Exclusive Look at Google Payments

Techcrunch has a scoop on the process behind Google Payments

read more | digg story

The 2006 Best of Web 2.0

Designtechnica has published their list of favorite Web 2.0 sites out there and categorizes them. Topping the list includes Digg.com, Flickr.com, Vimeo, and several others. Congratulations to these site.

read more | digg story

Leader of Yahoo Developer Network quits for Wordpress startup

Toni Schneider, a senior executive spear-heading Yahoo!'s Developer Network, joins Matt Mullenweg and other core Wordpress developers in Automattic (http://automattic.com/). Automattic offers Wordpress.com blogging service and the Akismet (http://akismet.com/) collaborative comment spam filter.

read more | digg story

The Best Time to Buy Everything

CNNMoney reports on the Best Time to buy Air Tickets, Televisions, Houses, Cars, Video Games, and Toys.

read more | digg story

10 classic clueless-user stories

Technology may be evolving at warp speed, but one thing about IT will never change: Techs love to swap stories about the deficiencies of their users. The dumber, the better. That's just the way it works. How else are you going to make it through the week if you don't get to shake your head in disbelief after hearing at least one tale ..

read more | digg story

How Things Work - The physics of everyday life

A colossal list of worthy Physics questions! I bet you'll find one useful.

read more | digg story

How they named companies

Lists of how many corporations got their names. Good read.

"Yahoo!- a "backronym" for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. The word Yahoo was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders David Filo and Jerry Yang selected the name because they jokingly considered themselves Yahoos"

read more | digg story

53 ScreenShots of Latest Vista Release

Microsoft said today's release of the Windows Vista February CTP is "feature-complete". Two new features are Sidebar and Welcome Center. Take an illustrated walkthrough of Vista build 5308 with these 53 screenshots.

read more | digg story

Top 10 Tuesday: Worst Game Controllers

Here's some brilliant ideas that came out of game engineers...

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Desktop Earth - Gorgeous Wallpaper Generator

Desktop Earth generates very high-resolution wallpapers based on NASA's Blue Marble Next imagery. Both online and downloadable versions are available.

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Google releases new Page Creator

"Google Page Creator is a free online tool that makes it easy for anyone to create and publish useful, attractive web pages in just minutes." Whoa, looks very useful for HTML newbies. It must have been quite popular, it's been really slow, o wait...it's actually giving a 404 right now...

read more | digg story

Download 9 Mozart symphonies for free

Danish national radio released 9 mp3s (at very high quality: 256kbps) with 9 Mozart symphonies in honour of the musician's 250th birth anniversary. Download for free.

read more | digg story

Is Yahoo! banning Allah?

Here's an excerpt from the site:

Hello, my name is Kallahar (well, it's an alias, but Kallahar really is a family name of an 1800's Irish family (Ancestry of William Kallahar, born 1830). I recently tried to create a user on Yahoo with my name.

Unfortunately, Yahoo said it was unavailable.

"That's odd" I thought, "maybe I created a user years ago and forgot about it." Thus I tried "kallahar2", then "kallahar3" then "kallahar385753984753". All of them came back as "unavailable".

I did some more research, and came up with the following interesting results. All of these were tested in the "test4allah408754873" format to ensure they weren't simply conflicting with an existing user.

read more | digg story

Real life Counter Strike

Heh, if you play Counter Strike, you gotta check this video out. Hillarious! I just wish it was longer, with more action :)

Must-have Firefox extensions for Web Developers

thecssweblog has a list of 9 Firefox extensions that anyone who works with web technology should check out. Some you might have heard of already, others you might not.
loadaveragezero also has a list of their own.

Here are the extensions that make it to my list:

1. Web Developer - The absolute must-have extension for anyone who builds web sites, no matter how small or few and far between.
2. FireBug - Not your grandma's Javascript console! A much more versatile replacement for the built-in console.
3. Greasemonkey - Lets you add bits of Javascript to any web page. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page's style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page's behavior.
4. Platypus - Works well together with Greasemonkey. The author calls this Firefox extension "active browsing." In effect, it allows non-programmers to interactively alter a Web page, and then save the changes as a Greasemonkey script so the next time you visit the page your changes stick.
4. IE View - Check all the nasty IE bug from within Firefox.
5. LiveHTTPHeaders - It's kinda like Fiddler, it tracks all the HTTP request/response route that happens when you visit a site.
6. Piggy Bank - Just for fun (or not), a glimpse of the future "Semantic Web" browser that lets you take informations found on the web and display it the way you want it.
7. Google PageRank - A nice little extension that displays Google PageRank neatly inside your status bar. Very useful if you don't want to install the entire Google Toolbar just to see PageRanks.

