Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

My browser is filling up with pages left right and centre.

I need to reduce the number of windows open – even though I am running Google Chrome now. I have noticed it is way more stable than Firefox and leaves Internet Explorer for dead – except for a few sites that will only open properly in IE. Qantas being one of them. Actually the Qantas site works fine, but the Infotriever software uses a plugin that extracts my flight bookings and inserts them into Outlook for me. So where am I going?

First I am flying to Sydney for the day on 18th October to attend the Australian DrupalCamp. The at Christmas time I am flying to New Zealand to attend a family reunion as the resident tech geek – set up and manage a wifi network, patch PCs, probably build a new one for my folks etc. Oh and hang out with my siblings and nieces and nephews for a couple of days :)

Twitter world. I am attending my first ever BTUB this Friday. The Director of Innovation Services Australia, John Haining, is following my twitter updates, and I reciprocated. (Maybe I do have a voice Chris Saad!) I better say something intelligent now!

I am going to have to purchase the antivirus software for the Windows Home Server soon. The trial version of F-Secure will run out shortly. I think I will try the licensed version. It is Euro 65.

Ping.fm is awesome. I will draw a chart later to explain it. Suffice to say for now that if you use more than one social network, microblogging facility or lifestream application then Ping.fm is THE tool for you. And its free.

Windows Live! Where do I start? The Live team are releasing stuff like mice breeding. Talking of which, Jadeen is upset now as she begins to realise that her baby mice, now nearly three weeks old will be euthanised this weekend for snake food. She gets to keep 1 and 2 go to the mouse’s fathers owner. Anyway back to Windows Live. The Live Betas for Photo Gallery, Writer, Messenger, Movie Maker, Mail, Office Outlook Connector (for hotmail and outlook and calendar integration) have all been released.

Photo gallery has some cool enhancements including tagging photos for people using your messenger contacts. I am writing this in the New Live Writer – much cleaner interface and seems to work better. They fixed some bugs also. Live Messenger Beta is Way Cool. It has this awesome heading background that can be customised with a photo or pic from your computer, and this is shared with your contacts when you chat with them – if they have the new version. I have put a panoramic photo created in Live Photo Gallery in my header.

Get all the new Live Tools from the http://download.live.com/ site.

Talking of Panoramic, the Live team released the Image Composite Editor today for x86 and x64. I have downloaded it but haven’t installed it yet – i only found it out a few minutes ago.

Internet Explorer is available. While I haven’t installed it yet, I will dot hat on a dev machine to test the next site we build, there are some pages I have found that may be helpful. Learn all about web slices and locate and download Internet Explorer 8 addons.

5 of the guys from our church have gone to Tanzania to do some community development work, teach at a pastors conference and generally minister to the folk there. Read all about it and interact with them if you desire on the Narangba Baptist Church – Tanzania Missions Trip blog site I set up using Ning.

Another Ning site I created some time ago is for the basketball coaching group I am working with. We are working on fitness, basketball and volleyball skills and some life skills including confidence, interpersonal relationships and spiritual growth. Tonight we had an exciting meeting with some parents and 4 of the older kids including our very own aManda about how we can use the group to reach out to disadvantaged kids and kids with needs. We are looking at connecting with a campus for drop out kids, – those who have been completely abandoned by the school system because of behavioural and societal issues. It is exciting to see the passion of the young people as they prepare to step out of the safety of their comfort zones to help kids who really need it but will be very confronting and hard to help.

That closed a few – down to 31 tabs open!.

Question – what exciting stuff are you reading about right now?