Filed under: Peripherals, Portable Audio

Too busy to bother with external speakers for your iPod? Still can’t shake that fascination with colored blocks after all these decades? Take heart, young buck, as the iPod building block speakers can keep that kid in you alive for a good bit longer — though we aren’t sure the audiophile in you will be too pleased. These non-powered “drivers” get amped after being plugged into an iPod’s dock connector (sorry, iPhone users), but curiously enough, they only arrive in a single 2.5- x 1- x .75-inch form, which doesn’t exactly fit flush against the last-gen nano. Nevertheless, those giddy about the notion of claiming a few as their own can pick ‘em up in yellow, white, red, black, blue and green for $24.99 apiece.

[Via BoingBoing]

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By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website

The world wide web is “still in its infancy”, the web’s inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has told BBC News.

He was speaking ahead of the 15th anniversary of the day the web’s code was put into the public domain by Cern, the lab where the web was developed.

The future web will put “all the data in the world” at the fingertips ofevery user, Sir Tim said.

“The web has been a tremendous tool for people to do a lot of good even though you can find bad stuff out there.”

Making the web free to use had a vital role in spreading its use worldwide.

There are now 165 million different websites around the world, according to internet research firm Netcraft.

Sir Tim said he was optimistic about the future of the web.

‘Fantastic experience’

“The experience of the development of the web by so many people collaborating across the globe has just been a fantastic experience,” he said.

“The experience of international collaboration continues. Also the spirit that really we have only started to explore the possibilities of [the web], that continues.”

Sir Tim predicted that the web’s ability to engender collaboration could one day see the web being used to help manage the planet.

"The difficult part was explaining to them the true nature of what the web was going to be"
Robert Cailliau, Cern

“What’s exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance.

“My hope is that those will produce… new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet.”

The ubiquity of the web gives the impression that its success was inevitable but that was not always the case, said Robert Cailliau, who worked alongside Sir Tim.

The decision byphysics laboratory Cern to release the web code into the public domain was not a straightforward one, he told BBC News.

Technical proposals

Mr Cailliau helped draw up one of the early technical proposals for the web and later helped convince the directors at Cern to “give the web away”.

“The difficult part was explaining to them the true nature of what the web was going to be,” he said.

“We had to convince them that this was going to take off and it was a really big thing. And therefore Cern couldn’t hold on to it and the best thing to do was to give it away.”

He said competing technologies, such as Gopher, which was developed at the University of Minnesota,were also offering a method of using hyperlinks to connect documents across computers on the internet.

“If we had put a price on it like the University of Minnesota had done with Gopher then it would not have expanded into what it is now.

“We would have had some sort of market share alongside services like AOL and Compuserve, but we would not have flattened the world.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation

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Windows XP Service Pack 3 officially hit Microsoft servers this morning, and although it won’t be available through Windows Update today, it should be sometime soon. Your desire to stay on the cutting edge of XP features and security may dictate that you install the latest service pack, but in case you were wondering what you can actually expect from your SP3 update, we’re breaking down the new and improved features with our field guide to Windows XP SP3.

What Should I Expect?

You may be disappointed to find out that SP3 isn’t really bringing much to the table in terms of new and sexy functionality. In fact, the majority of updates included in SP3 have been available as per-item hotfixes and updates for XP. However, there are also four new features being back-ported from Vista to XP. First, let’s take a look at the back-ported features.

New Features in XP SP3

For the most part, Microsoft is doing their best to avoid pulling Vista features into XP, with just a few exceptions. They are:

• Network Access Protection (NAP): A new system in Vista and Windows Server 2008, this feature sets system “health” requirements to validate a computer’s health before it allows that computer to connect to yours.
• “Black Hole” Router Detection: This new feature detects when your router is silently losing or discarding packets and is intended to protect from such problems.
• Product Activation Not Required on Installation: Like Vista, you can now install XP without first providing a valid product key. Windows will prompt for a product key after installation, though, if you want to take advantage of Windows Genuine Advantage.
• Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module: In a nutshell, this Vista back-port makes it easier to encrypt data through a single algorithm. Enjoy that one!

Aside from these Vista back-port features, other new features include more descriptive security options that better explain your security settings and improved administrator security.

Previously Released Features

As I said above, the majority of updates in SP3 were already available in one form or another via hotfixes or installations, but unless you’re a system administrator, there’s a good chance that they will still be new to your computer. Some are rather developer-oriented, so I’ll highlight the updates that might mean something to the general user.

• Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2): Provides support for WPA2, the latest wireless security protocol.
• Peer Name Resolution: It’s not sexy, but this minor update allows SP3 computers to communicate with Vista programs that use the Peer Name Resolutions Protocol (PNRP).
• MMC 3.0: This is a framework to help simplify system management tasks in XP. You can learn more about it here.

For a fuller rundown of every new feature, you can grab the XP SP3 overview from Microsoft as a PDF. Like I said, SP3 isn’t the sexiest update your computer has ever seen, but if you’re planning to continue using XP (and judging from our poll, that’s a lot of you), then it’s an update you’re likely to be using for a while.

If you’ve updated and noticed a feature tweak or two, let’s hear about it—love it or lump it—in the comments.

Fixing a Minor SP3 Annoyance

One reader found that his SP3 update disabled the address bar option for the Windows taskbar—a feature removed “due to legal restrictions.” If you fall in the same boat, you can still get your address bar back.

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