Google Earth now has some really nice historical maps under the Layers pane, Featured Content > Rumsey Historical Maps. You may have to upgrade your version of the software before it will display though.

For all the haters – Flash is the new internet video medium!
Here is a nice guide with information on compressing to FLV and serving it.

VideoLAN VLC media player is a streaming media server and client solution that runs on loads of platforms and goes for free.

This is a nice piece of software that starts up with the insertion of your USB drive giving your home address and a little message.

For some reason Internet Explorer has a problem opening websites containing the Google Maps API with a totally non-saying why error leading to a generic page. The linkielist contained this API, and it has now been removed, so IE users can get back to reading this.

Do something they should have done – and then for a supplier that will win!

Now if they could only get those Pocket PCs to not wipe every time they run out of batteries…

If you’ve seen the future of UIs with Vista, Mac and Linux (search this site for ‘cube’) you know that Compiz with the flying cubes wins hands down – looks very very cool.

There is, however some confusion as to how to get it to run – it’s not trivial, but not so hard either.

1) Compiz (vanilla by Novell)
2) Beryl (formerly Compiz-QuinnStorm, the branch which the users have split off due to users building more and more of their own plugins).

Debian Unstable allows you to install compiz-vanilla.
They are still working on a Beryl package.

Ubuntu allready has a Beryl package. The installation wiki is here.