Super Ginormous

Month: October 2005

  • AOL Triton Update

    AOL Instant Messenger Logo

    It looks like AOL is giving it’s popular Instant Messaging app: AOL Instant Messenger a brand makeover. The logo shown to the right features the new AIM “speech balloon” that is prevalent in marketing materials promoting the new AIM Triton Beta client.

    I’m surprised that AOL has taken this step to brand AIM more than it has in the past. In the past, they only used the little AIM “buddy” as the logo… but the new materials seem to either place him in a less significant role, or eliminate him altogether. But I guess they see AIM as being more central in their future plans.

  • Google Reader Revisited

    Google has released some pretty impressive products in the past couple of years: Gmail, Google News, Google Desktop, Google Earth, etc. Sadly, Google Reader doesn’t fall into that category.

    I know it’s still in the Labs… but Google Reader is a big disappointment. Adding feeds to your subscriptions is a bit of a hassle (unless you search for them). I spent at least half an hour trying to add to RSS feeds. The way Reader is setup you have to Preview the feeds first, then subscribe to them. (I know I want to read what’s on em, I don’t want to preview it!) The system was way too slow. It was way to heavy on the AJAX (if you’re going to use it, make it be there for a reason!)

    The idea behind Google Reader is sound, but this first iteration really stinks. I’ll give it a few months to “grow up” and then maybe, just maybe, I might give it a try once more.

  • Yahoo Unveils Podcast Site

    Yahoo! revealed its own Podcast website. You can search through podcasts, tag em, and subscribe to them all through our browser.

  • Say hello to my little friend: Google Reader

    Google Reader BetaGoogle just launched Google Reader, an RSS aggregator. I’ve been using Bloglines for a while… but I think I may be making a switch in the near future.

  • Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 Released

    Mozilla Firefox Deer Park BetaYou can snag it here: Mozilla.org I plan on downloading it as soon as I get into work. I had some rendering issues with Beta 1, that I hope have been improved upon. One of the issues being able to access authenticated feeds.

  • Upcoming.org

    Upcoming.org

    Upcoming.org is a social event calendar, completely driven by people like you. Manage your events, share events with friends and family, and syndicate your calendar to your own site.

    Note to self: add to that: Upcoming.org is now a part of Yahoo!

    Another great concept for the web was snatched up by one of the big guys. Yahoo!’s been on a buying spree lately. Wanna make some fast cash???? Quick… start a ‘Web 2.0? company, build an app on Ruby on Rails, and build up a lot of hype around it. Yahoo! or one of the other major players will be around to buy you in no time! ;)

    All joking aside… congrats to the Upcoming.org team. It’ll be interesting to see what they’ll be able to accomplish now with the support of Yahoo!

    (Hat tip: 43 Folders)

  • One More Thing…

    What’s Apple got up it’s sleeves now? Rumors are flying about a possible Video iPod, a Video-enabled AirPort Express, and more… What do you think it might be?

  • Subscribe to iCalendars in Outlook 2003

    Heck yeah! Got further validation that I am a GEEK. I am absolutely giddy about news that I received via email from Daniele Tiles about the SourceForge Project: RemoteCalendars.

    RemoteCalendars is a COM-.NET Add-in for Outlook 2003, written in C#. After installing this plugin, every Outlook user should be able to subscribe, reload and delete a generic remote iCalendar (RFC 2445) from Outlook 2003.

    This is what I’ve wanted for quite some time for Outlook. It’s definitely going to make Basecamp more usable for me… now that I can subscribe to project Calendars and get an overview of what’s going on in Outlook, or on my PDA.Daniele – THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for building this. You’re my hero.

  • Pregnancy Update

    Things are going well for Kim and the Baby! She enters the 3rd trimester on Wednesday. We’re both excited to be so close to the end.

    Life threw us a curveball over the weekend. We discovered that the Baby Gender Mentor might not be as accurate as we previously thought. A recent report on NPR and posts on several websites, including in-Gender.com, have caused us to seriously doubt the results we were given back in July. We’ve invested a lot of time and money in getting ready for a boy. If Kim has a girl, we won’t be devestated, but we’ll definitely be inconvenienced at the start.

    To avoid any issues, we decided to give a local company – Prenatal Imaging – a try. They specialize in 3D ultrasounds. Hopefully, they’ll be able to give us better insight as to what Kim and I should be expecting.

    I know it’s a little weird to be so concerned about what the gender will be. I wish we could be more patient like my boss and his wife were (who recently gave birth to a baby girl!). They didn’t know what the baby would be til she came into this world. I’m too inpatient, though. I’m like a kid at Christmas. I see the present. I want to know what’s inside. Know what I mean?

    Anyway, we’re going for the u/s appointment on Thursday at 4pm. It’s not cheap, but it could give us some piece of mind. Kim’s got enough stress on her as it is. She doesn’t need to be worrying about what’s inside her, too. (Because that’s all she’s stewed over all weekend.)

  • Writeboard is here.

    Writeboard by 37Signals

    Looks like the guesses were right: Writeboard is here. As usual, 37Signals has created something useful AND easy to use. This new online application offering allows for online collaboration with text documents. The interface is really clean, simple and well thought out.

    I setup my first Writeboard in about 5 seconds. I started writing text to my Writeboard in under a minute. Now, if I wanted I could invite others to collaborate on my document, export the text to a text file, or send it to myself via email.

    Probably one of the coolest features of Writeboard is the ability to have version control on documents. This is has been heavily requested as a feature for Basecamp, and I hope they are able to incorporate it there because it would be very useful. Best thing about Writeboard? It’s free!

    Update 7:39am: It looks like they’ve added Writeboards to Backpack as well. I finally took some time to read the Writeboard homepage to find out more about the app.

    Update 10:00am: The official Writeboard product announcement can be found here: http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/writeboard_is_live.php

    Nice job, again, 37Signals.