News about what is happening in technology today!

Howard Stern began his new satellite radio show on Monday by putting to rest rumors that he got married to his longtime girlfriend, model Beth Ostrosky — in a comment complete with a federally banned expletive.

“I am not married. It’s a nice feeling that we get along great. We’re very happy and I don’t want to (blank) it up,” said Stern, who is finally free of government decency laws on Sirius Satellite Radio.

Stern has promised everything from stripper poles to live sex on his new show.

But he used only a moderate amount of swearing and said his show was more about ideas, not the use of the f-word. Cursing, he said, would be part of the natural progression of speech.

“I feel this is a culmination of dreams for me,” Stern said in an on-air news conference.

“The only limit is our mind,” he said.

At the time his October 2004 deal with Sirius was announced, the company said it could be worth up to $500 million over five years to headline two Sirius channels.

Stern broadcast his last FM radio show on Dec. 16 as thousands of fans gathered outside his New York City studio.

At the start of the show Monday, Stern dished up some phone sex with Playboy bunny Heidi Cortez, who has her own phone-sex nighttime show lined up on Sirius.

Stern also introduced George Takei as his new on-air personality. Takei, who played Sulu on Star Trek and who last year publicly said he is gay, will serve as announcer. After the first week, he will record segments for the show but will not be in the studio.

“The revolution has begun” in new radio, Takei said Monday.

Even before his first day on the job, the shock jock recruited listeners for the $13-per-month service: The Sirius audience expanded from 600,000 at the time the switch was announced to more than 3.3 million subscribers, Stern said Monday. At the same time, Sirius stock has roughly doubled.

That’s hardly a surprise. Stern’s wildly popular syndicated show proved a cash cow for Infinity Broadcasting, now the CBS Radio unit of CBS Corp., raking in about $100 million in annual advertising revenues and capturing 12 million listeners with raunchy, boundary-pushing programming.

Stern had frequently tested and sparred with the regulatory Federal Communications Commission during his 25-year run on the public airwaves, often having his morning show interrupted by censors.

Weeks after Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction,” Clear Channel Communications yanked Stern from six stations amid an FCC crackdown. Stern signed with Sirius five months later.

“I thought Clear Channel and companies like that were going to fight the FCC,” Stern, 51, told the Associated Press last month. “I kept hanging around. And they never fought back…. They are cowards. They bow, and they deserve to be destroyed.”

On Monday, caller after caller wished Stern luck — and he reacted with annoyance.

“I’ve been doing years and years of shows but I get irritated when people wish me luck,” he said. “You should have wished me luck 25 years ago.”

During the on-air news conference, Stern was asked how he felt about listeners having to pay to hear his new show.

“I believe that people will pay for radio,” he said. “It’s everything iPod can’t be. IPod can’t give you content and we can.”

One guest who joined Stern on Monday was the shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge, who was fired by Clear Channel two years ago. The DJ, who legally changed his name from Todd Clem, has been recruited by Stern to host an afternoon drive time show on Channel 101, one of two Sirius channels managed by Stern.

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs took center stage at Macworld on Tuesday to introduce the first Macs based on Intel chips six months ahead of schedule: a speedy, flat-screen iMac and a slim, high-end notebook with a new name — the MacBook.

Looking trim and fit in his trademark jeans and turtleneck, Jobs told the enthusiastic audience that the new machines are two to four times faster then the Macs they replace, which are based on PowerPC chips from IBM and Motorola.

“These things are screamers,” he said.

Both machines are based on Intel’s “latest and greatest” dual-core chips, branded the Intel Core Duo, Jobs said. He said each core in the new chips is faster than the G4 or G5 PowerPC chips they replace.

Available in February, the MacBook Pro will replace Apple’s high-end PowerBook G4 notebook. Jobs said the new Intel model is four times faster than the PowerBook G4 it replaces. The slim, “1-inch thin” notebook features a 15-inch screen, built-in iSight video-conferencing camera and remote control. It also has a new magnetic power adapter that detaches easily when the power cord is yanked on, preventing accidental falls. The MacBook Pro will sell in two configurations: a 1.67-GHz model for $2,000 and a 2.1-GHz model for $2,500.

The new iMac, available now, has the same features, design and price as the machine it replaces, Jobs said. What’s different? The new model delivers two to three times the speed, Jobs said.

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Here is the first official photograph of the new X3 IR hardware. As you can see there is a serial programmer module which enables to ability to update the hardware with new infra red codes via the learning function. The software (X3 IR Manager) is currently at v1.1.6 and tweeks are still bing implemented. You should expect these in stores within the next couple of weeks - remember the first batch of customers will receive an X3 Pro Switch ($20 RRP) completely free of charge as a thank you for your patience and loyalty!

Xbox 360
It is great to see such a huge community input into the openeing up of the 360. Two websites of note (one a returning old freind) are worth keeping bookmarked, they have some interesting discoveries and observations.
www.xboxhacker.net
www.free60.org
Of course for the latest news and updates you should be looking at www.xbox-scene.com but we shouldn’t have to tell you that.

For a completely “hacked” 360 don’t expect anything on the scale of the first Xbox - at least not for a long, long time, however you can expect to see a hack of some sort soon - not only from Xecuter(info) but from at least one other group of guys we have spoken to. Unsigned code is looking unlikely atm but booting of raw dumps maybe quite possible - but no where near as much fun or scope as Xbox1 mods. Kudos to M$ for their security on this one, however there is always a way…..

On a non-hacking note, we have licenced a number of Xbox 360 hardware add-on designs to a couple of companies ready to be announced soon.

* X3 Config Live
We just noticed a nice Xbox 360 skin over at allxboxskins - go check it out if you have an X3
X3CL 360 Skin

In the meantime we hope you all have a successful new year.

Despite the obvious preference for HD-DVD, it seems Microsoft isn’t willing to completely tie its fate to the format just yet. During CES 2006, Microsoft’s Xbox corporate VP of worldwide marketing and publishing Peter Moore told Japanese site ITmedia that a Blu-ray Xbox 360 peripheral could appear for the system if the need arises. Moore admitted that Microsoft isn’t sure of the next-generation format war’s outcome, with the worst-case scenario being a repeat of the Beta vs. VHS war of the ’80s.

However, he suggested that whatever the outcome of the HD-DVD/Blu-ray war, the Xbox 360 can adopt the dominant format since its uses an external drive. He also suggested that it’s a weak point for PlayStation 3, saying Sony’s system is stuck with Blu-ray. Microsoft hasn’t announced how the HD-DVD peripheral will connect to the Xbox 360, but it’s most likely going to use one of the system’s USB ports. While the PS3 may come with Blu-ray out of the box, there’s no apparent reason an external HD-DVD drive couldn’t be hooked up through that system’s USB ports.