noinput.net | plug it in

Seriously.

Lots of exciting things happening this week for Microsoft. Bill Gates will be on the Daily Show tomorrow (Monday) night *joy* and I can’t wait to see if John Hodgman decides to show up for a little game of satirical ping-pong. Of course he will be on tv just one hour before the official release of Vista to the public. MS.com has prepared nicely for the occasion as well.

Along with the spirit of gearing up for the 07 rendition of Microsoft products I decided to jump into the Live.com version of hotmail which tends to be my failsafe for spam-catching these days, but a very nice upgrade, indeed. Along with the sexy AJAX-style interface, a nice 2gb bump in storage space is included.

We went from this:

and this

to a quick customization setup page:

and finally, a new and improved email interface*:

*ad-free of course, thanks to AdBlocker+

It’s definitely going to be a great year for NASCAR. All broadcasts in 100% HD including on-board car cams. Now that’s what I’m talking about. I didn’t know that every Busch series race was on ESPN2-HD, I’m going to have to look into that one. Or for all I know I’ll get lucky with a Google TV invite. *chuckle*, yeah, I fell for it and tried it a few times.

ESPN recently revealed its plans for broadcasting NASCAR races during the upcoming season, in what the network is calling “most technologically advanced in motorsports history”. Every race will be done completely in HD, including in car cameras, pit crew, blimp and other angles. All of this goes along with the mobile studio ESPN will use to broadcast NASCAR Countdown shows from each race, and a radio room that allows ESPN to record and replay clips from any driver-pit crew transmissions. You can expect the full HD treatment on every Busch Series race this year (aired on ESPN2-HD) and the final 17 Nextel Cup races on ESPN and ABC. We’ve already come to expect top notch HD broadcasts from TNT, Fox and HDNet’s coverage of the sport and it appears ESPN is ready to raise the bar yet again.

via EngadgetHD

For any true geek with the money to kill out there, this is like a dream come true. Every NES game up for grabs on eBay. It even comes with a Power Glove and a Game Genie! Talk about a flash from the past man, I still remember the day I came home from Toys’R'Us with my Game Genie.

*ahh* those were the days.

Nice little article on Google’s blog yesterday talking about the future of YouTube and Google. One thing that stood out to me was where they stated “..as it evolves into a service where you can search for the world’s online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted.”

Google’s strength — and its history — is grounded in search and in innovating technologies to make more information more available and accessible. YouTube, meanwhile, excels at being a leading content destination with a dynamic community of users who create, watch and share videos worldwide.

Google search results already include links to content that’s hosted on YouTube. Starting today, YouTube video results will appear in the Google Video search index: when you click on YouTube thumbnails, you will be taken to YouTube.com to experience the videos. Over time, Google Video will become even more comprehensive as it evolves into a service where you can search for the world’s online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted.

This is part of Google’s overall goal to give you the highest quality search results possible. For example, some users who do a Google search for Martin Luther King, Jr. may want to find websites about him. Others may want to see images of him. And others may want to watch video footage…

YouTube, as we’ve stated previously, will remain an independent subsidiary of Google, and will continue to operate separately. Google will support YouTube by providing access to search and monetization platforms and, when/where YouTube launches internationally, to international resources. YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and the rest of the YouTube team will continue to innovate exciting new ways for people to “broadcast themselves.”

Funny to think that just 10 years ago I was using webcrawler and lycos thinking It can’t get any better than this right here.. and look at where we’ve come to now. Before you know it Google will be able to pull up relevant video-casts that relate to the page you’re viewing so you can watch a tutorial as you read it. Of course it will be on-demand and streaming so you can skip ahead and find the part that interests you.

A while back I found a great article on readwriteweb that talked about the future of inline video searching. For example with this method if I wanted to find that part in 24 Season 5 when Jack was in the submarine on the computer. I could just search for tags embedded in the movie clip (submarine, computer, jack, torpedo) and have it pull relevant timecode for a quick jump. I really see this type of thing as the future of the web.. or maybe I’ll start calling it Web 2.5.

UPDATE: YouTube co-founder says site will begin sharing revenue with users

Excellent use of one of the most cherished inventions in human history, packaged air.

Smart Idea, this would really come in handy for all my cards that I use once a week/month that don’t want to carry everywhere I go. Great way of GTD.

A Instructables user was sick of carrying several “bonus” cards that had scanable bar codes, so they scanned them into Photoshop, stuck them together, printed them out and made an all-in-one card. So very cool.

You can scan anything with a barcode: Your student ID, Video Store Card, Library Card, etc. One caveat…You might want to use the self-checkout lanes with this baby. We can see the cashiers getting a little freaked out. Thin wallet here we come. —MEGHANN MARCO

hat tip -> brady via consumerist