Tune-in to see Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, launch the Apple iTunes Music Store in UK, France, and Germany from the Old Billingsgate Market in London, UK.

Keen to see TV coverage of the iTunes announcement you can catch video footage on the Internet of Apple CEO Steve Jobs taking on London.

The BBC is carrying a report from its NewsNight programme, view here

The release of iPod mini internationally is drawing closer, with rumors that production of the hard drives have now been increased. Apple still maintains that July will be month when we can get our hands of these little devices, lets hope Apple does get it right with the price and delivery times (4-6 weeks will prove unpopular). Apple may claim to be the market leader but in the UKt there is a more of a competitive market and people will turn to alternatives.



It is widely known that Apple often stock has surplus stock of hardware to satisfy its US market, which analysts in the UK in believe damages Apples ability to increase its market share as the built times are often unacceptable.

At the UK music event today, Apple released version of iTunes Music store for France, the UK and Germany.

Apple hopes to expand the store to include the rest of Europe by October.

See pictures from the UK launch here

The Server Administration Software contains administration software and tools that you can use to administer a Mac OS X Server.



Requires OS X 10.3

A complaint against Apple's claim that its Power Mac G5 was the "world's fastest personal computer" has been upheld by the UK's advertising watchdog.

Read more here

As well as keeping MPG up to date from my little office in the UK, I do like to get out and about a bit.

Again this year I shall running in the World Largest Half Marathon (that's 13.1 miles), I do hope that may of you MPG visitors can offer your support.

find out more on my web site http://rox.me.uk/

(I offer my time to MPG for free, so this is a good way to pay me back)

iTunes 4.6 includes support for playing your music wirelessly using AirPort Express with AirTunes. It also includes a number of other minor enhancements.

The update is available via the software update panel

The UK Channel Five launched its new Gadget Show last night featuring a hole host of Apple products.

It showed editing the results on a 17-inch PowerBook G4, and used iDVD to make a DVD of the results. These results appeared impressive on the TV

Visit the web site today

As a ex-employee of the BBC back in 2001 I heard that the BBC R&D were developing there own Codec to reduce and replace the license its has to pay to Real Network and Microsoft to use its streaming technology.

Read about Dirac here

The codec, called Dirac, is in the early stages of development, the experimental version of the code, written in C++, is released under an Open Source licence agreement on at http://sourceforge.net/projects/dirac You can download and compile to run on OS X.

This weeks BBC technology show clickonline takes a look at the massive expansion in Instant Messaging, and talks about the possible security ramifications of IM use.

Along with usual round up of technology news and features.

Watch here

The BBC has also posted a nice little follow up piece here

Oxfam is has launched a music download service to help raise money to fight poverty around the world.

The charity will offer 300,000 songs to download through its Big Noise Music website. tracks will cost between 75p and 99p, with 10p going to Oxfam. Stars who have backed the site include Coldplay, Faithless and The Darkness.

Apple needs to launch there service NOW !, the UK market is already very crowded with Coca-Cola, HMV, Tiscali, Virgin, Ministry of Sound, Napster, BT Yahoo, AOL, Wanadoo and MSN already offering services and I feel they may have missed the boat.

According to a Reuters report, Apple may be ready to launch their iTunes Music Store for Europe as early as next month.

Napster Thursday launched its music service in the UK, beating Apple to the punch overseas and surprising analysts who had only been told the service would debut by the end of summer. In response, OD2, Europe's leading online music store, announced that it will be cutting prices by up to 50 percent to remain competitive. Napster, meanwhile, boasted that its catalog of 500,000 songs is the largest in Europe, and said it would expand its offerings to 700,000 songs within 30 days. Apple declined to comment on Napster's UK launch, telling Reuters only that it plans to launch its service in Europe by the end of summer

Read more here

Apple is rapidly exapandin with its new (under construction) store on in London. The picture is a shot of the construction on the rooftop.

Update
The building is owned by the Queen and has very strict building laws so alterations are limited, it is scheduled to open later in the year in time for Christmas. The Apple store is in good company with the Hamleys Toy Store, Nike Town and Disney Store close by.

The BBC technology show show focuses on security and ways in which we can be monitored by the authorities - through our passports, credit cards or Identity cards, or by the increasingly common CCTV cameras that watch us on every street corner.

Click Online

In rather a surprise announcement (at least on my-behalf as I have heard of them) the UK government organization responsible for gathering information on IT security incidents has issued two security advisories regarding recently identified vulnerabilities in Mac OS X.

This security vulnerability is described as a "pre-authentication, remotely exploitable stack buffer overflow that allows an attacker to obtain administrative privileges".

