(iPod) nano technology.: The new iPod nano lineup from Apple.

Traditionally, October marks the true arrival of autumn, along with the incessant stress of papers and exams, the brief (if not glorious) escape of fall break and the eventual parading of costumed trick-or-treaters through the streets on Halloween. This October, however, will mark the release of the next round of the smartphone revolution, with the introduction of the T-Mobile G1, the first handset to run Android, the new mobile operating system from Google.

Ever wanted to play God with your own little universe?

Apparently, so did Will Wright, the celebrated father of Sim City, Sim Ant, The Sims and a slew of other similarly-themed games that have come out of Maxis over the last two decades. After years of hype and delays, the now-Electronic Arts-owned studio released Spore, a start-to-finish civilization simulator, earlier this month.

[video:node=32134] Spore lets you design your own single-cell life form, plop it into the primordial ooze, and then guide it on its evolutionary path towards sentience and eventually global — and galactic — domination. The game takes the conceptual feel of progress from all of its earlier works and moves it to a much grander scale than ever before.

It’s that time of year again: when September pops up on the calendar, you know you won’t have to look far to find Steve Jobs on a stage somewhere introducing new iPods. This year was certainly no exception, as everyone’s favorite iconic CEO delivered the keynote at Apple’s “Let’s Rock” special event in San Francisco on Tuesday.

As the name implies, the event focused on Apple’s booming music business, which includes the iTunes music player, its accompanying online store and the ubiquitous iPod, an entity which, according to Jobs, has now sold over 160 million units for a phenomenal 73.4 percent share of the digital music player market.

Much of our time on campus this semester will be spent consuming music, television shows and movies through our computers. Much of that entertainment will be obtained through electronic methods — some legal, most not. Many times before, I have written about those more seedy methods of obtaining music on campus, so I’m not going to do so again. (Freshmen: visit cornellsun.com and search for “DC++” if you are interested.)

No, this semester’s inaugural Optimized Queries was inspired by an email sent by Kent Hubbell, the dean of students, to all of his charges at the beginning of orientation. One paragraph in particular drew my attention.

So, the new iteration of Just the Facts crashed and burned Monday in its first real trial by fire. Oops? Of course, as anyone familiar with Murphy’s Law knows, anything that can go wrong will go wrong — especially where computer systems are involved, and especially where giant, massive, integrated computer systems that haven’t been disturbed in almost a decade are involved.

Most people don’t give a second thought about surfing the web — just hit the big blue “e,” and you’re off to the races. However, the truth of the matter is that there is quite a wide selection of browsers that will all get the job done — to one degree or another.

Look out, BlackBerry — here comes the iPhone.

Since its birth on Jun. 29 of last year, Apple’s versatile device has managed to capture 28 percent of the smartphone market, second only to Research in Motion, the Canadian firm behind the ubiquitous BlackBerry. In its first-quarter conference call, Apple announced that it has sold over 2.3 million iPhone units since launch, which they claim is on track to meet their goal of 10 million sold by the end of the year.

Microsoft shook up the Internet last Friday when it announced its intentions to buy Yahoo for the ridiculously large sum of $44.6 billion, over 60 percent more per share than the price at which the company’s stock is currently valued. Although it certainly did not come out of the blue, the idea of the “big three” — Google being the third in the triumvirate — collapsing to the “big two,” coupled with the overall depressing conditions that have gripped the market in the last month, sent a chill down the spines of web surfers everywhere.

Last week, Apple welcomed all of us back to campus with a presentation at the annual Macworld Expo in San Francisco. CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the Moscone Convention Center in his trademark black sweater and blue jeans get-up and, among other things, introduced the world to his company’s new baby, the MacBook Air (which I will henceforth abbreviate as MBA for space).