I don't have EditCSS, MeasureIt, CookieCrumbler and Clear Cache Button up there simply because the same functionalities exist in the Web Developer extension, no need to crowd the space.
ColorZilla is not up there as well because I think a desktop app is more suitable for the task.
DevBoi is also a very interesting extension that offers easy access to web-dev documentations, but I just thought the docs are more useful living in your IDE/editor.

Let me know if you think there's a must-have extensions I gotta have on my list.

digg story

Tons of new widgets for Google's Personalized homepage

Although I don't really use my Google homepage, these user-created widgets might be the right incentive for me to do so. Check out them out for yourself: Widgets for Google's personalized homepage. Although I think widgets belong to desktop applications, like Dashboard or Yahoo! Widget (formerly known as Konfabulator)

see it | digg story

"Cheney's Got a Gun" parody song! Hillarious!

A song for Dick Cheney's shooting incident - very funny! MUST listen!
Song produced by Bob Rivers - more info at:
http://www.bobrivers.com/audiovault/downloads/downloads.asp

listen to it | digg story back-link

Early Holodeck? Star Wars Holographic message?

"The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST, President: Hiroyuki Yoshikawa) and Keio University (President: Yuichiro Anzai), in collaboration with Burton Inc. (CEO: Hideki Kimura), have succeeded in the experimental fabrication of a device displaying "real 3D images" which consist of dot arrays in space where there is nothing but air."

Google Web Authoring Statistics

This is actually about a week old, so pardon my procrastination. Google has released a Web Authoring Statistics, "In December 2005 we did an analysis of a sample of slightly over a billion documents, extracting information about popular class names, elements, attributes, and related metadata. The results we found are available below. We hope this is of use!"
The data is presented in pretty graphs. Might be a useful resource for your SEO optimizations project.

Experience Torino Virtually

...through Google Earth! Exclusively for the Winter Olympics, Google Earth and Google Local have been updated with high resolution imagery of Torino, Italy and the surrounding area. The 3D imagery of the snow-covered mountain is amazing, now all we need is simulations of people skiing down and you'll be virtually there.
More info about Google Earth is here: http://earth.google.com/

Yahoo! Developers Network: Cool New Releases

Yahoo! Developers Network has just released some cool new API and Libraries. Yahoo! User Interface Library: a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, HTML and AJAX and Yahoo! Design Pattern Library: Yahoo!'s own monthly publication on design patterns.
If you've never been to Yahoo! Developers Network before, this site is a repository for APIs, libraries, RSS feeds, plugins, tools, etc. It's also home to the newly acquired properties API like: Flickr, Widgets, Upcoming.org, Webjay. The sheer amount of APIs you can develop on makes Google's API page looks like a startup company, imho.

Google acquires Measure Map

Today, Google acquires Measure Map for Bloggers! Measure Map is a robust and user-friendly traffic analysis tool for blogs.
"It was this feeling that led to the idea of Measure Map. Our goal has been to use the power of web analytics to help bloggers feel that same sense of connection with their audience. Today, as the Measure Map team joins Google, our mission remains the same: to build the best possible user experience so people can understand and appreciate the effect their blogs - their words and ideas - can have."
As a fellow blogger, I can't wait to get my hand on this. Bye-bye third party stats provider.

Novelty items, Toys and Optical Illusion

A surprisingly entertaining and educational site that has eye-popping optical illusion tricks and very interesting novelty items and toys. Most products on the site includes video demonstration showing them in action. Check it out: Grand Illusions

The Hardest Riddle / Puzzle on the Internet

If you are crazy about solving mysteries / riddles and if you have intermediate to advanced computer skill, you'll enjoy killing some brain cells at not pron's riddle. Each level you are presented has a clue to get to the next level, and no, it's not a simple point and click. Definitely not for the fainted heart! I am stuck at level 23!

