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One enormous spider WEB (650Ft) has been reported in Lake Tawakoni state park in Texas, US. Apparently the work of millions of tiny spiders (should we be thankful that this was not *one big spider* !!) getting together and possibly starting from a central point and working out. Social CobWeb has been used to describe this, maybe google will sue 
News link is here
A shameless parody by Rich Cando — very good and damn funny too !!!
I am a fan of the XP PowerToys and find the Virtual Desktop Manager (MSVDM) a very useful addon. MSVDM allows you to have 4 separate desktops; including individual wallpaper and start bars, allowing the user to organise their busy desktops. The whole thing is controlled via shortcut keys or menus and includes an over view shot to help find windows you may have misplaced. May not be a eye popping as Beryl on Linux, but its still a good tool on XP.
However, I have found an interesting (annoying bug) when you use this with Access 2007 or Excel 2007 in that when the desktop with either application looses focus the ribbon bar disappears when you switch back to that desktop. I have tested this with other Office 2007 applications but Access and Excel seem to be the only ones with the issue, which in itself is very strange. The application and any work is still loaded but not very useful without any menus or icons !!
Has anyone else noticed this?
Still testing so will post more if anything else comes to light.
I agree that it is not a particularly common set up, (XP + Office 2007 + MSVDM) but it is starting to get annoying and I would rather not have to sacrifice MSVDM.
However interesting this post is about the ease at which some people will part with personal information in the social networking community of Facebook (and no doubt alternative sites) the title alone is worth a mention 
I have been reading about the latest developments for online storage offered by the big 3 as named in this post header. Google have all but dismissed hopes of unlimited free online storage with the announcement that they will offer a paid service storage upgrade for its users. These can be used across both Picasa Web Albums and Gmail (and shortly for Google Docs & Spreadsheets). For $20 a year, Gmail users can add another 6GB of storage to sit on top of the 2+GB which is offered [for free] through Gmail, plus an additional 1GB offered for Picasa. There are more storage options available, going up as high as 250GB for $500 per year. More info on this here
Additionally, Microsoft announced that Windows Live SkyDrive (previously ”Windows Live Folders”) has opened to the public. This free beta service offers up to 500MB of online storage for not just e-mail and web albums (as with Google’s offering) but practically anything else can be stored as well. Through a new look UI which integrates into Windows users can drag and drop their files, plus browse the public directories of other SkyDrives users.
Finally, not to be outdone in such matters Apple has bumped up their storage offerings through .Mac from 1gb to 10gb. Subscription remains the same, $99 a year, but the service also comes with a number of other tools such as web hosting, tight desktop integration and Mac training. More info here
There are alternatives to these providers both free and subscription based but it is interesting to see these companies battle it out on the road to cloud computing (its a long road!) and it will not be surprising to see these services gain functionality and drop in price.
I am currently reviewing these services so will post my findings over the next week or so, but feel free to leave a comment if you have any experience with these.
These are not true “online backup” solutions - I may post about those at a later date.
I don’t know the original source of this, but these are so true and funny ……
1. Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.
2. Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.
3. Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.
4. Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don’t Do It!
5. Loud Sigh: This is not actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to #3 for the meaning of nothing.)
6. That’s Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That’s okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.
7. Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or Faint. Just say you’re welcome.
8. Whatever: Is a woman’s way of saying F@!K YOU!
9. Don’t worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking “What’s wrong?” For the woman’s response, refer to #3.
Microsoft have started to test a new dashboard interface for their Live services (link is home.live.com) where a Windows Live user can get an overview of their personal Live account, i.e. emails - MSN contacts - blog postings and try out other online Microsoft services.