The other advisory describes a Mac OS X file server authentication vulnerability – also "high" risk. It is described as a buffer overflow vulnerability in the way the AppleFileServer handles certain authentication requests. UNIRAS suggests that "a remote attacker could overflow a buffer, gain root privileges, and execute arbitrary commands on the system."

The warning was issued by UNIRAS, view the alert here

They appear to old warnings and upgrading to the latest release of OS X will keep you safe

A reader of UK magazine Macworld has reported that he downloaded the file from Limewire. The reader told Macworld: "I downloaded the file in the hope that perhaps Microsoft had released some sort of public beta. The file unzipped, and to my delight the Microsoft icon looked genuine and trustworthy."

Read More here

An 18-year-old arrested in northern Germany admits creating the Sasser computer worm, police say.

Story Here

This weeks BBC Technology show Click Online focuses on PC and IT Security, and explains many ways how unscrupulous people are trying to steel our passwords and credit card details.

Click Online

(a copy of Real Player is required)

The BBC News Technology web site is worth bookmarking as it contains lots of useful Technology News.

Nope not Steve Jobs but you guessed it - the english designer Jonathan Ive, who designer the iPod, iMac and iBook is to be named the most influential person on British culture.


Read the full story here

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3481599.stm

Oh dear again the world of Windoze is under attack from a security hole in the Operating System - effecting versions Windows 2003, 2000 and Windows XP.

Microsoft describes it as a critical vulnerability and to install Security Update MS04-011, then you will be safe from this worm. (Yeh)

You can get the update from here http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-011.mspx

For my sins I have Windows XP and 2000 running on VPC 6.1.1 so its time to update.

The BBC technology show click online this week will make to laugh. The show focuses on PC users who have to take their machines apart to make them look better. But no matter what they do one thing remains the same, they are just not as stylish as Mac.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/technology

pple released a number of useful Airport Management tools, but quickly withdrew them, well here they are if you missed your chance to download.

http://www.btinternet.com/~roland.young/mac.html

This weeks ClickOnline the BBC's Technology programme focuses on searches on the web

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta//progs/04/click_online/22apr.ram

Apple is now hiring for Europe’s first Apple Retail Store, set to open in London in Autumn 2004.

With Apple re-confirming the UK store I thought I'd see how its coming along. Well the BBC did have live jam cam which clearly showed the building in the background, but the camera has now been repositioned ever so slightly, bah you can no-longer see the proposed site. Steve really does want to keep it a secret.

I wonder if the flagship European UK store opening will also correspond with the European iTunes music store online?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/travel/jamcams/camloco/040247.shtml

This week the BBC Technology show 'Click Online' comes from the WiFi show held recently in London UK, if you want to know more about WiFi technology it is worth a look. There is also a nice feature about Bluetooth and asks the question how safe is the data on your phone?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/technology

Despite running into some delays, Apple remains comitted to launching a European iTunes Music Store this year. "When we launch in Europe, we want to do it well. There can be no compromise on the ease of use, the depth of the catalogue or the responsiveness ," Apple's European chief Pascal Cagni told Reuters. "This is going to be so important for the future that a few months' delay is not essential."

Well only in America - A draft law is being drawn up by local Democratic Senator Liz Figueroa, who calls Gmail "an invasion of privacy".

he problem, Ms Figueroa says, is Google's plan to make revenue from users agreeing to their incoming e-mail being scanned for targeted advertising.

Read the full story http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3621169.stm

Magic before your eyes

http://www.dslextreme.com/users/exstatica/psychic.swf

http://digicc.com/fido/

Real Networks has release Realplayer 10 the first major free player that can play AAC, Quicktime, Real, Windows Media, MPEG-4, MP3 and many others.

Read Rob Glase chief executive of Real Networks interview with BBC Online

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3608295.stm

It is still unfortunate that the Mac version is still at Version 9, but lets hope Real Player 10 is coming soon.

Happy Easter you all, well on this easter day it is a big day Newcastle Untied face the current premiership leaders Arsenal, and let hope we stuff em.

Well I've spent a few hours this morning fighting a hangover, and what better way than to amuse myself, than browse the net and I'd thought I'd share a few interesting finds.

Apple has used the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to ask SourceForge to remove the project.

Well the he new location for PlayFair is at Sarovar - http://sarovar.org/, a hosting company for software projects based in Trivandrum, India.

While we all sit and watch our Windows buddies continuously fight off the virus attacks (I know because I work in a support environment with mostly PCs) we think were safe. Well are we?

Meanwhile, virus writers are "showing increased interest in Unix", according to Macworld UK