Google services listed

We all know that Google is not just a simple search engine anymore. But did we actually know what are all the stuff the company offers? Here's one list trying to explain that.

(No, I have not forgotten this blog.. just moved countries, jobs etc so it takes a while to get to old routines ;)

del.icio.us have replaced my bookmarks

del.lico.us -service has replaced my numerous local bookmark files lately. Having one central service which is accessible from everywhere is such a great usability point. Having the most important links has been a must for me for ages, as I use the web via many computers and mobile phones during the day. Having your bookmarks accessible from everywhere is great addition to this idea.

Naturally I collect the more private bookmarks to the browser and by other means. When it comes to the generic newscatching and filtering, the easy and fast tagging is unbeatable. The tags can be shared with friends and one can even subscribe to certain tags or certain users certain tag via RSS syndication.

Ok, del.icio.us has been around for a while. .. but I've always had a certain leadtime adopting the newest services anyway. 8)

Google maps adds satellite images of the whole world

This is amazing. Google Maps has expanded its internet mapping service to include the satellite images of the whole world. As a user of Keyhole (which is now being renamed to "Google Earth") it does not take very long to see that the satellite data used is the very same. This is no wonder as the Keyhole company was bought by Google a while ago.

Now everybody can visit virtually any place in the world by variably detailed satellite images. Some big cities have very accurate images (check this as an example, centre of Helsinki). The rest of the world is covered in a bit less detail, even in that case the places are clearly recognizable (example of my homeplace at Lieksa, Finland). From Golden Gate -bridge to Vatican City, the images are there for you to explore, free..

The new service does not replace the attractiveness of the Keyhole as a application. The smooth 3d navigation, placemarks, overlays and the overall wow-effect needs still a separate application. Also, the mapping information does not yet cover but the USA and UK, for other countries only the country names and borders are available. For finding your way, the Multimap, map24 or some other available services are much more universal.

Having high-street renting blues - now trying internet DVD renting

OK, the DVD rental by mail is n addition to that the local ot a new thing. I have always considered the services a bit too expensive to our usage level. In blockbuster has served us quite well so far - until very recently.

Last couple of times we have had problems to find some bit older titles from Blockbuster. The new releases are covered quite well but the older titles get less and less shelf space. Also there has been many times when we have (after long pondering) selected a movie, just to find out that all of the copies had been rented out. Many people seem to just ask from the counter for some titles and the (busy?) clerks forget to get the box from the shelves.

In UK, the two biggest in the field were Blockbuster and Screenselect. As the first one is the one we try to at least temporarily escape from, we ended up with the latter. The Amazon.co.uk and couple of others are also offering the similar service, some of them - like Tesco - seem to offer the same service as Screenselect just rebranded.



The first brief impressions from the new service:

- The selection is very good. The website claims they have 32000 titles. I had no problems to make the first 20-30 titles needed for the start. I couldn't help noticing a tiny feeling that something is missing - maybe some very newest titles aren't presented as well as in a high-street venue.
- I selected the delivery to be done to my work address. To be honest I was not confident that the dvd:s delivered to our shared staircase would be safe. The delivery system has worked without a hitch so far.

We have now used the free trial, and considering whether we are going to continue. The benefits of the films delivered using your preferred lists has been evident, and so has been the absence of the due dates. Should the monthly fee be couple of pounds less (now about 13 UKP) I wouldn't hesitate, but we'll see. Most probably we continue for couple of months and just do the raw calculations.

Serious vulnerability on Firefox 1.0.3

A serious vulnerability without a fix has been found on Mozilla Firefox. At the moment there are no fix available, and even the latest Firefox 1.0.3 is still vulnerable. What makes this very serious is that there is published exploit available for this..

So before continuing, disable JavaScript or disable the "allow web sites to install software" -feature on the settings.

Please check the securityfocus info page for the latest information.

Edit: Now there is a new Firefox release (1.0.4) with these bugs fixed.

E-Mail moblogging now possible directly with blogger.com

I have waited this ever since started blogging! With the new changes in blogger.com service, I can now photoblog using e-mail directly to the blogger.com. The difference to using image hosting services like flickr.com is that now the images get stored to the same server than the blog, and are therefore easy to backup and admin.

The only gripe using email photoblogging from my Nokia 6670 mobile phone is that I have not found a way to resize the image within the phone. The blogger.com uses the width argument in the img tag to make it fit to the template body text area. As I would like to use the full resolution of the camera I would prefer the service generating a scaled down version for the blog entry and just adding a link to full resolution image. Oh well, in any case this is a good improvement to the previously text-only email service.

The e-mail photoblogging is just a side-effect of larger intent to support blogging from the mobile phones. In the US, blogger.com supports now also photoblogging using MMS (Multimedia Messages). At this first stages the service is supported only in certain operators, the intent is to have this service available worldwide. Basically even with the MMS the image is sent to an e-mail address, the added trick is to associate the postings to certain blog using the sender mobile phone number information. The US MMS users can start a moblog with standard template by just sending a first photo to go@blogger com - the server supposedly replies with the new blog url and a identifier token.

With the "just-email" service, the the blog admin him/herself sets an secret email address is associated to the blog, so the service knows to which blog to add the posting.

Google Maps UK Beta

This is definitely bit different mapping website. Very clean, pretty interface, at least when compared to Multimap. The Map24 service is still far more useful as it covers practically all of the western world. Map24 also has some handy features like measuring the distance.

