MusicGiants is a relatively new music service. Launched September 29, it features music encoded with Microsoft's Windows Media Lossless format, which, according to Microsoft, ensures that there is no loss in quality over the original. The service costs $50/year and $1.29 per track, although they waive the yearly fee if you give them $250 for downloads. Yes, it requires that you use their client software, something that I find unfortuntate but, still, to get legal high quality tracks without having to worry about an actual CD, it's probably worth it. Myself, I still prefer to actually have the CD in my hands but I may sign up just for grins.
See this article on BetaNews for a review.
It's here but you'll need a Google account, which you can easily create, or, if you have a GMail account, you can use that. Matter of fact, you can use any of the accounts that you have already created with Google.
My early opinion? It's not a Bloglines but it's an OK start.
Update, October 21: Well, I've played with it a bit and I'll take function over form anyday. Yeah, it's cute and the way it interacts with the user is neat-o keen but if you've got an active site you're tracking via RSS or more than a couple of subscriptions, I find it too unwieldy. Maybe it's just me ... I haven't given up yet and will continue to work with it but, for now, Bloglines is still my number one app.
Heretofore, tweaking Firefox has been a matter of reading an article, running about:config and playing with the values there or, if you're trusting, running FireTune. Finally, someone's come out with an extension to help you manage your tweaks. While there may already be a number of these out there, FasterFox is the first I've seen. Screenshots are here if you wanna see what it looks like before you install it.
engadget reports that Microsoft's research labs has released a set of software to virtually clone your WiFi card, allowing you to appear to have multiple cards installed so you can, for instance, connect to multiple wireless networks.
If you haven't yet installed the fix for MS05-051, you might want to take a look at this bulletin and make sure your permissions are set right. Apparently if they've been changed on certain folders, you could have trouble logging in, starting apps and running Windows Firewall.
Ever need to do the equivalent of an nslookup on a WINS server? No, it's not the same. As I've said before, Windows IT Pro has a lot of good newsletters and the most recent issue of their "Windows Tips & Tricks UPDATE" gives a pointer to NBLookup.exe that Microsoft released about a year ago.
What can you do? Pretty much what you would expect but see the Microsoft article link, above, for details.
Yeah, I know, there are a LOT of extensions out there that enable/assist with tabbed browsing in Firefox. I've just run across Tab Mix Plus and am trying it out. It's replaced 5 extensions for me and, so far, it doesn't look like I've lost any functionality.
And may even replace SessionSaver .2.
Looks like we're getting closer to my goal of not rewiring my house and yet still being able to network my home without the benefit of WiFi (see this entry about my new computer). The San Jose Mercury News had an article (registration required, I think) in this morning's paper about networking your computers using your home's power lines and another article about power companies connecting homes to the Internet.
No rebate. $159.99 with $80 Instant Savings bringing it to $79.99. 8AM-8PM tomorrow (Sunday, 10/9) only.
Mailnation is offering free email accounts with 1TB of storage, WAP, POP3 and IMAP access.
Update, October 5, 2005: Thanks to a suspicious/cautious friend, see this post for some cautionary words about MailNation.
Mulberry is no more. The folks at ISAMET/Cyrusoft have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Mulberry probably utilized more IMAP features than any other client with the possible exception of Pine but it certainly used the most features of any GUI client. While Thunderbird was my primary mail client, Mulberry's single-key ease of use let me breeze through my mailboxes. True, I still have the program but the source is locked up and it looks like there will be no more updates.
Aloha.