Filed under: Internet

A far reaching transformation of domain names could be in store as Internet guardians, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meets to discuss changes to top level domain names.

According to a report from the BBC, ICANN has plans to deregulate top level domain names to allow any string of letters to be used as a top level domain, paving the way for long proposed domains such as .xxx, for company names like .Disney or even personal names such as .gordonfinlayson to be used as a domain name.

The proposed system would also allow for internationalization of domain names so that additional new languages and characters could be used to register domains which will be a plus for the billions of people who don't use Latin alphabets.

ICANN will vote on the proposal on Thursday on the last day of a series of public meetings which are being held in Paris this week. ICANN acts as the guardian of all Internet domain names and more informally as a global regulator of the Internet, but such services don't come cheap and the new domain names could see the cash rolling in for ICANN.

The release of a new domain name system could see a feeding frenzy as people individuals and companies compete to acquire catchy or unique domain names, and will no doubt be a considerable disappointment to all the poor saps who have paid good money for quality .com, .net or .tv domain names. All this is is inevitably going to result in a ton of new disputes over precedence for registrations, trade marks and issues like obscenity so lets hope ICANN has a really good dispute resolution procedure in the works.

[Via the BBC]

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Beta, web 2.0

At first glance, the latest version of RSS Bandit looks just like pretty much every other desktop RSS reader for Windows. In other words, it looks like Outlook. But this week saw the released of RSS Bandit 1.7 Alpha with one killer new feature: support for synchronization with your Google Reader or NewsGator feeds.

Here's how it works. You download and install the open source application, and then click the File menu and select Synchronize Feeds. Pick your service and enter your login information and RSS Bandit will import your feed list in a matter of seconds. Any actions you take using the desktop reader should then be reflected at your online feed reader. You can mark items as reader, unread, or shared. And you can subscribe to feeds or remove feeds using RSS Bandit and the changes should apply to your online account.

At least that's the theory. In practice, we're still waiting for our changes to show up in Google Reader. We read a few items, unsubscribed from a feed, and over an hour later Google Reader is showing no sign that it's noticed. This is still Alpha software, so it's possible speedier updates could come at a later date.

RSS Bandit 1.7 Alpha also adds a new podcast download manager.

[via Digital Inspiration]

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Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Web services, web 2.0

A while back, we asked for reader feedback for off-site backup solutions. Unsurprisingly, many of you said you used Jungle Disk which is a disk-based utility that allows for easy backup to Amazon's S3 storage platform. S3 is inexpensive, efficient and Amazon's servers are fast, which makes it a great tool to use for either server or local drive backups. However, if you don't want to stare at the command line or grapple with a web interface, especially for automated backups, Jungle Disk is a tremendous time savor.

Today, Jungle Disk released version 2.0 of their software for Windows, Mac and Linux. You can read the release notes, but here are some highlights:

• Brand new interface that makes setting up the service easier than ever and a very intuitive back-up selection utility
• Support for Jungle Disk 2.0 buckets and compatibility buckets
• Support for European S3 buckets
• Support for multiple backups and independent scheduling
• Previous versions feature
• Improved performance

Continue reading Jungle Disk 2.0 released

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

Timelines are a great way to provide an overview of events. But what's even better is a timeline that generates content automatically based on information you probably already have.

Dipity takes automated timeline creation to a new level. If you have (and quite frankly who doesn't) a Blogger, Flickr, WordPress, YouTube, Twitter or any of the other supported social networking site just enter in your user name, URL or an RSS feed and dipity will do the rest.

You can view your timeline in years, months, weeks or even one day. Dipity also let's you rate your events so that those with higher ratings are displayed more prominently than others with lower ratings.

You're free to embed your timeline on your own site or list them on dipity's searchable directory.

If you ever wanted to see your online life sprawled out in front of you, dipity is one way to go about it.

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Filed under: Fun, Internet

Here's an interesting fact. Did you know that actress Yasmine Bleeth and US president James Madison were the same height? At 5 foot, 4 inches, Madison was the shortest president in US history. How do we know this? Because we read it on a free ringtones site, and if it's on the internet, it's probably true, right?

