[Geeks Are Sexy] Technology News

Who are the people who define the Internet?

By Mark O’Neill

I came across an interesting list called “15 People Who Changed The Internet” and all the obvious characters are on there - Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Sir Tim Berners-Lee… but the list got me wondering who is NOT on there.

As with any product, it’s one thing to invent the Internet but it takes a lot of people to develop it and take it to the next level. We’re on Web 2.0 at the moment, and we are well on our way to Web 3.0, so I find it very difficult to believe that we can condense “People Who Changed The Internet” down to a nice neat list of 15.

So since we’re all geeks here, who would YOU nominate for the list? Who would YOU say is a major mover and shaker online? Do you agree with the list? Who would you kick off and why? Who would you put on, and why?

Planet Earth Forever

Just because Earth is a beautiful place. Music by composer Jo Blankenburg. Enjoy!

[Via Neatorama]

What Do YOU Use To Check For Domain Names?

By Mark O’Neill

One of the things I like to do is research and buy web domain names. I am NOT a cyber-squatter mind you but I like to think up creative URL’s, see if they are available, buy the domains for a year and see if I can make a project out of them or not. If not, I release them out into the wild for someone else to snap up.

But I have never been able to find a decent domain searching tool. I have been using Yahoo Small Business’s URL search engine and on occasion, I have also been using WHOIS. But I’ve been wanting something else, something with a bit more….of a punch I guess.

Today, Web Worker Daily pointed out a really interesting domain searching tool called Domize which is rather interesting. But I still feel kind of unimpressed with these tools. For a start, where is the support for foreign domains? What if I want a German .de domain? Next, where’s the skimpy bikini model on the screen cooing and complimenting me on my domain name choices? I mean, come on man! Do I have to do everything around here?!

Does anyone know of a really fantastic free domain checking tool that they use personally and would recommend? Preferably ones that don’t push you towards GoDaddy afterwards and just tells you instead the availability of domain names. Real time checking-as-you-type is a plus as well as foreign domain support.

Plus I seem to vaguely remember that there was a service or a webtool a couple of years back that alerted you when certain domains were released back onto the open market. So if you were waiting for a certain domain to be freed up, you could put a watch on it and you would be alerted by email when it became available again. Does anyone know if such a service still exists?

Free Subscription to PC Magazine

We’ve got a special offer for you today folks; we’re offering you a free subscription to PC Magazine, no strings attached!

PC Magazine is America’s #1 technology magazine, providing lab-tested technology information that helps you at work, home, and on the road.

In every issue you’ll find smart, practical solutions for getting the most out of consumer and business technology, expert buying advice across a wide range of business, productivity and consumer electronics product categories and deep, entertaining insight from industry-leading columnists.

Subscribe for free here! (U.S. only)

Xobni: Email Made Easier Than Ever

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Fellow Outlook users, prepare to revolutionize your email experience.

Allow me to introduce you to my new best friend and personal assistant, Xobni (pronounced ZOB-nee, and spelled like a backwards inbox). He and I just met this morning, but we’ve really hit it off.

Xobni is a powerful little tool that’ll save you time and effort in your electronic communications. It’s been under development in a limited beta release up until this week, so now’s your first chance to give it a whirl. I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of how it can help me, and I’m already blown away. Let me get you acquainted.

Easy indexing

Perhaps the most useful part of Xobni is how it indexes and threads content. Taking a cue from Gmail, the program lists emails in “conversations,” so you’ll see all the back-and-forth replies to any message together in one window within Outlook (Xobni runs as a sidebar inside the program). Having that info so readily available, without even having to navigate away from your current message, is quite a convenience.

But where Xobni one-ups Gmail is in its attachment handling. Who hasn’t needed to find an old attached file and forgotten where you saved it? When you have an email open, Xobni’s displays a box that shows you every single file you’ve ever exchanged with that person and lets you easily access them. I have no doubt this will save me on many occasions. But it’s only the beginning of what Xobni can do for your inbox.

Quick connections

The neat thing about this utility is how it logically connects everything in Outlook. Open up an email from someone, and everything you could possibly need to know about them appears in the sidebar:

• You get all their contact info, including — here’s the best part — phone numbers extracted from their past emails. Xobni will pull their digits from their signature and save them for you, without you ever having to do a thing.
• You get a list of people related to your sender, like coworkers or others with measurable connections. Xobni analyzes emails they’ve sent, looking at things like shared recipients, to deduce and organize this data.
• You get a bar graph of what times of day they email you, so you can easily figure out when they’re usually at their computer and most reachable.
• And you get a chart showing the balance of inbound and outbound messages. Think you’re emailing your boss way more than he’s emailing you? Xobni will let you know at a glance.

Xobni also has far more powerful (and far less time-consuming) searching than Outlook, plus another fun Google-esque feature: analytics. Makes you wonder why Microsoft didn’t think of all that.

Xobni is available for free downloading at the developer’s web site. The program supports Outlook 2003 or 2007 running on XP or Vista.

