Yahoo! Gets into Podcasts

Yahoo! is now offering a new service called Yahoo! Podcasts. Like iTunes, they offer a comprehensive catalog of podcasts to choose from. The main page features "What We Like This Week," "What Other People Like," and "Explore on Your Own" sections. There is even a section of tags down at the bottom of the page. Yahoo! Podcasts includes a free player (Yahoo! Music Engine) so you can listen right away, but that’s optional. You can also use many other media players once you download the file. Users can subscribe to podcasts and rate them. Not bad, Yahoo! Podcasts.

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Podcast #4 is sort of off-topic — it’s all about the websites of "Lost."

BlogExplosion has been great, and they have a lot of features that I enjoy, especially the handy "ping my blog" feature. When I have time, I enjoy surfing and discovering new blogs using BE. However, they’ve been the top blog community site for some time now. Say what you want about BlogAdvance, Blogclicker, Blogazoo, etc., BE beats them all hands down in my book.

So, when BlogMad announced their plans to launch a new blog community site, I was interested. Why? This site promises to offer REAL competition to BlogExplosion. And when companies compete, we win. And what’s the juicy gossip, you ask? Well, apparently some BE users have felt for some time now that the battle of the blogs feature is unfair. So, when BlogMad hinted that they will offer something different and better (ie. FAIR), BE was worried. Apparently, Blogexplosion has sent notification to the BlogMad guys demanding that they not to copy their ideas, although word is that the BlogMad guys don’t plan on "copying" the battle of the blogs concept…so it makes it seem all the more intriguing.

And if BlogExplosion is already clearly worried, then this BlogMad thing MUST be good!

Still a few weeks from launch, but you can sign up now.

At Pandora.com, you can make your own radio station and then subscribe to it. The way it works is you type in a favorite artist or song and Pandora matches that to other artists you may enjoy to create a streaming radio station customized to your interests. You can continue to add additional artists or songs, so Pandora can really get to know you. It’s a very pleasant way to discover new artists. The only downside is that Pandora is not free — it’s either $36/year or $12/every 3 months. However, the first 10 hours are free, so you can at least get a taste of it. I’m really too cheap to pay for this service, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts.

The Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 upgrade is here now and I finally went through with it. It was relatively painless. One of the greatest things about Firefox is the plethora of extensions (browser add-ons) that allow you to customize your browser in many different ways. However, during an upgrade, these extensions go from blessing to curse. You come to rely on them as part of your browsing experience. Then, when you upgrade, you discover that your extensions aren’t supported in this new beta version. Also, the extensions are all written by independent developers, so there’s no way of knowing for sure when the extension will be available for the new version. The best you can do is post a comment on the extension’s homepage, begging for an update.

Surprisingly, one of my favorite extensions, the Googlebar (a Google Toolbar), does not work with Firefox 1.5 Beta 2. I actually prefer the extension to the real Google Toolbar because my preferred Firefox theme makes the drop-down arrow buttons on the Google Toolbar too big. But I can’t live without some sort of Google Toolbar, so I got the one from Google and am just living with the un-asthetically pleasing elements. There’s no way I would give up my theme, Noia 2.0 eXtreme. Firefox just isn’t Firefox without it. In fact, I even waited for it to be compatible with the beta before upgrading.

Three other favorite extensions, IE View , Gmail Notifier, and Tabbrowser Preferences were good to go with Beta 2, so really the only important one I’m missing is the Copy Plain Text extension, which I blogged about a while back.  I really miss this one! I hope that an update is soon to come. I don’t know how I’m going to live without it.

As far as the Beta itself…did it just get faster? I believe so. The release notes mention that there are improvements to website rendering and performance. Nice. However, the best part of the upgrade is that, from now on, the browser will auto-update itself. Sure, you can turn that off if you’d like, but I’d prefer my patches to come down the pipe ASAP, thank you very much.

UPDATE: Ack! The "Saved Form Information" thing is not working in Beta 2. I *need* that. Oh well, back to the stable version again.

Wow! I was just reading a post over at Webby’s World regarding the "blockbuster" deal involving MSN and Yahoo! connecting their IM networks. Combined, the companies project that the platform will host over 275 million users. We can expect to see this sometime in mid-2006. This is really good news! (And it’s about time!) The IM market has been fragmented for entirely too long. You have either had to choose between running multiple IM programs, which is just ridiculous, or using a universal IM, like Trillian. I currently use Trillian, but the problem with Trillian is that it lacks features unless you’re willing to pay for the Pro version…and I’m just too cheap for that.  Regardless, this deal is a step in the right direction. I’d like to see Google Talk, Skype, and AIM get on board with this interoperability plan as well, but I doubt that will happen since Microsoft sees Google as a major competitor these days. Still, a girl can dream…

Google and Comcast are in discussions to buy a minority stake in Time Warner’s America Online. The deal would combine Time Warner’s programming, Google’s search, and Comcast’s high-speed internet portal. This would definitely raise the stakes against Yahoo! and Microsoft. It could also mean a future of video distribution via the net, if you read between the lines. You know I love Google…but AOL? Not so much. AOL already uses Google for its searches, so where are they going with this? Where’s the benefit? If Google wants in the content business, why can’t they build their own portal? Someone help me out here…

I just received an email from Picasa - did you? The email was to let me know that an update was available for Picasa. The new features included in the update are multiple language support, a "blog this" button (for Blogger users, of course), a "Print CD Covers" feature, improved RAW editing, and…my new favorite feature…external drive support. That’s just handy! To install the update, all you have to do is open Picasa. It asks if you want to install and you say "yes." No glitches, no bugs, no worries. Thank you, Google!

There’s another big announcement from Apple and it’s going to be today. Their last brought us the iPod nano and the Motorola Rockr phone, and that wasn’t too long ago! The invitations they sent out to the  media had the words "One More Thing…" written on the top. "One more thing" is Steve Jobs’ catchphrase, which is often used to indicate a blockbuster announcement. So, what could it be today? The video iPod perhaps? Could be. Engadget posted a leaked photo of what may be the video iPod. Here’s hoping!

UPDATE! It was the Video iPod, except they’re not calling it that. For more info, visit leehord.com!

Over at Blink.nu, someone did some digging in the Windows Vista code and came across this little gem: an xml file that, decoded, revealed 20 different product names for Vista. Over at Blink.nu, they are calling these "SKUs," but that would not be the accurate term, since SKUs are numeric, and these are actual English product names. The question is, are there going to be 20 different versions of Windows? Seriously? Because that would be madness!!

The full list:

Windows Vista Starter
Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Ultimate
Windows Vista Pro Standard/SB
Longhorn Enterprise Server (ADS)
Longhorn Enterprise Server - IA64
Longhorn Standard Server
Longhorn Datacenter Server
Windows Vista Pro Std/SB/Ent - VL Binding Service
Windows Vista Pro Std/SB/Ent - VLGeneric
Windows Vista Pro Std/SB/Ent - DMAK
Windows Vista Starter Digital Boost - OEM
Windows Vista Home Basic - OEM
Windows Vista Home Premium - OEM
Windows Vista Ultimate - OEM
Windows Vista Pro Standard/SB - OEM
Longhorn Enterprise Server - OEM
Windows Vista Home Basic N
Windows Vista Pro Standard N