Follow-up to the story we ran on the Yahoo layoff rumours – well, looks like they’re going to happen and soon. That’s the buzz from the source of the original story anyway.

Apple is the poster company for technology these days; just dropping the name brand Apple makes rich people feel rich, and normal people lust after that which they probably don’t need. All the glitz and glamour have been paying Apple big dividends, but after a while, if the spotlight stays on for too long, everyone watching the show starts picking apart the star.

The Entertainment and Devices Division of Microsoft has made a much needed profit over the past year, but how much of that was down to the performance of the Xbox 360 is unclear, as sales are actually on the way down.

There just seems to be no end to the constant onslaught of bad news for the HD DVD camp.  Now it seems the sales numbers are catching up with them.

The Pirate Bay has labelled itself as the “World’s Largest Tracker” for a while now, but today that bragging seems even more correct than it has ever been. The torrent tracker has now passed two huge landmarks, with over 10 million peers, and 1 million torrents at any one time.

As thin and light as the MacBook Air is, it’s still “slow” (relatively speaking) and users of the laptop will have to make do with one USB port, one headphone jack and one external monitor connection.  It lacks even the most basic of connections which is a severe drawback.  If you can deal with carting a few extra accessories then it’s highly advisable to pick up these five.

This question is being raised time and again by every person who reviews the MacBook Air.  Who is this computer for?  Sentiments that have been echoed the world over.  Ultraportables aren’t known for their power and the MacBook Air is the slowest computer Apple makes.

The Playstation 3 is currently in a definitive third place, way behind the phenomenally successful Wii, and quite a bit behind the Xbox 360. Good Christmas sales figures have increased confidence at Sony however, and there’s a feeling that good things are around the corner.

The most common way to uninstall programs is to use the “Programs and Features” function in Vista’s Control Panel.  If you’re lucky, the developer of the program wrote an uninstaller to specifically deal with that program.  If not, Vista will rely on its built-in uninstaller to get rid of the program.  This can leave behind unwanted files, traces of the program and errant/corrupted or extra registry entries.  There is a better way, Revo Uninstaller.

Older versions of IE were just awful when it came to being compliant with any kind of standard.  IE5.5 was a horrible mess and web developers had to be written specifically to look right in IE5.5.  With the release of IE6 some sites broke and web developers had to once again fix a mess that Microsoft created.  When IE7 was released, Microsoft once again tried to make it more standards compliant.  This broke a lot of websites and web developers screamed bloody murder.  The company is at it again and is going to make IE8 “the most standards compliant browser yet.”  Oh, joy.

Apple rolled out iTunes movie rentals recently. They got a lot of initial criticism from their users on the length of time the movies would remain active on a users system. Many movie watchers said that a 24 hour movie viewing period was not enough time to watch a movie and keep up with a hectic schedule.
Apple answered the call of their customers with little fanfare, extending the rental time slightly. What has been happening to users who download rentals now is that the countdown screen will appear as usual, but it now offers the viewer a chance to finish the movie once they’ve hit play.

Those of you that are regular readers of the BLORGE.com family of websites have not been able to access the site for a period of 48 hours from January 24 to January 26.  We were aware of the problem but could not do much about it until tech support helped us out.  If you want to read the long boring story, here it is.

Since the iPhone was born, there’s been a rift in the user community between those who keep the iPhone the way Apple intended, only updating when Apple releases something new.  On the flip side, there’s the “jailbreak” community, who has been opening up the iPhone to new applications and uses, though admittedly to the detriment of some user’s phones, for the same amount of time.  Whether Apple admits to it or not, the iPhone “hackers” have been responsible for all the recent innovation to the iPhone.

Marijuana vending machiens are hitting LA. Let that sink-in for a moment. Are you paying attention again? OK, now get ready for the bad news: it’s almost as good as it sounds… almost.

The Charlatans have the right idea. Music isn’t about the money, and they get that. They plan to release their album for free on the web before making official CD and vinly packages. Though it’s unlikely the stunt will work the way it did for Radiohead, the move helps to free artists from the record labels’ squeezing grip.