I went to the Australian Nokia Music Store launch last night at the Oxford Art Factory. Great venue, made more appealing by the fact that it’s walking distance from my place and there was free booze and nibblies.

Oddly, there were hardly any other tech journos there. I spotted two that I didn’t know well enough to attempt small talk with, so I secreted myself into one of the stairwells and played with my non-Nokia iPhone. My state of friendlessness would’ve had me leaving immediately after the presentation and a couple of beers if not for the promise of The Presets performing, one of my favourite electro brands.

I left the event with a nice little goody bag from Nokia containing a set of portable mobile phone speakers and a $10 voucher for the Music Store. As a bit of background, the Australian Nokia Music Store launched yesterday with 2.5 million tracks in its catalogue. Individual tracks are $1.70 each, albums start at $17, and you can stream unlimited tracks from your PC for $10 a month.

I decided to give the unlimited streaming thing a go on my Asus Eee PC (which is still running the default Xandros Linux OS), and was greeted by this window.

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Earth Day is tomorrow April 22. If you’ve been haphazard in your conservation efforts you may be interested to know that you can do something to ease your conscience help the environment just by opening your wallet. Carbon Offsets are an unregulated market whose providers take your donations and pledge to fund and support various types of projects including reforestation, renewable energy initiatives (solar, wind and hydro power). How do you find a reputable Carbon Offset provider? How much carbon are you emitting each year? Keep reading!

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Wow, what a night! I stayed up late eating dark chocolate covered espresso beans, drinking decaffeinated Diet Coke (because I am strange like that), and loading the Hermes with applications.Today marks its first day as my daily driver…my poor abandoned JasJar is sitting forlorn to the side; oh the humanity!

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