Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
This classic 1981 shooter from Midway is the perfect way to spend down time between trick or treaters this Halloween (especially if you keep the candy within arms reach).
The addicting game play is pretty standard 80s arcade action. Even if you have never played Satan's Hollow before, the controls should be familiar if you've been around any of the host of similar shooters from the Reagan years. You basically move your tank around and shoot stuff: bats, fire breathing devil heads, pitchfork throwing devils, acid throwing devils, etc. You can upgrade your cannon by completing a bonus round and there is a special shield feature which gives you quick protection if the bad guys get too close. Watch out that the bats don't steal your extra life though.
Oh, and if all that wasn't enough, amongst all this carnage you'll have to steadily work on building a bridge across the lake of fire to get to each bonus round. It is down right biblical.
It was once considered unconventional to mess with your corporate logo, as if modifying it for a particular event was somehow degrading to your corporate image. But Google's been doing it every holiday (and even Earth Day) for the last ten years or so. Today's Google logo is a spooky-looking house, obviously inspired by Halloween. But Google's not the only online powerhouse celebrating All Hallow's Eve.
Hauntworld.com offers a directory of haunted houses all around the U.S. Like being scared? Get your fright game on at 7floorsofhell.com or Terror Town. Besides a directory of places you can pay to involuntarily pee, Hauntworld has a blog run by scare fans, too.
If you'd rather trick or treat than go to one of those exhibitions, you can still make the most of the web to plot your goody-gathering course. Want to avoid sex offenders? No sweat. Trying to find out where the most frequented neighborhoods are, or where the candy is "full size"? Check out Kidcounter. This site is limited in geography but serves as a model for tracking Treat Distribution online. The site is designed to count the number of trick or treaters an the amount of candy handed out, so next year, you'll know what neighborhoods to plunder, and which to avoid like the plague.
Apple appears to have changed its stance on virtualization... a little. The licensing agreement for OS X 10.4 strictly reads that you can only run Tiger on a single "Apple-labeled computer." And while the license for the desktop version of OS X 10.5 Leopard states the same restriction, Apple'se license for the server version of Leopard holds a little surprise.
You still need to buy a separate license for every Leopard Server installation. But in addition to installing Leopard Server on an Apple machine, you can install multiple copies of OS X 10.5 Server on a single machine. In other words, once VMWare and Parallels offer support for Leopard virtualization, you'll be all set.
This change does not apply to the desktop operating system. And Apple still strictly forbids installation of OS X on a non-Apple computer, which means there's no way to run Leopard on a PC without violating the terms of your license. Still, it's nice to see Apple crack the window a bit, even if they're not ready to open the door and let you run OS X, Linux, Windows all on the same box (unless you bought that box from Apple).
When you hit the minimize tab on any program in Windows, your application will disappear into the taskbar. But if you've got more than a few applications hiding out in your taskbar, it can be kind of tough to find the program you're looking for.
ThumbWin gives your minimized windows a bit more visual information. Once you install and run this tiny application, any time you minimize a window, a thumbnail will be created on your desktop. You can click the thumbnail to maximize a window, or click the close button on a thumbnail to exit a program.
ThumbWin only kicks in if you minimize applications one at a time. If you hit the show desktop button, no thumbnails will be created. The utility is highly customizable, letting you change the thumbnail dimensions and layout. You can also select certain programs to exclude from ThumbWin, which will prevent thumbnails from being generated when you minimize those applications.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. In this case, the "them" is Facebook. Microsoft joined them. Google wants to beat them.
Tomorrow, Google will launch its new social networking API, called OpenSocial, with a host of high-value social networking players already at the party. The most significant of these players are LinkedIn, Salesforce, and Orkut, who've all been around quite a while and have substantial vertical popularity: LinkedIn in the business work, Salesforce in CRM applications, and Orkut as a South-American MySpace-killer. Even Friendster, which has become a sort-of also-ran with a great brand name, has joined the party. Perhaps these relatively peripheral social nets see Google as their ticket to competing with MySpace and Facebook.
