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# Giles Turnbull at O'Reilly DevCenter - Kings of the mountain - everybody and his mother is reporting on EMI's agreement to provide higher-quality, and higher-cost, DRM-free music via Apple's iTunes service. This is the best article I've seen on it to date. [devcenter]

# Think Secret - Leopard leaping in June - claims that Mac OS X Leopard will ship at the tail end of spring, in June, likely at or around the World Wide Developers Conference. Details off the record.

"Leopard is shaping up to be a more significant release than anyone expected, with much more to come than any of the developer builds have led on," one source said.

Also scheduled for a June release now are new versions of Apple's iLife and iWork suites, which will pack extensive Leopard-dependent features. Sources say Apple continues to toy with the idea of bundling one or both suites with the new operating system free of charge in an effort to further play up the extra value and features Mac OS X offers over Microsoft's new Windows Vista.

# Gizmag - Flexible see-through battery power - Drs. Hiroyuki Nishide, Hiroaki Konishi and Takeo Suga at Waseda University have designed a transparent polymer battery that can be charged in one minute and will hold a charge through 1,000 cycles. No word on how much energy it stores, compared with NiMH, not on when we can expect commercialization. [gizmodo]

# Gizmag - Major breakthrough for electricity with 2G wire - superconducting power lines may be coming soon, thanks to a breakthrough from American Superconductor. The silver-colored bars on the right of the photo below, when cooled with liquid nitrogen, can carry as much power as the three large copper cables on the left.

"This is a major breakthrough in electricity. It is the first-ever, commercial grade 2G wire that has been produced by a high volume, low-cost, scalable industrial process. I expect that this achievement will have a significant impact on the future of power grids worldwide," said Greg Yurek, chief executive officer, American Superconductor.

"I believe this breakthrough will do for the electrical grid what optical fibers did for telecommunications. The emergence of optical fibers had a tremendous ripple effect on areas well beyond telecom, and I believe that HTS wire will produce similar results. Our ultra-thin wires - only the thickness of two human hairs - have the ability to transmit massive amounts of power to, and through, congested urban areas where the greatest demand for power exists. Because of the advances in electrical performance we are achieving day after day with 2G wire and with the continuous reductions we are driving in manufacturing costs, we expect the price-performance ratio of 2G wire to be equivalent to that of copper by the end of the decade."

# Olivier Playez - MyMahj is a free Majhong solitaire game. It comes in both 2d and 3d (GL) versions. Backgrounds, tiles, layouts, sounds, and music are all selectable. [versiontracker]

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