Up til now, I’ve loved almost every Google product I’ve used in the past, so I do have high hopes for Google+.

Who knows how much I’ll use it, but you can find me on Google+ right here.

The medals being presented at the Vancouver Winter Games have the distinction of being “first” in several ways. It’s the first time they aren’t flat. These medals are of an undulating design. Basically, that means they look wrinkled. Personally, I’m still not sure if i like that feature or not.

They also are the first medals that aren’t all the same. Each medal is etched with a randomly cropped portion of a piece of Canadian First Nation artwork representing orca whales.

However, the part that most caught my attention is the fact that the Vancouver medals have technology in them, but not in the way that you think. They don’t have chips in them. They actually have old technology items in them! Some of the metal used to mint the medals came from recycled e-waste. E-waste is a huge problem. I deal with it at work and at home. Old computer equipment and electronics build up at an astounding rate. I know that recycling a small amount of gold, silver and copper and reusing it in Olympic medals isn’t exactly going to solve the problem, but it’s nice to see an opportunity to better publicize the issue. I’m just sorry that I haven’t seen more about this in the media coverage or even on the VANOC website.

You can read more about this on Bloomberg. You can also take a look at all of the past Olympic medals at the IOC site.

You’ll be seeing many more updates to the site in the next few days. I’m slowly bringing it up to date and making it more useful.

We all know Microsoft is trying desperately to get some traction for their new Bing search engine. While looking for some images on Google, I just noticed that one of the avenues Microsoft is using is by buying adds on… wait for it… Google!

Click here to see the whole page.

Since that time, a lot has changed. THe Macintosh has consistently stayed one step ahead of the curve when it comes to new technologies. The mouse, 3.5″ floppies, firewire, USB are just a few items that apple was early to adopt. Of course, who could forget the first iMac. Not only did it revitalize Apple’s sales, it impacted a wide range of consumer products. We saw brightly colored translucent plastic on everything from staplers to office furniture to floppy drives.

So, take a moment and relive the Macintosh introduction on YouTube…

Most people think that Apple fans like me are nuts for taking so much stock in the health and well-being of a CEO, but unlike most companies, Apple’s CEO IS the company. The company moved solely on his direction and ideas. He’s a complete totalitarian (I mean that in the nicest possible way!) who built the company, and later rebuilt it.

Hopefully we’ll see him back at the helm in a few months before too much damage is done to the company.

On this special day every year, the men and women of NORAD that serve 2400 feet under the ground add a very special mission to their other critical tasks.

As they have for the 52 years, NORAD will follow Santa Claus on his flight around the world. This year it’s greatly enhanced by teaming up with Google Earth to make it fun and educational. (But mainly fun!)

Track Santa at noradsanta.org.

It’s amazing how 25 years later, all of those hours sitting with my mom and trying to fix the syntax errors in the tapes my Uncle Ott would send her actually seem like fond memories when at the time we wanted to throw the machine out the window.

Yes, the Commodore 64 is 25 years old now. I still have mine packed away. I could never get rid of it. CNN has a great article about the historic anniversary of everyone’s favorite home computer. Read CNN’s article here.

Luckily, getting lost isn’t much of a problem now that we have GPS, cell phones and Google Maps. But now things have gone full circle. If you leave home and forget to map your route first, you can pull into a gas station and ask the pump for directions thanks to an internet connection and Google Maps.

read more on Engadget | digg story

Spam is a problem on the Internet. I’ll give you a minute while you recover from that shocking revelation. If you think spam in your inbox is annoying, you should try dealing with comment spam on a blog. I get thousands of them per day. It is debilitating because you can’t possibly find any real message in the pile of crap. Thanks to Akismet spam filtering software, it’s more of an amusement than an annoyance.

What I wonder is why they bother. This blog isn’t exactly the most popular on the web and no comments get posted without moderation. So of the 100,256 comments that have been caught so far, ZERO have been seen by any human being. Oh well, if it gives them something to do instead of e-mailing me viagra ads and bank scams, then maybe it’s a good thing.

And in case you’re wondering, 44 more pieces of spam were caught in the time it took me to write this.

Then on Tuesday Steve Jobs unveiled the newest Apple keyboards. The little cloverleaf symbol is still on the command key, but the open apple was replaced with the word “command.” It’s the end of an era. It’s kind of sad.

Derik DeLong of MacUser thinks otherwise.

If you grew up in the 1980′s, you more than likely grew up with your eyes glued to the only TV channel for kids, Nickelodeon. Most people loved Nickelodeon for You Can’t Do That on Television. However, I was way more excited when 1983 rolled around and Mr. Wizard returned to TV on Mr. Wizard’s World. Sure it was kind of campy and those kids were just a little too excited about helping out Mr. Wizard with his experiments, but at the the time, I would have given ANYTHING to be one of those kids!

Mr. Wizard had a way of making science make sense by using everyday household items with the random really cool items thrown in like a Jacob’s Ladder, a Van de Graaf generator or even a computer with a black and green screen that ran BASIC!

You can learn much more about the man who inspired so many kids at his website www.mrwizardstudios.com. You can even purchase DVD’s of his shows on the website. I’m tempted to order them all.

