How could I let this slip me by? This is my last post with w.Bloggar v3 as I am downloading this baby ASAP. If you're unfamiliar with this wonderful app read below. The w.bloggar is an application that acts as an interface between the user and one or more blog(s); in other words, it is a Post and Template editor, with several features and resources that the browser based blog editors do not offer. Because w.bloggar runs over the Windows GUI, it allows the user to edit posts without being connected to the Internet. Posts can be saved locally; and anytime the user wants to publish a new text, one click on the w.bloggar icon in the system tray brings up the editor, and one more click will post it to the weblog.

Ooh, this looks nice. Just read about the Sonos on ProjectNeo and completely fell in love with it. Sonos is the first and only digital music system that lets you play all your digital music, all over your house — and control it all from the palm of your hand. Best of all, you don't need a PC in every room, a music server or a wireless network. Just a Sonos ZonePlayer and speakers in the rooms of your choice and a Sonos Controller in hand to access all your digital music, no matter where it's stored — on your PC, Mac or Network Attached Storage box. It's not cheap, the remote and first unit will come to about US$ 900.00 (although you can get a bundle with two units and a remote for about US$ 1200.00) but the iPod'ish good looks and coolness factor of the whole thing should get quite a few tech-hungry yuppies excited. Lovely.

While both MSN and Yahoo! have taken up most of their time catching up to Google, things are finally starting to get exciting. With it's announcement of Internet Explorer 7, new desktop search app and (ugly) upgrade to its MSN Search Microsoft is kick-starting it's fight for the web again while Yahoo! sneakily announces Y!Q a contextual search system that provides relevant links to pages being browsed (better explained here). All the while Google continues to innovate at a great pace. It will be interesting to see how things pan out. It is more or less certain that Google will release a (most likely) Gecko engine based browser while Microsoft will attempt to further integrate more into their applications while dodging law suits. Yahoo's future is less certain, while they enjoy a relatively large user-base they are vulnerable of losing it to MSN (OS/browser integration) or Google (street cred). I don't know how much Y!Q is going to help Yahoo! gain ground as it doesn't seem to have that "everybody wants this" feel that many of Google's releases have had. We shall see. To be honest I don't see how much longer we can go before web search becomes completely ubiquitous, built into every application, operating system, mobile phone, etc... This is what the consumer truly wants, not a site, a resident application or some sort of toolbar but a completely transparent contextual and integrated search system that does the job inside or outside the browser. Maybe a new feature of operating systems (desktop or mobile) should be "search engine of choice" where you can select to integrate your Windows XP with any search engine depending on who's results you prefer.

Just caught on my good friend Contantinos' blog that Mr. Kottke has decided to quit his job to concentrate on his blogging. While his site is full of remarkable content and has a strong readership it will be interesting to see how he manages, especially since he's going the "user donation" route. Like the most of us however, I better stop blogging and get back to work...

Sierra have released a F.E.A.R. multiplayer beta. F.E.A.R. is the latest in the line of next-gen shooters that promises to out-gorgeous (and out-lame name) the latest gorgeous (and lame named) FPS. I'll be downloading that A.S.A.P. and write a short review I.I.A.G. (if it's any good). Also available for your downloading pleasure are the Empire Earth 2 demo, the Splinter Sell: Chaos Theory demo and the S.W.A.T. 4 single-player demo. I am utterly dissapointed that the remake/update of Geoff Grammond's awesome Stunt Car Racer has been binned. I still count the original as one of my favourite games of all time. Cars on rollercoaster tracks, genius...

We launched a viral a while back that caught on just about everywhere, but nowhere quite like in Asia (mostly Korea and Japan). With a large percentage of the population on broadband and a quirky sense of aesthetics and humour I guess our little dancing dudes must have struck just the right chord. It was extremelly exciting to see well over 15,000 people a day coming from Korea, Japan & Taiwan. It went viral in these countries days before Europe and the States picked up on it, without any marketing. But enough with the self-praise... I'm actually quite interested in what works truly globally. We know that the penguin/yeti game went global while other virals are more contained. There are some cultural issues and humour usually travels pretty badly unless you distill it like, say, Mr. Bean. Different regions consider different things fun, a pachinko based viral might not catch on in Europe while a football (soccer) penalty shoot-out might get ignored in the US. Recently that Numa Numa guy took the States by storm but didn't really make a ripple in Europe. Why? Possibly because that song was unknown in the US while it was in the charts for weeks in most European countries so the novelty had long worn off (and in many cases turned into pure "Ketchup Song" style disdain.) A good example of western vs. eastern design comes in the form of the decision to have Everquest 2 characters redesigned for Asian audiences. I must admit I prefer the new Asian (Final Fantasy-esque) ones. You might also want to check out Kingdom Hearts to see something oh so strange yet utterly brilliant. Also, be sure to check out Samurai Champloo by Shinishiro Watanabe (of Cowboy Beebop fame) for some seriously excellent anime.

