Year: 2002

Nine technology giants have announced plans to adopt a common recording standard for DVD that they hope will expand the market for DVD recorders, according to CBS MarketWatch. The “Blue-ray Disc” standard can record and rewrite up to 27GB of data on a single-sided disc — far more than the 4.7GB that most DVD recorders currently support. Licensing of the format could begin as early as Spring, although it’s unclear when such recorders could appear on the market.

Basketball star Shaquille O’Neil loves his iPod, as seen in a Fox News segment that aired late last month that an iTools member has made available for download (5.9MB), as noted by MacNN. The segment follows members of the L.A. Lakers on their trip to Apple store at the Mall of America to purchase iPods, after one player says O’Neil joked that he wouldn’t let anyone on the bus who didn’t own one.

Aspyr Media has released Spider-Man1.0.1, an updated version of its 3D action-adventure game for Mac OS 8/9and Mac OS X. The new version adds support for 32-bit color, support forfull screen anti-aliasing on ATI graphics cards, and fixes for several minorbugs. Spider-Man sells for US$39.95.

WiebeTech today announced an updated version of its DesktopGB external FireWire/USB 2.0 hard drive. The new drive sports a quieter fan and updated firmware that adds support for 160GB hard drives and boosts real-world transfer rates to more than 30MB/sec. Current DesktopGB owners are eligible to receive the firmware update and quieter fan free of charge, and can do so by contacting WiebeTech.

VersionTracker notes the release of WebObjects 5.1, a new version of Apple’s Web development software. The upgrade is available for US$19.95 and adds support for JSP Servlet Integration, Enterprise Java Beans, LDAP access, and other enhancements. WebObjects sells for US$699 and requires Mac OS X 10.1 or later.