After wasting a lot of time on this in the past, I found an easy and simple way to do it. iSquint converts the video It has some options for more advanced users, but you can also just drag, drop and convert! It runs pretty quick on my Intel 2GHz MacBook.

Believe it or not even some podcasts aren’t in iPod format!!! This saves me from them. Download it at iSquint.com.

I agree with the others who have commented on the post, I want an mp3 of it!

Check it in Pogue’s Posts.

After an extensive search by land and air James’ body was found earlier today. It appears he was leaving a trail of clothing to help searchers track him, but they got there too late.

Besides losing a great technology journalist what strikes me is that this could happen to anyone. They missed a turnoff and looked at map and found another route to take. It was a National Forest Service road that, unkown to them, is not plowed in the winter. They became stuck and wound up staying in their car for a week with little or no food.

I’ve seen a lot of people who were critical of James’ decision to leave the family and car. But I can’t imagine how desparate he must’ve been at that point. They ran the car heater until it ran out of gas. They then burned the tires for warmth. Seriously, how bad does a situation have to be to push you to the point where burning your tires is the best option. After a week of being stranded, he had to think that they’d never be rescued unless he went for help.

Like I said, what is so scary is that this could happen to anyone. I mean I don’t expect that you could get quite that lost in the this part of the country, but there are is still plenty of wilderness in places like Oregon. It’s definately making be reconsider what I carry in my trunk.

You can donate to the family at the site set up by a friend while the family was missing at www.jamesandkati.com.

You can also view a tribute from his coworkers at C|NET.

They monitor your site and e-mail you if it goes down. They have packages ranging from free to $10/month.

Check them out now and worry less about your site’s status.

Check it out here…

Last week the new Firefox v2.0 was released. I haven’t had to much time to play with it, but it looks great. In celebration of this event, the Internet Explorer Team at Microsoft sent Mozilla a congratulatory cake. I don’t know what to make of this one. Was it a nice gesture, or does the black and white theme imply something else.

Well, either way, Firefox 2 seems to be kicking IE 7′s ass.

This is my first blog post from my brand new dual core 2 GHz MacBook. (i got the white one, because I cant see paying more for some black paint.)

So far, I love it. I was nervous about getting an Intel Mac because most of my software will have to run using Roseta. After using Classic mode for years after upgrading to OS X I had a sour taste in my mouth when it comes to emulation. However, it has worked beautifully so far and it’s been seemless.

As usual, another great job by Apple.

While I still believe that a lot of systems can be cleaned by end users, I’ve recently come upon a few systems that were so badly infected that there is no way that the average user could fix them short of reformatting the hard disk (which would result in data loss.)

If you feel you are in this situation, please contact me and I’d be glad to quote you a price on fixing your system. I’ll remove any spyware and viruses, install software to prevent future infections, update Windows with all current patches and updates and more. My prices are reasonable because I consider this a service to the computing community as a whole since infected computers on the internet hurt everyone.

Just in case you aren’t familiar with it, MySpace is a website that allows you to create a profile and share it with the world. This profile is basically a mini-website which can include a photo gallery, personal facts, work and school information, a blog and more.

One of the things that has helped it grow in popularity is the fact thatit offers some useful networking features. You can link to a network of friends. This network allows links to your friends’ pages to be displayed on your homepage and it also allows you to broadcast alerts to all of your friends to keep them up to date on your life. Your friends are also able to leave comments on your homepage.

MySpace was originally created for the purpose of sharing and exposing new independent music groups and artists. However, the general public took a liking to it and it’s now one of the most visited sites on the web. While a lot of children use the site, a lot of adults do as well. Personally I have no real use for the site since I run and maintain my own website. However, if I were someone who did not know how to create my own site without using a tool such as MySpace, then I would most definately use it. Anything that allows people to easily express themselves online is a good thing, in my opinion.

Here’s where the rant begins… Like I said earlier, MySpace gets a bad rap in the media constantly. It’s blamed for people publishing too much personal information on it. It’s blamed for criminals using it to find victims. It’s blamed for kids posting threatening or other inappropriate messages. Are you seeing a pattern here? The website and it’s owners are blamed for everything that people do on it. In other words, the site gives people a forum and people use it in improper and negative ways so naturally it’s the website’s fault. It couldn’t possibly be the fault of these people who are posting on the site. Why get mad at your kids or teach them about personal responsibility when you can get mad at a total stranger who created and maintains a useful website?

The riduculous thing is that MySpace is not the first website that allows people to easily create websites. Geocities, Tripod and Bravenet have been around for years, and newer ones like Face Book and Friendster are extremely similar to MySpace. But because MySpace is so popular it’s the new popular target for anyone who wants an easy way to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions or the actions of their kids.

Oh well, I’m sure if you’re someone who really believes that a website is responsible for the actions of its users, you’re probably not reading this. You’re probably way too busy trying to find a way to sue the owner of the wall you spraypainted last night.

It’s a short (5 minutes or so) podcast that talk about a new and unique tech gadget each day.

They don’t have an actual website yet, but you can visit Dick’s site at www.gizwizbiz.com. Subscribe to the feed at http://leo.am/podcasts/dgw.

Their site is www.macbreak.com.
You can subscribe at http://www.macbreak.com/macbreak_rss.php.