Check out this Google Map mashup called GMaps Flight Tracker. Check out the status of inbound flights scheduled to land in Atlanta, Boston, New York’s JFK, LA, Miami and San Francisco. Pick your city, and a list of the arriving flights are displayed. Click or mouse over the airline flight number of plane icon and the altitude, speed and heading coordinates are displayed as well as flight trail waypoints so you can check out the travel path. Pretty cool!

As Sony is “blooded” and shutting down its Connect online music service it appears that the company is gearing up take on the iTunes Store with its own movie download service, according to Forbes. Sony is planning on leveraging the PlayStation 3 and possible Windows Media Player. Good luck!

OpenOSX Office 2.0, US$30 is available in Universal Binary, allowing it to run natively on PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. Upgrades from previous versions cost $15. This version of OpenOSX Office includes AbiWord 2.4.6, Gnumeric 1.7.11, Diagram 0.96.1, Gnucash 2.2.1, and Inkscape 0.45.

Added to this version is Gnucash for personal and business financial management, Inkscape for creating vector-based graphics, added database support to Gnumetric. Yet another nice replacement for Microsoft Office.

See a larger view and visit Joel Watson’s website for more of what NBC wants!

The soap opera between NBC and Apple continues with NBC telling consumers that they only wanted “flexibility in wholesale pricing, including the ability to package shows together in ways that could make our content even more attractive for consumers.” Not just a $4.99 per episode show.

Continue reading News From NBC: Apple Wants To Make Money On iPods!…

In the midst of the Apple vs NBC spat, I almost missed this one (thanks Trish). Seems there is more blood on the iTunes play button. After Sony’s three-year effort to beat Apple’s iTunes Music Store they are calling it quits and closing the Sony Connect Online Music Store.

In its place, Sony is adding Microsoft’s Windows Media technology to its music players and allowing consumers to download copy-protected content from numerous Windows Media-compatible music stores, including those from Napster, Audible.com and WalMart. Sony will also distribute Windows Media Player 11 software with their new players. This represents a big change in the direction of Sony’s portable audio business. While Sony created this sector with the huge success of the Walkman in 1979, it has not made a dent in the iPod and iTunes Music Store. Well they are in good company, just ask all the others that “were” like Virgin Music, Urge, MSN Music, AOL Music, etc.

Continue reading Sony Gives Up on Connect…