Brian Fitzgerald

They are finally coming…

This killer Coldfusion-based flash application provides a fullscreen (within your browser window) visualization of current news.

I know winter is over, but you’ve done this: You want to lounge around with your laptop and cover up with a blanket. Problem is that you either need to keep the blanket below your arms to use your computer or do some weird thneed-like thing with it to keep it between your arms and out of the way. What if your blanket had sleeves? The Slanket does!

Chax adds needed features to iChat like tabs and growl support.

CNN has a fantastic new layout that is standards-compliant, wide and beautiful. The new site is 980 pixels wide. WooHoo. I’m for anything that aids in stretching web users expectations of what a site is. Monitors are wider, let’s use them.

This awesome umbrella was in this month’s WIRED mag. It receives radio signals that tell it what the chance of rain that day is, then blinks it’s blue handle to communicate that you to you. See the umbrella blinking madly near the door on the way out? Better take it with you!

Think secret reports locations of the many new Apple Stores expected this year and Omaha’s Village Point mall is on the list.

Digital Web Magazine reviews “CSS Mastery”

After reading this interview, I’m more impressed that I was before with the ability to dual-boot XP on an intel mac.

VW’s new Gypsie interface allows you to sync with iTunes, dock your iPod and access both with a fantastic interface in the dash. Wow.

Here's stuff we looked at during <cfgeek> on Wednesday morning

• Mandolux (High-res desktop pictures)
• Color Schemes

• Color Scheme Generator 2

• Steel Dolphin Creative - Color Scheme Generator
• Return of Design Color Schemes
• Color Schemer Gallery
• Colr.org (sample schemes and ability to generate off of provided photo)
  

• GIMP for Windoze
  

Firefox 2 alpha 1 is available. At the time of this posting, it is not yet on the mozilla site, but TechCrunch has managed to find a link to it.

There’s a lot of pages out there trying to be the perfect page to set your browser home page to. PopURLs is about the best I’ve seen. It pulls in all of the top headlines/links, etc from sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, furl, and flickr.

Google has made another acquisition of a cool ‘web 2.0’ site. It has purchased Writely, an online word processor that uses AJAX methods to create a product that is cross platform, cross browser and pretty snappy to use. A year ago or more I think I would have been pretty excited by this, but Google’s releases lately have been, in my opinion, real yawners demonstrating some lack of focus. When they were releasing one great ‘product’ after another, there was no one that I would rather see pick up a site like this. Now that Google is starting to become a bit of a Yahoo, I don’t know. On the other hand, if you put together their email system with the in-development calendar, their as-of-yet unannounced file storage, and now a word processor, you are starting to have all of the elements of your computer on the web. That may be huge.

Microsoft announced and showed off the new Origami at CeBit. Haven’t had much time to take a good read of it, but sure looks cool.

• Windows Live » Microsoft's new me-too start page. Clean look but a little slow.
• MaxPower Icons » Professionally designed icons available for free under the creative commons license. They may even be used in commercial applications as long as they remain free for others to use.
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Screenshots have been leaked of a calendar system in development at Google.

You knew it would be coming. I’m just surprised it happened this soon. You can now subscribe to Comedy Central’s Daily Show and Colbert Report on iTunes. You pay $10/show and you get the next 16 episodes (one month). Get both and that’s $20 a month, but considering that that’s about all I keep cable for, it could be a great deal.

If you have a Tivo (or are thinking about getting one), better do it quick. Next week, Tivo plans to pull it’s lifetime subscription plan which allows you to pay a one time fee of $299 and never pay the monthly fee. Apparently they have decided it’s too good of a deal.

• 30daytags » Site allows you to add references to sites and tag them. All entries remain in the system for 30 days and then expire allowing the entire system to stay fairly current.
• mobileGlu | your mobile glue » MobilGlu creates portable versions of rss feeds, flickr, del.icio.us, and other services. Designed for phones but low-bandwidth design would work great for wi-fi enabled palms or other small (and slow) internet devices.
• NetVibes » Ajax start page
• The Lyceum Project » A version of wordpress designed for multiple-user/blog installations.
• BlinkList » Another social bookmarker?
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• Portable Applications ? FreeSMUG » Macintosh Applications converted to be able to run off of a portable storage device such as a USB drive. The preferences are stored on that drive so that launching them from any computer where you have connected the device will give you access to your bo
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I heard somebody talk a couple of years ago about a taco bell or mcdonalds or something down in Florida that was experimenting with serve-yourself cashier counters. Looks like those combination restaraunts (KFC/Pizza Hut, Pizza Hut/Taco Bell, Taco Bell/KFC) are ready to start trying it out.

• evolt.org - Browser Archive » A archive of browsers. Best part IMHO is the standalone versions of Internet Explorer. With these, you can test multiple version of WinIE on a single computer.
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First video: Mocks Microsofts ability to make any packaging dull and over detailed.

Second video: Is this what Microsoft will be announcing tomorrow? 

• geocoder.us: a free US geocoder » Get the latiitude and longitude of any address
• Google Maps API Documentation » Google's documentation to aid the creation of pages using their mapping service.
• XML.com: Hacking Maps with the Google Maps API » Helpful information regarding the creation of maps using Google's map service and their APIs
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