Abstracting hardware: obsolescence obsolete (with OnLive)

Most everyone has heard the news of OnLive, the new cloud-based computer gaming platform. I’m not here to regurgitate that for you. Instead, I intend to give it some context. Cloud computing is all the rage right now. With netbooks growing in popularity, all sorts of Internet-based services are popping up to make the experience of owning a netbook more rich. OnLive applies this model to PC gaming while...

Google Reader adds comments for sharing

This is a big deal for social web addicts. One of the first articles posted to this site was about the inadequacies of Google Reader as a sharing platform when compared to FriendFeed. Yesterday, one of FriendFeed’s advantages over Google’s sharing platform was mitigated as Google unveiled comments for shared items. Google Reader makes it easy to share stories with friends, but it hasn’t fostered...

The Facebook TOS controversy

Facebook recently updated their terms of service to include language which made users of the service a little uncomfortable. The new terms gave Facebook “perpetual worldwide license” to any content shared on the service. There was an outcry from the community regarding the open-endedness of these new terms of service. I can attest that, upon sharing content on any social network, my intent is not to...

Caps return us to the days of limited Internet access

ISPs everywhere are making it known that they do not intend for Internet access to be unlimited. It was a popular marketing term in the days of time-limited Internet access. Everyone has seen the old AOL disks and CDs that offer 500 hours for the first month. Users hated having to count hours (and even minutes prior to that). Some ISPs realized this and started offering unlimited Internet access plans as a way to...

Create rich Gmail signatures in Firefox with Blank Canvas

Blank Canvas is a FireFox extension which allows you to create HTML signatures for automatic inclusion in your outgoing mail from Gmail. Gmail has offered signatures for some time, but they are plain text only. This means no images, no links, and no layout. You simply enter some characters, spaces, and line breaks, and the recipient sees those in your message. This is a little inflexible for web nuts like you and I....