Microsoft have announced SQL Server Everywhere as part of their line-up for SQL Server.

Everywhere is based upon SQL Server Mobile Edition but available for Windows XP platform. It is already used by MSN Client and Media Center PC.

Back in the days of Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and Mac OS 7 the operating systems used a bit mapped font as the default system font for the various windows and dialogs.

Apple replaced their venerable Chicago with a scalable version that took advantage of font smoothing and moved on. By Mac OS X they switched to entirely new fonts such as Lucida Grande.

The performance is quite amazing.

World of Warcraft runs nicely under Windows giving an acceptable 20 fps at 1440×900 24-bit color 24-bit depth 1xmultisample1440×900 24-bit color 24-bit depth 1xmultisample with everything turned up high or on. Dropping down the anisotropic to mid-point and turning off the full-screen glow effect and smooth shading bumps that up to 30 fps.

Apple announced their Boot Camp technology — basically a set of drivers for Windows XP, a wizard to help resize your existing disk partition and the necessary magic to load XP from the EFI BIOS.

I can imagine the Windows on Mac Intel project that raised $12,000 USD are wondering why they bothered…

It seems that the UK Department of Trade & Industry has convinced the ISO to add the codes for Guernsey (GE), Jersey (JE) and Isle of Man (IM) to the official ISO 3166–1 country database.

This is the database often used to populate the drop-down lists of countries seen when shopping on-line.

Steve Jobs’ vision and leadership has turned Apple around from a great-promise but minimal market share in the computer business into a media and fashion darling envied by the likes of Sony, Dell and Microsoft.

Under his watchful eye they have put out a friendly computer called the iMac that redefined what computers could look like, a powerful Unix based OS with a simple but gorgeous user interface and practically took possession lock-stock-and-barrel of the portable music player market.

Microsoft have announced their XNA platform for game development.

The platform is based around C# and the .NET 2.0 CLR and frameworks, specifically tailored for the requirements of game developers. This might possibly mean much of the common language specification (CLS) elements are removed for performance.

Okay, after a few nail biting days of;

“Your course result will be available Wednesday 22 March 2006”

Last night I went home with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for the Xbox 360, wired up to the projector producing 720p high definition imagery that dominates the darkened room.

You start off with an incredibly comprehensive character generation where you can choose race, sex, hair color, eye color, age… and a bewildering number of options to customs your face. So many options in fact it’s quite difficult to come up with something you like. Hitting the random option until you see a good starting point is probably the easiest way to progress.

Time for an update on the state of broadband in the Channel Islands. Some interesting home tariff cuts on both islands. The Office of Utility Regulation is pushing for further wholesale ADSL cuts in Guernsey. More news as it happens.

Now have usage limits in place on their “Rapid” broadband services with the exception of the top-end business service.