Jay Leno's Photo Booth

Jay Leno's hidden camera in a fake photo booth. If you miss this episode, check it out. Hillarious!

Coca Cola: How chill are you?

Coca Cola has a new project called World Chill, a website that maps how people around the world are feeling at any given time. Visitors rate their feelings according to five fuzzy definitions: "freakin'", "bugging", "uptight", “calm" and "chill", this input makes up a Global Chill Map.

Gmail for your domain

Google is testing a new feature for their email service Gmail: Gmail for your domain. "This special beta test lets you give Gmail, Google's webmail service, to every user at your domain. Gmail for your domain is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software for you to install or maintain." Woot! Another mind-blowing surprise! Google does it again!

Top 10 weirdest USB drives

Think all USB thumbdrives look as boring as the ones you can get at your local BestBuy...think again. Fosfor Gadgets has a list of top 10 weirdest USB drives ever. My favorite: The Sushi drive! Although the iDisk comes at close second, there's a high chance it'll end up in my dog's bowel movement.

Ferrari Design Competition

Serious Wheels has a gallery of 20 finalist models of concept Ferrari done by students from 13 different countries. Which one do you think is worthy?

Do you see dolphins?

Found this in collegehumor.com. "What do you see here? Interestingly, research has shown that young children cannot identify the intimate couple because they do not have prior memory associated with such a scenario. What they WILL see, however, is the nine dolphins in the picture."
Click the thumbnail for the bigger picture.

The War of the Worlds: The Comic

Beautifully drawn comics of The War of the Worlds as told by H.G. Wells. Must see!

It's a Wonderful Internet

An interesting modern fairy tales to tell your geeky children about how the Internet shapes our lives.

Winter Olympics

The winter Olympics in Torino, Italy has officially started! Google Video has an extensive collections of interview videos with the athletes as well as memorable moments on the Olympics. Don't miss American Daron Rahlves spectacular crashes in Alpine!

Panama Canal - 1 week compressed video

Check out this impressive animations of 1 week in Panama Canal compressed into 11 minutes video. Giant tanker ships that usually take hours to cross the canal do so in few seconds in the video.

Guide to Japanese Castles

Like any castles in the world, it is built as a defensive platform and doubles as a symbol of wealth and sovereignity. Check out this unique Guide to Japanese Castles. Complete with beatiful images and informational data about the castle.

Time-lapse animation of complete lunar cycle

Our moon changes slightly every night. Check out a pretty cool time-lapse animation on a complete lunary cycle, courtesy of people in NASA.

iSketch Online Multiplayer Drawing Game

Remember a TV show called Win, Lose or Draw? It's a game where a person draws and the rests have to guess what it is. iSketch is a basically the same game brought online. Play against people all around the world in various languages and categories/difficulties. Very fun and addictive! Shockwave plugins required.

Zillow.com

Find out how much your neighbor pay for her house at a new real estate comparison site called Zillow.com Very cool new site from the guys who brought you Expedia.com
It gives you a satellite view tagged with prices on territories if you zoom out and houses if you zoom in.

Cute Mini Games

Boredom got you in your cube? Why not play these cute mini games by Ferry Halim...and maybe beat the insanely high score. Very nicely done mini games, in both game concept and graphic design.

Yahoo! Mail Beta

Few months ago, Yahoo! invited 500 people to join their Y! Mail Beta test. I was one of the participant. Here's a screenshot of the new upcoming Yahoo! Mail. Already arguably the most popular email client in the world, the new Y! Mail is moving the richness of desktop application to the web Ajaxified.
Everything you would expect from email app like Outlook: Drag-and-drop, reading pane, and so on are built into this new mail. Click on the thumbnails to see the larger version.

Hotmail is also not far behind with their Beta release.



More screenshots:

New Yahoo! Photos

Check out this new Yahoo! Photos video demo. Seems like they incorporate a lot of Flickr goodness and added some nice Ajax touch (interface looks similar to Candygram on the new Y! Mail Beta). I wonder why can't they just merge the two, it doesn't make sense to have two products of the same company compete with each other...

