News.com is stating that Flash 8 will be announced on August the 8th. Now all that date stuff meants they could be sticking to the "8" moniker, as the official vote for the acquisition by Adobe isn't until August the 24th the software will still be most likely be released as Macromedia Flash 8 or Flash MX2005 (and not Adobe Flash CS2, hoom). Official release is expected "a few weeks later". Would have been cooler if they waited for 2008.

Slashdot talks of the closed beta (MSDN subscribers only) release of Windows Vista and IE7 Beta1 For Windows XP. IE7 is already out on torrent sites, pretty sure you can find it here. Word on the street is that full-CSS implementation is not on the agenda (yet?) Pretty sure reviews are going to start pouring out right about... now. Update: hands-on reviews of the beta are already floating about. I know it's still early days but it doesn't look good. Huge memory needs, terrible PNG handling, incomplete CSS2 support... Pff.

In my previous post I said that this was the future, but to be honest this (kudos, Ant) might be a better way to go. A human looking android has always been the benchmark of robotics so it was only a matter of time until someone merged a Real Doll with an Aibo. The real aim though is to pass some sort of robotic Turing test: Professor Ishiguro believes that it may prove possible to build an android that could pass for a human, if only for a brief period. -- "An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to perhaps 10 minutes," he said. In other news: I try, I really do and while I get good ranking for stuff like Flash and other serious things I post about a lot of my search engine traffic makes me look rather unsavoury. I mean, I'm third on MSN Search for the word "penises" (here's a screenshot if it changes). Really, not like this is a 100% clean blog but it's not exactly Stile Project either.

While video rental stores are going the way of the dodo (Blockbuster, what's your plan?) Netflix, which revolutionised movie rentals with its mail service is gearing up for the launch of its movie download service (source: PSFK). The question is, why is this only happening now and why are the big guys waiting for people like Netflix to steal the market so they can try to emulate them and maybe pick-up some of the crumbs. I would have thought that the "kill Napster, watch it go underground and then watch Apple take over" episode would have surely shown studios, retail and rental companies that delivering the goods by pipe would be an inevitable outcome of the digital revolution. Going to buy/rent a DVD or CD stopped being enjoyable a long time ago. In the long run, there is no option but delivering media over the internet in whatever form it takes. Sure, it could dramatically alter the marketplace but there are no alternatives. I mean this is the future (note: this link is neither pleasant, nor office-safe). Why isn't everyone ready? People blame piracy but why can't I pay Fox to download an episode from The Simpsons for say 1 or 2 bucks while any kid around the world with an ADSL connection can download full episodes and watch them for free on his/her Xbox before they air? Why not expand your market and start delivering digitally to countries where the only real way to watch/listen to your product without months of delay is to download it illegally. For god's sake, here's a way to stamp out piracy: make your product available! Make it a reasonably priced, well thought-out experience. Why do I have to watch 2 minutes of some shitty ad calling me a thief before I watch a DVD which I paid good money for? The guy that downloads the movie illegally doesn't need to sit through that rubbish. And trying to compare watching a pirated movie to "stealing a TV" is simply wrong: when you steal a TV the dude you stole it from doesn't keep it. If it's all about starting a conversation, the media industry is taking the "kid being lectured by the headmaster" route. I think that they should come to terms with the fact that when people are thinking of media execs the vision of some young guy in a $5,000 suit snorting coke through a rolled-up $100 bill off a hooker's chest comes to mind, not a hard-working individual trying to make a living. Sure we're being mean, but damn, there's a lot of work to be done before the general population starts feeling like copying a tape from a friend is actually hurting someone they could care about. Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish and the sign of an industry so inflicted with the neutered cat mentality that it has no idea how to treat the people who fund it. Disney blasts you with a flood of unskippable ads everytime you want to watch The Lion King -- wonderful movie, awful way to start it. If the pirated product offers a better experience than an original one you're in deep, deep trouble. But I digress, if your product can be sold digitally, why are you only thinking about it?

