Who Will Google Buy Next?

This article have a great summary for the past, now and future of Google.

Google is the new Internet behemoth, snatching up small companies left and right. So, in this article, I ask: what tech gems are in the running for Google's growing subsidiary menagerie? To help predict, I will first take a look at who Google has acquired in the past and what Google has done for them, and then I'll throw out a few possibilities for Googlification and discuss where they might fit into Google's strategy.

Click the following source link for more information.

Source: kuro5hin

How to make a home video

Recently, I spent some time making a film for my friend's 50th anniversary. Through the whole process I knew that making a movie is a task which now everything can enjoy. Here is some of my DIY for your reference:

1. Video record people using a "Digital Video Camcorder". Mine is Panansonic PV-DV702.

2. Capture the video from camcord to your computer through Firewire connection. Firewire connection is very fast while USB is pretty slow, even if it is USB2.0. I use the windows movie maker which comes with windows XP OS to capture the video.

3. Then I used the movie maker which is pretty easy to use to edit the clips, add backgroup musics, add pictures, add video transitions. The whole process is easy, but take some time and you need to be patient :)

4. After finishing the movie edtting, I need to export the movie as WMV file. Here comes the evil of Microsoft: it only support its own format wma instead of industry standards. But it provides multiple exporting choices to fit for PC, WEB or PDA. The only bad thing is that it doesn't allow you to convert into VCD or DVD, so the home entertainment DVD/VCD player can play it on TV.

5. But I do want to have a VCD version of the movie. So I choose to use ULead Videostudio 7 SE (now they should have the version 9, but I only have version 7). However, it tooks me around 3 hours to capture the wma filen and then convert into MPEG format, so a VCD movie can be created.

If you have a wma movie and want to convert into the VCD, please use Rixio CD creator which takes less than 10 minutes and the quality is pretty much the same as the Ulead 7.

BTW, the converted VCD movie from WMA format seems to lose a little bit sound quality.

So if possible, I would like to consistently use the latest ULead software to capture, edit and create the MPEG format video. Later on, I can always easily convert it into other formats.

For building the VCD or DVD, Roxio EasyCD Creator is much better and easier than the Ulead's DVD build function.

Ulead VideoStudio is supposed to be more powerful, but harder to use than windows movie maker.

In summary, the idea way (for me) to build a movie is

1. Capture and edit the movie using Ulead Videostudio
2. Create the VCD/DVD using Roxio
3. Convert the video into wma so you can publish it on the web or PDA using windows movie maker.

Microsoft Plans RSS Features In Longhorn

Features are designed to make Really Simple Syndication feeds easier to subscribe to and more useful by connecting to desktop software.

Microsoft plans to include in the next version of Windows features to manage Web content distributed via RSS, an increasingly popular way of reading online news and blogs.

Windows Longhorn will include features to help PC users subscribe to information published by bloggers and Web news sites using the Really Simple Syndication protocol. Longhorn will also include a special database and API to make RSS feeds available to desktop apps, Microsoft said.

A test version of Longhorn--the desktop operating system due late next year--that Microsoft plans to distribute at its Professional Developers Conference in September will include the ability to subscribe to news feeds, blog entries, and other Web content published via RSS from within the Windows user interface. The feature will require the upcoming version 7 of Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser, due in test form this summer. Longhorn will also be able to store data from RSS feeds in a central place on a PC's hard drive and make it available to apps such as PC calendars. "We're making a really big RSS investment in Longhorn," says Gary Schare, Windows product-management director. "We think RSS will work better than past push technology."

The RSS protocol, based on XML, is a popular way for authors of online news sites, blogs, and audio "podcasts" to automatically alert their subscribers that new content is available. Today, most PC users who subscribe to RSS feeds view entries with special reader software or through Web sites like Technorati.com and Bloglines.com that aggregate the feeds. Apple Computer has built some support for subscribing to RSS feeds into its Safari Web browser, and the Mozilla Foundation includes the ability to bookmark RSS headlines in its Firefox browser.

But RSS still hasn't caught on with most PC users, says Matt Rosoff, a Directions on Microsoft analyst. "It's cutting-edge technology but not something that would enlist a ton of new users," he says. RSS could become more popular if Microsoft builds into its Office apps features that consume information published that way, Rosoff adds.

For its part, Microsoft says it hopes to expand applications for RSS-syndicated content. "We want to enable RSS at the Windows platform level to open it up to new developers," Schare says. On Friday, Microsoft published extensions to the RSS protocol for viewing and sorting lists of entries--such as items on an E-commerce site or songs from an online music store--by their popularity or other criteria. Currently, RSS entries appear in reader software by the date they were published. Microsoft published the extensions under the Creative Commons license, a public domain licensing organization founded by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig.

Some of the features Microsoft plans for Longhorn will be available to Windows XP users as well. The RSS extensions and ability to subscribe to feeds from within Windows will also appear in a version of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP, Schare says. But users will have to wait for Longhorn to take advantage of the "common feed store" for desktop software that Microsoft is developing. That technology is scheduled to debut in a test version of Longhorn due in mid-September at Microsoft's developers conference in Los Angeles. Schare says it won't appear in the "beta 1" version of Longhorn, which is expected in August.

Source: InformationWeek

My Speeding Ticket

Last October, I got a traffic speeding ticket for driving 35 miles/hr at the 25 miles/hr residential area. Actually I really didn't know how fast I drove exactly. After 2 months, I didn't receive any letter from superior court. So I called the court to see what was going on. I turned out that officer wrote my drive license number wrong, so it took a while for them to figure out who should receive the ticket. (If I didn't call in, I may never receive the ticket :)

Then I checked the citation ticket copy the officer gave me and found that he not only wrote my drive license number wrong, but also my registration information and the citation date. It looked that he really in the low-maintenance mode at that day. So I suspected that he really didn't know at what speed I was driving and he just wanted to rip me off. So I decided to go to the court to fight with the officer.

So I made the appointment for the court appearance in March to ask for trial. Unfortunately, somehow I totally forgot about that. When I remembered that I was supposed to appear in the court, it was too late. So I got one more charge besides the speeding -- non-appearance in the court for $400 fine or in prison for 6 month. At that time, I was so scared that I would end up in jail because of the 35 miles per hour driving !

Fortunately, during the next court appearance, judge was so kind and he would drop any first time non-appearance charge :) But I still chose to go to the trial to fight with the cop face by face.

So on June 21, 2005, 10:30AM, I appeared at the Palo Also superior court room 86 with all the preparation, ready to accuse that the officer was lowly maintained. I was also kind of excited because I had never defended myself in front of judge. In my imagination, it would be like something in the TV that attorney will bring all the evidences to persuade judge that defendant is innocent. (Just like Michael Jackson was aquited :)

To my surprise, the officer didn't show up. Natually, the case was dismissed, so I had no any charge for this case. Faint! I didn't even have a chance to talk with judge to dispute that I was not guilty. He only said two sentences, "The plaintiff didn't appear; the case is dropped. You can go now!"

So with all the disappointment, I left the court without any charge ...

Hehe, I don't need to pay the fine. Let me enjoy the lobster this week :)