A wise somebody once said that the internet was a place where men were men, women were men and children were FBI agents. It's hell being a parent in a connected household nowadays and in its continuing effort to make the world a safer place Microsoft has decided to teach parents about how kids communicate online (thanks George). Leet words can be expressed in hundreds of ways using different substitutions and combinations, but once one understands that nearly all characters are formed as phonemes and symbols, leetspeek isn't difficult to translate. Indeed, leetness can be expressed in hundreds of ways. You could virtually slap someone around with a big large trout and type out "0wn3d j00!", humiliate someone asking a relevant question in a forum with your sharp wit ("h3y n00bz, g0 fux0r y0s3lf!") or quite possibly make friends with an offering of a 1337 ASCII beer mug c(_) Microsoft does a good job at not only understanding but being 1337: "pron": An anagram of "porn," possibly indicating the use of pornography. I don't know about you but I never thought I would read the word "pron" (I prefer pr0n) on Microsoft's site. To be honest, I respect Microsoft for undertaking the task of clarifying leetspeak to adults and in the process making themselves vulnerable to posts like this one. Thinking about it, I doubt they give a rat's ass but still... This exercise is, of course, completely futile: kids will only need to come up with new ways to confuse grown-ups. I propose p1G l4t1N (or 1337 Pig Latin), a hybrid/mongrel language that surely even Microsoft won't be able to make sense of: 0wn4y 3t'sl4y 33s4y 1fw4y 3yth4y 4nc4y 4k3m4y 3ns3s4y0fw4y 15th4y.

I wonder when (because it will happen) blogging becomes so widespread, abused by corporations and covered in the media that it stops being connected to guerilla reporting geek elitism and becomes, dare I say it, mainstream. It happened to that great "All Your Bases Are Belong To Us" thing, it could happen to blogging... Another poignant example of this sort of thing happening was Google's brilliant "you want Gmail? you want Gmail? Hmmmm?" tactic - wasn't your Gmail account that much more satisfying to use before they started inviting every tom, dick and harry@gmail.com? I'm way off course, of course, but I feel that blogging (and Gmail) is just everywhere at the moment. Basically we have newscasters, bloggers covering news, newscasters covering blogs covering news and blogs covering newscasters covering blogs covering news. This infernal loop actually goes on for a while but I'll spare you for now. Cue long debates about "accountability" and blogs are all over the place from the NY Times to The Harlington Poodle Shelter Gazette. Ironically, that 60 Minutes thing basically started the debate about whether or not blogs are to be considered reliable news sources. I wish the press would stop generalising because many of us bloggers have absolutely nothing important to say but for now forget the government conspiracies, dirty journalists and hidden agendas: Paris Hilton's Sidekick has been hacked! (Link seems down/slow, bummer!) Oh, and by the way, free Gmail account for anyone that wants one (while stocks last).

Funny how things pan out. I remember nearly giving Skype a miss about a year ago after being disappointed by so many other "free" voice chat systems. Back then I still classed the then (and now) defunct Firetalk as the best voice chat experience I'd ever had and nothing I would download could provide the same level of quality & reliability (& lack of obnoxious adware/spyware). Created by the people behind Kazaa, Skype seemed at first to be "just another voice chat app", one among a hundred others... Skype however, worked the first time round and worked better than anything before it. It's not nearly as good as a phone call, or as good as a one but so far better that I now despise talking to people over the old land-line. I feel a lot of people have had that same great first impression which has meant that Skype has seen an exponential rise in its user-base over the last few months. I would say that about 30-40% of my talk time at the office is spent on Skype and this is sure to rise to well over 50% by the end of the year as many clients and partners are starting to adopt it. The success of Skype has completely stunned everyone and in a many ways undermined efforts to push the adoption of established (and standardised) VoiP services. As many will admit Skype is easier to setup, easier to use and generally better quality than your garden variety SIP setup. Go to any place that offers broadband (hotel, spa, donut shop, Starbucks, massage parlour, whatever) and try setting up a standard VoiP call if you don't believe me -- Once you've failed, try again with Skype and get talking in under a minute. It was only a matter of time really until big device manufacturers would start trying to cash in on the Skype hype. You can already buy a DECT phone that also acts as a Skype phone but I predict dozens of similar products out before the end of the year. Skype is doing what many other VoiP providers failed to do, get a mass market appeal. Now we can expect Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL to start mimicking the Skype recipe. They all have exisiting voice chat apps (built into their respective IM clients) but have failed to capture the market quite like Skype. With the user-base the big 3 already enjoy it should be relatively possible that they will catch up or even attempt to buy out Skype unless Google gets there first. Now wouldn't it be lovely if we could only get reliable video conferencing from someone.

I remember living in Amman (Jordan) as being some of the best years of my life. With the current coverage in the media it would be hard for most people to imagine any place in the Middle-East to be "a great place to live" but Jordan was (and I hear, still is) fantastic. Living there had it's perks: the weather was great, the food was great and people were so overly kind and hospitable they would lead you to believe it was the law. Everything stayed open late and it seemed like the city would start buzzing as the evening set in. The smell of roasting and spices would fill the air while crowds filled the shops and streets; everything would feel so alive you'd be forgiven for forgetting it was well past 8PM. But I digress... There were some disadvantages but I have to admit I even remember those fondly behind this veil of nostalgia. I can still clearly see women's lifestyle magazines with partial nudity covered roughly manually by black marker. You could get everything the west was producing, movies, magazines, books, comics but devoid of anything that could be perceived as "offensive". An impressive amount of man hours was put in daily as to allow western media to peacefully coexist in a predominantly muslim country. As a compromised it seemed to work and while people moaned most understood and respected. Being a kid I surely didn't mind, the cinemas were filled with Hollywood movies (which were mostly filled with ever acceptable violence at the time). To everyone's amazement 9 1/2 Weeks was shown, it ran a full 45 minute. Stumbling upon CleanFilms.com, ironically, reminded me of those days. Popular Hollywood DVD titles that have been professionally edited to remove nudity, sexual situations, offensive language, and graphic violence. Jordanian video rental shops would sometimes have a collection of "clean" films but then that meant uncut and unsensored. Don't we live in a strange strange world?