It looks like I am going to be putting more of my life on Google's servers, this time future business projects (as long as it is legal that is).
(Google Docs & Spreadsheets Blog) Whenever those of you who use Gmail receive a spreadsheet or a document in an email, you will see a new link next to the "Download" link that says "Open as a Google document." Click on that and the attachment will automatically be imported into Docs & Spreadsheets and added to your personal document list where you can make changes, invite collaborators and search for it later. We hope you like it.
If they continue doing cool things like this, Google will end up being a portal--that is if they are not one already.
Note: Is it me, or did Google finally open up comments on their blog?
It looks like Google just got rid of (or at least greatly suppressed) the ability of bloggers and websites to Googlebomb those they despise.
(Google Webmaster Blog) People have asked about how we feel about Googlebombs, and we have talked about them in the past. Because these pranks are normally for phrases that are well off the beaten path, they haven't been a very high priority for us. But over time, we've seen more people assume that they are Google's opinion, or that Google has hand-coded the results for these Googlebombed queries. That's not true, and it seemed like it was worth trying to correct that misperception. So a few of us who work here got together and came up with an algorithm that minimizes the impact of many Googlebombs.
Previously typing in failure in Google brought up President Bush (thanks to liberal bloggers) and Israeli bloggers did something something similar to Prime Minister Olmert.
It looks like for the first time (in a long time) Google has recaptured the Internet (or the Internet on its servers) before politics ruined it for everyone.
Note: I wonder if Yahoo plans on doing the same thing for their search engine?
Update: Silly me! I forgot the to add the "quotations" for my source. As well as corrected a noticeable spelling error.
The problem is not getting to be ridiculous. It's just a bit annoying to go from no spam for months on end to about five a day.
What's even worse is the fact that spammers seem to type either in all caps, or unable to spell out half their entire message.
If you are going to spam me, at least use proper grammar. You would think they would teach these things at the "annoy planet Earth" spam conferences, assuming that spammers actually attend them.
(Space Daily) "We're at a junction now of developing a new approach for a brain-machine interface," says senior author Douglas H. Smith, MD, Professor of Neurosurgery and Director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at Penn. "The nervous system will certainly rebel if you place hard or sharp electrodes into it to record signals. However, the nervous system can be tricked to accept an interface letting it do what it likes - assimilating new nerve cells into its own network."
To develop the next generation of prosthetics the idea is to use regions of undamaged nervous tissue to provide command signals to drive a device, such as an artificial limb. The challenge is for a prosthesis to perform naturally, relaying two-way communication with the patient's brain.
We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
Lifter, lifter, in the sky How is it you climb so high Up above the clouds you go Power beamed up from below Lifter, lifter, in the sky How is it you climb so high
Climbing slowly to the stars Bringing Earthlings from afar Holding goodies big and small Opening space for us all Lifter, lifter, in the sky How is it you climb so high
Clinging tightly to the ribbon Made of nanotubes of carbon On your top is a counterweight Down below is the LiftPort gate Lifter, lifter, in the sky How is it you climb so high
Update: This poem was produced as part of LiftPort's poetry contest, where contestants can win a free T-shirt from their store. Since poetry is something I randomly enjoy, I thought this would be a nice addition to post to this weblog.
Image used without permission (please don't sue me) and copyrighted to LiftPort, Inc., all rights reserved.
Although I love borrowing Google's blogger design for this template, it kinda makes me unofficially look like Google (which can be bad and possibly lead towards confusion, not to mention loss of Ad Sense).
This site may look funky for a while, but hold on as I work out the bugs of this joint.
(Chicago Sun-Times) INDIANAPOLIS -- A comeback, a drive, a legacy. And yes -- finally -- Peyton Manning gets his Super Bowl trip, too.
Football's most prolific quarterback put on a show for the ages Sunday, rallying the Indianapolis Colts from 18 points down and driving them 80 yards for the winning score in a wildly entertaining 38-34 victory over the New England Patriots.
It was a great game, either way, even though I was rooting for New England. Oh well, I guess they've won too many super bowls already (at least that is what my friends tell me).
Either way, I'm looking forward to watching the big game on TV. Now all I have to do is figure out who is hosting the party this year.
Well, today I just discovered why time management is important. And why I need to upload more of my life on Google's servers (this time via Google Calendar).
Basically, I contacted a friend and let him know that I would be getting in touch with him later on today this evening.
Ironically, I discovered an event at church that is happening around the same time (give or take an hour). Although I have not committed to the event, everyone is probably expecting me to be there because I attended the same event last year.
And to make matters worse, one of the church members emailed me to make sure that I am wearing red (I think it's a theme or something, although I hope it has nothing to do with star trek).
I may be able to make the opening ceremonies, but I am definitely going to have to miss the dinner. I'll probably get some flack for it via MySpace (that is if I both check it next week) but that would be better than disappointing my friend.
After previously posting about how to fix the mysterious 404 WWW issue with Blogger, I think I may have found a faster (and more simple) fix.