Like Facebook, Google's API will provide participants with options for dealing with user profiles and events. But unlike Facebook, OpenSocial will really on commonplace JavaScript to do the API's bidding. Facebook uses it's own "FBML" specification, which means it can't be used off of the Facebook system. Google's intention is to get as many third-party social nets supporting OpenSocial as possible. And developers will flock to anything that saves them from having to re-develop their widgets for a dozen different social nets.
If you can tolerate the music, Head Defence offers some quick one-on-one action. We weren't expecting this one to hold our attention, but it quickly became surprisingly addictive.
True to its name, the object in Head Defence is to jump up and bounce bombs that are falling out of the sky towards your opponent's castle. Make sure you're not standing around if one of the bombs falls to the ground, or your little man will be temporarily stunned giving your opponent a leg up.
It's an extremely simple game, but is surprisingly playable. The name seems like a play on the name of the extremely popular Desktop Tower Defense game.
Remember that craze back in the early days of the internet? The early 90's. You remember, the time when the animated gif was a cult phenomenon? Well, like pogs, they are back.
Move over YouTube, GIFTube is your one stop shop for everything animated gif. Users upload and share their creations or findings to make their MySpace pages, websites and blogs as flashy as they can through the provided web 2.0 embed code. Have a snazzy GIF or something saved from the internets early days? Submit it for entry into the directory. But please, do us all a favor and just browse the site, do not use these on your website. Thanks!
It seems that the new age of animated GIF's drops the flashy text and symbols in favor of some questionable adult GIF's on this site. So browse the GIF library at your own discretion.
Just a few months after relaunching Truveo as a video search engine (as opposed to a video sharing site), AOL is taking Truveo worldwide. Or at least adding localized versions for a number of countries including France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Tawain, and the UK.
AOL, which owns both Truveo and this blog, plans to bring more regional versions online in the next few months. Australia, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia, and Turkey are all on the waiting list, because we know they've been waiting with baited breath for yet another website dedicated to online video.
While Truveo international might not be exactly what anyone outside of AOL was asking for, it makes a lot of sense. There are hundreds of sites dedicated to professional and user generated content not just in the US, but across the globe. And Truveo is already a pretty polished search engine for finding videos whether they're produced for YouTube or the Associated Press.
Much of the content on the US version of the site is already coming from overseas sources. Regional versions will make it easier for citizens to find Japanese, Indian, or German videos without sifting through all the English language crap on the web.
The localized sites do have the same limitations as the US version of Truveo. While the site indexes videos from across the web, and lets you play many videos without leaving the site, there are still a number of videos that are only available from the content producer's website. So it's hard to tell when you're looking at a screen filled with video thumbnails whether clicking on one will make a video start playing or take you to another website where you may need to install a browser plugin before the video will play properly.
Microsoft has opened the doors (well, cracked the window really) for its new Google Analytics competitor. Codenamed, Project Gatineau, the new web analytics tool will offer web publishers and advertisers advanced tools for measuring how people are interacting with web sites.
The private beta which launches today is only available to US-based advertisers at the moment. Advertisers can sign up via a Microsoft website. During the beta, Project Gatineau will only be available to adCenter account holders, which means you'll have to shell out $5 to sign up for an account if you don't already have one. It's not clear if the analytics tool will be available to users without adCenter accounts after Project Gatineau emerges from beta.
Looking for a sample invoice, lease, will, W-2 or pretty much anything else that can be saved as a document? Online document sharing company DocStoc has emerged from private beta. We got our first look at DocStoc last month, and the service is easy to use, and most importantly, useful.
There are over 12,000 documents online so far, and they cover everything from business plans to software tutorials. You can easily read documents online, download them, or embed them on a web page.
Like other user generated content sites, you need an account to upload content. But anyone can browse, read, download, and share documents that other users have uploaded.
