The IPod Turns Five

Happy iPod birthday! Five years ago today, the digital-music player with the white headphones made its public debut (and promptly got panned by some reviewers).

Yesterday's Business section featured a group of stories looking at the state of the digital-music these days. My contribution to that bunch was a look at how things like the iPod have changed the ways we buy and listen to music -- changes that not everybody might rate as beneficial. Here are the pieces:

* A Messy Age for Music

* Changing Her Tune on Apple's iPod

* Web Watch: Music Store Cold War

* iPod Jeers and Cheers

And, finally, my column: Digital, Our Song for the Ages

Internet Explorer Is New Again

Wednesday, Microsoft released its first major upgrade to its Web browser since 2001. The new Internet Explorer 7 -- available in various test versions since late last year -- is a free download for Windows XP (Service Pack 2 required) only.

It doesn't seem to look or act much different than the test release I reviewed in July. In essence, IE 7 catches up with most of the features such competing browsers as Mozilla Firefox and Opera have offered for years -- tabbed browsing, RSS feeds, quick Web searches and so on. It can also warn you about suspected phishing sites.

But unlike test versions, the final release of IE 7 will be installed automatically through Microsoft's Windows Update mechanism, starting Nov. 1. This is the first time an upgrade this major has been made mandatory via through Windows Update. Traditionally, Microsoft -- aside from the "Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications" anti-piracy program -- has only provided bug fixes and security patches through this channel.

With IE 7, people who have been trudging along with IE 6 will wake up one morning to find a completely different browser has landed on their computers. Is that going too far? Is it something that Microsoft has to do, given how many folks might otherwise keep an obsolete, insecure version of IE in use?

With last week's release, Microsoft managed to beat the developers of the Mozilla Firefox browser. Although Firefox 2.0 was supposed to have shipped by now, slips in development caused it to fall behind the IE 7 effort -- as of Friday, Firefox 2.0 is available only as a "Release Candidate 3" build, intended for developers first.

Patent Absurdity Continues

If this isn't the best reason ever to reform the out-of-control patent system in the U.S., and in particular the category of "business-method" patents, I don't know what is: Companies are now applying for patents on their favorite tax-shelter gambits:

(Stupid patent claims are one of those column topics that never seems to go away.

One More Thing about the iPod

Apple provided one of the strangest tech-support notices ever when it posted this item on its Web site: "Small Number of Video iPods Shipped With Windows Virus."

That sounds like a headline from The Onion, but it's a real article.

In the notice, Apple explains that you can scan for this worm by running any of a few different anti-virus utilities, while you can clean it from an iPod by resetting it with iTunes. Apple also offers this bit of editorializing: "As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it."

So how'd a virus get on an iPod? I can only guess that a Windows PC at its contract manufacturer's facilities got infected while it was in use to either prepare or test new iPods coming off the assembly line.

More Tech Commentary Online

My colleagues' new group blog, Post I.T., launched last week.

Stop by for news and analysis from Frank Ahrens, Sara Goo, Sam Diaz, Mike Musgrove, Alan Sipress and Yuki Noguchi.

Elsewhere in the weekend's papers, we had these other tech stories:

* In Help File, I explain a few ways that a memory card might not work in a computer (including that old standby, user error).

* Be careful when you discard an old cell phone. That's what Yuki Noguchi's story from Saturday's paper says.

* Can video games help kids learn about health? Read Christopher Lee's piece on the topic.