Yahoo! Maps Beta

If you haven't seen it yet, Yahoo! has been testing their new maps for a while now, which features draggable maps, live traffic, plot multiple destination, and so on. Too bad it's done in Flash, the performance is slow compared to Google Maps. Check it out here.

Spacetime continuum a lie?

Check out this guy's theory on spacetime. What he's saying is, there's no such thing as space and time, they are all just an illusion. No time travel, no killing your grandpa, none of that. Good news though, if space is an abstract concept, then in theory we can be anywhere we want in a blink of an eye. Genius or Nutcase, you decide...

Grammy's at Yahoo!

A friend of mine actually does this page, check it out. If you missed it, watch Madonna w/ Gorillaz performance. It's pretty sweet 3D trick they got setup.

Code pasting

If you are a programmer and you wanted to send chunks of codes to someone, chances are you'll use email or IM...and chances are they'll be ugly, badly indented, missing line-breaks, etc.
When I was at college, I ran into this site where you can post your code for free and get a URL out of it. It will preserves line-breaks & indentations, give it line numbers, and best of all, it has built-in syntax highlighting for popular language from C++ to Ruby.
Check out RAFB's Paste()

How it should have ended...

Sometimes movies don't finish the way we like. Luckily, there's a site that shows you how it should have. Very funny animations, check it out.

The art of flight pattern

Check out this beautiful computer-generated artwork of flight pattern. It's interesting how even in the absence of borders, pattern emerges and you can make out continents/islands.

Multi-Touch Interactive Screen

A single-touch screen is pretty common today, but what about multi-touch screen where one or more users could have a larger set of interaction? Watch the Quicktime demo by Multi-Touch Interactive Research on their latest prototype of what's possible on a multi-touch screen.

The Amazing Blue Ball Machine

By putting together pieces of animated gifs, a guy has managed to create an amazing Blue Ball Machine. Try following a ball, it's so seamless you could stretch your browser and it'll keep going and going!

Web 2.0 Compilation

Stabilo Boss compiled logos of Web 2.0 sites into one huge image and posted it on Flickr. Very interesting to look at. You can also click the image on the left to see the larger version.

Yahoo! testing a new design

Seems like Yahoo! is testing a new design for their frontpage. It definitely looks cleaner and sleeker, with friendly icons and user-interface. The page also looks wider than the current.

BIG Beer Ad

This year's Super Bowl's ads might be disappointing. If you still thirst for big ads, check this Carlton Draught big beer ad! Brought to you by design studio: Animal Logic.

Random live webcams around the world

Very interesting site if you are into voyeur...*cough* observing daily lives around the world. Seriously though, I get pretty addicted to watching people from the other half of the globe go about their morning chores when I am getting ready to sleep.

The tallest virtual building in the world

Who says the tallest building is in Taiwan? That title belongs to this building which could scale up to the moon if my calculation is correct :)
You are invited to create your own floor that resembles anything you can imagine. Very creative use of space, some floors are just plain hillarious to look at.
Unfortunately, the building got so tall that the author has to shutdown the project.

Darth Vader's Sith Sense

Star Wars craze might be over, but that won't stop Darth Vader from guessing what's on your mind. Answer few questions and he will guess what you are thinking...dirty thoughts...dirty thoughts...

Send messages to the future

Would you like to talk to your future-self? Now you can! Matt Sly's FutureMe.org allows you to send a time-capsule in a form of email to yourself in the future! You can messages up to 30 years from now, but Matt said most users scheduled theirs to be sent within 3 years timeframe. And most of the messages basically tell the person what he/she is currently doing and ask if he/she has reached the goal of the person in the past.

There're also other sites like: http://www.mylastemail.com/ and http://www.lastwishes.com that will send email to your loved ones when you're dead.

I'd personally stay on the optimistic side for the moment and remind myself 30 years from now not to touch another one of those fatty fries :)

The birth of Simply Web

Simply Web blog was born! Now let's see what the future holds for this baby...

I am going to start moving my old blog contents here, so some of the stuff will be pretty stale (in internet time, that's few months ;))