Apple has decided to stop accepting cash payments for iPhones purchased from retail Apple stores. Instead, they're only taking credit and debit card payments, ostensibly in an effort to keep track of everybody who buys them. But why would Apple do such a thing? After all, isn't cash legal tender for all debts public and private?
Apparently not when the item being tendered is an Apple iPhone. It seems Apple is trying to cut down on unlocking and bricking, practices which, when employed together, allow the phone to be used more or less permanently with carriers other than AT&T, the firm with the exclusive (restrictive) distribution deal for the vaunted device. AT&T requires a two-year commitment just to purchase the iPhone, and unlocking/bricking lets customers out of that deal. So Apple has upped the ante on iPhone purchasers by making sure that they know each customer's identity.
Apple estimates that about 250,000 iPhone have been sold to non-AT&T customers. This means people are either unlocking them and then activating them personally on other carriers, or they're simply selling the unlocked units to folks who want to use them on another carrier. Apple is claiming 4.5 million bucks in lost revenue as a result of unlocking. Of course, we don't think the majority of iPhone purchasers were using cash to begin with, so the likelihood of this debit/credit thing having a negative impact on legitimate iPhone sales is pretty slim. Still, one wonders if there's a precedent for retailers not accepting cash for a sale. Don't think we've heard of that one before.
Yahoo! has launched a public beta of Yahoo! Messenger 9. The update includes a bunch of boring but important updates like localized versions for more countries including Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. But the big news is that you can embed videos, images, and maps in a chat window.
If you copy and paste a YouTube URL into a message, a video window will pop up. You can also add a Flickr slideshow or drag and drop images from your desktop.
The new IM client also has a redesigned contact list. When you hover over a friend, options pop up for sending an IM message, SMS text message, or starting a voice call. You can also customize the look with new skins, and you can add emoticons to your status message.
Yahoo! Messenger 9 beta is available for Windows XP and Vista. There are other versions available for Mac, Linux/Unix, mobile, or web chat.
Text messages are normally easy to send, but what about when you're driving or occupied and want to get something complex across? Pinger is a service that lets users call into a service and leave a voicemail to a contact, that will in turn send a text message instead of a ring. Recipients then press a button and listen to your voice message and can reply or forward the message. It's a quick alternative service that makes voice messages easy without actually ringing up and interrupting a person. Recipients are presented with a message that shows who the message is from, how long it is, and when it was sent before they listen.
The Pinger service is free to use, but is only currently open to US residents. Instead of calling a number, Pinger has a special application for Blackberry and Treo that speeds up the process and allows for a visual preview of messages, list of last 10 Pinger messages and sharing between other Blackberry or Treo users.
Along with pinpointing business locations on Google Maps, companies can also list coupons to draw traffic into their locations. However, what if we wanted to search deals in a certain area only, and the store location didn't matter much. That could be a little difficult to find, until now.
Mike Blumenthal has discovered a way to search through a unique Google interface that pulls up coupons that have been entered into Maps. This secret interface allows users to search for coupons in a city based location and get results back without a giant pinpointed map. Simply visit this link and type in a city for all participating area coupons, you will be presented with a listing of deals. Happy coupon hunting!
Apple today announced that it has sold 2 million copies of OS X 10.5 since launching Leopard on Friday. Who knew there were 2 million Mac users out there? Just kidding. No, seriously.
That figure includes copies of the OS sold through retail stores, Apple's online store, and copies delivered as part of maintenance agreements.
The bigger question is if this is a sort of blockbuster release. Everyone who wants Leopard will have rushed out to buy it on opening weekend. And next week the sales will slump significantly. Our guess is that the first weekend sales don't necessarily predict the overall success of an operating system. Rather, they indicate the degree to which the public bought the hype surrounding an operating system.
This classic 1981 shooter from Midway is the perfect way to spend down time between trick or treaters this Halloween (especially if you keep the candy within arms reach). 
If you can tolerate the music, 
