Nero CD-DVD Speed is a software designed to execute a number of tests to verify optical drives (both burners and readers) functionality and to determine burned media quality. This standalone application is also part of Nero Toolkit, but can provide useful info on its own.

Key features

• Support for CD, DVD, BD and HD DVD drives/media
• Read/write transfer rate
• Create disc/verify function
• Detailed disc information
• Disc quality tests (PI/PO, C1/C2, Jitter)
• TA jitter test
• Scan disc
• Bitsetting
• DAE tests
• Erase/format
• Overburning test

All CD/DVD/BD or HD DVD drives are supported. However, not all drives support the following functions:
Disc Quality, Advanced Disc Quality, TA Jitter and Bitsetting

Ever since Xbox 360 hit the market the gaming and video console has had a growing reputation of having multiple errors. Unnamed employee’s at some of the biggest American dealers recently told PCWorld.com about an error rate between 25 and 33 percent. Microsoft previously claimed this rate to be within industry standards (3-5%).

A few days ago Microsoft Corp. announced that it will expand its global Xbox 360™ warranty coverage (Listen to the Webcast). Any Xbox 360 customer who experiences a general hardware failure indicated by three flashing red lights will now be covered by a three year warranty from date of purchase. All other existing Xbox 360 warranty policies remain in place.

As a result of what Microsoft views as an unacceptable number of repairs to Xbox 360 consoles, the company conducted extensive investigations into potential sources of general hardware failures. Having identified a number of factors which can cause general hardware failures indicated by three red flashing lights on the console, Microsoft has made improvements to the console and is enhancing its Xbox 360 warranty policy for existing and new customers.

Not surprisingly Microsoft will take a $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion pre-tax charge to earnings for the quarter ended June 30, 2007 for anticipated costs under its current and enhanced Xbox 360 policies.

The good news is that any customer who has previously paid for repair expenses related to the three flashing lights error message on the Xbox 360 console, Microsoft will retroactively reimburse them.

According to News.com Microsoft didn’t manage to reach their expected sales figure of 12 million units. However after 11.6 million units sold the financial director, Chris Liddell, still believes Microsoft should be satisfied.

I suppose announcing this extended warranty coverage doesn’t hurt the sales figures either. Smells like a clever marketing campaign to me, and they even get (take) a tax reduction while running it…

Children, pre-teens and functionally retarded adults across America can sigh with relief: Their favourite boy wizard is back. But are kids, young adults and the mentally stupid Potter’s target audience any more?

Read more | Digg story

Microsoft claims this weekends Live Earth concert had the biggest net audience ever.

For those of you still unaware, Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series that brings together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.

Microsoft says that MSN received more than 10 million video streams, which according to Microsoft is the highest number of viewers during a web concert ever.

Reuters wrote that AOL had 5 million unique users during the Live 8 concerts 2 years ago. The numbers are difficult to compare though as one user can watch multiple streams at the same time. At the time AOL reported 175.000 simultaneous streams.

Visit Live Earth on MSN if you missed the concerts or want to see it again. Have a nice day

Brand loyalty doesn’t mean much for social networking sites, according to a study from Parks Associates, which found that many users alternate between the likes of MySpace and Facebook.

Half the users surveyed regularly use more than one social networking site, while one in six users have three or more accounts.

Fickle users and recent strides by Facebook to open its network, have cast doubt on the future importance of MySpace, which currently dominates a field in which rival Facebook has seen an explosion in registrations.

“MySpace is, by far, still the most popular social network,” Alex Burmaster of Nielsen told The Times. “However, if last month’s growth rates were to remain consistent, Facebook would catch MySpace in September.”

As the battle for social networking dominance heats up, both MySpace and Facebook are looking for ways to attract and, more importantly, keep users on their respective sites. Both firms have expanded relationships with developers to create user-pleasing applications.