Category: Websites
STREET VIEW SNAPS #3: Drunken Aussie
Lately we’ve seen houses burning down and people flashing knickers on Google Street View, but spare a thought for this poor chap, known only as “Bill”.
Facebook adding filters to news feed
Facebook have added a new feature to the big ol’ river of crap that is the homepage news feed. Previously you could tweak it a little bit, allowing you to display just status updates, or photos, but after a quick check of my Facebook account, there’s now a wealth of options available…
BBC's iPlayer upgraded to H.264 codec – download speed and picture quality boosted
The BBC has been blowing your license fee on further developing its iPlayer service, announcing today that it’s starting to use the open source H.264 codec for its streaming telly service.
This has allowed the Beeb to boost the encoding bitrate of streamed shows from 500kbps to 800kbps, so it should all look a little sharper and cleaner when you catch up with such classics…
Yahoo launch Fire Eagle location-based internet… thing
Last night Yahoo finally took it’s long awaited (by nerds) Fire Eagle out of private beta so now anyone can sign up and use it.
But… What is it? Like everything web 2.0, the name doesn’t describe it very accurately. Basically it’s a system designed to act as the middle-man between you and a whole load of location-aware applications, so that you only have to log your location once and it’ll syndicate it with every other Fire Eagle equipped location service you use…
Is your neighbour an evil felon? Find out online, right now, for free.
We all know the fear..
A new guy moves in to the place next door, and he seems nice enough – all smiles, and quiet, and polite, and stuff.. But, no-one is really that nice, are they?
You’ve just started dating, and as you stare lovingly in the eyes of your newly beloved, a thought crosses your mind.. you can’t help but wonder.. Is he/she all he/she seems to be? Is the friendliness and charm just a cover for a darker, more sinister reality? Is this person a serial killer who likes to rape children!?! They could be! How would i know!?
Well, if you live in America, there is now a convenient, free, online way for you to find out. Yes, spying / invading privacy has just got that little bit easier: criminalsearches.com is a beta website (i.e. ‘in development’), that allows anyone with access to the internet (that’s everyone now, right?) to search for any and all criminals living in their neighbourhood, or State, or indeed, Country. Not only that, but the website lists what crimes they were convicted of, and, brilliantly, their names and addresses too.
Pirate Bay banned by Italian Government
In a particularly bold/stupid move the Italian government today took on the might of the internet’s geek underworld by deciding to block the Italian people from using The Pirate Bay – the daddy of illegal torrent sites.
Akin to jumping naked onto a greased up King Cobra with your arms tied behind your back in the hopes of pining it for the three-count, the Italians have discovered that it’s not that easy a thing to wrestle into submission. Indeed, what they’ve actually gone and done is awaken the beast of a thousand nerds, an army of ‘leechers’ and ‘seeders’ who have dodged and weaved the Italian’s paltry web-blocks and filters like Ryan Giggs dribbling his way past the entire Arsenal squad. Easily.
Google Street View invades privacy of fire. Fire says it has right to smoke in its own home
Something tells me that the Google Street View pictures of Eagle Point Drive in Sherwood, Arkansas are going to be rendered out-of-date slightly quicker than Google might have hoped…
Keep your eye on the destruction of the planet with the Real-Time Global Disaster Alert Map
How are you feeling? Feeling good? Happy? Good, well go look at something else.
Feeling terribly depressed? Just watched ‘Zeitgeist the Movie‘ and think the world is going to hell in a teacup? Well, excellent. Join me, and read on…
The world is a big place, and no matter how often you read the papers or watch the news, you have no idea exactly how big the scale of the problems that exist at anyone time around the planet really is. Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Biological Hazards, Chemical accidents.. all these things are happening somewhere on the globe right now and unless you have access to the Thunderbirds mission control computer on Tracy Island, then you’re completely ignorant of them all.
Well, you were. Not anymore. Because EDIS, a non-profit emergency services organisation in Hungary, has provided us with a free-to-use online map compiling all of the world’s reported disasters in continually refreshing real-time. The perfect thing to look at and fret over.
Google put Olympic medal tables on mobile site. Now you can watch Olympic dreams die whilst on the go
The trouble with the Olympics is that it is just too big. There’s so many sports to keep track of and they go on for so long, is it really possible to keep an eye out for your favourite minority sport? Are you really willing to endure all of that track cycling whilst you wait for the Handball to start? (Whatever Handball is?) Luckily, Google has got you covered – it has optimised it’s mobile site for the duration of the games…
eBay Nutcase of the Week: Lord puts title, Bentleys, houses and wives up for sale
This week’s eBay Nutcase is 58-year-old David Piper, who’s put his Bentleys, Lord of the Manor title, hotel, cafe and 111-acre estate up for sale on the auction site.
You are allowed to buy and sell titles in the UK, so yes, you would be able to call yourself Lord of the Manor of Warleigh should you win his auction. And you’d be able to drive his two Bentleys…
