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Along with just being the right thing to do (although I’ve been using Flock for the past week and am kinda hooked…), Firefox will try to break the Guiness World Record for most downloads in a day…

Wow, this is going to be pretty fascinating. Warm up the inner geek child for this one. Ever wanted to zoom around the Universe and see all these other galaxies? Well looks like you’ll be able to do that real soon (like Spring ’08!).
Click the image or here to view the video demo from TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), a wild Invite only conference of the worlds leading innovators and thinkers…

Sorry, this is a geeky post I know, but thought this was a nice piece of work about common application design mistakes (and web design), and some ideas on workarounds…

In a very ‘uber-geek’ sorta way, this video is very cool. Kind of a 4 minute history of the web, a statement on it’s impact on us all and the world around us. It’s an exciting time and just to think how the world has changed since I was in college, let alone since my parents or grandparents were my age is remarkable (re:Shorpy)… Also, there’s a weird little watermark in the ‘You Tube’ segment of this vid that caught my attention… Strange…

The latest Winamp is out of Beta and ready to go! It’s always been one of my favorite media players and I stopped using it for a while when i first got my IPod. But now the IPOD support on this is awesome so I’m back in the Winamp camp. There’s a ton of skins and plugins (I recommend SoundSolutions for making my crappy speakers sound decent). The new Bento Skin that comes with it is awesome. All the album art off the pod is shown and there’s a real nice web interface with extra info about whatever I’m listening to. Haven’t played much yet with the video channels or the Winamp Remote (access your music from another PC thru winamp) but will look into that as well…Â Get it today!

I’ll admit, I was very hesitant at first to run with Google Desktop. I mean, this is Google on my computer, scanning everything and indexing it and who knows what… But the apps they’ve been pumping out are pretty cool and after seeing an article on the sidebar and all the related desktop apps in the Google Desktop Pak, I thought I’d give it a try.

Verdict? Pretty freakin sweet so far. It doesn’t take up too much room but I love having the stuff along the side for quick access, reference and viewing. No more toggling back and forth in Itunes to see what’s playing, and I can see some of my favorite RSS Feeds without having to hit a bunch of web pages over and over…

The whole suite includes Google Earth, a great Screensaver, Google Chat, some security and anti-virus stuff (which I opted not to install as I’m happy with what I already have) and much more… Even Star Office (a Open-Source Microsoft Office Suite Alternative! Check it out as it’s very cool and quite a production enhancer…

Joost – Way Cool. What is it? Well, it’s a Beta Internet TV service that has some really cool partners so far (Comedy Central, Adult Swim, some Independant Film groups, music, etc…) And the interface and functionality are impressive as well. It streams full screen video to your computer, but uses the space to the sides and bottom for extra information. It’s very intuitive and has many cool features like instant access to all channels and program descriptions, the ability to chat and learn more about what your viewing, and just an all around cool look and feel to the web Tv viewing experience. At some point I’d like to hook this up to my main TV and see how it looks, but for now the experience of viewing some full screen content on the laptop is quite enjoyable.

Joost was in the news recently as, even though they are still in Beta, they’ve landed a new VH1 series (called I Hate My 30′s) before it airs on TV. I know Adobe has a video program coming out soon, and there are probably others, but I’d say Joost has a jump on the competition and seems to be doing it right!…

By the way, I’ve got invites if anyone is interested in taking part in the beta program!..(Just leave a comment or shoot me an email)…

WOW…Google Street View–Part “this is so cool” and part “this is so scary…like invasion of privacy scary”… It is mostly however, cool. I have no idea how they were able (or who had the time) to photograph (in relatively high quality mind you) every street in New York City, San Francisco, and like 7 other cities. And not only just “A” photo, but full on panoramas from what appears to be every block of the aforementioned cities!
I wonder what will be next. Will they expand to more cities? Or will they get even closer to some sort of ‘Live’ look at things. At what point will people freak out and say, “Enough Google! Back off!” “You already know the entire contents of the web and all computers and everything…” I don’t want to sound like I’m bashing Google… I think most of their stuff is quite impressive. Gmail is very slick, Picassa is quite cool for a free Photo tool, and I always use Google maps over any other map service online. Not to be left out, there is the very impressive Google Earth!
But it does raise the question about when much information becomes too much information. Like I’ve previously posted, I’m really a huge fan of how integrated technology is into our society as a whole. Instant access is a nice nice thing…

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When my world of computers began (back in the early 90′s…before everyone received daily AOL CD’s in the mail and before it took less than 2 hours to download a photo), I bought my first computer…a Mac clone (remember those?) Yes, I loved my Starmax with it’s huge 2gb hard drive and speedy 14.4 modem. I taught myself a little Photoshop (version 3 back then), and learned a little bit about audio editing.

Things were fantastic. And I was a Mac junkie! My subscription to Macworld couldn’t arrive soon enough, and I soaked up the In’s & Out’s of System 7 and OS 8 like a sponge. I got my first computer job editing powerpoint files and tweaking presentations and had the sorry experience of occasionally having to work on the Windows 3.1 machine.Yikes! That was a pain! Crashes, confusing menus, sluggish performance…the whole deal was tough. I had drunk the Mac Kool Aid and was a devotee to the end! Read the rest of this entry »