Roundup for 9th May 06

I'm afraid that again, no time for any indepth posts. I'm writing this at 11:40pm, so by rights, I should be in bed!

A price has been fixed for the Playstation 3 by Sony, in the run-up to E3, the show that is to gaming what CES is to consumer electronics. It will retail for $499 in the US and 499 euros (£341) over here. The console will be released on 11th November in Japan, with US and Europe launching over the following week. At £341, it's expensive, more expensive than the 360 and significantly more than the Wii will be. However, what I'm more bothered about is the discrimation against europe with the pricing. According to a quick check, $499 is worth 391 EUR, so why Sony thinks it's OK to charge Europe that much more is an interesting and significantly irritating question. We shouldn't just blame Sony. Everyone does it.

The Webby Awards have been announced, with Google and Yahoo the big winners. Full details on the award winners here. The award winners seem quite sensible, but I would like to see a few more of the little people, as the awards could be used as a tool to draw attention to the really innovative ideas and services that aren't necessarily well-known or that don't have a marketing budget.

James O'Neill's made his RSS Stumbler available for download (as source code), after Scoble told him to. O'Neill works for Microsoft, and to demonstrate how easy it is to use the new RSS Platform distributed with IE7, coded an RSS reader in 90 lines in VB. It should be quite interesting to have a look at, especially as it's written in VB, which is a language which I can actually use to a level at which I'll be able to hack around with the program. Download VB 2005 Express Edition for free here.

Turns out that the MacBook wasn't announced today after all, apparently due to supply issues, but Engadget reckons that Apple never intended to announce today, as it would have to vie for coverage with the E3 crowd. Next Tuesday, according to ThinkSecret.

RealTechNews links to obscure Google pages. Some interesting ones there, but my favourite has to be the Google Easter java game, with a little bunny that has to catch eggs.

Good night!