It now appears to be true, inevitably. After much gossip this morning, Google have unleashed a beta of AdSense (their content-driven advertisement program) for RSS feeds. This means that adverts will occupy (supposedly) lightwight site summaries and ad blocking in feeds comes to mind.

PalmOne have released LifeDrive after much leakage of information. Their site presents a very marketbale device, yet in my opinion, a poorly made demo is delivered. When initially glancing at the details yesterday morning, I was appalled to find a Flash clip that incorporated every possible usability flaw. I could never get what I actually wanted — a large gallery of pictures. (UPDATE: They seemed to have realised it by now and changed)

The 4 GB capacity on this Palm-powered devices is useful for large media files. MP3 files come to mind in particular.

It is not good news all around though. In UseNet, people have raised concerns about bettery life (ironic if you think of the name of the device), weight, and size. Here are a few snippets from comp.sys.palmtops.pilot:

AaronJ: But to get that it seems that you also get a bloated (big and heavy), warm to the touch, $100 more expensive PDA that takes several seconds to load apps. Is this really progress?

Lone Bard: Where am I going to carry this thing? my Man-Purse?

Other things that suck…

• Battery Life
• Heat Issues
• Slow Ass HardDrive
• Mesh on back (can anyone say “dirt collector”?)

AaronJ: I found some battery tests here:

http://www.bargainpda.com/discussion/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8987

Looks like 4+ hours max.

• Some of the earliest reviews to come out: Brighthand

recent market survey reveals which Linux distributions are most popular, which windows managers are on the rise and likewise with applications. A must to any Linux enthusiast (via Slashdot).

…Mandrake and SuSE are now essentially tied for first place — at 17.6 and 17.5 percent respectively. Red Hat comes next, at sightly over 15 percent, and last year’s winner, Debian, has slipped into fourth place, garnering half a percent fewer votes than Red Hat…

On the left: Screen-shot of Metisse for FVWM

UPDATE: More details on FireFTP, an FTP client for Firefox, are available in a new and comprehensive item. Visitors are strongly encouraged to follow this link.

o some this may be no cause for excitement, but many Firefox users would love to integrate FTP capabilities into their browser.

An extension called FireFTP was released two days ago (beta phase) and its value to regular FTP users is high. To discover more Firefox updates, RSS feeds for new themes and extensions exist and are highly recommended.

According to Slashdot, Microsoft demanded the removal of screenshots from its Longhorn beta version, which was described by some as “disappointing”.

After the previously reported release of the Longhorn beta at this year’s WinHEC, Neowin and other Windows sites are reporting that Microsoft is going around sending legal letters demanding removal of Longhorn Build 5048 screenshots.

Below are screenshots of older betas.

Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

Shortly after Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia, Microsoft infiltrate Adobe territories by introducing their own portable document format called “Metro”, which is based on XML.

ews that are just in speak of a takeover of Macromedia (best known for Flash) by Adobe (makers of Acrobat Reader, Photoshop, Illustrator and so forth).

The two companies had settlements in court in the past. So, what are the implications of this acquisition? Domination of rich media delivery? This 3.4 billion dollar deal is definitely going to shape our future.