Darren Straight's Blog

ICT Enthusiast and photographer.

By - Darren Straight

Reading Festival 2007 gets all clear despite floods!

Great News for those of you going to reading Festival 2007. Mean Fiddler’s Reading Festival organiser and boss Melvin Benn has given the festival the all clear despite the floods which have left parts of the site still underwater. He said the field where the arena stands is relatively dry, but around 30 per cent of the campsite is under water.

By - Darren Straight

Digg goes from Google to Microsoft for online ads

Digg and Microsoft have announced an agreement in which the two companies will collaborate to bring relevant advertising to the more than 17 million unique monthly visitors to Digg, an innovative Web site that harnesses the collective wisdom of the world’s online audience to prioritize the overwhelming amount of content available on the Web. Microsoft’s advanced advertising technology and sales

By - Darren Straight

BBC iPlayer Beta goes live tomorrow

Have you heard of the BBC iPlayer? The BBC iPlayer is a downloadable application from the BBC which offers you a range of BBC television programmes to download to your PC from the last seven days. It’s been in private beta for some time now and in the making even longer but all that is soon coming to an end,

By - Darren Straight

Microsoft Live Derby 2007

Microsoft has once again released another game to promote Windows Live, this time it’s a game called Microsoft Live Derby 2007. Within this game, you drive around a little car through the cities of either San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Las Vegas or London in which you have to try and pick up the little pellets (pac man style dots) and all

By - Darren Straight

365 Main datacenter power outage brings down major websites

It seems that the Web 2.0 datacenter 365 Main, in the heart of SOMA, has lost it’s power. Sites that are affected include Craigstlist, Technorati, Yelp, Netflix, AdBrite and all Six Apart properties, TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox. There isn’t much information available as to what has caused this – but you can check out these links for some more info on the situation: O’Reilly

By - Darren Straight

Reading and Leeds Festival 2007 Full Lineup

It’s the 24th of July 2007 today, so guess what? There’s only 30 days left until Reading and Leeds Festival 2007! 😀 So as Reading and Leeds Festival 2007 is only a short way away, I thought id once again post the full and complete Reading and Leeds Festival Lineup so far, but this time I’ve also linked to all

By - Darren Straight

ParkatmyHouse.com have you checked it out yet?

Have you heard of ParkatmyHouse.com yet? It’s a new and innovative system of parking which provides affordable, penalty-free and secure spaces around public venues in various town and cities such as London, Brighton and glasgow by enabling property-owners with empty driveways, garages and car parks to rent them out to drivers needing somewhere to park. Commuters on their way to a

By - Darren Straight

Microsoft’s Annual Revenue Surpasses $50 Billion

Microsoft has now announced revenue of $13.37 billion for the fourth quarter ending on the 30th of June 2007, that is a 13% increase over the same period of the prior year. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.31. Excluding $0.08 of previously announced charges primarily related to Xbox 360 warranty policies, earnings per share would have been

By - Darren Straight

Explore a Virtual World, Make New Friends and Play Games With GoPets on Windows Live Messenger

Whether you’re having another day at the office or enjoying downtime at home, if you’re a user of the Windows Live Messenger network, then you are just a click away from exploring a new virtual world as Microsoft Casual Games partners with GoPets Ltd. to launch GoPets on Windows Live Messenger. Inhabited by pets that owners create and customize, the virtual GoPets