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Sure, I’d like to have an iPhone. However, since I don’t have $600 to drop on a new phone (and I’m indentured to Sprint for at least another year – or more). I’ll settle for playing with the Leaflets web based demo.

To get the full effect, you’ll need to be running Safari 3 on a Mac or PC. The idea of Leaflets is a great one. Provide a portal that formats a lot of the popular RSS based services for iPhone viewing. The RSS / Feeds view is very efficient and all the demos read very well on the small screen of the iPhone.

Still, the negatives on the iPhone (no MS Exchange, no high-speed data, etc.) make me want to wait for a later version anyway.

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Drap and Drop to Add Markers and Change Routes in Google Maps

We’ve all used Google Maps to get directions. Most of us have probably even said to ourself “why is it going that way?”

Now you can change all that. For any Google Map Route, you can drag and drop to add route markers. This will let you adjust or completely change that route that Google planned. Each new custom point is added as a yellow pause “||” symbol so it’s easy to tell what changes you’ve made.

The most interesting thing to me is the ability to compare routes. I can map 2 or the paths to the same location (from the same starting point) and see which is the shortest. Could help you find your way around that traffic jam you always run into on the way home.

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Drobo - The Storage Robot

No, it’s not something from the upcoming Transformers movie, Drobo is an easy to use, RAID backup replacement for your PC.

Drobo is the world’s first storage robot, providing fully automated, infinitely expandable storage that safeguards against drive failure and data corruption. Fully automatic protection: Drobo is self-healing; when a hard drive fails, it reconfigures data to ensure it is once again protected – all without any human intervention. Infinitely expandable capacity: Drobo is self-improving; just add a new drive, or upsize a smaller one, and you’ll instantly increaseoverall protected capacity without needing to do anything else. Effortless storage management: Drobo is self-aware, knowing where your data is and how to heal or improve itself in the event of trouble – Drobo takes the pain out of managing large amounts of data. System requirements: Apple Macintosh OS-X 10.4 or greater, Microsoft Windows 2000, 2003, XP or Vista.

The problem with most RAID arrays is that that all the hard drives have to the same. If they support different sizes, the array will only store the amount of the smallest drive. The cool thing about the Drobo is that you can use any Serial ATA drive you want. Use three drives of different sizes and the next time you see a Hard Drive on sale for cheap, replace the smallest drive with a larger one. Very cool. Now, too bad they’re $499 (no drives included). Let’s get that down to about $249.

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“Hitch that team up Jebediah Springfield,
whip them horses, let them wagons roll.
That a people might embiggen America,
that a man might embiggen his soul.
his soul,
his soul, …, …”

Jebediah: [on film] A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
Edna: Embiggens? I never heard that word before I moved to Springfield
Ms.Hoover: I don’t know why. It’s a perfectly cromulent word.

Both of those quites are from Episode 3F13: Lisa the Iconoclast from the Simpsons. Is it bad when I see a JavaScript that expands Tiny URLs and I immediately realize it’s named after a fake word from The Simpsons?

Seems there’s also a PHP/MySQL Content Management System called Embiggen.

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More semi-random link goodness for today.

Wookieepedia is an impressive Wiki for all things Star Wars. First of all, you can’t beat that name. Wookieepedia has got to be one of the Top 10 web site names in my book. Second, the Wookieepedia is great for catching up on all your Star Wars lore. I’ve fallen way behind on the books (and will not catch up anytime soon), but in just a few minutes browsing I found out that one character from the Marvel Comics Star Wars run is returning. Lumiya was one of the first evil Jedi created after Darth Vader and has quite a good history in the comic series. Definitely makes me want to read the new Legacy of the Force series.

myIPneighbors.com is a fascinating site if you have a website. You can enter your IP or domain name and see what other sites are sharing your server. Since my host is European, nothing really cool popped up. That also means that my site (and the few others a friend and I host on that server) get most of server resources. Find the most overloaded server out there. Once search returned 641 sites on a shared host. Wow.

Texter is a great time saving tool for Windows users that do a lot of typing or coding. Within a few minutes, you can set Texter up to replace a few keystrokes with any text you choose. It makes blogging a snap. I can type hre+TAB key and instantly I’ve got a fully formatted link tag with the URL in my clipboard pasted in my document. Try it, you’ll like it.