I’m showing my age, but I remember the time when simply having a floppy disk drive attached to your computer was a big deal. I’m too scared to calculate how many hours of my life were wasted waiting for my Commodore 64, and later Amiga 500, to load software from the agonizingly slow floppy disk drives of the 1980s.

Sony has released a new firmware upgrade, version 3.10, for the PlayStation Portable (PSP). But even as PSP owners are finding out about the upgrade, it’s already been decrypted, and apparently “customized” hacked versions are not too far away.

Hoping to make a fortune by selling virtual goods you’ve acquired in an online game like World of Warcraft, EverQuest II, or City of Heroes? Forget about using eBay to sell your goodies.

Sony has reported a profit of $US1.3 billion for the quarter ending December 31, a decline of 5.3% compared to the same quarter in the previous year. And it’s largely the fault of the PlayStation 3 (PS3), according to Sony.

After what seemed to be a lifetime, Windows Vista finally hit the consumer market. For many, this is the start of a new  experience in Windows; but for some, is a race to find vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s new OS. 

Nintendo once ruled the console world. Its Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Super Nintendo Entertainment Systems (SNES) helped revitalize the games industry after the big console crash of 1983. But for the past few years Nintendo has been in the games console wilderness.  

Vista is disrupting game play for up to 70 million online gamers at sites like RealArcade, Yahoo Games and AOL Games, as well as at Microsoft’s own MSN gaming portal, according to WildTangent, an online gaming network.

As if we needed more evidence that the iPod media players are as much about fashion as they are about technology, Apple has announced that the iPod shuffle will be available in five colors: blue, pink, green, orange and the original silver.

Similar to a scene from CSI; a criminal commits a crime leaving nothing behind but a shoe print. The agents working the case create a mold of the print to take back to the lab for further analysis. Upon arrival, they load the print into their computers to compare it against the database; within seconds, they retrieve the type, brand, and size. Sound like a fantasy? Britain doesn’t think so.  

Until a few days ago if you typed “miserable failure” into Google, the first result that appeared was George Bush’s biography at whitehouse.gov.

Google moves to limit Google bombs

In a move that will give US law enforcement agencies access to the latest sex offender information, MySpace.com and Sentinel Tech are donating their Sentinel Safe database technology to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).

Initial sales of the iPhone will be modest, but sales will accelerate once the the price of the iPhone starts to hit the “sweet spot of the mobile phone market”, according to analyst Charles Wolf of Needham & Co in a note to investors.

It was 1992 and Bill Gates was visiting Sydney. I did a long television interview with him for a program called ‘Hot Chips’ and was present at a press conference that was held later that day.

China has sort of ignored 3G in mobile telephones and opted to go for its own 4G standard.

Hoaxes and practical jokes are nothing new to YouTube. But the latest hoax, a video that purportedly shows you how to obtain an invitation to join Google TV (a non-existent service, by the way), is so well done, that it’s worth a look - especially if you know that some people have actually been taken in by it (videos are at the bottom of this report).

It’s going to be a wonderful week for Microsoft; support lines will be ringing off the hook, wait times stretching into the hours, and high volumes of traffic will be flooding servers on websites offering support. In an effort to save you time and money, we’ve compiled a black book of everything you need to know before and after purchasing Microsoft’s new OS, Vista.