,, guiding you through today's tec
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audio files MS makes it official: it's Xp Finding on the Internet naming scheme that capitalizes on the buzz around Apple'sMac OS X, due Mar. 24th. Actually, Micro soft has a long and flirtatious history
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Me2," anyways Now, we may have
Audio Galaxyr Better than Napster?
to come up with a whole new set of journalistic witricisms about what XP stands for — XPensive? XPlod of experience with the letter X. I t ing?XPletives? It seems likely chat icrosoft has announced the announced ActiveX back inMarch XML Protocol" was the underlying o fficial names o f th e 1996. Tvflcrosofl DirectX wasalready ranonale for the XP name. However, products previously code at version 5.0 back in May, 1997. Microsoft's marketing department named Office 10 and "Whisder." Apple, on the other hand, didn' t insists that XP stands for "experi The successor to Windows 2000 will announce MacOS X (which, by the ence," as m "E he Windows become Windows XP, and Office way, is correctly pronounced "ten" ) Experience." Look for an oflicial 10 will become Office XP. The XP undf May 1998, and the Mac sys Microsoft rollout of Windows XP name, saysthe company, is short for tem's much vaunted Aqua" interface and Oflice XP at the Experience "experience," symbolizing the rich didn't show up until the year 2000. Music Project(get it — areyou expe and extended user experiences Win And, then there's the Unix-based rienced?)in Seattle on Feb. 13th. dowsand Officecan offer by embrac X-Windows, which predates them Windows XP and Office XP are ing Web services that span a broad all.... Frankly, we' re glad to see MS currently in beta testing. Windows range of devices. finafiy getting off the "year names" XP is scheduled to be generally avail Legions of indignant Mac fans, kick — not to mention the "What able in the second half of 2001. meanwhile, are up in arms, moaning werethey thinking" Me moniker. But Office XP is scheduled to be avail that Microsoft has ripped them off can we be the first to call the Win abletoward the end of the f irst half yet again — this time, with a me-too dows XP GUI redesign "Windows of2001.IP +croak
Windows"P
ow that Napster has con firmed that it i n tends to s tart charging a small membership fee " for access to its file-sharing services in the near future, some are already predicting that it will Fade into insignificance as users find other alternatives.
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• Inside Everquest The great RPG adventure begins
De Facto Standards Do "open" standards doanygood?
internet Video Trends Will we havesmooth sailing
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Indeed,many former Napsterfans already fed up with Napster.corn's busy servers and incomplete files hav«obtained better results &om a
free tool called AudioGalaxy. Indeed, we arc mightily impressed with this program. It is quick to download and simple to use — at learnt in its Windows incarnation. A Linux version exists, but lacks
a friendly graphical user interface.
or growerWarsII TRACKER FEATURE
Media Studio Pro 6.0 Great features, poorperformance!
CD-R Reliability Report Experts talk about their results
Flat Panel Displays They arecoming downin price
Behind the Firewall
Internet movies roll abea
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What is a firowagand why doyouneed one
SoundBlaster Live Mac Edition The PC matkof's hellcat sound card comesto the Mac!
Power to Burn MacWorldattendeesaretreated lo Apple's latest offenngs
which Format(s) were sking most popular on the Net a few yearsago isa question that will get you different answers depending on who you ask, and where the experts were looking.
A
Arguably, Apple QuickTime format movies werethe most popular Format
during the first few years of the Web's explosive growth. Apple users had an early head start in the digital
video field, thanks ro Apple's pio neering work with QuickTime and
tvpes of media, including MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group)
Perhaps most importantly, Audio Galaxyseemed to produce a nearly 10096 success ratio in our search and download attempts. The program uses a Web page as its song-searching interface and cur rent status reporting tools. A search dialog allows you to type artist or song names. When found, an artist' s song is displayed along with user comments, links to more informanon based on the downloadbehaviours of others who have selected the sam» song. At this time, AudioGalaxy for Windows is our Editor's Choice for bestmusic download tooL Download the 359K satellite" utility From AudioGalaxy.corn to access what some call the "easiest MP3 downloader of all time." tp
the fact that the first Web browsers and Web authoring tools ran best on Macintoshes, and it took Microsoft until 1996 to release its first version of what was then known as Active Movie, accessed via Media Player
video and audio, Video for Win dows, OuickTime (basic features o nly), and m ore. For m ost w eb users, its MPEG features were its most valuable asset, as there were at that time relatively few other freely for Windows 95. available, full-featured, high-perfor ActiveMovie, in its initial release, mance MPEG players. supported a number of different see Internet video trends, page 12
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