Hurricane Dennis: Whew!

Thank god we missed being hit by Dennis - it stayed far enough off our coast to not do any damage. On Saturday, we had some sporadic high winds, but the only thing that blew over was a pot in a planter by our driveway. Others were not so lucky. I can’t even imagine having to deal with flooding like you see in this photo. I hope this is not the start of another horrible hurricane season for Florida.

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There is an extension in development that aims to "create a powerful but simple interface to BitTorrent downloads" using the Firefox web browser. The goal is to make it very easy to download torrents - as easy as it is to download from the web! The BitTorrent software uses cooperative distribution to allow users to download large files (torrents) in a shorter amount of time than traditional publishing. Think movies, tv shows, etc. Unfortunately, with P2P programs (BitTorrent is peer-to-peer) under the legal spotlight, this kind of innovation could suffer.

With the birth of Napster, the world was introduced to mp3s (well, the general public was). Although, the original Napster has been shut down, the mp3 craze rages on, and LEGAL companies like the new Napster and iTunes are raking in the profits. Without the innovation that Napster provided, mp3s may never have become as popular as they are today. My thinking is that the same goes for BitTorrent. Sure, users today are downloading copyrighted material with the program, but how many people would be happy to purchase the torrents, once a legal avenue presented itself? Probably as many people as who use iTunes today. But the innovation, such as this extension, must come first. The MPAA isn’t interested in creating a new system for distribution of movies on the net, they are just trying to fight it with lawsuits. However, the people want it…and here it comes!

According to Technorati, there were more than 1,300 posts about the blasts by 10:15 GMT. Popular news websites operated by BBC, a satellite TV provider BSkyB, and the Financial Times business newspaper suffered delays on their home pages Thursday morning in London because of the increased traffic. That’s when people began turning to blog sites to find out what was going on. Getting your news from blogs is very different than the usual reporting done by news organizations. It really gives a personal view on the events by telling a frighteningly human side of the story.

For example:

Earlier in the morning, one blogger wrote: "Scared now. There’s no one in the office.

"I can’t make calls with my mobile at all. Nada."

It definitely gives the events more impact to read these posts than to just hear a talking head announce "London Blasts Kill 50."

source: BBC

Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that the company
does not plan to offer what he called a "person-to-person stored-value
payments system" (like Paypal), but did confirm on Tuesday that the company is planning to expand into broader online payment services. Schmidt said that Google is looking to expand its current payment services. These services are used today to handle payments from advertisers and to Web publishers in Google’s online advertising programs. The new Google payment service would just be an extension of this. Hmmm…maybe I could get that $11.00 I made with my Google Ad right away instead of having to wait 3 years until I make $100.00

The first time you log in to the MSN Music store, you can buy one song and get five free! No strings. That’s 6 Mp3s for 99 cents. Definitely a bargain. And they’re already Mp3s, so no converting necessary. My current playlist includes The Transplants, The Used, The Bravery, and Gwen Stefani. I’m off to burn a mix now.

Cnet wants to know what your favorite tech blog is and what you like about it. However, they don’t say why they’re asking. It’s not listed as a contest and they don’t mention what, if anything, they are going to do with the results. Maybe they’re just curious?

Google Earth is a new service built on the technology from Keyhole, a satellite mapping service Google acquired in October. Google Earth lets you see an aerial view of a location, then zoom in to see 3D images of buildings and landscapes (in some U.S. cities). You can tilt and rotate these images. It also offers dynamic navigation and video playback of driving directions. You can even save your results for later use. There are commercial versions available, of course - Google Earth Plus with GPS support and fancy Google Earth Pro, designed to be used by researchers, but the free beta is good enough for most people….so, imagine my disappointment when I found the beta closed. Closed! Someone, hook me up with the download!