Secondly, there's a new version of Mathematica! I had no idea this was even on its way. The most obvious change is that Mathematica 8 now has the same capabilities as Wolfram Alpha: the ability to process native language input and access to Wolfram Alpha's mindbogglingly comprehensive databases, which are growing constantly. There are a number of new features related to statistical analysis and engineering, none of which I really understand, but I do appreciate the new features for group theory. In fact, not too long ago I was using Mathematica 7, and I was astonished at how sparse its data on groups was. It had information on a few specific groups, but not even as basic as the cyclic groups of order n! It looks like that's been very well taken care of, and I can't wait to start playing around with all the new features. Of course, the most pressing question on my mind is whether Mathematica has actually managed to implement undo functionality that's not terrible? I'm guessing no.
Finally, Apple's homepage has been replaced with this tantalizing message: "Tomorrow is just another day. That you'll never forget. Check back here tomorrow for an exciting announcement from iTunes". Personally, I'm not expecting much from it. iTunes 10 just came out a few months ago, so I very much doubt it's an exciting new feature. Besides, if it were some big new innovation, they'd probably announce it in a big to-do at a trade show, not in a random online announcement. Plus, there's the story that Apple is about to finally get rights to sell the Beatles music, broken by the Wall Street Journal a few days ago. I'm guessing that the Apple announcement is just going to be the Beatles music, which is good news for sure, but I don't think it merits that kind of hype.
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