Software utilities

Rumors about the launch of the iPhone in France!It will be presented at the Apple Expo in Paris on 24th of September, but will be available only in November. The price for the iPhone should be around 300 €, for the version with less memory. No 3G connection will be available, and no flat for Internet will be given by Orange, the chose carrier in France.

Microsoft launched a new offer, proprably against Office piracy. Students can now have the best Office 2007 release, Ultimate, for only $59.95. Microsoft called this offer the ultimate steal! A similar offer will be launched in Europe soon; for example, in Italy it will be Office 30 e lode. Eligibility info is available here.

In an Adobe blog the new Adobe product was announced. CEO Bruce Chizen announced it six months ago, and now at Photoshop World a quick preview of Photoshop Express was shown. It’s not meant as a substitute of Photoshop CS3 or Elements, but as a free image editor, suitable for non professional users, which may eventually buy Photoshop if their needs grow. This new product will be available soon.

At the next USA auction for new national frequencies, two big players in the technology market will compete: Google and Apple. These frequencies, used by analog TV and to be handed back to the government in 2009 (after switching to digital television), can be used for a new digital network, with frequencies around 700 MHz, which could pass through buildings and bad weather conditions. Steve Jobs and Apple managers are discussing the possibility to join the auction, to become a carrier for their iTunes contents and iPhone distribution, now in “joint-venture” with AT&T. Analysts say that this possibility could lower margins for Apple, due to the high investments needed for establishing a new network from scratch, but the possibility to deliver their contents directly is intriguing. Also, consider that now iPhone users have a contract for two years wit a total of 1.440 $, and since one million iPhones have been sold, this could mean a few billion business (1.440 X 1.000.000 = 1.440.000.000 $ !!!!! ).

Mmmm, interesting!

TextFileOperations is a small software utility useful for batch-editing text files, such as logs. It could see a bit outdated (who would use txt files now?), but they are still used in many environment, and they often need long editing operations to modify them. With this small utility you can edit them really fast. From its homepage:

The main program advantages are:

• very intuitive interface
• easy syntax
• comprehensive manual with a lot of examples and a tutorial
• transforming more files at the same time
• simple searching commands
• automatic backups of your file(s)