Hurley's World

Many people are commenting about the proposal made by Verizon, Bell South, and other companies demanding that Google pay telecoms money to ensure that users can view their premium content. Such premium content would undoubtedly include Google Video. Many of these same people are calling this a double-dip or a pure money grab, since home users are already paying for their access. However, what many of them fail to mention is that Verizon, and probably a few other telecom companies, are in the process of laying vasts amounts of fiber optic cable across the US, a rather costly proposition. So costly, in fact, that it's doubtful Verizon can afford to pay for these upgrades from subscriber fees alone.

A neat new tool recently entered beta. Called MyStickies, it allows users to add sticky notes to any web page. The key is installing a browser extension for your browser which enables you to view the stickies. If you're interested, sign up for an account at http://www.mystickies.com and give it a spin. Currently, the extension is only available for Firefox users.

Since the announcement of the beta just arrived on my desk(top), I haven't had a lot of time to think of great uses yet. However, I could see people getting a lot of use out of the product when doing all sorts of research, especially genealogy research.

In addition using del.icio.us as a research log, I have found yet another use for the site. Using the aggregator2 module for Drupal, I can add items from my del.icio.us rss feed as a node to my site, allowing me to kill two birds with one stone. In addition, once it's on my site, it gives my visitors a chance to see and comment on what I find interesting and important, without any additional work on my part.

I hope other social networking sites pick up on this idea.

Microsoft has released the official patch for the WMF vulnerability found earlier. All Microsoft users should download and install this patch as the threat is pretty serious. It is highly recommended that you use the Windows Update tool if it's on your computer but you can also find the necessary downloads here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS06-001.mspx.

Massachusetts tackles spam gang - One of the world's biggest senders of spam is being sued by the Massachusetts attorney general. [BBC - Technology]

As far as I can tell, all I have to say to this is "thank God." I'm as tired of these emails as the rest of you are. Unfortunately, enforcing this order will probably be much harder than he thinks as not all foreign countries have the time or resources to pressure ISPs to shut down these sites.

Developers to play with BBC wares - The BBC opens up its content for outside web developers and designers to "create cool new things". [BBC - Technology]

With announcements such as the above increasing in frequency across the Internet, I wonder if perhaps we are about to enter the next phase of Internet growth. The first phase began when AOL (and probably some other companies) created the monthly rate plan which was well within the grasp of many Americans. Once AOL launched that product, URLs were popping up everywhere from print to TV. And while the Internet is awesome, there is only so far it could go with the old way of doing things. For many people, their bookmark lists are getting too long and it takes too long to check out every website of interest to see if the content has been updated and what has been added.