AUTOMAN and various 80s tea-time TV: Grid212 has put together a fantastic little collection of intros from Saturday afternoon television from the 80s.

How to destroy the earth: “Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.” (via Pixelsurgeon)

The street in Brighton that I moved out of just 6 months ago plays host to a week-long rooftop art show!

“It will take the form of still and moving images projected onto large rooftop screens after dusk. They will be visible from a substantial part of the city. The installation will last for one week from 16th till 23rd September 2006 beginning with a street party for residents.”

If you want to see it for yourself the installation will last for one week with 6 showings a night from 7:30pm until 11pm on the rooftops of Compton Road, Brighton from the 16th until 23rd September 2006 and will be visible from the valley area around Preston Park and Fiveways. Visit the Compton Skyline website for more information.

Sadly, I’m out of town for much of the duration but hope to catch the final show before it’s taken down on the 23rd.

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s been announced by Apple this afternoon:

• iPod beefed up to feature 30Gb and 80Gb models.
• iPod Nano gets new, uglier, mini-style design. Presumably, as Grid212 mentioned, because of the problem the original had with scratches. It’s also been bumped up to 2Gb, 4Gb and 8Gb models and has a brighter screen.
• iPod Shuffle gets smaller and restyled to match the new Nano.
• iTunes 7: Movie downloads, Cover Flow (flip through your DVD and CD covers), updated interface and Automatic Album Art (which sounds rather scarily Big Brother: “As long as you have an iTunes Store account, iTunes will automatically fetch available album art for any CD you imported to iTunes.”).
• Downloadable games for iPod like Tetris, Pac-Man and Bejeweled.
• Movie downloads. Still 4:3, though a slightly higher (but still small) 640×480 resolution. It also, predictably, seems to be Disney content right now.

They also announced that they’re working on a sleek looking set-top box tentatively named iTV (no relation, I assume, and, pending a lawsuit from ITV, I am certain it will change) which transmits video from iTunes to TV.

As of today the eDonkey network has been shut down. MetaMachine, the firm who created the eDonkey 2000 software, has agreed to pay $30m to avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits from the recording industry.

Under the terms of their agreement they can no longer distribute the eDonkey software or any of its variants. An attempt to run the software will inform you via a pop-up that the network is no longer available and attempts to uninstall itself in a self-destruct fashion.

Visitors to the eDonkey website are now greeted with the message:

The eDonkey2000 Network is no longer available.

If you steal music or movies, you are breaking the law.
Courts around the world — including the United States Supreme Court — have ruled that businesses and individuals can be prosecuted for illegal downloading.
You are not anonymous when you illegally download copyrighted material.
Your IP address is x.x.x.x and has been logged.
Respect the music, download legally.
Goodbye Everyone.

As of posting, a federal judge has yet to give final approval over the settlement.

Several file-sharing services have yet to reach settlements with the recording industry, including Warez P2P, Limewire and Soulseek. (via Associated Press)

Countdown to Apple “Showtime”: Blog212 sifts through the last minute rumours and speculation over Apple’s forthcoming announcements. Call me cynical but I reckon it’ll just be iTunes 7 with “enhanced” video downloads.

Democracy Player v0.9 released: “Stop squinting at tiny web video. Instead, download and watch all the best internet TV shows in one powerful application: any video RSS feed, video podcast, video blog, or BitTorrent file. Fullscreen, high resolution, 100% free and open source. New channels arrive daily in the built-in Channel Guide.” For Windows, Mac and Linux. (via BoingBoing)

Universal to close Back To The Future: The Ride in Orlando: It’s not clear whether it’s just the one in Florida or whether the Hollywood ride also has a similar fate. As much as the execution sucked it was still quite good fun, particularly as a fan of the movies. It’s rumoured that it will be replaced by a Simpsons or Transformers attraction. More details on the ride at Wikipedia.

The Ultimate Blog Post: “you’d be surprised how many people are fascinated to hear you have a blog and want to know more, especially if you were expecting the number to be greater than zero.”

Banksy at Disneyland: Only one artist could possibly get away with placing an installation of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner beside the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.