Help contribute to the networked future – install blog torrent on your weblog. It’s not yet feature complete (it only half works with macs right now but they’re focused on getting that fixed, and mac owners will love their rationale for why this is the priority) but this is another in a long line of examples of the kinds of things broadcast networks should be freaking about, and yet another reason why the damned ISP’s should be enabling fully asyncronous network connections for all of us, two issues longtime readers know I am passionate about. Drop dead simple to get up and running, and the only real requirement is PHP.

This will be up and running on my site as soon as I deal with the recent security issues and get the redesign done. In other words, umm, a year or so from now. Doh!

This is more like a Friday fun link, but what they hey, it’s lunchtime and I’m in a playful mood. Check out Pixelfest – a communal art project where each contributor provides but one pixel to the piece. Will meaning coalesce from the chaos? You can see the seeds of a woodland scene there but it’s not a sure thing that this will end up visible in the whole once it’s done. Contribute your little piece by clicking the link.

Blogbox is a pretty cool idea. They offer a selection of free, open source mini-flash apps you can embed in your weblog. A photo box like the one to the top right on this site (though more fully featured), a link collection tool, a weather box, and a couple of others are available. I linked to them some time ago when they first produced soundblox, their mp3 player. It’s good to see their collection has grown nicely.

It would be exceptionally cool if they integrated support for things like sitebar (a link collection tool which I’m actually running here and gallery. Seems like it wouldn’t be too tough to do.

None of this stuff is likely to show up here in the short term, though it’s possible after the redesign I’ll have two versions of the weblog, one with and one without flash, using stuff like this.

I’ve been talking about IP/packet-based television for a while now and how the potential to completely do away with broadcast tv is getting close. Engadget has just run a great little tutorial on how to roll your own virtual tv station using the azureusbit torrent client and a couple of plugins for it. This is still not something your mom might do, but for most of the folks reading this site it’s a completely workable way to experiment with the packet-tv future now.

You can read more about this over on engadget if you’re interested – basically Creative has announced their intent to dethrone Apple’s ipod as the most popular portable mp3 playing device. My advice to Creative is – focus on the quality and interface on your own products, instead of your marketing. I have a Creative player. It was exceedingly cheap and I got precisely what I paid for – an inferior product in all aspects to an ipod. I don’t mind, I knew this when I bought it, and I bought it more to experiment with than to use (I use an iriver h120 for long trips and a rio cali for jogging). My advice to anyone reading this? Don’t be swayed by Creative’s $100 million advertising blitz – their products are generally inferior and their support is absolutely awful – ever try and track down drivers for one of their soundcard products, or waited interminably for updates to fix known issues? I have, take it from me, they’re not a good company

Here’s another option for using your gmail account as a networked file system – Filebunker. It’s Java based so in theory you can get this running on any OS that supports Java, though the FAQ states that it’s untested on Mac OSX. It adds a few features other utilities of this nature have lacked, including autocompression and autoencryption of your files. This is another excellent option for securely backing up your data.

What if similar to virus definitions, someone kept an exhaustively maintained list of advertising servers on the net, and you could use this list to exclude the ads from appearing in your browser? Sounds great – which it is. To get this going, first make sure you’re using the latest version of the Firefox web browser (which I won’t link to today – the recent release of version 1.0 has left their webservers completely overwhelmed – no sense pouring gas on the fire). Once you have Firefox running, Use the tools menu to install new extensions. Install the Adblock extension. Out of the box it will block and extensive % of the ads you see. Then head on over to this geocities site, read the instructions.txt file, and install the appropriate definitions file. While that sounds complex it’s actually really easy and will work absolute wonders on your browsing experience.

I’ll make the standard comment about how most of the websites you’re visiting rely on those ads to pay their bills, so follow your own conscience. Me, I installed it, and the flashblocking extension as well. This would be absolutely perfect if they could autoupdate the definitions files in the same way

Palm acquired the remnants of the BeOS when that company failed. BeOS was actually a pretty cool operating system, or at least it showed great promise, but going against MS was hopeless and when Steve Jobs took over Apple and locked them out of installing on Macs their fate was pretty much sealed. Anyway a portion of the BeOS developer team has been working on Palm OS 6 for years now, and fans of the old BeOS have been anticipating the release to see that these clever folks came up with. For whatever business reasons, Palm has been slow to release a Palm OS 6 device. Impatient geeks can stop anticipating and start noodling around with it – Palm has long offered emulators that developers can use to test their code, and there’s now an OS 6 emulator available directly from Palm. I’m pretty sure these are win32 only, though in the past these emulators have also been available for macs. If you’re interested in tinkering with the new os, give it a try. And keep your fingers crossed for me that they make this backwards compatible with my much loved Palm Tungsten C.

[updated this 9-2013 to pull some links which no longer work. Amazed that they worked this long since PalmOS has been dead for years now]

This is a fun blog to watch – check out the hackaday.com weblog, where most days they post interesting hardware and software hacks you can tinker with. My favorite of the past week is the personal hovercraft on the cheap plans. I wish we had these when I was a kid.

Check out this inexpensive ‘server appliance’ from Revo – the Kuro Box. For around $160 you get a linux-based web, file and other services server with internal storage and a USB port so you can add additional external storage. Plug it into your network and you’re good to go. I’m tempted to get one of these to use as a dedicated music server on my network, for the price it’s an amazing value.

They’ve got another model coming sometime next year with better networking and additional storage options, you can read about it in their forums if you’re interested.