MICROSOFT announced in late: May that its Zune HD will debut sometime this fall, setting up a battle with Apple’s iPod Touch. The touchscreen portable media player, Microsoft says, will be the first one to combine an OLED (organic lighlemitting diode) display, an HD Radio receiver, Wi-Fi, and high-def video. Microsoft didn’t announce pricing.

The OLED screen will have 480-by-272-pixel resolution and a 16:9 aspect ratio. The Zune HD will also play highdef video on a TV. (You’ll need a docking station and a TVwith HDMI input).

The HD Radio function will allow users to tune in to stations broadcasting in that format, which offers higher fidelity than regular FM and sometimes subchannels with additional programming.

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The iPhone and iPod touch are nearly identical in outward appearance, have the same touch screen interface, and perform many of the same functions. The key difference between the two is obvious: one has a phone and the other doesn’t. However, there are additional important differences which this article will describe. But first, the similarities.

Similarities

As you can tell by looking at the photos of the devices, they are nearly identical in size and shape. In addition, they both have a touch screen interface and built-in Wi-Fi capability. With the iPhone 2.0 software update, they share many of the same applications including the Safari Web browser, Contacts, Calendar, Photo, YouTube, Mail, Stocks, Maps, Weather, Clock, Calculator, Notes, Settings, iTunes, and App Store.

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After Apple announced the iPhone 3G at their annual WorldWide Developer Conference in June of this year, anticipation for the first 3G-capable iPhone was running high. While the original device launched in the U.S. and then spread to a handful of European countries, Apple planned to launch the iPhone 3G in 24 more nations worldwide and expected to be offering it in a whopping 73 countries by the end of 2008. On July 11th, Apple and AT&T stores started selling the 3G, and over one million consumers bought one in the first three days, making this the hottest smartphone launch ever.

The iPhone 3G brings speed, assisted GPS, and a new low price to Apple’s smartphone platform. And while the hardware has definitely been improved, it’s the iPhone 2.0 OS and software suite that is truly revolutionary.

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IMPROVING performance is one of Microsoft’s design goals with Windows 7, and many early reviewers (including ours) have said that the new Windows operating system seems peppier than Vista. But test of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in our Test Center indicate that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 performance test suite, users may barely notice the difference.

OSs Head-to-Head

We loaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate on three systems (two desktops and a laptop) and ran our WorldBench 6 tests on them. Then we compared those results with the ones we obtained from the same three systems running Windows Vista. Each PC was slightly faster when running Windows 7, but the overall improvement didn’t exceed 5 percent, our threshold for gauging whether a performance change will be noticeable to a typical user.

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MICROSOFT WILL release Windows 7 on October 22, the company has confirmed. The date will put Windows 7 on store shelves a  full three months earlier than originally planned, and it follows Microsoft’s recent announcement that the OS would ship “in time for the holidays“.

Plenty of things will still take place: between now and October. Here’s a breakdown of some key events to watch for in the months before the Windows 7 release.

Windows 7 Upgrade Option

Microsoft is expected to unveil an upgrade: program for Windows 7 that will likely let you get the operating system for free or with a discount if you’ve recently purchased a Vista-basd PC that meets certain conditions.

So what are those conditions? that’s not yet dear. Microsoft has confinued the program will be called “Windows Upgrade Option“.

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GOOGLE HAS released to developers an early version of a complex colaboration and communications tool that consolidates features of e-mail, instant messaging, blogging, wikis, and multimedia management, as well as document sharing.

Called Wave, the Web application is the equivalent of a Swiss army knife for consumer online services and is possibly one of the riskiest and most ambitious endeavors Google has embarked on.

At its core, Wave Jets people create a document to which multiple users can add rich text, multimedia, gadget applications, and feeds, and do so concurrently, much as people interact on, say, instant messaging. Users can roll back these “waves” to view the evolution of the document.

In the works for about two years, Wave could draw people away from the company’s other products (Blogger, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk, Picasa, and Sites), and from similiar products by competitors such as AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

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Here’s the lowdown on search engine submission. You can do it manually for free. The only problem there is going to be time—you may have to wait for your site to show up, or you may have to submit more than once to ensure that your site shows up. So, you might wish to use a company that does the site submissions.

Getting listed at a major search engine, such as Google, will get you listed in other search engines faster and vice versa. Once again you’re faced with having to choose a vendor to help. Paid submission will get your site ranked faster, and many search engines now offer fast additions and improved ranking for pay.

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