Just recently I changed my theme to a nice clean cool snow theme! :D Drop a comment and tell me what you think.

Meebo online (mentioned previously) and KoolIM online and GoogleTalk online and (now) Yahoo! IM online! Oh, my!

(Know of any others? Post 'em in the comments!)

StumbleUpon, eBay, and Google

Several weeks ago it was announced that eBay was about to acquire StumbleUpon for around 45$ million. Though I have not found any conformation, I am assuming the deal went through. It will be interesting to see what they have planned for the social bookmarking service, as this seems somewhat out of their realm. Perhaps they'll add a section for eBay category interests so users can stumble upon interesting eBay auctions? (It seems others think this is probable.) Or how about letting people receive eBay notifications in their SU inbox?

Right on the heels of eBay, Google added similar functionality to their toolbar, allowing users to receive randomly chosen pages based on their search results. Though I would have much rather seen Google acquire StumbleUpon, I'll be interested in seeing what Google does with this. However, I do have several concerns. How does Google intend to protect user's privacy? Or, on the other hand, is there a way to block "naughty" content, like on SU? Let's say, in theory, that someone borrows your computer and you forget to log off your Google account. They could totally screw up your recommendation profile. In SU, it's all in the user's control. From what I've read so far, this thing's no SU killer. In reality, though, I echo John Battelle. Even if the service does have some quirks and obviously has political motivations, it's always nice to see Google expanding it's "toolbox." (And, if this thing does take off, a little competition can only be a good thing.)

How I Made Del.icio.us Work for Me

Just recently I have officially made the switch from Windows Bookmarks to the social-bookmarking service Del.icio.us. I had to. With over 1,000 bookmarks, it just simply wasn't manageable in the default Firefox hierarchy system. In the transition I found that Del.icio.us doesn't exactly have the most user friendly interface -- a fact I've heard voiced by several other people. So, I've decided to put down how I made Del.icio.us work for me.

Don't Use the Official Del.icio.us Firefox Extension

I strongly recommend you skip the official extension. It stinks. No, really. You have to sign in every Firefox session, the pop-up is a web page (not good for people on slow connections), and after you bookmark something, it reuses the tab you just bookmarked to take you to the Del.icio.us homepage. Not fun. And I've found that most bookmarklets are little better. So, what's a guy supposed to do?

Use the Del.icio.us Firefox Extension made by Yahoo!

I have found the Yahoo! Del.icio.us firefox extension to be superb. All your bookmarks are easily available (even when offline) in a sidebar togglable via ctrl+b. It can even (optionally) replace your Firefox bookmarks menu with a minue of it's own populated by a list of your favorite tags, which act like submenus. The extension comes with a bookmarking button which brings up a (fast loading) bookmarking dialog, allowing you to edit the title / description and add custom tags, popular tags, and/or tags suggested by Del.icio.us. The whole experience is a seamless integration of Del.icio.us into Firefox. I never even go to the Del.icio.us website anymore!

Fun Tag Cloud Thingy

Well, I was going to get the previously-mentioned USB CORSAIR Flash Voyager 2GB Flash Drive, but, sadly, it was out of stock. So, I was forced to get the slightly more expensive (but nicer) CORSAIR Flash Voyager GT 2GB Flash Drive. And, so far, I'm impressed. I loaded a 700 mb file to the stick in a very short amount of time. I did have a bit of trouble getting Vista to accept it, but the problem seems to have fixed it self, and the drive works with Ready Boost. Oh, and about it being durable... This thing has officially gone through -- and survived -- the washing machine. (No I didn't have the guts to do it on purpose. It was an accident. lol )