MRR Tech News Snooze

I'm a tech & gadget junkie so of course I follow stories even remotely involving tech closely. This has been a slow few days for tech news, but there are still things going on that baffle or bug me.

In the "bugs me" category is Creative's declaration that it will take legal action against Apple and possibly other digital music player producers who have used a similiar software file organization design. Companies who to flex muscle in the tech arena through legal action instead of through innovation just seems to be "fighting dirty". It was damned sloppy of Apple's legal department not to patent their music player software sooner. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out, I'm sure Apple will have evidence of previous work that pre-dates or is independent of Creative's claim. That's more my attorney brother's territory of knowledge then my own, but from what I know of crazy US patent laws it could go either way. It should be interesting.

In the baffles me category, is the current software offerings coming from Google. First there was the new Google IM. I understand having an IM app, adds to their well-rounded suite of offerings but the 'Net needs another IM service like a hole in the head. Internet usage has matured to the point that folks have settled into and built networks into the services they like already. The Google chat IM seems like very little, very late.

Another Google offering to Mac users is a little app that notifies you when new messages arrive in your gmail account. What a useless little throwaway, it's not even worth the effort. With the pop support offered in Gmail you can feed the e-mail for that account right to your favorit e-mail app. I just don't see the value added by this little mini app.