Yahoo! Tech is live. This site is directed at consumers. Looks like they are trying to win over the traffic currently browsing CNet. They offer reviews, advice, product comparisons. I'll think it's definitely worth making part of your next purchasing research.
Tags: yahoo, tech, reviews
[via: SearchBlog]
VideoDownloader is a new extension that will let you download an embedded movie or any other embedded object such as flash or mp3. Once installed, you will find an icon in your status bar that you can click on and download the movie you are watching on YouTube, Google Video or many other sites.
[via: BoingBoing]
Tags: firefox, extension, video
USAToday: Internet2 network aims to boost capacity
"By sending data using different colors of light, operators of the ultrahigh-speed Internet2 network are hoping to boost capacity by as much as 80-fold to enable researchers to connect telescopes around the world and perform other bandwidth-intensive tasks. The new network should be in place by fall 2007."
Sweet! Where is the on-ramp??
Tags: internet2, networks
A new rollup for MCE was released 4/25. You will need to go to the download page to get the 3.4MB file. This rollup is for people who already have Rollup 2 installed and is cumulative, containing the same files as other recent hotfixes for MCE. You might want to have a look a the knowledge base page for KB914548 to see how this applies to you.
Tags: mce, rollup, windows
Yahoo! Go is a new service that you use with a PC connected to your TV and a broadband connection to the Net.
Mike over at TechCrunch says that it could be competition for Windows Media Center. Although it's an uphill battle being that MCE comes preinstalled on many machinew. The thing is, millions have XP. You can't just get MCE with out doing a complete reinstall of the OS. So if you have vanilla XP Y!GO would be something to look into. The people who should be worried are the folks over a Snapstream who make beyond TV.
The big thing for me would be if Y!GO supports cards that do unencrypted QAM. MCE isn't slated to support QAM until Vista as far as I know.
Tags: yahoo, go, mce, tv
Personally I like bottles but I have to say this is cool. Warm to 30F in 3 minutes...all by itself!
[via: NewTechSpy]
Tags: miller, beer, tempra
First Stanford and now, across the bay, UC Berkeley enters the walled garden that is iTunes U.
Tags: ucberkely, itunes
Google UK honors St. George day. Knights and dragons are always cool.
[via: Inside Google]
Tags: google, st+george, knights, dragons
If you are headed to Europe this site from the New York Times could be worth a look: Affordable Europe. They are articles on the various cities. One thing that is great is that they have sections to leave and read comments so you can find deals from people who have experienced them rather than just what the author saw during the time they were writing. The cities they cover are:
Amsterdam
Athens
Barcelona
Berlin
Copenhagen
Dublin
Geneva
Lisbon
London
Madrid
Milan
Oslo
Paris
Prague
Rome
Venice
Tags: travel, europe, bargains, nyt
Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 is out. Mozilla encourages everyone to upgrade because of security enhancements. Mine updated itself. If yours hasn't, go to Help and click Check for Updates. A detailed list of fixes can be found at the Rumbling Edge.
Tags: thunderbird, mozilla, email
Linux Standard Base 3.1 will unify Linux Desktop standards so that developers will have a better handle on what is on the desktop and therefore enable the creation of better applications. Will help administrators and support staff as well.
LSB 3.1 is supported by all the major vendors including Red Hat and IBM. All the major distros will start to certify on LSB 3.1 quickly.
eWeek: LSB 3.1 Unifies Linux Desktop Standards
NewsVine: Linux Distributors Unite on Standard
Tags: linux, lsb, desktop
Microsoft has confirmed a bug in USB 2.0 drivers in Windows XP SP2 that will drain your batteries faster than normal. No fix seen in the near future. Article: Microsoft confirms USB bug that drains batteries
[via:tuttleinfosystems]
Tags: usb, microsoft, windows+xp
ZDNet reports that Microsoft will issue a fix for the patch. Don't ya just love fixes for fixes?? The new fix will be out next Tuesday and will only be available, according to the article, to people who have applied the patch and are experiencing problems.
Tags: microsoft, windows, xp
Google Blogoscoped has a list of interesting public calendars that you can add into your Google Calendar. The site also has screenshots of each one so you can see what they look like.
Tags: calendar, google, public
[via: lifehacker]
Google Calendar API is now available. Start yer coding.
[via: GoogleBlog]
Tags: google, calendar, api
Microsoft has made Visual Studio Express available for free. Good news for you hobbyist programmers out there. Go build something cool.
[via: Aaron Stebner]
Tags: microsoft, programming, visual+studio
I don't usually hear much about the Google appliance used in business. This article points to Google and various sources sharing APIs to build a common interface.
From the article in B2Day:
"Google is set to announce tomorrow a broad set of partnerships with enterprise software companies, including Cognos, Oracle, Salesforce.com, and SAS. The partnerships basically amount to Google and these enterprise software companies sharing APIs so that data from the various software systems can more easily be searched for through Google's OneBox corporate homepage."
This could get pretty interesting.
Scoop: Google Enterprise Mashups to Suck in Data From Cognos, Oracle, and Salesforce.com
Edit: More from GoogleBlog: OneBox
Tags: b2d, google, cognos, oracle, salesforce, bi, mashup
100 years ago today (4/18/06) 'The Big One" rocked San Francisco. What would happen today? Have a fun (or scary) look with this mashup of Google Maps.
