I treated myself to an 16Gb iPod Touch yesterday, I’ve been meaning to get an iPod for a few years and being a user of iTunes at home for my music collection it was a logical step. The iPod Touch is a great little device, not too heavy and has a great screen but hey you already know that because “we” geeks have read all the reviews, and if lucky enough to have a nearby Apple Store we’ve had a play with one.

So late yesterday afternoon I took a spin down Pitt Street here in Sydney to Next Bytes (Apple Reseller) and purchased my iPod Touch, I even bought a nice silicon protector for it. I resisted the urge to open it and play with it on the trip home and ripped the packaging off once I was in front of my PC.

I plugged it in to the USB socket and started iTunes only to be greated by the message:

“This iPod cannot be used because the required software is not installed. Run the iTunes installer to remove iTunes, then install the 64-bit version of iTunes.”

Darn, I just assumed that iTunes would work with the iPod on my 64-bit Windows Vista system, yes CD Burning did not but I don’t use iTunes for that so I didn’t even think about it. The iTunes error message is intriging though it does imply that they is a 64-bit version of iTunes but searches via Google and on the Apple website have not turned up a 64-bit version of iTunes.

To their credit Apple do have a support article that states that iTunes is not supported on ANY 64-bit version of Windows and a search of “itunes +64-bit” has this as the #1 result.

I don’t think Apple are naive or shortsighted to not support 64-bit Windows for iTunes and this error message gives hope that its being worked on (I’m actually wondering if 64-bit support may be related to the recent revelation that the MacOS X Leopard has hidden/in development support for Windows PE binary/executable files).

 I’m not overjoyed that I have to use a different PC for my iPod sync’ing it is inconvenient and a real pain copying music libraries between PCs (8000 files took 5 hours last night on a gigabit network)

But I’ll bide my time and will be eagerly awaiting 64-bit support in a future release of iTunes and will certainly in the future be checking the compatibility of the software as well as the hardware for ANY tech I buy.

 Edit @ 1235hrs: My spelling and grammer has been really bad this morning so after a review I cleaned things up, sorry about that if you were unfortunate enough to read it prior to now and wondered what I was talking about.

[Richard Elkington] said there was genuine bipartisan support at state and federal level for the development of clean coal technology. “In the absence of nuclear, what is really the alternative?” he said.

What’s the alternative? Taking your hand off it for a start.

Wind. Tidal. Geothermal. Solar (not PV, that’s not economic). Coupled with hydro.

Sure, wind, tidal and solar are unsuitable for baseload generation. Geothermal would be fine for that, New Zealand has been running geothermal powerstations for more than thirty years -it’s a proven technology. Perhaps it’s too expensive to drill the necessary holes in Australia, we’re not on top of the ring of fire like NZ is.

There’s nothing stopping you pumping water back into a hydroelectric dam using the fluctuating power generated by wind, tidal and solar plants, and then using the potential energy of the water in that dam as an energy buffer to smooth out generation. For example, solar could pump water during the day, to run the dam at night. All proven, tested, real zero emission technolgies. Windmills have been around for hundreds of years, along with dams. Getting power out of them has been around for a hundred. We know how to do it, really efficiently.

No need for thirsty nuclear, or pixies-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden “clean” coal. “Clean” coal solutions require the rebuilding of power stations (at enormous cost) anyway, so why not build a windmill rather than a smokestack, if the environmental effect is going to be the same (note: “clean” coal still puts out CO₂).

It’s just a matter of the politicians pulling their fingers out and making it happen. Don’t expect that anytime soon.

This article about the success of Facebook’s applications platform and its growing population got me thinking… with Facebook’s population booming, and SecondLife’s slumping, I reckon some of those organisations that spent a bundle setting up shop in Second Life must be wondering why they didn’t put their efforts into Facebook instead.

How much taxpayers’ money did the ABC waste building that island, for instance? We do know that a City of Melbourne project cost around $100,000.

It’s not surprising the ABC Island has had barely any visitors: some figures (from February) suggest there are only about 3000 Australians on SL. Compare that with almost 2 million on Facebook, and I know where I’d be building my applications. Do you want to potentially reach a tenth of the population (and growing) or 0.015% of it?

Now, if Facebook come up with a virtual meeting place to chat to your friends (and friends of friends), then I reckon they’d kill SecondLife stone dead.

• 6/9/2007: If SL is really becoming so deserted, I wonder if it has virtual tumbleweeds?

The virtual branded locations that sounded so impressive in the pages of BusinessWeek are basic and devoid of visitors. … American Apparel has all but given up on its virtual store, citing the criticism it has received and “insignificant” sales.

Is it like a Gold Rush, and they have to stake their claim before someone else gets it? Maybe, maybe not… but shouldn’t the priority of marketing people be to push their product where there’s an actual audience?

If SL is really becoming so deserted, I wonder if it has virtual tumbleweeds?