I Dig Digg

If you haven’t been to Digg.com yet, go. Go now! Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and it lets users (like you!) submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do. Next to the stories, it shows how many times they have been "dugg" (clicked on), so you can see how popular they are. You can use the search box to search for a particular subject. And for you experienced Digg users — you’re going to love this — they’ve just added RSS to search. That’s right! You can now subscribe to your searches. The only problem I have with Digg, is that I’ve never been able to get it to work with Typepad. It shows Typepad as a blogging option, but when I put in my username and password, I get "invalid login" everytime. I’m not sure what the deal with that is, since I’ve never received a response from support, but it’s not enough to keep me away from the site. It’s just too cool — and when tech support ignores me and I still visit, that’s saying a lot.

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…and obviously, I bought I microphone too.

Download ipodminidock.mp3

I knew it! I knew it! And now it has been confirmed. Today, Google has announced that they are indeed testing a free Wi-Fi internet access service called, of course, Google WiFi. On the Secure Access FAQ page, the 2nd question down mentions Google WiFi, but there is no public Google WiFi home page as of yet. (So that’s what the Secure Access was for, it seems!) The current Wi-Fi test is limited to two public sites near the company’s Mountain View, California, headquarters — a pizza parlor and a gym — I’m guessing it’s probably where Google employees hang out after work. The Google WiFi project was started as part of a Google engineer’s "20 percent time project." (Google encourages its engineers to spend 20% of their work time developing independent projects. Several of Google’s products have grown out of the 20% time, including Google News, AdSense and Orkut.) Google says they’re just focused on getting feedback from users at this point in time, and are not confirming what their future plans are. Here’s some feedback, Google: I want your free Wi-Fi! I want it now! I’ll run your toolbar. You can track me online and serve me targeted Adsense ads. No problem. I trust you. I’m a fan. Just bring that free Wi-Fi over to to Tampa!

From the Sandbox, MSN’s equivalent to Google Labs, comes the MSN Screen Saver (beta).  Most techies are just over screen savers, with their CPU-sucking capabilities and potential for causing problems. I agree to a point. I wouldn’t recommend downloading a screen saver, especially one in beta, on an office computer; but if you’re looking to jazz up your home PC and have a little fun, this MSN screen saver is pretty nifty. You can personalize it with background photos from the folder of your choosing, and view news and weather information from MSN. However, what really makes it stand out is the ability to add any RSS feeds from websites of your choice to the list of content it displays. And if you’ve picked sides (meaning you’re on the Microsoft team, instead of the Google team…or the Yahoo team), you’ll also enjoy the Messenger, Hotmail, and Spaces integration.

I downloaded an interesting software application this weekend called TVexe. This application allows you to watch hundreds of live TV channels from around the world, on your PC, free of charge. There are news, music, shopping, sports, and educational channels in many different languages available for viewing. This definitely is an innovative idea and gets me excited about the potential the future holds for online TV viewing. However, after a few minutes of watching the Irish News and the Africa Hit Music Channel, I realized that, as great as this technology is, what I really want is to be able to watch "Lost" and "The O.C" online. I doubt American networks will ever let viewers watch their broadcasts online. Like the RIAA and the MPAA, network television will fight technology like this, which is unfortunate. Until the entertainment industry realizes you can make a profit in non-traditional ways, progress will be slow.

Six Apart, the company behind Movable Type, Typepad (what I use), and recently-acquired Livejournal has just announced a new blogging platform, dubbed Project Comet. With a planned launch date sometime in early 2006, Project Comet promises to "combine the publishing power of TypePad, the community aspects of LiveJournal and the years of insight garnered from Movable Type." One new feature on the Comet website is called "Community Aggregation," which will let you create blogs and share sections of them with other users. I imagine this is a takeoff on the "guest blogging" and "Free-for-all-Fridays" (aka FFAF) that are popular with bloggers today.

Another new feature is "Multiple Streams," which makes the lofty promise to "provide a single place to keep everything that is important to you." I think that may be a bit of an over-exaggeration, and since I haven’t heard of them buying Gmail, I don’t think that will be true for me. However, it does purport to be "a record of your life is created by incorporating streams from various media, like music, photos, videos and other blogs into a single customized blog with an identity of its own." I’m not sure how this goes beyond what Typepad offers me today, since you can make photo albums, "what I’m reading/listening to" lists, etc. Maybe they mean to make it easier to post rich media like Bubbler does, which would be great. I’m interested to see what they mean by that.