The Big One. (note: Best when viewed in IE due to animation)
Tags: google, map, mashup, earthquake, san+francisco
ZDNet reports that people with HP printers, scanners and digital cameras are having issues with the latest patch that changes the way ActiveX works.. The article also says people using Kerio Personal Firewall are reporting Windows isn't working right since the patch.
"The problems occur because HP's "share-to-Web" software and the Kerio firewall interfere with a new file, verclsid.exe, delivered by the security update, Microsoft said. The HP software in question ships with cameras, printers, scanners and some DVD drives, Microsoft said."
Tags: activex, windows, hp, kerio, hotfix
There is a new hotfix for Windows Media Center 2005. hotfix KB913800 is designed to fix some problems that cause errors when trying to play protected content in Windows Media Center. These problems seem to have arisen since MCE update roll-up 2. Aaron Stebner's blog has more info.
Tags: mce, windows, drm, hotfix
Corporate IT pros might want to have a look at this article for Information Week: Microsoft Sparks Backlash By Tying Internet Explorer Changes To Security Patch.
"Along with the 10 patches in Tuesday's MS06-013 security bulletin, Microsoft bundled changes to IE's handling of ActiveX controls."
I've seen some reports on a few newsgroups, including the Google's Media Center group, that people have had various troubles since their machines patched themselves.
Tags: microsoft, activex, mce
Well that didn't take long! Google Calendar was released yesterday and here we have a Greasemonkey script for Firefox to put your agenda into your Gmail! Cool!.
This script isn't quite like others you may have used. There is a bit of set up to it and the instructions you'll find aren't that clear so here's how I got it up and running.
Obviously you'll need the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox. Then go get the Add Calendar Feed script. Got it? Ok.
Now go to your Google calendar and click the little drop down to the right of your calendar and choose Calendar Settings. 
You'll want one of the XML links. The one you choose depends on whether your calendar has been made public or not. In my case I thought I'd try the Padres link because that one has the most data. Right-click on the XML link you want and click Copy Link Location.
Next we need to surf over to Google Bookmarks and create a new bookmark. Paste in your link, title it what ever you want and label it GMgcal (the label is critcal so don't forget!!).
Ok, we're almost home...
Open GMail (or refresh the page if you already had it open). You'll see the agenda section in red on the left. It may or may not be working. Either way, go up to your browsers tool bar and click Tools -> Userscript Commands -> GMgcal options. Since I told you to use GMgcal as your label you can click OK through the first screen. The next screen is where you the offset for your timezone. This is the offset from GMT. So, for example. Pacific time is GMT -8 so I'd enter -8 in this field. This controls how the times show up in your agenda in Gmail.
This is a pretty cool feature add. The Padres calendar is pretty big and the script seems to want to reload every time so it's a bit slow. Not slow enough that it prevents me from using email but delayed. Also, you can only have one calendar at a time but that's not a big deal to me.
Update 13 September 2007: I got a comment for a reader named Mike that says there are updated instructions for this. He says these instructions no longer work, because the GM script no longer works. There is a new version that DOES work however, with full instructions here:
http://userscripts.org/scripts
Tags: gmail, gcal, google, calendar, greasemonkey, script, feeds, xml
The long awaited Google Calendar is here and it's pretty cool. You can share your calendar and create other calendars to share or keep private. You can also choose which calendars you want to see at the click of a mouse. I was able to download the CSV file containing the Padres 2006 schedule and import it into a second calendar so I can see when they play. Really cool to play with the overlay feature and see just the Padres schedule or just my schedule or both at the same time for scheduling. There is also a feature that lets you search for other public calendars and add them as well.
This screenshot shows an example of both calendars overlayed:
Here is a shot of a new calendar entry being created. It is cool how you can invite people via email and how there is a selection for letting those people invite others:
You can get to Calendar via HTTPS as well as normal HTTP which is a nice feature. Oddly, at the top of calendar there is a link to Gmail but not the other way around. And be careful, if you are in Calendar via HTTPS, clicking the link to GMail takes you to the unencrypted (HTTP) session.
You can take a tour which will explain it in more details: Google Calendar Tour
TechCrunch has more details as does CNet
Tags: google, calendar, google+calendar
A long time ago I had heard that the Major League schedule was made up by some couple in Florida. I thought it was a wives tail be it's true! I had the state wrong, it was Massachusetts. And, after 24 years, they no longer make the schedule.
Here's an interesting article from MLB.com: 2,400 games and only 181 days to play them
Tags: mlb, sports, baseball
In his Wiring Update post today, Ray Ozzie updates us on current progress the Live Clipboard idea that he had a few weeks back and demoed at eTech. Among other things there is now a draft spec for people to check out and a new icon:
Tags: live+clipboard, ozzie, web
So you're back from that family trip and are now in the process of editing up the miles of video and megabytes of photos you took. Sure would be nice to add some music. Thing is, if you want to post those videos on the web you might want to avoid getting into trouble with RIAA. You need some safe music. There was a nice article yesterday in PC World: Set Your Movies to Music. There you'll find links to many sites offering music under various Creative Commons attributes. Be sure to read the attributes carefully to be sure you can safely use the songs.
Happy editing!
Tags: music, cc, video
