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Rise of Kobol is in the earliest stages of development. I will be excited to see if this mod actually gets made. I know with the delay of the BF2 Editor, mod makers are having a tough time getting anything out.

Based on the Battlestar Galactica Universe this mod takes you back in time 45 years to the first Cylon war. Get ready to battle for your life on the twelve colonies of Kobol and their solar system!

So far I am skeptical. I have yet to see any promised mods be released for HL2 or Far Cry. And those games have been out for a year. So I won’t be holding my breath on the release of BF2 mods anytime soon.

Ever have trouble getting your Internet Explorer-specific Web applications to work with Mozilla? This article covers common issues associated with migrating applications to the open source Mozilla-based browser.

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A chicklet is a small graphic button that you see on everyones’ blogs. Usually for XML or RSS feeds or too promote a piece of software. Such as Firefox or Thunderbird. Well now you can make your own chicklet for your site.

These types of images are good, because they are small, and typically bloggers don’t mind placing a lot of chicklets of their site. They can be good non-intrusive form of advertising.

Banner ads are dead, long live chicklets!

Google has released Google Earth into beta. This amazing, and free, program let’s you zoom down to anywhere on Earth. It has numerous layers, such as Crime Stats, Census, 3-D buildings, roads, schools, parks, etc.

From the web site:

Google Earth puts a planet’s worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. View exotic locales like Maui and Paris as well as points of interest such as local restaurants, hospitals, schools, and more.

Here you can see a view of the Cincinnati riverfront, with 3-D buildings and highlighted roads.

There are several levels to Google Earth, ranging from free (for home use), Google Earth Plus, and Google Earth Pro. Each level increases the number of features, but also increases the price.

Google Earth gives the user some features not found in online mapping tools. Google Earth will let the user mark and store custom locations on the map. The software even includes the ability to email a screen shot through Gmail or another email program.

It appears that this product replaces Keyhole, which Google purchased last year. Keyhole was a subscription only service. It’s good to see Google give us a free version of the software.

All images are said to be taken in the last 3 years. And images are updated on a rolling basis. Based on the look of it, my neighborhood pictures are around 1 year old.

On a side note you will need a fairly powerful machine. Google recommends the following:

More specifics about what you need to run Google Earth…

Minimum configuration:

* Operating system: Windows 2000, Windows XP
* CPU speed: Intel® Pentium® PIII 500 MHz
* System memory (RAM): 128MB
* 200MB hard-disk space
* 3D graphics card: 3D-capable video card with 16MB VRAM
* 1024×768, 32-bit true color screen
* Network speed: 128 kbps (”Broadband/Cable Internet”)

Recommended configuration:

* Operating system: Windows XP
* CPU speed: Intel® Pentium® P4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+
* System memory (RAM): 512MB
* 2GB hard-disk space
* 3D graphics card: 3D-capable video card with 32MB VRAM or greater
* 1280×1024, 32-bit true color screen
* Network speed: 128 kbps (”Broadband/Cable Internet”)

The first software update to actually be released early. That’s right, this update to iTunes wasn’t expected until next month. This update was promised by Steve Jobs himself and adds podcasting support directly within iTunes.

Manage Podcasts. Select subscription options and download your favorite podcasts automatically.

The last few updates have been adding new features like this to iTunes. 4.8 added support for Quicktime videos. Fueling rumors of a Video iPod. And 4.7 added support for PDF files. iTunes makes a great way to manage your PDF library by the way.

The entire feature list for iTunes 4.9:

iTunes for Mac & PC.
iTunes, the #1 music download store and jukebox software, now makes podcasting as easy as iPod.

• Music Store
  - Best Selection. More than 1.5 million tracks and 1,000 independent labels with 30-second previews.
• Shop Easily - Shop Easily. Buy entire albums or single tracks. Give gift certificates or set an allowance for the kids.
• Find music fast. - Find Stuff Fast. Search for any artist, song, album or podcast on the store with virtually instant results.
• Discover Music - Discover Music. Browse Billboard and radio station charts, music videos, and free weekly downloads.
• Manage Podcasts - Select subscription options and download your favorite podcasts automatically.
• Share Your Taste - Share Your Taste. Send a friend music links in an email with cover art or share an iMix with everyone.
• Listen to Audiobooks - Listen to Audiobooks. Choose from more than 11,000 best-sellers, classics and radio programs.
• Import Music - Import Music. Gather all your music in one place in AAC, MP3 or Apple Lossless format.
• Party Shuffle - Create Playlists. Generate lists of your favorites. Dig deep into your library with Party Shuffle.
• Share Music - Share Music. Let the whole family listen to your collection in any room on Mac or Windows.
• Burn CDs - Burn CDs. Burn any playlist. Create CD inserts with mosaics of cover art and track lists. Make backups.
• Sync with iPod - Sync your music, podcasts, audiobooks and photos; enjoy them on the go.