Watch Out For This Watch

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I often write about cool gadgets we’d all like to own. Well, my friends, today I am turning the tables and focusing on a pricey little gadget you should be embarrassed to own. This is the $300,000 watch…that doesn’t tell time.

Have you heard of this thing? It’s the hottest new “luxury” item to hit the jewelry market in years, and quite possibly the stupidest. Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome came up with the concept, called the Day&Night, and already has it selling like hotcakes. In fact, the watch sold out completely without two days of its launch and is now on backorder.

“With no display for the hours, minutes or seconds, the Day&Night offers a new way of measuring time, splitting the universe of time into two fundamentally opposing sections: day versus night,” Jerome explains on his web site.

The watch has two tourbillons — fancy lil’ wheels that can balance the effects of gravity to keep your watch accurate. Very important, clearly, since this watch doesn’t actually tell you the time. It instead, as the name suggests, only shows you whether it’s day or night. But it evidently does so within a millisecond of accuracy.

Now, the designer’s whole selling point is that it’s the “ultimate luxury” to not have to worry about time. And I get that. When I’m not on a specific schedule, I’ll leave my watch at home. It makes me feel as unconfined as a freshly escaped farm sheep roaming the countryside. The difference, of course, is that I’m not paying $300,000 for that readily available luxury.

Jerome calls the Day&Night a “new interpretation of time.” I call it a “new waste of time” — and money. Sorry, high society, but this one is taking the idea of silly spending just a bit too far.

World’s First Digital Camera

Ahhhhh the 70’s… the decade where the first Star Wars movie was released, where afro haircuts where all the rage, and where the first digital camera came into existence. Yep, you read that right! In 1975, Kodak released the world’s first digital camera prototype, a clunky-looking device that used casette tapes as the medium to store pictures. Each photo took 23 seconds to snap, producing a 100-line black and white image that could only be displayed on a television set. No wonder why it never became popular.

[Via TechEblog]

Perform Ego Searches Online With Addict-o-matic

By Mark O’Neill

We’re all guilty of it. Every so often, we put our own name into Google to do an “ego search” to see what pops up and to see who’s saying what about us online. But the problem about doing it on Google is that sometimes you get irrelevant results. I mean, putting “Mark O’Neill” into Google gives me results about Mark O’Neill the Irish radio DJ, Mark O’Neill the Irish painter, as well as the make up artist, the fashion designer, the rugby player and the singer. Then there’s me.

So a new online ego searching service called Addict-o-matic is proving to be quite interesting because in the past few days that I have been using it, it has been returning quite surprisingly relevant results.   Perhaps this is because it is only returning results based on various blogging, search and social networking sites, all within the last 24 hours or so.  So if you’ve been active online on those sites since then, there’s a good chance you will find yourself. I mean, what are the chances of Mark O’Neill the Irish painter turning up on Digg the same time as me? Not very likely.

The only downside to Addict-o-matic is that you only get five results and then you have to click through to the site (Digg, Flickr, etc) to find more.   But since the service has only just started, maybe this is just a temporary glitch which will soon change.   Either way, this is a site worth watching if you perform regular online ego searches and Google just isn’t cutting the mustard.

Mirror’s Edge

You’ve probably noticed that we don’t cover video games very often here on [GAS], probably because I’m not very much into them myself right now. But when I saw the upcoming “Mirror’s Edge” title set to be released for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC, I couldn’t help but post some in-game footage action. Check it out, it looks totally amazing!

Could we be about to see a pre-paid iPhone?

By Mark O’Neill

Italy could prove to be the turning point for the Apple iPhone. Vodafone and Telecom Italia have announced that they have both won contracts to bring the iPhone to Italy - the first time that two competing networks will sell the iPhone in the same country at the same time - and this may have a knock-on effect elsewhere in other iPhone markets.

Vodafone will also sell the iPhone in nine other countries where the customers prefer pre-pay phones instead of contracts - and we’re talking BIG countries here such as Australia and New Zealand, not poor Third World ones. So if Australia and New Zealand rolls out pre-paid iPhones to satisfy their customers, how long before they reach the US, UK and Europe? Not long I imagine. And how will Steve Jobs feel about his beloved iPhone being used with top-up pre-pay cards?

My own personal feeling is that pre-pay iPhones would actually do well here in Europe where sales are actually very disappointing and the price of an iPhone has been slashed very heavily to try to boost sales. Here in Germany, the price of an iPhone has plummeted from an initial EUR 400 down to EUR 100 and STILL they are not selling. But imagine if they were to be sold with a pre-pay card instead? I would immediately buy one and I’m sure others would too, if they weren’t handcuffed with an expensive long-term contract.

But with the Skype phone out and a Google Android phone due to come out soon, I can’t help but wonder if Apple have missed the boat. They may have had their moment and blew it by bringing out their phone with too high a price and too restrictive a contract. Now it’s Skype and Google’s turn to swoop in. What do you think?

Via Times Online