http://www.hesspoint.com

I just saw that Mozilla released Firefox 2.0. I am downloading it as I type. I hope it finishes loading till I am done writing this post. Lots of people are loading right now, I guess. I looked up the feature list and it looks like they put in some nice little improvements. However, to me it seems like most of the new things I already have in 1.5 by using extensions. Now they built it right in. But anyway better then MS with Internet Explorer 7 which managed to catch up to Firefox could not overtake it. Now Mozilla is another step ahead. Better luck next time, Microsoft!

Wohooooo!!!! Finally Germany is all high resulution in Google Earth. I just opened up GE and could not believe my eyes. Not just the big cities, but also little villages and countryside is finally not a big blob anymore. This might take geocaching to a whole new level in Germany. What a day!

If you put your photos online with Flickr, you normally want the viewers to know where these photos were taken. You can do this the low-tech way by giving them a tag with the name of the City or the like. However there is also a better way to do this by assigning a georeference to the photo by latitude and longitute coordinates. This way the photos can be viewed on maps like Google Earth. To achieve this you got to "geotag" your images.

Geotagging your photos in Flickr has always been a hassle. You could manually add tags with logitude and latitude coordinates for each photo. With Google Earth and a nice little networklink from Flickrmap you can do this very easily now. Check their tutorial, how it works. Once your photos are geotagged they show up on Flickrmap and (with the right networklink) on Google Earth.

I just came across a neat service that falls under the category "visitor-maps". As you might have noticed, I already use a service called Blogflux MapStats, which uses Google Maps to display the origin of my visitors. ClustrMaps shows your visitors on a map as clusters of varying size and lets. As an aside: It seems to be quite a hype these days to omit the "e" in names, like in Flickr and now in Clustr.

The service is free for sites with less then 1000 visitors daily otherwise it costs $ 9.99 a year or $ 0.99 per month.

These days Google launches cool new projects almost on a daily basis. Their newest baby is Google Pack, a bundle of some very useful Google tools, mixed with some third party software. Certainly cool is a free version of Norton AntiVirus that comes with a free subscription for 6 month. You can customize which tools should be in your pack and then download it all together. Since I use all of these tools already, I haven’t tried it myself yet, but as I know the guys from Google it will certainly work like a charm. By default, the following apps are included:

• Google Earth
• Google Desktop
• Google Toolbar für den Internet Explorer
• Picasa
• Google Pack Screensaver
• Mozilla Firefox mit Google Toolbar
• Norton AntiVirus 2005 Special Edition
• Adobe Reader 7
• Ad-Aware SE Personal

Optionally you can also include:

• Google Talk
• RealPlayer
• Trillian
• GalleryPlayer HD Images

To learn more check the About-Page.

I am a big fan of the Trillian Instant Messenger, which is an IM client, able to handle ICQ, MSN, AIM, Yahoo! and Jabber. With plugins you can even use it for Lotus Sametime and Novell Messenger. But one thing was always missing: Skype! I mean the cool thing about Trillian is that you only need one contact list for everything. But also using Skype means two contact lists open. Now, there is the solution: SkyLlian. It is a Trillian plugin that puts your Skype contacts in your Trillian list and lets you use Trillian to chat and voice chat. The downside however is that you still need to have a Skype client installed and run in the background. Hopefully they will get rid of that in the future that you really only need a Trillian. Anyway it is a great step in the right direction.

Skyllian Website

I have been asked quite a lot from friends and collagues, which extensions for Firefox are good and which ones do i need for this and that. There are tons of extensions out there, and some are excellent and some are really crappy. I meant to post a list of extensions I use, but I never found the time. Just now I came across an article on chip.de, which has some good extensions listed by their focus and with a description. Here you go!

Here are also some other links where you can get extensions:

• Mozilla Update - Firefox Extensions
• Extension Room
• The Extensions Mirror

Now that all providers updated their PHP to 4.4.1 because of the security risks, more bad news hits the fan: PHP 4.4.1 can cause PHP applications to crash. According to heise news, the functions next(), prev() and reset() are affected. I wonder if this was the reason for my WordPress problems last week.

Here is finally the post I wanted to make 3 days ago:
Do you know what TFTC or UPS (no, not United Parcel Service ;-)) means? Do you know what a geomuggle is? GeoLex is a cool online geocaching dictionary where you find lots of answers and information about our sport.

Yesterday, I watched the news and saw a report about a website called NewSevenWonders.com where you can vote for the world’s seven wonders of our time. The idea is that since the seven wonders of the ancient time are all gone but the pyramids, it is time to find the ones of our days.
A cool idea I thought and visited the site this morning. I clicked on vote and then… What a rip-off!!! You have to call a 0190 number for 0.62 €/min. to get a code to enter on the site. I get the strong feeling that the sole purpose of this site is to make money. Why do I have to pay to vote for a world wonder? They say that they don’t really make lots of revenue but I don’t quite belive it. Besides, did anyone tell these guys that 0190 numbers will be abolished by the end of the year (Read here)? In the US and other countries you have to call overseas. Why does Germany have an expensive number where all other countries can just call abroad for one or two cents? Click here for the list of numbers.
It is very sad that a really nice idea is misused to rip people off in this way.