I suppose it was inevitable, but it makes me a little sad anyway... Netscape has announced the end of ongoing development and support of the Netscape Navigator browser as of February 1, 2008. (On the other hand, it's a little surprising this didn't happen a while ago.)

Although Navigator has been irrelevant for many years now, I still have a soft place in my heart for the browser that took me down many of the early twists and turns on the "Information Superhighway".

Rest in peace, Mozilla.

Raph Koster is a game designer known for his work as the lead designer of Ultima Online and the creative director behind Star Wars Galaxies.

A little more than a year ago, Raph started a new company named Areae, which has been feverishly working on a super-secret MMO-related project. Today was finally the official unveiling of Raph's project, called Metaplace.

Metaplace allows anyone to build their own virtual spaces and treat them just like any other Web site. You can build chat rooms, store-fronts, online apartments, and all kinds of homebrewed games and attach them easily to your blog or MySpace page. Areae is even building their own full-blown MMO using the Metaplace tools.

From the FAQ...

Can I make my own world?

That's sort of the whole point. You should be able to stage up a massively multiplayer world with basic chat and a map you can build on in less than five minutes. It's that easy. Inherit a stylesheet -- puzzle game, or shooter, or chat world -- and off you go! Building maps and places is as easy as pasting in links from the Web, and dragging and dropping the pictures into your world.

Of course, as with any Web 2.0-ish social experiment where users generate most or all of the content, 90% of the resulting product will be complete crap.

<cough>MySpace<cough> <cough>YouTube<cough>

Uh, sorry about that. Of course, that also means that 10% is pretty good stuff. If Metaplace really is as easy as they make it sound, it should be extremely interesting to see what kind of cool stuff we end up with...

Ever wonder what Siskel and Ebert (or Ebert and Roeper) thought about Independence Day (2 thumbs down), That Thing You Do (2 thumbs up), or Serenity (2 thumbs up)?

Gene and I knew those old shows would be worth saving, but for a long time nobody agreed with us. In the years before home video, it seemed like a waste of expensive video tape to preserve hundreds of episodes of "Opening Soon at a Theater Near You," "Sneak Previews" or "At the Movies."

Fortunately, someone finally agreed with Ebert and started saving the old shows. Now, the past twenty-ish years of movie reviews are indexed and available for our (re)viewing pleasure at the Balcony Archive.

I found a terrific Webcomic called Looking For Group a few weeks ago...

The comic, set in an alternate World of Warcraft-ish universe, follows the adventures of an elven archer named Cale'Anon who is out to save the world.

Along the way, Cale gains traveling companions who have a slightly, uh, different set of priorities. In particular is Richard, an undead warlock who provides comic relief, strangely enough, in his absolute delight causing as much death and destruction as inhumanly possible.

If you're into gaming, fantasy, and humor, LFG is highly recommended!

Canon Rock is a rock arrangement of Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D major by the Taiwanese musician and composer Jerry Chang (JerryC). The song became popular on the internet after a video of JerryC's playing the song was posted online...


The rendition has since been featured on newspapers, magazines, and television shows.

Awesome!

How funny is this...


See, I told you this blog would talk about "life, the universe, and everything."

Found a very fun site today: How It Should Have Ended.com. The tagline of the site pretty much says it all... "Sometimes movies don't finish the way we'd like."


As you can see, in addition to the hi-res versions on the HISHE website, there also are versions of the videos here on YouTube. Very funny stuff!

Pandora is a very interesting service... It is an online music site that asks about your favorite artists and dynamically constructs a custom radio station just for you. In addition to songs from the artists you selected, the site will analyze your choices and deliver tunes from different artists that (hopefully) also fit your taste. You can further guide the playlist by clicking thumbs up or thumbs down for songs you feel strongly about. If you're an impulse shopper, links are available to iTunes and Amazon to buy the current song or album then and there. Nice.

Unfortunately, Pandora and other online radio stations like it might not be available for our listening (and shopping) pleasure very much longer. The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has recently released a revised fee schedule for internet radio. For most Webcasters, this new royalty rate represents more than 100% of their total revenues. Left unchanged, these rates will force most independent internet radio sites to shut down. The RIAA has effectively convinced this federal committee to establish rates that make online radio a non-viable business.

A site called SaveTheStreams.org has been created to provide information on this issue and what we might be able to do to reverse this decision. An online petition is available, as well as links to snail and e-mail addresses for your local representatives in Congress.

Maybe together we can prevent big business from limiting our soundscape.

The new Barenaked Ladies video is out for the song "Sound of Your Voice"...



An entertaining video, but I already have so much BNL material in this blog, why include this also, you may ask?

The schtick of the video is that all of those people became "famous" as a result of videos published on YouTube. I consider myself to be a serious Internet geek, and I have to admit that I only recognized about half of the YouTubers featured in this video. So, I thought I might do a little research (i.e. a bunch of YouTube searches) and present for your browsing convenience the comprehensive list of the videos that made these people the pop culture icons that they've become. Enjoy!

• 'man vs. magnet' - Matt Smithson
  
• 'Brookers' - Brooke Brodack
  
• 'Barats and Bereta' - Luke Barats and Joe Bereta
  
• 'Geriatric1927' - Peter Oakley
  
• 'Eepybird' - Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz
  
• 'Boh3m3' - Ben Going
  
• 'Thewinekone' - Tony Huynh
  
• Winston Spear
  
• 'Numa Numa' - Gary Brolsma
  
• 'Evolution of Dance' - Judson Laipply
  
• 'Where the Hell is Matt?' - Matt Harding
  

Most of the blogs that I check regularly are topic-oriented: technology, games, or entertainment mostly. But there is one written by a guy called moreanonymous that's very much a slice-of-life. He had an entry a few days ago titled "Batman Gets Treated to Burger King" that I really enjoyed, and I hope you will also...

He had been using his best behavior all morning. He ate his breakfast quietly at the table; usually he refuses to eat anything. He brushed his teeth and used the potty. Then put his pajamas into the hamper before changing into his Batman clothes. He started with jeans and then added a black turtleneck, followed by a cape and gloves. He needed help to get his mask on, but he asked very nicely. Then he spent the rest of the morning sitting at his desk drawing pictures of himself. He was being so damn precious that I decided to treat him to lunch at Burger King.

Too adorable!