During one of the few relaxing moments of the rather stressful week-end I gave Sudoku a shot to see what all the fuss was about. Sudoku is a number game which originated in the US only to become huge in Japan before it caught on in places like the UK. The Brits have officially gone Sudoku crazy (and yes, I am a bit late with this). All further proof that you can't really predict these types of viral crazes. Maybe the global pick-up was fueled by the new name (Sudoku is better than Number Place), maybe the fact that it was sold as a Japanese puzzle did the trick. An interesting tidbit is that the pick-up in Japan was mostly attributed to the fact that it didn't have to compete with crossword puzzles as they aren't practical in Japanese. I am told that puzzle games, and number games in particular are extremelly popular in Japan. Try a great online version of it here. Sudoku in many respects is the perfect puzzle game; It's easy to understand but hard to master, the difficulty of a table can be as easy or devilishly difficult as you want, they can be generated automatically (unlike crosswords), it travels well (no words) and works as well in print as online. I remember driving towards London from Exeter (don't remember where now) and seeing a giant sudoku grid on a hillside, does anyone know what that was?

Engine just blew on the way to the beach. Spark plugs popped out (maybe not, after all). Sending the car back but will try to still enjoy the weekend. At least my phone still works. Messed up room booking. Car busted. What a day. Here is a picture of a bunch me people angry at me. Update: Not sure what's wrong with the car yet. Managed to get to beach and a great mexican dinner so it wasn't all bad. -- Car was fixed in a couple of days, water-pump failed. The engine seems fine which is extremelly lucky as it could have blown. Thanks to the people (fix your blog William) who came to pick us up. And the American Express roadside rescue service rocked.

Out with friends. Stella Artois has a new campaign that tells you to `drink a classic and drive a legend` Drink and drive? You might want to rethink that message.

Update: Somebody pointed me to The Lesbian Scene Movie Database. I thought it would be wise to post it. I might be proven wrong. D'ave from Hello World Blog has something to say about lesbians: Lesbians are only hot girls, so the rest of you hunched, leering, badly dressed females (and I use that term in a form more loose than they are) are fakers and frauds. I know this, because I have seen a few movies on the subject, and lesbians, without exception, look like the two in the pic on the left. It is a lovely, wondrous thing. Don't mess it up. While linking this may seem a little gratuitous at first (that and it's pretty fucking funny) I can assure you that this actually is quite a legitimate experiment. You see, while I try my utmost to be informative and up-to-date with in-depth coverage of design, marketing & technology (and a wee bit of gaming), most of the search engine linkage I get seems to be for posts were I mention penises, piercing, mojitos and other such things you wouldn't mention at the dinner table with the local vicar. I'm generally quite tasteful and objective but in the name of higher Google traffic I give you two hot girls kissing. In other news: Tom Peters once again hits the nail right on the head. He's the man. Apparently, MacOS X Flash 8 stuff is much faster because of OpenGL acceleration. We were talking about this kind of acceleration the other day and were wondering if it would be possible for Macromedia to accelerate Flash content using DirectX or OpenGl. Apparently it is.

Update: Longhorn is now officially called Windows Vista. (Thanks, CMD) Funny how this happens. Just yesterday I was wondering when Microsoft would announce their "real" name for Windows Longhorn as the thing has been in development for so long its beta name has spread far beyond geekdom. While many were anticipating Microsoft going back to the "year of release" moniker and call it Windows 2006 or possibly another double letter like XR or XE, some even had anticipated Windows 360. However, Adrian has just informed me that ActiveWin has leaked that the next generation Windows would be called Windows Vista. Odd name, not sure what I make of it yet. Bring on the Windows "Hasta la Vista" jokes. The official new name for the Longhorn operating system is Microsoft Windows Vista, according to our insider sources. The name was mentioned today at the Microsoft sales conference in Atlanta. The official announcement will go live at 6 AM PST. In other news: Aleksandar says the latest build of PearPC (PowerPC emulator for x86) is the shit. Howard gets a brand new kind of Dell experience (read a bad one). Sony finally delivers a web browser for it's PSP. This means being able to use the PSP properly without having to hack the crap out of it apparently.

Here's something interesting: a site which lets others rate your Elevator Pitch. If anything this should get people thinking about their 10 second pitch and in the process start thinking objectively about what their 'thing' is. An 'elevator pitch' is a quick and concise way to communicate who you are, what you're trying to do and why you do it better. It's much more than a mission statement, it's understanding your business in a way that gets people excited and thinking. In other news: Download.com redesigns. Clean, dynamic, compliant. Me like. They've gone all bloggy on us too. If you're the type of person that likes to undo knots Planarity is a good way to kill a couple of hours. If you've only got a couple of minutes, why not play around with this cool real-time motion blur thingy in Flash 8.