660.aspx

Google Satellite

Google has updated its map service with satellite pictures. Click the "Satellite" link next to the map link to get high definition satellite images with your directions.

Other projects do amazing things with Google Maps as well:

• Paul Rademacher shows the Craigslist on Google Maps


• Go Google Sightseeing


• Fly to your address with keyhole

Via [code.google.com] and [Jwz]

659.aspx

Stortroopers

Make your own avatar for free that you can customize any way you want at stortroopers.com

To dress your trooper, drag and drop items onto the skeleton. The applet uses a layering system, so if you try to put knickers on over your coat, you’ll probably find it won’t work! Experiment – if you want your shoes under your trousers, put them on first.

653.aspx

Cool Tool: PDF Creator 0.8

PDFCreator 0.8.0 is the best free PDF Generator I have tried so far, better than CutePDF and PDF 995. The open source generator can be downloaded from Sourceforge (project RSS feeds)

I has several features I really like:

• You can specify the date, author, subject and keywords of the PDF document
  
• By default it uses the name of the source document, and not the previously created PDF like CutePDF
  
• It generates small files. A 1MB Word document with several screen shots and a lot off formatting became 160kb with PDF Creator vs 305kb with CutePDF!
  
• Plenty of options for fine tuning quality vs size.

Thanks for the tip Michael S!

650.aspx

MSN Messenger 7.0 released

MSN Messenger Version 7.0 has been released.

It has several new features:

• The buddy list shows emoticons the display picture in the buddy list


• Ships with the MSN Toolbar (I have not tried it yet as I am happy with Dave's Quick Search Taskbar)


• You can set the status before you log in


• Conversation changes include; Winks (short animations), Nudges (shakes the window) and free hand drawing (click the fountain pen)

And probably a whole lot more I haven't discovered yet.

649.aspx

LaCie 2TB Bigger Disk Extreme

LaCie just launched a 2 TB USB/Firwire storage with RAID support and burst transfer rates of 80MB/s. What more can a geek ask for?

643.aspx

2GB Gmail in color

Google celebrated the 1 year birthday of Gmail by doubling the storage to 2gb while Yahoo and others are still in the process of upgrading to 1GB.

Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn't mean you should have to worry about it. To celebrate our one-year birthday, we're giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able. We know that email will only become more important in people's lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs. From Gmail, you can expect more.

They also added rich text formatting :

Give me a shout if you need a Gmail invite.

635.aspx

Google Ride Finder beta

The Google Ride Finder (beta) is another cool new service from Google. It allows you to see available rides in some cities in the US:

Some neat features:

• The position of the available taxis are updated in real time when you click the "Update Vehicle Locations".


• The map is similar to the Google Maps and offers the same impressive performance, smooth scrolling and click and drag support.

It works with:

• IE 5.5+ (Windows)


• Firefox 0.8+ (Windows, Mac, Linux)


• Netscape 7.1+ (Windows, Mac, Linux)


• Mozilla 1.4+ (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Cool Or What?