Pretty darn cool- Start.com is my new homepage- pulling in blogs, news sites, weather and more. Ad-free. More on this later.

Forget political affiliations, HurricaneHousing.org has the right idea- offer to provide a temporary home to hurricane refugees.  My wife wants to sign us up to host a family. The cynic in me says no way, the American in me said ok - to put it out there. 

30,555 beds offered so far. Over 120 homes opened up in the Seattle area alone. 

Words can't even begin to describe. Just give what you can please to the American Red Cross.  It's hard to imagine - 1,000,000 people displaced.  The term "American Refugees" sounds so foreign.  Our beloved city of New Orleans is gone... for now. 

Watching the NBC Nightly News last night, my wife and I were shocked at the "Lord of the Flies" lawlessness that's gripping the city now, the death and desparation; the lack of (or lack of coverage of) what seems like simple things our Government could be doing:

• Air-dropping Emergency Ration Kits into hardest hit areas in New Orleans. 24 hours was the turnaround for the Tsunami- why not here?
• Using loudspeakers on helicopters to reassure people- turn psyops around and help the people
• Direct refugees using a blimp w/ text banners There's a novel idea for communicating when normal modes of communication are out.

NBC is sending in their own security details to protect their reporters in New Orleans- is this Baghdad? I'm not there. I try not to judge but the lack of coordination, the desparate S.O.S. pleas of mayor of New Orleans the emotion reflected by the most war-weathered journalists (not just at NBC) warns the cynic in me that this is not being sensationalized.

We don't need the president in the city for a photo op unless he's offloading water and food.  Then it hits me- is it possible our military is really stretched so thin that the national guard can't mount a swift response?

I've been watching the mobilization of help internally at Microsoft and other companies. From servers and sites, hundreds of employees are working on everything from infrastructure to help bolster the American Red Cross' bandwidth and servers (see Red Cross servers under extreme load), to the Katrina Relief Auction on Flickr that my friend Thomas Hawk and others are doing.

Turkey, Morocco, it does not matter. Write a virus, you will be found eventually.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Authorities in Morocco and Turkey have arrested two people believed to be responsible for unleashing a computer worm that infected networks at U.S. companies and government agencies earlier this month, the FBI said Friday.

Farid Essebar, 18, was arrested in Morocco, while Atilla Ekici, 21, was arrested in Turkey on Thursday, the FBI said. They will be prosecuted in those countries, the FBI said.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20050826/D8C7K9NO3.html 

New features include:

• Dynamic Backgrounds
• Voice Clip
• New Sign-In UI
• New Connectivity Troubleshooter
• Improved Voice Conversation
• Vodafone support* 
   
  * you need to be located in a Vodafone market (IT-IT, ES-ES, NL-NL) to experience.

Get it at http://Messenger.msn.com

You gotta hand it to MSN. Between MSN Spaces, Messenger, Desktop Toolbar, and Start.com, there's a lot of interesting and good stuff being churned out at a rapid rate. Others are taking notice.

You just have to love our friends at the FCC. The FCC requires that new devices registered in the US are available for public inspection prior to certification. Such is the situation with Moto's iTunes phone including photos, manuals, and test details.  According to PhoneArena, new details gleamed include:

* Bar form factor, stereo speakers on the side
* VGA built-in camera; Video Record supported
* Trans-Flash (micro SD) card memory expansion
* Bluetooth
* iTunes support
* Music key

Apple has stated that an iTunes-compatible phone will ship this summer.

News.com has a roundup of new PC designs and processors coming from Intel including one low-voltage-enabled CPU that purports to use less power than a current PC put into sleep/standby while still remaining on.

Sorry but the first PC looks like a Tandy from the early 1990's. I'm sure we can do better.  Also note to Intel- please put an object such as a ruler next to these super-small devices?  Otherwise we have no concept of scale on "first read".

But it's good to have a sense of  humor :)

I have a neighbor who is on her 3rd iPod.  Why? "The hard drive keeps dying".  Yes, she should sign up for the AppleCare progra, but the real culprit is how she uses it- she runs. A lot.  Truth be told, HD-based Portable Music Players just don't handle the g-shock of running very well. 

Enter Sony's new Walkman "Beans", three new flash-based players that look super-slick.  No mention of PlaysforSure support which has me wanting though- if they don't work with Yahoo's music service, MSN or Napster, count me out.  I hope Sony woke up and snuck a few podcasting features in like bookmarking.

Here's a quick roundup of digital media items from this week:

• Here's a new episode of The Media Center Show with an interview with Matt Goyer from the MCE team. Lots of interesting things here.
• mNewsCenter RSS for MCE is now available
• Everyone seems to be opening up their API's these days - Orb is the latest
• In-stat report says Digital Terrestrial and Free To Air Sat will give PC Tuner market a boost - $3.7B in 2009, 42.6% CAGR.  Credits MCE's traction.
• Barb Bowman writes about Windows Connect Now technology.
• Parks' report says 4M US HH's now engaging in digital video editing every month.

