Base made an appearance yesterday and then quickly went dark. This new
Google service is going to be offering some interesting database type
services, which I am predict just from a quick look of a screen shot
that was captured may compete with Craigslist and other social
applications.
Geek News Central Revealing Links & Useful Technical Information
Here’s the screen cap
c|net
is reporting that Google is hiring programmers to improve OpenOffice.org.
(Duh), as it sits now it’s basically unusable. The only ones that are using it are the ones that have to or are forced to. Everyone thought it was a great idea 5 years ago when Sun turned it over to the open-source community. But since then it started to get bloated and things got worse instead of better. Of course Sun realized they alone could not take on M$.
Now a couple of weeks ago we talked about Google making an online, portal based office suite. Certainly some applications don’t lend itself so well to this but if anyone can make a go of it Google can, and this is just the first step of them warming up to the idea.
The 80/20 rule applies here as it does everywhere else. 80% of the world only uses about 20% of Microsoft Office features. So you can easily satisfy 80% of the worlds needs out of the gate by giving them a feature rich web based office experience that’s compatible but doesn’t have everything. People want everything but they don’t need it. If it’s FREE they certainly will use it.
The 20% that use the higher end wiz-bang features will never be happy with a web based experience anyway. So don’t try to solve their problems with 1.0 or even 2.0
About 80% of the documents I work with each day could easily be handled by an online office suite, if done properly, 20% can’t and probably never will.
But for the cost differential, I’m willing to bet that some organizations, a lot of organizations will find a way to deal with the 20% that will struggle.
Google Office is coming… Write it down.
I’m guessing that poohbah figured out how to make dashed borders with css 
Say you want to put a box in the sidebar of your website with the latest posts from a collection of websites. Simple. Use RSS right?
Right, but first you need to mix the different RSS feeds into one big feed. To do this, you use an RSS mixer. (just google on that and you will find a bunch of them). I used kickrss to do this. Works great and the price is right.
Then you can use feed2js to create some nice java script that puts it on your site. Easy. As it should be.
Last week the fine folks at insomniac games release the 4th game in the Ratchet & Clank series, Ratchet Deadlocked.
We grabbed a copy tonight and in traditional Ratchet & Clank fashion it’s a keeper. Each game it clearly getting more complicated.
If you haven’t played the R&C games prior, I wouldn’t suggest this game a the first place to start. You’ll miss out on a lot. Besides the 3 previous games are all classics so you can pick them up for a song.
This game picks up where the 3rd game left off. If you enjoyed the battle arena in Up your Arsenal, this game a boat load more of that. There is a single player game mode, but the point of this game is “Blowing $#% up online”, more importantly, using the ubber cool R&C weapons we all know and love to blow other people up.
Now I just need to get my PS2 online wirelessly because it’s not in the same room as my Internet connection.
Grab a copy of this excellent game! You won’t be disappointed.
If you’re not familiar with woot! You should check them out 
A deal a day, sometimes crap, sometimes not. Today’s goodie is a Western Digital Caviar IDE 250GB drive for $69.99 +$5.00 shipping.
Just the drive, no cables, or instructions and a 90 day warranty.
Not bad for storing your photos and what not. This doesn’t aim to be a bargain blog, but when I find a good deal I’ll point it out, and this is a decent deal.
These are refurbs, refurb drives are what they are, but at least you don’t need to hassle with a rebate.
I’d use one of these in home use, not for a server or anything super serious.
-Caveat Emptor
-Your mileage may vary.