RingoPhone's Tall or Not toy is obviously just an attempt to get you to use the service's ringtone search engine. But that doesn't make it any less fun to play with. Just enter your height using US or metric measurements and you can flip through a long list of celebrities, public officials, and world record holders to see how you stack up.

The shortest person in the index is Gul Mohammed, the shortest adult ever recorded at less than 2 feet tall. The tallest is Robert Pershing Wadlow, who came in at nearly 9 feet. In between are a wide array of folks, living and dead, including Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Lil' Kim and Rod Serling.

[via MakeUseOf]

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

Goodreads is a social networking site dedicated to book lovers everywhere. Here you can post up books you've read or are planning to read on your virtual book shelves and get book suggestions based on what others have reviewed.

Like any good social networking site, your experience here is only as good as the number of friends in your network. If you don't currently have any friends (on the site that is) try searching for a book that you like and see whose reviewed the book and what else they've reviewed. If you find their taste similar to yours, ask them to add you as their friend.

In additional to book recommendations, Goodreads also offers links to purchase books from sites like Amazon or Barnes & Noble and offers discussion areas where you can interact with other members.

So if you're looking to expand your reading library, you might want to give Goodreads a try.

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Filed under: Developer, Utilities, Blogging, Social Software

Back before the days of FriendFeed, it was pretty common to see people post things like, "Just wrote a new blog post. What do you think?" to Twitter. That's a good way of getting your link out there, but if anybody actually wanted to answer your question, they'd probably do it in the comments, not in Twitter. Chirrup is a way of tweeting back at someone and commenting at the same time. A neat trick!

Installing Chirrup is as simple as uploading a bit of PHP or installing it as a Wordpress plugin. Most webhosts support this, and the HowTo on the Chirrup site has straightforward instructions for getting it working. Once it's set up, Chirrup will grab any replies to you that contain a URL from your site, and associate the right comments with the right pages. It also knows how to unpack TinyURLs, which eases character-count concerns considerably.

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Filed under: Utilities, Blogging, Productivity, Web services

Poll Authority is an easy poll-creation service that generates nice tidy multiple-choice polls you can paste into your website or blog. A lot of blogging services and social networks have their own polling systems, but as far as the platform-neutral free poll generators go, Poll Authority looks pretty decent.

With the free version, you get unlimited polls and a bit of customization in terms of appearance. Upgrading to the $5 or $8 monthly plans doesn't actually seem to do much, other than adding a bit of professionalism by replacing the Poll Authority link on each poll with a customized one. The Gold plan gets you a breakdown of your results by geographic area. Bottom line: if you're looking for a fast, easy way to make a poll, and you don't want it to cost you anything, Poll Authority is a good bet.

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Filed under: Internet, Windows Mobile, Freeware, Mobile Minute, AOL, Beta

It's been a while since AOL launched an updated version if its instant messenger for Windows Mobile. The new version is still in beta, but it has some nifty features that make it worth checking out. The first thing you'll notice is that the interface is much more attractive. But it's also more useful.

When you first login you're greeted with a buddy list. You can double tap on any contact to enter a chat window. After you've initiated a chat you can flip back to your buddy list knowing that you'll be able to see all open chats and any new messages in the sidebar that now pops up.

You can also manage your buddy list from the client. And the settings menu has a nice array of options letting you customize your notification, conversation, and privacy settings.

This beta supports devices running Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.

[via The Boy Genius Report]

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Filed under: Audio, Internet

Amazon offers one of the most compelling iTunes competitors around right now. The online retailer offers music downloads from all four major labels. And unlike Apple's iTunes, Microsoft's Zune Marketplace and other digital music stores, Amazon MP3 offers DRM-free music at reasonable prices. There's just one problem -- the service doesn't work outside of the US. Yet.

For months, Amazon has been saying that it plans to go international. Now it looks like the company is taking the first steps. The Telegraph reports that Amazon MP3 officials visited London last week to meet with record label execs. It's possible that Amazon could launch a UK version of its MP3 music store by the end of the year.

[via Engadget]

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