That's Life as we know it

Hi Guys, sorry I have been relatively 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 various stories that where “trawled” up by my Newzcrawler RSS/News reader

Broadband fuels online expression Having an always-on, fast net connection is changing the way Britons use the Internet, research suggests.

[via BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

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 experienced, without my Broadband connection. And,now at least, i haven’t got a clue how I ever managed before on just a dial up connection.As some of you will be aware, as a BT Engineer, part of my skill base is the repair and provision of Broadband for the various ISP’s, so i know how hard it has been for some people to get this “wonderful” connection system.

It has certainly changed the way that i use the Internet. I’m still not a great user of Messaging systems, but I can see why people do. And a lot of my web presence is via my various weblogs (I now even 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.

[via BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

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…

[via Lockergnome's Tech News Watch]

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 moment 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 their 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.

[via BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

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.

[via "ComingSoon.net"]

“who would have believed, in the last years of the Nineteenth Century, that Human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of Space”

One of my favourite memories was listening , for the first time, to the voice of Richard Burton narrating the story of the Martian 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 muted, 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 predecessor, will turn into some “American-is’ed” blockbuster.I’m not trying to be nationalistic, and i also realise that certain elements of a story have to be “amended” 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.