Microsoft have yet to make a genuinely significant impact in the MP3 world. Ok, they do shift a fair number of units, but for MS to be considered successful it must at least compete with the iPod. And it's not. They are trying though, you have to hand them that. And today sees a new marketing ploy - the red Zune. Well it does look quite pretty. But I'm far from sure this is gonna do it. What would do it, in my humble opinion, is doing away with the necessity for proprietry software. I just want to plug my MP3 in and drag and drop, thank you very much. Or just use a media player of my choice.

Thunderbird has always been a second rate email client in my opinion. And not least because of the cruddy way it handles contacts, forcing you to use a seperate window instead of working withing the main user interface. There have been extensions to right this terrible wrong, but a new one imaginitively named Contacts Sidebar seems to have really cured Thunderbird of this ill.

It's been a long wait for SP3. So long that it's arrival would have been after the last sale date of XP, if Microsoft didn't keep changing their mind. But it's here at last. Well, sort of anyway. It's not available from Microsoft themselves just yet, but Softpedia are distributing it now. Take a risk or wait till MS pump it out themselves next week? The choice is yours, as is the risk. But I've always found Softpedia to be a reliable site.

Once upon a time, the car was the home to the decorative wood casing. Then Japanese and cheap British cars came along, littering their mundane models with plastic imitation wooden dashs, destroying the concept as a credible, luxurious option for ever. Or so we thought. Cowon clearly have never seen an old Austin Maxi, or they might have thought twice before creating this monstrosity. It is unique I suppose. Having an arse instead of a nose would also be unique. But I wouldn't want to be quite that unique. Maybe you are different....

I posted about the imminent arrival of Facebook chat a couple of weeks ago. Initially it had been rolled out to a select few networks, one assumes as a trial run to iron out any teething problems. And kudos to Facebook - if there were any issues to be resolved, they seem to have done so. The chat app went live for all users today and it seems to be working just fine. I've had a couple of chats, and the app works well. Very slick in fact.

This is yet another killer app for Facebook, on the back of quite a number of innovative add ons to the site. It's what keeps me on Facebook - the relentless evolution of the concept. It helps keep it fresh. Beacon is beginning to seem like a distant memory already!