Enquiring Memes – tech memes and otherwise worth the mention

Image by _Blaster_ via Flickr

Trying to catch up on tech memes. Digging through the news I found several interesting tidbits worth sharing.  Don’t scream if there’s a lot of news coming out of that search company in Mountain View, not my fault they’re always kind of active.

• Amazon Kindle 2 – The very cool electronic book reader from Amazon is getting ready to ship Version 2.  Carry your books with you in a device less than the thickness of a pencil.  See it in action. I want one.  Where my next disposable $359 goes.  Great for traveling or reading in bed.
• Google Book Search – That being said, who needs a Kindle if your phone is an iPhone or an Android G1?  Google has made over 1.5 million public domain books available, formatted for the small screen of the iPhone or the Android.  I’ve been reading the Grimm’s Fairy Tales while walking the corgi.  Point your mobile browser at http://books.google.com/m and give it a whirl.
• Gmail Multiple Inboxes – Gmail has a new feature, like that doesn’t happen very often.  You can now display multiple separate inboxes in your Gmail.  Think about it this way, your regular inbox with everything and additional inboxes based on searches, like all starred items.  Best with a wide screen monitor.  More info.

• WonderWall – This may be in the category of why?  Microsoft has a slick new celebrity site called WonderWall.  The answer is people like reading and watching celebrities and knowing about their foibles, right Hilton Perez?  I just found out that Courtney Love is being named Elle Magazine UK’s woman of the year.  I certainly didn’t know that.
• Digital Pirates Winning – The New York Times has scored the contest between the movie studios and the pirates that are stealing the movies and making them available on the Internet and has given the advantage to the pirates. Read their take.
• Meebo – Meebo.com, the chat-everywhere browser-based IM client has become the first user of a new Facebook technology that allows them to add Facebook to the exhaustive list of chat interfaces that they support.  Meebo allows users to chat with their friends on IM services that include AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, MySpace and now Facebook, all from a free web interface.
• Google Calendar Offline – Just to show that everything Google builds isn’t always great, they have started to release an offline version of Google Calendar that doesn’t allow creating entries offline or editing existing entries.  This lame version is, so far, only available in Google domain accounts, for those who pay.
• Google Chrome Will include Extensions by May – Internet browsers like Firefox achieve their power by being able to use 3rd party written “extensions” to add functionality.  Chrome, the newish browser from Google, has not be able to use extensions,  so some of the functionality expected of a modern browser has been missing.  A read of the program for a May Google developer’s conference shows a session called “Developing Extensions for Google Chrome” – t it is safe then to conclude that the functionality to support extensions will be available by May 27, the date of the conference.
• Spam on Twitter – If you’re a user of the popular Twitter micro-blogging/messaging service, you’re probably aware of what an annoying issue fake spam users have become – it’s only going to get worse as commercial Twitter spamming products like twittertornado become available.  This little gem bills itself as “fully automated advertising software for Twitter advertising” read spam.  More about it.

• Papa John’s Pizza – “Pizza is actually healthy for you if you don’t eat too much”, that’s what the founder of pizza chain Pappa John’s said in an interview on BBC.  Not too much, if you’re interested, is one or two slices.