Here’s some links, and I’ll probably post more about it once I’ve looked at it further

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/07/2022244
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060807-105252
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/06/aol-proudly-releases-massive-amounts-of-user-search-data/

The data itself:

http://www.gregsadetsky.com/aol-data/
http://www.aolsearchdatabase.com/
http://oy-oy.eu/temp/aol/

www.elephantsdream.org

Now, it looks great. The designers/renderers/artists, whatever you call them, did a great job. Apart from the fact that the character’s lips don’t quite match their voices (I imagine that would have been too hard to do), it’s amazing to watch and I’m sure a lot of time went into it.

It is only a 10 minute movie though, and it has no storyline whatsoever. Apparently it’s about two men that get stuck in a machine. The older man is leading the younger man for awhile, supposedly out of danger, and there’s a phone that rings and the younger man isn’t allowed to answer it, then it ends up with the younger man turning his back on the older one and walking away, only to get hit by the older man. So yeah, no storyline, so there’s not much point me writing a review on that one…

But what I did like is that its a beginning. Imagine thousands of people around the world collaborating on an open source movie. It sounds to me like the next step!

The movie was created all within Blender, an open source 3D graphics tool. I imagine that alot more publicity has been generated for Blender now, and I’m one of the likely many people that have downloaded it to check it out. At first glance it’s daunting (I’m sure that’s the same with all 3D graphics rendering software though), and apparently it has a non-standard but very well thought out interface. I’m starting to get to know how to use it using this short tutorial, and over time I’ll add more links to my del.iciou.us blender tag as I find new and useful information on it.

3D graphics creation… certainly not my forte, but it sure will be fun to try out!

Every day we’re coming closer and closer to the reality of a big change at Microsoft. Soon enough, open source – cleverly backed by Google – will come through and trample Microsoft like it hasn’t done before. Sure, the take up is slow, but as market penetration of Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice increases, Microsoft’s share in each of these markets decreases. The majority of IT pros and computer nerds now use Firefox/Thunderbird, many of them use OpenOffice, and as they have influence on friends and family around them, changes are slowly being made. When Microsoft’s Vista and Office 2007 is released later this year, the takeup – of Office especially because it isn’t often bundled with new computers – will be lower than ever before.

Long live Microsoft, I say. By the time Vista comes out, I’m not going to need to purchase it because I would have fully switched over to open source software. Many others will be in the same position.

Certainly a quick and easy way to become famous! He’ll probably really get hired now.

The current top few results for “tom vendetta” (with quotes) on Google are things from Digital Paintball forums. Check it again in a few days/weeks and there’ll be hundreds of results all about him.

Turns out he wants to visit Australia, too. Well, where the bloody hell are you?

Notes accidentally made public on Google’s website said “With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)”.

Google’s CEO also commented that one of their goals is to “store 100 percent” of consumer’s information.

This is probably going to get an even bigger backlash than what Gmail got, regarding privacy concerns. It’s even making me wonder now as well – whereas with the Gmail complaints I was just thinking “oh, get over it!”. Maybe it’s time I watch what I save in my Gmail account, you know, just in case?

(From Yahoo Finance via Slashdot)

Could it work? I guess it’s a clever idea. But I’d hate to see them accidentally get a spammer website wrong, and bring down a legitimate company instead. I could send out spam pretending to be one of my competitors, and would they then get bombarded by this screensaver? And what about all this traffic, which they’re hoping will be generated by the millions who download it. I read somewhere “33 terabytes of useless traffic per day”.

Either way, I’m going to try it out. I, like many others, hate spam. And I’ll do anything I can to help fight it.

You can download the screensaver here. Select “International English” from the select box underneath the map if you’re not from Europe.