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The Giants and the Jets have agreed on a new stadium in the Meadowlands. Both teams would own the stadium, which would be the first time two teams have shared ownership of a stadium. Both teams would like a retractable roof, which would almost guarantee a Super Bowl, but can’t afford it. The downside to this agreement is that the new stadium will not be called Giants Stadium.

Technorati Tags: Giants, Jets, Meadowlands

Opera has finally removed all integrated ad banners from their browser. Opera is a web browser that will run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and a few other operating systems. I’ve been using Opera for a while now but only to see how one of my sites looks in a different browser.

Technorati Tags: Opera

Google has launched a blog search.

Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs. Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you’re looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice.

Your results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger; our blog index is continually updated, so you’ll always get the most accurate and up-to-date results; and you can search not just for blogs written in English, but in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages as well.

I tried it out and it works pretty well. Under the name of the link, it tells you when that entry was made. If it’s less than 24 hours ago, it’ll tell you how many hours ago. If it’s more than 24 hours ago, it’ll tell you what date it was posted but not the time. You can get your results as an RSS or Atom feed with 10 or 100 results so instead of going back to Blog Search and searching for something months from now, you can subscribe to the RSS/Atom feed, and see when it gets updated.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Google

I have ESPN BottomLine running at the bottom of my screen all the time and while I was writing my last post, a headline popped up that caught my attention; NHL announces $100M deal with XM Radio. It’s a 10 year deal that will make XM the exclusive satellite radio broadcaster for the NHL as of 2007. That makes XM the exclusive satellite radio broadcaster for Major League Baseball, NASCAR (which I don’t listen to), and now the National Hockey League. Now all I need is National Football League games on XM so I can listen to my Giants games.

Technorati Tags: NHL, Satellite Radio, XM

I have been listening to the podcast Coverville ever since I discovered podcasting about 9 months ago. Brian Ibbot, the creator of Coverville, played a song I requested in his last show and even said my name “on the air”. He started off pronouncing my last name incorrectly but quickly corrected himself. I’m used to having people pronounce my last name with a long I instead of a soft i. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to pronounce my last name.

Technorati Tags: Coverville, Podcast

I’ve come across a couple of programs that anybody can run from a USB flash drive without needing to install them to the hard drive. I already use the regular versions of these programs on my laptop and tower but it’s nice having them on a thumbdrive for when I go to people’s houses for tech work. The best part is they’re all free.
The first one is Portable Firefox. Firefox is a free alternative to Internet Explorer that is also a lot safer to use than IE. Firefox also has tabbed browsing so that you can visit multiple sites at the same time inside one browser window. With IE, you would have to have multiple IE windows open. Portable Firefox is 5.8MB downloaded and 7.5MB installed.
The next one is Portable Thunderbird. Thunderbird is a free alternative to Microsoft Outlook that is also safer to use than Outlook. Thunderbird only handles email and contacts. It doesn’t have a calendar feature built into it which is why there’s Sunbird. Portable Thunderbird is 7.1MB downloaded and 9.0MB installed.
The next one is Portable Sunbird. Sunbird is Mozilla’s calendar program. It allows you to keep track of all your appointments just like Microsoft Outlook. Thunderbird and Sunbird together are the equivalent of Microsoft Outlook. Portable Sunbird is 6.1MB downloaded and 7.5MB installed.
The next one is Portable OpenOffice. OpenOffice is a free alternative to Microsoft Office. Presently there are two version of OpenOffice available. The latest stable version has a word processor, spreadsheet, and a presentation package. The latest beta adds a database to that list. The only Office application that OpenOffice doesn’t have a similar version, is Outlook; but then again, you already have Thunderbird and Sunbird. Portable OpenOffice is 53.4MB downloaded and 90.6MB for the stable version; 60.5MB downloaded and 116MB installed for the beta version.
The last one is FileZilla. FileZilla is a free FTP client for uploading/downloading files to/from an FTP server. Make sure you download the .zip and not the .exe if you’re going to use it on a thumbdrive. FileZilla is 4.3MB downloaded and 11.5MB installed.

iTunes 5.0 was released today along with the new iPod nano. The nano replaces the mini but is slimmer and has a color display. It looks like a wider version of the shuffle with a color display. It comes in a 2GB and 4GB version whereas the mini was available in 4GB and 6GB models. The nano is also available in black instead of the stereotypical iPod white. I can honestly see the nano causing the end of the shuffle. The shuffle is $129 for 1GB whereas the nano is $199 for 2GB. I’ll have to go to the Apple store in the mall here to see how light the nano is.
The new version of iTunes isn’t much different from the previous version. They changed the look of iTunes and now podcasts that you’re subscribed to in iTunes show up under Podcasts and in your main library. Other than that, the only reason for iTunes 5.0 is to give the nano and the new iTunes phone, the Motorola ROKR available only through Cingular, something to sync with. The one thing missing from the new iTunes is BitTorrent support. A lot of the lesser known podcasts can’t afford the bandwidth that iTunes may bring them so most turn to BitTorrent to help control bandwidth demand on their sites. All of the other podcatching clients like Doppler, iPodder lemon, and iPodderX support BitTorrent.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, iTunes

I was going through some of the WeirdNJ groups on Yahoo and came across a link for postage stamps with Tillie face on them. For those of you who don’t know who Tillie is, Tillie was the smiling face on the side of the Palace Amusements in Asbury Park before they tore it down. To help remember Tillie and the Palace Amusements, there’s a site where you can buy Tille postage stamps.

Technorati Tags: Asbury Park, NJ, Palace Amusements, Tillie

I just checked my gmail account and noticed that I have 100 invites now instead of the usual 50. The only thing that comes to mind is that they are getting ready to go public.

Technorati Tags: GMail