Simple is Beautiful

Yahoo! is fighting a good fight against Google and Microsoft, unwilling to accept that either of those giants will eventually render Yahoo! obsolete ( which will be a bad thing, for competition is such a wonderful concept ). They are getting better by the day, adding new services, improving old ones.. they seem to lack the technology and coolness Google has, the might and financial strength of Microsoft, yet they are putting all their effort in deploying new content sections and improving the services for their users -- which is I guess they only thing left for them to do. Their latest service, Yahoo! foods is quite great. I love the content, the UI, the ideas. Very tasty.

Speaking of Google, they are going to surpass UK's Channel Four advertising revenue as far as their operations in the UK are concerned. Lots of quid for the Google boys.

Filling the Lik-Sang Void : Now that Lik Sang is no more, thanks to the efforts of Sony ( may they burn flames ), gamers will have to look for another company to provide them with important gaming goodies.

The Stimulants : Steve Dekorte's lists some of the most well known stimulants, such as caffeine, cocaine, ritalin and more.

Microsoft and Yahoo Finally Merge IM Networks: Another effort to resist the inevitable defeat by/from Google. Resistance is futile. Google and AIM are to interoperate sooner or later too.

StartUps Embracing Amazon S3 : (mental note) - I need to check this out sooner or later.

Call of Duty 3 with the Wii-Mote : Sweeet!

Yahoo Boosts Social Travel : the latest battlefield in the online wars saga seems to be focuses on the travel sites/services. Expedia leads the pack, but the underdogs are gaining ground by the day. I am looking forward to the day we launch our own travel service for pathfinder.gr. By the looks of it, it won't be long..

arstechnica is reviewing Parallels Desktop 1.0 for Mac OS X : they like it, just like most of the ones that have had the chance it try it out, me included. I am going to purchase it soon ( their introductory price offer ends at 15h of July ) and use it for Visual Studio .NET, SecureCRT and for running PIM, until I get down and build a PIM client for Mac OS X -- which is probably going to be my first real Mac OS X App, just like PIM was my first real Win32 app. .

Pages 3 to sport improved word processing features : more reasons to rejoice! Not only Charts is going to be included in the forthcoming Apple iWork 07 upgrade, they are adding some great new features on Pages 3 as well, such as:

A number of convenient features catered to writers and typists will also be wrapped into Pages 3, including a thesaurus and integration with Spotlight, Wikipedia, and Google. Apple is also said to be looking to build a robust grammar checking engine for Pages that could find its way into other Apple and Cocoa applications.

and

Apple is also beefing up Pages' collaboration capabilities, sources say, enabling any object in a document to be commented on and tracking changes from multiple users. A more robust Mail Merge functionality should also at last support mail merging to email.

David Watanabe believes Apple will ditch the metal windows look altogher in favor of the iApp scheme, for the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. This is probably a good thing.

Nintendo DS rocks!

I barely managed to climb the stairs and let myself in our apartment, today. It seems all those nights with little to no sleep triggered the most strict of all my body and mind defenses in an effort to understand that I need to rest. Something's telling me that I must somehow follow those orders or risk another breakdown..

I wrote a tiny Ajax (client + gateway) framework last night, just to see how this all Ajax concept works. It is, indeed, really cool. It's so cool I may even sit down and build (God forbidden) an AJAX based web-app for some projects I have in mind. Cool stuff, when one has free time. I don't.

PES, short for Pro Evolution Soccer, or Winning Eleven in Japan is perhaps the most addictive and well designed game, ever (hm, along with some great ones from the past..). I am not into football at all, yet, when our buddy Jim lured us into playing a few matches with him, we got stuck. Once or twice a week, we gather at our place and play for a 2 or 3 hours, and, let me tell you, we are having a blast. If you want to have some fun with your friends, consider this game.

Speaking of games, I got my Nintendo DS Lite Black edition from Amazon.co.uk today, along with a few books I have ordered. Alas, Mario Kart DS and another book didn't make it with this shipment, they should be here on Monday. So nothing to play on this slick sexy little game machine for now. This is interesting, by the way. Why the DS Needs to be Nintendo’s iPod.

Microsoft, as you probably have read by now, is preparing an 'iPod killer', due this Christmas. As far as I am concerned, competition is a great thing, regardless the very possible failure Microsoft is facing with such an idea.

Stephen Hawking Makes a Cameo on Yahoo! answers, asking about possible ways to deal with the imminent extinction of the human kind. Yup, that's the very Stephen Hawking you have in mind.

Do you want to know how Google really works?. I bet you do.

New Yahoo! Photos : uhm, interesting -- some nice UI tricks here, along with some interesting ideas. Definitely something we should check out for Pathfinder Photos(?)
Sleep with remote : super useful - now I can watch videos and listen to music/podcasts and let my MacBook Pro go to sleep with me, with the click of a button on the FrontRow remote.
C/Net Relaunches Consumating : very neat. I dig the UI and the overall idea. A pool of good ideas, that one.
Google Research prototypes ambient audio contextual content : awe, those amazing googlers..
Rich RSS Readers: best of breed picks : I vote for Bloglines and the amazing NetNewsWire, on the desktop side.
Google Browser Sync : I really needed this. If it only worked with Safari, too, somehow..
Leopard to bring collaborative document? : I so can't wait for Leopard. Apple rules.