Firefox

The best BitTorrent client, µTorrent, just released it’s latest version. It has now much improved disk caching and other optimizations for faster download speed.

you’re up to date on what they’re all about, they’re just small little programs that can do all sorts of different things, from searching the internet, to providing a clock for your computer, or doing all sorts of other things. The support that they’re getting for the widgets is pretty awesome, too…they’ve got a BitTorrent widget, a Google Toolbar Widget, and my favorite, a feed reader called “Raggerator.” The widgets feature of Opera 9 appears to me like it could shape the future of web browsing. The concept of having all sorts of different programs to enhance your browsing experience is something that sounds really cool to me.

IBM has released a DB2 adapter for Ruby on Rails. it is now possible to write Ruby on Rails applications for a DB2 database.

Eine sehr coole Firefox Extension zur WM. Man kann den Skin anpassen (bei mir natürlich England) und es gibt Videos und Ergebnisse eingeblendet.

BitComet is a p2p file-sharing freeware fully compatible with Bittorrent, which is one of the most popular p2p protocol designed for high-speed distribution of 100MB or GB sized files. BitComet is a powerful, clean, fast, and easy-to-use bittorrent client. It supports simultaneous downloads, download queue, selected downloads in torrent package, fast-resume, chatting, disk cache, speed limits, port mapping, proxy, ip-filter, etc. Supports 43 Languages.

Pandora owns my heart when it comes to listening to music over the internet, but I allow myself certain infidelities from time to time. Mercora uses the power of Ajax in that effective manner that makes you wonder how pages managed to ever seem smooth before. The idea behind the site is interesting: the users are the DJs, the users are the listeners. Essentially it’s a peer-to-peer music-sharing service, but with streaming instead of torrenting, and legal listening instead of pirating. One perk over Pandora is that you can actually search out specific songs and play them on the spot. Instant gratification for your ears.

Apple did something most extraordinary, when Mac OS X was released - they simply put to rest a whole OS and started to build upon solid ground - UNIX-based to be exact. Windows on Vista and all the features such as P2P support (which by the way, this is used EVERYDAY on MSN and other IM clients) and Bittorrent had something going on - something that OS X and other Operating Systems will most eventually adopt - but in the long run.

One might wonder why they don’t just use Bittorrent to distribute the thing like the open source folks do with Linux. Apparently blogger Chris Pirillo had this very same thought:

I agree with Marc. It is really good to see a move to so many applications like Google spreadsheet, Microsoft Live, and Writely available on the net, but the reality is that I still find myself in situations where I need to work, but I still don’t have access to the net.

Although I have Opera installed on my PC (as well as IE7, Flock, Firefox, and Maxthon) I don’t really use it much, but maybe with this latest update I might, as it seems to have some very useful features.

Today I upgraded the wordpress engine to 2.03 to solve some minor bugs and security issues. I also added my Flickr RSS feed to the homepage. For now registration is disabled and will be back shortly(no one registers anyway). I also upgraded the archives pages to support “live archives” which allows the archives to be explored via ajax.

Isn’t this software called Spyware by definition? Since when does spyware have fewer “legal and privacy issues” than BitTorrent?

What Google Spreadsheets does do is confirm the rumors of Google competing directly with Microsoft Office by releasing a web-based office suite of their own. Despite their recent aquisition of Writely, I still refused to believe that this is actually what they were doing. Because, well, it doesn't sound very smart to me. Google's core business – what they do best – is search. And straying from that in order to take on a suite of desktop applications doesn't seem to be in their best interest.

Widgets are useful for displaying user-created microcontent such as: Flickr photos, Writely documents, events calendar, and to-do lists, and del.icio.us bookmarks. Similarly, these gizmos are an effective way of enabling non-user-centric microcontent such as updates on sporting events, stock quotes, quotes, news, and Sudoku puzzles. Start pages may be considered a superclass of widget themselves, allowing users to add multiple widgets within them. Pageflakes has over 70 “flakes” or widgets available for users, and Netvibes offers over 150.

The last few months have been portentuous ones. The U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could radically alter the landscape of the Internet. Microsoft has been becalmed by further delays in the release of Windows Vista and Office 2007, and while it is moving decisively into the realm of network-available applications and services, there is a growing sense that the company is vulnerable. Meanwhile, Google has begun to assemble and make available the pieces of what is expected to become Google Office, mainly by acquiring and then refining AJAX-based products such as Writely. it is already clear that users who don’t require the complexity of an office productivity suite like Office — and that would be most of us — are going to benefit substantially from the eventual emergence of Google Office as well as other AJAX and Java-based productivity applications (because choice is presumably a good thing, and because the use of other competitor products and services will galvanize Microsoft and its developers), but the catalyst for change on a larger scale may be GDrive, the long-rumored Google service that will provide unlimited network storage to registered users and test the notion that the locus of personal computing is gravitating decidedly toward network-based services.

Truthfully, Google is a little late to the online-office apps arena. It's starting to get a little crowded (Backpack, Writely, AjaxWrite, and Zoho to name a few, beat them to the punch). True, they make the platform irrelevant, but application development is way out in front of bandwidth development right now. Bandwidth and net accessibility need to do some catching up. Demand should follow.

Topics will include Flash Media Server, with FlashCommGuru Stefan Richter, and Ruby On Rails for the Flex Developer, with Stuart Eccles. Both of which are fantastic topics to start with and I'm sure of interest to you as a Flash Developer!

Smallwire.net has compiled a list of all Google web application keyboard shortcuts. There are complete keyboard shortcuts for Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Writely, Google Video, and Google Maps.

That’s roughly how long I spent bashing my head against a seemingly impenetrable brick wall trying to get a Rails app to work properly on my server.

The other feature I really like is having an RSS Feed feature. It works much better and faster than previous builds. I might be tempted to give up Onfolio to have my RSS data in Outlook. The one missing feature is the ability to mark all the sub folders as read. If you subscribe to alot of feeds and have trouble staying caught up from time to time, you know how valuable a global “Mark All As Read” can be. I use that feature a lot in Onfolio ( now a part of the Live Toolbar ).

Now here’s where it gets interesting. At around 11 a.m. CET on May 31, 2006, a major raid against ThePirateBay and people involved with the site took place, prompted by allegations of copyright violations. Around 50 officers confiscated the servers and detained several people.

While Microsoft are trying to catch up with Google with their pathetic attempt at an AJAX webmail system Windows Live Mail (still in beta), Google have powered on with their newest product - Google Spreadsheets. You need to signup and get an invite to try it out since it’s still in beta but the ability for multiple people to update a spreadsheet at the same time and chat with each other while doing so is a nifty feature.

I am well aware of the downside, risks etc. but plain and simple: it works, it’s smart and I predict that small businesses and startups will rush to embrace their answer to Excel fairly quickly. In fact, if Google wishes to keep that stock price at such a lofty levels, it should start to aggressively tie up things like a lightweight Corporate Gmail service, Calendar, Excel, Writely, Maps, etc., into a Small & Medium Business Solution.