I think that this is probably one of the better deals I’ve seen in a while. Check out the image in case the page has changed :) I think that it is a move which creates a major differentiating feature in the low-profit PC market.

I wonder if this will be taken up by other manufacturers. I can imagine Dell going for large but boring countries and Apple going for odd places like Togo or Andorra.

News just in:

With new Web 5.0 Technologies, including HP Smell-ternet, Microsoft Smell-ternet Explorer and Mozilla Smell-erfox, users can experience new multimedia experiences via visual-audio-smell combinations! Smell the dung in your virtual safari (www.smell-afari.com)! Experience the smog in London: A nasal tour (www.alondonersnose.co.uk) and get yourself hungry on the morning after at www.greasy-spoon.org!

Web 6.0 alpha 1 includes pins in your eyes and the taste of rancid frogs (low-bandwidth prototype).

Microsoft have a page on design and how it effects the experience a user of software. It’s actually reasonably insightful, showing the experiences of creating the XBox 360 and Zune are being gradually rolled out within Microsoft. The obviously now realise that a user’s experience is key to being successful in future — and they cannot rely solely on an entrenched position to provide the impetus for selling their products, as in the past.

I stumbled upon Edge magazine today, run by the Edge Foundation, who say their mandate is “to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society”. Specifically, their page entitled The Edge Annual Question — 2007, which is “What are you optimistic about? Why?”. This question was put to many interesting people and their answers are available to read, and read through some of them you should. I’d like to point out some of my favourites amongst the answers.

This article is disturbing. I suggest that anyone with a concern about technological privacy read it. Whilst I knew that the DRM features (or, perhaps, in a delicious reversal of the programming joke, these are really bugs) were going to be fairly strong and include nasty hardware-based measures — like ensuring your TV is kosher for watching a film on (hint: it probably isn’t), that is, you don’t have a line out to a recording device hooked up — I hadn’t realized quite the problems this will create for the hardware industry.