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VMWare announced yesterday that they were developing a project known as "Project Redwood" that would allow value added resellers to get into the cloud computing game.

This will allow IT departments in big companies to move away from public clouds, the fear associated with letting someone else hold your data, and focus on building their own Private Clouds.

VMware recognizes that many solution providers feel threatened or challenged by the idea of cloud computing, and have yet to understand what it means for them, said Carl Eschenbach, executive vice president of worldwide field operations at VMware.

"In fact, it's not a threat," Eschenbach said. "It's an opportunity."

More at
http://www.crn.com/security/222700644;jsessionid=W4PSBCV5FNCCPQE1GHPSKHW...

Google is now offering a free Eye-Fi memory card and free upload service for a year if you sign up for the 200GB Picasa storage option for $50. They will even continue to pay for your upload service as long as you are uploading to picasa.

An Eye-Fi wireless memory card lets you upload your photos and video to the web straight from *your* camera.

So imagine this, you are at a Christmas party, your third of the day, and have a tiny memory card in your digital camera that is already full. Sure you bought another one, but it is in the car or at home, so what do you do? If you are like the folks at the party I attended, you give up. That is it, no more pictures today.

While I have been one to study the fine art and gameplay dynamics behind social media gaming, I wanted to think of myself as special. I felt that by looking in with perspective to the reasons people play, what the special *social* aspects of playing the game are, and limiting my exposure I would keep from getting sucked in.

I was wrong...

I was able to go into Farmville and Fishville unwounded, although when some limited edition fish died, I sold the rest and left the tank to scum over. No love lost there.

MafiaWars, and its ever accessible IPhone port, have me hooked though.

I really like the reading list application on LinkedIN by Amazon. It is a third party application by Amazon that lets you list what you are reading and see what your other linkedIN contacts are reading ( or intend to read someday). There is a pretty large network effect there, though. The more people who add it, the more useful it is to me and vice versa.

So, if we are linkedIN, please add this app to your profile.

This is nothing new, but Amazon has created a Universal Wish List. They let you add items from any site on the web to your wishlist simply by clicking a bookmark button.

http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/get-button/ref=cm_wl_noff_top

Works on Safari and Firefox as far as I have tested.

So Gmail just added a multiple inboxes feature in labs, and there are some pretty cool tricks you do with the feature whether you want multiple inboxes or just want to see filtered items.

Enable the multiple inboxes feature from labs and go to your Settings section. Here you will be able to make selections for each of the multiple "panes" in your inboxes.

The primary issue I had with this feature was that it showed all of the messages whether they were in the inbox or not. While CNet suggests that you add a filter and tell the messages in your other accounts to just skip the inbox, I wanted it to work a little different.

I wanted to see my Starred messages, but not ALL of my starred messages forever... once I archive it I stop caring. Turns out by exploring the filters a bit I could get exactly what I wanted. The secret to multiple queries in mail searching is to use parenthesis to select more than one thing.

is:(Starred) in:(Inbox) produced exactly the results I needed.

Some other combinations
is:(Starred) to:(myemail@myschool.edu) shows my important school messages only
is:(Inbox) ebay shows only the messages in my inbox that have the text 'ebay' in the subject or body

Many other cool combinations can be found by testing the define filter dialog...

If you have ever wanted all of the important links and cool stuff for CSS design and layout all in one place, this is it.

http://www.dezwozhere.com/links.html

Also if you have never seen A List Apart you should check it out too http://www.alistapart.com

_K

Check out this demo over at betterthanflex.com. They are calling it Courier New Tube. Basically it is youTube videos but converted in the Flex app to characters rather than the live video.

http://www.betterthanflex.com/app/couriernewtube/CourierNewTube.html

It is similar to the sample code that showed the conversion of pictures to the characters but much much slicker. Someone I was watching it with said "what is so cool about that" then "OH... it's letters that is F_ing cool".

Check it out www.betterthanflex.com

Outsmart has a couple of examples at their website showing some wild 3D visualizations. You can run around a 3D room with Flex charts, video components, slide shows and other components on the walls. It is pretty amazing.

There are also some examples of other 3D animation, and a discussion at their blog about other game focused technology and their place in business applications.

Check out the 3D and components demo at: http://dev.getoutsmart.com/os3d/demos/videoroom/

The 3D rotating earth with depth of field at: http://dev.getoutsmart.com/os3d/demos/earth/

If you are looking for some great resources to make your Flex projects stand out from the crowd, or even stand out like the crowd you should take a look over at scalenine.com. I have also listed direct links to some of the cooler examples at the bottom of this entry.

http://www.scalenine.com/resources.html