Normally, Tuesdays are the days you can expect a plethora of news releases. Coming off of a longer Labor Day holiday, many companies opted to put their big announcements out on Wednesday instead.As mentioned previously, many rumor sites had anticipated Apple would introduce new iMacs and iPods alongside an iTunes movie service as part of a special media event this upcoming Tuesday, September 12th. But the Cupertino computer maker surprised the bloggers by debuting the new iMacs a full week earlier. As anticipated, the new iMacs feature the latest in Intel processors, and the top-line version expands to a 24-inch screen, which should dominate just about any desktop. Apple's Mac Mini lineup also received a performance bump with the latest Intel processors. Seems like having a new CPU partner is doing Apple some good. (MacRumors | Think Secret)
In more Web-focused news, it looks like the Silicon Valley may finally have found a wireless partner to blanket the region with ubiquitous high-speed Internet access. As I've always said, anywhere with air, food, water, a place to sleep and high speed Internet is where I call home. Luckily, it now appears I don't have to move to make that happen, as a consortium led by Cisco and IBM aims to offer wireless internet to the more than 2 million residents in the area. Businesses looking to utilize the network or gain increased bandwidth would have to ante up and buy additional equipment. Matt Marshall at VentureBeat says despite the news, it may be a long time before we can boot up from the park. (Mercury News | New York Times)
If it does indeed take a long time to roll out, then future historians can chronicle the planning on a new service from Google that has organized news articles from the past five-plus years, and is aggressively looking to span the last few centuries or so. The company's new archive search can come in very handy if you are looking to see how a company or product is covered over time. For more-popular items, you can delve into specific years or months to gain more granular data or read specific stories.
Examples: Segway in 2005, iPod in 2001, Bin Laden in 1998-1999