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Filed under: Audio, Internet

Another one bites the dust: Virgin kills its online music store

Virgin DigitalWhile competition continues to heat up in the online video space, it appears the online music space is getting smaller and smaller. Just weeks after Sony announced it was closing its online music store, Virgin is shutting down its Virgin Digital web site.

Virgin Digital offers users the chance to download songs a la carte or subscribe for content a la Napster/Rhapsody. The service, which was only available to users in the US and UK will officially shut down on October 19th, although Virgin Digital has already stopped accepting new customer registrations.

Anyone with more than a month of subscription credit will get a refund. If you've got credit for song downloads, there won't be a refund, so it's time to start a downloading binge or you can use your credit on Napster.

Filed under: Internet, Productivity

Virgin America to offer in-flight WiFi, Google Talk

In previous experiments, in-flight WiFi Internet access failed to capture much attention, either because consumers thought it was to expensive or because it wasn't ubiquitous. Ie. if it's not on every aircraft, it's hard to plan your travel time around being productive, sleeping, or watching a movie on your iPod. For those of us who typically only travel on business, in-flight WiFi is a huge productivity enhancer, if only because it saves us from suffering through the naked feeling of offline e-mail.

Virgin says they'll have the service deployed by mid-'08, and while they haven't talked much about pricing, we're guessing this will be a premium service, since the airline has invested a new in-flight portal called "Red" that will allow passengers to surf and chat even if they don't have their own laptops on board. Red will offer access to Skype and Google Talk, too. Very handy indeed.

But this stuff needs to become ubiquitous. Show us a major domestic airline that offers always-on, zero-premium WiFi access and we'll show you an airline that takes a bite out of business traveler market share.

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet, Microsoft, Commercial

Vista's new net stack will speed things up

Windows VistaSo Vista has a brand-spanking new network stack, which according to TorrentFreak will speed up not only torrents, but all other network activity as well. Up to 10% faster than XP. That isn't a huge performance boost, but hey I'll take what I can get. It seems that the boost will help traffic speed up on both wireless and wired connections. With the world rapidly heading toward super-high speed bandwidth in the next few years, it may not matter too much soon, but it is good to know that the new operating system will be an improvement in this area.

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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