Tech News of the Week

Let's see what's been happening around the tech world...

1. Google has unveiled Google Pages (obviously its a beta) which lets you create websites online using simple drag & drop WYSIWYG editor. It gives you a 100MB storage space and a subdomain at www.googlepages.com. I created mine before they closed it down due to the amount of registrations they received. It's pretty much like Yahoo Geocities but much better with no ads and huge storage space and easy-to-use tools. All cool. But, what's the revenue model here?
2. I have been beta testing Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Mail for a while. While, I am unimpressed by Live Messenger - it's basically MSN Messenger 8 and it's bloated, has lots of ads and content tabs that you cant' get rid of and it's slow. But I'm impressed with Live Mail. Basically they have integrated their Outlook UI on to the web. If you use Microsoft Outlook for your mail, just like I do, you'll find the interface familiar. Yes, you can right click and delete an email. And you can re-arrange the size of the columns and open a mail in a new window. I think this is a welcome improvement from the drab the Hotmail was.
3. Microsoft also unveiled Office Live. Although the name sounds like confusingly similar to Microsoft Office giving the impression that this might be a online version of the popular productivity suite, it is not. It's basically aimed at small businesses to manage its website, email addresses, and customers online. The basic version is free and includes a domain name, 5 email accounts and a website analysis tool. I haven't got an invite to try this yet but Walt Mossberg of WSJ did and has a review.
4. I think somebody finally has the answer to the market leading Apple iPod. It's Sony Ericsson Walkman Phone W950i. It's got 4GB of flash memory. It's thinner and lighter than iPod Nano. And it can make phone calls. And as things stand, operators would subsidize this phone anyways when selling it to customers - so it shouldn't be that expensive - probably about $300 to begin with and then going down to $0 as it's widely available. But I know I am getting one as soon as Cingular gets this phone.
5. Nokia also has a phone (N91) coming out with 4GB HDD although its not as sexy (Is any Nokia phone?).
6. There are wild speculations about the Apple event next tuesday where they have said they would be announcing "fun new products" (Only apple can send out such cryptic invitations). The most widely rumored guess seems to be on a Movie Download Service in iTMS.