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Nokia, acting a little ahead of the planned schedule for “early June” and released the latest update for the North American N95, bring the firmware to version 20.02.011. Along with the new firmware comes a few welcome changes that include a faster boot time that was cut from 30 seconds down to 19 seconds and a camera start-up time of just 2 seconds. The N95 also sees the addition of Flash Lite 3 support, demand paging, Web Run Time and Idle Screen Nokia search. Nokia also added a few N-Gage demos in for good measure. The update, which is currently available for all Nokia N95 NAM users can be found on the Nokia Software Updater.

Via [IntoMobile]

The recently released Photoshop Express, which is a free web-based photo editor has just added support for Flickr. With the newly added support users can now take images from their Flickr account, edit them in Photoshop Express and place the hopefully nicer images back into their Flickr photo stream for everyone to enjoy. If you are new to Photoshop Express, you can check out the recent review from our own Debbie Cook.

Via [Lifehacker]

Some potential good news for any Zune user and Audible fan, a recent posting from Paul Thurrott has ‘confirmed’ the upcoming support for Audible playback on the Zune. Thanks to an email that he received, we are now learning that the deal has been completed and although a specific date has not been announced it will happen before the years end.

“I understand that you have contacted us today in regards to whether or not the Microsoft Zune is compatible with our service. We have great news! After much anticipation, Audible and Microsoft have completed negotiations on making the Zune AudibleReady!”

Paul has also claimed to have gotten this news confirmed by other sources as well, hopefully we will see an official announcement soon. Until then, while this may sound logical and believable its still unconfirmed.

Via [Zune Boards]

Flickr has added video to the ever-popular photo sharing site, albeit with some initial limitations. The videos that are uploaded can be a maximum of 90 seconds and must be 150MB in size or smaller. Videos are also limited to be uploaded only by Pro users, but can be viewed by anyone, as long as the video is marked public, they can also be uploaded and marked as private.

Overall Flickr is taking an approach that leaves little difference between the existing photos and new videos, in fact they were noted as being called “long photos.” Which makes sense because the videos are side by side with your photos and while the videos do have their limitations, once you get used to them they seem to be a really nice addition. 

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Microsoft declared to end support for Windows XP Service Pack 1 and SP1a on this Tuesday, leaving users no choice but to upgrade their OS into either SP2 or upcoming Vista. While 50% of windows user still using SP1 the move to drop support for SP1 is in line with Microsoft’s stated strategy for support. According to its guidelines, Microsoft guarantees to provide “mainstream support” for a full product for five years, but will only guarantee to support a service pack for 12 months after the launch of the next version of that pack. So legally Microsoft is clean for ending support for SP1 - since SP1 was started to shipped in September 2002...and SP2 was released in September 2004.

Users can check which version they are running by right-clicking on the My Computer desktop icon and then selecting properties. The decision to end support for SP1 will help Microsoft to clear the decks for the arrival of Vista, which is expected to be released to business customers next month and to consumers by the end of January.

This will definitely put a spark on growing unrest on Microsoft’s product policy. For example Mac OSX let their user upgrade with little or no cost at all, on the other hand Microsoft charge a very handsome amount even if it’s just an upgrade. Shouldn’t Microsoft be concerned that MAC OSX-Leopard is due to release around the same time as Vista?  Which we probably don’t need to remind you, but it will support both PC and Mac platform (platform independent) and cost $60 less than Vista’s basic edition.

Could this be another mistake for Microsoft?

Read [ZDnet]