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The Malaysian website Tech ARP, which previously figured out the release schedule for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3, has looked into its crystal ball again and predicts Vista SP2 will be released to manufacturing in April 2009. First, though, a release candidate (RC) will be released in February.

So, what will be the big attractions in Vista SP2? 

• Windows Search 4.0
• Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack
• Native Blu-Ray recording
• Windows Connect Now support for easier Wi-Fi connections
• UTC timestamp support in the exFAT file system to enable correct file synchronization across timezones

Keep in mind that Vista SP2 will only install on systems running Vista SP1.

So, how does the Vista SP2 release schedule jibe with previous service pack releases? ZDNet’s Ed Bott (whom I assisted many moons ago on the book Special Edition Using Windows Me) has run the numbers on the typical timespan between service packs, and finds that the space between Vista SP1 and the predicted release of Vista SP2 is on par with most Microsoft service pack releases other than those for Windows XP: about a year after the previous service pack.

Why is Windows XP an exception? Bott notes that Windows XP broke the pattern established by Windows NT4 and Windows 2000. It took almost two years to release XP SP2 after XP SP1, and almost four years elapsed between XP’s SP2 and SP3. Thus, Vista SP2, if it comes out as predicted, will mark a return to normal.

So, what do you think? Does the projected release date for Vista SP2 make sense, or does it still seem “rushed” as some have suggested? Hit Comment and tell us your thoughts.

Maybe it’s part of our own human arrogance, but there’s something fascinating about imagining the world with us no longer in it. Not a world where we never existed, but the world as it would go on if at this very moment, today, rapture-like, we all of a sudden disappeared. Not vacated and had time to clean-up what we thought shouldn’t be left behind, but just vanished with little warning.

With “Bankrupt”, acclaimed NYC-based photographer Phillip Toledano gives us perfect snapshots of something that equates our abolition about as closely as it can while we’re still hanging around. In another facet of his study of those sort of sterile, factory, monolithic modern offices he examined in his series “Cubelife”, here he looks at offices that are no longer because they went under. The interesting this is that, as is part of the risk of the modern Western economy, businesses now can almost literally disappear - bankrupt and shut down and finished in a day. These aren’t places where everyone was notified and packed up and left everything spotless for their predecessors. These are buildings where people quite literally grabbed what they cared about and then just disappeared.

The detritus speaks volumes. And raises questions - “why is there a single white gym sock on the office floor?”. With nobody remaining there to answer our queries, we’ll simply never get to know…

“As I started shooting bankrupt offices I found it to be more archaeology than photography. Everywhere I went I found signs of life, interrupted.”

Below is my favourite shot: the two errant pencils thrown into one of those awful, generic, cheap-ass flatboard ceilings found in faceless offices from coast to coast:

Toledano is super well known and much blogged about for his disturbing body-morphic series “Hope & Fear” (check out the “baby suit”…) but he’s also got some of the most innovative, interesting editorial work around. His entire site is definitely worth a full scope out, but here are just a few of my favourites:

South Korea will build two more atomic power plants by 2014, bringing its total number to 26, the government announced Wednesday.

The new reactors, each with a capacity of 1,400 megawatts, are to be built in the southeastern city of Ulsan by 2013 and 2014, respectively, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said. When completed, they will be the country’s 25th and 26th atomic reactors.

The project will cost 5.73 trillion won (US$6.16 billion; €4.46 billion), the ministry said in a statement.

The country’s long-term electricity plan also calls for an additional two reactors by 2016.

South Korea first introduced atomic power in 1978 and now has 20 nuclear reactors in operation, with four more under construction since 2005.