When Google Talk first came out, many people were excited that they were using the protocol that jabber is built on. There were also disappointments that ALL of the protocol hadn’t been implemented. In fact, the biggest disappointment many had was that a jabber.org instant messenger user could not IM with a gmail.com user. That has all changed…. Google Talk now does “open federation” which basically means IM requests can be passed along from one server to another until it get’s to the server that the IM user is registered with.
Category: General Web/Tech
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Winter Olympics 2006 Turin Italy – technology wibro/wimax
The 2006 Winter Olympics are coming up. This time around, the olympics are being held in Turin, Italy. The official site can be found here. I can’t say that I’ve been a huge fan of the Olympics, but there are things that interest me. First is the security environment. Obviously the Olympics is a high-profile event and unfortunately has been the target of trouble before. I can’t help but have a concern (and prayer) that the security will be clamped down in such a way that all the events go off smoothly and that sport is the main story for their run. Of course, the next thing on my mind is the technology aspect…. from this announcement
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WordPress 2.0 plugins
One of the real hesitations I had in moving current sites to WordPress 2.0 was the thought of “what plugins will break?” From what I saw the supported plugins list was short and so was the “broken” plugins list. Which said many were likely untested. So, after I installed a new wordpress 2.0 setup… I started copying over some of my favorite plugins (from my 1.5.2 sites) to see how they did.
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WordPress 2.0 first impressions
Given that I’ve now had a chance to use WordPress 2.0 a bit, I thought I’d do a couple posts on some of my impressions. For starters, I’m quite fond of the interface for 1.5.2 that I use here. It’s comfortable, I’ve added a few plugins to make life easier and, well… I can’t find anything that just bugs me that I can think of. I do like the look of the new admin interface, it’s very similar, but with somewhat better color-scheming at the top (menu area) of the page. I like the Ajax-ified features in the post-writing tool. It’s convenient to not have to have a page load and go through “clunky” gyrations to add a category on the fly…. definite improvement….
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Google Video Store
It looks as though Google will be selling video content for as little as $1.99 each. At CES today they’ve announced deals with CBS for some current running shows (CSI for instance). Also, a large number of older CBS shows including a few entries in the Star Trek franchise, I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch, etc… will be made available. There’s a deal with the NBA for games (24 hour delay.) Looks like some music videos, and a good deal of other content.
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Google Pack
Google has announced Google Pack available for download It sounds as though there’s a nice bundle of Google (and non-google software) included (Google Desktop, Earth, Picasa, Toolbar for IE, Google Pack Screensaver, Acrobat reader, Norton Antivirus 6 month trial, AD-aware SE personal, firefox with google toolbar.) It sounds as though there is an update manager that can keep all the “google pack” components updated and there are rumors of other applications being made available in the not so distant future (OpenOffice for instance.)
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Fake Google sites….
You know you would think that www.google.most anything would be legit, but.. sunbelt has been given a heads up, that a site posing as Google Belarus (www.google.by) is not actually a google site. It has ads on the main page. Google is looking into legal options it sounds like.
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Google rumors galore….
There are all sorts of rumors circulating about Google’s product announcements tomorrow at CES. There are still stories floating around about a Google PC running linux and there are stories about pay-download videos and a software bundle. No official word on these from Google. (They had denials about PC talks from some of the retailers that were supposedly approached.) The Google Cube is listed as the codename for the Google PC according to one article.
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New “Basics” category
I’ve added a new Computers-Basics category that will be a catchall for all sorts of “what is a” articles and hopefully very simple how-to’s (the kind of things that will have some viewers rushing for the exits, or the search boxes…) One of the things I like trying to do is explaining tech stuff in less than tech terms, or at least in an approachable way. On this site, so far, I’ve dealt with pretty technical issues and the kind of stuff that has a new user searching for an exit (probably the x in the upper right hand corner, or the back button), or maybe a translator. I hope that this series will not need extra referencing to understand. I’ll probably post to this category in spurts….
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The press covering the WMF bug
It’s always a strange mix between comedy and frustration to see the main media outlets cover a tech news item. I usually wince and brace myself when I see any tv news outlet take on a computer issue and likewise when I read newspapers and non-tech publications take on anything of the sort. It’s kind of like movies that use extremely fake computers. Sometimes I think it’s because they’re trying to simplify things for the average viewer, but I usually find that approach somewhat condescending because I don’t think grown adults should be treated like little kids. Anyway, I digress… the coverage of this WMF exploit has been, well, interesting. There was…