Code and Coffee

Todays’ YouTube clips are all about Google. See in an inside look at the Googleplex and what it’s like to be a Googler. Also, how they got the SpaceShipOne inside the Googleplex.

Inside the Googleplex

SpaceShipOne Arrives at Google

Good mail solutions are hard to come by, and most of the solutions that your company needs and wants will end up costing you and arm and a leg. @Mail has long been a great, robust, and slick looking solution, that will not put a hole in your wallet. The only problem with @Mail, is that until now it was only available in Perl. CalaCode has put the finishing touches on the PHP version, and it has finally launched after 18 months of development. @Mail comes in two versions: a webmail only solution, and a full mail server solution.

How many logins do you have? 100? 200? 500? Are pushing a 1,000? I have a bunch, too many to count. I use the save login feature in Firefox as do many. Have you ever gone to a website where it asks for your username, so you enter the usual “JohnDoe, JohnDoe1, JohnDoeTheStud, JohnDoeTheMan”, only to find out that the username as really your email address? If the login for your site is actually an Email Address, then you should label it so; otherwise it causes confusion.

Just a user interface pet peeve I guess.

Transparent Desktops, or transparent screens are showing up all over the web, and some are a just remarkable. What are transparent desktops? Well like the picture to the left, they are simply pictures of your desktop modified to make it loop like your monitor is transparent sometimes with human interaction involved. So how are these things made? You are in luck, PhoTut has a tutorial you can follow to make your very own transparent desktop. If that isn’t enough, MacMerc.com has another excellent tutorial as well.

If you end up creating a transparent desktop of your own, send it in; I would enjoy taking a  look at it. Maybe sometime, if I have time, I will make one of my three monitor setup.

I have Megite as my homepage, and much to my surprise tonight at 12:45 P.M EST, the site appears to be down and forwards to this page which claims that the account has been suspended. Hmmm… wonder if they went over their bandwidth cap, or if someone forgot to pay the bill. Weird…

Snocap has apparently seen a 2000% percent growth recently, which I guess means it’s finally open for business. Snocap is a company started in 2002 by Shawn Fanning and others, with the goal to “create the next generation of online music distribution”.

Shawn Fanning of course was the creator of the original Napster back in 1999, and arguably started the digital music generation. Napster took MP3’s from the hard to find FTP sites, to an all-in-one easy to use, yet illegal solution. Shawn has kept a very low profile since the downfall of Napster, only now to pop up again with his new venture in the working since 2002.

People love their weather, widgets, weather stations, smart phones, television tickers; the weather is everywhere. Weather.com has launched interactive maps on their site, and they look really good. The new maps use Flash technology, as appose to other online maps which are heavy in the HTML, JavaScript, and image department. I am not sure that this type of map could be done in anything other than Flash, with the level of detail and options you have to interact with the map. Now all we need is someone to make this into a widget or a smart phone plug in.

BitTorrent.com launched today, and already today there are mixed reviews. I have not had time yet to try the service, but judging by some of the reviews I may not be quick to run out and do so.

Webware has a list of 10 pros and cons, and GigaOM has 5 reason the service will fail. Definitely some interesting thoughts revolving around the new service.

Firefox 2.0.0.2 was released on Friday, must have been after my quitting time. On the list of fixes and enhancements are a security update, better Windows Vista support, new languages, and a permission bug fix. You can read all of the juicy details over at the Firefox page.

Ars Technica has a great article about the browser market, and who’s winning or loosing the race. I’ll give you a hint, it’s good news for Firefox lovers.

Lifehacker definitely doesn’t need links from me, but they are running a poll that not only I would like to see the results for; but I am sure there are a bunch of people out there who want the results as well.

The best thing about this poll, is the audience is mostly tech-savvy users; and we are the users that usually pave the way for the masses to use these products. Look at Firefox.

Go over to Lifehacker, and vote!

At the time of posting Google Apps is over Microsoft Office 45.5% to 34.6%. Very interesting!