Check the example of the local search and click the pub names on the right. Isn't that nice eye candy or not? 8)

These mapping services come really useful if you can use them with your mobile. It is possible with the xhtml interface to the pages, at least the Google Local has one. Firefox does not seem to understand the result, but standard Series 60 browser does, as does (yikes) MSIE.

Edit 20050421: Replaced the Google local pondering with working link.

Back from down under

Its been a while since my last post here. The reason has been our three-week trip to Singapore and Australia, and recovery from that.

During the visit to Singapore I was unable to resist the local Apple Centre. The result: I bougth iPod Photo 30G and iPod Shuffle 1G. 8) The plan was to use the iPod Photo in car and longer trips, and the Shuffle during sports and shorter trips. The initial impressions of the both have been very good. Only gripe has been my WinXP laptop, which has not been that co-operative with iPod Photo. With other PCs and my old faithful iBook Tangerine I have had no problems whatsoever.

In order to properly enable the iPod car use I bought a Dension Ice>link to integrate the player to the car stereo. I had it installed today along with Nokia CK-1W Bluetooth carkit which I had acquired earlier. I will post later on with the experiences..

DVD successor battle revisited

Blu Ray and HD-DVD are the two formats fighting the crown of DVD successor. The battle is not won, though as this Softpedia article describes. Both formats have their strong backers, both in manufacturer and movie industry front. However, the issue of how and which DRM system is going to be adopted might be a key issue. As also referred in the article, I cannot help comparing this to the battle of VHS and betamax home video formats. The sad thing is the result might be the same - loss for everybody.

(via Slashdot)

13 things that do not make sense

The New Scientist magazine has listed things or observations where whe observed things do not line up with the current theory. The list starts with placebo effect and discusses also e.g. some anomalies observed in space. Interesting stuff in real-life-twilight-zone -category.

(via Slashdot)

Series 60 malware that uses MMS as spreading mechanism

The title link leads to F-Secure description of the "comwarrior" S60 worm, which uses MMS as a spreading mechanism in addition to the bluetooth.

It was quite a surprise for me to find out that it was possible to send symbian installation packages (SIS-files) as MMS messages! Naturally this is not possible from UI using the built in applicaition. In this case the malware seems to do the sending itself and sending the sis file instead of the media file.

This could have been easily prevented on the network side by just double checking the file type of the file the mobile phone is trying to send.

As stated by F-Secure, the comwarrior is not going to spread widely nor it is going to be a threat to the mobile phones. However, it is an example that the writers of the malware try to find holes in all systems handling data to the mobile phones.

All of the mobile platforms have been relatively free of malware. Especially Symbian OS has been by its architecture very secure to the threats outside the phone. To keep it that way we have to make sure that in addition to the OS platform, the new services offered by the network take security into the account.

Home network woes

First, the power supply of the old faithful D-Link 713P gateway/router died after short power outage couple of weeks ago. I decided to upgrade the home network and ordered new Linksys WRT54G router and WLAN card from the same company for my laptop. The new system should give some extra speed with 802.11g and some extra security e.g. with WPA.

The setup of the new system was straightforward but I did instantly run into problems with the new WLAN card. With my old 802.11b card even the wireless net started to work right away, my old Tangerine iBook did also catch the net wirelessly without a hitch.

My means to correct the situation made the situation worse. When I upgraded the linksys firmware to the latest from the US site, the WinXP laptop started to lose the network every couple of minutes - even with the old WLAN card. Our VoIP phone connection (cheap gransream 102 hooked to finnish http://www.laajakaistapuhelin.net) was resurrected when I set up the standard port redirections, and the wired connections seemed to work just ok. The wireless problems persisted, however, despite trying different drivers and configurations.

Then, one night I decided to try the EU version of the firmware. Never do things like that when you are too tired! I managed to brute-force update a firmware ment for another linksys model to the box, and managed to kill the router in the process!! Completely my mistake.. I would have presumed some kind of checksum check on when updating the firmware, but no. Anyway, I learnt my lesson!

Now I have to send the linksys router to the linksys for replacement, lets hope there is more luck with new one.

After three months of wireless keyboard usage

Well, the keyboard itself has been working like a dream. I have been using it mostly with Nokia 6670. I haven't been able to find a good generic text editor for S60, therefore I have been forced to use the notepad. The Nokia Lifeblog could be a good candidate for writing journal, if it didn't have limitation of the text note length.. I am hacking my own editor application for the purpose, but it is not ready for publicity 8)

The plastic stand - which appeared a bit lightweight to start with - did not stand the constant usage. It seemed that the spring part did dig its way out, which snapped the stand. Superglue fixed this with ease.

BTW I am still using the first set of batteries (!) Maybe using it just my journal is not heavy duty usage after all.

Mac mini

Mac mini is the most interesting announcement of the Macworld 2005 at San Francisco. It is a miniscule Mac G4 computer clearly designed to head on the small desktop/media PC solutions like Shuttle. Starting at 500 USD it is going to end to many homes as a replacement/addition to the old PC box. In many cases the old PC will continue it's life as a linux server, at least that's what i would do.

As my present Mac is too old for the present software I am not touching the sw side now, let's see hows the Tiger like when I get my hands on any newer hardware next summer.. 8)

Kate Bush is working on new album!

Yay! Kate Bush is working on a new album!! If the information on the fan site is correct, it is going to be out later this year.. I was a HUGE KB fan at 80's, and still come back to those songs once in a while. Definite buy for me, I thought that I'll never hear anything new music from her..

[Got the info via Pinseri]