As the last webDotWiz column was going to the printers, Warner Bros announced that it would be selling its music, movies and TV shows from the Net. Then a few days ago, Skype, an Internet phone company which enables free calls between its 100 million users, announced that all calls to landline and mobile phones within the U.S. and Canada would be free until December 31, 2006. The BBC announced earlier this year that it was proceeding with plans to digitise all its content for distribution via the Net. Aunty ABC is heading along similar lines and already has a number of shows available from its Video on Demand site.

The new services mentioned above are just a drop in the ocean but they all assume that we, the consumers, have the means to use them - and Australia is lagging further behind with broadband infrastructure by the day. As a measure of the pace at which computing was progressing in the early 80's, one wag estimated that, had the aircraft industry moved at the same pace as the computer industry, the 747 Jumbo would have been flying in 1917. That prediction was before the Internet had arrived and at one stage a few years ago one Internet year was considered equivalent to three months real time - webDotWiz has decided that one Internet year now to be one week at the present rate of progress.

So for those of us living in regional Australia, what hope is there that we'll be able to access services such as being offered by Warner Bros (the other major entertainment globals will soon offer similar services), Skype, Windows Live Messenger Phone, Video on Demand, and hundreds of others, before we're so far behind that it won't matter?

It's becoming a bit of a habit with Rushworth Community House Friday's webDotWizards again being at the forefront of new additions to Windows Live services. Winodws Live Mail brought back the personal signature option, put Customize (sic) and contextual New buttons on each screen and removed the right-hand advertisement.

Friday's webDotWizards also had a quick look at the latest trial version of Windows Media Player 11. Just be aware that there's a note in the Readme that you shouldn't install this trial version if you're running Internet Explorer 7 beta 2 (webDotWiz noticed this recommendation after he'd installed WMP 11 but everything so far is working ok).

Windows Media Player 11 now shows your music, video and photos content in a graphical fashion - yes, gone are those endless lists in plain text. The search function is very fast and searching for a particular artist displays a stacked representation of each album that that artist features on. When the final version of WMP 11 is released, the search function will also seamlessly work on finding content at a particular online store. However the biggest improvement is that it's much easier to find your way around to get things happening. Each major menu item across the top has its own sub-menu and a right-click or pressing the ALT key brings up the classic menu system if you need it.

It won't be long before the final version of Windows Live Messenger is available. Four to five million users are presently running it (if you're the sole user of a computer, install the trial version from Ideas.live.com). Have a look at The Future of Messenger to read about the new phone call feature - the Messenger cordless phone is now being sold in the U.S.

With 210 million Messenger users world-wide, and those 100 million Skype users, the telcos will be watching how these phone call services impact them - perhaps they'll learn from Brazil where its telco blocked calls from services such as Messenger but had to change its decision when customers revolted.