From the people that brought you Blogger comes Odeo. It’s not out yet but here are some very positive words on the closed beta. After all my bitching about current Podcast programs this sounds like just the ticket - easy audio publishing, browsing and syncing. I love how the internet never ceases to produce great new ideas, or at least realise the potential of old ones that were previously done badly.

How have I only just seen this? Upcoming.org is a great looking social calendar system that lets you stick in events, share them with friends or even post them on your website. I’ve wanted something like this for ages, now to just convince various friends to try it.

Any regular reader knows I’m Google’s willing bitch, but then who isn’t? They just do things cleverly, every time (well, almost). Here’s an interesting look at who they’ve bought in the past as well as some possible future acquisitions. (via [H]ardOCP)

Radio is looking at podcasting as a possible revenue source to support their floundering (in America at least) profits. It’s interesting just how quickly companies are catching onto the podcasting thing, particularly as it’s still fairly crap really. It’s almost like Google and iTunes has made the internet cool for companies to spend money on again, not that it’s a bad thing. Strange that they never took much notice of streaming net radio though.

On the upside this might mean more quality podcasts - during my last journey into podcastland I encountered mostly tripe, plus podcast programs all seem fairly flakey and unintuitive so far. It’s a medium with potential though, no doubt.

Yup, still alive, excuse the brief hiatus. I’ve been forever jealous of the US and their great deal sites like FatWallet and Passwird. Well, after some Googling and advice from the Shack, I’ve finally found a few deal sites to share with any Brits reading this. Hold onto your wallets!

Hot UK Deals
Hexus Bargains Forum
The DVD Forums (signup required)

If you know any other such sites or forums for us Brits, by all means stick it in the comments.

3D buildings, GPS, public transport… Google clearly didn’t mess about with Keyhole after buying it. This looks like one extremely useful toy indeed.

Yes, they’re still working on it. It’s a shame they’re being current plugin compatability nazis though. Maybe it’s because it worked well for Windows 95 (or maybe OS2 was always doomed), but I’d rather they force plugins to do a little updating rather than being obsessed with legacy support that’s bound to hold the browser back.

Wikipedia never ceases to amaze. There’s an entry for fictional swear words. Thankfully it even includes "smeg" from Red Dwarf. (via Waxy.org)

I’ve been saving up a couple of fun comparison articles. First up is Opera vs Firefox - having switched from the former to the latter you can probably guess my pick, but Opera is still a quality browser. X vs XP is a detailed and fair looking comparison of Apple and Windows - again having used both I’d say they could learn a lot from each other, though Windows nudges it for me each time purely because of gaming. And finally, Forza vs GT4, this time as a video. Personally, GT4 is artistically a better game despite the inferior hardware, but Forza is just far more accessible thanks to the clever driving aids and zero driving test nonsense. Certainly a very impressive first effort and it’s nudging GT4 on MetaCritic too.

Google continues to be astoundingly clever. The most recent example of their ingenuity is this - they’re creating a new translation system that learns by comparing existing translations. Think Rosetta Stone. Brilliant idea (if it works, anyway). This paragraph in particular highlights how impressive this all is:

The researchers working on this enabled the system to translate from Chinese to English without any researcher being able to speak Chinese.

An impressive feat that apparently took 500 hours, BUT WHY?! Good effort and all, but it’s somewhere on par with art from the old Broken Sword adventure games, if that. Madness. (via Waxy)

Read about them here. The back/forward cache in particular sounds nice, I used Opera briefly and it had speedy back/forward navigation which makes general usage much faster. Now they just need to improve the naff spam filter in the otherwise excellent Thunderbird. How about DSPAM or CRM114 integration guys?