iLounge

Microsoft has set up a cryptic website for its “Origami Project,” which appears to be a new portable touch-screen device that could be introduced as early as this week. The site says the product will “change your life.”

A photo that appeared on several websites last week purporting to be the new video iPod has been proven to be a fake. The creator of the hoax has documented the process of creating the original image in a video that has been posted online.

The software inside Samsung’s new Z5 portable MP3 player “was forged at Iventor Inc. by a small team of programmers led by Paul Mercer, 38, a veteran Apple Macintosh software designer.”

The New York Times’ David Pogue comments on the reports of Amazon launching an online music store and a branded MP3 player: “First, Amazon will have to beat the iPod’s physical beauty—its chic quotient, its jewelry factor. Then it will have to match the iTunes Music Store, complete with videos, podcasts, gift certificates, and so on. Then it will have to overcome the ‘lock factor’—the fact that anyone who’s ever bought an iTunes song is unlikely to switch players, thanks to Apple’s proprietary copy-protection scheme. Finally, Amazon will have to start in 2001.”