I have just logged in and given this a spin, and well, like any dashboard it was actually good to be able to see a top level view of my services but I was disapointed at the experiences in that when you click to view a service there is no way “back” to the dashboard, other than pressing the browser back button. Well, that works so whats the problem ??? and isn’t that just a niggle rather than a complaint ???… well to me it does not project an intergrated all-in-one experience which is kind of what I would expect. Plus if you try and edit your settings then pressing the back button does not return you to the dashboard…. I actually had to go through the history and select the “sign in” page (interestingly I never had to sign in again but at least I got to the dashboard).
What I did like was the fact Windows Live services are linked on the back end by a common contacts database. So I can post a picture on Windows Live Spaces, its blog - and picture sharing site, and send a notice to anyone on my instant messaging contact list. Plus it is actually very neat to have a portal view … not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination but as Windows Live has about 300 million users who frequently log in to IM or EMail then this can only be a very good move.
If only it tied into non-Microsoft services like GMail, Facebook, Twitter, etc etc etc
Social networking sites are huge … how obviously is that statement !!!! but I came across another side to this upsurge of sites which are known as “Passion-Centric” or “Object-Oriented”. Lets paint the picture: “A San Francisco native who loves the beach, parks, running and dancing, Marco has easily made connections over the Internet, racking up 5,200 on his profile. Not bad for a 4-year-old Miniature Schnauzer.”
Marco is just one of thousands of dogs with a WEB profile on Dogster.com - which is simply an online community featuring pet photos, pet videos, diaries, tips etc etc etc. Its sister site, catster.com, is the same thing for cat lovers and apparently pets are not the only thing targetted … sneakerplay.com is for, well, sneakers (trainers, runnng shoes .. whatever).
These are places for people with particular passions to share that passion and have a bit of fun … not just swap names, photos or “collect” friends.
I’m sure there are other passions represented …. but you may have to clear your browser cache afterwards !!
This just cracked me up ….
A new web search service has launched, but this one doesn’t provide results for the entire web—it only provides results about people. Spock.com went into public beta today after several months of private testingand prides itself in providing the “richest people search experience on the web.”
This may sound creepy at first, but users are able to manage thier own profile pages and also import details from a number of other places, such as LinkedIn and MySpace as well as tags, pictures and contact lists. So why is this different from say MySpace or Facebook? Well, it seems that the general public can also tag your pictures and put information in about you, and as Wikipedia has learned this sort of Openness some members may choose to vandalise profiles with damaging or false information. Spock say that information will be checked, but it is unclear how.
They claim to have already indexed 100 million people, with a new million each day and it is fair to say that a high percentage of these people will not be managing their own profiles.
Microsoft still isn’t commenting on when a beta of Service Pack 1 for Vista will be officially released, but the company has posted two updates that are expected to be part of that final package: the “performance and reliability” update and the “compatibility and reliability” update. These are official releases.
Among other things the Explorer file transfer slowness has been fixed as has hibernate/sleep (well, for some laptops), and a load of video card support issues have been sorted (I will try these on my Dell D810 and let you know).
See KB 938979 (memory performance) and KB 938194 (the one which *finally* lets you play games 
)
While this isn’t beta software, you would be advised to read both KB entries and hitting the discussion thread before installing the updates just to see what to expect and what your fellow Vista users are experiencing… and I will install both and let you know ASP.
Follow a live .Mac web gallery link to see what iMac galleries are now offering …….. It’s very slick indeed…. Drag your cursor over a gallery to “flip” through its photos, and click anyone to view. Once you’ve entered a gallery, you’ve got several options. Choose a grid, carousel or mosaic layout (the carousel is **impressive**), or simply start a slideshow. You may also change the background’s color and resize any photo. Finally, you can subscribe to an album’s RSS feed, send to a friend or add photos (if you’ve got permission to do so).
I tried this on Firefox 2.0.0.4 on XP and it was very nice … I heard that it looks amazing on iphone (don’t have those in the UK yet) and I am sure it looks better on MAC/Safari … but as for sharing photos then I wish Flickr did that
A wonderful opportunity to play with your very own pee and poo
This is a very smart use of furniture but it may take you a moment to guess what it is
