Left Turn at Albuquerque

Gmail: Google’s approach to email, has recently announced a bunch of new updates. Gmail has already not too arguably been the best online e-mail solution and the new slew of updates just prove that even more. Maybe with all these new features, Google will finally take Gmail out of Beta? Here are the highlights of the new features:

• Tons of new emoticons that are now available in e-mails, not just chat
• Colored labels to better categorize your e-mails
• Chat with groups of people, not just one on one
• Chat with your AIM friends in Gmail chat
• New 20MB maximum attachment file size
• No invitations needed anymore to sign up for Gmail
• Check up to five e-mail accounts through Gmail

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Following the trend of TV media going online recently, MTV dropped a bomb today by flipping the switch on mtvmusic.com. The site has tons and tons of music videos to watch from the MTV vintage vault to present day material (broadband or FIOS internet connection highly recommended). The site is currently in Beta but the music videos they have are up and running well. Just type in the artist or song you’re looking for and see if it’s available yet on the service. Yup, this internet thing may not be a fad afterall…

More @ mtvmusic.com.

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The music group AC/DC came out with an interesting idea for a music video. An official song video that is meant to be downloaded and viewed in MS Excel. Apparently Excel isn’t just used for adding up numbers with formulas but also as a way to show off artistic videos. Although I couldn’t get it to work on my computer (must be a Mac thing) I was able to watch the YouTube video and it is seems different and unique, much like AC/DC’s style of music.

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Sex Drive looks like a pretty funny movie but how do we know if it’s really worth our ten bucks? How about by watching the first ten minutes of the movie (10:52 to be exact) absolutely free! The first ten minutes of Sex Drive really make you want more too. The characters seem funny and so does the story. This idea of giving away xx minutes of a movie is a good one. Something I hope to see more of in the future.

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I was looking online to see if there was a free version of Crazy Taxi somewhere out there and came across Crazy Shuttle. It’s a Crazy Taxi rip-off where you go around picking up pedestrians and running over others as you try to get them to their destinition in the fastest time possible and it’s fun! What makes it different than Crazy taxi is instead of a 3D world to drive around you can only go drive left and right while swerving up and down. Yes, that’s a freshly hit Cody from Final Fight laying on the ground. Anyone know who the girl is?

Play the game @ Newgrounds.

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I’m guilty of playing Tetris on Game Boy for hours straight. In fact I’d play it so much that I’d see falling blocks in my dreams at night. A while ago, an Interactive Designer named Neave created a falling blocks game called N-Blox which plays similar to Tetris and is just as addicting. Be sure to check Neave’s other games and just browse around the awesome, newly redesigned site, Neave.com.

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So is the internet the future of TV? Maybe one day we will just be able to watch any episode of any show any time we want to. The future is now with South Park. Now I’m a huge South Park fan but I don’t like paying the cable company $60/month just for the privlage to view episodes with tons of commercials whenever Comedy Central plays them. So I just watch South Park Studios which lets you watch any episode of the show (previous to the current season) whenever I want to, for free! All they ask is you get through the ad bombarded site and sit through 3-4 ads per episode. A small price to pay for the brilliance of South Park.

More @ South Park Studios.

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light-Bot is a fun and addictive web game where the user has to guide the robot to certain boxes to get through the level. Unlike typical games where the user uses a control pad to guide the character, in Light-Bot the user writes a program complete with functions to try to guide the robot along the right path.

Play light-Bot here.

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Google has further expanded on its internet empire yesterday by releasing a new open source web browser: Google Chrome. The primary design goals of the browser are improvements in security, speed and stability when compared to existing browsers like IE and Firefox.

I downloaded Chrome this morning and I’m impressed with it so far. The menus on the top of the screen don’t take up as much room, leaving the viewer with more space for viewing the actual web sites. After looking into my crystal ball I predict Chrome becoming as popular as Firefox has become in the next few years.

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Cubeecraft are free papercraft toys you can download, print and cut to create characters and put on display. The details on these little guys are pretty amazing. I created the Duck Hunt character and it took about a half an hour but the final product turned out nice so it’s worth it if you have some extra time to kill.

cubeecraft.com

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There are two neat Olympic related features on the NY Times website.

The first is a 360 degree rotating high-res picture of what it’s like to look off the top of the diving platform in the Water Cube. It would be difficult enough to jump off this thing but imagine doing it with 17,000 people staring at you. Here.

The second is a map of Olympic medals. The countries that won more medals in a particular year are represented by a larger circle. Here.

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The largest vinyl record collection is for sale for $3 million dollars. The owner must sell it due to health issues and a struggling record industry. This is a really good documentary of the story of the man and his records. You can view the official website of the collection for more information.

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I was recently going through my closet and found my old Speak & Read, similar to Speak & Spell, the popular computerized electronic game that teaches you how to spell. I was curious on the history of the Speak & Spell and discovered that it was first made in 1978 where it was shown at CES (Consumer Electronics Show). It was a very popular toy in the 80’s, highlighted by an appearance in the Steven Spielberg classic: E.T. before slowly fading as computers became more popular. I then came across the Speak & Spell Simulator which accurately simulates the classic learning toy.

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Ten years ago, no one would have thought that the internet would be what it is today. People practically live online by doing everything from banking to trading stocks to ordering food on the internet. I don’t see this going away but I see the interface and the way we view it changing dramatically one day.

Away will go the method of opening up an internet browser to view the internet. I predict that one day a new computer will only run the internet. There will be no other programs needed on that computer and just about everything will be web-based. It seems to be already headed that way now.

Further down the road I can see the internet stepping away from personal computers and laptops we carry around with us. How will we view it then? Everywhere we go will be hooked up. There will be monitors on our shopping carts to assist us at the store and personal shopper helpers (PSH’s?) we carry around with us at other stores.

I also see a wearable device similar to sunglasses that tell people different things about different areas. For example if someone is looking at a building and wondering the history of it as well as what they sell inside, the wearable device will know you’re looking at it and download the info directly to you. If you’re at the store and interested in an item, the device will give you product reviews, a detailed description and even if you ever bought it before. There will be many possibilities for this technology.

While I enjoy the internet and everything it provides for us today, it’s fun to think about what we may see tomorrow.

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