It was announced yesterday that Apple would be releasing their newest version of iTunes in the early hours of this morning. And as if by magic, the Apple Software Updater today alerted me that a new version of the software was available. So I’ve downloaded it, given it a spin and here’s what I have to say.

If you’re just a casual user of iTunes, you probably won’t notice any huge difference except from the new design and interface. They’ve replaced the CD logo with a new logo of a music note. The general UI of the program has been changed quite considerably. I quite like it, but I think this new approach to listing my music library looks very untidy.

Thankfully, I use the album cover view to see my music, so that won’t affect me hugely.

The biggest new feature to the program is the new “Ping”. Essentially, it’s just a copy of last.fm with the ability to like, review and follow artists/songs that are of interest to you. You can then share this with other users that you happen to be following. The software will give you up to date information from the artists you are following.

Personally, I quite like the feature. I’ll find it very useful for “discovering” new music as Apple like to put it. However, I think it’s sad that Apple are so desperate for ideas that they have to go and copy a concept that already exists. I much prefer last.fm’s approach and I think Apple will have a job getting people to convert to their idea.

I happen to think performance has improved considerably with the new version. Even with a dual core 2.8ghz processor and Windows 7, iTunes 9 still seemed to be pretty sluggish. The new version appears to load up pretty quickly and navigating through the software seems to be much more speedy. Gone are the days when you have to wait several seconds for iTunes to respond to you clicking a menu option.

Other than that though, there isn’t really much the casual iTunes user will notice. The store hasn’t really changed much, except for “Ping” integration. The iPod management is almost identical to the old version, with exception to a tiny bit of new design.

Overall, I’d go grab it. It’ll probably be essential to upgrade soon anyway. You can get it from apple.com/itunes or from the Apple Software Updater.

First of all, I’m back! Sorry I’ve been away for so long – I really wanted to make the most of the summer break to focus on a few other personal matters. But now summer seems to be rapidly fading into autumn, I’m back in business for the time being! There will be lots to look forward to with GEEK! this autumn – I’m going to be reviewing some cool new tech in the months up to Christmas and chatting about loads of new software!

In the mean time though, I’ll stick to the post at hand. It’s always baffled me as to why Apple decided to block out multitasking and wallpapers on the iPod touch 2G. I’ve been a proud owner of my iPod Touch for nearly 18 months now and was very pleased when Apple announced that they’d finally be supporting it in iOS4 some months back.

But then when Apple said that they wouldn’t support it on 2G, I was quite annoyed. They state that the lack of recent hardware made it difficult for them to implement the new features, but that doesn’t make much sense to me.

When the firmware was eventually cracked, I jailbroke my iPod and, to my surprise, multitasking worked perfectly. You have to close apps from time to time as it does get a bit slow if you leave too many open, but otherwise it works well.

I really don’t get why they wiped out the home screen wallpaper for the 2G iPod touch. What was the problem with that?

Alan Edwardes raised a good point in a blog post he wrote, asking why not just have a slider that could turn the features on or off in the device settings? The iPod Touch 2G can clearly cope with the new features, but it would be useful if you could choose to have them on or off. Some people could find it annoying that you do have to close apps from time to time. Still, why can’t I make that choice myself rather than having to hack my device in order to get the features?

Yes, I’m back posting again. Sorry I haven’t posted for a little while – I decided to take a little summer break. But have no fear, I’m back as of today!

Anyway, last night I came across this very cool application. It’s free and it works with your webcam. It basically replaces your password at Windows logon with a window that shows your webcam. As soon as the app recognises your face using biometric technology, it will automatically log you on with the password you told it.

It doesn’t actually replace your password. It leaves you with the opportunity to use a password, just in case your webcam packs up or you need to get in from Safe Mode.

However, the app does work very well and I was very pleased with how quickly it responded as soon as it recognised me. It also worked very well under various light conditions.

I would have been slightly more impressed if the app had given me the opportunity to register more than one accepted face, but I guess if security is really your thing you probably wouldn’t want that.

Overall, for a free app it is a must have. If you want to keep friends and family away from your personal info, it’s much more secure than a password and doesn’t seem to take any longer than typing a password. Go grab it for free by clicking here. The app works with any Windows Vista or Windows 7 computer.

Yes, the news that every Spotify customer has wanted to hear. Spotify finally supports multitasking on the iOS4 with the latest update.

You will of course need an iPhone 3GS/4 or an 3rd gen iPod Touch (unless you have jailbroken) to get the multitasking ability.

The new app also supports control from the lock screen and double-click control buttons, which does make the app much more usable. It also features a new “What’s new” section like in the PC application, so you can see the top tracks of the moment and any new releases.

A well deserved update I think.

How many times have you been on your computer and then had the phone ring? You go out of the room to answer it, and when you come back you’ve left the computer and monitor on pointlessly for half an hour.

PecoBoo, developed by VeryPC, is an attempt to try and solve that problem. It utilises your webcam and uses face recognition to work out whether you are sitting at your computer. If it can’t find a person for a predetermined amount of time, it will automatically turn off your monitor. However the webcam and software stays on – so as soon as it notices that you have got back to your PC, it switches your monitor back on.