I tested this out with one blog already, and I am sure everyone else is going to love this as well (well, mostly everyone else).
Note: This may or may not require you to sign up with Google Apps (I don't think it should, but you never know).
First, login to your host account, and locate the area of your account where you can create sub domains (on GoDaddy simply pull up the page listing your domain(s) and click on the one you want to create an account on. Then click on the Manage Sub domains account).
Next, create a sub domain on the page. Since we all love Google, lets call it "google" (no pun intended).
Underneath you should have an option to forward the domain to a URL. Simply type in your www.mydomain.com (with the "WWW's") and click save.
Now what is going to happen is that whenever someone clicks on mydomain.com it will automatically select the sub-domain google.mydomain.com as its first choice (don't ask me why it does this, but it does for some strange silly reason).
As soon as your "google" alias pops up, your server will redirect you to mydomain.com.
This is a lot more simple and easier than my previous explanation (and a lot faster too). This should work after ten minuets, but give it a day to make it "round the net."
As always, feel free to comment if you have any questions, concerns or praises (I like those) regarding this issue.
Update: You should not need to point this CNAME to a host directly. Also, I updated the "google." to "google" (without the period) in the post.
For those of you who switched their blog*spot blogs to Google's custom domain for blogger, you may have run into some unexpected errors, mainly being only able to publish either directly to your domain (example: mycoolblog.com) or to the "www" address (example: www.mycoolblog.com) but not both.
After finding manyotherbloggers experiencing the same thing, I decided to do some testing to see if there was a way to resolve this.
Note: Make sure your CNAME has an alias of www (or the place you want to publish your blog) as well as having the host account point to ghs.google.com.
The first thing I did was create a Google Apps account, adding my blog domain to its services.
Next, I would select the available Google services. Although you can select all or none of the features to add to your blog, you must choose the Domain Web Pages feature.
After adding this feature, you should see a link that says something to the sort of Activating the web pages (underneath the Domain Web Pages image). Click on it.
Make sure that you put "www" as the publishing address. This will do one of two things. Either a) It will kick blogger from originally publishing to the domain (which is good) or b) blogger will refuse to move (not as good, but okay). If blogger is stubborn simply publish on mycoolblog.com, in order to let Google Apps have a turn at "www."
If you are unable to publish to "www" via Google apps, create a new sub name/alias instead. On the left should be in bold a category called Services. Find the Domain Web Pages link and then click the Change web publishing address on the screen and select an alias such as "about," "google" or even "darnell" if you would like. ;-)
Visit the "www" domain (or the alias you created in its place) and make sure you see a 404 error in an off color mellow yellow orange (note: what is that color anyways?). If you don't see it, try refreshing a couple of times.
Wait about five to ten minuets after seeing the 404 error, and then delete your Domain Web Pages from your current account, and republish blogger to the "www."
Give the internet 24 hours and with any luck (as well as some prayers) your mycoolblog.com should redirect to www.mycoolblog.com.
After testing this on several of my weblogs (ColonyWorlds.com, IsraGood.com, InsideOrkut.com as well as this one) I found this to be the only consistent method that seemed to make this work (as to why it works, you'll have to ask someone else that question).
One of my blogs redirected within a few seconds. Another one took several minuets while two of mine took almost 24 hours before they were functioning. I would also give it 48 hours until all of your friends see the same thing, (as it takes awhile for the new settings to register throughout the entire internet.
If you have any problems, comments or questions, feel free to post them here.
Whether they're Jewish, Arabian, Druze or anyone else I left out, one thing about middle eastern women (or rather middle eastern people in general) is that they are passionate, no matter what they believe.
Here is a "secularist" (who use to be Muslim) giving her spin on liberty, Islam and the political way.
I bet this news is not going to make Ahmadinejad very happy, let alone the Mullah's.
(Israel Hasbara Committee) Iran is suffering a staggering decline in revenue from its oil exports, and if the trend continues income could virtually disappear by 2015, according to an analysis by Roger Stern of Johns Hopkins University. Iran earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports. The decline is estimated at 10 to 12% annually. In less than five years, exports could be halved, and they could disappear by 2015, Stern predicted. He added that there could be merit to Iran's assertion that it needs nuclear power for civilian purposes.
(Space Daily) Further observations of Zeta Leporis have enabled researchers to precisely gauge the size of this dust dusk. Additionally, according to Cowen, research finds that the location of the dust is at a distance of 3 astronomical units (AU) from Zeta Leporis, quite similar to the location of the solar system's asteroid belt, stretching from 2.1 to 3.3 AU from the sun.
Noting that asteroids are leftovers from the planet-making process in the solar system, Cowen reports that, while still a young star, Zeta Leporis is old enough to have formed planets. These new studies and findings "support the thought that Earthlike planets may exist" according to Michael Jura of the University of California, Los Angeles who observed the dust in the disk surrounding Zeta Leporis to find its radius.