The final feature mentioned is privacy, which, again, is already incorporated into Typepad, with password-protect options for entire sites or just specific blogs. The best part of all these promised changes is that they will be offered to current Typepad members at no extra charge. (Yes!)

Over at Engadget, there was a post about the possibility of Google TV. The talk has been all over the net this week because Google had posted an ad for a "Google TV Project Manager." (They’ve since taken down the ad.) The person they were looking for should be knowledgeable about “the intersection of Internet and Television technologies, Video-On-Demand, Personal Video Recorders and emergence of next generation set-top-boxes with IP connectivity,” according to that now-deleted post.

Speculation is rampant. Let’s begin: Google buys up dark fiber. Google launches Video Search. Google hires TV Project Manager. Hmmm. I think Google is planning an ISP. In my neighborhood, Brighthouse delivers high-speed internet and cable TV; Verizon FIOS just became available, which is only internet access for now, but in the future, they plan on offering all the TV channels in HDTV. Maybe this is where Google wants to compete. The Google ISP where you surf the net via free Wi-Fi and watch TV over the Google OS using the Google browser. It could happen.

Currently in a public beta, Microsoft Max is new software that lets you make lists of your photos, turn them into slide shows, and share them with your friends (well, if they have Max) And that’s about it — for now….or so the  website claims ("Tomorrow…who knows?", they tease). Clearly introduced to compete with Google’s Picasa, Microsoft Max has potential, but it looks like it got pushed out the door before it was ready. I mean, emailing slide shows is nice, but that’s it? Picasa can do so much more. However, that being said, Microsoft Max is visually pretty slick. That’s because it’s built on Windows Vista’s WinFX programming interface. It’s a little piece of Vista you can download for free, and that alone may make it worth checking out — especially if you’ve been dying to get a peek at those 3-D graphics (check out the "Mantle" view in Max). But be warned…this is no quick 30-second install. This is one of those long, drawn-out, reboot-required installs. Before you bother, make sure your system meets the hardware requirements:

• 1.0 gigahertz (GHz) processor
• 256 megabytes (MB) of RAM
• 200 MB of available hard disk space
• Super VGA (800 x 600) resolution monitor

When it comes down to it, Picasa wins it for me…for now. I’m willing to give other programs a shot. (Slide was nice, for example). But really it’s all about integration. Microsoft Max integrates with your Passport account. Picasa integrates with your Gmail. These powerhouses are drawing lines in the sand and asking you to pick sides. They all want to win, but when they compete like this, I worry that it’s us who lose. Without spending the time making any one product great, they are just going to be throwing stuff at us faster and faster in an effort to one-up their competition. Meanwhile, we’re living in a world where we’re stuck with running 5 instant messenger programs, or giving up on the extra features of IM in order to run a universal messenger. Competition is healthy to a point, but I’m starting to see the beginnings of a war. It’s cola wars for the new millenium — who will win? Microsoft? Google?….Yahoo!?

If you thought Microsoft was on a downward spiral, then this just seals it. Microsoft is in talks regarding acquiring an AOL stake and then combining it with Microsoft’s Web unit MSN. Microsoft would pay Time Warner for the AOL stake, leaving the two companies approximately equal partners in the venture. I’m sure Time Warner would be happy to get AOL off its hands, but what’s in it for MS?  Well, investers are giving AOL a valuation of more than $10 billion, but it could eventually be making in the $15 billion to $20 billion range. No more butterfly? No more MSN browser? Oh darn.

I almost don’t want to blog about this because I happen to like all the free and open wireless networks out there, but those guys probably aren’t reading my blog anyway. Google is now offering Secure Access, which is a downloadable client application that allows users to establish a more secure Wi-Fi connection. It works by connecting to a Google VPN server that is provided for this service. A handy tool if you don’t know how to configure a router and your NIC. Is anyone using this? I’m wondering if you take a hit on speed.