As always you can download the latest version of iTunes at Apple.com.

Sadly, Apple chose not to support BitTorrent, so I stil have to use iPodder for my downloading my podcasts.

Seems Alienware has systems shipping with the new Nvidia 7800 graphics card.

For mind blowing graphics, you need the fastest frame rates possible and impressive image quality. The new NVIDIA® GeForce™ 7800 GTX, now available on Aurora 7500, and ALX systems, is the graphics card with the power and innovation to deliver the absolute highest levels of performance.
Extreme Graphics Performance for Gamers

With the GeForce 7800 GTX, you can enjoy stunning visual effects at incredible speeds when running the latest graphics-intensive games on Alienware desktops. Featuring the new CineFX™ 4.0 engine, Alienware systems with the 7800 GTX shorten the time required to deliver complex textures and blending quickly. Get ready to experience tremendous graphics performance increases with all the latest games.

YubNub.org is more than just a strange name. It’s the first social search engine. While the default search is Google, certains commands will let you search other sites as well. You see YubNub is also the first command-line search engine. For instance typing “wp” before your search criteria will let you search Wikipedia.org. (i.e. “wp Cincinnati”)

There are an entire slew of commands. “gim” for instance will search Google images. And simply typing “ls” will give you a list of commands.

Popular commands:

gnews - Searches Google News
cnn - Searches CNN
am - Searches Amazon
weather - Gets weather for zip code
flk - Searches Flickr

Now where this site gets really cool is you can create your own commands. I did say it was social right? Just type in “create YOURCOMMANDNAME” and if it isn’t taken you will be able to create your own command with that name.

For instance I created two new searches. “cincy” will search Cincinnati.com. So if you type in “cincy reds win” it will bring up all articles from the Cincinnati Enquirer, WCPO, CiN Weekly, and The Post. The second new command is “dwb”. It will search this blog. So if you type “dwb yubnub” you will find this post.

Commands I Created:

cincy - Searches Cincinnati.com
dwb - Searches this blog
redbooks - Searches IBM redbooks

Do you YubNub?

Imagine using your iPod and a regular old microphone to record studio-quality audio. Or sitting on a commuter train and playing Othello, Pong, Tetris, or Asteroids. All this and more is possible when you install Linux on your third-generation or earlier iPod. Best of all, one soft reset, and you’re back in Apple’s iPod operating system, listening to your tunes.

This has been around for a while, but this is the best article I have seen on the subject. And honestly, this is just cool.

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I don’t know what it is. But there appears to be a revival in Lotus Notes. I am not sure if it because Lotus Notes 7 beta 3 is out or because there is already talk of version 8? But my bloglines had three, yes three, links referring to Lotus Notes today.

First Microsoft has two new webcasts related to Lotus Notes:
Optimizing Sharepoint for the Lotus Notes Customer
Integrating MS Office 2003 with Lotus Notes/Domino

I also found a Lotus Notes .NET Integration Page which features a Lotus Notes .NET Integration Toolkit, a Domino web service demo, and many more examples.

That’s all for now.

UPDATE: Make that four links today for Lotus Notes.
GTD ToDo List for Lotus Notes

Who didn’t play Oregan Trail in elementary school? Those of us to poor to afford a computer. Thanks for opening old wounds! Jerk!

Well now is your chance to play this classic Apple game. Head over to the Virtual Apple and get yourself on the trail. Just watch out for cattle rustlers. Warning: Virtual Apple runs in a ActiveX control. So you have to use I.E. And I am not sure if it actually runs on a Mac. Ouch, watch where your throwing that irony!

OH, and to be a real nerd, pick up a Oregan Trail tee at bustedtees.com.