Ah the number of ideas I had for a headline for this article. "Factor6 - now with extra mayo." Or maybe "Flame-grilled Factor6." Or... hell, I'll just get on and tell you the news.
According to Yerzmyey, Factor6 has had some of his music included on the I'm Lovin' It (shift-click the link) compilation CD. I'm Lovin' It is of course the new ad campaign for McDonalds, the cow-burger people. I'm not certain at the moment if the tune on the CD is actually a ZX-tune or not -- perhaps someone can confirm. And if anyone knows where I can get hold of this CD, I may even try to get it signed by the man himself. The value will sky-rocket!

As you'll no doubt recall (I hope), I mentioned a while ago about the upcoming MicroMart show, and how it'll have an area dedicated to Retro machines, organised by Shaun Bebbington. Well the show is only 3 weeks away, so I thought I'd remind you that it's happening! I did have a floor-plan lying around, but I think I deleted it, natch! Well, it was nestled in my email folder along with a bunch of "honestly it's from Microsoft" executables.
Anyway. It looks like it'll be a good show, with sections dedicated to the ZX, Atari, Amiga, blah blah blah. For full details of the show check out the official site, and if you're interested in helping out with the Retro side of things, contact Shaun (i can forward on emails if need be).

In the last week or so, two of the main "commander" programs for the ZX have been updated. Optical Bros have stuck the new v2.82 of Quick Commander on their site, which includes some speed improvements, better compression, and oooh, other things. Meanwhile over at the ZX Software Archive you can get that and the latest version of Real Commander. v2.6 (available in both Russian and English versions) is ready for your download along with several other new apps, including v2.17 of BestView, JPEG Viewer 0.33, Unrar 0.50, and Hrust 2.5.

I think it's funny. On the day I mention that there's a new version of EmuZWin out, the next version is released. Admittedly I was quite out-of-date before. Anyway, the latest release is on the 'net for your downloading pleasure. v2.2 release 1.0 (!) brings with it the following lovelies: TR-DOS Support has been added; slight interface changes; modifications and fixes to built-in assembler; a bunch of small emulation bugfixes. Go grab.

Ok, I'm sure you've all heard of Abe, the farting-belching star of a few PC (and console) games. Quality platform-'em-up gaming. Well recently as part of a game programming competition, "Abe's Mission - Escape" was created for the ZX, and now it's available from the TCG homepage translated into English (and Czech). It's a quality game, with nice animation. And a lovely little cracktro too :]
While we're talking about games you may like to check out Cronosoft too. New in the shop is "Rough Justice", which looks kinda Cybernoid-y. Well, it does from the screenshots. Anyway, it's available for just 2.99ukp. Retro gaming at Retro prices. That's what I like to see!

Reading the forums (places like WOS) There seems to be a lot of interest in "General Sound" at the moment, the sound-system for Speccies. Well if you're in the mood to hear some of it you could do worse than check out the downloads section of POS, where there's a whole bunch of GS download packs. Add to that a shed-load of 'zines, and the trip is well worth the effort.

In what seems to be a rather small news entry, the announcement is out that Syndeecate 2004 has been cancelled. The quote on the site is simple that "We need time to get new energy for SA2005." So, a year off.

Just checked out the homepage of LCD, the creator of the wonderful BMP2SCR program. Aside from the fact that he's soon to be relocating his site (the main redirection URL will stay the same, but it kinda screws up my web-checker, hmph) there's some news on forthcoming features of the app. Such as conversion to SAM Coupe mode-4 graphics. Not something I'd personally find useful, not really being a SAM-fan (due to never having one), but a handy addition all the same.

The latest version of Ay-Emulator is ready for you to grab. v2.8b2 is a general bugfix of the version released about a week ago, but with a couple added extras. BASS.DLL v2.0 is now supported (still not entirely certain what this does - hmm), and a couple extra playlist buttons are added, allowing you to alter the way the list is... played.

Damn, here's a bunch of news I missed from a couple weeks ago. A bunch of new-and-updated emulators hit the 'net. I only found out about these from WOS, so I don't have much in the way of details at the moment. Hmm.
A new release of ZX-Emul is out (v0.25b) - this emulator is for Windows. For *nix users there's a new addon package for XZX-Pro. And Vladimir Kladov has been working like crazy, releasing 3 (three) emulators. EMUZ is an old emulator, written about 8 years ago, but there's an updated version for Windows (EmuZWin) which is out at v2.1. And as competition to Bacteria (a diddy little emulator), he's released Z.com, a 6k emulator (in a 97k download package).