Some time (must have been ages) ago i recommended Yahoo! to everybody who's looking for a free one-stop-shop for web services (not in a technical meaning): Webmail, Calendar, Homepage (formerly Geocities), Groups (eGroups), Photosharing, etc...
But things have changed: Google - formerly a search engine only - catched up with gMail, gCalendar, Blogger, Picasa, Pages. And today i have to say that Picasa is pretty impressive. Some days ago i was looking for an easy way to organize, share, upload, blog, ... photos. For sure i have my Flickr account and Blogger too (as you can see), and i basically now how to deal with Photoshop, but that's all patchwork. I fired up Picasa - and that was the missing link.
Organize, upload, blog, print, mail, basic modification operations - everything from a single application. And everything is nicely integrated (Blogger, gMail, Picasa Web Album). You can love or hate Picasas user interface, but until now it's the most simple thing i know about to do the daily job. If you know something better please let me know.
I am aware that Google is somehow under discussion those days (Blake Ross) but this doesn't hold me to recommend some of their services.

The fact that there was no update for several weeks doesn't mean that there are no news!

My daughter Helene Sophie was born on 2.11.!

The fact that there was no update for several weeks doesn't mean that there are no news!

My daughter Helene Sophie was born on 2.11.!

Looks like soon our favorite search results (/gmail/gcal/...) will be powered directly from sun Official Google Blog: Corporate solar is coming.
Ok, not really (it's about replacing 30% of power @ google offices in Mountain View, i suppose the huge number of google servers need much more electricity), but hey, i wanted to blog something and solar energy is pretty fascinating.

Christian Handl, a friend of mine is doing a world trip.
Follow him on his journey across the planet: http://christianhandl.blogspot.com/

Besides some other nice features Google Desktop 3 supports searching over multiple computers. To allow that even if another computer is shut down, documents are uploaded to Google's servers. Well, it's obvious that you need that to make that functionality real, but: who would really want to upload his private documents? Have they gone crazy? Or evil (Hint: Google's motto is "Do no evil").
I started to use more and more functionality from Google lately (gmail, desktop2, blogger, ...) but this really frightens me! Maybe i have to rethink my decision!
EFF stmt

Guardian Interview with Joshua Schachter, creator of del.icio.us and according to this interview inventor of "tagging".
Haven't realized that, but i personally think "tagging" is a possible solution for "multi-dimensional information structuring". Del.icio.us, flickr (also mentioned in the articel) and even gmail's "filters" go beyond classical tree-like information structuring. And for me this makes them outstanding.

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | 'I want to build something that grows'Interview with Joshua Schachter, creator of del.icio.us and according to this interview inventor of "tagging".
Haven't realized that, but i personally think "tagging" is a possible solution for "multi-dimensional information structuring". Del.icio.us, flickr (also mentioned in the articel) and even gmail's "filters" go beyond classical tree-like information structuring. And for me this makes them outstanding.

stumbled accross Paul Allen's yacht. well, now i know what those guys do with their money!

Wilson Picket died today. I'm not listening his music today, but i heavily did some years ago - and i still love it.

a wrap up of great free online services (as i was asked about yesterday):

• http://del.icio.us - social bookmarking
  
• http://www.flickr.com - photo sharing
  
• http://mail.google.com - google's mail service
  
• http://www.newsisfree.com - news agregator (haven't investigated alternatives for a long time)
  

and some free software

• mozilla firefox - browser
  with some extensions:
  
  
  
  • adblock extension
    
  • google toolbar
    
  • greasmonkey
    
  • tabbrowser preferences
    
  • ...
    
  
  
• google desktop - desktop search + sidebar panels
  

..to be continued

heise online - Linz AG wehrt sich gegen negativen Powerline-Bescheid
This time for the german (speaking) readers: There have been "Powerline" (Internet via Power Infrastructure) projects in a lot of cities. All of them (afaik) have been stopped. Just Linz AG thinks it can manage the troubles which forced others to give up. Hum.