Hi Guys, sorry I have been realatively quite for a little while, but you know how things are. Family. Work, life in general.
Anyway, below is a collection of links that I found interesting from the vrious stories that where “trawled” up by my Newzcrawler RSS/Newsreader
Broadband fuels online expression Having an always-on, fast net connection is changing the way Britons use the internet, research suggests.
In some ways this, and the following two stories are a conglomeration , in the fact they are all interlinked. In my case blogging would be a lot “harder”, as would the rest of my Internet expirance, without my Broadband connection. And,now at least, i haven’t got a clue how I ever mamaged before on just a dial up connection.As some of you wil be aware, as a BT Engineer, part of my skill base is the repair and provsioin of Broadband for the various ISP’s, so i know how hard it has been for some poeple to get this “wonderful” connection system.
It has certainly changed the way that i use the internet. I’m still not a gereat user of Messanging systems, but I can see why poeple do. And a lot of my web presance is via my variuos weblogs (I now evn have an
MSN “Space” (see below). Maybe allowing everyone an outlet for their thoughts and feelings is a good thing, i think so.
Microsoft gets the blogging bug Software giant Microsoft is joining the ranks of companies offering blogs or online journals.
MSN Launches Spaces! MSN® Spaces, a free service currently available in beta version, is an entirely new offering from MSN that allows consumers to create personal Internet Spaces sites where they can express themselves in a variety of ways and interact with the people they care about most. MSN Spaces is more than an ordinary personal Web site; it?s an easy-to-use service that is more like a dynamic online scrapbook, giving people a place to create and update…
Direct and Related Links for 'MSN Launches Spaces!'
Should we surprised?
I suppose not. What did surprise me was the amount of time it did take Microsoft to join the blogging revolution. That said, I have taken the bait and sign up for an MSN Space.(click here to have a look at
Smudgersworld)
What is it like?
Bare in mind that i have only been tinkering with this for a couple of days, but.
It appears, for the momnet least ways, to be an online only system in that I can’t find a way to it post remotely, using either Blogjet, wblogger and thier ilk. Not that that’s a completely bad thing, its just a “lazy” issue with me.It has a small number of site themes and they seem to OK. Other than that it is a standard blogging service.
Give it a go and see what you think.
'Blog' picked as word of the year A US dictionary publisher declares "blog" as one of the words of the year.
War of the Worlds Teaser Trailer Friday Building on the intense level of interest and enthusiasm across the internet, Paramount Pictures will unveil the highly anticipated teaser trailer for Steven Spielberg's contemporary retelling of H.G. Wells' classic War of the Worlds exclusively on the web Friday morning, December 10, 2004.
“who would have belieb=ved, in the last years of the Nieteeth Century, that Human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of Space”
One of my favourite menories was listerning , for the first tinm, to the voice of Richard Burton narrating the story of the Matrian invasion on Jeff Waynes War of the Worlds Album. The book, the 50’s film, even some of the “odd” TV spin off’s, all part of an “aging” teenagers’ past.
For a number of years a new version of the War of the Worlds film has been mutted, but always came to nought.
But now. We have Steven Spilberg and Tom Cruise in the same story. My only worry is that this, like it’s 50’s predessor, will turn into some “Americain-is’ed” blockbuster.I’m not trying to be nationalistic, and i also realise that certian elements of a story have to be “ammended” to suit the medium of the big screen, but how many times have we seen a good book, destroyed for the sake of “the film makers art”. To be fair to Mr Spielberg i must admit that i do like a lot of his work, and the way he goes about things.
We will see.
God Bless
The Smudger - 
