So I am back in Second Life, everyday I wake up go to school and log into my second life. Above you can see my avatar Naly Heron. She is my digital representation in Second Life. I notice that these days I am wondering off and getting things for her that I want for myself in my real life. For example I bought Naly Heron some blue eyes… I have always wanted blue eyes. I also bought her some tattoos - I would never get a tattoo, Naly Heron has one tho! I really enjoy mixing realities, either putting digital characters in real life or vice versa, inserting real life characters in second life. You can do this in either video or still format. Video of course is much cooler but more difficult. Stills are pretty simple…. Check out the video below for some really cool blended realties video footage.

Did you know about the labs? Google Labs that is …

Labs.google.com is Google’s technology playground.
Google labs showcases a few of our favorite ideas that aren’t quite ready for prime time.

Your feedback can help Google improve them.

Google is always working on new stuff and they give users the chance to be apart of the developement.

Below are a few “graduates” from Google Labs

If you want to keep on top of Google Development this is definitely a place for you to check out.

	Google Suggest As you type your search, Google offers keyword suggestions in real time
	Google Transit Plan trips using public transportation
	GOOG-411 Search for local businesses using your voice, from any phone, for free. Dial 1-800-GOOG-411.
	Google Reader Use Google’s web-based feed reader to keep track of your favorite web sites
	Google Notebook Clip and collect information as you browse the web
	Google Docs & Spreadsheets Create, store and share documents and spreadsheets on the web
	Google Video Search TV programs and videos

Have you ever been scammed online? Have you ever visited a website and then BOOM… you have a virus!! Don’t you think there should be some sort of tool out there that would help you assess a websites trustworthiness?!?!? Well there is! This fantastic tool is called Web of Trust. They use a traffic light system to let users know what sites are safe and which ones are not. Green let’s the user know that the site they are visiting is A OK! Yellow- Cautions you and Red is a no no- There are also setting to show if a site is suitable for children. This is a great tool to help you steer away from viruses and fraudulent websites!

Click to see video below: 

Google is launching a new satellite on September 4th. This satellite will provide google earth and it’s users high resolutions pictures of earth. The satelltite is called GeoEye-1 and is the highest ground resolution and colour publicily available. 

“ It is our goal to display high-resolution imagery for as much of the world as possible, and GeoEye-1 will help further that goal.” — Kate Hurowitz (Google)

With Google updating these images once a month… these images will be more up-to-date than their current system.

Google Chrome is Google’s newest addition to their large family. Chrome is the new internet browser that Google has been working on for quite some time. The browser is completly open source and is built towards handling all types of media. The beta version is going to be release tomorrow September 2 2008 only for windows. The Mac and Linux versions are yet to come.

“So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.” From TheGoogle Blog

Click Here to View the Google Chrome Comic 

With Social Networks on the rise there are so many different networks to check out on the web. Being aware of all them is nearly impossible as many are trying to be better than the last. Yahoo Mash was Yahoo’s attempt at what would almost seem like a facebook but run by Yahoo. Yahoo stated that they were closing this service in April of this year. Just yesterdya they have pulled Mash offline. The network was always in beta and Yahoo did not do very well at all with this test. Yahoo has over 500 million users world-wide and just couldn’t create a usable/interesting social network for users. 

From the Mash Blog:

 Slydial.com is a very cool service offered for US phone numbers. This site lets you connect right to anyones voicemail. You don’t have time to talk or don’t really want to talk at a certain time. Slydial is very easy to use and a great tool to use when you still need to communicate but you just don’t want to deal with the drama/situations or are pressed for time. I tried it out and it’s great! 

See what the ladies on The View had to say about it:

 SuperCook.com is something that you should know about. When you start running out of food and have bits of ingredients here ant there, this website is going to help you out. Basically you enter in the search tool the ingredients that you have in your house. The engine will then go give you options to what you can make with your ingredients. Right now I have chickpeas and beans… Festival Refried Beans, Taco Pie II … are among some of the results given. 

‘Supercook returns recipes you can actually make right now with the ingredients you have. It even tells you exactly how many recipes you can make, broken down into ‘Starters’, ‘Entrees’ and ‘Dessert’ categories. With Supercook, finding a great recipe is no longer a hassle, simply put in all the ingredients you have at home and Supercook will instantly provide you with hundreds of recipes that are all within your reach. If a recipe requires ingredients you do not have, Supercook takes the guesswork out by clearly listing the additional ingredients you will need. This eliminates wasted time spent browsing through recipes to determine whether or not a recipe is right for you. ‘

I am always looking for new webhosting services. I have many different web projects and it gets very costly. Today I found a great company! WebHostingGeeks.com that helps you find the best web hosting comapny at the best rate. Having a good web hosting company is very important over time. Their servers can go down, they may be a bit slower- Web Hosting Geeks is the new solution. Users rate different web hosting comapnies based on their experiences. You can see an overall rating of

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I found out about SocialGO a few months ago. I was intrigued, curious, and tried many different ways of attaining an account. Today is that day! I finally got into the SocialGO network. SocialGo is to me exactly like Ning, so far I see nothing that really separates the two. You can create your own social network for anything! Ning has taken off in the last few years and of course other companies are going to follow the same viral model, even the back-end looks the same. I am not sure how successsfull this company will be or how many active users they will get. So far the whole thing looks very amateur compared to Ning. 

‘SocialGO is a service which allows you create a social website for any group you choose. After 18 months of development we have entered closed BETA (soon to be open)’ 

Here is a snapshot of the backend:

           CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW:

I’m not going to completely write them off since they are still in beta