GrandCentral has been an application that I have been very excited about and one that Refactr has used for several months now. With this acquisition by Google I would bet there will be even more features rolled out (for free). One that I would love, if you are listening Google, would be a fax from/to email service. That would make this web-based phone toolset very compelling.
If you think you can explain "the theory of everythingTM" in 2 minutes of less, have at it in this contest from Discover Magazine.
Project Black Box from sun is promising to deliver 146 teraflops, hold 2 petrabytes of storage, 7 terabytes of memory, and be globally available nearly instantaneously, in a shipping container. I love the scenarios page with photos of how these could be used.
A nice little explanatory video on what the web has been and could become.
I really like the Ask.com aerial images at close proximity. I think they have some of the newest satellite images. Even though they look to be simply extrapolating in the closest views.
e-democracy.org suggests new tags for any posts to blogs or bookmarking tools, flickr, YouTube, etc. about politics in Minnesota use the following tags: mnpolitics, mn06video, and mn06.
Wanted to announce this earlier but forgot.
This morning I thought how great it would be if weather could be incorporated into my Google Calendar so I wouldn't have to go elsewhere for that info. A brief Google search turned up that The Weather Underground already has weather in iCal format and that Google has already added it to its public calendar offering. Just search the public calendars for "weather and your city or zip code" and you can add it as a calendar. Now all it needs is nice little icons.
Here's the full audio of his statements to Congress.
Senator Stevens (R-Alaska) might need this to explain the internets to him.
One thing that, perhaps, is getting overlooked in all this, is brought into focus in Steven's words: "It's there for the consumer." The internet is not "there for the consumer" it is there for everyone - or at least it should be. It doesn't need to function as another way to buy shit for it to have value. It's value is in the way in can quickly and easily share information across communities, borders, and cultures; in how it can bring our world together and keep people informed and educated.
The FBI and Justice Department is "interested in records that would allow them to identify which individuals visited certain Web sites and possibly conducted searches using certain terms. It also wants the Internet companies to retain records about whom their users exchange e-mail with..."
I cannot believe what has happened to our country in the last 8 years. Forget for a moment what you have been taught since you were very young - that the U.S. is a great bastion of freedom and democracy and think about what our country does both in the world and here at home: preemptive war on unfounded grounds, torture and illegal detention, murder (and cover-up) of civilians (oh my god there is another report of this!), spying and wiretapping the phones of it citizens, removing protections to whistle-blowers, fixing elections, and now asking that all user data online be retained for future "use". Aren't these the things that those other countries that we despise do? What way of life are we now protecting and promoting if not one that is free from such things?
There is also this list of lists of Web 2.0 apps.
I meant to report this a couple days ago, but it sort of slipped my mind.
Now you can listen to the entire Napster catalog (over 2 millions songs) for free (5 times each). You don't even need to download any software, just browse and listen at Napster.com
New service is aimed at taking on Google's online advertising dominance. Too bad it only works in IE!
EXTRA: Check out the Wall Street Journal site and try highlighting a word and right-clicking. Nice.
The only real flaw in this article is calling MySpace a Web 2.0 endeavor. MySpace is extremely popular but not really what web 2.0 is all about.
...but then I saw Misselblast. This is either really bad videoblogging or really bad parody.
Is Google's tribute to Joan Miró (by way of their logo alterations today) condoning drug use? Is it just a coincidence that today's date is 4/20 and Joan Miró was well known to have used drugs and other techniques for inspiration?
He's already got the use of a home in Phoenix for 1 year, can a real house be that far off? Put this next to the Million Dollar Homepage on the list of things we are all kicking ourselves over for not doing ourselves.
You can even pinpoint where in-game items are by selecting them from the list on the right.
I suspect some fraudulent "voting" on the Huffington Contagious Festival. The #1 ranked Al Qaeda Caller I.D.bit is just not very good (11615).
God, that is very bad and only gets worse the more you look at it. Did they even care about the user experience on this project? Google has been making some interesting (read: bad) decision as of late, I wonder if all that money is clouding thier judgement. More on Google strange decisions in an upcoming post.
Using Google searches such as, "Germans are known for *" and the like, this map was created to show the general impressions people have of various people around the world.
To continue the Google Maps mashup postings - this is a site that shows some promise.
This goes a little ways towards what I want in a mapping app, but not much further. It is going to be exciting to see the important incremental steps all these mashups and Google itself make in the coming year.
Just like those old computer games (Zork?) where you can't really do much, only much, much sadder (and hilarious).
Use Google Maps to find places based on clues given.
While I really may want to hate Alex Tew, the British guy selling pixels for $1 each at The Million Dollar Homepage I know it is just because he will make well over a million dollars with an idea anyone could have come up with. Damn you Alex Tew!