Gadgety News

Can’t wait to try out Windows 7?

Well, the Windows 7 Beta 1 that was to appear all public-like next month has been unleashed in a leaked stylee via BitTorrent.

The beta expires July 1, 2009, and from what I gather from various sources on the interweblogosphere, it’s a bit more stable than the versions people have been playing with over the last few months.

Don’t believe me?

ZDNet has had a blast with the beta over here, and remark:

This beta is of excellent quality. This is the kind of code that you could roll out and live with. Even the pre-betas were solid, but finally this beta feels like it’s “done.” This beta exceeds the quality of any other Microsoft OS beta that I’ve handled.

Head over to the links below to get a copy but remember you’re not actually supposed to have it yet!

My Digital Life via BlogsDNA via Technovedad via Download Squad

ZDNet

I’ve seen double-adapters for headphones plenty of times but if you’re anything like me you’re gonna end up leaving them at home.

Some bright spark has had the brains to shove a splitter on a keyring - genius!

Now a pair of friends can happily share tunes safe in the knowledge there will be an acceptable earphone to ear ratio - although I’m not sure how it affects sound quality and/or volume.

Buy it here: Gadgets.co.uk for under 7 quid!

I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve only had to share my house or flat once with someone other than my partner at the time - and then that was with another bassplayer in a West London penthouse.

I did say I was lucky

(Big shout out to Johnny Mac!)

Others I know have not been so blessed; forced to share a house or appartment with half-a-dozen other people whether at University or when they moved to the big city.

One source of contention, other than cleaning duties, is fridge space.

Thankfully the annual Electrolux Design Lab has birthed this modular fridge, designed to keep each student’s bread, beer and red bull completely separate.

With the Flatshare Fridge everyone gets there own very separate compartment that still has a tall section for bottles and a smaller side for veg (students eat veg?).

This design also negates having to share fridge space with Stinky Kev or with the person that just loves Toulouse sausages.

When you manage to get someone to live in the space under the stairs or if you decide to sublet the living room you can just add another unit on top for them as well.

I think this should be fitted as standard in any flat/house share!

Genius!

Electrolux Design Lab

iPhone users and those that have an iPod Touch can now stream music from their puter officially thanks to a new app just launched on the Apple App Store!

Called Simplify Media, the new application allows you to navigate artists, ablums and genre and works over Wi-Fi, EDGE and 3G.

You’ll need to download a secondary application on your PC/Mac for the application to work but that aint a big deal now is it?

You’ll also be able to stream music from up to 30 friends as well as being able to view album art!

Apple has said recently “New versions iTunes and the iPhone Software could theoretically eliminate this problem by syncing only the metadata — or tiny files containing the barebones attributes of each media item or playlist but not the content itself — from a user’s iTunes library to their portable devices.”

It seems now you can but someone’s bet Apple to it :0P

Via - Appleinsider

Here’s a pretty cool bit of kit and it’s Free!

FonStruct is a cleverly named online font building tool.

You create the font, and the service then turns it into a “high-quality TrueType font” ready for Mac or Windows.

You are encouraged to share the results of your excellent design knowledge via the online gallery which features tags, voting and intelligent categorisation.

I realise that, at best, this is a bit niche but I still think that it’s rather cool.

Making a decent, legible font isn’t as easy as I thought but if you know what you’re doing then it’s definitely worth a try.

Redferret.net

“Check out this cut; it’s banging”

Then comes the pre-worn, still warm, slightly waxy ear-buds that belong to your enthusiastic buddy attached to their iPod………

It doesn’t have to be like this!!

MiShare puts paid to this lobe-gunk sharing and allows you to pass tracks from iPod to iPod.

Just slot in an iPod at either end, press a button and then the last track played zooms across to the receiving Pod. If you don’t want to listen to the track there-and-then and wish to give it your fullest attention later - so be it.