I downloaded the 30 day trial and gave the software a spin. I’m relatively impressed – it takes a bit of fiddling to stop it turning off your monitor when you are still at the system. I found that if you set the idle time to less than about 20 seconds you end up switching your monitor off if you hold your head still – and if you turn your monitor on and off too much you’ll not only end up using more energy than just using it normally, but you’ll also considerably shorten it’s life. It’s also extremely irritating!

Nevertheless, the software did a good job and I do think the face recognition technique is very clever.

To be honest though, the fact that it isn’t free puts me off. To earn back the £9.99 I’d spent in buying the software from turning my monitor off, I’d have to use it for months – which defeats the point a bit. It also poses the question of how much energy does your webcam use if you’re having that on whenever your PC is on.

Overall, if you’re a green geek – buy it and it will save valuable energy utilising extended breaks from the PC. However, for the average user, this will be of little interest.

I’ve always found it really hard to find decent apps for the Nokia 5230. The “Ovi Store” is total rubbish on the device (constantly getting the random error problem) and it’s pretty hard to work around that.

I’ve been looking for a decent IM (instant messaging) client for the device for some time and there’s plenty of choice – eBuddy, Socially, Nokia Messaging IM Beta – but none of them perform very well. Until very late yesterday night, when I came across Nimbuzz.

Nimbuzz is a free client that supports a wide range of phone brands and works as an IM and VoIP client. It supports a wide variety of services including MSN (Windows Live), Yahoo, Facebook, Google Talk and many more. You simply hook up your account details into a Nimbuzz account, log on and off you go.

The interface has really come to my liking – much better than eBuddy’s for touch devices – that’s just unusable. You can also use it in both portrait and landscape modes and best of all, there are no adverts!

An addition to all of that, it also supports VoIP – so you can use either Nimbuzz’s cheap online call rates or you can use SkypeOut (very handy). So if you have a subscription on Skype, as far as I know, you can make use of use of it from Nimbuzz (sadly I haven’t been able to test that yet as currently I don’t get EDGE or 3G where I live – that will soon change).

Overall, it’s a fantastic client. It’s very simple to use and has the best interface I’ve seen yet. You can get it free either from the dreaded “Ovi Store” or by going to nimbuzz.com. If you want to chat on the go with a Nokia 5230 or Nokia 5800 – this is the way to go!

I’ve just been notified by my WordPress system that 3.0 has now officially arrived.

I’ve just installed the update and from what I can see, there’s no major overhaul. However, there are a few minor adjustments that make a big difference. Updating plugins has become much quicker with the new updates page on the Dashboard. In addition, a few cosmetic changes have made browsing the WordPress Dashboard much more straightforward and intuitive.

If you want to grab the new update, either do an automatic upgrade from your WordPress Dashboard, or head to wordpress.org and download it from there!

3 UK, the network which claims to have the best 3G coverage in the UK, has recently announced that it will start offering the iPhone 4 from June 24th.

There’s no news on pricing as yet, but 3 have said that they’re aiming to announce tariffs on June 15th.

I’m personally very pleased with the idea. Despite the fact that I left 3 earlier this year, it’s good that 3 are finally offering one of the most popular smartphones around. And it could be perfect time, as O2 are cutting their mobile internet down later this month, coinciding with the iPhone 4 launch.

With their extensive 3G coverage in the UK, this could see a lot of customers moving from other networks to 3 for the brand new iPhone, which claims to have a bucket-load of new features that will interest a wide range of smartphone users.

It has recently been announced that as of June 24th, O2 will no longer be offering unlimited internet to it’s new and upgrading customers. The move has shocked many, but O2 has said that too many people use the network abusively and as a result they have been forced to take action.

O2 has mentioned in it’s press release that the changes will only affect about 3% of it’s customers who use the network excessively. The remaining 97% will not be affected as O2 claims that even the lowest internet package, providing 500MB per month, is more than 2.5 times the average monthly user usage.

Customers currently on contracts with O2 will continue to receive unlimited data until 1st October, but will have to watch for changes to their contract over the next few months to make sure they don’t receive horrendous charges.

The question is whether other networks will follow suit. Orange currently offers “unlimited” internet packages, but hidden in the FUP are limits restricting customers. As usual, Orange has forgotten the meaning of unlimited. Vodafone is slightly clearer, offering fixed plans with fixed usage limits.

It is also worth thinking about whether O2′s increasingly popular MVNO, giffgaff, will follow suit. The network announced today that they have no plans to change their unlimited internet offers with their goodybags, but stated that they couldn’t guarantee this wouldn’t change in the future.

Personally, I don’t think the news is all that bad – as customers will finally get a clear idea of what they can use each month in terms of data, but time will tell as to whether customers agree to the changes.

Despite loving mobile broadband, I have to say that the cost of maintaining it is still very high. Even with 3′s very competitive rates, it is still very expensive. At £10 per single GB, that’s a very high rate. Of course, you can get multiple GBs at cheaper rates, but you still have the annoying 30 day limit with most networks. If you don’t use the data within 30 days, you loose it.

Mobile broadband has been around a fair old while now. It took off when networks starting giving birth to 3.5G services (or HSDPA) which offered speeds that were comparable to home broadband speeds. The USB dongle brought easy connectivity to the mobile networks, whilst in more recent months the Mi-Fi dongle has made mobile internet much more convenient.

I really do think it’s about time mobile networks started offering cheaper data rates for mobile broadband. The cost of providing bandwidth is falling and networks should start passing these savings onto customers.