I prefer to have a similar setup on the computers I use. In some cases you may not have this possibility. Maybe your company gives you limited access to your company computer. This is no longer a problem, since you get access to a lot of software online these days, like the online word processor Writely and the calendar service Calendarhub. For those of you who haven’t checked out the customizable personalized website Netvibes, check it out!

I think it’s just a matter of time until Microsoft and the other huge software companies will notice the competition they get from online applications and have to rethink their solutions. If you think of it…there are so many advantages with online applications:

Availability

You only need a computer with internet (web) access. With today’s broadband and wireless access (almost) everywhere that’s not a problem.

Reliability

If there’s a bug in the software, it will probably be automatically be reported to the software developer. If something’s not working, it will probably be fixed soon, as you’re not the only user

Cost

As the application can be sold by the developer and not by a store, the prices will go down. One example of this is the company Dell, which sells all their computers online.

Piracy

The user may no long make an illegal copy, as the application us user online Problem solved?

Virus, Trojans and Spyware

Instead of having each computer checking files for viruses, now this may be scanned online, like Gmail does for all attachments.

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I have always liked the ability to manipulate the environment of the game. The gravity gun in Half-Life 2 was genious, and it looks like this gun will be at least as awesome!
Read more about the game at IGN.com.

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One of the new features include a Recommendation Radio. Last.fm has always provided recommendations based on what the user listens to and the user’s social network, and you’ve always been able to preview those songs in that recommended list. Now you can play a radio based entirely on such recommendations. This radio is also customizable! You can set a level of obscurity, like “popular” or “obscure”, and you can select and deselect artists who will be played on the channel.

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According to the FlickrBlog the Flickr-site is temporarily down due to a storage glitch. They ensure that all photos and data are safe and that nothing has been lost.  To humor us, they’ve created a competition:

Because this sucks*, we thought you might like to enter an impromptu competition to win a FREE PRO ACCOUNT!

Just print out this page and colour in the dots. When the site’s back up, take a photo of your creation and post it to Flickr, tagged with “flickrcolourcontest”.

If you missed the competition you can print out my screenshot

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Charlie Paglee now reports that the Skype Protocol has been cracked.
But why crack such a nice software, you might ask. “It is free to use!” Is it? Here’s an excerpt from Skype’s licence agreement:

“4.1 Utilization of Your computer. You hereby acknowledge that the Skype Software may utilize the processor and bandwidth of the computer (or other applicable device) You are utilizing, for the limited purpose of facilitating the communication between Skype Software users.”

What this practically means, is that Skype may use your computer as a supernode (Skype’s Super Node technology), which means that it may steal alot of your bandwitdth. So, you might say it’s free, but no it’s not. This is why Skype wants everybody to create “free” accounts.

Lots of software supporting the Skype network will probably appear now as the code is broken. The picture (taken from Paglee’s blog) shows a client compatible with the Skype protocol. This software will not support Skype’s supernode technology. This means that soon will skype users have a client that doesn’t hijack their computer. This will of course have a negative impact on the Skype network, if everyone uses this client.

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Gmail is continously improving with new features. ZDNet’s Google Blog is now reporting new features will be added to the gmail accounts. One of the features is that you can now delete all spam with a single click. This is probably not groundbreaking. I however like the second feature, which is the ability to add filters to exisiting emails. Up to now it’s only been possible to add filters to incoming emails. This new features makes it a lot easier to organize your emails.

If you, like me, have multiple email accounts and receive hundreds of emails every month, this is very helpful. Earlier you had to use searching and go through pages of search hits to add labels to lots of emails. Now you can do this is in a filter.
I use labels frequently in my gmail accounts. Yes, I have two accounts. One for rss feeds and one regular. Google Operating System has a list of things you can do with this new feature.

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• Do you Advertise Your Blog?
• How to Increase a Blog’s Page Views
• 54 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Blog
• How to Find Traffic for a New Blog
• How to Grow Your Blog’s Readership

If you find this interesting you should also check out Successful Blog’s post about 9 + 1 Things Every Reader Wants from a Writer.

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I will probably register with streamload or amazon’s jungledisc soon.

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• Runtime Exceptions
• Runtime Types
• Sealed Classes
• Delegation
• ECMAScript for XML (E4X)
• Regular Expressions
• Namespaces
• New Primitive Types
• Flash Player API Features
• DOM3 Event Model
• Display List API

From betanews.com:

Adobe on Wednesday released the final version of Flash Player 9, which the company says offers ten times better performance through ActionScript 3.0 and a new ActionScript Virtual Machine. The update provides the backbone for Flex 2.0, Adobe’s new line of development tools.

According to Bill McCoy, General Manager of the ePublishing Business at Adobe, Flash has struggled to find acceptance among the Web development community because its scripting language, ActionScript, offered no real advantages over JavaScript.

“Well, now Flash app development is even more compelling and a lot easier,” McCoy explained. “Flash Player 9’s new ActionScript 3, compatible with proposed next-level of ECMAScript, is a powerful language that supports direct XML processing (ECMAScript for XML, aka E4X), strong types, inheritance and mix-in interfaces, exceptions, and other robust software-engineering capabilities.”

Kevin Lynch’s Web 2.0 Conference Presentation announcing Flex 2.0 and Flash 8.5 (now called Flash 9):

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If you find this interesting, you should check out Edward Tse’s blog.

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Then I tried just about everything…from trying another PSU to removing all components and reinstalling them one by one. The PSU was intact. So was also the harddrives, and the memory (tested in one of my other computers).

I’ve been using computers since I was 5-6 years old, and I think I was about 10 the first time I actually opened a pc. I have however not experienced this happening this silently before. I don’t think there was lightning that night…

Now I’m crossing my fingers and hope that it’s the motherboard. I’ve ordered another Asus A8N-SLI Premium, and ofcourse a Belkin SurgeMaster Superior 6.

UPDATE: It was the motherboard. However, the powersupply made terrible noises when I started the computer after replacing the motherboard. So now I’ve ordered a 500w MIST PSU.

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After googling some more I found an application called Domain Name Pro. This is indeed a very neat application. What I find interesting is that you may add a few word combinations, and the application comes up with lots of alterntives (using a thesaurus). This application could also be useful if you are looking for a suitable name for your product or company.

I still think that this service should be available online, with the possibility of subscribing to feeds and notification. If such a (free) service doesn’t exist already, I guess it soon will. It will probably take advantage of the popular AJAX development technique.

UPDATE: I found a freeware version of the application. It’s however a lot simpler, but it has no restrictions.

UPDATE 2: Domainnameshop offers a free monitoring of your domain. Subscribe for monitoring of domains and get an email notification when it’s available. Thanks to Håvard this tips.

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