Sony plans a movie download service for its PlayStation 3

The service will be launched this summer in US and later in the European and Japanese markets.

The first rumors about a movie download service came out in 2005 in a interview with Sony executive. In December 2006, Financial Times article gave information about this service, available for the Sony PSP and being a possible rival to Apple's iTunes. PSP owners could download media from Sony's website to their PC and transfer it to the PSP flash card.

Past attempts of Sony creating online content ditribution failed. They closed Connect Store in March this year, because of the failed AMTRAC format becoming an alternative to MP3. The store was launched in 2004 as a response to iTunes. Also Sony sold Movielink, their joint effrot with several big studios, to Blockbuster.

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Gates to step down from Microsoft

Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates is stepping down from running the company.

Gates, one of the world's richest men, is planing to devote his time to charity work. Gates programmed his first computer at the age of 13. After 2 years in Harvard, he dropped out to found Microsoft with his friend, Paul Allen. Their big break came when they signed a deal with IBM develop their operating system software later known as MS-DOS.

Gates will remain as Microsoft's chairman and dedicate his work to finding new vaccines and financing projects in the developing world.

Mozilla Firefox 3 out:: over 8 million downloads in 24hrs

According to Mozilla, the new version of their browser Firefox 3 passed the 8 million mark within 24 hours. The company attempted to set a Guinness record for most downloaded software, and wait for approval of the result.

The question is how many of these people switched from Internet Explorer, or are they long time Firefox users waiting for the end of Beta testing for version 3. And if they are IE users, will they stick to using the other browser.

I've been using Firefox 3 through the beta stages and I think the most noticeable aspect is the significantly low usage/efficient management of memory than in version 2. Another good improvement is organizing bookmarks. One thing really annoying is the autocomplete address bar now shows more information, title and description with the URL - very irritating to scroll through - but you could turn it off.