Unfortunately the star is 70 plus light years away, give or take a day. It also orbits a blue star, which may or may not be suitable for Earth plants (that is if we every took the chance of traveling there).
I know most of my American friends have either Yahoo!, MSN, Gtalk, AIM or use them all via Trillian.
That's all great and dandy, but I think I am going to ditch all of the other instant messengers (with the exception of Gtalk if Google decides) and stick with Skype.
There is just so much I can do with this chat/VOIP/telephone program, that puts the others to shame.
So if you want to chat with me, my screenname on Skype is HiddenNook or you can leave a message if I don't pick up.
Update: Added photo...and on a further note switching to Skype may not be that bad.
Whatever Google is putting in their employee's water cooler, they definitely need to share it with the rest of the world. The search engine king has announced their commitment to bring users real-time instant live stats of stock quotes, free of charge and free of delay.
(Google Blog) As a result, we've worked with the SEC, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and our D.C. trade association, NetCoalition, to find a way to bring stock data to Google users in a way that benefits users and is practical for all parties. We have encouraged the SEC to ensure that this data can be made available to our users at fair and reasonable rates, and applaud their recent efforts to review this issue. Today, the NYSE has moved the issue a great step forward with a proposal to the SEC which if approved, would allow you to see real-time, last-sale prices across all Google properties including Google Finance, Personalized Google, Mobile, and of course, Google.com. It won't matter if you're on Wall Street or Main Street -- you'll have free, easy and fast access to real-time prices from NYSE on Google.
When it comes to innovation of information, Google is serious about change. This may put many expensive stock software companies out of business, but it will empower the consumer to track their own portfolio.
Apparently their is a site stealing content from one of my weblogs, Inside Orkut.
I am not going to mention the site here (or the host) but I hope to resolve this issue privately in order to spare the hosting company bad media that can be picked up by the ever vigilant Google bots (aka Google spiders).
I've ran into this problem before, but thankfully the person in question last time apologized and complied (in essence, removed the offending posts as well as the site).
Hopefully a peaceful solution can be found as I have better things to do than dealing with content theft.
Update (1/11): Problem was resolved. Thanks Mr. [Host Company]!
Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.
So I finally migrated another part of my life onto Google's servers, and I noticed several great things (as well as bad minor issues) with Blogger's Custom Domain.
Another user could claim your domain via Blogger, preventing you from using it (see my theory for details on my second thread response)
Your Google Page rank drops (which means you'll have to resubmit it everywhere again)
Now, in my opinion the good definitely out weighs the bad, and I would seriously recommend any serious blogger to consider switching over as it does have a way of making your site feel a little more professional.
Note: Is it me, or did Blogger just become cooler than WordPress?
I never thought I would ever say this, but it seems that Google (or rather Blogger) has once again reinvented the way blogging is done!
(Blogger Buzz) The new version of Blogger now supports using a custom domain for serving your blog. If you already own a domain named, say, mysite.com and want your blog to be served at that address instead of at a blogspot.com address, we can host your blog on that domain for you — for free. Your old Blog*Spot address will forward to your new custom domain, so the switch will be seamless for your readers.
I've already purchased several domains I would love to try this on (those being InsideOrkut.com, DarnellClayton.com, ColonyWorlds.com, IsraGood.com) and I will move my blog over to the self hosting later on today (after I get some sleep).
Hmm...I'm definitely going to have to pick up one of these!
(Ars Technica) It seems the day of the 1-terabyte consumer hard drive has finally become a reality. Hitachi announced yesterday, just before the start of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, that it will be shipping a 1TB hard drive by the end of the first quarter in 2007. The drive will be the first of three that the company is expecting to release in 2007; the other two are aimed at video pros and the enterprise market. Those two will ship in the second quarter of the year.
The 3.5" Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 will run at 7200 rpm, have a 32MB buffer, and be available as SATA 3.0Gb/s or Parallel-ATA 133. The company did not max out on areal density on the drives though; instead of trying to cram 250GB onto four platters, Hitachi opted to go with a 200GB-per-platter, five-platter approach. Hitachi's director of market and product strategy Doug Pickford told PC World that "About 250GB per platter is the next bump on the areal density curve, but we've backed off from doing that in order to achieve higher reliability at this time."
They say its selling for about $400 (or so) on the market. If only they could hook this up to an OQO, then I would have my dream machine.
You're on DivShare – the free, fast file host for everyone.
We built this site in December 2006 to provide a simple and reliable way to show off photos, documents, music, and all your other creations. Whether you're just posting one file or setting up an account and personalizing your download pages, it's the web's best way to put your stuff in the spotlight. And you know what else is cool? It's all free.
They are already receiving a lot of positive feedback, and I may move all of my images from Flickr and Picasa to divShare in the near future. I wonder how long it will be until a mega company decides to buy them out?
It almost seems like every personal blog I come across (at least with friends) is either depressing, semi-depressed, or uber-geekified like me (hey, at least they are happy).
