simplify Web searching by only displaying results pertinent to someone at least 50 years of age. Compete, an online market research company, helped the site find advertisements by identifying and analyzing 5,000 of the most popular Web sites used by a group of 500,000 users aged 45 and up.

Cranky includes a user interface that limits the first page to the top four authoritative sites matching the search term. The sites are rated and reviewed by Eons members and the ratings in turn influence the top sites. The search engine can potentially improve as more users engage with rankings. Of course, any rating system is prone to abuse and Cranky.com will have quite a workout converting users from other search engines already out there.

View: Cranky
Source: InfoWorld via Neowin

Swedish file-sharing website The Pirate Bay is planning to buy the 550 square metre principality of Sealand, a former British naval platform in the North Sea that has been designated a ‘micronation’.

The group has set up a campaign to raise money to buy the self-declared sovereign nation. Outside the jurisdiction of the UK or any other country, The Pirate Bays believes it could safely run the world’s largest ‘bit torrent tracker’.

Last year the Pirate Bay was closed down after raids by the Swedish police, and although it returned to a new Swedish server after a short stay in the Netherlands, the Motion Picture Ass. of America, the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau and the US government have all lobbied for The Pirate Bay’s closure.
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Two sparsely-buttoned large, touchscreen phones: the Apple iPhone, and the LG KE850 (which already won the International Forum Design Product Design Award for 2007). Separated at birth, or possible lawsuit number two for Apple? You decide.

Source: Engadget

I know this news is a bit old now, but just found a 14min video on the New Years Eve 2006 Fireworks in Sydney, and thought I would share it with you all.

Just a test post to see how GreyBox looks/works on the site.

Click the image to see a nice feature (needs JavaScript enabled)
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Show flower

Cisco Systems Inc. has owned the name “iPhone” since 2000 and today announced that it is suing Apple Inc. in federal court. Cisco obtained the trademark by acquiring InfoGear Technology Corp. over 6 years ago, which originally registered the name. It has been three weeks since Cisco’s Linksys division released a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone for which the trademark was put to use. Apple had tried to gain legal rights to use the iPhone name but upon failure chose to unveil their iPhone yesterday anyway, a touch-screen cell phone with music, video, web, voicemail and e-mail capabilities.

“Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco’s iPhone name. There is no doubt that Apple’s new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission.” said Mark Chandler, Cisco senior vice president and general counsel.

View: Linksys iPhone | Apple iPhone
Source: Breitbart via Neowin

If you feel the need to have a nuclear reactor in your gaming case, the 2000W ATX Power Supply from Ultra Products should be enough for you. Being unveiled at CES, the 2000W PS is modular, and feeds up to 1800W on the 12V connection alone.

With all that power, you’re going to be able to support quad core, quad GPU cards, or a gigantic RAID system to store all your homemade movies. No word on price, but we’re guessing somewhere around the PlayStation 3’s price tag.

View: Ultra Products Homepage
Source: Gizmodo

Mozilla developers plan to update Firefox on Feb. 1 with bug fixes to make the browser work better under Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system, which will have been rolled out to consumers two days earlier. According to notes from the weekly status meeting held Monday, the first of next month is the tentative release date for Firefox 2.0.0.2 and 1.5.0.10, the next security updates to the two versions that Mozilla is supporting. About 100 bugs have already been spotted and quashed, but about 60 remain unpatched, the notes said. Special attention will be paid to bugs involving Windows Vista in the hope that most or all can be fixed before Vista releases to retail.

“Need to check bug lists to make sure we are in good shape with the Vista bugs we hope to fix in this release,” the notes said. In other news, Mozilla will also offer Firefox 1.5.x users an update to the newer 2.0.x version of the open-source browser sometime this month. Currently, Firefox 1.5.x users who want to upgrade must manually download and install 2.0.x. The clock on Firefox 1.5.x is ticking, as Mozilla has already announced it will end security updates for that browser on April 24.

Source: InformationWeek

Today Microsoft and AMD have revealed the rules and began the “Vanishing Point” sweepstakes, a large-scale online and offline collaborative puzzle game. Vanishing Point takes online games to new heights with tough challenges, big rewards and events scheduled around the globe. Microsoft will be spending nearly half a million dollars in prizes, and that the eventual winner will secure a ride into sub-orbital space, courtesy of Rocketplane Limited Inc. All this is being done to celebrate the upcoming release of Windows Vista.

“Vanishing Point” challenges players to solve an international game, drawing clues from spectacular events at various locations to decipher online puzzles. The game is only open for selected countries which include USA, Australia, Canada, Germany, UK, New Zealand, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain and Singapore.

The prize package includes a Windows Vista based AMD powered Dell desktop pc, 24″ widescreen monitor, Zune(tm) digital media player, an Xbox(r) 360 gaming console, three Games for Windows game titles, a Microsoft(r) LifeCam VX-6000, Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, and $50,000 cash to help defray the cost of taxes.

View: Vanishing Point Game
Source: AeroXperience