Three new PowerToys for MSN Spaces.  Get em over on the official MSN Spaces blog: http://spaces.msn.com/members/thespacecraft/  

Tweak UI
The Tweak UI Power Toy is designed to allow you to customize the look of your Space. Once you add the Tweak UI Power Toy to your Space you can use it to control colors, module borders and transparency, and the background image’s placement and presence. Granular control combined with existing Spaces layout and module configuration allows for almost endless customizability and personalization.

Custom HTML
The Custom HTML Power Toy is designed to allow you to add a sandbox module to your Space in which you can enter text, link to images, and use other HTML features. The Custom HTML Power Toy supports all of the same HTML that you can enter into a Blog entry and can be moved around your Space as a separate module, just like a list or any other Spaces module. Additionally you can control the Title of this module and whether the borders for this module are displayed or not.

Windows Media Player Powertoy
The Media Player Power Toy is designed to allow you to play audio and video files within your Space. While editing your Space specify the URL of a Media file located on the web in the Media Power Toy and hit Save. This will allow the people viewing your Space to watch or listen to the media file you have linked. You can customize the experience even more by altering the player settings (like auto start, times to play, and player mode) while editing your Space.

Usual disclaimers apply- beta blah blah US-only blah blah (hey- I'm just the messenger).

That stands for, "Yet another Steve Ballmer Video".  It's so 1990's, but the remix is kinda catchy...

Well, they’re still not forthcoming with an actual date, but the Creative Zen Sleek has made an official appearance on Creative’s US website, which means it probably won’t be long now. Here are the Sleek's stats:

Still no mention of podcasting or podcasting features. Someday they'll get it...

via Engadget

An interesting story regarding how easily iTunes Music Store's Podcast Directory ratings can be easily manipulated.

Ed Note: Fixed download URL below and updated to reflect HKey_Current_User as the appropriate regkey setting.

Okay, here's my first unofficial Windows Vista "Enhancement Pack" and early feedback is that it's a good one- add 32 search providers to Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 in 32 seconds ;)

New in Internet Explorer 7 is a simple searchbox with the ability to search many different providers (e.g. MSN, AOL, Ebay, WSJ, Fandango) all from one place- just select the search provider (aka Scope) of your search by clicking the Magnifier glass icon and you're ready to go. The only problem is that the ability to add search providers is not in IE7 in Windows Vista Beta 1 (which I'm sure will be remedied). With this kit, you get over thirty of the top search and service providers on the Internet, including:

-Amazon.com
-AOL
-AskJeeves
-C|Net (Product search)
-C|Net News.com
-Costco
-eBay
-Encarta
-Fandango
-FedEx
-Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/groups/mediacenter)
-Google
-IMDb
-LA Times
-Lycos
-The Mercury News
-Microsoft.com
-Microsoft Help & Support Knowledgebase
-Microsoft Office Clip Art Gallery Live (Note: May require MS Office license)
-Microsoft PressPass (for the Journalists and Newshounds)
-MSDN (Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!)
-MSN Images
-MSN Music
-MSN News
-The New York Times
-The Seattle Times
-Technorati (Blog it!)
-UPS (United Parcel Service)
-The Wall Street Journal
-The weather Channel
-Yahoo!

Download: IE7_Search_Providers.zip (4.31 KB)

How to Install:
-Select the entry you wish to add to IE and double-click it.  Accept when prompted.
-To add all 32 entries at once, choose "Add All.reg"

How to Use:
-Once installed, restart IE7 (any instance will do)
-Click the Magnifier Glass icon next to Search in upper-right corner of IE7
-Choose your Search Provider

How to Change your Default Provider:
-Click the Magnifier Glass icon next to Search in upper-right corner of IE7
-Choose last option, "Search Settings"
-Change Settings

How to Remove Search Providers:
-Click the Magnifier Glass icon next to Search in upper-right corner of IE7
-Choose last option, "Search Settings"
-Change Settings

How this works:
IE7 in Windows Vista Beta 1 stores search provider information in the registry under:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes\

If you run RegEdit.exe and do a "Find" (F3) for SearchScopes, you'll find em.  Each entry has four pieces of information starting with the full Key name, for example:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes\CNet]
"DisplayName"="C|Net News.com"
"URL"="http://cnet.search.com/search?chkpt=astg.cnet.fd.search.cnet&q=%s&tag=srch"
"SortIndex"=dword:00000005

It's pretty easy to figure out. "%s" is the wildcard for the search string the user enters.

If you like it, feel free to leave feedback at my blog at http://blog.seanalexander.com/PermaLink,guid,04a7843f-bbdd-460b-8d49-8c7848bad52f.aspx
Ugly URL isn't it? ;)

^ No Washington State Marmots were hurt in the creation of this kit. One Furrygoat (www.furrygoat.com) was sighted.