I stumbled onto this Portal/home page site the other day - and I am glad glad glad I did! The site is pageflakes.com. It's an AJAX based home page site that allows drag and drop on the fly customization of what content you want to have smack you in the noggin every time you open you favorite web browser (Firefox).

I have officially ditched the Google page as my home page in favor of this. In fact, I think I am going to develop a Flake and try to win that xBox 360 they are going to give away to the most popular Flake at the end of March.

This is really cool. I love new web apps. I'm not exactly sure where wufoo comes from.. scratch that - I have no idea where wufoo comes from - but it one of the coolest things I have seen around in a bit. I have kicked this idea around for a while now. No really, we have been talking about making dynamic forms at work almost the last year - but don't really have the need.

The interface is really simple and straight forward. Uncluttered and clean. The fact that it is in Flash doesn't hurt either. This is pretty sweet. I'm not sure what they plan on doing with it ultimately - but I will hang around and find out.

JotForm is another site doing the same thing, and actually I think they were doing it first. This is a bit different in that it does not utilize Flash, it is built on AJAX. So it is just as cool.

Makes me want to figure this out for work again. Even though I would be the one using it would still be fun.

We know what Origami is right?
the art of paper-folding...
Well maybe not anymore. I ran across this just a little bit ago and I must say that I am very intrigued by this little video on Digital Kitchen's website.

If you hit their site, and check out the work section, go to BrandTheatre, and tag the link to Microsoft Origami. It's a pretty slick little video.

Microsoft just launched this little guy here too, origamiproject.com. There isn't much info on the site, just a date - 3.2.06 - and an RSS feed.  I'm generally not a sucker for the old marketing traps, but this has hit me right in the geek-spot. I don't even really know what it is, and I want one. It looks like a tablet thinga-ma-bob, and I have been Jonsing for a tablet PC for a while. I bought my iPod and that has been able to stem the tide a bit, but I long for a gadget. A really cool, kickin' full-functioned toy. In fact, I was just sayin' to Brent a few weeks ago how someone should make something like this so I could buy it.

There was Leica digital camera in the video too, a Digilux 2 to be exact. Which has reminded me how much I absolutely love the look of old Leica range finders. They are like the Volvo's of cameras. They are simply beautiful. Always have been, and I imagine they always will be. Too bad the damn thing is like $1,800.00!

Anyway, be sure to come back in a couple of days, since I will most certainly be posting again about Origami.

This is pretty damned amazing! Go to codefromthe70s.org and check Desktop Earth. Do it! NOW!

It's pretty cool. Unbelievable actually. The quality and sharpness of the image it generates is outstanding, and the fact that you can select which region to center on, and select the day and time to generate the desktop image... well it's not something I have seen before.

You can even decide how big a file to generate for your desktop. How cool is that? It's not the fastest thing in the world, but I just generated a 1280 x 1024 image in about 30 seconds from start to finish. Okay, so maybe my gen x attention span is kicking here....

There is also some really interesting other stuff on the site. The link to LogMeIn Remote Access is nice. I haven't heard of this software before, and from the website it seems to be excellent. I am setting up a free account right now.

The setup is quick and straight forward, they even give you a password strength indicator when you enter in you account password - kinda neat. The free account is limited, but never expires. I will try it out from work tomorrow to see how it goes. The Pro version is spendy ($12.95 month) - but for me to use with my work PC, it may be worth it...

I added a n new Dynamic Photo Gallery to help me keep up to date with all the photos of the kids, so check it out.

Flogging English Photo Gallery

You can do a ton of stuff here, and you must have my permission to log in/register. It's pretty sweet. You can comment, rate it, search, and I can add members to be able to upload images too. For anyone interested in getting this for their own website, it's the Coppermine Photo Gallery.

It's still pretty sparse, since I just got it working - but all of the images from the static pages will be added eventually, and will replace those pages altogether.

The set-up

It's like 7:30 in the morning. Dylan and Donovan have just consumed some food - waffles to be exact. Notice the conspicuous absence of the eldest...

Any way, enter Dylan - supercharged and ready to face the world. Keep in my as you watch this, he did this for almost 20 minutes... I had to get this on video.

So being the big geek that I am, there is a regular windows version (wmv file - 2.6mb) and and iPod ready version (.m4v - 3.2mb). I spliced two clips together so I could get him running off screen at the end after Momo. You will have to right-click on the links to save link as... to view them (most likely).

He likes to chase Momo as much as he likes to wear a tread pattern into the floor around the island.

As a side note; I am looking for an application to allow me to easily add a bunch of images to the site - so I don't have to keep doing it manually... hopefully I will find something soon - and just toss up a ton of images of the kids.